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Essays on John Stuart Mill

We have gathered here essays and shorter pieces about or by John Stuart Mill, one of the more important individuals who has increased our understanding of the nature of individual liberty. Many of the essays are the editor’s introductions to the Collected Works of J.S. Mill published by the University of Toronto Press which are reproduced here under license.

[The image comes from “The Warren J. Samuels Portrait Collection at Duke University.”]

For additional information see:

• Works by JS Mill in the Library
• A Timeline of the Life and Work of JS Mill
• An anthology of the writings of Mill and Taylor on Women

• Back to Top

  1: Ashley’s Introduction to Mill’s Principles of Political Economy (1909)

  John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy with some of their Applications to Social Philosophy, ed. William James Ashley (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1909, 7th ed.). Chapter: Introduction

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/101/36210 on 2009-10-28

  The text is in the public domain.

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  Introduction

  The best Introduction to the Principles of Political Economy of John Stuart Mill is Mill's own account of his economic studies. They began at the age of thirteen; when he was approaching the end of that unique educational process, enforced by the stern will of his father, which he has described in his Autobiography for the amazement and pity of subsequent generations.

  “It was in 1819 that he took me through a complete course of political economy. His loved and intimate friend, Ricardo, had shortly before published the book which formed so great an epoch in political economy; a book which would never have been published or written, but for the entreaty and strong encouragement of my father.... No didactic treatise embodying its doctrines, in a manner fit for learners, had yet appeared. My father, therefore, commenced instructing me in the science by a sort of lectures, which he delivered to me in our walks. He expounded each day a portion of the subject, and I gave him next day a written account of it, which he made me rewrite over and over again until it was clear, precise, and tolerably complete. In this manner I went through the whole extent of the science; and the written outline of it which resulted from my daily compte rendu served him afterwards as notes from which to write his Elements of Political Economy. After this I read Ricardo, giving an account daily of what I read, and discussing... the collateral points which offered themselves in our progress.

  “On Money, as the most intricate part of the subject, he made me read in the same manner Ricardo's admirable pamphlets, written during... the Bullion controversy; to these succeeded Adam Smith; and... it was one of my father's main objects to make me apply to Smith's more superficial view of political economy the superior lights of Ricardo, and detect what was fallacious in Smith's arguments, or erroneous in any of his conclusions. Such a mode of instruction was excellently calculated to form a thinker; but it required to be worked by a thinker, as close and vigorous as my father. The path was a thorny one, even to him, and I am sure it was so to me, notwithstanding the strong interest I took in the subject. He was often, and much beyond reason, provoked by my failures in cases where success could not have been expected; but in the main his method was right, and it succeeded.”1

  After a year in France, during which he “passed some time in the house of M. Say, the eminent political economist, who was a friend and correspondent” of the elder Mill,2 he went a second time over the same ground under the same guidance.

  “When I returned (1821), my father was just finishing for the press his Elements of Political Economy, and he made me perform an exercise on the manuscript, which Mr. Bentham practised on all his own writings, making what he called ‘marginal contents’; a short abstract of every paragraph, to enable the writer more easily to judge of, and improve, the order of the ideas, and the general character of the exposition.”3

  This was soon after reaching the age of fifteen. Four years later, in 1825, he made a systematic survey of the field for the third time. Though he was still only nineteen, he was now fully embarked upon his career as an economist, and was contributing articles on currency and commercial policy to the Westminster Review. Yet when, in that year, John Mill and a number of his youthful friends entered upon “the joint study of several of the branches of science” which they “wished to be masters of,” it was once more the work of the elder Mill which served as the basis.

  “We assembled to the number of a dozen or more. Mr. Grote lent a room of his house in Threadneedle Street.... We met two mornings in every week, from half-past eight till ten, at which hour most of us were called off to our daily occupations. Our first subject was Political Economy. We chose some systematic treatise as our text-book; my father's Elements being our first choice. One of us read a chapter, or some smaller portion of the book. The discussion was then opened, and anyone who had an objection, or other remark to make, made it. Our rule was to discuss thoroughly every point raised... until all who took part were satisfied with the conclusion they had individually arrived at; and to follow up every topic... which the chapter or the conversation suggested, never leaving it until we had untied every knot.”1

  The figure of James Mill has been singularly obscured by the more attractive personality of his son. It may possibly be open to discussion how far James Mill was a trustworthy interpreter of Ricardo. But what cannot be doubted is the extent and penetrating character of his influence. The evidence of his son may certainly be relied upon:

  “My father's writings and conversation drew round him a number of young men who had already imbibed, or who imbibed from him, a greater or smaller portion of his very decided political and philosophical opinions. The notion that Bentham was surrounded by a band of disciples who received their opinions from his lips, is a fable.... The influence which Bentham exercised was by his writings. Through them he has produced, and is producing, effects on the condition of mankind, wider and deeper than any which can be attributed to my father. He is a much greater name in history. But my father exercised a far greater personal ascendency. He was sought for the vigour and instructiveness of his conversation, and did use it largely as an instrument for the diffusion of his opinions....

  “It was my father's opinions which gave the distinguishing character to the Benthamic or utilitarian propagandism of that time. They fell singly, scattered from him, in many directions, but they flowed from him in a continued stream principally in three channels. One was through me, the only mind directly formed by his instructions, and through whom considerable influence was exercised over various young men, who became, in their turn, propagandists. A second was through some of the Cambridge contemporaries of Charles Austin... some of the more considerable of whom afterwards sought my father's acquaintance.... The third channel was that of a younger generation of Cambridge undergraduates, contemporary... with Eyton Tooke, who were... introduced by him to my father....

  “Though none of us, probably, agreed in every respect with my father, his opinions, as I said before, were the principal element which gave its colour and character to the little group of young men who were the first propagators of what was afterwards called ‘Philosophic Radicalism.’ Their mode of thinking was characterized by... a combination of Bentham's point of view with that of the modern political economy, and with the Hartleian metaphysics. Malthus's population principle was quite as much a banner, and point of union among us, as any opinion specially belonging to Bentham. This great doctrine... we took up with ardent zeal,... as indicating the sole means of realizing the improvability of human affairs by securing full employment at high wages to the whole labouring population through a voluntary restriction of the increase of their numbers.”1

  What was true of James Mill's personal influence on the entire circle of young Philosophic Radicals and over the whole range of their beliefs, was peculiarly true of his influence on the economic opinions of his son. The impress was deep and indelible. For good or for ill,—and it is not the purpose of this Introduction to interpose between the reader and the author and to assign either praise or blame—John Mill's economics remained those of his father down to the end of his life. His economics, that is to say, in the sense of what he himself afterwards described as “the theoretic principles,”2 or again as the “abstract and purely scientific”3 element in his writings: the whole, in fact, of the doctrine of Distribution and Exchange in its application to competitive conditions. After reading through the first three Books of the son's Principles of 1848, one has but to turn to the father's Elements of 1821 to realize that, though on outlying portions of the field (like the subject of Currency) John Mill had benefited by the discussions that had been going on during the interval, the main conclusions, as well as the methods of reasoning, are the same in the two treatises. How much of “the deposit” of doctrine,—if we may borrow a theological term,—came originally from Ricardo, how much from Malthus, from Adam Smith, from the French Physiocrats of the eighteenth century, and from the general movement of philosophical and political thought, is a subject on which much has been written, but on which we cannot now enter. It is sufficient for our purpose to make this one point clear: that it was through James Mill, and, as shaped by James Mill, that it chiefly reached his son.

  Yet John Mill certainly thought, when he was writing his book in 1848, and still more evidently when he wrote his Autobiography in 1861, that there was a wide difference between himself and those whom he calls, in language curiously anticipating that of our own day, “the political economists of the old school,”1 or “the common run of political economists.”2 And accordingly it is essential to observe that this difference consisted, not in any abandonment of the “abstract science,” but in the placing of it in a new setting. In substance he kept it intact; but he sought to surround it, so to speak, with a new environment.

  To make this clear, we must return to Mill's mental history. Though eminently retentive of early impressions, he was also, in a very real sense, singularly open-minded; and the work of his life cannot be better described than in a happy phrase of his own coinage: it was a constant effort to “build the bridges and clear the paths” which should connect new truths with his “general system of thought,”3i.e. with his Benthamite and Ricardian starting point. Of the influences, later than that of his father, which coloured his thoughts, three must be singled out for notice. They may briefly be summed up—though each name represents much besides—as those of Coleridge, of Comte, and of his wife.

  In Coleridge and in the Coleridgians—such as Maurice and Sterling, whose acquaintance he made in 1828—he recognised the English exponents of “the European reaction against the philosophy of the eighteenth century,”4 and its Benthamite outcome. That reaction, he came to believe, was in large measure justifiable; and in two celebrated articles in the London and Westminster Review in 1838 and 18405 he sought to expound Benthamism and Coleridgism as complementary bodies of truth. He did not, indeed, extend this appreciation to Coleridge's economic utterances, and compounded for the respect he paid to his political philosophy by the vivacity with which he condemned his incursions into the more sacred field:

  “In political economy he writes like an arrant driveller, and it would have been well for his reputation had he never meddled with the subject. But this department of knowledge can now take care of itself.”1

  What Coleridge helped him to realise was, firstly, the historical point of view in its relation to politics, and secondly, and as a corollary, the inadequacy of laissez faire.

  “The Germano-Coleridgian school produced... a philosophy of society in the only form in which it is yet possible, that of a philosophy of history.”2

  And again

  “That series of great writers and thinkers, from Herder to Michelet, by whom history... has been made a science of causes and effects,... by making the events of the past have a meaning and an intelligible place in the gradual evolution of humanity, have afforded the only means of predicting and guiding the future.”3

  Similarly, after pointing out that Coleridge was

  “at issue with the let alone doctrine, or the theory that governments can do no better than to do nothing,”

  he remarks that it was

  “a doctrine generated by the manifest selfishness and incompetence of modern European governments, but of which, as a general theory, we may now be permitted to say that one-half of it is true and the other half false.”4

  It is not wonderful that the Bentham and Coleridge articles should “make a temporary alienation between Mill and his old associates and plant in their minds a painful misgiving as to his adhering to their principles,” as we learn from Professor Bain, who became an intimate friend of Mill shortly afterwards.5 As early as 1837 Mrs. Grote had been “quite persuaded that the [London and Westminster] Review would cease to be an engine of propagating sound and sane doctrines on Ethics and Politics under J. M.”6 But it is a little surprising, perhaps, that by 1841 Mill was ready to describe himself in the privacy of correspondence as having definitely withdrawn from the Benthamite school “in which I was brought up and in which I might almost say I was born.”1

  The letter was that in which Mill introduced himself to Comte, the first of a remarkable series which has only recently seen the light. By the time he wrote it, the influence of Coleridge had been powerfully supplemented by that of the French philosopher. Indeed, with that tendency to run into extremes which was seldom quite absent from him, Mill even declared, in addressing Comte, that it was the impression produced as far back as 1828 by the reading of a very early work by Comte which had “more than any other cause determined his definite withdrawal from the Benthamite school.” In his eager enthusiasm, he probably ante-dated Comte's influence. It seems to have been the first two volumes of the Positive Philosophy (of which the second appeared in 1837) that first interested Mill at all deeply in Comte's views; though, as we shall notice later, he had long been familiar with ideas akin to them in the writings of the St. Simonians.

  However this may have been, it is abundantly clear that during the years 1841–3, when he was engaged in completing his great treatise on Logic, Mill was fascinated by Comte's general system, as set forth in the Positive Philosophy. In October, 1841, he wrote to Bain that he thought Comte's book, in spite of “some mistakes,” was “very near the grandest work of this age.”2 In November, in the letter to Comte already quoted, he took the initiative and wrote to the French philosopher to express his “sympathy and adhesion.” “I have read and re-read your Cours with a veritable intellectual passion,” he told him.

  “I had indeed already entered into a line of thought somewhat similar to your own; but there were many things of the first importance which I had still to learn from you and I hope to show you, by and by, that I have really learnt them. There are some questions of a secondary order on which my opinions are not in accord with yours; some day perhaps this difference will disappear; I am not flattering myself when I believe that I have no ill-founded opinion so deeply rooted as to resist a thorough discussion,”

  such as he hoped to engage Comte in. It was for this reason that he ventured to put himself into communication with “that one of the great minds of our time which I regard with most esteem and admiration,” and believed that their correspondence might be “of immense value” for him. And in the first edition of his Logic, which appeared in 1843, he did not scruple to speak of Comte as “the greatest living authority on scientific methods in general.”1 Into the causes of this enthusiasm it is unnecessary to enter. Mill was tired of Benthamism: a masterly attempt to construct a philosophy of Science and of Humanity, which paid attention at the same time to historical evolution and to the achievements of modern physical and biological science (a side on which the Benthamite school had always been weak), and yet professed to be “positive,” i.e. neither theological nor metaphysical—such an attempt had, for the time, an overmastering charm for him. The effect of his reading of Comte on his conception of the logic of the physical and biological sciences falls outside our present range. What we have now to notice are Comte's views with regard to political economy. They cannot but have shaken, at any rate for a time, Mill's confidence that what he had learnt from his father could “take care of itself.”

  Comte's ultimate object was, of course, the creation of “the Social Science” or “Sociology.” To-day there are almost as many different conceptions of the scope of “sociology” as there are eminent sociologists; so that it is perhaps worth while to add that Comte's ideal was a body of doctrine which should cover the life of human society in all its aspects. This science could be created, he held, only by the “positive” method—by the employment of the Art of Observation, in its three modes, Direct Observation or Observation proper, Experiment, and Comparison.2 Each of these modes of Observation would necessarily assume a character appropriate to the field of enquiry. As to Observation proper: while the metaphysical school of the eighteenth century had grossly exaggerated its difficulties, on the other hand there was no utility in mere collections of disconnected facts. Some sort of provisional hypothesis or theory or anticipation was necessary, if only to give direction to our enquiries. As to Experiment: direct Experiment, as in the physical sciences, was evidently impracticable, but its place could be taken by a consideration of “pathological” states of society such as might fairly be called “indirect” Experiment. And as to Comparison: there was a form of this procedure, viz. the comparison of “the different consecutive conditions of humanity,”—“the historical method” in the true sense of the term,—so fruitful in sociological enquiry as to constitute the distinguishing characteristic of this particular branch of science.

  To this social science of his vision Comte applied the distinction he had already applied to the preliminary sciences, between the static and the dynamic.1 The difference between “the fundamental study of the condition of existence of society” and “the study of the laws of its continuous movement” was so clear, in his judgment, that he could foresee the ultimate division of Sociology into Social Statics and Social Dynamics. But to attach, in the formative stage of the science, any very great importance to this convenient distribution of the subject matter would, he thought, be positively dangerous, since it would tend to obscure “the indispensable and permanent combination of the two points of view.”

  Comte's attitude towards political economy, as it was then taught was the natural result of his views as to the proper method of creating a science of society.2 As part of the general movement of revolutionary thought, it had had a “provisional” function, and had rendered a transitory service in discrediting the industrial policy of the ancien régime after that policy had become a mere hindrance to progress. It had prepared the way for a sound historical analysis by calling attention to the importance of the economic side of life. Its practical utility, however, was by this time a thing of the past and it was now an actual obstacle to social advance. Like the rest of the revolutionary philosophy, it now tended to prolong and systematise social anarchy. It led people to regard the absence of all regulating intervention in economic affairs on the part of society as a universal dogma; and it met all the difficulties arising out of modern industrial changes, such as “the famous and immense economic question of the effect of machinery,” with “the sterile aphorism of absolute industrial liberty.” And these practical consequences were but, in Comte's judgment, the consequences of its underlying scientific defects. From this sweeping condemnation Comte excepts Adam Smith, from whose example, according to him, the creators of the contemporary political economy had completely departed. But of the contemporary political economy he declares that it was fundamentally metaphysical: its creators had no real understanding of the necessity and character of scientific observation. Its “inanity” was proved by the absence in economic literature of the real tests of all truly scientific conceptions, viz. continuity and fecundity. Its sterile disputes on the meaning of terms such as value, and utility, and production were like the worst debates of medieval schoolmen. And the very isolation of economics from other fields of social enquiry which economists had sought to justify was its decisive condemnation.

  “By the nature of the subject, in social studies the various general aspects are, quite necessarily, mutually inter-connected and inseparable in reason, so that the one aspect can only be adequately explained by the consideration of the others. It is certain that the economic and industrial analysis of society cannot be positively accomplished, if one leaves out all intellectual, moral and political analysis: and therefore this irrational separation furnishes an evident indication of the essentially metaphysical nature of the doctrines based upon it.”

  Now Mill was immensely attracted, and for the time possessed, by Comte's general conception of the Social Science or Sociology; and in the concluding chapters of his Logic he took this over bodily, together with Comte's distinction between Social Statics and Social Dynamics.1 Just as Comte rejected the “metaphysical” political philosophy of France, so Mill made clear his opinion of the inadequacy of “the interest-philosophy of the Bentham school” in its application to “the general theory of government.” That philosophy, as he explained, was “founded on one comprehensive premiss: namely, that men's actions are always determined by their interests.” But as this premiss was not true, what were really “the mere polemics of the day,” and useful enough in that capacity, were quite erroneously “presented as the scientific treatment of a great question.” And quite in the spirit of Comte he added:

  “These philosophers would have applied and did apply their principles with innumerable allowances. But it is not allowances that are wanted. There is little chance of making due amends in the superstructure of a theory for the want of sufficient breadth in its foundations. It is unphilosophical to construct a science out of a few of the agencies by which the phenomena are determined, and leave the rest to the routine of practice or the sagacity of conjecture. We ought either not to pretend to scientific forms or we ought to study all the determining agencies equally, and endeavour, as far as can be done, to include all of them within the pale of the science; else we shall infallibly bestow a disproportionate attention upon those which our theory takes into account, while we misestimate the rest and probably underrate their importance.”1

  How, then, about political economy, which Comte had criticised in precisely the same spirit ? Mill was not at all disposed to throw overboard the Ricardian economics received from his father. In the first place, he maintained that a distinction could be drawn between the “general Science of Society” or “general Sociology” and “the separate compartments of the science, each of which asserts its conclusions only conditionally, subject to the paramount control of the laws of the general science.” The ground for this contention he sets forth thus:

  “Notwithstanding the universal consensus of the social phenomena, whereby nothing which takes place in any part of the operations of society is without its share of influence on every other part; and notwithstanding the paramount ascendency which the general state of civilisation and social progress in any given society must hence exercise over the partial and subordinate phenomena; it is not the less true that different species of social facts are in the main dependent, immediately and in the first resort, on different kinds of causes; and therefore not only may with advantage, but must, be studied apart....

  “There is, for example, one large class of social phenomena of which the immediately determining causes are principally those which act through the desire of wealth; and in which the psychological law mainly concerned is the familiar one that a greater gain is preferred to the smaller... A science may be thus constructed which has received the name of Political Economy.”2

  In spite of the “for example” with which political economy is introduced, it is clear that the generalisation was formulated for the sake of that one subject, subject to a qualification to be shortly mentioned.

  “I would not here undertake to decide what other hypothetical or abstract sciences, similar to Political Economy, may admit of being carved out of the general body of the social science; what other portions of the social phenomena are in a sufficiently close and complete dependence, in the first resort, on a particular class of causes, to make it convenient to create a preliminary science of those causes; postponing the consideration of the causes which act through them or in concurrence with them to a later period of the enquiry.”1

  But Mill was not content with this “departmental” view, taken by itself: he proceeded to build two further “bridges” between his new and his old opinions. In an essay, written for the most part in 1830, and published in the London and Westminster Review in 1836,2 Mill had laid down with the utmost stringency that the only method appropriate to political economy, i.e. to the Ricardian economics, was the a priori or deductive one. Between this and the method of Observation recommended by Comte it might have been thought that there was a sufficiently wide gulf. But Mill now proceeded to describe “the historical method,”—whereby “general” Sociology was to be built up according to Comte and himself alike,—in such terms as permitted him to designate even that a “Deductive Method,” though indeed an “Inverse Deductive Method.” Thus the evident contrast in method was softened down into the difference simply between “direct” and “inverse” deduction.3

  The other bridge was to be a new science, or couple of sciences, still to be created. Mill explained at length in his Logic that there was need of what he denominated “Ethology” or a Science of Character.4 Built upon this, there ought to be a Political Ethology, or “a theory of the causes which determine the type of character belonging to a people or to an age.”5 The bearing of Political Ethology on Political Economy is thus summarily indicated:

  “The most imperfect part of those branches of social enquiry which have been cultivated as separate sciences is the theory of the manner in which their conclusions are affected by ethological considerations. The omission is no defect in them as abstract or hypothetical sciences, but it vitiates them in their practical application as branches of a comprehensive social science. In political economy, for instance, empirical laws of human nature are tacitly assumed by English thinkers, which are calculated only for Great Britain and the United States. Among other things an intensity of competition is constantly supposed, which, as a general mercantile fact, exists in no country in the world except those two. An English political economist... has seldom learned that it is possible that men, in conducting the business of selling their goods over the counter, should care more about their ease or their vanity than about their pecuniary gain.”1

  In spite once more of the introductory “for instance,” it is clear that it is only political economy that Mill has in his mind; and it is primarily to remedy its “imperfections” that Political Ethology is to be created. Political Ethology, like Ethology itself, Mill conceived of as directly deductive in its character.

  It is no part of my task to criticise either Mill or Comte: all I am seeking to do is to make clear the intellectual relations between them. And whether, in particular, a Science of National Character is possible, and, if possible, on what sort of lines it may be constructed, I “would not here undertake to decide.” I go on now to the purely biographical facts,—which need the more emphasis because they have dropt altogether out of the Autobiography,—that Mill took this project of creating an Ethology very seriously; that “with parental fondness he cherished this subject for a considerable time”;2 and that he dropt it because he could not make anything of it.3

  It was in this mood of recoil that he began to think of composing “a special treatise on political economy, analogous to that of Adam Smith.” Writing to Comte in April, 1844, he remarked that for him “this would only be the work of a few months.”4 Some particulars as to the actual period of composition are furnished by the Autobiography.5

  “The Political Economy was far more rapidly executed than the Logic, or indeed than anything of importance which I had previously written. It was commenced in the autumn of 1845, and was ready for the press before the end of 1847. In this period of little more than two years there was an interval of six months during which the work was laid aside, while I was writing articles in the Morning Chronicle... urging the formation of peasant properties on the waste lands of Ireland. This was during the period of the Famine, the winter of 1846–47.”

  After what we have seen of his mental history, it is easy to anticipate that Mill would no longer be satisfied with the kind of treatment that economics had received at the hands of his father, or in subsequent years of McCulloch or Senior. The “principles” of abstract political economy, as he had inherited them, he entertained no sort of doubt about. As has been well said, within that field “Mill speaks as one expounding an established system.”1 As late as 1844 he had reprinted in the thin volume entitled Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy his old essay on Method, and had expressed his complete satisfaction, within its range, with the science as it was to be found “in the writings of its best teachers.”2 But he was bound to put this science into some sort of relation with that general Social Science or Philosophy, of which he had gained, or solidified, his notion from the reading of Comte. Accordingly, he gave to his book the title “Principles of Political Economy, with some of their Applications to Social Philosophy.” And he himself spoke of the work in later years in the following terms:

  “It was, from the first, continually cited and referred to as an authority, because it was not a book merely of abstract science, but also of application, and treated Political Economy not as a thing by itself, but as a fragment of a greater whole; a branch of Social Philosophy, so interlinked with all the other branches, that its conclusions, even in its own peculiar province, are only true conditionally, subject to interference and counteraction from causes not directed within its scope: while to the character of a practical guide it has no pretension, apart from other classes of considerations.”3

  It must be left to the reader to judge how far this “application” was successful,—how far, indeed, the nature of the abstract science lent itself to application. But the character of the undertaking will be rendered clearer by noticing certain of its characteristics.

  Ethology, as we have seen, had receded from Mill's mind. But the thoughts which had given rise to the project have left their traces in the chapter on “Competition and Custom.”4 Here Custom is placed side by side with Competition as the other agency determining the division of produce under the rule of private property. It is pointed out not only that Competition is a comparatively modern phenomenon, so that, until recently, rents, for instance, were ruled by custom, but also that “even in the present state of intense competition” its influence is not so absolute as is often supposed: there are very often two prices in the same market. He asserts that

  “political economists generally, and English political economists above others, are accustomed to lay almost exclusive stress upon the first of these agencies; to exaggerate the effect of competition, and take into little account the other and conflicting principle. They are apt to express themselves as if they thought that competition actually does, in all cases, whatever it can be shown to be the tendency of competition to do.”

  The language in which he goes on to formulate an explanation and relative justification of their practice is of the utmost significance.

  “This is partly intelligible, if we consider that only through the principle of competition has political economy any pretension to the character of a science. So far as rents, profits, wages, prices, are determined by competition, laws may be assigned for them. Assume competition to be their exclusive regulator, and principles of broad generality and scientific precision may be laid down, according to which they will be regulated. The political economist justly deems this his proper business: and as an abstract or hypothetical science, political economy cannot be required to do anything more.”

  But, as the ascription to Competition of an unlimited sway is, as a matter of fact, “a great misconception of the actual cause of human affairs.”

  “to escape error, we ought, in applying the conclusions of political economy to the actual affairs of life, to consider not only what will happen supposing the maximum of competition, but how far the result will be affected if competition falls short of the maximum.”

  After this it might perhaps be expected that Mill would himself embark on a quantitative estimate of the extent of the divergence of the “laws” of “the science” from the facts of life. But certainly no such attempt is made within the covers of his treatise—and he makes it clear that the application of his warning is to be left to the reader:

  “These observations must be received as a general correction, to be applied whenever relevant, whether expressly mentioned or not, to the conclusions contained in the subsequent portions of this treatise. Our reasonings must, in general, proceed as if the known and natural effects of competition were actually produced by it.”

  To discuss the conception of “science” and its relation to “law” which underlies such passages; to compare it with that implied by Mill elsewhere; or to enter into the question whether a systematic ascertainment and grouping of actual facts, guided by the ordinary rules of evidence, might not deserve to be called “scientific,” even if it did not result in “law”—would take us too far afield. By confining, as he did, the term “science” to the abstract argument, and by leaving the determination of its relation to actual conditions to what he himself in another connexion calls “the sagacity of conjecture,” Mill undoubtedly exercised a profound influence on the subsequent character of economic writing in England.

  Another result, in the Political Economy, of the preceding phase of Mill's social speculation, is to be found in the distinction between Statics and Dynamics which he now introduces into economics itself.1 In the Logic, as we have noticed, this distinction was applied, following Comte, only to the general Sociology which was to be created by “the historical method.” But the general Sociology being indefinitely postponed, because the Ethology which in Mill's judgment was its necessary foundation was not forthcoming, it seemed proper to employ the distinction in the “preliminary” science, and to add in the Political Economy itself a “theory of motion” to the “theory of equilibrium.” Thus employed, however, the distinction becomes something very different from what Comte had intended. Almost the whole of Mill's Book IV on the Progress of Society consists of a highly theoretical and abstract argument as to the effect on Prices, Rents, Profits, and Wages, within a competitive society of the present type, of the progress of population, capital, and the arts of production, in various combinations. Much of the substance of these arguments was derived from Ricardo or his school; and the whole discussion, even when Mill takes an independent line of his own, moves within the Ricardian atmosphere. This statement of fact does not necessarily imply condemnation. It is made only to clear Mill's use of the terms “static” and “dynamic” in his Political Economy from the ambiguity which his own previous use of the term in relation to general Sociology might cause to cling to it. And we must except the last chapter of the Book, dealing with “the Probable Futurity of the Working Classes,” which is a prophecy of the ultimate victory of Co-operation, and has little or no connexion with what goes before.

  And now we come finally to what Mill himself regarded as the distinguishing characteristic of his work; and with it we reach the third of the influences that affected the movement of his mind after his early education. I refer, of course, to the distinction which Mill drew between the laws of the Production and those of the Distribution of wealth.1 With the formal statement in the Principles may be compared the passage in the Autobiography,2 where Mill gives an account of the influence of Mrs. Taylor (who became his wife in April, 1851):

  “The purely scientific part of the Political Economy I did not learn from her; but it was chiefly her influence that gave to the book that general tone by which it is distinguished from all previous expositions of political economy that had any pretension to being scientific.... This tone consisted chiefly in making the proper distinction between the laws of the Production of wealth—which are real laws of nature, dependent on the properties of objects—and the modes of its Distribution, which, subject to certain conditions, depend on human will. The common run of political economists confuse these together, under the designation of economic laws, which they deem incapable of being defeated or modified by human effort; ascribing the same necessity to things dependent on the unchangeable conditions of our earthly existence, and to those which, being but the necessary consequences of particular social arrangements, are merely co-extensive with these: given certain institutions and customs, wages, profits, and rent will be determined by certain causes; but this class of political economists drop the indispensable presupposition, and argue that these causes must, by an inherent necessity, against which no human means can avail, determine the shares which fall, in the division of the produce, to labourers, capitalists, and landlords. The Principles of Political Economy yielded to none of its predecessors in aiming at the scientific appreciation of the action of these causes, under the conditions which they presuppose; but it set the example of not treating those conditions as final. The economic generalizations which depend not on necessities of nature but on those combined with the existing arrangements of society, it deals with only as provisional, and as liable to be much altered by the progress of social improvement. I had indeed partially learnt this view of things from the thoughts awakened in me by the speculations of the St. Simonians; but it was made a living principle pervading and animating the book by my wife's promptings.”

  It would be interesting, had I space, to try to distinguish the various currents of thought which converged at this time upon Mill and his wife. They were both people of warm hearts and generous sympathies; and the one most important fact about Mill's Principles, besides its being the work of the son of his father, is that it was published in the great year 1848. Mill's personal friendship with Carlyle and Maurice in England, his keen interest for years in St. Simonism and all the other early phases of French “socialism,” sufficiently disposed him, if he wore the old political economy at all, to wear it “with a difference.” I do not propose to add one more to the numerous arguments as to the validity of the distinction between the laws of Production and the modes of Distribution. But I should like to comment on one word which was constantly in Mill's mouth in this connexion—and that is the word “provisional”; a word which, according to his own account, he had picked up from Austin.1 He used it twice in the letter to Comte announcing his intention to write an economic treatise:

  “I know your opinion of the political economy of the day: I have a better opinion of it than you have; but, if I write anything on the subject, it will be never losing out of sight the purely provisional character of all its concrete conclusions; and I shall take special pains to separate the general laws of Production; which are necessarily common to all industrial societies; from the principles of the Distribution and Exchange of wealth, which necessarily presuppose a particular state of society, without implying that this state should, or even can, indefinitely continue.... I believe that such a treatise might have, especially, in England, great provisional utility, and that it will greatly help the positive spirit to make its way into political discussions.”1

  Then followed a curious interchange of letters. Comte replied politely that he was glad to learn of Mill's project, and that he did not doubt that it would be very useful, by contributing to the spread of the positive spirit.

  “Although an economic analysis, properly so called, ought not, in my opinion, to be finally conceived of or undertaken apart from the general body of sociological analysis, both static and dynamic, yet I have never refused to recognise the provisional efficacy of this kind of present-day metaphysics.”2

  Mill wrote in return that he was pleased to get Comte's approbation, since he was afraid Comte might have thought his project “essentially anti-scientific”;

  “and so it would really be if I did not take the greatest possible care to establish the purely provisional character of any doctrine on industrial phenomena which leaves out of sight the general movement of humanity.”3

  Comte once more replied that he thought Mill's project a happy one.

  “When regarded as having the purely preliminary purpose and provisional office that are assigned to it by a general historical view, political economy loses its principal dangers and may become very useful.”4

  It is sufficiently apparent that the correspondents are at cross purposes. By “provisional” Comte means until a positive Sociology can be created; Mill means so long as the present system of private property lasts. Until the present social system should be fundamentally changed, Mill clearly regarded the Ricardian economics as so far applicable to existing conditions as to call for no substantial revision in method or conclusions. And by this attitude,—by deferring any breach with Ricardian political economy to a time comparable in the minds of men less ardent than himself to the Greek Kalends,—he certainly strengthened its hold over many of his readers.

  Since Mill's time there has been a vast amount of economic writing. The German Historical School has come into existence, and has reached a high point of achievement in the treatise of Gustav Schmoller. On the other hand, other bodies of theory have made their appearance, quite as abstract as the Ricardian which they reject: and here the names of Jevons and Menger stand out above the rest. An equally abstract Socialist doctrine, the creation largely of Marx, has meantime waxed and waned. But Mill's Principles will long continue to be read and will deserve to be read. It represents an interesting phase in the intellectual history of the nineteenth century. But its merit is more than historical. It is still one of the most stimulating books that can be put into the hands of students, if they are cautioned at the outset against regarding it as necessarily final in all its parts. On some topics there is still, in my opinion, nothing better in the English language; on others Mill's treatment is still the best point of departure for further enquiry. Whatever its faults, few or many, it is a great treatise, conceived and executed on a lofty plane, and breathing a noble spirit. Mill—especially when we penetrate beneath the magisterial flow of his final text, as we are now enabled to do by the record in this edition of his varying moods—is a very human personality. The reader of to-day is not likely to come to him in too receptive a spirit; and for a long time there will be much that even those who most differ from him will still be able to learn from his pages.

  It remains now to describe the character of the present edition. The text is that of the seventh edition (1871), the last revised by Mill; and it is hoped that the occasional but misleading misprints which had crept into it have now all been corrected. It has not seemed desirable to add anything in the way of editorial comment. But in the one case where Mill himself publicly abandoned an important doctrine of his Principles,—that of the Wages Fund—it has seemed proper to give an excerpt from his later writings in the Appendix. And the same plan has been pursued with regard to Mill's latest views on Socialism. I have also appended a series of references to the chief writers who have dealt with the main topics of Mill's treatise, especially those of a controversial nature, since his time. That I have altogether escaped the influence of personal bias in this selection I can hardly hope. If the references under any head should seem scanty or one-sided, it should be borne in mind that they are intended to include only those outstanding works whose value is generally recognized by all serious economists, and that the choice is limited in the main to the books that are easily accessible to the English-reading public.

  The characteristic feature, however, of this edition is the indication in the notes of all the significant changes or additions made by Mill in the course of the six editions revised by himself. The dates of these editions, after the first in 1848, were 1849, 1852, 1857, 1862, 1865, and 1871. In every one of these Mill made noteworthy alterations. Rewriting, or the addition of whole sections or paragraphs, takes place chiefly in the earlier editions;. but even in the last, that of 1871, the “few verbal corrections” of which Mill speaks in his Preface were sufficient, in more passages than one, to give a different complexion to the argument. My attention was called to this interesting feature in the history of the Principles by Miss M. A. Ellis' article in the Economic Journal for June, 1906; and it seemed to me that the interest of students would be aroused by a record of the variations. Accordingly I have compared the first and the seventh edition page by page and paragraph by paragraph; and where any striking divergence has shown itself, I have looked up the earlier editions and ascertained the date of its first appearance. This has proved an unexpectedly toilsome business, even with the assistance of the notes that Miss Ellis has been good enough to put at my disposal; and I cannot feel quite sure that nothing has escaped my eye that ought to be noted. Mere changes of language for the sake of improving the style I have disregarded, though I have erred rather in the direction of including than of excluding every apparent indication of change of opinion or even of mood. All editorial notes are placed within square brackets; and I have added, and marked in the same way, the dates of all Mill's own footnotes subsequent to the first edition. As Mill's revision of the text, though considerable, was rather fragmentary, his time-references are occasionally a little bewildering: a “now” in his text may mean any time between 1848 and 1871. In every case where it seemed necessary to ascertain and to remind the reader of the time when a particular sentence was written, I have inserted the date in the text in square brackets.

  Mill's punctuation is not quite so preponderatingly grammatical as punctuation has since become. As in all the books of the middle of last century, it is also largely rhetorical. The printers had already, during the course of six editions, occasionally used their discretion and dropt out a misleading comma. I have ventured to carry the process just a little further, and to strike out a few rhetorical commas that seemed to interfere with the easy understanding of the text. The Index has been prepared by Miss M. A. Ellis.

  I must express my thanks to the proprietors of the Fortnightly Review for allowing me to make use of Mill's posthumous articles, and to Mr. Hugh Elliot for permitting me to refer to the Letters of Mill which he is now editing.

  W. J. ASHLEY.

  • EDGBASTON,

  September, 1909.

  [1.][Autobiography, p. 27 (Pop. ed. p. 15).]

  [2.][Ibid. p. 60 (Pop. ed. p. 34).]

  [3.][Ibid. p. 62 (Pop. ed. p. 36).]

  [1.][Ibid. p. 119 (Pop. ed. p. 68).]

  [1.][Autobiography, p. 101 (Pop. ed. p. 58).]

  [2.][Ibid. p. 242 (Pop. ed. p. 139).]

  [3.][Ibid. p. 247 (Pop. ed. p. 142).]

  [1.][Political Economy. Book iv. chap. vi. § 2.]

  [2.][Autobiography, p. 246 (Pop. ed. p. 141).]

  [3.][Ibid. p. 243 (Pop. ed. p. 139).]

  [4.][Ibid. p. 128 (Pop. ed. p. 73).]

  [5.][Reprinted in Dissertations and Discussions. Series I.]

  [1.][Dissertations and Discussions, I. p. 452.]

  [2.][Ibid. p. 425.]

  [3.][Ibid. p. 426.]

  [4.][Ibid. p. 453.]

  [5.][Alexander Bain, John Stuart Mill, A Criticism: with personal recollections, p. 56.]

  [6.][Ibid. p. 57 n.]

  [1.][L. Lévy-Bruhl, Lettres Inédites de John Stuart Mill à Auguste Comte (Paris, 1899), p. 2. Writing to Comte, Mill naturally employs Comtean phraseology, and speaks of “ma sortie definitive de la section benthamiste de l'école revolutionnaire.”]

  [2.][Bain, J. S. Mill, p. 63.]

  [1.][Cf. Bain, p. 72.]

  [2.][Cours de Philosophie Positive, vol. iv. (1839), pp. 412 seq.]

  [1.][Ibid. pp. 318 seq.]

  [2.][Ibid. pp. 264–79.]

  [1.][Mill's Logic, book vi. chaps. 6, 10.]

  [1.][Ibid. ii. p. 472 (ed. 3).

  [2.][Ibid. ii. pp. 480–1.]

  [1.][Mill's Logic, ii. p. 486.]

  [2.][Reprinted in Essays on some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy (1844).]

  [3.][Logic, ii. pp. 476–7.]

  [4.][Ibid. ii. p. 441.]

  [5.][Ibid. ii. p. 486.]

  [1.][Ibid. ii. p. 487.]

  [2.][Bain, pp. 78–9.]

  [3.][Besides Bain's account, Mill's letters to Comte, printed by Lévy-Bruhl, pp. 260, 285, are of interest.]

  [4.][Lévy-Bruhl, p. 308.]

  [5.][P. 235 (Pop. ed. p. 135).]

  [1.][Leslie Stephen, The English Utilitarians, ii. 161.]

  [2.][Unsettled Questions, p. 149.]

  [3.][Autobiography, p. 236 (Pop. ed. p. 135).]

  [4.][Book ii. chap. 4.]

  [1.][Book iv, chap. 1.]

  [1.][See the concluding paragraphs in the Preliminary Remarks, and book ii, chap. i. § 1.]

  [2.][P. 246 (Pop. ed. p. 141).]

  [1.][Autobiography, p. 234 (Pop. ed. p. 134).]

  [1.][April 3, 1844. Translated from the French text in Lévy-Bruhl, p. 309.]

  [2.][May 1, 1844. Ibid. p. 314. The original French should be consulted. It is impossible in a free rendering to give all the nuances of the original.]

  [3.][June 6, 1844. Ibid. p. 322.]

  [4.][July 22, 1844. Ibid. p. 338.]

• Back to Top

  2: Ashley’s Bibliographical Appendix to Mill’s Principles of Political Economy (1909)

  John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy with some of their Applications to Social Philosophy, ed. William James Ashley (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1909, 7th ed.). Chapter: BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX: prepared by sir william ashley in 1909

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/101/36375 on 2009-10-28

  The text is in the public domain.

  ---

  BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX

  prepared by sir william ashley in 1909

  For the history of economic investigation and discussion since the publication of Mill's Principles in 1848, the only general work to which reference can be made in English is Palgrave's Dictionary of Political Economy (1894–1908), which contains many useful articles under the headings of the various subjects and authors. Readers of French will obtain some assistance from Block, Les Progrès de la Science Économique depuis Adam Smith (1890), representing the strictest school of French orthodoxy, and from Gide and Rist, Histoire des Doctrines Économiques (1909), written from a more modern point of view. Readers of German will naturally refer to Conrad's Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenachaften, of which the third and enlarged edition is now being issued; and they will find a number of valuable reviews of the course of discussion of the several main topics in the series of monographs brought together under the title Die Entwicklung der deutschen Volkswirthschaftslehre im neunzehnten Jahrhundert (1908).

  A.—

  The Mercantile System (p. 6)

  Mill's account is based on that of Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, bk. iv. ch. i. Much investigation has subsequently taken place into mercantilist literature and policy, some results of which may be seen in Roscher, Geschichte der National-Ökonomik in Deutschland (1874), § 57, closely followed (with a Positivist colouring) by Ingram, History of Political Economy (1888); in Schmoller, The Mercantile System and its Historical Significance (1884; Eng. trans. 1896), and Grundriss der Allgemeinen Volkswirthschaftslehre (1900), i. § 39 (in French trans., Principes d'Économie Politique (1905–1908), i. § 39); in Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, vol. ii. pt. i., The Mercantile System (1903); and in Unwin, Industrial Organisation in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1904). One of the most significant of English mercantilist writings, Mun's England's Treasure by Forraign Trade (1664), has been recently republished (1895).

  B.—

  The Definition of Wealth (p. 9)

  Mill's definition has been criticised, from very different points of view, by Jevons, Principles of Economics (posthumously published, 1905), p. 14; Nicholson, Principles of Political Economy, i. (1893), Introduction; and Ruskin, Unto this Last (1862), Preface, and Munera Pulveris (1863), Preface. For a recent classification of “desirable things,” see Marshall, Principles of Economics (1890; 5th ed. 1907), bk. ii. ch. 2. Sidgwick, Principles of Political Economy (1883), bk. i. ch. ii., points out that, though in England “Wealth” has commonly been regarded as the most fundamental conception in Political Economy, it has also been commonly held that it should be defined by the characteristic of possessing “Value,” so that it would seem more logical “to begin by attempting to get a precise conception of this characteristic.” For difficulties attaching to “Richesse,” as the French equivalent of “Wealth,” see Gide, Cours d'Économie Politique (1909), p. 47. [By the earlier French economic writers, however, the term was used in the plural, as in Turgot's Réflexions sur Formation et la Distribution des Richesses (1770: trans. by Ashley, 1898).]

  The German language possesses no one inclusive term like “Wealth”; and German economists have long been accustomed to begin with the definition of “goods” (Guter) and, in consequence, of “a good” (Gut)—enjoying, in the use of the latter term, an advantage not available in current English speech. For characteristic examples reference may be made to Wagner, Lehrbuch der Politischen Oekonomie, Grundlagen (3rd ed. 1892), I, bk. ii. ch. i.; or Conrad, Grundriss zum Studium der Politischen Oekonomie (6th ed. 1907), § 5. The phrases “goods,” “economic goods,” “an economic good,” and so on, have of late years made their way into English and still more into American economic writings; see, for instance, Marshall (as above), and Clark, Essentials of Economic Theory (1907), ch. 2; and cf. Pierson, Principles of Economics (Eng. trans. 1902), pt. i. ch. i.

  C.—

  The Types of Society (p. 20)

  Mill's brief sketch of the general economic development of humanity is a masterly one. But since his time there has been a vast amount of work done, especially in Germany, in the field of economic history. The best introduction to the subject is now Schmoller's Grundriss, bk. ii. (occupying the second volume of the French trans., Principes). A very suggestive treatment of certain aspects of the subject is presented in a brief compass in Bücher, Entstehung der Volkswirthschaft (Eng. trans. under the title Industrial Evolution, N. Y. 1901); which receives some necessary correction and is supplemented in important respects by Meyer, Die wirthschaftliche Entwickelung des Alterthums, Vortrag, 1895, and Die Sklaverei im Alterthum, Vortrag, 1898; and by v. Below, Über Theorien der wirthschaftlichen Entwicklung der Völker, in Historische Zeitschrift, lxxxvi. (N. F. 1.). The best general work in English is Cunningham's Western Civilisation in its Economic Aspects; Ancient Times (1898), Mediaeval and Modern Times (1900). Seligman, Principles of Economics (1905), part ii. bks. ii. and iii., brings together a great many instructive apercus in a short compass.

  D.—

  Productive and Unproductive Labour (p. 53)

  The distinction was taken from Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, bk. ii. ch. 3, who derived the words themselves from the French Physiocrats, though he used them in a different sense. It has been criticised by Jevons, Principles, ch. xviii., and Cancan, History of the Theories of Production and Distribution (1893), ch. i. § 7; and it is now but little used. Cf. Marshall, bk. ii. ch. 3.

  E.—

  The Definition of Capital (p. 62)

  A good introduction to the large contentious literature on this subject is Schmoller, Grundriss, ii. § 182 c (in the French trans. Principes, iii. pp. 409 seq.); which makes use of the material collected in Böhm-Bawerk, The Positive Theory of Capital (Eng. trans. 1891), bk. i. ch. 3. As Wagner, Grundlagen, § 129, has pointed out, the conception of capital is twofold—economical and historical (cf. Gide, Cours, bk. i. ch. 3); the latter aspect was emphasised by Lassalle in his proposition that “Capital is a historical category.” An account in English of the history of the conception will be found in Marshall, i. App. E, and in Taussig, Wages and Capital (N. Y. 1896), ch. 2. Clark, Distribution of Wealth (1902), ch. 9, distinguishes between “Capital” and “Capital Goods.” Fisher, The Nature of Capital and Income (1906), defines Capital as “a stock of wealth existing at a moment of time,”—which would seem to identify Capital with Wealth generally; while Gibson, Human Economics (1909), defines Capital from the business point of view as “everything in which an individual or group has a legal estate and for which there is a buyer's valuation.”

  F.—

  Fundamental Propositions on Capital (p. 90)

  For destructive criticism of these propositions see Jevons, Principles, ch. xxiv.; Sidgwick Principles, bk. i. ch. 5, note; and Nicholson, Principles, i. pp. 98 seq. The first and fourth of them, as stated by Mill, are only other aspects of his Wages Fund doctrine, and, according to Marshall, Principles, i. App. J, “express his meaning badly.”

  G.—

  Division and Combination of Labour (p. 131)

  This subject, when further examined, widens out into the two far larger topics of economic differentiation and co-operation, which are themselves to a large extent but different aspects of the same process. In this sense it is philosophically treated with a great command of the results of recent investigations, in Schmoller, Grundriss, i. §§ 113 seq. (in Fr. trans. Principes, ii. pp. 248 seq.).

  H.—

  Large and Small Farming (p. 154)

  On this problem, so far as England is concerned, it has to be remembered: (1) that the substitution of large for small farming in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was closely associated with the movement for the enclosure of the “open” or intermixed fields; see hereon, Slater, The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields (1907), and Hasbach, A History of the English Agricultural Labourer (Eng. trans. 1908); and (2) that the position of affairs has been greatly affected since Mill wrote by the shock to “cereal farming” caused by the influx of cheap American grain in the eighties: hereon, see Levy, Entstehung and Rückgang des landwirthschaftlichen Grossbetriebes in England (1904). Materials for an opinion on the economic prospects of small farming in England are to be found in Lawes and Gilbert, Allotments and Small Holdings, in Journal of the Royal Agric. Soc., vol. iii. 3rd series (1892); in the Report of a Departmental Committee on Small Holdings (1906); and in Jebb, The Small Holdings of England (1907). They are evidently bound up to some extent with the prospects of agricultural co-operation (in the purchase of fertilisers, the sale of produce, &c.), of which an account is given in Pratt, The Organisation of Agriculture (1905), and in the publications of the Agricultural Organisation Society. A general comparison of Large and Small Farming following, criticising, and supplementing that of Mill is presented by Nicholson, Principles, i. (1893) bk. i. ch. 9.

  I.—

  Population (p. 162)

  In the writings of no contemporary economist, in Great Britain or abroad, does the idea that population is constantly tending to press upon the means of subsistence occupy the same conspicuous and primary place as it does with Mill. The treatment of the subject by Marshall, Principles, bk. iv. chs. 4, 13, and bk. vi. ch. 13, is characteristic of the general present attitude. Attention is coming to be directed more and more to those defects in the present industrial organisation which create a body of permanently underemployed as well as temporarily unemployed, even where the growth of population is evidently not outstripping the means of employment: hereon see Beveridge, Unemployment (1909), p. 6 and passim. The understanding of the exact teaching of Malthus, and of the differences between the first edition of the Essay (1798) and the second (1803), has been facilitated by the publication of Parallel Chapters from the First and Second Editions of an Essay on the Principle of Population (1895).

  J.—

  The Law of Diminishing Return (p. 188)

  Careful restatements in general accord with Mill's teaching are to be found in Marshall, Principles, i. bk. iv. ch. 3; and Nicholson, Principles, bk. i. ch. 10. For the results of the Rothamsted experiments, showing that “beyond a certain point the increase of crop is not in proportion to the increase in the amount of manure applied,” see Lawes, Is Higher Farming a Remedy for Lower Prices? Lecture (1879); and Hall, The Book of the Rothamsted Experiments (1905). The extent to which the formula of diminishing returns covers the facts of agricultural development is discussed by Schmoller, Grundriss, ii. § 233 (Principes, iv. pp. 427 seq.). But while Mill and the older theoretic writers distinguished between the law of diminishing return in agriculture and the fact (by some called the law) of increasing return in manufacture (cf. Marshall, Principles, bk. iv. ch. 13, § 2), and writers of the historical school tend to minimise the effect of the law of diminishing return even in agriculture, some more recent theoretic writers go in the other direction and declare that the law of diminishing return is universal and applies to production of all kinds. For the sense in which they use such language, see Clark, Distribution of Wealth, p. 208, and Seligman, Principles, § 88.

  K.—

  Mill's Earlier and Later Writings on Socialism (p. 204)

  Mill's account in the Preface to the 3rd edition of the nature of the alterations there made, scarcely give an adequate impression of the change of tone on his part between 1848 and 1852. The total impression produced by the argument of 1848 is that “Socialism” was probably undesirable and impracticable. Thus the difficulty of apportioning labour among the members of the community, which was met in 1852 by an expression of the hope that “human intelligence would not be inadequate” to deal with it, had called forth in 1848 the following remarks:

  “In the existing system of industry these things do adjust themselves with some, though but a distant, approach to fairness. If one kind of work is harder or more disagreeable than another, or requires a longer practice, it is better paid, simply because there are fewer competitors for it; and an individual generally finds that he can earn most by doing the thing which he is fittest for. I admit that this self-adjusting machinery does not touch some of the grossest of the existing inequalities of remuneration, and in particular the unjust advantage possessed by almost the commonest mental over almost the hardest and most disagreeable bodily labour. Employments which require any kind of technical education, however simple, have hitherto been the subject of a real monopoly as against the mass. But as popular instruction advances, this monopoly is already becoming less complete, and every increase of prudence and foresight among the people encroaches upon it more and more.”

  And the argument concluded thus:

  “I believe that the condition of the operatives in a well-regulated manufactory, with a great reduction of the hours of labour and a considerable variety of the kind of it, is very like what the condition of all would be in a Socialist community. I believe that the majority would not exert themselves for any thing beyond this, and that unless they did, nobody else would; and that on this basis human life would settle itself into one invariable round. But to maintain even this state, the limitation of the propagative powers of the community must be as much a matter of public regulation as everything else; since under the supposed arrangements prudential restraint would no longer exist. Now, if we suppose an equal degree of regulation to take place under the present system, either compulsorily, or, what would be so much preferable, voluntarily; a condition at least equal to what the Socialist system offers to all would fall to the lot of the least fortunate, by the mere action of the competitive principle. Whatever of pecuniary means or freedom of action any one obtained beyond this, would be so much to be counted in favour of the competitive system.”

  It is true that, in the next section, he went on to say:

  “These arguments, to my mind conclusive against Communism, are not applicable to St. Simonism... St. Simonism does not contemplate an equal, but an unequal, division of the produce.”

  But he judged the assumption on which it rested “almost too chimerical to be reasoned against”; and began the next section thus:

  “There has never been imagined any mode of distributing the produce of industry, so well adapted to the requirements of human nature on the whole, as that of letting the share of each individual (not in a state of bodily or mental incapacity) depend in the main on that individual's own energies and exertions, and on such furtherance as may be obtained from the voluntary good offices of others. It is not the subversion of the system of individual property that should be aimed at, but the improvement of it.”

  In the 3rd edition, it should be noted, the treatment of the subject is affected not only by a modification of personal opinion, but also by the insertion, which had taken place in the 2nd edition, of the account of Fourierism.

  In 1869 Mill formed the design of writing a book on Socialism; and after his death the first rough drafts of the work were published by his step-daughter, Miss Helen Taylor, in the Fortnightly Review for February, March, and April 1879. These articles indicate a reversion on Mill's part to an attitude resembling more closely perhaps his state of mind in 1848 than that in 1852. It must be remembered that his criticisms bore primarily upon the Socialist literature of his own time (1869). His treatment of the subject was so carefully balanced that there is a certain risk of giving an unfair impression of the general effect of the argument by the selection of a few passages. The following passages, taken in conjunction with the chapters in the Principles, will, however, indicate with sufficient clearness his general point of view.

  After an Introduction on the importance of the subject, Mill begins by setting forth at length the Socialist objections to the present order of society, and by recognising the large element of truth in them.

  “But the strongest case is susceptible of exaggeration; and it will have been evident to many readers, even from the passages I have quoted, that such exaggeration is not wanting in the representations of the ablest and most candid Socialists. Though much of their allegations is unanswerable, not a little is the result of errors in political economy; by which, let me say once for all, I do not mean the rejection of any practical rules of policy which have been laid down by political economists: I mean ignorance of economic facts, and of the causes by which the economic phenomena of society as it is, are actually determined.

  “In the first place, it is unhappily true that the wages of ordinary labour in all the countries of Europe are wretchedly insufficient to supply the physical and moral necessities of the population in any tolerable measure. But when it is further alleged that even this insufficient remuneration has a tendency to diminish; that there is, in the words of M. Louis Blanc, une baisse continue des salaires; the assertion is in opposition to all accurate information, and to many notorious facts. It has yet to be proved that there is any country in the civilised world where the ordinary wages of labour, estimated either in money or in articles of consumption, are declining; while in many they are, on the whole, on the increase; and an increase which is becoming not slower, but more rapid.”

  The following passage supplements the chapter in the Principles on the theory of Profit:

  “Another point on which there is much misapprehension on the part of Socialists, as well as of Trades Unionists and other partisans of Labour against Capital, relates to the proportions in which the produce of the country is really shared, and the amount of what is actually diverted from those who produce it, to enrich other persons.... With respect to capital employed in business, there is in the popular notions a great deal of illusion. When, for instance, a capitalist invests £20,000 in his business and draws from it an income of suppose £2000 a year, the common impression is as if he was the beneficial owner both of the £20,000 and the £2000, while the labourers own nothing but their wages. The truth, however, is that he only obtains the two thousand pounds on condition of applying no part of the £20,000 to his own use. He has the legal control over it, and might squander it if he chose, but if he did he would not have the £2000 a year also. As long as he derives an income from his capital he has not the option of withholding it from the use of others. As much of his invested capital as consists of buildings, machinery and other instruments of production, is applied to production and is not applicable to the support or enjoyment of any one. What is so applicable (including what is laid out in keeping up or renewing the buildings and instruments) is paid away to labourers, forming their remuneration and their share in the division of the produce. For all personal purposes they have the capital and he has but the profits, which it only yields to him on condition that the capital itself is employed in satisfying, not his own wants, but those of labourers. The proportion which the profits of capital usually bear to the capital itself (or rather to the circulating portion of it) is the ratio which the capitalist's share of the produce bears to the aggregate share of the labourers. Even as his own share a small part only belongs to him as the owner of capital. The portion of the produce which falls to capital merely as capital is measured by the interest of money, since that is all that the owner of capital obtains when he contributes nothing to production except the capital itself. Now the interest of capital in the public funds, which are considered to be the best security, is at the present prices (which have not varied much for many years) about three and one-third per cent. Even in this investment there is some little risk—risk of repudiation, risk of being obliged to sell out at a low price in some commercial crisis.

  “Estimating these risks at one-third per cent., the remaining three per cent. may be considered as the remuneration of capital, apart from insurance against loss. On the security of a mortgage four per cent. is generally obtained, but in this transaction there are considerably greater risks—the uncertainty of titles to land under our bad system of law; the chance of having to realise the security at a great cost in law charges; and liability to delay in the receipt of the interest, even when the principal is safe. When mere money independently of exertion yields a larger income, as it sometimes does, for example, by shares in railway or other companies, the surplus is hardly ever an equivalent for the risk of losing the whole, or part, of the capital by mismanagement, as in the case of the Brighton Railway, the dividend of which, after having been six per cent. per annum, sunk to from nothing to one and one-half per cent., and shares which had been bought at 120 could not be sold for more than 43.... Of the profits, therefore, which a manufacturer or other person in business obtains from his capital no more than about three per cent. can be set down to the capital itself. If he were able and willing to give up the whole of this to his labourers, who already share among them the whole of his capital as it is annually reproduced from year to year, the addition to their weekly wages would be inconsiderable. Of what he obtains beyond three per cent. a great part is insurance against the manifold losses he is exposed to, and cannot safely be applied to his own use, but requires to be kept in reserve to cover those losses when they occur. The remainder is properly the remuneration of his skill and industry—the wages of his labour of superintendence. No doubt if he is very successful in business these wages of his are extremely liberal, and quite out of proportion to what the same skill and industry would command if offered for hire. But on the other hand he runs a worse risk than that of being out of employment: that of doing the work without earning anything by it, of having the labour and anxiety, without the wages. I do not say that the drawbacks balance the privileges, or that he derives no advantage from the position that makes him a capitalist and employer of labour, instead of a skilled superintendent letting out his service to others; but the amount of his advantage must not be estimated by the great prizes alone. If we subtract from the gains of some the losses of others and deduct from the balance a fair compensation for the anxiety, skill and labour of both, grounded on the market price of skilled superintendence, what remains will be, no doubt, considerable, but yet, when compared to the entire capital of the country, annually reproduced and dispensed in wages, it is very much smaller than it appears to the popular imagination; and were the whole of it added to the share of the labourers it would make a less addition to their share than would be made by any important invention in machinery, or by the suppression of unnecessary distributers and other ‘parasites of industry.’...

  “It seemed desirable to begin the discussion of the Socialist question by these remarks in abatement of Socialist exaggerations, in order that the true issues between Socialism and the existing state of society might be correctly conceived. The present system is not, as many Socialists believe, hurrying us into a state of general indigence and slavery from which only Socialism can save us. The evils and injustices suffered under the present system are great, but they are not increasing; on the contrary, the general tendency is toward their slow diminution.”

  Mill then opens his statement of the objections to Socialism with the following classification, which illustrates the extent to which Socialist propaganda has changed its character since 1869:

  “Among those who call themselves Socialists, two kinds of persons may be distinguished. There are, in the first place, those whose plans for a new order of society—in which private property and individual competition are to be superseded and other motives to action substituted—are on the scale of a village community or township, and would be applied to an entire country by the multiplication of such self-acting units; of this character are the systems of Owen and Fourier, and the more thoughtful and philosophic Socialists generally. The other class, who are more a product of the continent than of Great Britain and may be called the revolutionary Socialists, propose to themselves a much bolder stroke. Their scheme is the management of the whole productive resources of the country by one central authority, the general government.”

  Remarking that:

  “the peculiarities, however, of the revolutionary form of Socialism will be most conveniently examined after the considerations common to both the forms have been duly weighed,”

  he begins by pointing out that:

  “the distinctive feature of Socialism is not that all things are in common, but that production is only carried on upon the common account, and that the instruments of production are held as common property.”

  Accordingly:

  “The question to be considered is, whether this joint management is likely to be as efficient and successful as the managements of private industry by private capital. And this question has to be considered in a double aspect: the efficiency of the directing mind, or minds, and that of the simple workpeople.”

  He discusses this, first in relation to the form of Socialism which he calls

  “simple communism, i.e. equal division of the produce among all the sharers, or, according to M. Louis Blanc's still higher standard of justice, apportionment of it according to difference of need, but without making any difference of reward according to the nature of the duty nor according to the supposed merits or services of the individual,”

  with the conclusion that its success would depend upon a moral education for which mankind could only be effectually trained by communistic association:

  “It is for Communism, then, to prove, by practical experiment its power of giving this training. Experiments alone can show whether there is as yet in any portion of the population a sufficiently high level of moral cultivation to make Communism succeed, and to give the next generation among themselves the education necessary to keep up that high level permanently. If Communist associations show that they can be durable and prosperous, they will multiply, and will probably be adopted by successive portions of the population of the more advanced countries as they become morally fitted for that mode of life.”

  And, going on then to “those other forms of Socialism which recognise the difficulties of Communism and contrive means to surmount them,” of which the principal was Fourierism, he gives reasons for the opinion that, for them, “practical trial” is no less necessary. He then goes on to the other main division:

  “The various schemes for managing the productive resources of the country by public instead of private agency... are at present workabie only by the élite of mankind, and have yet to prove their power of training mankind at large to the state of improvement which they presuppose. Far more, of course, may this be said of the more ambitious plan which aims at taking possession of the whole land and capital of the country, and beginning at once to administer it on the public account. Apart from all consideration of injustice to the present possessors, the very idea of conducting the whole industry of a country by direction from a single centre is so obviously chimerical that nobody ventures to propose any mode in which it should be done.”

  Mill's argument with regard to the second or “revolutionary” type of Socialism is accordingly based upon the difficulty of “the problem of management.” And his final conclusion is thus expressed:

  “The preceding considerations appear sufficient to show that an entire renovation of the social fabric, such as is contemplated by Socialism, establishing the economic constitution of society upon an entirely new basis, other than that of private property and competition, however valuable as an ideal, and even as a prophecy of ultimate possibilities, is not available as a present resource, since it requires from those who are to carry on the new order of things qualities both moral and intellectual, which require to be tested in all, and to be created in most; and this cannot be done by an Act of Parliament, but must be, on the most favourable supposition, a work of considerable time. For a long period to come the principle of individual property will be in possession of the field; and even if in any country a popular movement were to place Socialists at the head of a revolutionary government, in however many ways they may violate private property the institution itself would survive, and would either be accepted by them or brought back by their expulsion, for the plain reason that people will not lose their hold of what is at present their sole reliance for subsistence and security until a substitute for it has been got into working order. Even those, if any, who have shared among themselves what was the property of others would desire to keep what they had acquired, and to give back to property in the new hands the sacredness which they had not recognised in the old.

  “But though, for these reasons, individual property has presumably a long term before it, if only of provisional existence, we are not, therefore, to conclude that it must exist during that whole term unmodified, or that all the rights now regarded as appertaining to property belong to it inherently, and must endure while it endures. On the contrary, it is both the duty and the interest of those who derive the most direct benefit from the laws of property to give impartial consideration to all proposals for rendering those laws in any way less onerous to the majority....

  “One of the mistakes oftenest committed, and which are the source of the greatest practical errors in human affairs, is that of supposing that the same name always stands for the same aggregation of ideas. No word has been the subject of more of this kind of misunderstanding than the word property. It denotes, in every state of society, the largest power of exclusive use or exclusive control over things (and sometimes, unfortunately, over persons) which the law accords, or which custom in that state of society recognises; but these powers of exclusive use and control are very various and differ greatly in different countries and in different states of society.”

  And, after some historical illustrations of this proposition, he concludes:

  “When, therefore, it is maintained, rightly or wrongly, that some change or modification in the powers exercised over things by the persons legally recognised as their proprietors would be beneficial to the public and conducive to the general improvement, it is no good answer to this merely to say that the supposed change conflicts with the idea of property. The idea of property is not some one thing identical throughout history and incapable of alteration, but is variable like all other creations of the human mind; at any given time it is a brief expression denoting the rights over things conferred by the law or custom of some given society at that time; but neither on this point nor on any other has the law and custom of a given time and place a claim to be stereotyped for ever. A proposed reform in laws or customs is not necessarily objectionable because its adoption would imply, not the adaptation of all human affairs to the existing idea of property, but the adaptation of the existing ideas of property to the growth and improvement of human affairs. This is said without prejudice to the equitable claim of proprietors to be compensated by the state for such legal rights of a proprietary nature as they may be dispossessed of for the public advantage.”

  L.—

  The Later History of Socialism (p. 217)

  It will be observed that the socialistic writings commented on by Mill were all of French origin and were none of them subsequent to 1869, the date of Mill's articles on Socialism referred to under Appendix K. The Socialism which has been of most influence in later years has been of German origin, and must be studied in the writings of its chief exponents, Karl Marx, Ferdinand Lassalle, Rodbertus, and Friedrich Engels. The most notable in this connexion of those of Lassalle were Arbeiterprogramm (1862: Eng. trans. as The Working Man's Programme), and Herr Bastiat Schulze von Delitzsch der ökonomische Julian (1864: French trans. by Malon as Capital et Travail); of Rodbertus, Zur Beleuchtung der Sozialen Frage (1875; containing a new edition of Soziale Briefe an v. Kirchmann, 1850), and Die Handelskrisen (1858: Eng. trans. as Overproduction and Crises, 1898); and of Engels (in conjunction with Marx), Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (1848: Eng. trans. revised by Engels 1888), and, alone, Die Entwickelung der Sozialismus von der Utopie zur Wissenschaft (1882: Eng. trans. as Socialism, Utopian and Scientific), and Introductions to Marx's Capital. But of most importance for the theoretic formulation of Socialism have been the writings of Marx (1818–1883): Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie (1859), and, above all, Das Kapital (i. 1867: Eng. trans. Capital, 1887; ii. 1893; iii. 1894. An English abstract of the 1st vol. by Aveling appeared in 1891 as The Student's Marx). Fundamental ideas in the writings of Marx were those of Surplus-Value, of Class War, of the Concentration of Wealth, and of the Materialist Interpretation of History. The extent to which these particular teachings have been abandoned by those younger German socialists known as “Revisionists” may be gathered from Bernstein, Die Voraussetzungen der Sozialismus (1899: Eng. trans. as Evolutionary Socialism, 1909).

  Among useful books on the history of Socialism in general, and of German socialism in particular, may be mentioned: Laveleye, Le Socialisme Contemporain (1881: Eng. trans. 1885); Ely, French and German Socialism (1885); Gonner, The Social Philosophy of Rodbertus (1900); Rae, Contemporary Socialism (3rd ed. 1901); Brooks, The Social Unrest (1903); Kirkup, A History of Socialism (3rd ed. 1906); Ensor, Modern Socialism (2nd ed. 1907),—a most useful collection of typical documents and speeches from all the leading countries of Europe; and Herkner, Die Arbeiterfrage (5th ed. 1908).

  English socialism has pursued in some respects a line of development of its own; and it may be studied in Fabian Essays in Socialism (1889: Reprint, with a significant preface, 1908); various Fabian Tracts, especially Shaw, The Fabian Society (1892); Macdonald, Socialism and Society (1905); Wells, New Worlds for Old (1908); and Villiers, The Socialist Movement in England (1908).

  Two popular works which have had a very large circulation are, in America, Bellamy, Looking Backward (1890), and in England, Blatchford, Merrie England (1894).

  For French socialism see Jaurès, Studies in Socialism (Eng. trans. 1906); Lavy, L'Oeuvre de Millerand (1902); and Millerand, Travail et Travailleurs (1908); for the recent developments of “Revolutionary Syndicalism,” Gide and Rist, Histoire des Doctrines Économiques (1909); and for Belgian socialism, Destrée and Vandervelde, Le Socialisme en Belgique (1903).

  Among criticisms of socialism in various forms and aspects may be singled out Herbert Spencer, The Man v. The State (1884); Courtney The Difficulties of Socialism, in Econ. Journal, i. (1891); Schäffle, The Impossibility of Social Democracy (Eng. trans. 1892); Richter, Pictures of the Socialistic Future (Eng. trans. 1893); Devas, Political Economy (2nd ed. 1901), bk. ii. ch. 7; Strachey, Problems and Perils of Socialism (1908); and Mallock, A Critical Examination of Socialism (1909). An individualist position is ably maintained in the writings of Helen Bosanquet, especially The Strength of the People (1902).

  M.—

  Indian Tenures (p. 328)

  The whole subject must now be studied in the works of the late B. H. Baden-Powell, and especially in the three massive volumes The Land Systems of British India (1892), and the brief text-book based upon that work, Land Revenue in British India (1894). See also his Indian Village Community (1896), and the more popular Village Communities in India (1899); and on the special subject of the Origin of Zamindari Estates in Bengal, his article under that title in the (Harvard) Quarterly Journal of Economics, xi. (Oct. 1896).

  N.—

  Irish Agrarian Development (p. 342)

  The Irish Land Act of 1870 marked the beginning of an attempt to solve the agrarian problem in accordance with the principle popularly described as “dual ownership,” by giving the tenants a right to “compensation for disturbance.” The great Land Act of 1881 carried the process much further by accepting the proposals known as “the three F's” (fair rents, free sale of tenants' interests, and fixed tenure), and establishing a Land Court to fix “judicial rents” for a term of years. By the Land Act of 1903, however, a new departure was made; and machinery was provided for the voluntary transference to the tenants of the land still in the hands of the landlords, on terms attractive to both parties. This measure and the subsequent amending and supplementary Acts will probably, in no long time, bring about the establishment of a system of peasant proprietorship over a great part of Ireland. It should be added that there has of recent years been a rapid growth among Irish farmers of various forms of co-operation. For a brief account of the Act of 1881 and of its relation to contemporary Nationalism, see Low and Sanders, Political History of England during the reign of Victoria (1907). The least biassed accounts of Irish agrarian history during the last forty years are perhaps to be found in a brief work by a German economist, Dr. Bonn, Modern Ireland and her Agrarian Problem (Eng. trans. 1906), and in Bastable's articles in the (Harvard) Quarterly Journal of Economics, xviii. (Nov. 1903), and in the Economic Journal, xix. (March 1909). On the movement towards co-operation among farmers, see Plunkett, Ireland in the New Century (1903), part ii. The details of the history are best looked for in the reports of Royal Commissions and similar documents, such as the Report of the Royal Commission of 1880–1, and of the Royal Commission of 1886–7, the Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons of 1894 (“Morley's Committee”), and the Report of the Royal Commission of 1897–8 (“Fry's Commission”), together with a Report by Mr. W. F. Bailey, Legal Assistant-Commissioner, of an Inquiry into the Present Condition of Tenant Purchasers (1903). the Reports of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (from 1895), and of the Irish Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction (from 1901). See also Coyne, Ireland, Industrial and Commercial (pub. by Irish Dep. of Agriculture, 1902), and for the text of the Acts, Cherry and Barton, Irish Land Law.

  O.—

  The Wages Fund Doctrine (p. 344)

  This doctrine was formally abandoned by Mill himself in the course of a review of Thornton's Labour in the Fortnightly Review for May 1869, reprinted in his Dissertations and Discussions, iv. The central passages of this article are as follows (Dissertations, iv. pp. 42 seq.):

  “It will be said that... supply and demand do entirely govern the price obtained for labour. The demand for labour consists of the whole circulating capital of the country, including what is paid in wages for unproductive labour. The supply is the whole labouring population. If the supply is in excess of what the capital can at present employ, wages must fall. If the labourers are all employed, and there is a surplus of capital still unused, wages will rise. This series of deductions is generally received as incontrovertible. They are found, I presume, in every systematic treatise on political economy, my own certainly included. I must plead guilty to having, along with the world in general, accepted the theory without the qualifications and limitations necessary to make it admissible.

  “The theory rests on what may be called the doctrine of the wages fund. There is supposed to be, at any given instant, a sum of wealth, which is unconditionally devoted to the payment of wages of labour. This sum is not regarded as unalterable, for it is augmented by saving, and increases with the progress of wealth; but it is reasoned upon as at any given moment a predetermined amount. More than that amount it is assumed that the wages-receiving class cannot possibly divide among them; that amount, and no less, they cannot but obtain. So that, the sum to be divided being fixed, the wages of each depend solely on the divisor, the number of participants....

  “But is there such a thing as a wages-fund, in the sense here implied? Exists there any fixed amount which, and neither more nor less than which, is destined to be expended in wages?

  “Of course there is an impassable limit to the amount which can be so expended; it cannot exceed the aggregate means of the employing classes. It cannot come up to those means; for the employers have also to maintain themselves and their families. But, short of this limit, it is not, in any sense of the word, a fixed amount.

  “In the common theory, the order of ideas is this: The capitalist's pecuniary means consist of two parts—his capital, and his profits or income. His capital is what he starts with at the beginning of the year, or when he commences some round of business operations; his income he does not receive until the end of the year, or until the round of operations it completed. His capital, except such part as is fixed in buildings and machinery, or laid out in materials, is what he has got to pay wages with. He cannot pay them out of his income, for he has not yet received it. When he does receive it, he may lay by a portion to add to his capital, and as such it will become part of next year's wages-fund, but has nothing to do with this year's.

  “This distinction, however, between the relation of the capitalist to his capital, and his relation to his income is wholly imaginary. He starts at the commencement with the whole of his accumulated means, all of which is potentially capital: and out of this he advances his personal and family expenses, exactly as he advances the wages of his labourers.... If we choose to call the whole of what he possesses applicable to the payment of wages, the wages-fund, that fund is co-extensive with the whole proceeds of his business, after keeping up his machinery, buildings and materials, and feeding his family; and it is expended jointly upon himself and his labourers. The less he expends on the one, the more may be expended on the other, and vice versâ. The price of labour, instead of being determined by the division of the proceeds between the employer and the labourers, determines it. If he gets his labour cheaper, he can afford to spend more upon himself. If he has to pay more for labour, the additional payment comes out of his own income; perhaps from the part which he would have saved and added to capital, thus anticipating his voluntary economy by a compulsory one; perhaps from what he would have expended on his private wants or pleasures. There is no law of nature making it inherently impossible for wages to rise to the point of absorbing not only the funds which he had intended to devote to carrying on his business, but the whole of what he allows for his private expenses, beyond the necessaries of life. The real limit to the rise is the practical consideration, how much would ruin him or drive him to abandon the business: not the inexorable limits of the wages-fund.

  “In short, there is abstractedly available for the payment of wages, before an absolute limit is reached, not only the employer's capital, but the whole of what can possibly be retrenched from his personal expenditure: and the law of wages, on the side of demand, amounts only to the obvious proposition that the employers cannot pay away in wages what they have not got. On the side of supply, the law as laid down by economists remains intact. The more numerous the competitors for employment, the lower, caeteris paribus, will wages be....

  “But though the population principle and its consequences are in no way touched by anything that Mr. Thornton has advanced, in another of its bearings the labour question, considered as one of mere economics, assumes a materially changed aspect. The doctrine hitherto taught by all or most economists (including myself), which denied it to be possible that trade combinations can raise wages, or which limited their operations in that respect to the somewhat earlier attainment of a rise which the competition of the market would have produced without them,—this doctrine is deprived of its scientific foundation, and must be thrown aside. The right and wrong of the proceedings of Trade Unions becomes a common question of prudence and social duty, not one which is peremptorily decided by unbending necessities of political economy.”

  In spite of the remonstrances of Cairnes, and his attempt to restate the Wages Fund doctrine in a more satisfactory form, in his Leading Principles, part ii. ch. 1, it may be said to be abandoned now by all economists, at any rate in the form in which it was stated by Mill. For a criticism of Mill's retractation, and a statement of a sense in which it may still be allowable to speak of a Wages Fund, see Taussig, Wages and Capital, an Examination of the Wages Fund Doctrine (N. Y. 1896), especially part ii. ch. 11. And see Sidgwick Principles, bk. ii. ch. 8, § 2; Marshall, Principles, i. App. J: The Doctrine of the Wages Fund; and Nicholson, Principles, bk. ii. ch. 10, § 8.

  P.—

  The Movement of Population (p. 360)

  The rate of growth of the population of the several parts of the United Kingdom is shown by the following table:

  

  The factors in the increase of population are evidently (1) migration, (2) the “natural increase” of population, i.e. the excess of births over deaths. The annual natural increase has fallen in England and Wales from 14.5 per 1000 of the population for the period 1876–1880, to 12.1 in 1901–1905, in consequence of the fact that though the death-rate fell from 20.8 to 16 per thousand, the birth-rate fell from 35.3 to 28.1. The birth-rate in England and Wales, for the period since the Civil Registration Act of 1837, reached its maximum in the period 1870–1876, and has since shown a material decline.

  The extent of this decline is shown in the next table:

  BIRTH-RATES (ENGLAND AND WALES).

  Period.	Average Annual Crude Birth-rate per 1000 of Total Population.	Average Annual Corrected Birth-rate per 1000 of Female Population aged 15–45 years.
  1876–1880....	35.3	153.3
  1881–1885....	33.5	144.3
  1886–1890....	31.4	133.4
  1891–1895....	30.5	126.8
  1896–1900....	29.3	118.8
  1901–1905....	28.1	112.5
  1906......	27.1	108.3
  1907......	26.3	105.1

  As regards the decline in the birth-rate generally, the Registrar-General observes:

  “There are sufficient grounds for stating that during the past 30 years approximately 14 per cent. of the decline in the birth-rate (based on the proportion of births to the female population aged 15–45 years) is due to the decrease in the proportion of married women in the female population of conceptive ages, and that over 7 per cent. is due to the decrease of illegitimacy. With regard to the remaining 79 per cent. of the decrease, although some of the reduced fertility may be ascribed to changes in the age constitution of married women, there can be little doubt that much of it is due to deliberate restriction of child-bearing.”

  The decline in the birth-rate, whatever may be its cause, is a feature common to the birth statistics of most European countries. The statistics may be studied in the General Report on the Census of 1901, and in the Annual Reports of the Registrar-General. The figures are conveniently collected in the Blue-book, Public Health and Social Conditions, prepared by the Local Government Board (1909). The most detailed statistical analysis of the facts is to be found in a paper by Newsholme and Stevenson, and another by Yule, in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (March 1906).

  Q.—

  Profits (p. 421)

  The most powerful impulse to fresh discussion of the nature of profits was given by the late General Walker, in the emphasis laid by him on “the function of the entrepreneur,” and his view that “profits are a species of the same genus as rent,” and “do not form a part of the price of manufactured products”; see his Wages Question (1876), ch. 14, and Political Economy (1883). In this discussion it has become usual to distinguish more sharply than the earlier writers between Interest and “pure” or “net” Profits; and there is now a large literature on both these topics. As to Interest, much influence has been exerted by the doctrine of the Austrian writer, Böhm-Bawerk, which explains interest as “a premium on present as against future things”; see Böhm-Bawerk, Capital and Interest (Eng. trans. 1890), and Positive Theory of Capital (Eng. trans. 1891). Of the writings this has called forth it may be sufficient to refer to Pierson, Principles of Economics (Eng. trans. 1902), part i. ch. 4, § 5, and to Cassel, The Nature and Necessity of Interest (1903).

  On Profit, recent writings are largely influenced by the conceptions of (1) a “quasi-rent,” (2) “the marginal entrepreneur,” and (3) “long and short periods.” The present state of the discussion may be seen in Marshall, Principles, bk. vi. chs. 6–8; Clark, Essentials of Economic Theory (1907), pp. 117 seq.; Seager, Introduction to Economics (3rd ed. 1906), ch. 10; and in Conrad's Grundriss, § 84, and Gide's Cours, pp. 674 seq. The treatment of the subject by Schmoller, Grundriss, §§ 231–2 (Principes, vol. iv.), will be found illuminating. The “tendency” of profits and wages to an equality has been commented upon frequently by Cliffe Leslie, as in his articles on The Political Economy of Adam Smith and On the Philosophical Method of Political Economy, reprinted in his Essays (1879).

  R.—

  Rent (p. 434)

  Criticisms of the Ricardian doctrine of rent, or of its formulation, are to be found in Sidgwick, Principles, bk. ii. ch. 8, and in Nicholson, Principles, vol. i. bk. ii. ch. 14; and it is restated in Pierson, Principles, pt. i. ch. 2, and in Marshall, Principles, bk. vi. ch. 9.

  S.—

  The Theory of Value (p. 482)

  It is on this subject—as to which Mill remarked, in 1848, that “happily there is nothing in the laws of value which remains for the present or any future writer to clear up; the theory of the subject is complete” (p. 436)—that theoretic discussion has mainly turned during the last four decades, owing chiefly to the writings of Jevons, of Menger and the other representatives of the Austrian school, and of Clark and his American followers. The characteristic of all these writers is to approach the problem from the side of demand, and to find the key to value in Final or Marginal Utility (Grenznutz). The best introduction to the discussion is through Jevons, Theory of Political Economy (1871; 2nd ed. revised, 1879), chs. 3 and 4; and through Bonar's article on The Austrian Economists in the (Harvard) Quarterly Journal of Economics, iii. (Oct. 1888); and Smart, An Introduction to the Theory of Value on the lines of Menger, Wieser and Böhm-Bawerk (1891). Wieser's Natural Value (Eng. trans. 1893) attempts to apply the doctrine to the whole problem of Distribution. For the present state of the discussion see Marshall, Principles, i. bk. v.; Clark, Essentials, chs. 6 and 7; and Schmoller, Grundriss, §§ 171–2 (in French, Principes, vol. iii.).

  Mill's doctrine of Cost of Production was attacked by Cairnes in his Some Leading Principles of Political Economy newly expounded (1874), soon after Mill's death. See hereon Marshall in Fortnightly Review (April 1876), and Principles, book v. ch. 3, § 2. Cairnes contributed an important consideration to the discussion by the emphasis which he laid on “Non-competing Groups.”

  T.—

  The Value of Money (p. 506)

  For other expositions of “the Quantity Theory of Prices,” see Walker, Money (1878), chs. 3–8; and Nicholson, Money and Monetary Problems (1888; 4th ed. 1897), chs. 5–7. For a criticism, see Scott, Money and Banking (N. Y. 1903), ch. 4. An attempt to test the doctrine statistically is made by Kemmerer, Money and Credit Instruments in their relation to General Prices (N. Y. 1907). For the sense of “money” in modern business, see Withers, The Meaning of Money (1909).

  U.—

  Bimetallism (p. 510)

  For the main points of the controversy on this subject, which had hardly begun when Mill wrote in 1848, see Jevons, Money (1875), ch. 12 (with his acceptance of the view of the “compensatory action” of a double standard system); Gibbs and Grenfell, The Bimetallic Controversy (1886),—a collection of pamphlets, speeches, &c., on both sides; Nicholson, Money and Monetary Problems; Walker, International Bimetallism (1896); Darwin, Bimetallism (1898); and Carlile, The Evolution of Modern Money (1901). An extreme monometallist position is represented in Giffen, Case against Bimetallism (1892).

  V.—

  International Values (p. 606)

  The Ricardian doctrine, followed and carried further by Mill, has hitherto remained the almost exclusive possession of English economists. It has been expounded by Cairnes, Leading Principles, part iii. ch. 3, and by Bastable, Theory of International Trade (2nd ed. 1897). It has been objected to from two diametrically opposite points of view. Transferability of capital and labour, it has been argued, is true of international trade as well as of domestic, so that no separate theory is necessary for the determination of international values; e.g. Hobson, International Trade (1904). On the other hand it has been asserted that such a transferability is true neither of domestic nor of international trade, and that therefore it is necessary to reject both the Ricardian doctrine of home values and the Ricardian doctrine of international values; e.g. Cliffe Leslie, Essays in Political and Moral Philosophy (1879), Preface. A different theory has been put forward by Sidgwick, Principles, bk. ii. ch. 3. A mathematical treatment of the whole subject, with a criticism of all the leading writers, will be found in a series of articles by Edgeworth on The Theory of International Values in the Economic Journal, vol. iv. (1894). Bastable and Edgeworth, while admiring and accepting Mill's first statement of the theory (ch. 18, §§ 1–5), agree in regarding “the superstructure of later date” (§§ 6–8) as “laborious and confusing.”

  W.—

  The Regulation of Currency (p. 677)

  The question of the effect of the Bank Charter Act has lost much of its importance in consequence of the growing use of cheques. These cheques are now largely drawn not against actual deposits but against banking credits; so that banks, while abandoning more and more the issue of notes, “manufacture money” on a vast scale in another way. Hereon see Withers, Meaningof Money, chs. 3 and 5. On the effect of an increase in the supply of gold, see Walker, Money, pt. i. ch. 4, and Withers, ch. 1.

  X.—

  Prices in the Nineteenth Century (p. 704)

  The actual movement of prices has been much investigated since the time of Mill; and attempts, in large measure successful, have been made by Jevons and others to reduce the statement of it to precision by the use of Index Numbers. On the theory and practice of Index Numbers, see article by Edgeworth, s. v., in Palgrave's Dictionary of Political Economy, vol. ii.; Fountain's Memorandum in Report on Wholesale and Retail Prices (Board of Trade, 1903); and the article of Flux in (Harvard) Quarterly Journal of Economics (Aug. 1907).

  The following table, taken from the Blue-book of the Local Government Board on Public Health and Social Conditions (1909), presents the conclusions of Sauerbeck as to prices, and of Bowley as to wages, in a form convenient for comparison.

  INDEX NUMBERS SHOWING COURSE OF AVERAGE WHOLESALE PRICES AND
  GENERAL MONEY WAGES.


  [The wages and prices in 1850 being taken as 100 ; wages and prices in other
  years in percentages of 1850 figures.]

  Year.	Index Numbas of		Year.	Index Number of
  		Prices.		Wages.		Prices.	Wages.
  1850	100	100
  			1895	80·5	159·2
  1855	131·2	—	1896	79·2	160·7
  			1897	80·5	162·3
  1860	128·6	119·2	1898	83·1	166·5
  			1899	88·3	170·4
  1865	131·2	127·5
  			1900	97·4	178·7
  1870	124·7	134·1	1901	90·9	177·0
  			1902	89·6	174·7
  1875	124·7	161·4	1903	89·6	173·7
  			1904	90·9	172·8
  1880	114·3	148·8
  			1905	93·5	173·3
  1885	93·5	149·6	1906	100·0	175·7
  			1907	103·9	181·7
  1890	93·5	161·7

  NOTE.—The Index Numbers here given have been calculated as regards Wages for the years to 1873 on the averages ascertained by Mr. Bowley—see the Economic Journal (Dec. 1898) and the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (Dec. 1899)—and for later years on the percentages in the 12th Abstract of Labour Statistics of the United Kingdom (1906–7), p. 54. As regards Prices, the Numbers are based on the Index Numbers calculated by Mr. Sauerbeck—see Report on Wholesale and Retail Prices (1903), p. 451, and particulars in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (March 1908).

  With this may be compared the calculation of the Board of Trade, taking the level of 1900 as 100, as given in the Twelfth Abstract of Labour Statistics (1908), p. 80.

  INDEX NUMBERS OF WHOLESALE PRICES, 1871–1907. 1900=100.

  Year.	Index No.	Year.	Index No.	Year.	Index No.	Year.	Index No.
  1871	136.0	1881	127.3	1891	107.4	1901	96.9
  1872	145.8	1882	128.4	1892	101.8	1902	96.5
  1873	152.7	1883	126.8	1893	100.0	1903	96.9
  1874	148.1	1884	114.7	1894	94.2	1904	98.3
  1875	141.4	1885	107.7	1895	91.0	1905	97.6
  1876	138.0	1886	101.6	1896	88.2	1906	100.5
  1877	141.6	1887	99.6	1897	90.1	1907	105.7
  1878	132.6	1888	102.7	1898	93.2
  1879	126.6	1889	104.0	1899	92.3
  1880	129.6	1890	104.0	1900	100.0

  Before making use of these figures it must be remembered that they indicate the movement of wholesale prices; and attention would need also to be paid to the selection of commodities and the method of “weighting.”

  To the Report on Wholesale and Retail Prices (1903) and to the “First Fiscal Blue-book” (British and Foreign Trade and Industry, Memoranda, &c., 1903) is prefixed as Frontispiece a chart combining the Index Numbers of Jevons for 1801–1846, of Sauerbeck for 1846–1871, and of the Board of Trade itself for 1871–1902; and so giving in one view the course of prices, so far as those materials indicate it, for the whole period 1801–1902.

  As to Retail Prices, calculations will be found in the First “Fiscal Blue-book,” p. 215, and in the Second (British and Foreign Trade and Industry, Second Series, 1904), as to changes in the Average Retail Price of Workmen's Food in large towns in Great Britain during recent decades, as well as of the other principal items of the workman's budget, viz. rent, clothing, fuel, and light, during a quarter of a century. A considerable fall in food prices and a slight fall in the price of clothing since 1880 were in part counterbalanced by a rise in rents and, in the latter years, in fuel; with the result indicated below (Second Series, p. 32):

  Statement showing Estimated Changes in Cost of Living of the Working Classes, based on Cost of Food, Rent, Clothing, Fuel, and Light, in a series of averages for quinquennial periods. (Cost in the year 1900=100.)

  Y.—

  Commercial Cycles (p. 709)

  In England there has been no “commercial crisis” since 1866, though crises have continued to make their appearance in the United States, as e.g. in 1893 and 1907. But the alternations of commercial prosperity and depression continue; and the cyclical movement, as Jevons first showed, seems to occupy about ten years. The study of the subject must begin with Jevons' papers (1875–1882) on the Periodicity of Commercial Crises, printed in his Investigations in Currency and Finance (1884). A guide to the history and literature of the subject will be found in Herkner's article Krisen in Conrad's Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften. The relation between Foreign Trade, Bank Rate, Employment, Marriage Rate, Pauperism, &c., for the period 1856–1907 can be conveniently observed in Table IX, and Chart II, “The Pulse of the Nation,” in Beveridge, Unemployment. On American conditions and their connexion with currency questions, see the papers of Seligman and others in The Currency Problem and the Present Financial Situation (N. Y. 1908).

  Z.—

  Rents in the Nineteenth Century (p. 724)

  According to an estimate of Mr. R. J. Thompson printed in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (Dec. 1907) the rent of agricultural land in England and Wales advanced by probably 40 per cent. in the first twenty years of the nineteenth century. After 1820 a period of depression ensued, followed in 1840 by the beginning of an upward movement which continued with little intermission till 1878, when a serious depression again set in. The average rent of agricultural land in 1900 was 34 per cent. below the maximum of 1877, and 13 per cent. below the figure of 1846. The average rent of farm land in 1900 was estimated at about 20s. per acre; subject to charges for repairs, &c., amounting on the average to 35 per cent.; so that the net rent probably averaged 13s. per acre. Estimating expenditure on buildings, fences, drainage, &c., at 12l. per acre, 3½ per cent. on this would amount to 8s. 5d., leaving 4s. 7d. per acre as “economic rent,” in the Ricardian sense of payment for the use of the “original and indestructible powers of the soil.”

  AA.—

  Wages in the Nineteenth Century (p. 724)

  There was undoubtedly a very large increase both in nominal or money wages and in real wages (i.e. their purchasing power) in the United Kingdom during the course of the century. The subject may be studied in Giffen's paper on The Progress of the Working Classes in the last half-century, reprinted in Essays in Finance (2nd series, 1886; and the first and more important of them more recently in Economic Inquiries and Studies, vol. i.); Webb, Labour in the Longest Reign (Fabian Tract, 1897); Bowley, Wages in the United Kingdom (1900), National Progress (1904), and his articles in the Journal of the R. Statistical Society, and Wood's article on Real Wages and the Standard of Comfort since 1850, in Jour. R. Stat. Soc. (March 1909).

  The conclusions arrived at by the last two statisticians for the period since 1850 are thus summarised in the article last quoted, 1900–1904 being taken by Bowley, and 1900–1902 by Wood, as basis, and called 100:

  REAL WAGES, 1850–1902.

  	1850–4	1855–9	1860–4	1865–9	1870–4	1875–9
  Bowley .. ..	50	50	50	55	60	65
  Wood .. ..	56	54	59	63	69	75
  	1880–4	1885–9	1890–4	1894–9	1900–2 or 4
  Bowley....	65	75	85	95	100
  Wood....	76	86	92	97	100

  Compare also the table in Appendix X above.

  The progress in real wages began before 1850; thus, e.g. Bowley's Index Numbers for 1830 and 1840 are 45 and 50 respectively (see National Progress, p. 33); and, for earlier periods, his conclusions are that while during 1790–1810 real wages were falling slowly, during 1810–1830 they were rising slowly (see Appendix (1908) to Palgrave's Dictionary of Political Economy). The general result would seem to be a large rise on the whole between 1810 and 1900, though between 1840 and 1860 and again between 1873 and 1879 wages were almost stationary.

  During the century a progress in real wages of substantially the same character took place in other countries. For a comparison by Bowley of the United Kingdom, the United States and France for the period 1844–1891, see Econ. Jour. viii. 488; and for France, 1806–1900, see Gide, Économie Sociale, p. 64.

  BB.—

  The Importation of Food (p. 738)

  The following figures are given in the Report of the Agricultural Committee (1906) of the Tariff Commission:

  IMPORTS OF WHEAT AND FLOUR

  Period.	Imports per head. Cwts.	Percentage of Population fed from home-grown corn.	Period.	Imports per head. Cwts.	Percentage of Population fed from home-grown corn.
  1831–1835	.119	96.0	1871–1875	1.56	48.0
  1836–1840	.267	90.0	1876–1880	1.85	37.2
  1841–1845	.308	89.55	1881–1885	2.17	26.4
  1846–1850	.644	78.45	1886–1890	2.09	29.0
  1851–1855	.755	74.4	1891–1895	2.51	15.2
  1856–1860	.837	71.9	1896–1900	2.38	19.1
  1861–1865	1.196	59.4	1901–1905	2.54	10.6
  1866–1870	1.224	58.4

  For other estimates, and for sources of import, see “First Fiscal Blue-book” (British and Foreign Trade and Industry, 1903), p. 108.

  CC.—

  The Tendency of Profits to a Minimum (p. 739)

  Compare Cliffe Leslie's article on The History and Future of Interest and Profit in the Fortnightly Review (Nov. 1881: reprinted in Essays, 2nd ed.); and Leroy-Beaulieu, Repartition des Richesses (3rd ed. 1888), ch. 8; and for the history of the rate of interest, see Schmoller, Grundriss, § 191 (Principes, vol. iii).

  DD.—

  The Subsequent History of Co-Operation (p. 794)

  Since Mill wrote, Industrial Co-operation in England has taken the direction mainly of the multiplication of retail stores, deriving their supplies in great measure from a great Wholesale Society: this “Wholesale” producing some of its goods in its own factories and purchasing the rest in the open market. It has not taken the form anticipated by him of self-governing productive associations, providing their own capital. The history of the various movements grouped under the name of Co-operation may be examined in Schloss, Methods of Industrial Remuneration (3rd ed. 1898), chs. 22–24; Potter, The Co-operative Movement (1891); Webb, Industrial Co-operation (1904); Aves, Co-operative Industry (1907); and Fay Co-operation at Home and Abroad (1908). For recent developments in “independent” productive co-operation, see Ashley, Surveys, Historic and Economic (1900), p. 399.

  EE.—

  The Subsequent History of Income Tax (pp. 806, 817)

  For developments later than the time of Mill, reference should be had to Bastable, Public Finance (3rd ed. 1903), bk. iii. ch. 3 and bk. iv. ch. 4; Hill, The English Income Tax (Publications of the American Economic Association, 1889); Seligman, Progressive Taxation (Am. Econ. Assoc. Quarterly, 2nd ed. 1908); and two recent Reports, one of a Departmental Committee on the present working of the income tax (1905), and one of a Select Committee on Graduation (1906). In the Finance Bill now (1909) before Parliament it is proposed to introduce a super-tax on incomes above a certain point, and give an abatement on incomes below a certain point in respect of every child (up to a specified number) below a certain age.

  FF.—

  The Taxation of Land (p. 819)

  In the Finance Bill now (1909) before Parliament it is proposed to impose a tax (1) of 20. per cent. on the future Unearned Increment in value of non-agricultural land; (2) of ½d. in the pound of the capital value of “undeveloped” land. The proposed exemption of agricultural land, when compared with Mill's assumption that there was likely to be a constant increase in the value of agricultural land owing to a rise in the price of food due to the growth of population, indicates the effect upon the public mind of the agricultural depression of the last two decades of the nineteenth century. On the general question of the assessment and special taxation of land values, see Report of the Royal Commission on Local Taxation (1901); Fox, The Rating of Land Values (1906); and the Blue-book on Taxation of Land in Foreign Countries (1909).

  GG.—

  The Incidence of Taxation (p. 863)

  On the whole subject of The Shifting and Incidence of Taxation recourse can now be had to the treatise of Seligman bearing that title (2nd ed. 1899). For the incidence of Death Duties, Rates on Houses and Land, Inhabited House Duty, Taxes on Trade Profits and Taxes on Transfer of Property, see in particular the elaborate replies by “financial and economic experts” in the Blue-book, Memoranda relating to the Classification and Incidence of Imperial and Local Taxes (1899); and on the incidence of Import and Export Duties, see Edgeworth in Economic Journal, iv. pp. 43 seq.

  HH.—

  Company and Partnership Law (p. 904)

  Partnership en commandite, as it is called abroad, is now allowed in the United Kingdom by the Limited Partnerships Act of 1907. This Act makes it possible to create a “limited partnership, wherein one or more persons, called general partners... shall be liable for all debts and obligations of the firm,” and “one or more persons, to be called limited partners, who shall at the time of entering into such partnership contribute thereto a sum as capital... shall not be liable for the obligations of the firm beyond the amount so contributed.” A limited partner must not take part in the management of the business.

  The most important development since Mill wrote, however, has been the growth in commercial practice of what came to be known in business language as “private companies,” though organised under the general company law. This form has been increasingly adopted by businesses which wished to combine the advantages of Limited Liability with the advantage of unity and privacy of management belonging to the sole trader or old-fashioned firm. The legality of such arrangements, which were certainly not contemplated by the legislature when it introduced Limited Liability, was finally settled by the decision of the House of Lords in 1896 in the case of Broderip v. Salamon. See hereon Palmer, Private Companies and Syndicates. The conception of a “private company” was finally recognised and defined by the Companies Act of 1907. According to this Act a private company “means a company which by its articles (a) restricts the right to transfer its shares; and (b) limits the number of its members (exclusive of persons who are in the employment of the company) to fifty; and (c) prohibits any invitation to the public to subscribe for shares or debentures.” For the formation of such a company, instead of the seven members formerly required by the Companies Acts, two members will now suffice.

  II.—

  Protection (p. 926)

  Mill's general line of argument has been further pursued and applied to contemporary conditions by Cairnes, Leading Principles; Fawcett, Free Trade and Protection (6th ed. 1885); and Farrar, Free Trade and Fair Trade (4th ed. 1887). Criticisms and considerations of other kinds will be found in Sidgwick, Principles of Political Economy, ch. v.; Patten, Economic Basis of Protection (Philadelphia, 1890); Johnson, Protection and Capital, in Political Science Quarterly, xxiii. (N. Y. 1908); Lexis, Handel, in Schönberg's Handbuch der Politischen Oekonomie (4th ed. 1898), vol. ii.; and Schmoller, Grundriss, §§ 253–271 (in Fr. trans.: Principes d'Économie Politique, vol. v.).

  Mill's concession in favour of “infant industries” (bk. v. ch. 10, § 1) was much quoted subsequently in America, Australia and Canada. Writing to a correspondent in 1869 (see Letters, ed. Elliot), he expressed an intention to “withdraw” the opinion, and remarked: “Even on this point I continue to think my opinion was well grounded, but experience has shown that protectionism, once introduced, is in danger of perpetuating itself... and I therefore now prefer some other mode of public aid to new industries, though in itself less appropriate”; but in preparing the edition of 1871 he contented himself with the verbal changes indicated on p. 922 n. 1.

  Mill makes no reference in his Principles to the writings of Friedrich List, the intellectual founder of the Zollverein, whose ideas have greatly influenced the subsequent commercial policy as well as the economic thought of Germany. Thereon see List's National System of Political Economy (1840, Eng. trans. by Lloyd: new ed. with Introduction by Nicholson, 1904), and Schmoller's article on List in Zur Litteraturgeschichte der Staats- und Sozialwissenschaften (1884).

  A new stage in the discussion was opened by the grant of Preference to imports from England by the Dominion of Canada in 1897—an example since followed by the other great self-governing Dominions of the British Empire; and by the movement in favour of a policy of reciprocal Preference by the Mother Country, initiated by Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, then Colonial Secretary, in 1903. The most important collections of political speeches on this subject are, on one side, those of Chamberlain, Imperial Union and Tariff Reform (1903); Bonar Law, The Fiscal Question (1908); and Milner, Imperialism and Social Reform (1908); and, on the other Asquith, Trade and the Empire (1903); Haldane, Army Reform and Other Addresses (1907); and Russell Rea, Insular Free Trade (1908). See also Balfour, Economic Notes on Insular Free Trade (1903).

  Among the writings called forth by the controversy may be mentioned, of those in favour of some modification of the present tariff policy: Caillard, Imperial Fiscal Reform (1903); Ashley, The Tariff Problem (2nd ed. 1904); Cunningham, The Rise and Decline of the Free Trade Movement (1904) and The Words of the Wise (1906); Graham, Free Trade and the Empire (1904); Palgrave, An Enquiry into the Economic Condition of the Country (1904); Price, Economic Theory and Fiscal Policy, in the Economic Journal, xiv. (Sept. 1904); Compatriots' Club Lectures (1905); Kirkup, Progress and the Fiscal Problem (1905); Welsford, The Strength of Nations (1907); Lethbridge, India and Imperial Preference (1907); and Milner's article on Colonial Policy and Vince's on The Tariff Reform Movement in Palgrave, Dictionary of Political Economy, Appendix (1908).

  Among the writings in favour of the present policy may be mentioned: Money, Elements of the Fiscal Problem (1903); Avebury, Essays and Addresses (1903); British Industries under Free Trade, ed. Cox (1903); Labour and Protection, ed. Massingham (1903); Smart, The Return to Protection (1904); Hobson, International Trade (1904); Bowley, National Progress (1904); various papers by Giffen in Economic Enquiries (1904); Brassey, Sixty Years of Progress (new ed. 1906); Pigou, Protective and Preferential Import Duties (1906); The Colonial Conference (Cobden Club, 1907); and Marshall, Memorandum on the Fiscal Policy of International Trade (White Paper, 1908).

  Materials, statistical and political, for a judgment will be found in the two “Fiscal Blue-books”—British and Foreign Trade and Industry, Memoranda, &c., 1st series, 1903; 2nd series, 1904; in the Proceedings of the Colonial Conferences of 1887, 1894, 1897, 1902, 1907; and in the Reports and Memoranda of the Tariff Commission, since 1904. Among foreign works bearing upon the problem may be particularly mentioned: Fuchs, The Trade Policy of Great Britain (1893: Eng. trans. 1905); Wagner, Agrar- und Industriestaat (2nd ed. 1902); Schwab, Chamberlain's Handelspolitik, with Preface by Wagner (1905); and Schulze-Gaevernitz, Britischer Imperialismus (1906). On the history of the English Corn Laws, Nicholson's book with that title (1904) should be consulted. Free Trade and the Manchester School, ed. Hirst (1903), is a convenient collection of speeches, &c. of the thirties and forties.

  JJ.—

  Usury Laws (p. 930.)

  The pretty general repeal all over Europe of the old usury laws has been followed since 1878 by a reaction, and a great number of “usury laws” have been passed in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, and other countries; as well as for the possessions of the Great Powers outside Europe, as e.g. for the Punjaub, the Soudan, Algiers, &c. For an account and estimate of this movement, see Schmoller, Grundriss, § 189 (Principes, vol. iii.). As to the English “Money-lenders Act” of 1900, see the observations from a point of view identical with that of Mill in Dicey, Law and Public Opinion in England (1905), pp. 33 and 45.

  KK.—

  The Factory Acts (p. 759)

  See, on the whole subject, Hutchins and Harrison, A History of Factory Legislation (1907). The legislature, after restricting the freedom of contract of adult men in various other ways, began very tentatively in 1893 to regulate their hours of labour by the Act of that year giving power to the Board of Trade to order railway companies to submit revised schedules of hours of duty for their servants: hereon see Bulletin of the U.S. Department of Labour, No. 20 (1899). Since then, by the Miners' Eight Hours Act (1908), it has introduced a “normal day” for a large number of adult men.

  LL.—

  The Poor Law (p. 969)

  The Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Law (1909) contains copious and systematically arranged treatises, in the Majority and Minority Reports, and in the supplementary volumes of Reports of special inquiries, on all aspects of the history and practice of the Poor Law since 1834; and will doubtless lead to considerable legislative changes.

  MM.—

  The Province or Government (p. 979)

  On this subject, in its general philosophical aspects, the most influential English writings since the time of Mill have perhaps been those of Sidgwick, Principles of Political Economy (1883), bk. iii. chs. 3 and 4; and Elements of Politics (1891); and Green, Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation in Works (1886), vol. ii. See also Ritchie, Natural Rights (1895), and, with regard to certain arguments drawn from modern biology, his Darwinism and Politics (1889).

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  3: John Gray’s Bibliographical Essay on J.S. Mill

  Leonard P. Liggio, Literature of Liberty: A Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought was published first by the Cato Institute (1978-1979) and later by the Institute for Humane Studies (1980-1982) under the editorial direction of Leonard P. Liggio. Chapter: Bibliographical Essay: John N. Gray, John Stuart Mill: Traditional and Revisionist Interpretations

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/1291/100152 on 2009-10-28

  This work is copyrighted by the Institute for Humane Studies, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, and is put online with their permission.

  ---

  Bibliographical Essay

  John Stuart Mill: Traditional and Revisionist Interpretations

  by John N. Gray

  The Traditional View of an Incoherent Mill. . . A “Two Mills” Thesis?

  The traditional interpretation pictures John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) as one of history's paradigmatic transitional thinkers. Situated uncertainly in a no-man's land between the rival intellectual traditions of nineteenth-century England, Mill in his writings displays no settled or coherent doctrine on social and political questions. In Mill's work, the received view contends, competing sympathies and commitments are the subject matter of an ultimately unsuccessful eclectic method. This alleged hodgepodge produces a brittle conceptual framework which quickly disintegrates under any sustained critical pressure. Thus, Mill's utilitarianism seems at odds with his values of self-development and individuality; his democratic loyalties are in a tug-of-war with his elitist dread of majority tyranny; and his allegiance to laissez-faire principles is compromised by his concessions toward the socialist currents of his day. Some exponents of this traditional view have gone so far as to claim to discern in Mill's writings an intellectual schizophrenia: the lineaments of “two Mills,” each with a distinctive expression and a coherent message.

  There is, unfortunately, little agreement in identifying and describing these “two Mills,” so that the vast secondary literature on the younger Mill contains a bewildering variety of pictures of him as at once a radical libertarian and a cautious, conservative, Whig trimmer; a moral totalitarian and a questing, open-minded skeptic; an unreconstructed empiricist and a free-wheeling epistemological pluralist. Whether they detect two (or more) Mills in John Mill's writings, or deny the presence of any integrated personality in his work, advocates of the received view all share the assumption that the promise of unity was not, and perhaps could never have been fulfilled in Mill's philosophy. A distinguished statement of the received view is that of John Plamenatz when he says of Mill's Utilitarianism, (1861, 1863), his Liberty (1859), and his Considerations on Representative Government (1861) that “These three essays written by a sick man in his premature old age, exhibit all his defects as a thinker, his lack of clarity, his inconsistency, and his inability either to accept whole-heartedly or to reject the principles inherited from his father and from Bentham.”1 Even Isaiah Berlin, one of Mill's more sympathetic interpreters, speaks of the “outdated psychology and lack of logical cogency” of On Liberty, and concludes that “Rigour in argument is not among Mill's accomplishments.”2

  The Revisionist View of Mill as a Consistent Thinker

  It must be admitted at once that there is much in Mill's work and in his life that supports the standard interpretation. Mill's notorious ambivalence to the utilitarian intellectual tradition he inherited from his father and Jeremy Bentham; his receptive response to some aspects of a German Idealist conception of the mind which the conservative Coleridge transmitted to the English world; his many shifts of position and emphasis on the great issues of socialism, democracy, and private property; together with the still intensely controversial question of how important for the development of his thought was his relationship with Harriet Taylor—all these vacillations conspire to suggest the image of a man inwardly divided. Mill seems a man at once acutely sensitive to the limitations of the utilitarian world view (whose official exponent he remained) but yet unable to abandon it decisively.

  In recent years, however, a wave of revisionist scholarship and interpretation has emerged, whose theme is that the judgment of J.S. Mill as a hopelessly muddled thinker may yet be ill-founded and certainly remains premature. This post-war revisionism argues that our assessment of Mill is distorted by an earlier generation of intellectual historians who caricatured the aims and doctrines of nineteenth-century English utilitarianism. Furthermore, our view of Mill has been badly obscured by the hasty and presumptuous judgment of Mill's substantive argument by the philosophers and social theorists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. If the revisionist scholars are on the right track, the work of the younger Mill may be a natural development of his utilitarian predecessors' achievements. Mill's writings may contain a subtle and complex body of doctrine which may not be internally inconsistent.

  Let us look, then, at the dialogue between traditional and revisionist interpretations of Mill. How convincingly does each interpretation deal with Mill on liberty, utility and morality, on private property, socialism and democracy, and on the scope and prospects of a science of society?

  The Traditional View of J.S. Mill on Liberty, Morality, and Utility

  The traditional accounts of Mill's doctrine of the limits of state interference interpret his enterprise in On Liberty (1859) as the impossible but perennially attractive one of squaring the circle: that of grounding a theory of the priority of liberty (itself part of a more comprehensive theory of justice and moral rights) in a utilitarian ethic. Mill, indeed, is clearly aware that some of his readers will see his enterprise as wholly misconceived. Thus, in the essay on Utilitarianism (1861, 1863) discussing the utilitarian foundation of his theory of moral rights he concedes: “To have a right, then, is I conceive, to have something which society ought to defend me in the possession of. If the objector goes on to ask, why it ought? I can give him no other reason than general utility.”3 But the traditional view insists that liberal utilitarianism is itself a weak, incoherent “reason,” since it is an unstable compound of two incompatible elements: (1) a teleological or maximizing element, in which the only duty any man or any government ever has is to promote the greatest good, and (2) a deontological or “side-constraint” element in which individuals are recognized as possessing inviolable moral rights against unjust treatment by state or society. What if achieving the greatest social good seems to require sacrificing some individual? The incompatible elements in utilitarianism itself create this dilemma.

  Stephen's Analysis of Utility as Antiliberty and Proauthority

  By far the most formidable of Mill's nineteenth-century English critics, the jurist James Fitzjames Stephen, criticizes Mill precisely because in On Liberty he illegitimately attempts to derive liberal conclusions supporting individual rights and liberty from a utilitarian outlook. Stephen, himself an avowed utilitarian, saw utilitarianism as having a natural antiliberal, authoritarian implication. In his great book, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity (1873), surely one of the world's masterpieces of conservative political thought, Stephen argues against Mill: if the only thing that has intrinsic value for utilitarians is happiness, and we are bound to promote happiness by the most efficacious means, then a consistent utilitarian policy of social betterment will not be especially tender toward individual liberty. In its political agenda utilitarianism will grant no priority to the protection of the classical liberal freedoms. Mill's utilitarian ancestors, such as Hume and Bentham, agree with Stephen in ranking liberty as, in fact, only one (and not always the most important) among the means necessary to security and good government in promoting happiness. Stephen's most forceful objection to Mill at this point of his critique is that, if Mill is truly a utilitarian, then liberty can have no intrinsic or inviolable value whatever: its value or disvalue will depend wholly on its contingent consequences which, given the variety of human circumstances, will be complex. As Stephen puts it:

  if the word ‘liberty’ has any definite sense attached to it, and if it is consistently used in that sense, it is almost impossible to make any true general assertion whatever about it, and quite impossible to regard it either as a good thing or a bad one. If, on the other hand, the word is used merely in a general popular way without attaching any distinct signification to it, it is easy to make almost any general assertion you please about it; but these assertions will be incapable of either proof or disproof as they will have no definite meaning. Thus the word is either a misleading appeal to passion, or else it embodies or rather hints at an exceedingly complicated assertion, the truth of which can be proved only by elaborate historical investigations.”4

  Traditional Critique of Mill's Utilitarianism: Its Unwarranted Optimism About Human Nature and Failure to Support the Priority of Liberty

  It is Stephen's charge that, given a less charitable historical view of human nature than the one Mill endorses, utilitarian principles in many circumstances might very well dictate supporting the stability of a traditional society of hierarchy and authority. In other circumstances they would sanction even more regimented schemes, such as Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon prison (or, a later objector might add, the Webb's admiration of Soviet Five-Year Plans and Stalin's collectivization program), which seek to promote aggregate social welfare by the morally monstrous expedient of inflicting great hardship on some or many members of a society. In modern terms, Stephen's argument might be reformulated in the following question: How can Mill as a utilitarian consistently object to the kind of authoritarian society depicted in Huxley's Brave New World or B.F. Skinner's Walden Two? Stephen's own intention was not, indeed, to give a utilitarian defense of the dystopian schemes of Bentham and his associates, but simply to affirm that nothing in the utilitarian tradition gave liberty any special importance, while much in human experience testified to the greater importance of security, order, and discipline as conditions of a happy life.

  The traditional criticism of Mill's enterprise in On Liberty really has two prongs: (1) On the one hand, how can Mill possibly hope to defend what he calls “one very simple principle”5 of giving liberty a privileged place among political values by invoking considerations of utility alone? Several of the critics discussed in J.C. Rees's classic study of Mill and his Early Critics (1956) highlight the incongruity in Mill's libertarian enterprise of defending this utilitarian principle “as entitled to govern absolutely” restrictions of liberty by society or state. However, as an avowed utilitarian, Mill is already committed to utility as yielding an absolute principle for determining the limits of state interference. (2) On the other hand, Mill's critics insist that, even supposing a successful utilitarian proof for liberty's priority over other political goods, its validity would hinge entirely on the accuracy of our conjectures about the effects on man and society of a regime of liberty. Such a utilitarian argument for liberty, in other words, is permanently defeasible and reversible. It yields antilibertarian results whenever particular predictions of the utility of liberty (or the picture of human nature on which such predictions depend) can be undermined by empirical investigation and argument.

  Fitzjames Stephen, like many of Mill's Victorian critics, asserts vehemently that the utilitarian proof will work only on the basis of a wildly optimistic assessment of the prudence and virtue of the average sensual man and of his real moral psychology. Mill's account of human psychology, Mill's critics insist, is excessively and narrowly intellectualist, neglecting the central role of passion, prejudice, and sheer moral perversity in human life. As the writer in the London Review (1859) observes, “. . . the truth is, that intellectual independence, however theoretically desirable, is practically unattainable in the vast majority of cases.”6 Given this more somber view of human psychology, can free men be trusted to promote social utility?

  Mill was defended against Stephen by disciples such as John Morley, Viscount of Blackburn, Liberal statesman, and editor of the Fortnightly Review (1861–1882), and by writers such as the positivist Frederic Harrison. But the general reaction to On Liberty was by no means so generally favorable as much second hand intellectual history has led generations of students to suppose. Principled argumentative defense of the doctrine of On Liberty was, in fact, a minority position throughout most of nineteenth-century English thought and letters. Probably the best available study of the whole period, apart from Rees's book, is John Roach's essay, “Liberalism and the Victorian Intelligentsia.” B.E. Lippincott's broader study of conservative and liberal thought in Victorian times, Victorian Critics of Democracy (1938), should also be consulted for its chapter on J.F. Stephen and its sensible treatment of the antidemocratic liberal and conservative reaction. F.W. Knickerbocker's Free Minds-John Morley and his Friends (1943) is also useful as a source for information on such Liberals as Frederic Harrison.

  The Revisionist View of Mill on Liberty, Morality, and Utility

  Much of the best recent work on Mill's liberalism asserts that critics have misconstrued both of Mill's central principles of utility and of liberty. Mill's views on utility and liberty can be properly stated only with terms and distinctions taken from his own general theory of human nature and of practical reasoning.

  As stated in the crucially important writings of Ryan7 , Brown8 , Dryer9 , and Lyons10 , the revisionist position begins by clarifying Mill's utility principle. It is neither a classical aggregative (i.e., average utility) principle, or a substantive moral principle. Whatever their differences in other areas of Mill scholarship, the revisionists agree that Mill saw the principle of utility as a very abstract principle, specifying that happiness alone was valuable for its own sake. Happiness governed not just morality but all the areas of practice identified in the theory of the “Art of Life” expounded in Mill's System of Logic (1843).

  The Utility Principle, the Art of Life, and the Theory of Morality

  In his System of Logic, Mill speaks of the three departments of the Art of Life as being “Morality, Prudence or Policy, and Aesthetics; the Right, the Expedient, and the Beautiful or Noble, in human conduct as works.” The doctrine of the Art of Life (now widely seen as incorporating one of Mill's most valuable, original, and neglected insights) distinguishes between judgments of a properly moral character and judgments which appraise actions (or human characters) in terms of their prudence or of their nobility. As Alan Ryan intimates in his path-breaking explorations of these aspects of Mill's thought, the arguments of Utilitarianism and of On Liberty presuppose an understanding of the Art of Life defended in the System of Logic (1843). The plausibility of the substantive doctrines defended in these two essays thus depends in part upon the cogency of the conceptual analysis in Mill's Logic. It is the argument of Utilitarianism that the principle of utility does not allow judgments about men's moral obligation or rights to be derived in any very direct way. Indeed, the subject matter of utility is not the moral rightness or wrongness of actions at all. Rather as an axiological principle specifying happiness as the only desirable end, quite distinct from any substantive moral principle, Mill's utility principle is conceived as “the test of all conduct.” As the revisionists understand it, the utility principle does not impose on anyone a moral obligation to maximize utility, and it does not condemn as a moral wrong any failure to do so. It follows from this that a utilitarian is not necessarily inconsistent if he knowingly sacrifices some utility for the sake of an equitable distribution of the utility that remains.

  If the utility principle does not condemn as a moral wrong any discussion to maximize utility, what claims does it make on action, and how is it related to morality?

  First, in specifying happiness as the only intrinsic value, the utility principle entails that all reasons for or against any act, policy, or practice must relate to and weigh its contribution to happiness. The principle of utility actually entails another principle, invoked by Mill but not named by him, which (following Brown and Lyons) I shall call the “Principle of Expediency.” An act (for example) is expedient if it brings about a net utility benefit, and it is maximally expedient if it brings about greater utility than any available alternative. An avowed utilitarian violates consistency if he knowingly acts inexpediently, but Mill's theory of morality and of moral obligation insists that the man who acts inexpediently need not thereby commit any moral wrong. As Mill puts it in Utilitarianism:

  We do not call anything wrong, unless we mean to imply that a person ought to be punished in some way or other for doing it; if not by law, then by the opinion of his fellow-creatures; if not by opinion, by the reproaches of his own conscience. This seems the real turning point of the distinction between morality and simple expediency. It is part of the notion of Duty in every one of its forms, that a person may rightfully be compelled to fulfill it. Duty is a thing that may be exacted from a person, as one exacts a debt. Unless we think that it may be exacted from him, we do not call it his duty.11

  Mill's theory of morality and of moral obligation has here two levels—one conceptual, the other substantive. At the conceptual level, Mill proposes that we judge something morally right or wrong, only if its performance can be enforced, and its omission punished. There is a necessary conceptual connection, according to Mill, between the idea of a moral judgment and the legitimacy of its enforcement. Contrary to countless interpreters and historians, then, Mill believes in the Enforcement of Morality. But the morality in question is not necessarily the popular or positive morality of prejudice and tradition, but rather the utilitarianly-sanctioned “critical” morality which is the subject matter of Utilitarianism and On Liberty.

  How, then, can we know the area of morality and of moral obligation? First of all, by applying the Principle of Expediency to the question of enforcement and punishability. An act is morally right, not if it is maximally expedient that it be done, but only if it is maximally expedient that its performance be enforced by penalties for noncompliance. It is worth noting that this aspect of Mill's theory of morality shows that his theory is not a species of act-utilitarianism.12 Mill cannot be an act-utilitarian, since his theory explicitly denies that an act's being maximally expedient generates any moral reason to do it. Nor, contrary to an influential current of interpretation begun by Urmson,13 can Mill be regarded as any sort of rule-utilitarian. Firstly, Mill's principle of utility, like the principle of expediency which it entails, does not mention either acts or rules, and, in fact, applies to things apart from acts and rules. Also, an act may be morally wrong, provided it is maximally expedient for the agent to suffer the penalties of conscience from it (regardless of whether any rule exists or might exist whose violation would be similarly wrong). Mill's moral theory, in short, is not accurately described in the traditional terms of act-and rule-utilitarianism. It remains recognizably utilitarian, nonetheless, in virtue of its clearly teleological orientation.

  What Constitutes Moral Wrong: Mill's Harm Principle or Principle of Liberty

  We have seen that for Mill moral wrongs are to be distinguished from merely inexpedient actions, and that a necessary condition of something being morally wrong is that punishing it would be maximally expedient. We have yet to discover what, according to Mill, is in fact morally wrong, and we can do this only by looking at the relationship between liberty and morality developed in the essay On Liberty. For it is there that Mill states his famous principle of liberty, sometimes called the self-protection or noninterference principle. This principle of liberty stipulates

  that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.

  We need to clarify several important points about Mill's statement of this principle of liberty. Mill clearly means that unless “harm to others” can be prevented, there is no reason at all for any limitation of liberty. As Brown puts it, “By giving this necessary condition for the existence of a reason for restriction, it rules out as irrelevant absolutely everything but the prevention of harm to others. This sharp and unequivocal denial,” as Brown rightly continues, “is the cutting edge of Mill's essay.”14

  Among the reasons which Mill's liberty principle rules out as irrelevant to justifying liberty-limiting acts, policies, and institutions are: (1) paternalist considerations, reasons having to do with preventing a person from harming himself, or with forcing him to benefit himself, and (2) moralist reasons, reasons to do with the enforcement of the positive or popular moral sentiments of a person's community. Mill also dismisses as legitimate reasons for limiting liberty: (3) welfarist considerations, reasons that favor restricting a person's liberty for the benefit of others.

  Mill's liberty principle is, at first sight at least, a very stringent test of the legitimacy of state interference, one which should appeal strongly to economic and civil libertarians. For it condemns as illegitimate any restriction of liberty by state or society which is not designed to prevent men from harming one another. And, further, taken together with Mill's principles about enforcing morality, it yields a substantive criterion or moral wrongness. An act (or whatever) is morally wrong, if and only if punishing it both would prevent harm to others and would be maximally expedient. (We must always remember here that “punishment,” for Mill, includes the sanctions of public opinion and the goads of conscience as well as legal penalties.) Mill's doctrine of liberty claims that the requirements of morality will be maximally expedient if they are themselves minimalist: we maximize utility if we restrict morality to questions of harm-prevention.

  Traditional Objections to Mill's Harm Principle

  At this point in stating Mill's doctrine, however, we may profitably raise a number of traditional objections. What, after all, are we to understand by the expression “harm to others”? Judgments about harm are often controversial (think of recent debates about the harmful effects of hallucinogenic drugs): how can we resolve such controversies? Does “harm” designate damage only to a person or property, or is there a class of moral harms, or harms to character, which may legitimately affect the liberty principle? Again, does the liberty principle license us to restrict liberty only where the conduct affected causes or threatens harm to others? Or does the harm principle sanction restrictions of liberty in all cases where harm to others can thereby be prevented? Further, is there really a category of actions which harm only the agent himself but not others? Is there in fact a class of self-regarding acts, whose primary effects are on the agent himself? If not, if all acts affect others through their effects on the agent, then the class of acts protected by the liberty principle would seem to be empty. Finally, even supposing these difficulties are solvable, it is far from obvious that Mill's liberty principle in fact expands liberty in its operations. Making “harm to others” the only good reason for interference, far from curtailing the legitimate powers of the state, might (because we all harm each other all the time in so many ways) indefinitely augment them.

  The Revisionists' Clarification of Mill's Harm or Liberty Principle.

  All these questions have much exercised Mill's traditional critics, and to deal with these difficulties the revisionists have advanced a range or more or less persuasive answers. By far the most common accusation against the doctrine of On Liberty has always been that Mill's principle of self-protection presupposes a distinction that we cannot intelligibly make between acts which are “self-regarding” (in that they affect only or primarily the agent himself), and acts which are “other-regarding.” As Fitzjames Stephen puts it, with characteristic bluntness and clarity.

  I think that the attempt to distinguish between self-regarding acts and acts which regard others, is like an attempt to distinguish between acts which happen in time and acts which happen in space. Every act happens at some time and in some place, and in like manner every act that we do either does or may affect both ourselves and others. I think, therefore, that the distinction (which, by the way, is not at all a common one) is altogether fallacious and unfounded.15

  One of Mill's early critics, Joseph Parker, in his John Stuart Mill on Liberty, A Critique (1865) makes a similar point about determining the range of application of the self-protection principle, when he asks how far Mill is prepared to stretch the concept of harm. If, as Mill thought, the state is justified in imposing compulsory education, and this is warranted in that it prevents “harm to others,” what policy could not similarly be justified? In the same vein, Leslie Stephen, James Fitzjames Stephen's brother and biographer, makes substantially the same objection, when in the third volume of his great work, The English Utilitarians (1900), he declares that “It is. . . the acceptance of this antithesis, put absolutely, the ‘individual’, as something natural on one side, and law, on the other side, as a bond imposed upon the society, which at every step hampers Mill's statement of any vital truths.”16

  Rees's Defense of Mill's Harm Principle: Interests and Rights

  How do the revisionists try to rebut these objections? By far the most powerful and influential attempt to clarify self- and other-regarding acts is made by J.C. Rees in his well-known 1960 paper, “A Re-reading of Mill on Liberty.”17 Rees distinguishes between actions that merely affect others and actions that affect others' interests, and gives massive textual support for the claim that Mill's working conception of harm in On Liberty is that of harm to interests. The crucial difficulty for this interpretation, however, is how Mill (or anyone else) is to know what are a man's interests. Might not a committed puritan claim that he had an ‘interest’ in the moral environment in which he and his children live, and hold the state might restrict the liberty of those libertines and deviants who threaten to harm or damage the moral environment? Rees's interpretation is clearly open to such an objection, since he emphasizes that interests “depend for their existence on social recognition and are closely connected with prevailing standards about the sort of behavior a man can legitimately expect from others.”18 It is, in fact, in order to distinguish human interests from “arbitrary wishes, fleeting fancies or capricious demands,”19 that Rees stresses their dependence on norms and values which enjoy social recognition.

  But, as Professor Richard Wollheim recognized, in Rees's interpretation Mill's liberty or self-protection principle becomes relativistic and conservative in character, and this cannot possibly accord with Mill's intentions. For on Rees's interpretation the boundaries of the self-regarding area will be relativistically determined by the currently dominant conception of interests, and the liberty principle will expand freedom only insofar as legal and social limitations on liberty lag behind changing, more restrictive conceptions of human interests.

  D.G. Brown has argued persuasively20 that we can avoid this relativization of Mill's liberty principle only if we construe Mill as understanding “interests” in a strictly naturalistic and prudential fashion. Rees himself considers this question further in a subsequent “Postscript”21 to his paper, where he emphasizes the relevance to On Liberty of certain passages in Utilitarianism. Brown's interpretation is further supported by the independent work of D.G. Long. In his highly relevant book Bentham on Liberty (1977), Long emphasizes that several of the crucial distinctions at work in On Liberty are variants of distinctions made by Bentham. And this is most obviously the case with Mill's distinction between self-regarding and other-regarding actions.

  What complicates Brown's revisionist interpretation is that in On Liberty, as in Utilitarianism, Mill recognizes that some, but not all, interests are crucially relevant in determining the self-regarding area and thus in applying principles about liberty of action. When Mill in On Liberty demarcates the area of life in which we may be held accountable to society, he speaks not of determining what are a man's interests but of ascertaining his rights. “This conduct,” he says, “consists in not injuring the interests of one another; or rather certain interests which, either by express legal provision or by tacit understanding, ought to be considered as rights.”22 Here the test is not whether a man's interests have been damaged by other men, but whether his interests ought to be protected as rights. Mill does not think, then, that if a man has an interest, he thereby has any kind of right. His reference to “certain interests” suggests that only some interests can be grounds for rights, but which ones?

  Utility and the Permanent Interests of Man as Progressive Being

  In the introductory chapter of On Liberty Mill relinquishes any support for his argument derivable from ideas of abstract right. Furthermore, he insists that he regards utility “as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but” he goes on at once, “it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of a man as a progressive being.”23 The difficulty here is pushed one stage further back, in that we now need a criterion for distinguishing between those interests of man that are transitory and those that are permanently his in virtue of his character as a progressive being. What is there in Mill's doctrine of liberty that answers this need for a criterion?

  Much of the secondary literature surrounding On Liberty might lead a student of Mill's thought to suppose that his use of terms like “harm” and “interests” is hopelessly vague. Given the apparent deficiency in Mill's argument, his principle of self-protection might also seem practically useless. As I have already observed, the force of that principle disqualifies anything but harm-prevention as a test for restricting liberty. Paternalist, welfarist, and moralistic interventions, therefore, all fall under the general ban.

  Human Interests, Moralism, and Paternalism

  But are we always able to differentiate paternalistic reasons for interference from moralistic ones? Is there, indeed, any determinate area in which paternalism is at all an issue? The controversies surrounding “moral offenses” suggest that judgments both about what is in a man's interests and about the general interest, have an inescapably controversial aspect. Professor Basil Mitchell shows this inherently debatable meaning of “interest” (while accurately reporting on the famous controversy between Lord Devlin and Professor H.L.A. Hart).24 The ambiguity of “interest” is evident in Hart's argument that much existing legislation that restricts liberty may be justified as protecting men's own interests by paternalistic, rather than moralistic reasonings. This argument, in other words, assumes that we can assess a man's interest without presupposing any evaluation of the worthiness or excellence of his way of life.

  To put this logical situation in a later terminology,25 Hart (like Mill before him) can resist Devlin's and Fitzjames Stephen's argument that individual immorality is itself harmful to others by contending that “interests” designate a purely want-regarding concept, and by claiming that state interference can never rightly be ideal-regarding. Then the central claim of liberalism in Hart, as in Mill, is that the state in its liberty-restricting activities should be neutral between necessarily controversial competing ideals of human excellence. Mill's argument, indeed, is that since assessments of a man's excellence or nobility are not authentically moral evaluations at all, the liberal thesis that the state may properly enforce the requirements of critical or rational morality, and those alone, itself entails that the state may never coercively support one ideal of human excellence against its competitors. Mill differs from Hart, and lines up with later libertarians like Thomas Szasz,26 in his uncompromising opposition, not only to legal moralism, but also to state paternalism.

  Man as a Progressive Being: Choice, Liberty, and the Psychology of Self-Realization

  What is the nub of the revisionist interpretation? We can concede that these may well be “hard cases for the harm principle,”27 that is to say, cases where Mill's self-protection principle gives, at best, ambiguous guidance to action. But revisionists hold that Mill's theory of happiness and human nature is rich and dense enough to clarify how to apply the principle of liberty across a very wide area. The crucial point to recognize is that Mill's Aristotelian and Humboldtian conception of happiness had moved far enough away from old-fashioned psychological hedonism to allow considerations of individuality and self-realization to enter as constitutive ingredients into the idea of human happiness. It is the theory of the higher pleasures, as elaborated in Utilitarianism, that the exercise of the human capacities of choice, reflective thought, and active imagination is not just a means to human happiness, but a vital ingredient of it.

  Mill further embeds this abstract and open-ended view of happiness in his characteristic theory of human nature as permanently capable of self-alteration and unpredictable self-transformation. Mill embraces this view in On Liberty following such German writers as Schiller and Novalis (who were in close touch with Wilhelm von Humboldt when he was writing his libertarian classic Limits of State Action). This is the same view which Mill elaborates more explicitly in the seminal articles on Bentham (1838) and Coleridge (1840): it is a mistake to regard man as a natural object with fixed qualities and predetermined possibilities. Rather, man is to be conceived as a reflective and self-critical agent, actively engaged in the open-ended venture of exploring his own powers and the world that he has created for himself. What distinguishes man from the inhabitants of the animal kingdom, and gives him a special relationship with nature, is only his capacity for reflective thought and deliberate choice; but this is of capital importance. For, unlike that of an animal, the shape of a man's life is not ordained in advance by a repertoire of unalterable instincts, but is never less than the permanently revisable product of his own past thought and action. Man, unlike the animals, is a progressive being. But Mill never unreservedly took this to mean that moral improvement or social progress are inevitable features of the human prospect. Being a progressive being means that man's life is not bound by any fixed, unalterable natural endowment, but is rather the unforseeable product of men's choices and experiments upon themselves.

  The Interests of a Progressive Being: Automony, Security, and Liberty

  We are now in a better position to understand what Mill means, when he speaks of “the permanent interests of man as a progressive being.” The permanent interests of any person are those that concern him or her as a chooser, a creature who fashions his or her life by provisionally endorsing but forever criticizing principles and policies. We can turn to the essay on Utilitarianism for further illumination on Mill's notion of interests. We find there that Mill regards security as man's least dispensable interest, the precondition of any valuable form of life. We may suppose that Mill understands by security, security of person and property. The theory of the higher pleasures,28 in turn, assures us that Mill believed that what was in a person's interests was a choice-environment undistorted by invasive social and legal controls. This freedom of choice is an indispensable condition of the kind of happy life that is distinctive of a person. It is clear that we can secure free choice only by the social and legal protection of an area of individual liberty.

  The permanent or vital interests of persons, accordingly, are the interests they have in security and in liberty. These interests thus ground their moral rights. Damaging these interests constitutes, not just harm, but injustice. Mill's doctrine of liberty and utility, we may repeat, judges that morality is maximally expedient (and utility is itself maximized) when we maximize personal choice or liberty and minimize moral requirements. As a general rule, these moral requirements should be restricted to a prohibition of aggression and of injury to individual security and liberty. Mill believes we have no moral duty to benefit others, except in special circumstances as when a person freely chooses contractual obligations. This is surely a conclusion which should be welcome to all radical libertarians. One objection may be that the conclusion is somehow suspect because it depends on contingent assumptions about man and society.But this objection surely begs the questions whether any social philosophy can avoid such assumptions.

  Mill on the Priority of Liberty as Autonomy: Laissez-faire, Private Property, and Socialism

  I have argued, from the revisionist viewpoint, that Mill could consistently attach a priority to individual liberty in political and social life. Allowing liberty to be preeminent whenever background conditions of security and an acceptable level of culture were established,29 Mill could yet remain faithful to his overriding utilitarian commitment.

  But what does Mill's commitment to liberty's priority mean in the intensely controversial areas of his view on laissez-faire, socialism, and private property? As a start to answering this difficult tangle of questions, we need to challenge the traditional view that Mill's working conception of liberty was a negative one.30 For, first, several of the fairly explicit definitions he gives of liberty commit him to a strongly positive libertarian standpoint.31 Secondly, although On Liberty indeed discusses the classical-liberal grounds and limits of justified coercion, that essay makes clear that Mill would regard any society which lacks conflicting modes of thought and life as failing to fit the ideal type of a society of free persons. Central to the argument of On Liberty, then, is the notion of the free person as having available to him a wide range of alternative lifestyles and modes of thought. Mill sees the free person as liberated from the yoke of custom and convention, from the conformist pressures of peer-groups as well as the legal penalties of law, in areas where harm to others is not an issue. This positive notion of freedom as autonomy informs all of Mill's writings on socialism and private property. It is related to the idea of the autonomous man defined in David Riesman's well-known sociological study of the nonautonomous or “other directed” person in modern society, The Lonely Crowd. The intellectual pedigree of freedom as autonomy extends back at least as far as de Tocqueville's writings on American democracy.

  Mill on the Role of Government: Neither Laissez-faire nor Socialism

  It is evident that the argument of On Liberty (1859) is a natural development of Mill's discussion of the proper province of government in his immensely influential Principles of Political Economy (1848). Mill never unreservedly endorsed the standard slogans of laissez-faire, and much of the time, indeed, he has engaged in criticizing them, sometimes misguidedly. We would, however, fundamentally misconceive of Mill's intellectual development imagining (as is sometimes still done) that Mill was intellectually seduced by Harriet Taylor from an orthodox laissez-faire position to something more akin to Fabian socialism. Mill's criticisms of the capitalist political economy of his day, though often misconceived, fundamentally differ from those of the socialists of his time and ours.

  Before we can demarcate Mill's critique of capitalism from that of the socialist orthodoxies, we need to be clear about Mill's relations to the doctrine of laissez-faire by making a number of distinctions. In the Principles of Political Economy (1848), Mill distinguished between ‘necessary’ and ‘optional’ state functions, and divides ‘optional’ into two types: ‘authoritative’ and ‘nonauthoritative’. Mill differed from stringent laissez-faire noninterventionists, and argued that it was completely inadequate to restrict state activity merely to the prevention of force and fraud. He concluded pragmatically that the range of necessary government functions, though certainly broader than supposed by many exponents of laissez-faire, could not be identified by any universal rule, save the simple and vague one: that we should permit governmental intervention only when the case of expediency is strong.32

  Against interventionists, however, Mill makes a crucial distinction between the two mentioned types of ‘optional’ government interference, the ‘authoritative’ and the ‘nonauthoritative’. Since the ‘authoritative’ comprehends interventions by sanction and legal prohibition, there is a strong presumption against it deriving from utility in the larger sense. There is, however, no such presumption against the ‘nonauthoritative’ interference which merely supplements and does not replace successful private initiative. Unlike nonauthoritative interference, which avoids all coercion beyond that involved in the exercise of the state's taxing power, authoritative interference involves the state as order-giver and tends to stultify the spirit of independence.

  Thus Mill believed that the larger utilitarian considerations on the one hand supported noninterference, but on the other hand allowed the state a wide range of functions, when it is clear that private institutions cannot adequately supply certain desirable things (public goods, as we should call them today). In this way, the state might properly assume a share of responsibility for such items as poor relief, colonization, scientific research, and the financing of education. Mill's overall view, in fact, was that the preservation of individuality in the modern world could not be achieved by sticking to any very fixed rule, but demanded great centralization of information in the state, together with great diffusion of power and initiative throughout society.

  Mill's Conception of Distributive Justice vs. Orthodox Socialism

  If Mill's criticism of orthodox laissez-faire went so far, how did his “new political economy” differ from contemporary and later socialist orthodoxy? Pedro Schwartz shows in his important book, The New Political Economy of J.S. Mill (1972) that the major targets of Mill's critique are the maldistribution of property and an oppressive system of industrial organization. One of the main causes of the maldistribution of property, according to Mill, was the concentrations of fortunes facilitated by uninterrupted accumulation of wealth across the generations. Mill's remedy for this maldistribution, which he proposed in the first edition (1848) of the Principles, was the institution, not of an estates duty, but of what we would nowadays call an accessions or inheritance tax, to be levied on the recipient and not on the donor of capital. For Mill, the merit of such a tax was that, unlike other arrangements, it need not transfer wealth from private individuals to the state, since it was easily avoidable by the desirable expedient of dispersing one's wealth widely. Importantly, Mill favored a steeply progressive inheritance tax. This tax, though it would allow the transfer of a “modest competence,” would destroy all great fortunes in a couple of generations.

  Mill's support of progression in inheritance taxation contrasts sharply with his opposition to it in the taxation of income. A progressive income tax, he argued, was tantamount to “hanging a weight upon the swift to diminish the distance between them and the slow”; it was to impose a penalty on people for having worked harder and saved more than their neighbors, which is the same as “relieving the prodigal at the expense of the prudent.” One explanation for this disparity in kinds of taxes lies in Mill's constant preoccupation with saving and his lifelong distaste for conspicuous consumption. These motives led him to express his support in principle for an expenditure tax before the Select Committee on Income and Property Tax of 1861.

  Mill's Lockean Distributive Theory vs. Egalitarianism

  Another deeper reason for his contrasting attitudes to income and inheritance taxes, one which I shall need to expand upon, is that Mill's conception of distributive justice was by origin a Lockean one. Although this Lockean position tended to make him favor a redistribution of property and of incomes, it had no specifically egalitarian complexion. Mill clearly avows the Lockean pedigree of his doctrine of property and distributive justice, when he gives a quasicanonical statement of the grounds and limits of property rights:

  The institution of property, when limited to its essential elements, consists in the recognition, in each person, of a right to the exclusive disposal of what he or she have produced by their own exertions or received either by gift or fair agreement, without force or fraud, from those who produced it. The foundation of the whole is, the right of producers to what they themselves have produced.33

  Statements such as this (which could easily be multiplied) open up a gulf between Mill's doctrine of property and that elaborated in the tradition of Hume, Bentham, and the elder Mill. The gap develops because Mill absorbed a Lockean, Ricardian labor theory of value, which he used to ground a theory of justice in property titles based on notions of desert. This labor theory of the acquisition of property rights explains why Mill always treated the ownership of land as a special case, in which the existence of permanent bequeathable property rights is least justifiable. Similarly, the labor theory of property accounts for his sustained interest in schemes for peasant proprietorship and his unremitting hostility to landlords. Again, it is a Lockean conviction that the marginal productivity of a man's labor is one good measure of his worth and one that should be encouraged. This conviction accounts for Mill's uncompromising defense of labor competition and his unrepentent support for the incentives of piece-work in increasing individual productivity. Mill's redistributionist proposals about inheritance also owe their rationale to another Lockean belief. In the market economy of his day, Mill lamented that “reward instead of being proportioned to labour and the abstinence of individuals, is almost in inverse ratio to it.” The Lockean background for Mill's conception of distributive justice is recognized in Lawrence C. Becker's recent study, Property Rights (1977), which expands and criticizes Locke's own theory.

  However, Mill's distributionism, that is to say his desire to distribute property on the basis of individual desert, has another source. This is the ill-judged and fatal methodological dichotomy he sought to make between laws of production and laws of distribution. As he famously puts it:

  The laws and conditions of the production of wealth, partake of the character of physical truths. There is nothing optional, or arbitrary in them. . . this is not so with the distribution of wealth. That is a matter of human institution solely. The things once there, mankind, individually or collectively, can do with them as they like.34

  This split between production versus distribution may be restated as follows: Somehow persons produce wealth through rather mechanical procedures without any options or choices on their part, and we need not examine their motivations or incentives in doing so. The only question that seems relevant to this approach is how society should choose to distribute the wealth that mysteriously appears. However, this approach gives little thought to the effects on producers of social schemes to redistribute the wealth they create. In fact such redistribution may discourage producers from producing their product.

  In this disastrous dissociation of production and distribution, with its implicit “manna from heaven” view of how goods and commodities are produced and with its failure to treat capitalism as a unified system of both production and distribution, Mill propounds the central heresy of modern Social Democracy. For this misleading dichotomy of production and distribution sanctions the belief that productive and distributive arrangements of different sorts may promiscuously be mixed so as to realize some ideal or preferred pattern of distribution. This is a delusion that is justly assaulted both by Marxians and by such neo-Austrian economists as F.A. Hayek and Murray Rothbard. In this belief, Mill fostered a harmful tradition of social criticism of capitalism. We are only lately recovering from this belief's ill-effects in social theory and political practice. At the same time, all who are not exponents of natural rights theory will commend Mill for arguing that property rights are not things settled once and for all, deducible from some supposed axioms of ethics. Mill viewed property rights, no less than political institutions, as creatures of “time, place and circumstance,” to be assessed and altered to harmonize with “the permanent interests of man as a progressive being.”

  Mill's Syndicalism vs. Authoritarian Socialism

  Mill thus advanced contemporary Social Democracy with his erroneous notions about what constituted justice in distribution. But we should not suppose that his form of anticapitalism had much in common with that of the Fabian socialists who came after him. (Nor is there any strong evidence to support the received view that Mill's approach to socialism and private property, or to any other major issue, was substantially modified by the influence of Harriet Taylor.35 ) It is true, however, that Mill was a lifelong opponent of one mode of capitalist industrial organization. He opposed those enterprises which are owned and managed by owners of capital who stand in an authoritarian relationship with wage-earners. He thought this became worse rather than better with the growth of joint-stock companies. He opposed it because, in the first place, he thought it institutionalized a permanent conflict of interests between capital-owners and wage-earners, and he doubted if any productive system which rested on such a basis could be either stable or efficient. Again, he supposed that the separations between wage-earners and owner-managers deprived workers of any real opportunity for personal initiative and precluded their becoming anything like the self-reliant individuals celebrated in On Liberty. Such objections to the capitalist system of his day led Mill to take a continuing interest in schemes for profit sharing, industrial partnership, and producer's cooperation. But his utopian views went far beyond such proposals and (as Lionel Robbins has suggested36 ) can best be characterized as a form of nonrevolutionary competitive syndicalism. As Mill put it himself in his Principles:

  The form of association. . . which if mankind continue to improve must be expected in the end to predominate is not that which can exist between a capitalist as Chief, and work people without a voice in the management, but the association of labourers themselves on forms of equality, collectively owning the capital with which they carry on their operations and working under managers elected and removable by themselves.37

  It is worth emphasizing that, while there are many objectionable aspects of Mill's syndicalist or non-state socialist utopias, it has no affinities whatever with the paternalist State celebrated in the Fabian socialist tradition. In Mill's posthumous Autobiography (1873), he certainly envisaged an economic order which was no longer recognizably that of nineteenth-century England, but it differs at least as much from our own interventionist economy. If Mill is in any sense a socialist then his was decidedly a “market socialism.” He nowhere fatally compromises the core capitalist institutions of private property in the instruments of production and commodity production for competitive markets. Further, in considering the relations between Mill's position and the various socialist orthodoxies, we should note that, despite his iconoclastic sympathies with trade unionism, he envisaged no place for trade unions in the society of the future. He looked forward to a time when the harmony of interests between all partners in production, facilitated by workers' ownership and self-management, would allow “the true euthanasia of trades unionism.”38

  Mill on the Limits of Economic Growth: Its Harm to Individual Character and Social Values

  Finally, Mill's thought significantly contrasts with his socialist posterity in his opposition to productivist conceptions of the good life. Like the other classical economists, Mill accepted that economic growth could only be temporary in a world of scarce natural resources in which population constantly pressed on land and food reserves. In contrast with all other economists in the classical tradition and in its socialist aftermath, however, Mill did not fear the arrival of a stationary economy, but rather welcomed it as an opportunity for a large-scale transformation in social values. Doubtless, a part of Mill's concern that society be re-ordered to allow for a peaceful transition to a no-growth economy derives from his neo-Malthusian insistence on the finitude of the world's resources and the ever-present danger of overpopulation. Yet Mill's advocacy of a stationary-state economy is largely concerned, not with considerations of resource-depletion, but with the damaging effects on human character of the unremitting pursuit of possessions and with the alleged destructive consequences for the natural environment of open-ended economic growth. In Mill's own emphatic words, in the chapter on “The Stationary State” in the Principles:

  “I confess I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on; that the trampling, crushing, elbowing and treading on each other's heels, which form the existing type of social life, are the most desirable lot of mankind, or anything but the disagreeable symptoms of one of the phases of industrial progress.”39

  In words which show him to have moved altogether outside the Benthamite utilitarian tradition, Mill goes on to illustrate the harmful consequences for human character and development of an overcrowded world: “It is not good for man to be kept perforce at all times in the presence of his species. A world from which solitude is extirpated is a very poor ideal. . . Nor is there much satisfaction in contemplating the world with nothing left to the spontaneous activity of nature.” Concluding the chapter in his Principles with the search that “a stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement,” Mill effectively confirms his distance from the productivist central stream of classical economic thought and of its socialist aftermath. Clearly John Stuart Mill, at least among the great liberals, owed little—too little perhaps—to any culture of possessive individualism.40

  We may well question the practical cogency of Mill's vision of a society of fraternal but competitive workers' cooperatives. No one who now reads the Principles can help reflecting that it became the standard economics textbook at a time when Britain was still only semi-industrialized. At this time the statification of the economy by interventionism was minimal and the joint-stock revolution had only recently got under way. It was an era when it was unthinkable that multinational corporations should arise possessing a discretionary authority often exceeding that of sovereign states. Further, we now know something of the problems of labor-managed economies (such as postwar Yugoslavia) resembling Mill's syndicalist utopia. What we know suggests their liability to debilitating influences, including especially an ineradicable disposition to an irrational allocation of labor. And, as both F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman have had occasion to observe,41 Mill's distributionism, combined with his belittling of the achievements of technology, caused him to support the bizarre view that no further economic growth was needed in mid-nineteenth century England, but only a radical redistribution of its products. As Hayek has put it,42 Mill “appears to have been unaware that an attempt to cure even extensive poverty by redistribution would in his time have led to the destruction of what he regarded as cultured life without achieving its object.”

  Mill and Socialism

  These defects in Mill's positive doctrine of a post-capitalist society are widely admitted in the relevant secondary literatures.43 It remains unquestionably the case, however, that a deep gulf separates Mill's idiosyncratic synthesis of laissez-faire with socialism from any subsequent socialist orthodoxy. If today, we have little to learn from Mill's political economy, still we ought, in intellectual honesty, to distinguish his errors from the even worse ones of his socialist rivals and heirs. Indeed, many socialists today might still benefit from reading Mill's posthumously published Chapters on Socialism, in which he prophetically exposed the dangers to individuality posed by a socialist economy.

  John Stuart Mill's Idea of a Science of Society: One or Two Mills?

  We now move on to one of the oldest, and most persuasive, traditionalist objections to the unity and coherence of Mill's social philosophy, and one which has furthered a number of “two Mills” theses. This objection focuses on a tension between Mill's view of mind and action, the tension between his theory of human nature (presupposed by Mill's liberalism) and that to which he explicitly commits himself in his “official” philosophical canon. Broadly speaking, traditional critics point to a tension between the empirical, more deterministic, and passive conception of human nature (defended, with several changes of emphasis, in Mill's 1843 System of Logic and in his 1865 Examination of Hamilton's Philosophy), and the view of the mind as free, active, and creatively ordering the raw data of experience. This second view seems presupposed by the argument of On Liberty, and Mill gestures towards it in such occasional pieces as his essay on “Two Varieties of Poetry.” This traditional criticism of Mill is powerfully made by a nineteenth-century writer, Charles Douglas, in his John Stuart Mill (1895):

  Because all improvement depends upon ideas, it must come from individuals; and the most real and secure improvement—that of men themselves—consists in their adoption of new and better ways of thinking.

  Personality is thus, for Mill, at the very centre of human affairs. Human progress depends, not only upon rational conditions, but still more upon choice, and thought, and character and qualities of personal life. If Mill is committed by his presuppositions to another way of conceiving men's relation to the world, yet his assertion of the fundamental importance of personality forces itself through his empiricism, and modifies the strictness of the theory (pp. 177–178).

  A very similar argument, contending that Mill's ideal of a free man commits him to a view of the mind as creative and ungoverned by causal laws, has been elaborated much more recently by J.W.N. Watkins in a lecture to the Royal Institute of Philosophy.44 Mill's views of the sovereign autonomous individual thus seems to impute to man a contracausal freedom of action which Mill's official empiricist philosophy denies.

  Mill as a Transitional Thinker on Human Nature: Between Mechanism and Idealism

  This, however, is only one aspect of the claim that two views of human nature compete and conflict in Mill's thought. At the most general level, such arguments raise the question of how Mill's moral and political philosophy is related to his theory of knowledge, and especially to his account of the scope and methods of a science of society.

  The traditional interpreters are on firm ground when they claim that Mill's theory of human nature is a halfway house between the avowedly mechanistic account that Bentham and Mill's father developed, and the Idealist view defended by such later liberal thinkers as Bernard Bosanquet and T.H. Green. Several recent writers acknowledge that Mill strongly inclined to endorse the view (intimated in On Liberty and expounded in the writings of Wilhelm von Humboldt and Coleridge) that emphatically denied the constancy of human nature and constantly emphasized its liability to unpredictable metamorphosis. Richard Wollheim has declared that “Mill denied the uniformity of human nature. In doing so he rejected a belief that, implicitly or explicitly, has been central to the thought of the European Enlightenment, and thus by descent to classical Utilitarianism.” R.J. Halliday, in his recent important book on Mill, sympathetically airs many revisionist claims and states: “Mill felt himself emancipated from simple psychological beliefs. Psychological hedonism, in particular, implied too neat and too narrow an account of motivation, there was no permanent human nature, to be explained by universal and invariant laws. . . . Mankind were not alike in all times and places.”45 Given Mill's methodological eclecticism, we must regard such claims as only a little less extravagant than Karl Popper's account of Mill which castigates him as an exponent of psychologism46 The real situation is more complex, and suggests that the traditionalists are right in affirming that Mill never enunciated a coherent philosophy of human nature.

  Mill's Science of Human Nature: Uniform Laws vs. Constancy

  The key point to make here is twofold: (1) Mill largely did free himself from any belief in the constancy of human nature as always and everywhere moved by a small, tight-knit family of motives; but (2) he never decisively relinquished the empiricist project of a science of society, which must presuppose that human conduct is sufficiently uniform to be brought under law-like statements having both explanatory and predictive value. Thus, though Mill did indeed respond to Macaulay's famous attack on his father's Essay on Government by repudiating the apriorism of the classical utilitarian approach, he never gave up the empiricist assumption that the way to render human conduct intelligible was to subsume its episodes under laws akin to those we formulate in the natural sciences. Some evidence may suggest that Mill believed the methods of inquiry appropriate to the study of human social life may qualitatively differ from those appropriate to the study of nature. But in his official philosophical corpus, Mill always adhered to a doctrine of methodological monism, to a thoroughly reductionist account of man and society. Though at times Mill's intellectual integrity and open-minded candor admitted bewilderment at the difficulties arising from the empiricist projects of a science of society, he never abandoned that project.47

  In order to critically evaluate the various traditional and revisionist accounts of Mill's project of a science of human nature and society, it is necessary to consider just how far Mill endorsed the classic empiricist aspiration to formulate a theory of human nature using principles and methods no different from those employed by natural scientists. To succeed, such aspiration presupposes that human behavior is subject to universal regularities which are culturally and historically invariant. This aspiration also assumes that in the human or moral sciences, as in the physical sciences, explanation and understanding consist in fitting observed behavior under a general formula or natural law. It was, after all, that most skeptical of British empiricists, David Hume, who wrote that “mankind is much the same in all times and places.”48 Before Hume, Machiavelli had expressed in the Discourses a similar conviction of the constancy of human nature: “In all cities and in all peoples there are the same desires and the same passions as there always were. . . . Everything that happens in the world at any time has a genuine resemblance to what happened in ancient times. This is because the agents who bring such things about are men, and men have, and always have had, the same passions from which it necessarily comes about that the same effects are produced.”49

  Now it is true that, in his philosophical writings, such as the System of Logic, Mill did occasionally insist that there are such things as laws of human nature, determinate and ascertainable: “the laws of the phenomena of society are, and can be, nothing but the actions and passion of human beings,” he says, namely “the laws of individual human nature.” Mill goes on to insist that men are not “when brought together converted into another kind of substance, with different properties.” Similarly, he declares that “Human beings in society have no properties but those which are derived from, and may be resolved into, the laws of nature of the individual.” Thus far, Mill does indeed seem to be endorsing a historical, psychologistic empiricism about the study of human conduct.

  Human Nature: the Laws of Individual Psychology and the Cultural, Historical Context

  Such an impression of Mill's “official” theory of human nature is seriously misleading, however, unless we severely qualify it. For Mill himself qualifies his assertion of the primacy of psychology among the social sciences with a reminder that it is necessary to grasp the historical context of human behavior if one is to understand it adequately: “as society proceeds in its development” he says “its phenomena are determined more and more, not by the simple tendencies of human nature, but by the accumulated influence of past generations over the present.”50 Mill's effort in his System of Logic to develop an account of the nature and scope of social explanation can be seen to embody an unresolved (and, very probably, insoluble) contradiction between the psychologistic methodological individualism (or “science of human nature”) he had inherited from the empiricist tradition, and the Comtean, historicist belief that “the fundamental problem of the social sciences [is to discover] the laws according to which any state of society produces the state which succeeds it and which takes its place.”51 It is widely recognized, even by the most sympathetic among Mill's interpreters, that his attempt to synthesize a form of methodological individualism which was no longer narrowly psychologistic with an emphasis on the cultural and historical contexts in which human behavior occurs was not, and could never have been successful.

  Perhaps the most powerful statement of the philosophical inadequacy of Mill's conception of explanation and understanding in human studies has been given by the Wittgensteinian philosopher, Peter Winch, in his extremely influential and controversial book, The Idea of a Social Science. Winch identifies the main weakness in Mill's philosophy not as its psychologistic tendencies, but more fundamentally, as its commitment to methodological individualism. This commitment is to a version of the “resolutive-compositive method” for which Newtonian mechanics (rather than the “geometrical” and “classical” methods he ascribed to his father and Macaulay respectively) was in Mill's view the appropriate model. Whinch's argument against Mill is no doubt, part of a polemical argument against empiricism and against methodological individualism in the social sciences generally. As such, it is very powerful. However, the inadequacy of Mill's “official” philosophy of human nature is not sufficient to establish his philosophy as inconsistent.

  Mill's Compatibilism: Free Will and Determinism

  Traditionally, the latter objection of internal inconsistency chiefly addresses Mill's reflections on the questions of free will and determinism. Mill's account, which renews an ancient compatibilist tradition, seeks to reconcile freedom and determinism, to show that any threat to the reality of choice posed by causal determinism of human actions is fraudulent. Mill contends that the consistency of determinism with freedom is, in the last resort, a pseudo-problem generated by a conflation of causal necessity with coercion.

  Mill directs the main force of his argument against the Owenite, necessitarian or modified fatalist view (which he had found so oppressive during the period of his mental collapse). This modified fatalism asserts human actions are the unavoidable results of human character. The very features of human character are themselves necessitated by circumstances which each man inherits from nature, history, and society. Mill's rebuttal of the Owenite view is straightforward enough, consisting of the assertion (unexceptionable so far as it goes) that a man can alter his own character if only he wishes to do so by (for example) placing himself under the influence of circumstances other than those which gave it its current attributes. The objection to this argument is equally straightforward, namely, that the impulse to change one's character must itself in any coherent determinism be determined by one's constitution, history, and circumstances.

  Such objections are, however, far from conclusive. Any attempt to show that Mill's philosophy, and his moral and political theory, flounders on the problem of free will, involves a program of substantive philosophical argument against compatibilism. This is an area of philosophy in which nothing like a consensus has yet been reached (and in which one is not yet visible on the philosophical horizon). On this issue, at any rate, the charge that Mill's philosophy lacks internal consistency must be given the Scottish verdict of “not proven.”

  A more problematic issue is that of the compatibility of the strongly fallibilistic theory of knowledge intimated in On Liberty with the inductivism defended in the System of Logic and throughout Mill's writings on epistemological writings. Paul Feyerabend has gone so far as to base one version of a “two Mills” thesis52 on this tension, claiming that in On Liberty Mill embraces a form of epistemological pluralism, stronger than Popper's falsificationism, in which human knowledge grows simply by the proliferation of conjectures and world views. Such a theory of knowledge would cerainly conflict with the more straight-forwardly accumulationist, inductive account offered elsewhere in Mill's writings. But it is also contradicted by much of what Mill says in On Liberty.

  Mill as a Transitional Thinker: Between the Objectivist and Skeptical Traditions of Liberalism

  Quite apart from the question of Feyerabend's fidelity to evidence about Mill's intentions in On Liberty—a question treated authoritatively by J.C. Rees53 —there is an overwhelming plausibility about the claim, recently advanced by Professor Basil Mitchell, that Mill stood between two traditions in liberal thought. According to Mitchell,54 the two kinds of liberalism are distinguished chiefly by their account of the value of freedom. The “old” liberalism valued freedom because only in a free society could men have the chance to discover the truth about basic questions in morality and metaphysics. The new liberalism valued freedom precisely because there are no objective truths (at any rate in respect of evaluative and metaphysical questions). Again, according to Mitchell, the new liberalism is represented by Strawson, who in a well-known paper55 justifies the freedom of individuals to realize a diversity of competing ideals of life within a framework of shared morality and law by arguing that no one of these ideals can be shown to be uniquely rational or even to be rationally preferable to other, well-formulated ideals.

  Interestingly, though Mitchell follows most interpreters in claiming that Mill belongs to the tradition of “old liberalism” he goes on to acknowledge that “the seeds of the new liberalism” are to be found in Mill's defense of individuality. In this respect, at any rate, the traditional interpretation seems irresistable: throughout his adult life, Mill was poised in unstable equilibrium between a dogmatic, objectivist posture towards truth and validity in the areas of morality, metaphysics, and science—a posture he inherited from his father—and a skeptical outlook in all of these areas. Part of the fascination of Mill's liberalism derives from the spectacle of his agonizingly self-conscious attempts to reconcile these irresolvably antagonistic outlooks.

  Traditional and Revisionist Interpretations— A Provisional Evaluation

  Speaking of his period of mental crisis, and of the change in his opinions which it wrought, Mill declared: “If I am asked what system of political philosophy I substituted for that which, as a philosophy, I had abandoned, I answer, no system; only a conviction that the true system; was something much more comprehensive than I had previously had any idea of.”56 There can be little doubt that it is this self-critical and open-minded eclecticism of Mill's thought which has led many commentators, exasperated by the systematic elusiveness of his standpoint on the great philosophical and social issues of his time, to despair of finding any coherent view in his writings. Certainly, these are good grounds for the traditional interpretation in Mill's own many-sided intellectual development. It must even be conceded that, in all probability, the traditionalists are right in their contention that Mill never succeeded in welding the diverse intellectual traditions by which he was influenced into an integrated system. To this extent, the traditional interpretation must be upheld.

  Several considerations emerge from the preceding discussion, however, which should cause us to moderate the severity of tone with which the traditional interpretation has often been accompanied.

  • (1) In the first place, which Mill's eclectic aspiration to synthesize the claims of utility and justice, laissez-faire and socialism, empiricism and a creative view of the mind may ultimately fail, his argument has been shown by the recent revisionist wave of Mill scholarship to be far more complex and subtle, far more acutely aware of obvious counterarguments, than exponents of the traditional view habitually allow. In some areas, indeed, it would be hasty and premature to suppose that Mill's reconciling purpose had been decisively defeated by progress in philosophical inquiry.
  • (2) Secondly, though we must not suppose that Mill is always clear-headed and consistent in argument, the power of his argument about the relations of utility, liberty, and moral rights should at least give pause to those who think intellectual traditions can be identified schematically be reference to some small group of dominating principles. Even if Mill's attempt to make peace between utilitarianism and justice does not in the end come off (and the issue must be regarded as still an open one) it does not do so because the idea of a utilitarian theory of moral rights is self-evidently absurd. Indeed, this is one area where Mill's eclectic method produces hopeful results.
  • (3) Finally, it should be recognized that the construction of an integrated and comprehensive philosophy was not one of Mill's major aspirations. The revisionist literature on Mill will have done us all a service if, in encouraging us to look with respect on Mill's work, it encourages us also to emulate that tolerance of uncertainty, and reverence for diversity, which is the distinctive feature of Mill's intellectual personality.

  FOOTNOTES

  Full citations for works listed in the Footnotes may be found in the following Bibliography.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  August, Eugene. John Stuart Mill: A Mind at Large. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1975.

  Barry, Brian. Political Argument. London: Routledge, Kegan, and Paul, 1965.

  Becker, Lawrence C. Property Rights: Philosophical Foundations. London: Routledge, Kegan, and Paul, 1977.

  Berlin, Isaiah. Four Essays on Liberty, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969.

  Brown, Donald G. “John Mill: John Rawls.” Dialogue 12 (1973): 1–3.

  ———. “Mill on Harm to Others' Interests.” Political Studies 26 (1978): 395–399.

  ———. “Mill on Liberty and Morality.” Philosophical Review 81 (1972): 133–158.

  ———. “Mill's Act-Utilitarianism.” Philosophical Quarterly 24 (1974): 67–68.

  ———. “What is Mill's Principle of Utility?” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 3 (1973): 1–12.

  Devlin, Patrick. The Enforcement of Morals. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965.

  Douglas, Charles. John Stuart Mill: A Study of his Philosophy. Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1895.

  Dryer, J.P. “Mill's Utilitarianism.” In Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society. Edited by J.M. Robson. Vol. X of Collected Works. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969.

  Feinberg, Joel. Social Philosophy. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973.

  Feyerabend, Paul K. Against Method. London: New Left Books, 1975.

  Friedman, Milton. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974.

  Halliday, R.J. John Stuart Mill. London: Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1976.

  Hampshire, Stuart. “Uncertainty in Politics.” Encounter 8 (January 1957): 34–37.

  Hart, Herbert L.A. Law, Liberty and Morality. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1963.

  Hascall, Dudley L., and Robson, John M. “Bibliography of Writings on Mill.” The Mill News Letter I (Fall 1965) through V (Spring 1970). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

  Hayek, Friedrich A. The Constitution of Liberty. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, Gateway Edition, 1970.

  Knickerbocker, F.W. Free Minds: John Morley and His Friends. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1943.

  Lippincott, B.E. Victorian Critics of Democracy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1938.

  Lively, J. and Rees, J.C. Utilitarian Logic and Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978.

  Long, D.G. Bentham on Liberty. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977.

  Lyons, David. Forms and Limits of Utilitarianism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965.

  ———. “Human Rights and the General Welfare.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 6 (Winter 1977): 113–129.

  ———. In the Interest of the Governed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973.

  ———. “J.S. Mill's Theory of Morality.” Nous 10 (May 1976): 101–119.

  MacMinn, Ney; Hainds, J.R.; and McCrimmon, James McNab, eds. Bibliography of the Published Writings of John Stuart Mill. 1945; Reprint. New York: AMS Press, 1970.

  Macpherson, C.B. The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.

  ———. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962.

  Mazlish, Bruce. James and John Stuart Mill. New York: Basic Books, 1975.

  Mill, John Stuart. Autobiography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971.

  ———. An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy. London: Longman's, 1865.

  ———. On Liberty. Edited by H.B. Acton. London: Everyman edition, 1972.

  ———. Principles of Political Economy, Collected Works. Vol III. Edited by J.M. Robson and V.W. Bladen. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965.

  ———. Principles of Political Economy. London: Penguin, 1970.

  ———. System of Logic. London: Longman's, 1874.

  ———. Utilitarianism, On Liberty and Considerations on Representative Government. London: Everyman edition, 1972.

  Mitchell, Basil. Law, Morality, and Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.

  Parker, Joseph. John Stuart Mill on Liberty, A Critique. London, 1865.

  Pappe, H.O. John Stuart Mill and the Harriet Taylor Myth. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1962.

  Plamenatz, John Petrov. The English Utilitarians. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958.

  Popper, Karl R. The Open Society and Its Enemies. London: Routledge, Kegan, and Paul, 1978.

  Radcliff, Peter, ed. Limits of Liberty. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1966.

  Rees, John C. “A Phase in the Development of Mill's Ideas on Liberty.” Political Studies 6 (1958): 33–44.

  ———. “A Re-Reading of Mill on Liberty.” Political Studies 8 (1960): 113–129.

  ———. “H.O. Pappe's John Stuart Mill and the Harriet Taylor Myth.” Political Studies 10 (1962): 198–202.

  ———. Mill and His Early Critics. Leicester: Leicester University College, 1956.

  ———. “The Thesis of the “Two Mills.'” Political Studies 25 (1977): 369–382.

  ———. “Was Mill for Liberty?” Political Studies 14 (1966): 72–77.

  Roach, John. “Liberalism and the Victorian Intelligentsia.” The Cambridge Historical Journal 13 (1957): 58–81.

  Robson, John M. “John Stuart Mill.” Victorian Prose: A Guide to Research. Edited by David J. DeLaura. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1973.

  ———. The Improvement of Mankind: The Social and Political Thought of John Stuart Mill. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968.

  Robson, John M., gen. ed. Collected Works of John Stuart Mill. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963-. Authoritative critical editions of all of J.S. Mill's writings, still in the process of being published.

  Robson, John M. and Laine, Michael, eds. The Mill News Letter. (Department of English, Victoria College, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.) Updated bibliographies of Mill published twice yearly since the fall of 1965.

  Ryan, Alan. John Stuart Mill. London: Routledge, Kegan, and Paul, 1974.

  ———. “John Stuart Mill and the Open Society.” The Listener (May 17, 1973): 633–635.

  ———. “John Stuart Mill's Art of Living.” The Listener (Oct. 21, 1965): 60–62.

  ———. “Mr. McCloskey on Mill's Liberalism.” Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1964): 253–260.

  ———. The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill. London: Macmillan & Co., 1970.

  Schwartz, Pedro. The New Political Economy of J.S. Mill. Translated by B. Leblanc. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1972.

  Spitz, David, ed. On Liberty. Norton Critical Edition. New York: W.W. Norton, and Co., 1975.

  Stephen, James Fitzjames. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. Edited by R.J. White. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967.

  Stephen, Leslie. The English Utilitarians. London: Duckworth, 1900.

  Strawson, P.F. “Social Morality and Individual Ideal.” Philosophy: The Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy 36 (Jan. 1968): 1–17.

  Urmson, J.O. “The Interpretation of the Moral Philosophy of J.S. Mill.” Philosophical Quarterly 3 (1953): 33–39.

  Watkins, J.W.N. “Three Views Concerning Human Freedom.” In Nature and Conduct. London: Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures Vol. 8, 1974.

  Wollheim, Richard. “Mill on the Limits of State Interference.” Social Research 40 (1973): 1–30.

  [1.] J.P. Plamenatz, The English Utilitarians, p. 123.

  [2.] Isaiah Berlin, “John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life,” in Four Essays on Liberty, pp. 174 and 189.

  [3.] J.S. Mill, “Utilitarianism,” in Utilitarianism, On Liberty and Considerations on Representative Government, p. 50.

  [4.] James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, p. 176.

  [5.]On Liberty (Everyman edition) p. 72.

  [6.] I owe this quotation to John C. Rees's admirable book, Mill and his Early Critics, p. 31. The most comprehensive and reliable general bibliography of writings on John Stuart Mill is that published in the Mill News Letter. One of the best nineteenth-century criticisms of Mill on liberty is to be found in the Norton Critical Edition of On Liberty, edited by David Spitz, pp. 123–142, reproduced from an anonymous paper in the National Review 8 (1859).

  [7.] Alan Ryan's main contributions are to be found in “Mr. McCloskey on Mill's Liberalism,” Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1964); “John Stuart Mill's Art of Living,” The Listener, October 21, 1965; The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill; John Stuart Mill; “John Stuart Mill and the Open Society,” The Listener, May 17, 1973.

  [8.] Donald G. Brown, “Mill on Liberty and Morality,” Philosophical Review 81 (1972): 133–158. I am indebted also to Brown's papers on “What is Mill's Principle of Utility?” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 3 (1973): 1–12; “Mill's Act-Utilitarianism,” Philosophical Quarterly 24 (1974): 67–68; “John Mill: John Rawls,” Dialogue 12, 3 (1973): 1–3.

  [9.] J.P. Dryer's contribution, on which Brown draws in part, entitled “Mill's Utilitarianism” may be found in Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society, J.M. Robson, ed., Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, 1969.

  [10.] Lyon's principal contributions are: “J.S. Mill's Theory of Morality,” Nous 10 (May 1976); “Human Rights and the General Welfare,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 6 (Winter 1977); his books, Forms and Limits of Utilitarianism and especially his In the Interest of the Governed, a revisionist interpretation of Bentham's legal and political thought, are relevant to the interpretation of On Liberty.

  [11.]Utilitarianism (Everyman edition) p. 45.

  [12.] This point is made in a perceptive paper by Professor David Copp of Simon Fraser University, entitled “The Iterated-Utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill,” and delivered to the Canadian Philosophical Association Congress, June 1978.

  [13.] For the argument that Mill is a rule-utilitarian, see J.O. Urmson, “The Interpretation of the Moral Philosophy of J.S. Mill,” Philosophical Quarterly 3 (1953).

  [14.] Brown, “Mill on Liberty and Morality,” p. 136.

  [15.] Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, p. 28.

  [16.] Leslie Stephen, The English Utilitarians, Vol. III, p. 296.

  [17.] John C. Rees, “A Re-reading of Mill on Liberty,” Political Studies 8 (1960), reprinted with an important “Postscript” (1966) in Limits of Liberty, Peter Radcliff, ed. Rees's papers “A Phase in the Development of Mill's Ideas on Liberty,” Political Studies 6 (1958); “Was Mill for Liberty?” Political Studies 14 (1966); and, “The Thesis of the ‘Two Mills,’” Political Studies 25 (1977), should also be consulted.

  [18.] Rees, in Radcliff, ed. Limits of Liberty, pp. 101–102.

  [19.] Rees, in Radcliff, pp. 101–102.

  [20.] See Brown, “Mill on Harm to Others' Interests,” Political Studies.

  [21.] See Radcliffe, Limits, pp. 106–107.

  [22.]On Liberty (Everyman edition) p. 132.

  [23.]On Liberty, p. 74.

  [24.] See Herbert L.A. Hart, Law, Liberty and Morality and Patrick Devlin, The Enforcement of Morals.

  [25.] The terminology of ‘want-regarding’ and ‘ideal-regarding’ principles derives from Brian Barry's book Political Argument.

  [26.] See Szasz's many publications on involuntary hospitalization as an infringement of human rights.

  [27.] Iowe the expression, “hard cases for the harm principle,” to Joel Feinberg, who uses it as the title for Chapter 3 of his excellent Social Philosophy where these matters are discussed.

  [28.] The theory of the higher pleasures is expounded by Mill in Utilitarianism, Chapter 2.

  [29.] Mill makes his qualifications to the range of application of his principles on p. 73 of On Liberty (Everyman edition.)

  [30.] The terminology of ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ liberty is owed to Isaiah Berlin, who develops its sense in his “Two Concepts of Liberty,” in Four Essays on Liberty.

  [31.] Thus, Mill observes in the System of Logic (London, 1974 edition, p. 841) “it is said with truth, that none but a person of confirmed truth is completely free.” In An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy (London: Longman's, 1865, p. 510) he speaks of “that normal preponderance of love of right, which the best moralists and theologians consider to constitute the true definition of freedom.”

  [32.] See Vol. III Principles of Political Economy in the Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, edited by J.M. Robson and V.W. Bladen, Toronto, 1965, p. 804.

  [33.] See Mill's Principles (Toronto edition) pp. 754–755.

  [34.] See Principles, Bk. II, Chapter I: “Of Property,” first paragraph, in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill.

  [35.] The claim that Harriet Taylor's influence decisively affected the development of Mill's thought is still alive in much recent work. It is discussed critically by H.O. Pappe in his valuable monograph John Stuart Mill and the Harriet Taylor Myth, which is reviewed by John C. Rees in Political Studies 10 (1962): pp. 198–202.

  [36.] See Lord Robbin's Introduction to Vol. IV Essays on Economics and Society in the Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, edited by J.M. Robson and Lord Robbins, Toronto, 1967, p. xi.

  [37.] See Principles, (Penguin edition) p. 133.

  [38.] This point is discussed in Pedro Schwartz's The New Political Economy of J.S. Mill, p. 103.

  [39.] See Principles (Penguin edition), p. 113 ff.

  [40.] My reference to possessive individualism is, of course, intended to designate C.B. Macpherson's ambitious ideological interpretation of liberalism in his The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism. He gives a more balanced view of liberalism, and an occasionally perceptive account of Mill, in his The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy.

  [41.] See Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom, p. 170; and Friedrich A. Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty, p. 430.

  [42.] Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, p. 430.

  [43.] See for example, Alan Ryan, John Stuart Mill, Chapter 6, for a critical discussion of some of the difficulties in Mill's account of property and distribution.

  [44.] See J.W.N. Watkins, “Three Views Concerning Human Freedom,” in Nature and Conduct, Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures Vol. 8, London, 1974.

  [45.] The preceding quotation from Wollheim occurs in his Introduction to the World's Classics Edition of On Liberty, Representative Government and the Subjection of Women, London, 1975, p. xi. The quotation from Halliday comes from his John Stuart Mill, pp. 55–56.

  [46.] Popper's attack on Mill's “psychologism” occurs in Vol. 2 of his The Open Society and Its Enemies, Chapter 14.

  [47.] The controversy surrounding Macaulay's attack on James Mill's Essay on Government has been marvelously presented in Utilitarian Logic and Politics by Jack Lively and John C. Rees.

  [48.] See Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. I, Part 4, Section 6, for a development of this claim.

  [49.] This passage from Machiavelli is quoted by Stuart Hampshire in a paper relevant to Mill Studies, “Uncertainty in Politics,” Encounter (January 1957).

  [50.] See System of Logic, Bk. VI, Chapter VIII, p. 583 (new edition, London, 1930) for this and the preceding quotation.

  [51.] See Mill's Against Comte and Positivism for a development of this claim.

  [52.] See especially the original version of P.K. Feyerabend, “Against Method” in Vol. 4 of Minnesota Studies in Philosophy of Science: Analyses of Theories and Methods of Physics and Psychology, p. 112.

  [53.] See Rees, “The Thesis of the “Two Mills,'” Political Studies (1977).

  [54.] Mitchell, Law Morality, and Religion.

  [55.] P.F. Strawson, “Social Morality and Individual Ideal,” Philosophy (1961).

  [56.] J.S. Mill's Autobiography, p. 97.

• Back to Top

  4: Editorial on Mill and Liberty as the Cardinal Moral Virtue

  Leonard P. Liggio, Literature of Liberty: A Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought was published first by the Cato Institute (1978-1979) and later by the Institute for Humane Studies (1980-1982) under the editorial direction of Leonard P. Liggio. Chapter: Editorial

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/1291/100151 on 2009-10-28

  This work is copyrighted by the Institute for Humane Studies, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, and is put online with their permission.

  ---

  Editorial

  The resurgence of interest in John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) began in the early 1940s stimulated by F. A. Hayek whose efforts and enthusiasm inspired new publications of collections of Mill's works, his letters, and biographies. Hayek's own study, The Constitution of Liberty (1960), commemorated the centenary of the publication of Mill's On Liberty.

  Hayek was particularly fascinated by Mill's views of the influence of intellectuals on public policy. A statesman adopts a policy, not because of objective reality, but because of public opinion. The statesman takes public opinion for his objective reality, and he is successful to the degree that he operates within the accepted framework of thought. On a deeper level, however, the framework of thought which guides human action is derived from those intellectuals whose profession it is to apply abstract ideas. Hayek comments on “The Rule of Ideas,” in chapter 7 (7) of The Constitution of Liberty:

  The belief that in the long run it is ideas and therefore the men who give currency to new ideas that govern evolution, and the belief that individual steps in that process should be governed by a set of coherent conceptions, have long formed a fundamental part of the liberal creed. It is impossible to study history without becoming aware of ‘the lesson given to mankind by every age, and always disregarded—that speculative philosophy, which to the superficial appears a thing so remote from the business of life and the outward interest of men, is in reality the thing on earth which most influences them, and in the long run overbears any influences save those it must itself obey.’ Though this fact is perhaps even less understood today than it was when John Stuart Mill wrote, there can be little doubt that it is true at all times, whether men recognize it or not.

  Mill keenly appreciated the indispensable and complex role of the intellectuals. Indeed, he understood the need both of developing abstract ideas and of disseminating these ideas to wider intellectual publics. The active intellectual's role as a disseminator of ideas—whether moral or economic views, political or scientific beliefs—complemented the contemplative intellectual role. John Mill was himself influenced by his father's role as scholar-activist in the radical politics of his day (cf. Joseph Hamburger, James Mill and the Art of Revolution, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963; and Hamburger, Intellectuals in Politics: John Stuart Mill and the Philosophic Radicals, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965). Accordingly, Mill both edited and subsidized the London and Westminster Review, and wrote editorials or articles for the radical Examiner and Morning Chronicle. By financially supporting Herbert Spencer's periodical and his books, Mill intended such ideas might begin their process of influencing public opinion. Mill attributed his political education to assisting his father James, in the preparation of the History of British India (1817). What impressed Mill was his father's repeated expression of “opinions and modes of judgment of a democratic radicalism then regarded as extreme,” and James Mill's severity in examining “the English Constitution, the English law, and all parties and classes who possessed any considerable influence in the country.” Mill's economic education had begun in the period of his first visit to France where he stayed at the Paris home of Jean Baptiste Say. Mill went on to assist his father in writing the Elements of Political Economy (1821) which was modelled on Say's Treatise on Political Economy (1803, 1814).

  Later, reflecting the influence of Say and Adam Smith, John Mill's Principles of Political Economy (1848) made an original contribution in his discussion of laissez-faire. Mill appreciated Smith's and Say's refusal to separate political economy from the philosophy of society. As a result of Smith's example, Mill sought to provide social applications as well as principles. This led to the charge that Mill changed from a young noninterventionist to a collectivist. The falsity of this charge has been argued by Pedro Schwartz in The New Political Economy of J. S. Mill (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968; Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1973). Along with other Utilitarians of the Bentham school, the young Mill did not oppose State intervention. As Élie Halévy points out (The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, London, 1928) Utilitarianism was rife with nonliberal elements, and the utilitarian disciples of Jeremy Bentham were not supporters of individual rights or opponents of state intervention. Thus, it was a natural progression for John Mill as a young man to accept the tenets of early socialism which was rooted in some of the ideas of the Utilitarians.

  The young Mill's movement toward collectivism was partly his response to Thomas Macaulay's critique of James Mill's “On Government.” Mill's father had endorsed Bentham's recognition that the state was a fiction since it was merely a sum of individuals. However, Utilitarians reached the non-individualist conclusion that the sum of the most individual goods or wills created a basis for a majority's ability to rule. To Utilitarians the concept of individual rights was suspect as a potential sanctuary for the politically dominant classes. Macaulay's emphasis on the Whig view of ‘rights’ thus awakened Mill's doubts about Utilitarianism, but John Mill rejected the inconsistent position of the Whigs and turned to the more consistent expression of emerging socialism. Mill came under the influence of the socialist digression from the school of J. B. Say, represented by the followers of Henri de Saint-Simon (cf. Élie Halévy, “Saint-Simonian Economic Doctrine,” The Era of Tyrannies, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965).

  Mill's movement away from his youthful collectivism and toward an individualist position began by the challenging of his original interventionism by discussions with Alexis de Tocqueville. Mill, in fact, lent his efforts to popularize Tocqueville's Democracy in America (vol. I, 1835; vol. II, 1840) in England. Through Tocqueville, Mill discovered the importance of local self-government in America, including its role in the political education of ordinary people. The danger of majoritarianism, originally pointed out by Tocqueville, grew in clarity for Mill (cf. Leon Bramson, The Political Context of Sociology, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961). Mill saw the danger of government “trampling meanwhile with considerable recklessness, as often as convenient, upon the rights of individuals, in the name of society and the public good.” Mill's individualism, inspired by Tocqueville, was reflected in his advocacy of laissez-faire as a general rule in his Principles and On Liberty (1859).

  Liberty functioned as a cardinal moral virtue for Mill. A distinguishing trait of Mill's personality and style is his liberality of spirit or his elaborate fairness to all intellectual positions—a trait that informs his writings and was vital to his analysis of progress in human history. In On Liberty, he defends the concept of liberty as intellectual autonomy, the cultivated habit of being “intellectually active” and fearless when advancing “heterodox speculation.” Those periods of human history brilliant for their “high scale of mental activity” were those that allowed free, untrammeled thought and discussion to break “the yoke of authority” and to throw off the “old mental despotism.” Mental freedom alone could sustain such liberating impulses that led to progress and improvements in human personal character and social institutions. But mental freedom and truth-seeking are nurtured only by the clash of debate and continuous Socratic examination of rival ideas, however one-sided, or non-conforming, or heretical. Any intellectual position “however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed . . .will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.” Even partisan one-sided truths, “compel reluctant attention to the fragment of wisdom which they proclaim as if it were the whole.”

  Thus, in the judgment of Mill in On Liberty, Rousseau's one-sided ideas critical of modern science and civilization had the healthy effect of supplementing the defective, one-sided idea of the eighteenth-century philosophes. “With what a salutary shock did the paradoxes of Rousseau explode like bombshells in the midst, dislocating the compact mass of one-sided opinion and forcing its elements to recombine in a better form and with additional ingredients.” Posterity gained through such a dialectic a greater appreciation of “the superior worth of simplicity of life” and “the enervating and demoralizing effect of the trammels and hypocrisies of artificial society.”

  Mill's On Liberty is the most widely known defense of individualism in the English-speaking world. As the epigraph for On Liberty Mill chose a quotation from the recently published (1852) English translation of Wilhelm von Humboldt, The Limits of State Action (1791): “The grand, leading principle, towards which every argument unfolded in these pages directly converges, is the absolute and essential importance of human development in its richest diversity.” Mill argued against state intervention because of the free market's efficiency when compared to political direction. However, Mill's major argument was founded on the evil effect of state intervention on the development of the individual, and thus, on the progress of society. Mill noted: “A people among whom there is no habit of spontaneous action for a collective interest. . . have their faculties only half developed; their education is defective in one of its most important branches. [Government] substitutes its own mode of accomplishing the work, for all the variety of modes which would be tried by a number of equally qualified persons aiming at the same end.”

  

• Back to Top

  5: Leslie Stephen’s Critique of Mill’s Idea of Liebrty

  James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, ed. Stuart D. Warner (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund 1993). Chapter: FOREWORD

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/572/39270 on 2009-10-28

  The copyright to this edition, in both print and electronic forms, is held by Liberty Fund, Inc.

  ---

  • ὲδύ τι θαραλέαιξ
  • τὸν μακρὸν τείνειν βίον έλπίσι, φαγαɩ̑ξ
  • θνμὸν ὰλδαίνονσαν εύφροσύναιξ
  • φρίσσω δέ σε δερκομέγ’α
  • μνρίοιξ& μόθοιξ& διακναιόμενον.
  • Ζε͂να γὰρ ού& τρομέων
  • ένίδία γνώμη σέβει
  • θνατοὺξ ἄγαν, Προμηθεῠ

  • Prom. Vinct. 535–542

  • Sweet is the life that lengthens,
  • While joyous hope still strengthens,
  • And glad, bright thought sustain;
  • But shuddering I behold thee,
  • The sorrows that enfold thee
  • And all thine endless pain.
  • For Zeus thou has despised;
  • Thy fearless heart misprized
  • All that his vengeance can,
  • The wayward will obeying,
  • Excess of honour paying,
  • Prometheus, unto man.

  • Prometheus Bound (translated by G. M. Cookson)

  FOREWORD

  James Fitzjames Stephen’s Liberty, Equality, Fraternity figured prominently in the mid- to late nineteenth century Victorian debates on two concepts at the heart of politics in the modern world—liberty and equality. Understanding himself to be a defender of an older English Liberalism that he thought to be under assault and weakening at an ever-quickening pace, Stephen attempted in Liberty, Equality, Fraternity to offer a corrective to what he believed were the mistaken views of liberty, equality, and fraternity that were leading the charge. He found these views most fully and powerfully expressed in three of John Stuart Mill’s works: On Liberty, The Subjection of Women, and Utilitarianism. Stephen thus subjected Mill’s political philosophy to intense criticism in Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. Yet Stephen was no mere polemicist, and throughout Liberty, Equality, Fraternity we find Stephen’s own understanding of liberty—as ordered liberty—equality—as equality under law—and fraternity—as a value incompatible with a free society—braided around his critique of Mill. And it is this understanding that is the most important feature of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and is eminently worthy of the attention of anyone concerned with the character of a free society.

  We will be aided in our pursuit of Stephen’s understanding of liberty, equality, and fraternity by first surveying certain features of his life and times and the influences upon his thought.

  James Fitzjames Stephen was born in London on March 3, 1829. His father, Sir James Stephen, was for a time Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, a position later held by Lord Acton. Stephen’s father drafted the legislation abolishing the slave trade in the British Empire, and his grandfather too, James Stephen, labored to abolish slavery.1 Stephen’s education took him to Eton, Kings College (London), and Trinity College (Cambridge) where he was a student of Sir Henry Sumner Maine. After further study at the Inner Temple, he was called to the Bar in 1854. Stephen’s pursuit of a career in law carried him to India in 1869 to serve for some two and a half years as Legal Member of the Viceroy’s Council (succeeding Maine) and ultimately to a Judgeship on the Queen’s Bench.

  Stephen’s legal career would surely have failed to provide sufficient support for his immediate family, so he took up a second career as a journalist. Stephen wrote often and on a wide range of intellectual matters. Many of his best pieces appeared in four periodicals in particular: Cornhill Magazine, Fraser’s Magazine, Pall Mall Gazette, and Saturday Review. Eventually, 55 of the articles that Stephen published in Saturday Review, ones that he himself admired, were collected and published in three volumes in 1892, two years before his death, as Horae Sabbaticae.2 Many of these have the outward appearance of book reviews and canvass in some detail the works of Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, Edward Gibbon, Edmund Burke, Jeremy Bentham, and Alexis de Tocqueville, among others. And although the intellectual influences upon Stephen were many, his understanding of things moral, social, and political perhaps owes most to Bentham and Hobbes.

  Through Bentham, Stephen came to favor utilitarianism. Yet Stephen’s utilitarianism was not the technical, philosophical doctrine that one finds represented in Bentham or presented in Henry Sidgwick’s The Methods of Ethics. Rather, it was a certain disposition of mind that expressed itself by privileging observation and facts over abstract reason. Stephen’s utilitarianism is most profoundly marked by a recognition that a calm and intelligent appraisal of moral and political life requires an understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of pursuing one course of conduct rather than another. Our starting point for appraising our moral and political lives demands that we begin from where we are—our time, place, and circumstances—for the question we are addressing is what to do next, and that can only be answered by first discovering where we are. Stephen’s utilitarianism, therefore, aims at the reform of current practices, not their elimination, and it is certainly not a morality and politics of uniformity.

  Hobbes’s influence on Stephen is more diffuse and perhaps for that reason greater. Stephen’s admiration for Hobbes—“the greatest of English philosophers”3 —is profound. Of Leviathan, Stephen writes, “Hardly any magnum opus of the speculative kind has been so maturely weighed, so completely thought out, and so deliberately fashioned to express in every point the whole mind of its author.”4 Stephen was particularly attracted to the idea that informs the whole of Leviathan, namely, that political philosophy rests upon a conception of human nature. It is not surprising, then, that Stephen’s own conception of human nature animates Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, which should lead us to understand Stephen’s work as a meditation upon human nature as applied to the practical world of political association.

  Although it is the spirit of Hobbes more than any particular one of his theories that seems most to have affected Stephen, there are two distinct features of Hobbes’s thought that penetrated deeply into Stephen’s work. The first of these is the view that the interests of human beings conflict, and that this is an irremediable feature of the human condition; and insofar as the interests of individuals conflict, they may arrive at different conceptions of the good.

  The second feature of Hobbes’s thought that greatly influenced Stephen is the idea that social order depends upon the imposition of force. Social order, in this view, requires the restraint of morality, law, and religion; and these forms of restraint obtain their power to bring about social order from the intermediary of some human agency.

  Liberty, Equality, Fraternity appeared first in periodical form—anonymously, although its author was no secret—in the Pall Mall Gazette from November of 1872 through January of 1873. It was published in book form in March of 1873 and followed a year later by a second edition which included some minor substantive changes, a lengthy second preface, and additional footnotes in the text responding to some of its critics. That the movement from periodical to book form was not unusual at this time is evidenced by the fact that works similar in some important respects to Liberty, Equality, Fraternity followed the same course: for example, Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy, Walter Bagehot’s The English Constitution, and Maine’s Popular Government.

  A not insubstantial amount of Stephen’s writing focused on the subject of the law proper, and he produced several works on the criminal law that earned him the highest praise. The best of these works is his three-volume History of the Criminal Law (1883), a work about which Maitland remarked, “I am struck every time I take up the book with the thoroughness of his work and the soundness of his judgments. . . . [A]nd—so I think, but it is impertinent in me to say it—he almost always got hold of the true story.”5 Nevertheless, Stephen’s enduring contribution to intellectual affairs is Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.

  The French Revolution gave birth to the creed “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”; however, this creed outlasted the Revolution, finding expression in the nineteenth century, both on the continent and in England. In offering a powerful polemic against this creed in Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Stephen is most emphatically not presenting himself as a defender of, as he puts it, “Slavery, Caste, and Hatred.” But he believed that many exponents of the creed of liberty, equality, and fraternity exaggerated the advantages and ignored the disadvantages of the political arrangements intended by this famed triptych of values, thereby distorting a proper understanding of liberty, equality, and fraternity along the way. In Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Stephen makes a point of revealing the character of these disadvantages. We should not lose sight of the fact, however, that Stephen’s criticisms are informed by his own understanding of these values, an understanding to which we now turn.

  Sir Isaiah Berlin directs us to the idea that a political philosophy is often presented by means of analogy to the more familiar: a contract, the family, an army on the march, a night watchman, or an umpire.6 Stephen’s understanding of liberty leads him to employ the metaphor of water running through pipes. In a passage that both makes use of this metaphor and stakes out other important features of his conception of liberty, Stephen remarks:

  Discussions about liberty are in truth discussions about a negation. Attempts to solve problems of government and society by such discussions are like attempts to discover the nature of light and heat by inquiries into darkness and cold. The phenomenon which requires and will repay study is the direction and nature of the various forces, individual and collective, which in their combination or collision with each other and with the outer world make up human life. If we want to know what ought to be the size and position of a hole in a water pipe, we must consider the nature of water, the nature of pipes, and the objects for which the water is wanted. . . .7

  To understand this remark, we must explore two important features of Stephen’s conception of liberty. First, Stephen recognizes liberty to be an instrumental value, not a value in and of itself; and the ultimate value that liberty principally serves is the well-being of society. We should be careful not to misunderstand this feature of Stephen’s thought—as a common understanding of Stephen would have us do—as portraying either a disregard for liberty or an authoritarian bent, for Liberty, Equality, Fraternity does not support such a reading. Not to value liberty as an end in itself is not to treat it lightly or to shy away from its endorsement as central to a civilized world. It is rather, as Stephen would see it, an admission that liberty, along with all of the other social elements of human life, has its advantages and disadvantages; and, if we are primarily concerned with the well-being of society, then we should not blindly support any given liberty in those circumstances in which its disadvantages outweigh its advantages.

  The second feature of Stephen’s conception of liberty is that liberty is fundamentally a negative concept. Stephen understands liberty at its core to be an absence of restraint; however, liberty cannot be understood to involve an absence of all restraint; for Stephen, like Hobbes, recognizes that it is impossible for a society and, therefore, liberty to exist in the absence of all restraint. Restraints are required if there is to be any society at all, if only because the human condition is one in which the actions of some frequently and inevitably conflict with the actions of others. This understanding of the role of restraint in society is the basis for Stephen’s distinguishing between liberty and license, and it encourages him to understand liberty as an “absence of injurious restraint.”8 In this conception of liberty, morality, law, and religion are understood to restrain an individual’s actions, but not injuriously, and hence do not constitute an infringement of his liberty. In fact, in the deepest sense, it is these restraints that make liberty of action possible. And since these restraints constitute a realm of power, Stephen can maintain that, “Liberty, from the very nature of things, is dependent upon power. . . .”9

  Now we can begin to understand Stephen’s frequent appeals to a water-works project to illuminate the nature of liberty. Just as the holes of water pipes are given their character and value by the nature of what bounds them, so liberty is given its character and value by what bounds and, hence, forms it; namely, the restraints of morality, religion, and law. A society’s liberties are thus constituted by the restraints that allow for the possibility of choice. For Stephen, therefore, talk of liberty makes no sense outside of the context of the restraints of morality, law, and religion.

  Stephen is promoting an understanding of ordered liberty or liberty under morality and law. Part of the value of liberty lies in its allowing individuals to pursue their own choices or, more exactly, a certain set of choices rather than others, for this contributes to the well-being of society. Importantly, some sets of choices must be excluded. Genuine options are possible for human beings only within the context of a web of restraint provided by the moral, political, legal, and religious institutions that form the social arrangements in which individuals can pursue their own ends in concert with one another. Therefore, on Stephen’s analysis, the character and value of liberty reside in the restraints that frame it: there is no liberty outside of restraint.

  Morality is foremost among the restraints that shape society generally and a free society in particular. For Stephen, morality is constituted in some measure by the fear of disapprobation, the fear of the opinion of others, the fear of being ostracized. Thus, Stephen remarks that “the custom of looking upon certain courses of conduct with aversion is the essence of morality.”10 And this aversion or disapprobation Stephen understands as being coercive. Although morality on this account might therefore be considered a system of force, the force in question is the pressure imposed by others and not punishment (or the threat of punishment) inflicted by government. Here we must underscore the idea that, as Stephen sees it, the restraints imposed by morality are vastly more extensive and important than those of law in establishing the web of restraint in which liberty is formed and has value:

  Criminal legislation proper may be regarded as an engine of prohibition unimportant in comparison with morals and the forms of morality sanctioned by theology. For one act from which one person is restrained by the fear of the law of the land, many persons are restrained from innumerable acts by the fear of the disapprobation of their neighbors, which is the moral sanction; or by the fear of punishment in a future state of existence, which is the religious sanction; or by the fear of their own disapprobation, which may be called the conscientious sanction.11

  Stephen’s conception of morality as a web of restraint that shapes individual conduct is deeply influenced by his conception of the human condition. Forgoing a pollyannish understanding of human beings, Stephen embraces a position some—perhaps with cause—may consider a dark and foreboding one. It may be more accurate to see Stephen as offering a rather sober-minded understanding of human beings, one that captures the curse and blessing of the human condition. Without the discipline imposed by morality, individuals will tend to pursue a life of idleness, a life that is vapid, without high culture, a life lacking the motivation to achieve greatness of character. Stephen sees that the human condition involves greater ambiguity than a world of men and women possessing exclusively either greatness or meanness of character: We are a mixed lot. Unfortunately, the human spirit typically does not aim high; however, human beings do have social desires, Stephen suggests, which in conjunction with the restraints of morality help to sustain a social order in which greatness of character and liberty are possible and can flourish. And while rejecting an optimistic view of human beings, Stephen lovingly cradles the high culture of England that a few are able to produce. However, both the few who are capable of high culture and those who are not still greatly benefit from being subjected to an Augustinian or Calvinist tinged morality of self-restraint and discipline.

  Given that liberty is of instrumental value for Stephen, it is easy to understand why he rejects any categorical, simple principle of liberty, one that would specify exactly which liberties should be protected, and where and when. “We must,” Stephen writes, “proceed in a far more cautious way, and confine ourselves to such remarks as experience suggests about the advantages and disadvantages of compulsion and liberty respectively in particular cases.”12 However, there are certain liberties that Stephen highlights in Liberty, Equality, Fraternity and in other of his writings that he believes to be of paramount importance to civilized life. The first is property: “Of all items of liberty, none is either so important or so universally recognized as the liberty of acquiring property.”13 The second liberty of great importance to Stephen, perhaps surprisingly, is privacy: “Legislation and public opinion ought in all cases whatever scrupulously to respect privacy. . . . To try to regulate the internal affairs of a family, the relations of love or friendship, or many other things of the same sort, by law or by the coercion of public opinion, is like trying to pull an eyelash out of a man’s eye with a pair of tongs. They may put out the eye, but they will never get hold of the eyelash.”14

  Essential to protecting these liberties and others is the rule of law. And so closely linked is the rule of law to various liberties that Stephen suggests the rule of law is itself a liberty; for in a significant way, the procedures afforded to individuals by the rule of law specify the liberties that an individual has.

  For Stephen, the rule of law is a remarkable moral conquest, a monumental achievement over despotism and the desires of some to enslave others for their own purposes. The rule of law both constitutes and vouchsafes liberties that Stephen, although holding them to be instrumentally valuable, embraces and understands to be of paramount importance to the civilized world he deeply valued.

  Along with fellow Victorians such as Arnold, Maine, W. E. H. Lecky, and even J. S. Mill, Stephen was deeply troubled by what he saw as the debilitating consequences of an ever-expanding democracy. In part because of the Reform Bill of 1867 which doubled the electorate in England, by the time of his writing Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Stephen reasoned that there was no turning back from an extensive democratic government; that is, no turning back from a regime resting upon universal suffrage. “If I am asked, What do you propose to substitute for universal suffrage? . . . I answer at once, Nothing. The whole current of thought and feeling, the whole stream of human affairs, is setting with irresistible force in that direction.”15 Stephen argued, however, that even if universal suffrage were achieved, the promissory note of political equality that defenders of universal suffrage advanced could not be fulfilled:

  Legislate how you will, establish universal suffrage, if you think proper, as a law which can never be broken. You are still as far as ever from equality. Political power has changed its shape but not its nature. The result of cutting it up into little bits is simply that the man who can sweep the greatest number of them into one heap will govern the rest. The strongest man in some form or other will always rule. If the government is a military one, the qualities which make a man a great soldier will make him a ruler. If the government is a monarchy, the qualities which kings value in counsellors, in generals, in administrators, will give power. In a pure democracy the ruling men will be the wirepullers and their friends. . . . Changes in the form of a government alter the conditions of superiority much more than its nature.16

  What is especially troubling to Stephen is that the plea for democracy or political equality frequently masquerades as a plea for liberty. This conflates democracy and universal suffrage—which are concerned with the distribution of political power—with liberty, which is another matter entirely.17 A precondition of deliverance from the political and cultural predicament that will be spawned by growing democracy is the recognition of the evils that the so-called political equality will make manifest in the world. It is just this recognition that Stephen hopes to provide in Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.

  Whatever may be the benefits of democracy, it also levies severe costs that render it a languid business. For the “wirepullers” need only satisfy an ignorant multitude, and this, Stephen feared, would ultimately lead to a debased and mediocre culture, one predicated on sordidness and vulgarity. In order to satisfy the unenlightened, these new rulers would extend government into the deepest recesses of the lives of individuals, willingly abandoning certain liberties along the way.

  An appeal to political equality is only one form that the appeal to equality takes, and it is an appeal that Stephen finds to be suspect, as we have seen. What is more disturbing to Stephen is the appeal to equality per se, for this is a conception that is devoid of content. One needs to know, Equal in what respect? However, when equality is offered as a value without qualification, what is typically being offered is equality of property. Equality in this sense is especially antithetical to liberty: “If human experience proves anything at all, it proves that, if restraints are minimized, if the largest possible measure of liberty is accorded to all human beings, the result will not be equality but inequality. . . .”18 As a result of industriousness, luck, skill, and a myriad of other factors, some will acquire and accumulate much more property than others: Liberty of action thus leads to inequality of results, an inequality that can be eliminated, if at all, only by constant governmental interference in the various liberties of individuals to pursue their own ends. For Stephen, equality of property is the death-knell of liberty, and this provides a powerful reason to eschew it.

  The equality that Stephen does value is equality under the law, the equality vouchsafed by the rule of law: Treat like cases alike. As philosophers of law recognize, however, deciding what constitutes a like case is puzzling. Yet, however complicated this issue is, numerous contemporary readers of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity will find Stephen’s understanding of what constitutes a like case in at least one area of life to be defective. Stephen holds that men are superior to women, not only in terms of physical strength, but also in terms of “greater intellectual force” and “greater vigour of character.”19 Men and women, not being equal in these respects, should not be treated the same by those “laws which affect their relations”20 ; for example, the law of military conscription and, most especially, the law of marriage. Indeed, Stephen presses the point that such inequality actually benefits women.

  Central to the legacy bequeathed to us by the liberal tradition is the idea that there is no natural, political authority, an idea expressed with great clarity by two of the founders of the liberal tradition, Hobbes and Locke. Toward the end of the eighteenth century and the start of the nineteenth, an idea that had its home in the world of politics, begins to spread to a broader range of human relationships, including the various relationships between men and women. The dismissal of natural authority in political life in the seventeenth century begins to be extended, leading many to dismiss hierarchical relationships generally by the end of the nineteenth century. And it is within the context of this movement of ideas that one must locate Stephen’s views on the relations between men and women; for certainly Stephen is attempting to hold on to a world in which hierarchical relations are possible and desirable.

  Although the nineteenth century was replete with accounts of the first two frames of the triptych of political values—liberty and equality—fraternity, the last frame, received surprisingly little critical attention. Indeed, whatever the influence of the French Revolution, it was much more because of Auguste Comte’s “Religion of Humanity”—and J. S. Mill’s partial appropriation of it—that reflection about fraternity became any part of the English intellectual landscape. And if only because substantial criticisms of the idea of fraternity were rare, Stephen’s savage attack on the value of fraternity becomes quite noteworthy.

  By fraternity, Stephen understands the idea of a universal brotherhood, the idea of a universal love of mankind; that is, the idea of individuals in a society associated with each other foremost by the love that they feel for one another. Support for the moral and political value of fraternity flows, Stephen believes, from two sources. The first source is a maudlin view of human nature that imagines a world without significant conflicts of interest among individuals and the hostility to which those lead. Few defenders of fraternity would suggest that this is the world of human beings as we find it. Thus, the second source is an appeal to the progress of which human beings are capable if only they are liberated from various restraints and treated as the equals that they are; and it is the human nature that is to be newly animated by the driving forces of progress which makes fraternity possible.

  For Stephen, however, a more sober-minded reflection reveals human nature to be incompatible with fraternity. He declares:

  I believe that many men are bad, a vast majority of men indifferent . . . and [this] great mass . . . sway[s] this way or that according to circumstances. . . . I further believe that between all classes of men there are and always will be real occasions of enmity and strife, and that even good men may be and often are compelled to treat each other as enemies either by the existence of conflicting interests which bring them into collision, or by their different ways of conceiving goodness.21

  Defenders of fraternity are sanguine about eliminating a good deal of the enmity and evil to be found in human existence; but, for Stephen, these elements of the human condition, although capable of being ameliorated to some degree by morality, religion, and law, stem from permanent features of human nature. Stephen claims that it is not only different interests that put individuals at odds with one another, but also differing conceptions of the good, both ineradicable features of human nature. And Stephen thought that the various conflicts of interest and value endemic to the human condition produce enmity not only among individuals, but also among groups. He suspected, for example, that Moslems and Christians would always feel hostility toward one another because of their disparate views of the good.

  Stephen believes that those who impatiently hunger for fraternity will not only fail to find a place for it in the world, but are apt to produce corrupting results in the world of practical affairs.

  A man to whom this ideal [of fraternity] becomes so far a reality as to colour his thoughts, his feelings, his estimate of the present and his action towards it, is usually, as repeated experience has shown, perfectly ready to sacrifice that which living people do actually regard as constituting their happiness to his own notions of what will constitute the happiness of other generations.22

  Love of humanity often becomes infected by fanaticism. The appeal to fraternity that on the surface bears the stamp of universal brotherhood, underneath has little concern for those in the present. For insofar as the advocates of fraternity recognize that human beings as we find them do not pass muster, it is convenient to discard them to the dust bin of concrete reality in favor of those who exist only in an ethereal, theoretical world: Neither the liberty nor happiness of those in the present matter when a vision of a world driven by fraternity is at stake.

  As we have mentioned, Stephen elucidates his own positions in Liberty, Equality, Fraternity within the frame of a critique of John Stuart Mill that runs throughout the book. Stephen was a great admirer of the early Mill, the Mill of “The Spirit of the Age,” “Civilization,” “Bentham,” Book VI of A System of Logic (“On the Logic of the Moral Sciences”), and the two essays on “De Tocqueville on Democracy in America.” Indeed, Stephen admired On Liberty when it first appeared in 1859. However, the Reform Bill of 1867, his experience in India, the publication of Mill’s The Subjection of Women, as well as further reflection, moved him to the conclusion that the later Mill had renounced what Stephen understood to be the principles of English Liberalism.

  As Stephen has it, the faults of On Liberty are many: the human condition is too complicated for Mill’s “simple principle of liberty” which holds that coercion is justified only to prevent harm to others; the distinction that provides the ground for Mill’s principle of liberty, the distinction between self-regarding and other-regarding actions, cannot be articulated in a clear-cut fashion; Mill’s principle of liberty is at loggerheads with his utilitarianism; Mill’s principle of liberty requires the absence of almost all restraint in human affairs, a circumstance that will lead to idleness and wretchedness, and not the self-development that Mill (following Wilhelm von Humboldt) imagines; liberty without the restraints of morality backed by the sanction of public opinion is license and of no social value; freedom of thought does not tend to verisimilitude as Mill suggests; Mill’s principle of liberty, vigorously applied, would be subversive of all morality, for morality is instantiated through the coercive opinions of others.

  Stephen’s litany of criticism of Mill’s The Subjection of Women and Utilitarianism is briefer but no less severe: The former work misleads us as to the proper relationship between men and women and fosters a view of democracy that violates high culture and liberty; the latter work suggests the possibility of a brotherhood of mankind that is grossly false to the facts and destructive of liberty, as well.

  It is fair to say that Stephen understands his view of liberty, equality, and fraternity to be contrary to Mill’s in almost every important particular. For on his view, he stands for liberty and Mill stands for license; he stands for equality under law and Mill stands for a morose egalitarianism; he stands for a sober understanding of the conflicts in human affairs and Mill for a great illusion.

  It cannot be denied that at least sometimes Stephen misconstrues Mill’s doctrine, heedless of the nuances to be found there, and that some of the charges that he levels against Mill miss their intended mark. Nevertheless, it is just as true that Stephen sees in Mill what others have missed and that many of his shots are on target. However, more important than this is the character of Stephen’s own teaching on liberty, equality, and fraternity, a teaching that has been unduly neglected and one that is unquestionably worthy of our attention.

  The analytic tradition that reigned supreme over the Anglo-American philosophical world would now have us ask: Is Stephen’s political philosophy best understood as a form of Liberalism or Conservatism? And, in fact, a considerable amount of intellectual energy has been spent on this question. Of course, any attempt to answer it would require a lengthy and careful analysis of what Liberalism and Conservatism are—a matter of incalculable difficulty at best—and it is unclear that the attempt to understand Stephen’s political philosophy in terms of abstract, timeless, ahistorical categories would be helpful or important in any case.

  What certainly is important, however, is Stephen’s understanding of himself as a defender of an older English Liberalism. In Stephen’s eyes, we should not conceive this Liberalism to be an abstract, philosophical category, but rather a term denoting a form of political life that historically was at home in mid-nineteenth century England. This was a form of political life that valued ordered liberty and dreaded license, one that despised despotism, yet trembled fearfully before universal suffrage. The English Liberalism that Stephen embraced valued “generous and high-minded sentiments upon political subjects, guided by a highly instructed, large minded, and impartial intellect,”23 not the sordidness and vulgarity that Stephen believed to be forthcoming in a different vision of political life, one he thought was enunciated and implied in Mill’s writings.

  Like mid- to late nineteenth century Victorian England, our world is moved to reflect about liberty, equality, and fraternity. And all around—both in the domains of politics and philosophy—we see admiring portraits of this famed triptych. Yet many of these portraits are vague and hazy, and at times it is hard to make out, for example, whether we are looking at liberty or license. Surely which it is matters, and Stephen’s Liberty, Equality, Fraternity is a fine work that can aid us in achieving clarity about what is being offered. And more broadly, in a world that continues to pamper fraternity and equality of all kinds, Stephen’s invocations against them might provide a salutary reminder that it is liberty—not license—for which they are being exchanged, and this might lead us to consider carefully the character of what we are getting in return.

  Professor Stuart D. Warner

  Thanksgiving, 1992

  • Roosevelt University

  [1.]For more on the role of the Stephen family in the anti-slavery movement, see Frank J. Klingberg, The Anti-Slavery Movement in England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1926).

  [2.]See the bibliography on p. xxvii for a complete reference to this and other works by Stephen cited in this foreword.

  [3.]From an autobiographical fragment cited in Leslie Stephen, The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1895), p. 116. Also, in a telling remark, Stephen says, “Of all men of his age [Hobbes] was most alive to the importance of treating all questions as questions of fact, and of not being led away by phrases.” Horae Sabbaticae, vol. 2, p. 63.

  [4.]Horae Sabbaticae, vol. 2, p. 20.

  [5.]Cited in Leslie Stephen, The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, p. 415.

  [6.]See Isaiah Berlin, “The Purpose of Philosophy,” in Concepts and Categories (New York: Viking Press, 1978), pp. 9–10.

  [7.]Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, p. 119. Three other analogies between water pipes and liberty are to be found on pp. 14–15, 23, and 118.

  [8.]Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, p. 122; my emphasis.

  [9.]Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, p. 111.

  [10.]Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, p. 13.

  [11.]Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, pp. 8–9.

  [12.]Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, p. 35.

  [13.]Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, p. 120.

  [14.]Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, pp. 106, 107–8.

  [15.]Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, p. 155.

  [16.]Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, pp. 154–55.

  [17.]In his essay “Hobbes on Government,” Stephen writes, “It would tend considerably to clear up various matters connected with the question of extension of the suffrage, if we bore in mind the fact that the question is one, not of liberty, but of the distribution of political power.” See Horae Sabbaticae, vol. 2, p. 12.

  [18.]Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, p. 120.

  [19.]Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, p. 138.

  [20.]Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, p. 143.

  [21.]Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, p. 169.

  [22.]Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, p. 181.

  [23.]“Liberalism,” in Cornhill Magazine, 5 (1862): 71.

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  6: CW vol. 1 Autobiography and Literary Essays: Intro by Lord Robbins

  John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume I - Autobiography and Literary Essays, ed. John M. Robson and Jack Stillinger, introduction by Lord Robbins (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981). Chapter: Introduction

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/242/7709 on 2009-10-28

  The online edition of the Collected Works is published under licence from the copyright holder, The University of Toronto Press. ©2006 The University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced in any form or medium without the permission of The University of Toronto Press.

  ---

  The Collected Edition of the works of John Stuart Mill has been planned and is being directed by an editorial committee appointed from the Faculty of Arts and Science of the University of Toronto, and from the University of Toronto Press. The primary aim of the edition is to present fully collated texts of those works which exist in a number of versions, both printed and manuscript, and to provide accurate texts of works previously unpublished or which have become relatively inaccessible.

  Editorial Committee

  j. m. robson,General Editor

  v. w. bladen, harald bohne, alexander brady,

  j. c. cairns, j. b. conacher, d. p. dryer,

  francess halpenny, samuel hollander,

  jean houston,

  marsh jeanneret, r. f.McRAE,f. e. l. priestley

  Introduction

  john stuart mill’sAutobiography offers details of his life, a subjective judgment as to its significance, and lengthy expositions of his leading ideas. It is therefore fitting that it should occupy the first place in an edition of his collected works. Indeed Mill himself, thinking of a smaller collection of essays, suggested to his wife that “the Life” should appear “at their head.”¹ The Autobiography’s comprehensiveness makes the choice of other materials to accompany it less obvious. Those gathered under the rubric of literary essays were decided upon because autobiography is a literary genre, because these essays cast light on some of the personal relations outlined in the memoir, and because they derive from and help us understand a period Mill saw as crucial to his development. Indeed they allow us, as does the Autobiography, to see aspects of his character that are obscured in the more magisterial works. In particular, one finds specific evidence of aesthetic enthusiasm and taste, and of friendships and allegiances, that proves him not to have been the chill pedant of caricature.

  THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

  autobiographies are seldom explicit about their purposes, which can be widely diverse. Yet to ignore the author’s intentions is to run the risk of confusing, for example, confession with self-celebration, or diary with social anatomy. Mill helps us avoid this danger by presenting, in the first paragraph of his Autobiography, a warning that serves as an enticing framework for his overt statement of purpose. He cannot imagine that anything in a life “so uneventful” could be “interesting to the public as a narrative, or as being connected” with himself. But there are, he says, other reasons that justify the publication of the record: first, a description of his “unusual and remarkable” education should be useful in showing how much can effectively be taught to children; second, an account of the successive phases of a mind always eager and open will be “both of interest and of benefit” in “an age of transition in opinions”; and, finally, and to the author most significantly (though, as he does not point out, without direct public utility), an acknowledgment of his intellectual and moral debts is necessary to satisfy his sense of duty. Having thus established the terms of a contract with his potential audience. Mill closes the paragraph with an admonition that probably no one has ever heeded: “The reader whom these things do not interest, has only himself to blame if he reads farther, and I do not desire any other indulgence from him than that of bearing in mind, that for him these pages were not written” (p. 5).²

  Anyone reading this introduction (and we beg the same indulgence) presumably believes, malgré Mill, that his “uneventful” life is interesting, or accepts, with him, the validity of his stated goals. One can proceed, then, to use the opening paragraph as an avenue into comment on the Autobiography, confident that one is on the author’s chosen route. To do so is doubly important, for some critics have chosen to treat his evident omissions and underplaying of events and people as evidence of suppressed psychological states or distorting attitudes. And such inferences may be correct: but at least one should give Mill credit, with his quirks and biasses, for knowing what he was trying to do.

  It is apparent, to begin with, that the narrative balance is affected by his notion of what his readers should properly take an interest in. As so often occurs in personal memoirs, there is a chronological imbalance: the first six chapters (about 70 per cent of the text) cover the period to 1840, when Mill was thirty-six years old, while the seventh and last chapter deals with the next thirty years. The title of that last chapter—“General View of the Remainder of My Life”—suggests summary and diminuendo, whereas the titles of the earlier chapters imply the rich detail that they in fact contain.

  Although chronology is (in the main) the structural guide, the pace is irregular: ignoring some adumbration and very slight retrospection, one can say that Chapters i and ii cover roughly the same years (to aet. 15) from different points of view, intellectual and moral. Chapter iii, rather surprisingly, covers only about two years (to aet. 17). Chapters iv and v together deal with nine years (to 1830, aet. 24); they overlap in their accounts of the period from 1826 to 1829 (aet. 20 to 23). Chapter vi takes one through the next decade (to 1840, aet. 34), and Chapter vii brings the narrative to the point where Mill finally put down his pen, early in 1870 (aet. 63). Furthermore, the chapters vary considerably in length, so the average amount of space given per year in each period clarifies the emphasis:

  TABLE 13

  Chap	i & ii	iii	iv & v	vi	vii
  3 Percentages are used because the setting of the text in this edition (parallel passages with blank spaces) and the number of footnotes make page counting unreliable. For that reason, in both Table 1 and Table 2 below, the counts are based on Jack Stillinger’s editions of the Autobiography (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969) and The Early Draft of John Stuart Mill’s “Autobiography” (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961).
  No. of years	15	2	9	10	30
  % of total pages	19	8	32	12	30
  % of pages per year	1.3	4	3.6	1.2	1

  Explanatory light is thrown on the imbalance by Mill’s tripartite division of his life: the first stage being one of education and of propagandism for Philosophic Radicalism; the second stage one of new ideas, assimilation, and reconsideration; and the third stage one of mature and steady (but not rigid) views, recorded in his major works. This division, seen in conjunction with the three purposes Mill announces, makes it clearer why he structured the Autobiography as he did.

  The account of his education (first purpose) occupies most of the first three chapters, while the explanation of the “successive phases” of his mind (second purpose) is the main matter of the next three chapters. The division between these phases, however, cannot be distinctly drawn, and the third purpose, acknowledgment of debts, as is to be expected, is served through most of the work. The reason is that education in its widest sense is a continuous process, during which one moves through “phases” and incurs repeated debts. For example, looking at the transition from Chapter iii to Chapter iv, one sees that the former ends with an account of what Mill, in its title, identifies as the “first” stage of his self-education, and the latter, with its mention of the strenuous activities of the fledgling Philosophic Radicals (discussions, debates, studies, editing, essays), obviously is the next phase. But, while the narrative of sectarian activities in Chapter iv provides an excellent foil for the rejection of one-sidedness in Chapter v, it also outlines a continuation of the young Mill’s education. Furthermore, his education of course continued in the exciting phase described in Chapter v, “A Crisis in My Mental History. One Stage Onward.” And in each of these chapters, as in Chapters i and ii, he mentions people who influenced him. The thematic intertwining, with the consequent need to cover crucial periods from different standpoints, explains why the period of greatest overlap, from about 1821 to the early 1830s, gets most attention. A glance at Table 1 above will show that Chapters iii-v occupy about 40 per cent of the whole work, and on an average each year in that period is given more than 3½ times as much space as each year after 1840.

  So, if we accept the premises Mill himself advances, the concentration on his education and intellectual development until his mid-thirties is neither surprising nor exceptionable. Indeed, the anomalous element is the final chapter, with its account of his next thirty years, in which there should be little matter relevant to his stated purposes. There is, in fact, some: most obviously, Mill pays important tribute to his wife. Chapter vi, which covers the decade of their first acquaintance, has in its title the strong assertion, “Commencement of the Most Valuable Friendship of My Life,” but the continuation of the account into the final chapter results in almost one-fifth of it being dedicated to her part in his life and work. Indeed, he ties that account directly to his third purpose:

  In resuming my pen some years after closing the preceding narrative, I am influenced by a desire not to leave incomplete the record, for the sake of which chiefly this biographical sketch was undertaken, of the obligations I owe to those who have either contributed essentially to my own mental developement or had a direct share in my writings and in whatever else of a public nature I have done.⁴

  It may be noticed that here he somewhat modifies his initial statement of purpose: rather than referring to aids to his intellectual and moral development, he refers to those who contributed to his mental development and to those who shared in his writings and public acts. This modification further justifies the final chapter, for in its pages appear substantial accounts of his writings in maturity, in the course of which he mentions other debts.⁵ It cannot be denied, however, that after the last tribute to his wife, the focus does alter: in actual as well as proportional length, Mill gives more space to his parliamentary career (1865-68) than to any other period in his life, even that of his “mental crisis.”⁶ The account of that career, the events of which were fresh in his mind only a year after his defeat, is not easily justified on Mill’s stated terms. Indeed, its main interest surely lies outside them, in his own character and fame, which are described if not in a boastful, at least in a self-satisfied way.

  Apart from the concluding portion of Chapter vii (which, untypically for Mill, was not rewritten), one can, then, gain considerable insight by accepting his exordium as accurate. In that light, some comment on the way he fulfils his goals is appropriate.

  First, the description of his extraordinary education, initially at the hands of his father, but later and indeed for most of the time on his own initiative, is copious and full of interest. The account is also dense, as may be seen by comparing the combined lengths of Appendices B and C below, which attempt to reconstruct his early reading and writing, with their primary source, the early pages of the Autobiography (cf. especially pp. 9-25 with App. B, pp. 552-68). The early start (Greek at the age of three) was not then so exceptional as it now would be: to choose relevant comparisons, Bentham (with not much encouragement) was quick off the infant blocks, as (with more encouragement) was Macaulay. Mill was unusual, but he appears unique because he left such a full record. His detailed memory of those early years is surprising; however, he almost certainly had at least one aide-mémoire, a copy of the letter he wrote to Sir Samuel Bentham in mid-1819,⁷ setting out his educational accomplishments of the preceding six years. That letter confirms and slightly expands the account in the Autobiography, and strengthens our appreciation of two aspects of his education—its continued and indeed increasing intensity, and the fact that it was intermingled with daily instruction of his younger siblings, especially of the two closest to him in age, Wilhelmina and Clara. In both these respects he was very unusual, especially when it is remembered that he had no formal education at all, his only teacher, in these early years, being his father, who was in truth using the child as a proving ground for his theories. (This wicked practice, it may be remarked, is found in all enlightened periods.) However, as Mill points out, his was not an education of cram; its great virtue, he believed, was that it enabled and encouraged him to think for himself, not only answering but questioning, not only getting but giving, not only remembering but discovering. This practice remained with him through life, and was connected with yet another distinguishing element: his curiosity and eagerness to learn. In the Autobiography this attribute is mentioned, although it surely tells against his assertion that anyone educated as he was could match his record. In the journal he kept while in France, his eagerness stands out as though in boldface, while one can read between the lines the efforts of his hosts, especially Lady Bentham, to prevent his doing lessons all the time.⁸

  Probably the most extraordinary aspect of Mill’s precocity was his ability from about twelve to fifteen years of age to comprehend and enunciate abstract ideas in economics, and some parts of philosophy and science. Many gifted children astonish with feats of memory,⁹ with ability to learn languages, and, perhaps most obviously, with great mathematical powers; Mill had these talents, but also showed astonishing maturity in his wide-ranging discussions with his father and others, in his self-directed studies, in his comments on his more formal studies, and in the major surviving piece of contemporary evidence, the “Traité de logique” he wrote while in France. And, without extending the case unduly, his editing, before his twentieth year, of Bentham’s Rationale of Judicial Evidence (see the understated account on pp. 117-19 below) was a genuinely amazing feat.

  In his account, of course, Mill, in keeping with his third purpose, is celebrating not himself, but his father, and, despite the qualifications and explanations,¹⁰ it is a celebration, incorporating at least one memorable aphorism: “A pupil from whom nothing is ever demanded which he cannot do, never does all he can” (p. 35). Moving into the period of self-education, Mill, having learned his pedagogy, broadened his teaching to include others who were caught up in the Radicals’ increasing momentum,¹¹ and one can be sure that at least the demand side of the aphorism was observed. We cannot now recapture all the detail—let alone the enthusiasm—of the activities he joined in with others, but what is known is remarkable.

  The earliest joint venture was probably the “Mutual Improvement Society,” not mentioned in the Autobiography, which flowered at least briefly under Jeremy Bentham’s patronage.¹² The date of Mill’s two surviving speeches for that Society, 1823 or 1824,¹³ suggests that in fact it may have melded with the “Utilitarian Society” that Mill says he founded in the winter of 1822-23 (p. 81); the latter also met in Bentham’s house, included Bentham’s amanuensis, Richard Doane, and convened once a fortnight to read essays and discuss questions of ethics and politics. This small group, which continued until 1826, included Mill’s most intimate friends, as did its successor, the “Society of Students of Mental Philosophy,” which met for detailed discussion of specific philosophic and economic texts in George Grote’s house from 1825 until early in 1828, and then again in 1829.¹⁴ In the mid-20s, emulating the philosophes, Mill kept a journal of his group’s activities, and wrote a few articles for a proposed Philosophical Dictionary to be edited by Charles Austin (see p. 110; the journal and articles seem not to have survived).

  Another kind of mutual education, through propagation of the faith, was contemporaneous: public debate. First, in 1825, he and some friends¹⁵ debated against the Owenites of the Cooperative Society; then, from 1826 to 1829, they embarked on a more impressive scheme, the London Debating Society, in which the coming young men opened their minds and talents on major issues of the times.¹⁶ Less important were evening meetings to study elocution, and the formation of a class to learn German on the “Hamiltonian method.”¹⁷

  Of greater significance in a wider sphere was the work done by the young Philosophic Radicals with their elders and mentors on the Westminster Review, founded in 1824 (see pp. 93-101), and on the Parliamentary History and Review during its brief career from 1826 to 1828 (p. 121), the latter year also seeing the Mills withdraw from the Westminster Review stable (p. 135). Throughout this period Mill’s practical education, the value of which he acknowledges on p. 87, was going on in the Examiner’s Office of the East India Company, which he had joined in 1823 on his seventeenth birthday. Finally, though the details are vague, one should not overlook the broad educational benefits of his less formal but undoubtedly strenuous and wide-ranging discussions with his friends on his daily walks between Kensington and the City, and his weekend and holiday excursions into the countryside. Even without analysis of his writings, one can wholeheartedly support his judgment that from 1822 to 1828 his “own pursuits . . . were never carried on more vigorously” (p. 89).¹⁸

  Here one is moving to the second of Mill’s purposes, his desire to show “the successive phases” of a “mind which was always pressing forward, equally ready to learn and to unlearn either from its own thoughts or from those of others” (p. 5). The least precise of the three goals, it nonetheless gets very careful attention in the next few chapters of the Autobiography, those dealing with the period from the time of his mental crisis in 1826-27 until 1840, when the Logic was virtually completed. He says that in his account of “these years of transition” he has mentioned only those of his “new impressions” which appeared then and later “to be a kind of turning points, marking a definite progress” in his mode of thought (p. 175). And he goes on to indicate that he was considering much more in those years than the account indicates. The nature and intensity of some of these considerations are to be seen in the literary essays in the present volume.

  Many of the changes, these essays also imply, came through personal contact of the kind already suggested, as his circle of acquaintance broadened. The record of “successive phases” of his mind is, therefore, again seen to be intertwined with that of his debts, and so the second and third purposes are served together. Often his desire to acknowledge his intellectual debts is greater than his desire to trace his development, with the result, quite intentional on Mill’s part, that emphasis falls on certain aspects of his development at the expense of others. For example, the brief period of near withdrawal from his customary activities from 1828 to 1830 is left in shade, and little evidence is available elsewhere to fill in the picture. And the years of active political sectarianism in the London and Westminster Review, years that have troubled many who otherwise admire Mill (after all, he says he had already forsworn at least overt sectarianism [see pp. 115-17]), are excused by the plea of circumstance, inadequately described. Again—and from the perspective of the editors of this volume, quite regrettably—Mill gives little space to his writings for journals in the 1830s, and much of that concerns his mainly political leaders in the Examiner.

  As mentioned above, one important change, Mill’s new aesthetic interest, is seen in his literary essays. In particular, they indicate the shift in thought following his distress over the effects of purely analytic methods, and point to the existence of what was not quite a school, or even a coterie, but certainly was a group quick to respond and to interact. The relief Mill found in Wordsworth’s poetry (pp. 149-53), and his related discovery of Shelley (a favourite of Harriet Taylor’s), as well as his love of music (almost unmentioned in the Autobiography),¹⁹ and his growing appreciation of drama, painting, and architecture, all had a part in inducing the aesthetic speculations found in these essays. Though they do not amount to an important theory, elements of them are of considerable value, and helped clarify for Mill both the place of emotion in individual lives and in the human sciences, and what he took to be his proper role in the “Art and Science of Life,” as “Scientist” or “Logician,” and not as “Artist” or “Poet.”²⁰

  Mill was markedly influenced by his new acquaintances, most significantly by W. J. Fox’s circle of Unitarians,²¹ including Harriet and John Taylor, by Thomas Carlyle, and by John Sterling. Through Sterling (and perhaps through Cambridge friends of Charles Austin) Mill became acquainted with other of the Cambridge “Apostles,” and it is of more than passing significance that his reaching out for “radicals” of different kinds brought into the net of the London and Westminster Review some of these apparently incompatible, but equally enthusiastic proponents of a new order. When one considers the subjects and provenances of Mill’s articles in the present volume, the network of relations is evident: of those articles published in the 1830s, four of the five that appeared before 1835 were in Fox’s journal, the Monthly Repository (which in these years was Mill’s main organ for non-literary essays as well); all those after that date were in the London and Westminster under his own editorship. Not all the articles are actually reviews, but of those that are, two deal with William Bridges Adams, a protégé of Fox’s, who married Sarah Flower, the sister of Harriet Taylor’s closest friend (and Fox’s lover), Eliza. Browning also was a member of Fox’s circle, and only accident (see pp. xxxiii-xxxiv) prevented Mill’s review of his Pauline from appearing. Tennyson, Helps, Milnes, and Bulwer (see App. F, p. 604) were all Cambridge men, the first three Apostles. This evidence does not justify an accusation of puffery, though the reviews are favourable, but Mill can at least be seen as showing bias in his selection of subjects. And there is other evidence of his raising a wind. Exhalations include his placing, in the Examiner, reviews of Eliza Flower’s musical compositions,²² and complimentary notices of the Monthly Repository.²³ In return, the Repository blew some kisses, mentioning as a new publication the pamphlet reprint of Mill’s “Corporation and Church Property,” and commenting, “ ‘Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest’ this little pamphlet, which is full of the marrow of a sound philosophy and morality.” In “Characteristics of English Aristocracy,” a review of Bulwer’s England and the English, there is praise for the appendices Mill contributed anonymously on Bentham and James Mill that might well normally have gone unnoticed. And there is an unambiguous (to the informed) reference to Mill: “The most accomplished and perfect logician we ever knew, has the best appreciation of the beautiful and the poetical.”²⁴

  In all ages, and even among the virtuous, manus manum lavat, and altruism may be a form of self-help. There were, in that age of excitement, when the old order (again) seemed to be passing away, many opportunities for the daring and enthusiastic young to air and share their views, and as Mill passed through his “successive phases” he joined in or was touched by the Philosophic Radicals of the 1820s, the Romantics, the Saint-Simonians, the Unitarians, the Cambridge Apostles, the new bureaucrats, the Philosophic Radicals of the 1830s; in some cases he was at or near the centre, in others on the periphery—but never was he to be ignored.

  A change came, however. The last stage (on his account) was one in which he thought himself rejected by “society,” and in which, in any case, he rejected the society of most others. His relation with Harriet Taylor, a relation which they seem naïvely to have thought neither would nor should cause comment, resulted in their eventual isolation from all but a few, such as the Carlyles (and there was constant and increasing tension even with them). Mill’s account of his movement into maturity of opinion, then, ought to be seen also as a movement away from the influence of groups. He did not, it should be clear, go into intellectual solitude, for quite apart from the constant interchange of views with Harriet Taylor, he read and corresponded widely (for example with Auguste Comte). He was not, however, in an arena where the constant push-and-pull of allegiances, opinions, and events could initiate major fluctuations of belief. When, in the mid-1860s after his wife’s death and his retirement from the East India Company, the time did come for him to plunge into turbulent political waters, his general attitudes were indeed firm, though his expression of them in particular circumstances led some to believe him fickle. And at that time, as young men gathered round him—Bain, Cairnes, Fawcett, Morley, even Spencer—it was his influence on them that mattered, not theirs on him. And that tale he does not choose to tell.

  The tale he does tell, right from the beginning of the Autobiography, as we have seen, is that of his third purpose: acknowledgment of his intellectual and moral debts, the importance of which justifies brief analysis. It is hard and indeed unwise to identify separately the elements that make up Mill’s accounts of his teachers and friends; there is some mention of their characters, some of their careers, and some of their writings, as well as of their relations with Mill, and all these matters bear on one another. Also, a few people of obvious importance are mentioned almost in passing,²⁵ one may infer because the exigencies of narrative did not easily permit of a fuller account. As has been argued, the tributes and assessments are entwined with the accounts of his education and the movement of his mind; nonetheless, if we look simply at the main emphasis of passages, almost one-third of the final version is given generally to an account of his debts. (A considerably higher proportion is found in the Early Draft, which includes, inter alia, longer passages on Roebuck and Sarah Austin and necessarily excludes the narrative of the final years.) The relative weighting is interesting. Ignoring all those of less than one-half page in length, one finds:

  TABLE 2

  Tribute to and discussion of	App. no. of pages	Tribute to and discussion of	App. no. of pages
  26 In the Early Draft; about three pages were removed in the final revision.
  27 In the Early Draft; the passage was removed in the final revision.
  James Mill	19½	Charles Austin	1½
  Harriet Taylor Mill	14	Carlyle	1½
  Roebuck	426	Sarah Austin	127
  John Austin	3	Sterling	1
  Comte	3	Maurice	1
  Wordsworth	2½	Helen Taylor	1
  Bentham	2	Hare	1
  Saint-Simonians	2	Black	⅔
  Tocqueville	2	Grote	½

  Such computation (which ignores the strength as well as the kind of comment) does rough justice to Mill’s account; but he himself is not even-handed. Given other evidence, including Mill’s writings, no one is likely to challenge the placing of his father and his wife at the head of the list of those who influenced him. The kind of influence and its effect are perhaps moot, especially in the case of his wife, but one can easily accept his estimate of their weights. Mill says his conscience spoke to him in his father’s voice (p. 613); there can be no doubt that there was a literal transference of this function to Harriet Taylor after James Mill’s death in 1836, if not before, and only a little that Helen Taylor played a speaking role after her mother’s death in 1858.²⁸ There is no room here for essays on these extraordinary relations; our comment is only that they were, certainly from a psychological point of view, as important as Mill indicates.

  About others, though, some caveats concerning Mill’s judgment must be entered. His attitude to his mother has caused speculation: not mentioned in the Autobiography, she is given, in isolated comments of a derogatory kind, almost all of which were cancelled, only about one-half page in the Early Draft. When he began that draft, Mill was excessively, indeed petulantly, angry at his family because of what he (and/or Harriet) took to be their slighting response to his marriage; in revision, he at least moved from derogation to silence. It is likely that his mother and his siblings did not “influence” him, using the word as he intends it, but one may well regret the attitude and the omission. At the very least it is odd that a strong feminist, writing under the correcting eye of an equally strong feminist, should have given himself but a single parent in the opening narrative sentence of his autobiography: “I was born in London, on the 20th of May 1806, and was the eldest son of James Mill, the author of The History of British India” (p. 5).

  Other questions can here only be asked:²⁹ if John Austin gets (deservedly) three pages, surely Bentham deserves more than two, and George Grote more than one-half—and what of Harriet Grote? Wordsworth merits at least the treatment he receives, but where then is Coleridge? (The answer lies partly, but only partly, in the discussion of the “Coleridgeans,” Sterling and Maurice.) Does not Tocqueville, whose influence, curiously enough, is not acknowledged at all in the Early Draft, deserve as much space as Comte (even if we admit that much of the three pages devoted to the latter is given to denial of influence)? Surely Carlyle, whatever Mill’s later judgments, had more influence than Roebuck (who was on his own admission a pupil of Mill’s)—and, again, where is Jane Carlyle? Could he not have mentioned his colleagues in the East India House, such as Thomas Love Peacock? The questions pile up, and answers implying the deliberate downplaying of friendships, or the desire to avoid comment on those alive to read the account, do not seem adequate. Of greater relevance are Mill’s and his wife’s attitudes to the people discussed and the exigencies of narrative and of thesis: the case he is making does not require equal or absolute justice, and a story—even one the author claims to be devoid of interesting episode—militates against judgmental balance. One certainly may regret that Mill’s denigration of self led him to the purposes he thought proper, and so to exclude much that other autobiographers, many of them of narrower experience and less insight, delight us with. But his judgment should be respected. Although his mind, his life, and his career have an interest beyond the significance he attached to them, in developing his stated purposes Mill faithfully adheres to his contract with the reader for whom “these pages were . . . written.”

  The Autobiography stands alone among Mill’s book-length works in the abundance of MS materials that have survived.³⁰ We have no fewer than three complete MSS—Mill’s original draft, a revised MS also in his hand, and a transcript of the whole—as well as a four-page piece of holograph draft independent of the other MSS. The three complete MSS were among the collection of letters and papers owned after Mill’s death by Helen Taylor, bequeathed by her to her niece Mary Taylor, and sold at auction in 1922 by the executors of the latter’s estate. They are listed together, “a large parcel,” as lot 720 (third day) in Sotheby’s sale catalogue of 27-29 March, 1922: “Mill (John Stuart) Auto. MS. of his Autobiography upwards of 220 pp. 4to; with an earlier draft of the same in his hand, and a copy, mostly in the hand of Helen Taylor, with the suppressed passages.” The lot went for £5 5s. to Maggs Bros., who resold the MSS separately.

  Early Draft. The “earlier draft” was purchased from Maggs in 1923 by Jacob H. Hollander, Professor of Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University, who kept it until his death in 1940, after which it was stored for nearly two decades in a Baltimore warehouse. In 1958 it was acquired with the rest of Hollander’s library by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. More than just “earlier,” it is in fact the original draft of the Autobiography, consisting of 169 leaves all told—139 leaves constituting the first finished version of the work plus thirty leaves of rejected text retained together at the end of the draft. Written in the late months of 1853 and the early months of 1854 (see below on this and other datings), the MS contains a complete account, as Mill then would have given it, of his life up to his marriage in 1851. The paper is apparently that used in the East India Company office where Mill worked, half-sheets of white laid foolscap measuring c. 33.6 × 20.8 cm., with either a Britannia watermark (on about half the leaves, irregularly throughout) or one of three countermarks: “Stacey Wise 1849,” “C Ansell 1851,” and “C Ansell 1852.” Mill wrote in ink, generally on both sides. Before beginning a leaf, he folded it once lengthwise, to divide each page into two long halves c. 10.4 cm. wide;³¹ he originally composed only in the right-hand half, saving the space at left for his revisions and for corrections, comments, and other markings by his wife.

  Columbia MS. The second of the complete MSS (to take them in the order in which they were written), the “Auto. MS.” of the description in Sotheby’s catalogue, was bought from Maggs by Professor John Jacob Coss, acting for members of the Department of Philosophy at Columbia who presented it to the Columbia University Library in April, 1923. This MS consists of 210 leaves (not counting those left blank by Mill or used as wrappers) measuring c. 26 × 21.5 cm. The first 162 leaves, medium blue paper sewn in twenty-leaf gatherings marked A through I (with the initial leaf of A and the last seventeen leaves of I left blank) and containing either a fleur-de-lis watermark or the countermark “Weatherley 1856,” constitute a revised version of the Early Draft text plus a three-page continuation, the text of 247.35-251.9 below. This part of the MS was written in 1861. The remaining forty-eight leaves, a gathering marked K and made up of twenty-four sheets of darker blue (unwatermarked) paper folded separately and unsewn, represent—except for text taken over from the Yale fragment (see below)—the first and only draft of the rest of the Autobiography, written in the winter of 1869-70.

  Rylands transcript. The third of the MSS sold at Sotheby’s, the “copy, mostly in the hand of Helen Taylor, with the suppressed passages,” went to an unknown English buyer, and was lost sight of until July, 1959, when it was discovered in the London salerooms of Messrs. Hodgson and acquired by the John Rylands Library, Manchester. Consisting of 282 leaves of various kinds and sizes of paper, the transcript was made mainly or entirely in the months just after Mill’s death by three writers—Helen Taylor, Mill’s youngest sister Mary Elizabeth Colman, and an unidentified French copyist. It is from this MS that the first edition of the work (1873) was printed, and the “descent” of the text is thus simple and straightforward: Mill revised, recopied, and continued his original version (Early Draft) in the Columbia MS; Helen Taylor and her helpers copied the Columbia text in the Rylands transcript; and the work was set in type from the Rylands transcript.

  Yale fragment. In addition to these complete MSS, Mill’s first draft of the present 251.18-259.21, the “Note . . . concerning the participation of my wife in my writings” given below beginning on p. 250, is extant at Yale. This is written on the four pages of a folded sheet of bluish-gray wove paper, page size c. 25.8 × 20.2 cm. The MS bears the pencil date “[1861]” in the hand of a twentieth-century scholar or archivist, but the basis for this dating is not clear. Mill could have drafted the note any time between the completion of the Early Draft, in 1854, and the writing of the last part of the work in 1869-70. The tenses, the tone, and the mention of On Liberty as a “book” (pp. 256-8) strongly suggest that it was composed no earlier than 1859, after his wife’s death and the publication of On Liberty, and probably after 1861, because it was not included in the continuation of the Early Draft written at that time.

  In his surviving letters Mill first mentions the Early Draft on 23 January, 1854, four days after recording in a diary entry his bitterness at having “procrastinated in the sacred duty of fixing in writing, so that it may not die with me, everything that I have in my mind which is capable of assisting the destruction of error and prejudice and the growth of just feelings and true opinions.”³² Replying to a letter now lost, he writes to his wife:

  I too have thought very often lately about the life & am most anxious that we should complete it the soonest possible. What there is of it is in a perfectly publishable state—as far as writing goes it could be printed tomorrow—& it contains a full writing out as far as anything can write out, what you are, as far as I am competent to describe you, & what I owe to you—but, besides that until revised by you it is little better than unwritten, it contains nothing about our private circumstances, further than shewing that there was intimate friendship for many years, & you only can decide what more it is necessary or desirable to say in order to stop the mouths of enemies hereafter. The fact is there is about as much written as I can write without your help & we must go through this together & add the rest to it at the very first opportunity—I have not forgotten what she said about bringing it with me to Paris.³³

  

  >Folio 1r of the Early Draft MS

  University of Illinois

  He discusses the subject at length again on 10 February:

  I . . . have read through all that is written of the Life—I find it wants revision, which I shall give it—but I do not well know what to do with some of the passages which we marked for alteration in the early part of it which we read together. They were mostly passages in which I had written, you thought, too much of the truth or what I believe to be the truth about my own defects. I certainly do not desire to say more about them than integrity requires, but the difficult matter is to decide how much that is. Of course one does not, in writing a life, either one’s own or another’s, undertake to tell everything—& it will be right to put something into this which shall prevent any one from being able to suppose or to pretend, that we undertake to keep nothing back. Still it va sans dire that it ought to be on the whole a fair representation. Some things appear to me on looking at them now to be said very crudely, which does not surprise me in a first draft, in which the essential was to say everything, somehow, sauf to omit or revise afterwards. As to matters of opinion & feeling on general subjects, I find there is a great deal of good matter written down in the Life which we have not written anywhere else, & which will make it as valuable in that respect (apart from its main object) as the best things we have published. But of what particularly concerns our life there is nothing yet written, except the descriptions of you, & of your effect on me; which are at all events a permanent memorial of what I know you to be, & (so far as it can be shewn by generalities) of what I owe to you intellectually. That, though it is the smallest part of what you are to me, is the most important to commemorate, as people are comparatively willing to suppose all the rest. But we have to consider, which we can only do together, how much of our story it is advisable to tell, in order to make head against the representations of enemies when we shall not be alive to add anything to it. If it was not to be published for 100 years I should say, tell all, simply & without reserve. As it is there must be care taken not to put arms into the hands of the enemy.³⁴

  Taken together, the two letters show (1) that an early form of the draft, including at least the first eight leaves of the original Part II,³⁵ largely unrevised since it was first written but nevertheless “in a perfectly publishable state,” was finished by 23 January, 1854; (2) that Mill and his wife had read an “early part of it” together, marking passages for alteration (those extracted in App. G from R23-5, and possibly Mill’s subsequent revisions of them—in R24²-25² and R19/20, also marked by her—are more or less specifically mentioned in the second letter); but (3) that she had not yet read any portion of the original Part II, in which she and their relationship are described. Up to this point, therefore, there were at least two periods of composition—one in which he wrote the early part that they read and marked together, the other in which he continued writing in her absence.

  We have, unfortunately, virtually no biographical documents for the first two years of their marriage, after they had returned from the Continent and settled at Blackheath Park in September, 1851. In August, 1853, Mill took his wife to Sidmouth, Devonshire, returning to London alone on the 23rd—the first time since the marriage that they had been separated. He remained in London through much of September, and then, on the advice of their physicians, accompanied his wife to Nice. When his three-month leave of absence from the India House had expired, he left her at Hyères, on 27 or 28 December, and arrived back in London on 5 January.

  It is unlikely that he worked on the draft between 5 and 23 January (the date of the first letter quoted above). On his return he was occupied with official correspondence that had accumulated in his absence, and of his own work he was primarily concerned with the essay on “Nature.” He told his wife on 14 January:

  I am working hard at getting up the arrear of India house business & have taken some of it home to work at tomorrow (Sunday). I hardly feel well or vigorous enough to set about any work of our own yet on Sundays & in the evenings—when I do the first thing shall be to finish the rewriting of the paper on Nature, which I began before we left.³⁶

  Moreover, the tone of his letter of 23 January (“I too have thought very often lately about the life”) does not suggest that he has been writing. What seems most probable, if we assume that he began the draft in London, perhaps even (as he did with other works) during office hours at the India House when correspondence lagged, is that he commenced writing earlier than August, 1853; that he and his wife read and marked the early part (at least the first twenty-five leaves, through the first extract given in App. G) before going to Devonshire in that month; and that he continued writing, through at least the first eight leaves of the original Part II, in the August-September interval of separation, before joining her for their sojourn in France. A large part of the draft, the “publishable” version described in the letter of 23 January, 1854, should therefore be dated earlier than 24 September, 1853, the date on which they left England together.

  On 13 February, 1854, still planning to join his wife in Paris, Mill again mentions bringing the draft with him, and adds:

  But if we are not to be together this summer it is doubly important to have as much of the life written as can be written before we meet—therefore will you my own love in one of your sweetest letters give me your general notion of what we should say or imply respecting our private concerns. As it is, it shews confidential friendship & strong attachment ending in marriage when you were free & ignores there having ever been any scandalous suspicions about us.³⁷

  To his earlier letter of the 10th she replied on 14-15 February:

  I feel sure dear that the Life is not half written and that half that is written will not do. Should there not be a summary of our relationship from its commencement in 1830—I mean given in a dozen lines. . . . This ought to be done in its genuine truth and simplicity—strong affection, intimacy of friendship, and no impropriety. It seems to me an edifying picture for those poor wretches who cannot conceive friendship but in sex—nor believe that expediency and the consideration for feelings of others can conquer sensuality.³⁸

  While her letter was en route Mill wrote to her again on the 18th that he was “most anxious at present about the Life, but . . . can do little in the way of addition to it till I hear from her,”³⁹ and a diary entry of 19 February implies further concern with the life: “Goethe . . . [called] his autobiography, which tells just as much about himself as he liked to be known, ‘Aus meinem Leben Dichtung und Wahrheit.’ The Aus even without the Dichtung saves his veracity.”⁴⁰ Finally on the 20th, having received her letter, he was able to report some progress in the work:

  As to the Life—which I have been revising & correcting—the greater part, in bulk, of what is written consists of the history of my mind up to the time when your influence over it began—& I do not think there can be much objectionable in that part, even including as it does, sketches of the character of most of the people I was intimate with—if I could be said to be so with any one. I quite agree in the sort of résumé of our relationship which you suggest—but if it is to be only as you say a dozen lines, or even three or four dozen, could you not my own love write it out your darling self & send it in one of your precious letters—It is one of the many things of which the fond would be much better laid by you & we can add to it afterwards if we see occasion.⁴¹

  On 5 February Mill had finished rewriting “Nature”; on 5 March, having caught up with India House correspondence, he began writing “Utility of Religion.”⁴² Between those dates, and especially around 20 February, when we have seen him “revising & correcting,” he read over and revised the whole of the draft he had written in 1853, and it was probably then also that he finished writing the original Part II. Professor Levi is surely right in suggesting that a passage from Harriet Mill’s letter of 14-15 February (“strong affection, intimacy of friendship . . . an edifying picture for those poor wretches who cannot conceive friendship but in sex—nor believe that expediency and the consideration for feelings of others can conquer sensuality”) is echoed in Mill’s account of their relationship in the twentieth leaf of Part II:

  our relation to each other was one of strong affection and confidential intimacy, entirely apart from sensuality. . . . we disdained, as every person not a slave of his animal appetites must do, the abject notion that the strongest and tenderest friendship cannot exist between a man and a woman without a sensual tie; or that sensuality cannot be put aside when regard for the feelings of others, or even when only prudence and personal dignity require it.⁴³

  She did not otherwise send him the account he requested, for of the numbered series of Mill’s letters to her all but one—a short letter addressed to Marseilles on 13 March—are extant between 20 February and the middle of April, and there are but two subsequent references to the work during the period. On 24 February he writes: “we must do what we can while we are alive—the Life being the first thing—which independent of the personal matters which it will set right when we have made it what we intend, is even now an unreserved proclamation of our opinions on religion, nature, & much else.”⁴⁴ The gist of the first part of this statement is repeated in a letter of 20 March: “above all I am anxious about the Life, which must be the first thing we go over when we are together.”⁴⁵

  Harriet Mill returned to London in the middle of April, and it must have been either then or shortly afterward—“the Life being the first thing”—that she read and “improved” the remainder of the draft. Though no useful terminal date for Mill’s subsequent corrections can be assigned with certainty, it seems most reasonable to suppose that he revised and rewrote the leaves of Part II before departing for a six-week tour of Brittany in June-July, 1854, and certainly before setting out on his extended tour of France, Italy, and Greece, 8 December, 1854-late June, 1855, during which he was separated from his wife for nearly seven months.

  The Early Draft is a heavily worked over MS, with cancellations and interlined revisions on nearly every page, and a great many additional passages written and rewritten at left. Mill foliated the MS in pencil, and most of the leaves show evidence of having been renumbered one or more times as additional leaves were inserted, passages reordered, and revised leaves substituted for earlier ones. The principal additions and rearrangements are reported in notes to the Early Draft text and in headnotes to the extracts given in Appendix G. The most interesting of Mill’s large-scale changes has to do with his early intention to divide the work into two parts, the first covering his life before he met Harriet Taylor, and “Part II,” beginning with his “first introduction to the lady whose friendship has been the honour and blessing of my existence.” Possibly because he wished to bring her in at an earlier point in his account (after his writings of 1832, rather than, as originally, after his writings of 1834 and Molesworth’s proposal in that year to establish the London and Westminster Review), perhaps also because the two parts were of considerably disproportionate lengths (121 vs. 24 leaves). Mill rearranged several paragraphs, condensed the first eight leaves of Part II to three and a half, and discarded the two-part division altogether (see pp. 616-17 below).

  Except possibly for the revised leaves that replaced the rejected leaves of the original Part II and the ending of Part I, Harriet Mill read the entire MS, marking passages with lines, X’s, and question marks beside the text, deleting and sometimes rewriting Mill’s sentences, here and there commenting in the space at left; and Mill followed many of her suggestions and accepted most of her pencilled alterations by rewriting them in ink. A sizable proportion of her markings are editorial in character, calling attention to wordiness, vagueness, inaccuracy of expression, repetition of word or phrase, and the like “minuter matters of composition” (see p. 255); but she was also the originator of some major changes in the texture and tone of the work. In response to her markings Mill suppressed personal and family details that, had they been retained, would have made the Autobiography a warmer, if often more critical document, and she exerted extensive influence on the several versions in which he attempted to describe his practical deficiencies (see pp. 608-11) and on the account he wrote of their relations in the original Part II. While “HTM” appears frequently in the textual apparatus, the notes report only the most significant of her markings and alterations, and do not adequately convey the pervasiveness of her pencil in the MS.⁴⁶

  Mill returned to the work sometime in 1861, two or three years after the death of his wife, and on this occasion wrote the first 162 leaves of the Columbia MS, the text from the beginning through the present 251.9.⁴⁷ Most of this, of course, was revision rather than initial composition—the “second writing” that Mill refers to in describing the “double redaction” method by which “all my books have been composed” (see pp. 229-31)—but, although the Early Draft on which it was based is itself, in its final stage, a highly finished piece of writing, the new version is substantially different. Between the Early Draft and the corresponding text of the Columbia MS there are some 2,600 substantive differences, large and small (the figure is offered simply as a rough indication of the frequency of revision; the alteration of a single word counts as one substantive change, and the omission or addition of an entire paragraph or more also counts as one). The number and nature of the differences make impracticable the usual method of recording variants in this edition. We have, therefore, chosen to present the Early Draft and the Columbia MS as parallel texts on facing pages, with spacing adjusted to bring corresponding passages, as much as possible, opposite one another. As a result, blank spaces (and even whole blank pages) on one side or the other immediately call attention to the most extensive of the revisions. Some of the less obvious may be mentioned briefly.

  With the distance gained by the passing of seven or more years since his writing of the Early Draft, Mill viewed the events of his life with increased detachment. He could now, for example, add a mitigating comparison to his description of heavy dejection during his mental crisis, by seeing it as like “the state . . . in which converts to Methodism usually are, when smitten by their first ‘conviction of sin,’ ” and go on, less dramatically. “In all probability my case was by no means so peculiar as I fancied it, and I doubt not that many others have passed through a similar state” (pp. 137, 145). This new objectivity dictated a number of changes by which earlier outbursts of egotism, contrasting strikingly with the characteristic self-effacement that marks much of the work, were deflated or restrained. Occasionally, for passages first written specifically about himself, Mill substituted generalization (compare the two versions of the concluding statement about Plato’s influence, pp. 24, 25); and many particulars of biographical detail were omitted in the revised account: his meeting with the Frenchmen Ternaux, Destutt de Tracy, Dunoyer, and others (p. 62), “emulation of a little manuscript essay of Mr. Grote” in attempting his first argumentative composition (p. 72), writing an early essay replying to Paley’s Natural Theology (p. 74), keeping a journal “on the model of Grimm’s Correspondence” and contributing three or four articles to a projected “Philosophical Dictionary, suggested by Voltaire’s” (p. 110), weekly evening meetings to study elocution (p. 126), his elaborate speech in reply to Thirlwall (p. 128), his enthusiastic admiration in response to Carlyle’s article on Johnson (p. 182), and so on. The revised life is less full, less varied in texture, than that of the Early Draft.

  Here and there Mill toned down his recollections of family relationships and especially of his father. Indirect references to his mother, in speaking of his father’s “ill assorted marriage,” “to which he had not, and never could have supposed that he had, the inducements of kindred intellect, tastes, or pursuits” (pp. 52, 6), are charitably omitted. James Mill’s “authority and indignation” is rewritten as “displeasure” (pp. 14, 15); and the fact that he “often mockingly caricatured” his son’s bad reading aloud is discarded (p. 26), along with a number of other sentences and phrases of similar tendency (compare the summary comments on the severity of his upbringing at 52.19-21 and 53.28-9). By changes of this sort, and the addition of several sentences comparing James Mill with Bentham (p. 213), the revised version comes considerably closer than the earlier to being, in the passages describing his father, a eulogy.⁴⁸ The same access of charity is evident in recollections of associates outside his family. He cut out the greater part of his “character” of Roebuck (pp. 154-8), softened his critique of Maurice (pp. 160-1), rewrote his account of Sterling (pp. 162, 161), dropped a nasty paragraph on Sarah Austin (p. 186), and resorted to anonymity (“My father and I had hoped that some competent leader might arise; some man of philosophic attainments and popular talents”) in place of several sentences of harsh commentary on George Grote’s lack of courage, energy, and activity (pp. 202, 204-5).

  The more formal and generalized character of the later version is continued in the last part that Mill wrote, the forty-eight leaves of the K gathering in the Columbia MS, containing the text of the work from the present 251.10 to the end. This was drafted in the winter of 1869-70.⁴⁹ Mill presumably also gave the earlier part of the MS a final polish at this time (there are in this part a few interlineations and other alterations in darker ink than the rest); there is no evidence of any authoritative changes in the work after this date.⁵⁰ At this point other hands take over, and the text deteriorates.

  In a codicil to his will dated 14 February, 1872, Mill names Helen Taylor as his literary executor “with full and absolute power and license . . . to edit all or any of my literary works and to publish all or any of my manuscripts as she in her sole discretion may think fit.” He then specifically mentions the Autobiography:

  And whereas in these days no one is secure against attempts to make money out of his memory by means of pretended biographies I therefore think it necessary to state that I have written a short account of my life which I leave to the absolute charge and controul of my said stepdaughter Miss Helen Taylor to be published or not at her will and discretion and in the event of her death in my lifetime to the charge and controul of William Thomas Thornton [a longtime colleague of Mill’s at the India House] of No. 23 Queens Gardens Hyde Park Square on condition that he publishes the same within two years of my decease.

  Mill died at Avignon on 7 May, 1873, and the will was proved in London on 5 September. By the latter date the Autobiography was already set in type and about to be printed.

  Though Helen Taylor may have begun copying the Columbia MS in France before Mill’s death, the greater part of the Rylands transcript was made afterward, in the summer of 1873, when she was in England “pressing on as quickly as I am able” with the publication of the work, “having come to England for that purpose only.”⁵¹ In the last 236 leaves of the Rylands MS, which constitute about five-sixths of the whole, Helen Taylor and Mary Colman copied discontinuous sections of the Columbia MS simultaneously (the former doing Columbia MS gatherings B, E, G, H, I, and K, the latter doing C, D, and F), and there is further evidence of haste in the great number of errors in these leaves, and in the fact that although Helen Taylor here and there corrected and punctuated Mary Colman’s parts of the transcript, she clearly did not read them over entirely or attempt to prepare them in any thorough way for the press. Mary Colman’s pages of the transcript went to the printer with more than 1,200 variants from Mill’s text unaltered, including some 170 substantive variants—all of them errors, and many quite obvious. Altogether, when we add the considerably longer stretches copied by Helen Taylor and the twenty-three leaves at the beginning in the hand of the unidentified French copyist, the transcript has over 2,650 variants, including more than 450 substantives, from the MS that was its immediate source.

  The Autobiography was published by Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, “8vo. price 7s. 6d.,” on 17 October, 1873.⁵² The most significant of the differences between the first printed text and that of the Columbia MS are (1) the omission of the first paragraph that Mill wrote when he took up the work again in 1869-70 (the present 251.10-17); (2) the rearrangement of the remaining nine paragraphs of transition between the 1861 and 1869-70 parts of the MS (247.35-251.9, 251.18-261.12) into the order 4-5, 1-3, 9, 6-8 (so that 1873 has, in succession, 251.18-257.32, 247.35-251.9, 261.8-12, 257.33-261.7); and (3) the excision of ten mostly short passages (563 words altogether) referring to Helen Taylor.⁵³ In addition to these, there are some eighty other substantive differences of varying length and importance,⁵⁴ and, as one would expect in comparing any MS text with a printed version, hundreds of differences in the accidentals of punctuation, spelling, capitalization, and word-division.

  The evidence of rearranged and partly rewritten leaves in the Rylands MS shows that Helen Taylor originally copied all ten of Mill’s paragraphs beginning at 247.35 in their original order, and that she dropped 251.10-17 and rearranged the others as a revision in the transcript. The cancellation of the ten passages referring to herself, on the other hand, as the spaced asterisks replacing them in 1873 make clear, was done at proof stage.⁵⁵ The rest of the substantive differences between the Columbia MS and the printed text represent errors and alterations originating in the Rylands transcript and then further changes made by the 1873 compositor and/or the proof-correctors. It is remarkable that only sixty of the more than 450 substantive errors in the Rylands transcript got into print. Someone—most likely Helen Taylor, but perhaps also Alexander Bain, who we know had a text of the work in hand in the weeks just before it was published—read proofs fairly carefully against the Columbia MS, and restored Mill’s wording in some 390 places. The first printed text could have been much worse.

  The 1873 edition (reprinted many times in London and New York) remained the sole source of text until September, 1924, when the Columbia University Press issued Autobiography of John Stuart Mill Published for the First Time without Alterations or Omissions from the Original Manuscript in the Possession of Columbia University, with a Preface by John Jacob Coss (and, as the Preface explains, the “editorial work . . . undertaken by Mr. Roger Howson”). Considerably more faithful than the text of 1873, this nevertheless departs from readings of Mill’s MS in more than nine hundred particulars, including some seventy errors of wording and paragraphing, many of which originated in the Rylands transcript and 1873, on the latter of which Howson relied too much in his attempts to decipher Mill’s hand. It was, however (as it should have been), the standard edition for the next forty-five years, although, until the textual puzzles were untangled in the early 1960s, scholars and critics sometimes used another text also published in 1924, Harold J. Laski’s Oxford World’s Classics edition, which is an imperfect and unedited reprint of the first edition. The second twentieth-century text based on the Columbia MS is that in the Riverside paperback edited by Jack Stillinger (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969). This improves on the accuracy of the 1924 Columbia edition in the nine hundred particulars just mentioned, and has been the most reliable text for the past decade. The third editing from the Columbia MS is that in the present volume. It corrects “their contraries” to “the contraries” at 53.1 (Mill wrote “their” but then deleted “ir”) and restores “given to the world” to Mill’s note at 253n.22 (words deleted by Helen Taylor’s pencil in the MS); otherwise it is substantively identical with the text published in 1969. In the present edition the reader can, as mentioned, compare at a glance this text with that of the Early Draft in various stages, aided by the editorial apparatus described later in this introduction.

  LITERARY ESSAYS

  this volume includes, in addition to the Autobiography, fourteen of Mill’s essays and reviews,⁵⁶ and nine appendices. Only two of these articles were republished in Dissertations and Discussions (1859) in more or less complete form, “Thoughts on Poetry and Its Varieties” (the two-part essay in the Monthly Repository) and “Writings of Alfred de Vigny” (from the London and Westminster), but two more, “Aphorisms: Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd” and “Ware’s Letters from Palmyra” (both from the London and Westminster), are represented by extracts in Dissertations and Discussions. It might be argued that Mill did not, at least in 1859 when Dissertations and Discussions first appeared, believe many of these essays to be of major importance, and indeed by any standards some of them are slight; however, a case can be made for each of those he chose to leave buried in periodicals, and a fortiori for the importance of his literary essays as a whole.

  It would be perverse to argue, on the other hand, that Mill in middle life or later believed his literary articles to have the importance of those on economics, history, and politics (though a great many of the last were not reprinted by Mill); in this connection one should note that the essays in this volume span only the years 1824 to 1844, with all but four appearing in the 1830s, the period when he was most concerned to examine literary works and, as editor of the London and Westminster, was able to review them at will. They thus illustrate (without in themselves establishing) Mill’s movement from orthodox Philosophic Radicalism through a period of eclectic search to settled maturity.

  “Periodical Literature: Edinburgh Review” represents the initial period, being in fact his first article in the newly-founded organ of the Philosophic Radicals, and indicating both in manner and content that the designated successor to Bentham and James Mill was coming out in the expected and proper fashion. The assurance, contempt, irony (particularly in the attacks on Brougham’s articles—anonymous, of course, but not to the initiate), and characteristic language (e.g., the demand for “securities”) all mark the author as a committed sectarian as surely as the argument that the governors must be accountable to the governed, and the insistence that the aristocracy and its organs are motivated by special (and therefore sinister) interests. That Mill later recognized these as signs of narrow sectarianism is indicated by his comment in the Autobiography: “The continuation of this article in the second number of the review was written by me under my father’s eye, and (except as practice in composition, in which respect it was, to me, more useful than anything else I ever wrote) was of little or no value” (p. 95n; see also p. 96^k). It also, of course, was a continuation of his practised diligence (soon to be taxed in his editing of Bentham’s Rationale), especially when one notes that he had done the extensive research for his father’s impressive article as well as for his own. Though there are hints in the article of his individual views, it is not surprising that he chose not to republish it (in fact he republished none of his thirteen articles from the first dynasty of the Westminster, all of which have considerable interest and value). Alexander Bain’s comment is fair: most of the opinions in the article “were his father redivivus; yet, we may see the beginnings of his own independent start, more especially in the opinions with regard to women, and the morality of sex.”⁵⁷

  The next four essays, “On Genius,” “Thoughts on Poetry and Its Varieties,” and the two reviews of Junius Redivivus, all date from 1832 and 1833. They show Mill in the midst of his period of search, examining and enjoying the new perspectives and insights afforded by W. J. Fox and his circle, including Harriet Taylor, and by Thomas Carlyle, who, though certainly not a member of that group, knew them and discussed their ways and works in his extensive correspondence with Mill. The first three of these essays appeared in Fox’s Monthly Repository, where Harriet Taylor was publishing poetry, and to which William Bridges Adams (“Junius Redivivus”) was contributing. Probably in response to a suggestion in conversation, Mill wrote to Fox on 3 April, 1832, to say that he would send along anything of his appropriate to the “design” of the Monthly Repository;⁵⁸ “On Genius,” a response to an article in the Repository, was the first to appear, some six months later. Of it, and the three following pieces, Mill might equally well have noted that he was gaining practice in composition, though he had changed his model from James Mill to Carlyle. To the latter he commented on 17 September, 1832:

  . . . I have written a rambling kind of article, in which many, I will not say great, but big things are said on a small occasion, namely in the form of strictures on a well-meaning but flimsy article which recently appeared in the Monthly Repository. . . . As for this article of mine, those who best know me will see more character in it than in anything I have ever published; other people will never guess it to be mine. You, I hope, will find all the three articles true, the only praise I covet, & certainly rarer than any other in our times. But in this last you will find many things which I never saw, or never saw clearly till they were shewn to me by you, nor even for some time after.⁵⁹

  The italicized words, “You” and “true,” match the article’s intensity, which clearly relates to his excitement over Carlyle’s rhetoric, as does the expression of emotional response, and also the Delphic evasiveness of such comments as that in the same letter: “You see I adhere to my system, which is to be as particular in the choice of my vehicles, as you are indiscriminate, & I think we are both right.” All of this mannerism he later repudiated (and he did not reprint “On Genius”), informing George Henry Lewes (probably late in 1840):

  The “Genius” paper is no favorite with me, especially in its boyish stile. It was written in the height of my Carlylism, a vice of style which I have since carefully striven to correct & as I think you should do—there is too much of it in the Shelley. I think Carlyle’s costume should be left to Carlyle whom alone it becomes & in whom it would soon become unpleasant if it were made common—& I have seen as you must have done, grievous symptoms of its being taken up by the lowest of the low.⁶⁰

  The next item, “Thoughts on Poetry and Its Varieties,” is the republished form of two essays in the Monthly Repository (January and October, 1833), which show less hectically the same characteristics. (The version in Dissertations and Discussions, it may be interjected, reveals Mill’s awareness of the over-enthusiasm in the originals by removing italics in sixty-four places.) The first, “What Is Poetry?” was evidently written without thought of a sequel, in a rather tentative spirit, as befitted a venture into strange new lands. He sought guidance and reassurance from Carlyle on 27 December, 1832, saying he had written an essay for “Fox’s January number” that

  attempts something much higher, and intrinsically more valuable, than all these writings on politics, but with far less success: it is not nearly so good of its kind, because I am not so well versed in the subject. It embodies some loose thoughts, which had long been floating in my mind, about Poetry and Art, but the result is not satisfactory to me and will probably be far less so to you—but you will tell me to what extent you think me wrong, or shallow. I wrote the paper from conviction (else it had never been written) but not from that strong conviction which forces to write: rather because I wished to write something for Fox, and thought there was a clearer field open for him in that direction than in the political one.⁶¹

  And his doubts continued, as is evident in a letter to Carlyle (11 and 12 Apr., 1833) after the article appeared:

  That last [“What Is Poetry?”] you promised me a careful examination and criticism of: I need it much; for I have a growing feeling that I have not got quite into the heart of that mystery, and I want you to shew me how. If you do not teach me you will do what is better, put me in the way of finding out. But I begin to see a not very far distant boundary to all I am qualified to accomplish in this particular line of speculation.⁶²

  During the course of the year, and in large measure because of actual and anticipated responses from Carlyle, Mill pushed his investigations further into the relation between Art and Philosophy (a question that was to resolve itself for him a decade later in Book VI of his Logic), into the value of his intellectual inheritance, and into examinations of new poets. The products were, in part, the comments on his father included in Bulwer’s England and the English (App. D below), the ill-fated review of Robert Browning’s Pauline (the surviving note for which is given in App. E below), and the beginnings of a review of Alfred Tennyson’s poems which resulted in both “The Two Kinds of Poetry” (the second part of “Thoughts on Poetry and Its Varieties”) and “Tennyson’s Poems.” The remarks on his father, which Mill repudiated as having been “cut and mangled and coxcombified” by Bulwer (see p. 589 below), should be seen in conjunction with the comments on Bentham that he also contributed to England and the English.⁶³ In both he is respectful; the voice, however, is that of a broadening critic, not that of a narrow disciple. The independence is more obvious in the “review” of Pauline, which has received much comment from Browning scholars. One need only summarize briefly what is known: Pauline was published in March, and Mill, given a copy by W. J. Fox, wrote a review for the Examiner before the middle of May. It was judged too long for the Examiner, so Mill proposed to revise it for Tait’s. His summer months being busy, however, he had not made his revisions by August, when Tait’s published a dismissive review of the poem, and Mill withdrew his offer. The only surviving evidence of his views is found in the copy of Pauline which he returned to Fox. He, going against Mill’s suggestion, gave it to Browning, whose revisions of the poem reflect in part a reaction to Mill’s marginal comments. The fullest recording of these, with the note printed below as Appendix E, and Browning’s revisions, is in an article by William S. Peterson and Fred L. Standley.⁶⁴ Some of the marginalia give evidence of Mill’s subjective reading of this highly subjective poem; for example, against

  • But then to know nothing—to hope for nothing—
  • To seize on life’s dull joys from a strange fear,
  • Lest, losing them, all’s lost, and nought remains

  he wrote, “deeply true.”

  When these other articles of 1833 are read with “The Two Kinds of Poetry,” one can see the “weaving anew” process mentioned in the Autobiography (p. 163), as Mill intertwines the warp of his learned associationism with the woof of new ideas about the use and value of emotion. The new insight he owed, in this case, to James Martineau’s “On the Life, Character, and Works of Dr. Priestley,”⁶⁵ as he acknowledges on 26 May, 1835:

  The last two pages of the concluding paper made an impression upon me which will never be effaced. In a subsequent paper of my own in the “Repository” headed “The Two Kinds of Poetry” (October, 1833) I attempted to carry out your speculation into some of those ulterior consequences which you had rather indicated than stated.⁶⁶

  And he goes on to assert his continued acceptance of at least part of his intellectual inheritance, in a way that was to become increasingly sure as he gained confidence in his new proceedings; he had, he told Carlyle, two articles in the Monthly Repository for October, 1833, one on Blakey, and the other

  the little paper I told you I was writing in further prosecution of, or rather improvement on, the thoughts I published before on Poetry and Art. You will not find much in the first to please you; perhaps rather more in the second, but I fear you will think both of them too much infected by mechanical theories of the mind: yet you will probably in this as in many other cases be glad to see that out of my mechanical premisses I elicit dynamical conclusions. . . .⁶⁷

  It is not known what Mill thought of these speculations later—he merely refers to them as “the most considerable” of his contributions to the Monthly Repository (p. 205)—but it is unquestionably significant that he included a carefully revised version in Dissertations and Discussions, the only such inclusions from his Repository articles (apart from a section of his review of Alison’s History).

  Using the latest version from Mill’s lifetime as copy-text (the normal practice in this edition), we indicate the variants in earlier versions in footnotes. A study of these shows that the revisions can be seen to fall into four types: (1) alterations in opinion or fact, including major omissions, amplifications, or corrections of information; (2) alterations resulting from the time between writings, including changes in statement of fact consequent upon the passage of time and new publications; (3) alterations which qualify, emphasize, or give technical clarity; and (4) alterations which are purely verbal, or give semantic clarity, or result from shifts in word usage, and alterations in italicization. The changes here reveal several similarities to Mill’s practice in other reprinted essays: first, there is a large number, some 209 in all (or 6.5 per page of Dissertations and Discussions), as is common in the early essays reprinted by Mill; when less time intervened between the original form and the first revised form in 1859, fewer changes seemed necessary. Second, using the categories just described, one finds the order of frequency to be 4 (128 changes), 3 (58 changes), 1 (20 changes), and 2 (3 changes); by far the largest number (more than half) are of type 4.⁶⁸ Third, very few of the changes (16 in all) were made for the 2nd ed. of Vols. I and II of Dissertations and Discussions (1867), and of these almost all were relatively trivial (12 involved the removal of italics that had survived the apparently thorough reduction of shrillness in 1859). It should be noted that while what, to modern taste, might seem to be excessive italicization appears in articles by others in the Monthly Repository, Mill’s usage in these articles went far beyond that journal’s norm. Finally, the non-substantive changes, like those in Mill’s other writings, generally parallel those of the substantives.⁶⁹

  Any selection of significant or even merely interesting variants will reflect subjective judgments, but, especially when seen in conjunction with the Autobiography and the other literary essays, it seems likely that most readers would attach importance to the long type 1 variants (p. 353^s-s and p. 365^a) that originally closed the separate essays. The former contains a comparison of French and Grecian (Modern and Ancient) artists (capped by a quotation from Carlyle), an account of beauty in painting, illustrated by Claude Lorraine and Salvator Rosa, and a passage on the weakness of modern architecture compared to the Classical and Gothic “tongues” which it “parrots” (here a quotation from Milton is used). The latter (with a quotation from Wordsworth) has a different kind of interest, explaining as it does (if again somewhat mysteriously) Mill’s use of the signature “Antiquus,” and by inference its successor, the simple “A” that he normally used in the London and Westminster Review.

  An example of the few and slight type 2 changes may be seen in the deletion of “last summer” from the account of Mme Schröder-Devrient’s performance in Fidelio at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket, in 1832 (p. 351^q).

  Probably the most easily identified characteristic of Mill’s revisions is the search for the properly weighted judgment, resulting in the qualifications that we count as type 3 changes. Most common are substitutions of a less extreme modifier: in 1859 “rarely” replaced “never” at p. 344^j-j, and “commonly” replaced “always” at p. 364^t-t. (See also the string of changes, pp. 359-60^b-b to^f.) A troublesome instance of scholarly obfuscation may be instanced: a description of poetry (in quotation marks) as “man’s thoughts tinged by his feelings” is ascribed by Mill to “a writer in Blackwood’s Magazine”; in 1859 he says, bluntly, “He defines” it as such; but in 1833 he had said, “We forget his exact words, but in substance he defined” (p. 348^i-i)—he almost certainly refers to John Wilson, who used similar phrases (especially after Mill wrote these words), but no such definition has been located by us. Perhaps Mill was simply seeking a more positive persona, as in a similar change where “We believe that whenever” is strengthened to just “Whenever” (p. 362^j-j). There are also some that remind one of the circumstances relating to the composition: at p. 364^w-w Mill in 1833 placed the “logician-poet” above the “mere poet”; “logician” was the term he used at the time in contrasting himself with Carlyle the “poet”; in 1859 the higher talent was assigned to the “philosopher-poet”—not, it should be said, with any self-reference.

  While the type 4 changes are most trivial as well as most common, they have a cumulative effect (as in the removal of italics already cited, with which may be compared the removal of exclamation marks at, e.g., p. 363^o-o). Also some have special or typical interest, not infrequently of a slightly puzzling kind. For instance, at p. 347^b-b, when Mill, referring to the powers of the imagination, altered “arranged in the colours and seen through the medium” to “seen through the medium and arrayed in the colours,” had his attention been caught by what may well be a printer’s misreading of his hand (“arranged” for “arrayed”) which led him to reconsider the temporal or logical priority of the two clauses?⁷⁰

  The final two essays in this group, the parallel reviews in 1833 of The ProducingMan’s Companion by W. B. Adams, were published in April (Monthly Repository) and June (Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine)—that is, in the period between the two essays on poetry. The one in Tait’s, though it appeared later, was written and submitted before the one in the Monthly Repository, being proposed by Mill in a letter to William Tait of 23 January, 1833:

  I shall probably send you, in time for your March number, a short review of an excellent book, the Producing Man’s Companion, by Junius Redivivus—whom I think the very best popular writer whom the enlightened radicals count in their ranks—though I like his personal articles in the Examiner less than the many admirable papers he has written in the True Sun, Mechanics Magazine & various other periodicals.⁷¹

  The article went to Tait on 28 February, with Mill’s comment: “I send you a paper on Junius Redivivus, for your Magazine, in case you think it worthy of insertion.”⁷² He also mentioned it to Carlyle in a letter of 3 March, saying that he was forwarding a copy of the book to him.⁷³ Some implications in the review evidently gave Tait doubts, which Mill attempted to assuage on 30 March:

  With respect to the article on Junius Redivivus, I myself have not made up my mind on the question whether the situation of the working classes is on the whole better or worse than it was: I worded the article so as if possible not to commit the Magazine to a decided opinion, but I thought the testimony of a writer who evidently knows much of the working people, an article of evidence very fit to be received, though not sufficient to decide the question. Could not you let the article stand as it is, and express your dissent from the opinion of J. R. in an editorial note? If not, I should like to see the article again before it is printed; not from any fear that you should “spoil” the article, but because when anything is to be left out, a writer almost always thinks it necessary that something else should be put in.

  As to the matter of fact in dispute I feel convinced from the great diversity of opinion among equally good observers, & from the result of the enquiries of the Poor Law Commission, that the truth varies very much in different parts of the kingdom & among different classes of workmen.

  Are there any other parts of the article which you object to?⁷⁴

  Tait’s reservations may have delayed publication, but in any case almost a month earlier, indeed on 1 March, the day after he had sent his review to Tait, Mill said to W. J. Fox: “I will write a short paper for the next M.R. on Junius Redivivus.”⁷⁵ This he produced with his usual dispatch, commenting to Carlyle in a letter of 11-12 April:

  Tait has not yet published that paper on Junius Redivivus, but in the meantime I have written another on the same subject for Fox, (a much better one as I think), which has appeared in the April number, and . . . you shall have it by the first opportunity.⁷⁶

  Before the “first opportunity” had arrived, Carlyle had seen a quoted passage that prompted him to think that, just as he had detected a new mystic (that is, a promising disciple) in Mill’s anonymous articles on the Spirit of the Age in the Examiner, so here he had found another.⁷⁷ Mill, saying on 18 May that he has finally sent a copy, adds: “The passage you saw quoted about Books and Men, was from that; so there is not evidence therein of ‘another mystic’; so much the worse.”⁷⁸

  The brief notice of Views in the Pyrenees, which is not mentioned by Mill in extant correspondence or in the Autobiography, also appeared in 1833 in the Monthly Repository. Though slight, it shows his continued enthusiasm for mountain views; one recalls his remark that the powerful effect of Wordsworth on him was in part the result of Wordsworth’s setting much of his poetry in mountains, which, says Mill, “owing to my early Pyrenean excursion, were my ideal of natural beauty” (p. 151). Though we have no evidence to support the assertion, it seems not unlikely that Mill chose to notice the book, rather than having it given to him for review merely by accident.

  The next five essays have a common source: all appeared in the journal edited by Mill, the London Review (later the London and Westminster Review). As might be expected when he was his own editor, they are more assured and independent. This tone is also seen, even when mixed with apology, in Mill’s editorial notes for the review, printed in Appendix F below.⁷⁹ These help us see Mill in his editorial role, though it seems that Alexander Bain overstates the case in saying that the review “abounds in editorial caveats, attached to the articles: [Mill’s] principle of seeing partial truth on opposite sides was carried out in this form.”⁸⁰ There can be no question, however, about their casting more light on his friendships with Sterling and Carlyle, and on his running battle with Abraham Hayward.⁸¹

  Mill’s first major literary essay in his own journal was the review of Tennyson (1835), which has links with the preceding years: as we have already mentioned, “The Two Kinds of Poetry” was first conceived as the prelude to a notice of Tennyson. Had such a notice appeared in 1833, what has been recognized as Mill’s early appreciation of Tennyson’s poems would have been even more remarkable. His view was enthusiastic: in a letter to J. P. Nichol he ranked them as “the best poems . . . which have appeared since the best days of Coleridge.”⁸² As is typical of him, impressions were retained: a particular view, he wrote to his wife twenty years later, is “as one fancies the valley in Tennyson’s Oenone, only that there is no forest or turf here”; Francis Mineka notes that Mill had quoted in his review the lines from “Oenone” beginning, “There is a vale in Ida.”⁸³

  Though Mill chose, regrettably and for unknown reasons, not to include his review of Tennyson in Dissertations and Discussions, the next three items from the London and Westminster were represented there, though, in one case, only by the opening and, in another, by the closing paragraphs. That is, the “review” parts were deleted, leaving the generalized comments appropriate to an exordium and a peroration. The subject of the first of these reviews, Arthur Helps’s Thoughts inthe Cloister and the Crowd, was another book that Mill held in more than a reviewer’s regard. According to Alexander Bain,

  This [review] was another occasion when [Mill] displayed his passion for discerning and encouraging the first indications of talent and genius. I remember when I first came to London, this was one of the books he lent me; and we agreed that, in point of thinking power, Helps had not fulfilled the promise of that little work.⁸⁴

  Mill seems to have pondered the subject for almost a year, for he told Nichol just after the article appeared that it “was all prepared last spring, though I had not put any of it on paper.”⁸⁵ As usual, when he put pen to paper, the ink flowed easily and quickly: “I have stolen in the last two days, time to begin a little article for the review & a day or two more will finish it.”⁸⁶ Helps gave Mill one of those fine moments of gratification for reviewers when he let Mill know, over thirty years later, that his had been a word in season. Mill replied:

  If, as you intimate, my review of your first publication had any share in procuring for the world the series of works which I & so many others have since read with so much pleasure & instruction; far from regarding this exploit of mine as a sin to be repented of, I should look upon it as a fair set off against a good many sins.⁸⁷

  No detailed comment is needed on the revisions Mill made in the reprinted paragraphs, the discussion on pp. xxxv-xxxvi above being intended to cover the general issues and types. It may be noted, however, that there are comparatively few changes, only 12, or 2.4 per page of Dissertations and Discussions,⁸⁸ all of them type 3 or type 4, and all but 2 made in 1859.

  “Ware’s Letters from Palmyra” is not mentioned in any of Mill’s extant correspondence or in the Autobiography. The novel, published in the United States, was probably first brought to his attention by its mention (which he quotes to open his review) in Harriet Martineau’s Society in America. Here again there are few variants (7, or 2.3 per page of Dissertations and Discussions, each made in 1859), all of which are minor.⁸⁹

  Mill’s review of Alfred de Vigny’s Œuvres, which appears in Dissertations and Discussions, less only the summary and running comment on Cinq Mars (p. 474^c), is his last major attempt, in Bain’s words, “to philosophize upon Literature and Poetry.”⁹⁰ Though we have only two comments on it by Mill, they indicate why he thought it was worth reprinting, and also show how he saw it in relation to his earlier essays. In the Early Draft he remarks that of his literary essays, “the one which contained most thought” was that on Vigny (p. 224). And in a letter of February, 1841, to George Henry Lewes, he says:

  You have not however yet convinced me that the line between poetry, & passionate writing of any kind, is best drawn where metre ends & prose begins. The distinction between the artistic expression of feeling for feeling’s sake & the artistic expression of feeling for the sake of compassing an end, or as I have phrased it between poetry & eloquence, appears to me to run through all art; & I am averse to saying that nothing is poetry which is not in words, as well as to saying that all passionate writing in verse is poetry. At the same time I allow that there is a natural, not an arbitrary relation between metre & what I call poetry. This is one of the truths I had not arrived at when I wrote those papers in the Repository but what afterwards occurred to me on the matter I put (in a very condensed form) into the concluding part of an article in the L. & W. on Alfred de Vigny. I wish you would look at that same when you have time, (I will shew it to you) & tell me whether what I have said there exhausts the meaning of what you say about the organic character of metre, or whether there is still something further which I have to take into my theory.⁹¹

  A glance at the revisions in this article helps establish the generalization offered above, that the later the date of an essay (this appeared in 1838), the less rewriting was needed: here there are 132 substantive changes, or 3.1 per page of Dissertations and Discussions (as against 6.5 per page for “Thoughts on Poetry and Its Varieties” of 1833).⁹² Once again no extensive treatment of the variants is called for. As usual, the order of frequency is type 4, type 3, type 1, type 2, with more than half being type 4,⁹³ and more than a third type 3; and very few changes were made in 1867 (7 of 132).⁹⁴

  The last essay in this group from the London and Westminster is Mill’s first review (Aug., 1838) of Richard Monckton Milnes. It would appear again that he was searching out good material for the Review, for the first issues of Milnes’s two books (later in the year published as Milnes’s Poems, Vols. I and II) were rather elusive. In the review, it will be noted, Mill says one of the volumes “was not designed for publication, and the other is not yet published” (p. 505). Editorial consultation led him to write to Leigh Hunt on 11 November, 1838:

  Robertson tells me you have a copy of Mr. Milnes’ volume of poems: if you are not needing it for a day or two, would it be too much to beg the favour of a sight of it? Something relating to the next number of the Review may depend upon the opinion we form of it—if left at Hooper’s or sent by omnibus or parcel company to the I[ndia] H[ouse] I should receive it.⁹⁵

  Despite the cautious tone (“Something . . . may depend”), Mill probably already intended to review the volumes, as the search and the praise in the review suggest prior knowledge.

  After giving up the editorship and proprietorship of the London and Westminster, Mill wrote only a little for the Westminster, as it then once more became. The next two essays in this volume, appreciative notices of Milnes’s Poetry for the People and of Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome, come from that small group, and it is at least moderately ironical that one of the remnant from the early, ferocious, and anti-poetical days of the Westminster should appear in it, almost for the last time, as the author of favourable reviews of poetry by non-Radicals. Nothing, it should be said, is known of the composition of these articles, nor do their texts present any challenges. And the same is true of the final item in the volume, Mill’s letter of January, 1844, in defence of his father, which appeared in the Edinburgh Review, the journal to which, in 1840, he began to contribute many of his best essays, as James Mill had in the years preceding the founding of the Westminster. (Concerning the main issue in this letter, James Mill’s financial obligations to Bentham, one should look at the revision of the Early Draft at p. 56^a-a below.) So a cycle, which this volume illustrates, comes to a close: the young sectarian Benthamite, now assured and, with the publication of the Logic, widely acclaimed, whose first periodical article was an attack on the Edinburgh, has become a contributor to it. The Autobiography tells us, of course, that the story does not end here, but the record of Mill’s further career as an author must be sought in other volumes of the Collected Works.

  This is not the appropriate place to enter into detailed exposition of Mill’s critical ideas or their relation to his ethical or political thought, and in any case one would be hard pressed to maintain that the essays in this volume—so various in occasion, scope, and seriousness of purpose—represent a coherent body of theory. A few of the pieces are not really “literary” at all (in the stricter sense of treating imaginative literature imaginatively), while others suggest that, as a practical critic, Mill had, by our standards, less than excellent taste. (His lengthy quotations in the two reviews of Milnes amount to a small anthology of the world’s worst poetry.) Even so, there are in the essays some statements that have, to modify Keats’s phrase, put Mill “among the English critics,” and these deserve to be noticed.

  The best known of Mill’s critical ideas are contained in “Thoughts on Poetry and Its Varieties,” and most of them more specifically in the first section (originally published separately as “What Is Poetry?”), where, after setting down the object of poetry (“to act upon the emotions”) and distinguishing between poetry and eloquence (“eloquence is heard, poetry is overheard”), Mill arrives at this summary definition: “Poetry is feeling, confessing itself to itself in moments of solitude, and embodying itself in symbols, which are the nearest possible representations of the feeling in the exact shape in which it exists in the poet’s mind” (p. 348). The three elements of this definition—the strong (almost exclusive) emphasis on feeling, the idea of the poet as self-confessor in solitude, and the description of symbols as vehicles of the poet’s emotion—are distinctive, and these are the points that have been of most interest to historians of modern criticism.⁹⁶

  Near the beginning of the essay, in a preliminary attempt to pin down exactly where poetry resides, Mill says that “poetry is not in the object itself, nor in the scientific truth itself, but in the state of mind in which the one and the other may be contemplated,” and he then invents an example, often quoted, of object as representation of feeling:

  If a poet describes a lion, he does not describe him as a naturalist would, nor even as a traveller would, who was intent upon stating the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. He describes him by imagery, that is, by suggesting the most striking likenesses and contrasts which might occur to a mind contemplating the lion, in the state of awe, wonder, or terror, which the spectacle naturally excites, or is, on the occasion, supposed to excite. Now this is describing the lion professedly, but the state of excitement of the spectator really.

  (P. 347.)

  In the later twentieth century, on the hither side of T. S. Eliot’s famous definition of “objective correlative”⁹⁷ (which is certainly what Mill, in his simpler way, intended the lion to exemplify) and several decades of New Critical elaboration of the concept, we can appreciate Mill’s intelligence, even precocity, at this point in the essay. But in the course of developing the notion of self-confession—“All poetry is of the nature of soliloquy,” “no trace of consciousness that any eyes are upon us must be visible in the work itself,” “Poetry . . . is the natural fruit of solitude and meditation” (p. 349)—he strips poetry of nearly all its traditional elements (story, incident, description, moral truth, above all an audience to interact with), and in place of the poet as, in Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads (para. 15), “a man speaking to men,” we are presented with the much narrower concept of a man speaking to himself about himself.⁹⁸

  Mill was himself soliloquizing, of course, and his essay has the rhetorical character of the greater Romantic lyric, taking shape according to the movement of the speaker’s mind. In the second section (originally published separately as “The Two Kinds of Poetry”), Mill restores some of what he had taken away by defining two categories, the poetry of the “poet by nature” (represented by Shelley) and the “poetry of culture” (Wordsworth—some would today reverse the examples), and then, perhaps upon realizing that he has produced two halves of something rather than two discrete entities, ends up with the ideal union of the two in the concept “philosopher-poet” (p. 364).⁹⁹ And this is the position that he begins with when he enters into the theoretical section of his review of Tennyson: “There are in the character of every true poet, two elements, for one of which he is indebted to nature, for the other to cultivation” (p. 413).

  The Tennyson essay contains an eloquent statement on the relative value of feeling and thought in achieving “the noblest end of poetry”:

  Every great poet, every poet who has extensively or permanently influenced mankind, has been a great thinker;—has had a philosophy, though perhaps he did not call it by that name;—has had his mind full of thoughts, derived not merely from passive sensibility, but from trains of reflection, from observation, analysis, and generalization. . . . Where the poetic temperament exists in its greatest degree, while the systematic culture of the intellect has been neglected, we may expect to find, what we do find in the best poems of Shelley—vivid representations of states of passive and dreamy emotion, fitted to give extreme pleasure to persons of similar organization to the poet, but not likely to be sympathized in, because not understood, by any other persons; and scarcely conducing at all to the noblest end of poetry as an intellectual pursuit, that of acting upon the desires and characters of mankind through their emotions, to raise them towards the perfection of their nature. This, like every other adaptation of means to ends, is the work of cultivated reason; and the poet’s success in it will be in proportion to the intrinsic value of his thoughts, and to the command which he has acquired over the materials of his imagination, for placing those thoughts in a strong light before the intellect, and impressing them on the feelings.

  (Pp. 413-14.)

  This is a much more generous and reasonable view of poetry than that of the first section of “Thoughts on Poetry and Its Varieties,” and it much better represents Mill’s considered ideas on the subject. From the Tennyson essay on, and most prominently in the reviews of Vigny, Milnes, and Macaulay, his emphasis is where readers of the Autobiography would expect it to be—on the importance of feeling and thought, and on the educational, social, and cultural functions of poetry (“to raise [men and women] towards the perfection of their nature”). These later ideas, unlike those of “Thoughts on Poetry,” are not distinctive; they were long in the public domain before Mill arrived. But this is not the first instance in which Mill sacrificed distinctive originality for the sake of more substantial and more comprehensive truth.

  There is little evidence that Mill read poetry later in life,¹⁰⁰ and it is probably best, in the over-all view, to say that where, before the mental crisis, he had been “theoretically indifferent” to poetry (see p. 115), ever afterward he was theoretically in favour of it—still, however, almost entirely at the level of theory. But though he wrote no more articles or reviews that would qualify for inclusion as “literary essays,” we nevertheless have, from his middle years, the fine paragraphs about discovering Wordsworth and the importance of poetry and “culture of the feelings” in the Autobiography (pp. 149-53), and from his last decade the powerful defence of poetry and art at the conclusion of his Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St. Andrews (1867). What is most significant, finally, is not any specific idea about the nature of poetry or the role of the poet, but instead the spectacle of Mill’s “strange confusion . . . endeavouring to unite poetry and philosophy.”¹⁰¹ This “confusion” and endeavour made him a broader, deeper, and more complex thinker and writer than he had been before, and they continue to make him interesting and valuable. His more orderly predecessors and contemporaries now figure mainly in footnotes; he, on the other hand, as the works collected in these volumes amply testify, remains alive in text and in context.

  APPENDICES

  the appended materials, arranged chronologically, fall into four categories: first, items that, though they contain text by Mill, for one reason or another are not in a form intended by him for publication (Appendices A, D, E, and G); second, lists that are provided as additional information for the understanding of the main texts (Appendices B, C, and I); third, matter of which the authorship is, in general, not certain, though most of it is probably by Mill (Appendix F); and fourth, a pertinent text by Helen Taylor (Appendix H). These are mentioned above, and are described in the headnotes that introduce each item; therefore a cursory description is here sufficient.

  Appendix A consists of the only surviving juvenilia from Mill’s pen: the opening pages of his first history of Rome, and his “Ode to Diana,” the former written when he was 6½ years old, the latter probably about a year or so later.

  Appendices B and C, in an attempt to bring together evidence of Mill’s precocity, provide lists of his early reading and writing; neither is, nor can be, complete, but even in this form they make up, at least for our less strenuous times, an impressive record.

  Appendix D gives the version by Bulwer, repudiated by Mill, of comments (now lost) that he had written on his father’s place in English life and letters.

  Appendix E gives the text of the comment on Browning’s Pauline that probably formed the basis of the review which, by a combination of circumstances, never was printed.

  Appendix F is made up of the editorial notes in the London and Westminster Review; these help elucidate the history of the periodical, and Mill’s attitudes towards authors and subjects.

  Appendix G gives a selection of extracts from the “Rejected Leaves” of the Early Draft of the Autobiography; it was not feasible to print these as variants, but they should be read in connection with the corresponding passages in the two main texts as evidence of Mill’s earliest intentions and of his and his wife’s sense of the appropriate and the proper.

  Appendix H is a continuation by Helen Taylor of the Autobiography, which summarizes the period between the last section by Mill (1869-70) and his death in May, 1873.

  Appendix I, the Bibliographic Index, lists all persons and works cited in the Autobiography, the essays, and the relevant appendices. These references are, consequently, omitted from the index proper. Because Mill saw his autobiographical memoir as a record of his writing career, this appendix incidentally includes references to most of his writings.

  TEXTUAL PRINCIPLES AND METHODS

  as throughout this edition, the copy-text for each item is the final version produced under Mill’s personal supervision, the latest over which he had significant authorial control.¹⁰² For the Autobiography this means the Columbia MS, since Mill never saw the Rylands transcript of it, or of course the first printed edition. (The Early Draft text presented here on facing pages may, in this view, be considered a single long variant, though it also has claims to independent status as a once complete and wholly authoritative version.) For the rest of the items (except for material given in Appendices A, E, G, and H) there are no extant MSS, and the source of text in each case is a printed version.

  Silent emendations. The following procedures apply to all the texts alike. Typographical peculiarities of titles, chapter headings, first lines, and some other features that similarly are matters of printing design are not strictly preserved. While as a rule the copy-text’s punctuation and spelling are retained, certain elements of style have been made uniform: for example, periods have regularly been inserted, where they are missing, after abbreviations, but have been deleted after references to monarchs (e.g., “Louis XIV,”); and dashes have been deleted where they are combined with other punctuation before a quotation or a reference. Italic punctuation following italic letters (in a printed version) has been regularized to roman. Indications of ellipsis have been normalized to three dots plus, where necessary, terminal punctuation. The positioning of footnote indicators has been normalized so that they always follow adjacent punctuation marks; in some cases, for consistency of appearance, references have been moved from the beginning to the end of quotations.

  Also in accordance with modern practice, all long quotations have been set off from the text, in reduced type, with opening and closing quotation marks removed. In consequence, it has occasionally been necessary to add square brackets around Mill’s own editorial interpolations; but there will be little likelihood of confusion, because our own editorial insertions in the texts are strictly confined to page references (we have deleted Mill’s square brackets in the one place—p. 474n—that would have caused trouble). Double quotation marks replace single as the standard. Titles of works referred to in the text have been italicized or enclosed in quotation marks according to a uniform style, and occasionally a lower-cased word in a title has been silently capitalized. Mill’s references to sources, and additional page references supplied editorially (in square brackets), have been normalized. Erroneous references have regularly been corrected; a list of corrections and other alterations is given in the note below.¹⁰³

  Treatment of MS texts. In the texts edited from MSS—the Autobiography and the Early Draft (as well as in the textual notes to those items and the MS materials printed in Appendices A, E, G, and H)—these further silent procedures apply. Superscript letters in “20^th,” “M^cCrie’s,” “M^r,” and the like have been regularly lowered to the line. Initial capitals of words that originally began a sentence but in revision were rearranged into some other position within a sentence have been reduced to lower case. Periods have been added, where they are missing, at the ends of sentences. Commas and in a few instances other marks of punctuation have been added, where necessary or especially desirable, mainly to complete Mill’s intended revision—as before or after an interlined phrase or clause, and before a deleted conjunction—but also in combination with other devices (the end of the line in the MS, or a closing parenthesis or quotation mark) that Mill characteristically used as a substitute for more conventional punctuation. Very occasionally, as when an opening parenthesis appears intended to cancel a mark, punctuation has been dropped. The ampersand has regularly been changed to “and,” and we have spelled out most arabic numbers (and added conventional hyphens in some that were already spelled out). Editorial emendations to the texts of the Autobiography and Early Draft that are not covered by these general procedures are listed in the note below.¹⁰⁴ In the headnotes to the essays, the quotations from Mill’s personal bibliography, which survives in a scribal copy in the Mill-Taylor Collection, British Library of Political and Economic Science, have regularly been corrected; again, a note below lists the corrections.¹⁰⁵

  Textual notes to the MSS. The textual apparatus to the Early Draft provides a selection of the most significant earlier and cancelled readings that illuminate Mill’s education, his reading and writing, and his relationships with his father, mother, siblings, and wife. Sometimes, especially in conjunction with Appendix G, which should be considered an extension of this apparatus, several successive versions may be reconstructed (e.g., the five accounts of Mill’s practical deficiencies, three of them extracted or described at pp. 608-11 below, the other two in the Early Draft and Columbia MS texts at pp. 32-3, 37, 39): and the influence of Mill’s wife, in alterations, queries, and other markings pencilled in the MS, is given special attention. The simplified methodology used in these textual notes is explained in the headnote on p. 2. It should be understood that the descriptions “deleted first by HTM” and “altered to final reading first by HTM” mean that the deletion or revision at hand originated with her, and that Mill accepted it by going over the pencilled alteration in ink (no change by her, if Mill himself did not subsequently alter the words, has been incorporated into the text). Only two cancelled passages are given from the Columbia MS (on pp. 272, 287). For the most part, the cancelled readings in the first 162 leaves of this later version are identical, or nearly so, with the Early Draft text that we print on facing pages; and in the final section of the MS, which is first draft, Mill was no longer writing intimately about his father or his wife, or any other matter where ambiguous personal feelings were involved, and his deletions and revisions here are routinely stylistic, and not of sufficient interest to deserve recording.

  Emendation of printed sources. In the items based on printed sources, typographical errors have been regularly corrected in the text. The note below lists these along with other readings that have been emended.¹⁰⁶

  Textual apparatus for the essays. As indicated in an earlier section of this Introduction, only four of the essays were reprinted by Mill (in two cases only a brief passage is involved), and so there are relatively few variants to record. The ensuing paragraphs explain the methods of indicating variants in these instances and more generally throughout this edition.

  We are concerned primarily with substantive variants, which may be taken to mean any differences among comparable texts except those in punctuation, spelling, capitalization, word-division, demonstrable typographical errors, and such printing-house concerns as type size and style. All substantive variants are reported, save for the substitution of “on” for “upon” (in five places), “an” for “a” (twice before “historical” and once before “heroic”), and “though” for “although” (twice).¹⁰⁷ The variants are of three kinds: addition of a word or words, substitution of a word or words, and deletion of a word or words. The illustrative examples that follow are drawn, except as indicated, from “Thoughts on Poetry and Its Varieties,” for which our copy-text is the version printed in 1867.

  Addition of a word or words: see p. 356^g-g. In the present text the passage “Whatever be the thing which they are contemplating, if it be capable of connecting itself with their emotions, the aspect” appears as “Whatever be the thing which they are contemplating, ^gif it be capable of connecting itself with their emotions,^g the aspect”; and the variant note reads “^g-g+59,67”. The plus sign shows that the passage enclosed by the superscripts in the text is an addition, and the numbers after the plus sign specify the editions in which the passage is included. The editions are indicated by the last two digits of the year of publication: here 59 = 1859 and 67 = 1867 (respectively, the 1st and 2nd editions of Volumes I and II of Dissertations and Discussions). Information explaining the use of these abbreviations is given in the headnotes, as required. Any editorial comment in the variant notes is enclosed in square brackets and italicized.

  When this example is placed in context, the interpretation is that the first published text (1833) had “Whatever be the thing which they are contemplating, the aspect”; in 1859 this was altered to “Whatever be the thing which they are contemplating, if it be capable of connecting itself with their emotions, the aspect”; and (as is evident in the present text) the new reading was retained in 1867.

  Substitution of a word or words: see p. 356^f-f. In the text the passage “which is a natural though not an universal consequence of” appears as “which is ^fa natural though not an universal consequence^f of”; the variant note reads “^f-f33 one of the natural consequences”. Here the words following the edition indicator are those for which “a natural though not an universal consequence” was substituted. When the same rules are applied and the variant is placed in context, the interpretation is that the first published text had “which is one of the natural consequences of”; in 1859 this was altered to “which is a natural though not an universal consequence of”; and the reading of 1859 (as is evident in the text) was retained in 1867.

  In this volume there are only rare and trivial instances where passages were altered more than once: at p. 343^b-b, the first published text has “ ‘poetry’ does import”; in 1859 Mill changed this to “ ‘poetry’ imports”; and in 1867 he removed the quotation marks from “poetry” to give the final reading, “poetry imports”, which appears in this edition as “^bpoetry imports^b”. To indicate this sequence, the note reads “^b-b33 ‘poetry’ does import] 59 ‘poetry’ imports” (the closing square bracket separates variants in a sequence). In the other cases, the variant represents a return to the original reading, as at p. 473^z-z, where in 1838 “these” appeared; in 1859, “those”; and in 1867, “these” again. Here the note indicates, as well as the sequence, the possibility of a typographical error: “^z-z59 those [printer’s error?]”.

  Deletion of a word or words: see p. 356^b and p. 422^f-f. The first of these is typical, representing a convenient way of indicating deletions in a later version. In the text at p. 356^b a single superscript b appears centred between “in” and “a”; the variant note reads “^b33 the table of contents of”. Here the words following the edition indicator are the ones subsequently deleted. The interpretation is that the first published text had “in the table of contents of a”; in 1859 the words “the table of contents of” were deleted; and the reading of 1859 (as is evident in the text) was retained in 1867.

  The second example (p. 422^f-f) illustrates the method used to cover deletions when only portions of the text were later reprinted, as in the case of “Aphorisms: Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd,” part of which was republished as “Aphorisms. A Fragment,” in Dissertations and Discussions, Vol. I, pp. 206-10. (That is, there is here, exceptionally, a later version of only part of the text originally published in the London and Westminster Review [1837], which, being the only complete version, we adopt as our copy-text; normally the copy-text would be the latest version.) In the text the words “appears to us to be” are printed “appears ^fto us^f to be”; the variant note reads “^f-f-59,67”. The minus sign indicates that in the editions specified the words enclosed were deleted. The interpretation is that the first published version had (as is evident in the text) “appears to us to be”; in 1859 this was altered to “appears to be”; and the latter reading was retained in 1867.

  Differences between italic and roman type are treated as substantive variants and therefore are regularly recorded, except when they occur in foreign phrases and titles of works. Although variations in punctuation and spelling are generally ignored, when they occur as part of a substantive variant they are included in the record of the variant. The superscript letters used to indicate variants to the text are placed exactly with reference to their position before or after punctuation.

  Variants in Mill’s footnotes are treated in the same manner as those in his text. In the essays in this volume no footnotes were added or deleted in the reprinted versions.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  for permission to publish manuscript material, we are indebted to the Columbia University Library and the Columbia University Press, the University of Illinois Library and the University of Illinois Press, the Yale University Library, the British Library, the British Library of Political and Economic Science, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the National Provincial Bank (literary executors and residual legatees of Mary Taylor, Mill’s step-grand-daughter). Our gratitude goes in full measure to the staffs of the libraries just mentioned, and also to those of the Archives Départementales (Tarn-et-Garonne), Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire, Montpellier, Bibliothèques Municipales de Bagnères-de-Bigorre, Montauban, Pau, Tarbes, Toulouse, the Liverpool Public Library, the London Library, the Somerville College Library, the University of London Library, the University of Toronto Library, and the Victoria University Library. Instrumental in our work has been the cheerful and ready co-operation of the editorial, production, design, and printing staff of the University of Toronto Press, most particularly that of Rosemary Shipton, the copy-editor. Among others to whom thanks are due are the members of the Editorial Board of the edition, and T. D. Barnes, Robert Fenn, John Grant, Walter Houghton, J. R. de J. Jackson, Renée Kahane, F. E. Sparshott, and Bart Winer.

  A Major Editorial Project Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada has generously supported the preparation and production of this volume; perhaps we may be allowed to say, for all those who have benefited from this programme, how much the Council is to be congratulated for its contributions to scholarship in what are, for too many, very lean times. This grant has enabled us to work with an editorial team whose members have insisted on labouring far beyond reason and request: Marion Filipiuk (whose command of French has been particularly valuable), Bruce Kinzer (who has, in addition to his other labours, compiled the Index), Martin Kreiswirth, Mary O’Connor, and Rea Wilmshurst. Where better than in what is truly a joint production could we acknowledge our immense indebtedness to our colleague-wives, Ann Robson and Nina Baym, who (to paraphrase Mill) have both taught and learnt that a scholar from whom nothing is ever demanded which he or she cannot do, never does all she or he can.

  [1 ]Later Letters [LL], ed. Francis E. Mineka and Dwight N. Lindley, Collected Works [CW], Vols. XIV-XVII (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972), Vol. XIV, p. 142 (29 Jan., 1854).

  [2 ]References to material printed in this volume are normally given in the text. The third of these stated purposes, it should be noted, is not present in the corresponding text of the Early Draft.

  [4 ]P. 251. The composition of the concluding pages of Chap. vii is described on p. xxvii below.

  [5 ]The acknowledgments are not extensive, though Helen Taylor is given a page explicitly (and more implicitly), and Thomas Hare’s writings are also given a page.

  [6 ]If we include the discussion of his writings while he was a member of parliament, the account fills about twenty pages, whereas that of his crisis occupies about eight.

  [7 ]See Earlier Letters [EL], ed. Francis E. Mineka, CW, Vols. XII-XIII (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963), Vol. XII, pp. 6-10.

  [8 ]See Anna J. Mill, ed., John Mill’s Boyhood Visit to France (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1960), esp. pp. 24, 28, 35, 43, 50.

  [9 ]Given Mill’s attitude towards his own life, it is not surprising that the Autobiography lacks particularity of detail. But there are some sentences that convey a sense of luminous memory breaking through the calm level. Often these have to do with his father’s use of the Socratic method in teaching: “my recollection,” he says, “is almost wholly of failures, hardly ever of success” (p. 35). Earlier he had remarked that he “well” remembered “how, and in what particular walk,” his father had attempted to get him to understand syllogistic logic (p. 21); here he goes on to mention what was obviously vivid in his mind, forty years after the event, his inability to define “idea,” and his father’s challenging him for having said that “something was true in theory but required correction in practice” (p. 35). Shortly thereafter he says he remembers “the very place in Hyde Park where, in [his] fourteenth year,” his father explained to him how unusual a person his education had made him (p. 37). Perhaps the most surprising passage is that concerning Ford Abbey, where the grounds, Mill (with his wife’s help) says, “were riant and secluded, umbrageous, and full of the sound of falling waters” (p. 57). More often the emotion is excluded with the telling detail, and only retracing the process of revision gives an opening: he mentions reading Dugald Stewart on reasoning “a second or third time” (originally he had written—probably correctly—“third or fourth”), but he cancelled “sitting in the garden at Mickleham” (where the Mills hada cottage). The detail is striking for anyone who has handled the bulky folios of Stewart, another matter that Mill omits. (Pp. 188-9.)

  [10 ]Probably the one he intended to tell most against a general application of his father’s methods is that on p. 37, where Mill says that much of what was accomplished was incompatible with “any great amount of intercourse with other boys.” (It need not be said that this pre-Freudian remark has no special reference to the English public schools.)

  [11 ]See John Arthur Roebuck’s account in his Life and Letters, ed. R. E. Leader (London: Arnold, 1897), pp. 25-8. See also pp. 306-7, where Leader gives Roebuck’s speech at an election meeting in support of Mill’s candidacy for Westminster (reported in the Morning Star, 7 Apr., 1865, p. 2).

  [12 ]See John M. Robson, “John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, with Some Observations on James Mill,” in Essays in English Literature Presented to A. S. P. Woodhouse, ed. M. MacLure and F. W. Watt (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964), p. 254.

  [13 ]One, “On the Utility of Knowledge,” was dated 1823 by its editor, H. J. Laski (who had the MS in his possession); see Mill’s Autobiography, ed. Laski (London: Oxford University Press, 1924), pp. 267-74. The MS of the other, “On Parliamentary Reform,” is inscribed by Mill “1823 or 24” (Mill-Taylor Collection, British Library of Political and Economic Science, London School of Economics).

  [14 ]The Utilitarian Society included William Prescott (Grote’s banking partner), William Eyton Tooke, William Ellis, George John Graham, and John Arthur Roebuck; the Society of Students of Mental Philosophy (which Harriet Grote called “the Brangles”) included all these (though Tooke is not named in known sources) plus, at one time or another, George Grote, Horace Grant, Henry Cole, Edward Lytton Bulwer, “two brothers Whitmore” (probably George and William, who were members of the London Debating Society), and [John?] Wilson. (See Textual Introduction, A System of Logic, CW, Vols. VII-VIII [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973], Vol. VII, p. liii, and the sources there cited, and F. E. Sparshott, Introduction, Essays on Philosophy and the Classics, CW, Vol. XI [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978], p. viii n.)

  [15 ]He mentions Roebuck, Ellis, and Charles Austin (pp. 127-9).

  [16 ]See pp. 129-33. Roebuck was (for most of the period) Mill’s major ally, but many other friends joined in the fray. The Society continued for a few years after Mill (with John Sterling, a new friend made through the Society) withdrew in 1829.

  [17 ]P. 123. Mill’s assertion that he “learnt German” at this time, and his later mention of reading “Goethe and other Germans” (adding in an earlier version, “either in the original or in translations,” p. 160b), merit attention, because the question whether he read the language is often raised, especially in connection with his philosophy. The Hamiltonian method (set out in James Hamilton, The History, Principles, Practice and Results of the Hamiltonian System [Manchester, Sowler, 1829]) involved immediate word for word translation by the student, the method originally used, and apparently still approved, by James Mill, who, on 15 Nov., 1825, was one of a group that examined “eight lads” of poor families who had been learning Latin, French, and Italian by this system (Morning Chronicle, 16 Nov., 1825).

  [18 ]In the Early Draft the sentence as first written reinforced the point by continuing, “than during the next few years.” Harriet Taylor underscored “few” and Mill responded with the question, “meaning of this mark?” Her answer, whatever it was, led to the deletion of the words.

  [19 ]There are references on pp. 21, 147-9. He played the piano (and composed in an amateur way); the piano he used in France still exists, in Fondation Flandreysy-Espérandieu, Palais du Roure, Avignon.

  [20 ]See John M. Robson, “J. S. Mill’s Theory of Poetry,” University of Toronto Quarterly, XXIX (July, 1960), 420-37, and, for a more personal application of the theory, Robson, “Harriet Taylor and John Stuart Mill. Artist and Scientist,” Queen’s Quarterly, LXXIII (Summer, 1966), 167-86.

  [21 ]Mill surely knew of Fox, if he had not actually met him, as early as 1824, for Fox contributed to the first number of the Westminster the lead article, which almost certainly is one of the two Mill says he took most to heart (see p. 96 below).

  [22 ]3 July, 1831, pp. 420-1; 8 Apr., 1832, p. 230, 21 Apr., 1833, p. 245; 20 Apr., 1834, p. 244, and 4 Jan., 1835, p. 4.

  [23 ]17 Mar., 1833, pp. 164-5; 14 Apr., 1833, pp. 229-30; 16 June, 1833, pp. 372-3; 8 Sept., 1833, p. 567; 15 Dec., 1833, pp. 788-9; 12 Jan., 1834, p. 21.

  [24 ]Monthly Repository, n.s. VII (Mar., 1833), 215, and ibid. (Sept., 1833), 601, and 593.

  [25 ]As an example (not a complete account), the following persons, all of whom most certainly influenced Mill in some significant way, are, except as noted, given two sentences or less: Ricardo, Joseph Hume, Samuel Bentham and his family (about five sentences), Mill’s teachers in France, Say (four sentences), W. E. Tooke, William Ellis, G. J. Graham, Thirlwall (three sentences), Coleridge, Goethe, Fonblanque (three sentences), and Bain.

  [28 ]Though Helen Taylor had nothing to do with the formation of Mill’s central views, she was a major influence on the expression of his ideas and on his actions in the last decade of his life.

  [29 ]One of them seems best relegated to a footnote, important as it is: would it not have been instructive for him to have given more space tothe influence on him of the dead (Aristotle, Bacon, Locke, as well as the acknowledged Plato)?

  [30 ]This section on the composition of the work and the transmission and first publication of the text draws (sometimes verbatim) on two previous accounts by Jack Stillinger—“The Text of John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, XLIII (Sept., 1960), 220-42, and the introduction to The Early Draft of John Stuart Mill’s “Autobiography.” These in turn are indebted to Albert William Levi’s pioneer work in “The Writing of Mill’s Autobiography,” Ethics, LXI (July, 1951), 284-96.

  [31 ]He used the same method in the extant MSS of “Notes on Some of the More Popular Dialogues of Plato” (see Textual Introduction, Essays on Philosophy and the Classics, CW, Vol. XI, pp. lxxxi-lxxxii, and illustration facing p. 175) and in the surviving MS page of “The Silk Trade” (see Essays on Economics and Society, CW, Vol. IV [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967], illustration facing p. 138).

  [32 ]Diary entry for 19 Jan., 1854, in The Letters of John Stuart Mill, ed. Hugh S. R. Elliot, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1910), Vol. II, p. 361.

  [33 ]LL, CW, Vol. XIV, pp. 137-8 (23 Jan., 1854) (At the end of this passage, as frequently elsewhere in his letters to her, Mill refers to his wife in the third person.)

  [34 ]Ibid., p. 154. Between 23 Jan. and 10 Feb. the “Life” is mentioned briefly in two other letters: “I fancy I see one large or two small posthumous volumes of Essays, with the Life at their head,” he writes on 29 Jan. (ibid., p. 142); and on 4 Feb. he promises to “look again through the Life” when he has finished rewriting “Nature” (ibid., p. 149). The “Essays” that he was envisioning in the first of these (29 Jan.) include “Nature,” “Utility of Religion,” On Liberty, and some pieces later incorporated into Utilitarianism; presumably they are also the “various Essays, for eventual publication, on some of the fundamental questions of human and social life” that he refers to toward the end of the Autobiography (p. 245 below). See Textual Introduction, Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society, CW, Vol. X (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), pp. cxxii-cxxix.

  [35 ]But apparently not the whole of Part II—or, more specifically, not the text of RII 20 (see the fourth paragraph below, and App. G, pp. 616-17)—since Mill says in both letters that he has written nothing of their “private circumstances.” Two breaks in the composition of the original Part II are evident from changes in pen, the first following the text of the extract given from RII.1-8 (pp. 617-24 below), the second coming after the sentence ending at 222.20 (“ . . . did not know what to say.”)

  [36 ]LL, CW, Vol. XIV, p. 131.

  [37 ]Ibid., p. 159.

  [38 ]F. A. Hayek, John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951), p. 196.

  [39 ]LL, CW, Vol. XIV, p. 163.

  [40 ]Letters of John Stuart Mill, ed. Elliot, Vol. II, p. 373.

  [41 ]LL, CW, Vol. XIV, pp. 165-6.

  [42 ]Ibid., pp. 152, 178.

  [43 ]Levi, “The Writing of Mill’s Autobiography,” p. 292. The passage from RII.20 was rewritten as the present 236.15-24. See also the textual notes on pp. 236-7.

  [44 ]LL, CW, Vol. XIV, p. 168.

  [45 ]Ibid., p. 190.

  [46 ]Her pencilled markings, alterations, and comments appear in nearly a hundred of the 169 leaves, they are absent most notably in the revised leaves that replaced R119-21, RII.1-8, 20, and 24. Occasional markings and alterations of Mill’s revisions at left—revisions made as a result of her earlier markings (e.g., in the discarded versions given in the long textual note on pp. 64-5)—are evidence that she read at least some of the MS twice.

  [47 ]The dating is based on Helen Taylor’s notes in the 1873 first edition, pp. 240, 251. “Written about 1861” appended to the end of the paragraph at 247.17 in the present volume, and “What precedes was written or revised previous to, or during the year 1861. What follows was written in 1870” appended to the end of the paragraph at 251.9. As is explained below, several paragraphs of Columbia MS text were reordered in the Rylands transcript (and thence in the 1873 edition) in the span where the latter note occurs. But 251.9 is where the text of gathering I of the Columbia MS leaves off, and 251.10 is the beginning of K; it seems virtually certain that the dating in the 1873 note should be applied to (because it originally derived from) this division in the MS. There are a few details in the text before 251.10 that postdate the year 1861—e.g., the references on pp. 79 and 105 to John Romilly as “Lord Romilly” (his title beginning in 1865)—but these are in every instance darker-ink interlineations in the Columbia MS and not part of the original writing.

  [48 ]This is how Mill himself viewed it. In a letter of 26 Nov., 1865, he thanks George Grote for “doing justice to my father” in an article in the Westminster Review, and adds. “My own contribution to his memory is already written in a MS designed for posthumous publication [i.e., the Autobiography]. though if I live more than a few years longer, I shall very likely publish it while I am alive” (LL, CW, Vol. XVI, p. 1121).

  [49 ]The dating is based on the second of Helen Taylor’s notes quoted in n. 47 just above, Mill’s parenthetical date in the text at 276.17, and the first sentence of Helen Taylor’s continuation given below in App. H (p. 625), all of which refer to 1870 or “the winter of 1869-1870.”

  [50 ]Except possibly in one instance (at 251.42), Mill did not respond to, and may never have seen, the handful of alterations and comments pencilled by Helen Taylor in the Columbia MS. For the record, they are as follows: 47.28-9, deletion of the five-word parenthesis; 55.4, deletion of a redundant “in education” after “dispensed with” (an emendation followed in the present text); 193.27, “Not true” written on the opposite verso and connected specifically to the words “or artistic tastes”: 195.6, “Miss Flower” (with the initials “HT”) also on the opposite verso, identifying the “person of genius”, 251.28-9, alteration of “preceded, all . . . her work” to read “preceded it, all . . . my wife’s work”, 251.42, interlineation of “perhaps” (subsequently cancelled in ink, but not necessarily by Mill) after “except”; 253n.22, deletion of “given to the world”; and 274.10, interlineation of “English” before “electors.” Helen Taylor’s note printed below on p. 282 is written in ink.

  [51 ]From an undated pencil draft written on the back of a note to her from the editor Howard Evans, 30 July, 1873 (Mill-Taylor Collection, British Library of Political and Economic Science). Both the Rylands transcript and the 1873 first edition are minutely described, and the dating discussed, in “The Text of John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography” (see n. 30 above). Though it has no independent authority, the transcript is of considerable importance textually. Before its rediscovery in 1959, there existed two separate texts of the full work, in the Columbia MS and the 1873 edition, and scholars had no knowledge of their relative authority (there was always the possibility that Mill himself provided copy, in another MS now lost, for the 1873 printing). The Rylands MS shows indisputably that Mill had no direct hand in the copy-text from which 1873 was printed, and thus establishes the Columbia MS as the single authoritative source for the final version of the work.

  [52 ]Athenaeum, 11, 18 Oct., 1873, pp. 451, 508, and The Times, 17 Oct., 1873, p. 6. The “second edition” of 1873 is apparently a reissue of sheets of the first impression, with a cancellans title leaf pasted to the stub of the original title and a twelve-page index inserted at the end. A sub-edition was issued in New York, by Henry Holt and Co., from plates of the first London issue, in the first week of Nov., 1873.

  [53 ]264.30-1 (“Miss Helen Taylor . . . character,”), 264.33-8 (“, and have . . . adequate idea”); 264.39-265.1 (“—another companion . . . quality”); 265.3-4 (“, the least . . . attached to it”), 265.30-1 (“at my daughter’s suggestion”); 265.35-6 (“it was enriched . . . writing. But”); 268.10-13 (“And I shall . . . till our return.”); 285.19-37 (“The time . . . others.”); 286.30-287.4 (“At this time . . . were hers.”); 290.16 (“by my daughter and myself,”)

  [54 ]These are listed in “The Text of John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography,” pp. 232-3, 237.

  [55 ]She worried a great deal over these passages. In letters of 6 and 13 Sept., 1873, Alexander Bain had urged her to omit the most extravagant parts of Mill’s description of her mother as well as herself: “I greatly doubt the propriety of your printing those sentences where he declares her to be a greater poet than Carlyle . . . and a greater thinker than himself—and again, a greater leader than his father (or at all events an equal)” (pp. 183, 213 in the present volume); “I would recommend to you, under all the circumstances, to decline the compliment, for yourself, of being more original than Mr Mill” (Bain refers specifically to the passage at the top of p. 265). Her eloquent reply of 14 Sept., too long to be included here, should be read in full; see “The Text of John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography,” pp. 234-7. The result was a compromise: retention of the passages about her mother on the grounds that Mill meant what he said, and omission of the references to herself because Mill “agreed . . . that nothing known from private intercourse ought to be published if it gives pain to living persons.”

  [56 ]Of the fourteen, eight appeared in the Westminster Review (including one in the London Review and four in the London and Westminster Review), four (one of them originally two separate essays) in the Monthly Repository, and one each in Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine and the Edinburgh Review. It is interesting to note that Mill signed his first three essays in the Monthly Repository “Antiquus,” explaining, when he last used it, his reason both for adopting and for abandoning it (see p. 365), and saying he would henceforth use “A.” And in five of the seven that appeared in the London and Westminster he used “A”; however, in the two others—the review of Ware and the first review of Milnes—he signed himself “S,” perhaps because he had other reviews in the same issues, and did not want readers to think the Review’s stable was emptying, and he was being left with a terminal case of Hobson’s choice.
  
  For economy, here and in similar contexts where no distinction is needed, “London and Westminster Review” should be understood to include the two volumes of the London Review that appeared before its merger with the Westminster.

  [57 ]Alexander Bain, John Stuart Mill (London: Longmans, Green, 1882), p. 33.

  [58 ]EL, CW, Vol. XII, pp. 97-8.

  [59 ]Ibid., pp. 117-18. The other two articles referred to are “Corporation and Church Property” and “Austin on Jurisprudence.”

  [60 ]Ibid., Vol. XIII, p. 449.

  [61 ]Ibid., Vol. XII, p. 133. Later he would surely have regretted saying he was “not so well versed” in poetry.

  [62 ]Ibid., p. 149.

  [63 ]Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society, CW, Vol. X, pp. 3-18, and 499-502.

  [64 ]“The J. S. Mill Marginalia in Robert Browning’s Pauline: A History and Transcription,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, LXVI (2nd quarter, 1972), 135-70, citing, inter alia, EL, CW, Vol. XII, pp. 157, 162, 174, 185. Our transcription corrects some errors in theirs. The marginal note quoted below is on p. 47 of Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession (London: Saunders and Otley, 1833).

  [65 ]Monthly Repository, n.s. VII (Jan., Feb., Apr., 1833), 19-30, 84-8, 231-41. Mill refers to, and quotes from, the concluding portion in his Logic (CW, Vol. VII, p. 481, and Vol. VIII, pp. 857-8).

  [66 ]EL, CW, Vol. XII, p. 247.

  [67 ]Ibid., p. 181. For the article on Blakey, see Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society, CW, Vol. X, pp. 19-29.

  [68 ]There are proportionally rather fewer type 3 changes here; in other essays there is more commonly only slightly more of type 4 than of type 3. See, e.g., CW, Vol. X, p. cxxii, and Vol. XVIII, p. lxxvii. In our calculations we are counting the variant notes, not the individual changes.

  [69 ]That is, more (though not preponderantly) occur here than in later essays, and more (with the same qualification) in 1859 than in 1867. The great majority involve changes in the use of commas, but there are almost as many deletions of a comma or a pair of commas (30 instances) as of additions (27 instances). In general, and remembering that some of these changes probably reflect house style, one may say that there is a lightening of punctuation over time—again a tendency seen in Mill’s other writings.

  [70 ]See also pp. 351n-n, 356b, 357t-t, and 360k-k. What is very likely a misreading, one paralleled elsewhere, may be seen in the change to “or” from “and” (habitually written by Mill as a small ampersand resembling both “or” and “a”) at p. 358w-w; and cf. below, the change from “where” to “when” (p. 423j-j) and from “those” to “these” (p. 467l-l), very likely the result of other common problems with Mill’s hand.

  [71 ]EL, CW, Vol. XII, p. 137.

  [72 ]Ibid., p. 142.

  [73 ]Ibid., p. 146.

  [74 ]Ibid., p. 148.

  [75 ]Ibid., p. 142.

  [76 ]Ibid., p. 149.

  [77 ]See Carlyle’s letter to Mill of 1 May, 1833, in The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle, ed. Charles Richard Sanders, et al. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1970- ), Vol. VI, p. 377. Concerning his comment on Mill’s “The Spirit of the Age,” see p. 181n below.

  [78 ]EL, CW, Vol. XII, p. 155.

  [79 ]Some of the worrisome details of an editor’s life can be seen in Mill’s letters, for example in that of June, 1837, to Robertson (EL, CW, Vol. XII, pp. 338-9), in which he says, in part, “There is the devil to pay on another score—the new printers have begun with page 1 instead of page 285”—as indeed No. 10 and 53 (July, 1837) mistakenly did.
  
  A greater problem—more annoying to modern scholars than it evidently was to Mill—concerns the numbering of the volumes of the review. When in 1836 the London Review combined with the Westminster as the London and Westminster, it was decided to preserve the volume sequence for both periodicals. There had been two volumes of the London, and twenty-four of the Westminster, so the first amalgamated volume was designated Vol. III and XXV. This double numbering was continued until 1838 (Vol. VII and XXIX). At that time it was decided to do something about the first two volumes of the London, which had appeared at the same time as, but quite distinct from, Vols. XXIII and XXIV of the Westminster, the decision was to give them the next numbers in the Westminster sequence, and so they are identified as both London Review, Vols. I and II, and London and Westminster Review, Vols. XXX and XXXI. The next volume published after this decision (that for 1838-39) was designated as Vol. XXXII. After one more volume, XXXIII (1839-40), Mill relinquished the review, and it became again (with Vol. XXXIV) the Westminster. The sequence of the Westminster numbers, then, is maintained at the cost of chronology and logic; between XXIX (1838) and XXXII (1838-39) come XXX (1835) and XXXI (1835-36).
  
  All this is quite bad enough, but the confusion is confounded for those who notice the note on the verso of the title page of the bound version of Vol. XXXIII (1839-40), printed on pp. 606-7 below. There it is said, with an apology for the lateness of the announcement and with some peculiar arithmetic, that “to avoid the double numbering” of the volumes, “the numbers of each Review were added together, whereby Vol. VII and XXIX became Vol. XXXI of the united series.” And indeed on the title page of that volume as bound, and in its index, as well as in the footlines, it is identified as Vol. XXXI. However, as indicated on the spines of sets, for the reasons given above, it is properly referred to as Vol. VII and XXIX.

  [80 ]Bain, John Stuart Mill, p. 57. The quotation from Locke that appears on the title pages of the review seems to indicate Mill’s determination that the periodical reflect his own search for truth rather than an assured dogmatism: “Those who have not thoroughly examined to the bottom all their own tenets, must confess they are unfit to prescribe to others; and are unreasonable in imposing that as truth on other men’s belief which they themselves have not searched into, nor weighed the arguments of probability on which they should receive or reject it.” (Essay Concerning Human Understanding, in Works, New ed., 10 vols. (London: Tegg, et al., 1823), Vol. III. p. 104 [Bk IV, Chap xvi. §4]. In Locke the sentence begins, “At least those, who . . . .”)
  
  The accompanying motto may equally well point to the influence over the fledgling review exerted by James Mill (see p. 208 below): “Legitimae inquisitionis vera norma est, ut nihil veniat in practicam, cujus non fit etiam doctrina aliqua et theoria.” (Francis Bacon, De augmentis scientiarum, in Works, ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath, 14 vols. [London: Longman, et al., 1857-74], Vol. I, p. 772.) The English version (ibid., Vol. V, p. 59) of this passage (we have italicized the words omitted from the Latin version in the quotation) reads: “Again, it tends to the perfection of learning, because it is the perfect law of the inquiry of truth, ‘that nothing be in the globe of matter which has not its parallel in the globe of crystal or the understanding,’ that is, that there be nothing in practice, whereof there is no theory or doctrine.”

  [81 ]Concerning Hayward and Mill, see Francis E. Mineka, “John Stuart Mill and Neo-Malthusianism, 1873,” Mill News Letter, VIII (Fall, 1972), 3-10. Also, Hayward’s translation of Faust was attacked by J. H. Garnier in the London and Westminster, III and XXV (Apr., 1836), 366-90.

  [82 ]EL, CW, Vol. XII, p. 245.

  [83 ]LL, CW, Vol. XIV, p. 382.

  [84 ]Bain, John Stuart Mill, p. 49.

  [85 ]EL, CW, Vol. XII, p. 322.

  [86 ]LL, CW, Vol. XVII, p. 1969.

  [87 ]Ibid., p. 1709.

  [88 ]Oddly enough, there are comparatively more (22 in total, all but 2 in 1859) changes in accidentals, which do not here, or in the next review (where there are only 5), appear in their final form because the copy-text for each is the earlier version.

  [89 ]All are of type 3 or type 4, except that at p. 460g-g, which ranks as a type 1: Mill deleted in 1859 the passage here italicized: “greatly is any book to be valued, which in this age, and in a form suited to it, and not only unexceptionable but fitted to be most acceptable to the religious leader, does its part towards keeping alive the chivalrous spirit.”

  [90 ]Bain, John Stuart Mill, p. 52.

  [91 ]EL, CW, Vol. XIII, pp. 463-4.

  [92 ]There are also relatively fewer non-substantive changes, only a handful of which were made in 1867 (including the addition of accents on four foreign words or names).

  [93 ]In contrast to the revised essay of 1833, this one shows far less need for the removal of italics; there are only 8 instances (1 dating from 1867), and in one place (p. 484t-t) the word “salon” (probably judged still to be foreign) was italicized in 1859.

  [94 ]Mill’s translations of Vigny demonstrate an extraordinary command of French. In those excerpts from Cinq-Mars chosen to illustrate Vigny’s ability to convey the character of an age, Mill successfully translates the flavour by employing structures and vocabulary, often cognates, for their archaic or poetic suggestiveness, occasionally leaving French words that contribute to atmosphere or mystery. In the excerpts that illustrate Vigny’s depiction of character and emotions, Mill, in his seemingly effortless way, renders faithfully ideas and nuances of feeling, but he also demonstrates, through the occasional omission and rearrangement of detail, that he has a good eye, and ear, for the dramatic. The most interesting omission and reordering of elements occurs in the translation of Stello’s credo concerning his poetic gift (p. 497), where Mill suppresses in each sentence the introductory main clause expressing belief in the self, and moves his affirmation of the poet’s visionary power from first to third place, after his response to Nature and his sympathy with mankind.

  [95 ]EL, CW, Vol. XIII, p. 384.

  [96 ]See in particular Alba H. Warren, Jr., English Poetic Theory, 1825-1865 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950), pp. 66-78, M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp (New York Oxford University Press, 1953), pp. 23-5; René Wellek, A History of Modern Criticism: 1750-1950, Vol. III (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), pp. 132-6.

  [97 ]In “Hamlet and His Problems” (1919), reprinted in Selected Essays, 1917-1932 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1932), pp. 124-5. Eliot later echoes Mill in The Three Voices of Poetry (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1954), where the first voice is “the poet talking to himself—or to nobody,” and Eliot suggests that “part of our enjoyment of great poetry is the enjoyment of overhearing words which are not addressed to us” (pp. 6, 33). As Mill progresses to a less extreme position, with the emphasis on both thought and feeling that begins with the Tennyson essay, he joins the many anticipators of Eliot’s “unified sensibility” (see Eliot’s “The Metaphysical Poets,” in Selected Essays, pp. 245-8).

  [98 ]Though there were other, more immediate stimuluses (Carlyle and James Martineau have been mentioned earlier, and Harriet Taylor is certain to have played a part), the most fundamental and pervasive influence on this essay, as on the literary essays more generally (especially “On Genius” and the reviews of Tennyson and Vigny), is Wordsworth, to whom Mill is indebted not just for quotations and the specific ideas that we have identified in reference notes, but for much of the vocabulary as well (e.g., “representation of feeling,” “state of excitement,” “feeling pouring itself out,” “emotion spontaneously embod[ying] itself,” “overflowing of . . . feelings,” “vivid sensations”) and even such rhetorical strategies as the affirmative antithesis so characteristic of Wordsworth when he wants to proceed in spite of the logical weakness of his position: “If the above be, as we believe, the true theory . . . or even though it be not so, yet . . .” (p. 350). (The paragraph of advice to readers beginning at the middle of p. 403 suggests that Mill read the 1798 Advertisement to Lyrical Ballads as well as the later prefaces.) But Wordsworth in his theory is constantly in touch with his audience, and the narrowness of Mill’s position in other respects is similarly unWordsworthian. Possibly we have here a prime case of Harold Bloom’s “anxiety of influence.” The most curious aspect of the relation is Mill’s use of the most typically Wordsworthian descriptions of the poet to apply not to Wordsworth but, as it turns out, to Shelley! (See especially the paragraph beginning at the bottom of p. 357.)

  [99 ]This strategy Mill employs elsewhere, most notably in his discussions of Bentham and Coleridge; he found the notion of “halfness” in Carlyle, but the putting together of “halfmen” was probably based on his own self-examination.

  [100 ]The following, however, from Lady Amberley’s journal, 28 Sept., 1870, is often quoted. “After dinner Mr. Mill read us Shelley’s Ode to Liberty & he got quite excited & moved over it rocking backwards & forwards & nearly choking with emotion; he said himself: “it is almost too much for one.’ Miss Taylor read the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty but in rather a theatrical voice not as pleasant as Mill’s, he also some of hisfavourite bits of Wordsworth whh he admires very much.” (The Amberley Papers, ed. Bertrand and Patricia Russell [London: Hogarth Press, 1937], Vol. II, p. 375.)

  [101 ]John Bowring’s phrase, reported by Caroline Fox, Memories of Old Friends, ed. Horace N. Pym (London: Smith, Elder, 1882), p. 113 (journal entry for 7 Aug., 1840).

  [102 ]The rationale for this practice is set forth in John M. Robson, “Principles and Methods in the Collected Edition of John Stuart Mill,” in Robson, ed., Editing Nineteenth-Century Texts (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967), pp. 96-122.

  [103 ]Following the page and line notation, the first reference is Mill’s identification in the copy-text, the corrected identification (that which appears in the present text) follows after a closing square bracket. We do not indicate places where a dash has been substituted for a comma to show continuity onto adjacent pages, or where a volume number has been added to the reference.
  
  301.16 p. 28] Pp. 27-8
  
  309n.1 p. 23] Pp. 22-3
  
  310n.11 p. 184] Pp. 184-5
  
  313.38 p. 343] Pp. 343-4
  
  324n.18 p. 183] 483
  
  426.30 p. 26] Pp. 26-7
  
  427.19 p. 23] Pp. 23-5
  
  428.18-19 p. 46] Pp. 45-6
  
  433n.2 p. 216] Pp. 216-17
  
  450.26 pp. 39, 40] Pp. 39-42

  [104 ]The MS reading is given first, followed by the emended reading in square brackets:
  
  29.3 think [think it] [Mill inadvertently deleted “it” in revision]
  
  29.9 with [with which] [word omitted between pages]
  
  55.4 with in education [with] [inadvertent repetition of phrase]
  
  74.10-11 the to discussions [the discussions] [word left undeleted in revision]
  
  74.30 politics [politics,]
  
  82.16 society [society,]
  
  90.2 H. [House]
  
  94.14 H. [House]
  
  118.6 is being itself [being itself] [word left undeleted in revision]
  
  134.29 urged [urged)]
  
  150.18 mountains [mountains,]
  
  152.30 Byron [Byron,]
  
  158.8 H. [House]
  
  161.35 character, [character;]
  
  174.24 modes modes [modes] [repetition of word at beginning of new page]
  
  193.21 according [according to]
  
  219.24 case [case,]
  
  223.3 unpropitious [unpropitious,]
  
  227.15 me [me,]
  
  228.8 enlarged enlarged [enlarged] [repetition of word at beginning of new page]
  
  238.20 to not to [not to]
  
  240.12 The [the]
  
  241.30 opinion [opinion,]
  
  242.17 Govt [Government]
  
  253.19 me [me,]
  
  253.19 not [not,]
  
  255n.9 Système [Cours]
  
  262.39 men [men,] [restoring deleted comma]
  
  265.19 whom [whom,]
  
  266.23 population [population,]
  
  266.30 Abolitionists [Abolitionists,]
  
  268.1 U. [United]
  
  268.9 1861 [1862]
  
  269.6 certainly [certainly,]
  
  278.38 press [press,]
  
  285.19-20 daughter . . . Taylor [daughter, . . . Taylor,]
  
  288.24 seems [seems,]

  [105 ]In a few cases our reading of the MS differs from that in the edition by Ney MacMinn, J. M. McCrimmon, and J. R. Hainds, Bibliography of the Published Writings of J. S. Mill (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1945), to which page references (as MacMinn) are given in the headnotes. The corrected scribal errors (the erroneous reading first, with the correction following in square brackets) are:
  
  328.3 f. [for]
  
  328.4 ‘On Genius and signed Antiquus’ [‘On Genius’ and signed ‘Antiquus’]
  
  342.5-6 ‘what is poetry’ [‘What Is Poetry’]
  
  342.6 Antiguus [Antiquus]
  
  342.6 1833 [1833)]
  
  342.7 Antiguus [Antiquus]
  
  368.8 Redivierus [Redivivus]
  
  380.10 Redivierus [Redivivus]
  
  392.8 News [Views]
  
  420.7 running to the [running title]
  
  432.8 Palmyro [Palmyra]
  
  504.10 Milne’ [Milnes’]
  
  518.5 Milne’s [Milnes’]
  
  534.5 indication [vindication]

  [106 ]Typographical errors in variant printed versions are ignored. For items where Mill himself made MS corrections, “SC” = his library, Somerville College, Oxford. The following are emended (the reading of the copy-text is given first, followed by the emended reading in square brackets):
  
  297.2 nntouched [untouched]
  
  299.32 stated [stated,] [as in quotation above, and for sense]
  
  301n.2 ) [)]
  
  301n.4 had [bad]
  
  306.15 ) [)]
  
  307.12 three pence [threepence] [as elsewhere in sentence]
  
  309.21 P. 283. [reference mistakenly given before the passage which it locates]
  
  311.20 pages, [pages] [for sense]
  
  314.35 question [question.]
  
  315.1 that under, the [that, under the]
  
  316.1 Even, [Even]
  
  316.33 istelf [itself]
  
  319.32 place [place.”] [restyled in this ed.]
  
  319n.1 Johnson s [Johnson’s]
  
  319n.1 Works [Works.]
  
  319n.2 pp. 146, 147 [pp. 146-7.]
  
  324n.2 ‘ [“]
  
  334.39 an inferiority [our inferiority] [corrected by Mill in SC copy]
  
  336.15-16 as, a preparation for [as a preparation for,] [corrected by Mill in SC copy]
  
  343.1 1 [I]
  
  343.12 though [through] [as in 33,59, and for sense]
  
  348.26 appear [appears] [as in 33,59]
  
  351.11 pii [fui] [correction indicated by Mill in SC copy of “What Is Poetry?” and made in 59]
  
  353n.24 œsthetic [æsthetic]
  
  354n.2-3 a loveliness, a cheerfulness, a wildness, a melancholy, a terror [or loveliness, or cheerfulness, or wildness, or melancholy, or terror] [correction indicated by Mill in SC copy of “What Is Poetry?”]
  
  362.11 this [This] [as in 33, and to conform with 362.25]
  
  363.4 this is ‘exaggeration,’ [“this is exaggeration,”] [as in 33,59]
  
  370.4 some [sore] [corrected by Mill in SC copy]
  
  371.1 with [worth] [corrected by Mill in SC copy]
  
  371.38 fame [frame] [corrected by Mill in SC copy]
  
  374.34 openly [clearly] [corrected by Mill in SC copy]
  
  381.12 judgment; [judgment,] [for sense]
  
  388.12 persih [perish]
  
  399.21 flower-pots [flower-plots] [as in Source (without hyphen), corrected by Mill in SC copy]
  
  404.40 charmed [charmèd] [as in Source]
  
  421.2 flourishes [flourishes,] [as in 59, 67, 75, and for sense]
  
  423.7 va riou slyfrom [variously from]
  
  423.24 atmosphere [atmosphere,] [as in 59,67,75, and for sense]
  
  424.7 γνωμαι [γνω̑μαι]
  
  424n.32 Remains [Remains’] [restyled in this ed.]
  
  429.7 well read [well-read] [as thrice elsewhere in paragraph]
  
  435.4 bears [bear] [for sense]
  
  437.11 exemta [exempta] [as in Source]
  
  437.15 vengeanee [vengeance]
  
  441.42 lulled [dulled] [as in Source]
  
  444.5 “Julia [“ ‘Julia] [restyled in this ed.]
  
  448.12 “Ye . . . doubtless,” . . . “of [“ ‘Ye . . . doubtless,’ . . . ‘of] [restyled in this ed.]
  
  448.38 Corah [Korah] [as in Source and Bible]
  
  449.3 Ishmaelite.” [Ishmaelite.’ ”] [restyled in this ed.]
  
  449.10 “Roman,” . . . “I [“ ‘Roman,’ . . . ‘I] [restyled in this ed.]
  
  449.28 loss.” [loss.’ ”] [restyled in this ed.]
  
  451.36 “As . . . tent” . . . “the [“ ‘As . . . tent’ . . . ‘the] [restyled in this ed.]
  
  452.3 “that [‘that]
  
  452.12 tent.’ ” [tent.’]
  
  453.40 thou [‘thou]
  
  454.47 her’s [hers] [correct in Source]
  
  458.43 robe [robe.]
  
  472.9 [paragraph] Those [[no paragraph] ‘Those] [as in 38, restyled in this ed.]
  
  474n.1-2 [Here . . . unnecessary.] [Mill’s brackets omitted in this ed.]
  
  476n.24 Célébres [Célèbres]
  
  478n.38-9 ‘ideas . . . before,’ ‘that . . . exile,’ [“ideas . . . before,” “that . . . exile,”]
  
  478n.41-3 “He . . . ‘I . . . conscience.’ [“ ‘He . . . “I . . . conscience.” ’]
  
  479n.40 Cardinal” [Cardinal’]
  
  484n.5 “I [“ ‘I]
  
  484n.7 “He [“ ‘He]
  
  484n.35 life! [life)!] [correct in Source]
  
  485n.11 kness [knees]
  
  485n.12 ‘For [“ ‘For]
  
  485n.19 “You [“ ‘You]
  
  485n.20 hermine [her mine]
  
  485n.28 Grandchamp’ (his servant), ‘called [Grandchamp” (his servant), “called] [restyled in this ed.]
  
  485n.31-2 ‘Fly,’ . . . “or . . . lost!” [“ ‘Fly,’ . . . ‘or . . . lost!’ ”]
  
  485n.43 “It [“ ‘It]
  
  486n.5 “The [“ ‘The]
  
  486.2 Militaire [Militaires] [as in 38 and on title page of Source]
  
  487.29 Militaire [Militaires] [as in 38 and on title page of Source]
  
  491.15 fault.’ [fault.] [as in 38]
  
  491.19 seated. [seated,”] [as in 38, restyled in this ed.]
  
  495.27 expected, [expected] [as in 38]
  
  501.3 austère [austère,] [as in Source, 38]
  
  520.21 onward [outward]
  
  527n.6 fed [feud] [as in Source; corrected by Mill in SC copy]
  
  530.17 Semponius [Sempronius] [as in Source]
  
  530.38 Semponius [Sempronius] [as in Source]
  
  538.11 “Life,’ [“Life,”]
  
  538.29 mistatements [misstatements]

  [107 ]Two other trivial differences are not otherwise noted: “i.e.” to “i.e.” (347.28) and “the ‘general” to “ ‘the general” (488.12).

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  7: CW vol. 2 Principles of Political Economy: Intro by V.W. Bladen

  John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume II - The Principles of Political Economy with Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy (Books I-II), ed. John M. Robson, introduction by V.W. Bladen (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965). Chapter: Introduction

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/102/9651 on 2009-10-28

  The online edition of the Collected Works is published under licence from the copyright holder, The University of Toronto Press. ©2006 The University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced in any form or medium without the permission of The University of Toronto Press.

  ---

  The Collected Edition of the works of John Stuart Mill has been planned and is being directed by an editorial committee appointed from the Faculty of Arts and Science of the University of Toronto, and from the University of Toronto Press. The primary aim of the edition is to present fully collated texts of those works which exist in a number of versions, both printed and manuscript, and to provide accurate texts of works previously unpublished or which have become relatively inaccessible.

  Editorial Committee

  f. e. l. priestley,General Editor

  j. m. robson,Associate Editor

  v. w. bladen, alexander brady, j. b. conacher

  r. f. mcrae, a. s. p. woodhouse

  marsh jeanneret, francess halpenny

  Introduction

  V.W.BLADEN

  I.

  THE APPROACH

  the textual precision and inclusiveness of this edition of the Principles of Political Economy are due entirely to the intelligence and industry of the textual editor, Professor Robson, and it is only proper that he has written the second introduction, which is concerned with the successive changes in thought and exposition recorded in this edition, and which lays down the principles of textual criticism and procedure followed in preparing the text. It is my privilege to contribute an economist’s introduction to the Principles as a single complete work, rather than to deal with variations of text. I fully recognize the importance of the work of the textual editor and the value of this edition, but I must explain how different is my own approach. I welcomed an edition which would make the Principles in its final form readily available and easy to read because I believe that it is a living book which has present value and significance. The members of the editorial committee have emphasized always the importance of providing easy reading of the main text of the Works for those who want to ignore changes over successive editions, and I was glad to have this 7th edition of the Principles in such a form. I have always set a high value on the Ashley edition, and was anxious that its virtues should be retained in this edition. Ashley’s was not a fully collated edition: it did not meet the needs of the scholar trying to reconstruct the successive editions after 1848; but as a working edition for the modern economist it was superb. It indicated nearly all the textual changes of importance to the modern economist. I am proud that it was the work of the first professor of economics in this University and it is with some sentiment of filial piety that I, one of his successors in the Department of Political Economy, write this introduction.

  I have said that this book has present value and significance, and this I must defend. I know that in many universities economists are trained without reading any economics written before World War I. I know that in most universities the history of economic thought, if included in the curriculum, is, nevertheless, considered of no real importance, though possibly of some antiquarian interest. Even where the classical literature is seriously studied the attitude is often that stated by Professor Frank Knight in his brilliant article on the “Ricardian Theory of Production and Distribution”:¹ he there said that our “primary interest in the ‘ancients’ in such a field as economics is to learn from their mistakes,” and the primary theme of his article was “the contrast between the ‘classical’ system and ‘correct’ views.” By contrast, I am not interested in examining the inadequacies of the “founders” but rather in discovering what we can still learn from them. From my own experience, and from observation of the development of my students, I would argue that the study of the classical economists, and in particular of Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill, is important in the development of the modern economist, in the development of insight if not in the development of analytical skill.

  The advance of our science has not been even on all fronts: while we now answer with greater precision and certainty some of the questions the classical economists asked, there are many other questions that we have ceased to ask because we have seen no better way of answering and have been dissatisfied with the apparent lack of a sound basis for the answers given. Some of these questions are, I suggest, as important as, or more important than, the ones we now answer. One of the values of the classical literature is to remind us to ask these questions and to seek anew ways of answering them. The student of this book will not improve his technical analytical skill, but he may come to recognize more fully how much more he needs than technical equipment. There is, as Professor Redfield reminded us, an element of art in science.² Alfred Marshall had this in mind when he said: “The economist needs the three great intellectual faculties, perception, imagination and reason: and most of all he needs imagination.”³ More recently, Professor Boulding has said: “Insight (judgment) and logic (mathematics) are strictly complementary goods.”⁴ We know a good deal about training in the techniques of science, we know incredibly little about the development of imagination or judgment. Indeed I am sometimes worried lest we kill off imagination in the process of such training. I cannot prove that a study of the great classics will develop those scarce qualities of imagination and judgment; but I assert that it will develop those qualities in some of us.

  This is a lonely position, and I therefore take great comfort in the support of the late Professor Schumpeter and of Lord Robbins. Said Schumpeter in his History of Economic Analysis:⁵

  Teachers or students who attempt to act upon the theory that the most recent treatise is all they need will soon discover that they are making things unnecessarily difficult for themselves. . . . Any treatise that attempts to render “the present state of science” really renders methods, problems, and results that are historically conditioned and are meaningful only with reference to the historical background from which they spring. . . . The state of any science at any given time implies its past history and cannot be satisfactorily conveyed without making this implicit history explicit.

  And Schumpeter went on to a further justification of the study of the classical literature with which I am particularly sympathetic. “Our minds,” he said, “are apt to derive new inspiration from the study of the history of science. Some do so more than others, but there are probably few that do not derive from it any benefit at all. A man’s mind must be indeed sluggish if, standing back from the work of his time and beholding the wide mountain ranges of past thought, he does not experience a widening of his own horizon.” Lord Robbins, in his Theory of Economic Policy,⁶ gives similar support: “I suspect,” he there said, “that damage has been done, not merely to historical and speculative culture, but also to our practical insight, by this indifference to our intellectual past—this provincialism in time—which has been so characteristic of our particular branch of social studies.” Lord Robbins went on to a further comment of great importance: “It is no exaggeration to say that it is impossible to understand the evolution and meaning of Western liberal civilization without some understanding of Classical Political Economy.” The contribution of the classical political economists to this cultural heritage may well have been as important as their contribution to the development of the science of economics. Modern economists have some responsibility for conserving and interpreting this part of our cultural and intellectual heritage.

  I have said that there is an element of “art” in the science of economics; I need hardly add that economic policy making is an “art”. It involves much more than prescribing on the basis of scientific analysis a particular action with a view to achieving a stated end. In this it is like medicine: in both political economy and medicine when practitioners diagnose and prescribe, judgment is involved. There must be a readiness to act in spite of incomplete knowledge which makes the result of the action uncertain. For economists the problem is frequently complicated by the desire of the public to promote two, or more, ends without recognition of their conflict; to make such conflict clear so that the public may be faced with the necessity of choice is an important function of the economist. But perhaps a more important function of the political economist is to make explicit the implicit but unrecognized values of the community of which he is a member, values which he is likely to share. This function John Stuart Mill performed more fully than most: study of his work may lead more of us to recognize the values implicit in our policy statements, and to attempt to develop similar recognition on the part of the public. Political Economy in the classical tradition comprehended more than economic analysis; some of its inadequacies in analysis may be forgiven when we consider the total contribution it made.

  Some of its supposed inadequacies I shall later argue are the product of misinterpretation of the literature, the inadequacy being in the modern reader rather than in the classical writer. Most frequently the source of misinterpretation lies in the failure to identify the question which the writer was trying to answer. Too often we assume that the ancients asked the same questions that we ask; their answers seem stupid in relation to our questions, but may be very intelligent in relation to those they asked. This habit of ours is sometimes a barrier to understanding in current discussion between modern economists; it is a formidable one in understanding the classics. The habit of mind developed in the sympathetic study of the classics may well contribute to more effective communication between modern economists.

  It is over fifty years since W. J. Ashley wrote his introduction to his edition of the Principles,⁷ but what he said of it then is not inappropriate at this later date:

  . . . Mill’s Principles will long continue to be read and will deserve to be read. It represents an interesting phase in the intellectual history of the nineteenth century. But its merit is more than historical. It is still one of the most stimulating books that can be put into the hands of students, if they are cautioned at the outset against regarding it as necessarily final in all its parts. On some topics there is still, in my opinion, nothing better in the English language; on others Mill’s treatment is still the best point of departure for further enquiry. Whatever its faults, few or many, it is a great treatise, conceived and executed on a lofty plane, and breathing a noble spirit. Mill—especially when we penetrate beneath the magisterial flow of his final text, as we are now enabled to do by the record in this edition of his varying moods—is a very human personality. The reader of to-day is not likely to come to him in too receptive a spirit; and for a long time there will be much that even those who most differ from him will still be able to learn from his pages.

  II.

  METHOD: SCIENCE AND VALUES

  though mill had been raised in the Ricardian tradition, the Principles is in the tradition of Adam Smith (and Malthus) rather than of Ricardo. Its title suggests this: Principles of Political Economy with Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy. His Preface to the 1st edition elaborates the point made in the title. Of Adam Smith’s work Mill says:

  The most characteristic quality . . . is that it invariably associates the principles with their applications. This of itself implies a much wider range of ideas and of topics, than are included in Political Economy, considered as a branch of abstract speculation. For practical purposes, Political Economy is inseparably intertwined with many other branches of social philosophy. Except on matters of mere detail, there are perhaps no practical questions, even among those which approach nearest to the character of purely economical questions, which admit of being decided on economical premises alone. And it is because Adam Smith never loses sight of this truth; because, in his applications of Political Economy, he perpetually appeals to other and often far larger considerations than pure Political Economy affords—that he gives that well-grounded feeling of command over the principles of the subject for purposes of practice. . . .

  (I.xci.19—xcii.3.)⁸

  But Mill felt that advances in “Political Economy, properly so called,” and in “the philosophy of society” had rendered the Wealth of Nations “in many parts obsolete” (I.xcii. 11-3). So he decided to attempt to “combine his practical mode of treating his subject with the increased knowledge since acquired of its theory” and to “exhibit the economical phenomena of society in the relation in which they stand to the best social ideas of the present time” (I.xcii.17-20). But while he wanted to make his treatise “more than a mere exposition of the abstract doctrines of Political Economy” he intended that “such an exposition should be found in it” (I.xcii. 28-30). The Principles is, then, the product of a Ricardian economist who was also, in the judgment of F. Y. Edgeworth,⁹ “pre-eminent in general philosophy,” in which respect he, and he alone, was “comparable to Adam Smith.”

  A full understanding of Mill’s view of the scope and method of Political Economy involves some semantic difficulty. The term “political economy” as distinguished from “economics” has come to refer to a study of the functioning of the economy in which historical, political, sociological, customary, and non-logical aspects are treated, and in which “values” are examined and policies are discussed not only with reference to the probability of the expected results being achieved, but with reference to the acceptability of the results in the light of values of the individual political economist or of the society of which he is a member. Since most policies have indirect as well as direct effects, it is the business of the political economist to determine as carefully and as fully as he can these indirect effects. The problem of values then becomes not simply that of the choice of the end directly sought, but of the net advantage of achieving the chosen direct end plus the advantages and minus the disadvantages of the indirect results of pursuing the given policy. A simple prescription of policy is only possible when there is certainty as to its direct and indirect effects, and when there is no doubt, or disagreement, as to the net advantages, that is, when there is complete agreement as to the “values” involved. The art of political economy requires, along with the best scientific estimate of probable effects of action (or inaction), a readiness to act (or to recommend action) even though the results are uncertain, and even though the results, if achieved, will not be universally recognized as good. How far the political economist should be honest in indicating the degree of probability of the result, and in identifying the value system which leads him to consider the net advantages of the policy to be positive (and greater than the net advantages of alternative policies which might have been adopted) may be disputed. My own use of the word “honest” indicates my bias. The science of political economy is related to the art of government in much the same way that the science of medicine is related to the art of medicine: there is the same necessity to decide what to do (if anything) in spite of the uncertainty as to the effect of that action (or of inaction): in relation to the art of medicine, the choice of values might seem to be absent, since health is an agreed end, but of course the conflict of values must still enter in since “health” is not simple and indivisible. Even Bentham’s formula, “minimize pain,” may prove an inadequate guide.

  Now what has all this to do with John Stuart Mill? Political Economy meant to him something different from the modern conception, and the difference is not just a matter of words. Political Economy he seems to have used as the name for what we would now call Economic Theory; prescription of policy required, in his view, a consideration of many factors excluded from the abstract analysis of political economy, the effects of which factors could not be as adequately determined as could those of the factors which formed the basis of the analytic part of the study; but if the knowledge and understanding of the economy and of the society were adequate, then Mill would, I think, claim that a “scientific” decision on policy was possible. The problem of values and the conflict of values as something beyond science does not seem to have arisen. I have sometimes argued that the absence of the discussion of values in the classical literature of political economy is explicable in terms of the common acceptance of an implicit scheme of values which, being taken for granted, did not need to be made explicit. But this is hard to maintain in the face of the vigorous criticism in Mill’s Principles of many of the “bourgeois” ideals, some examples of which will be noted later in this introduction.

  I must try to justify these general remarks by some specific examination of Mill’s writings, and this takes me back to his early essay on method. In his essay “On the Definition of Political Economy; and on the Method of Investigation Proper to It,”¹⁰ Mill restricted the term “political economy” to the narrow sphere that we would now call “economic theory.” He ruled out not only the “art” but even much of the science on which the art must depend:

  What is now commonly understood by the term “Political Economy” is not the science of speculative politics, but a branch of that science. It does not treat of the whole of man’s nature as modified by the social state, nor of the whole conduct of man in society. It is concerned with him solely as a being who desires to possess wealth, and who is capable of judging of the comparative efficacy of means for obtaining that end. It predicts only such of the phenomena of the social state as take place in consequence of the pursuit of wealth. It makes entire abstraction of every other human passion or motive; except those which may be regarded as perpetually antagonizing principles to the desire of wealth, namely, aversion to labour, and desire of the present enjoyment of costly indulgences. . . . [The actions it studies], though many of them are really the result of a plurality of motives, are considered by Political Economy as flowing solely from the desire of wealth. The science then proceeds to investigate the laws which govern these several operations, under the supposition that man is a being who is determined, by the necessity of his nature, to prefer a greater portion of wealth to a smaller in all cases, without any other exception than that constituted by the two counter-motives already specified. Not that any political economist was ever so absurd as to suppose that mankind are really thus constituted, but because this is the mode in which science must necessarily proceed. . . . With respect to those parts of human conduct of which wealth is not even the principal object, to these Political Economy does not pretend that its conclusions are applicable. But there are also certain departments of human affairs, in which the acquisition of wealth is the main and acknowledged end. It is only of these that Political Economy takes notice. . . . [It treats] the main and acknowledged end as if it were the sole end. . . . The political economist inquires, what are the actions which would be produced by this desire, if . . . it were unimpeded by any other. In this way a nearer approximation is obtained than would otherwise be practicable. . . . This approximation is then to be corrected by making proper allowance for the effects of any impulses of a different description. . . .

  Given this definition of the nature of the science as “abstract,” the “method of investigation proper to it” is obviously a priori. “It reasons, and, as we contend, must necessarily reason, from assumptions, not from facts. . . . Geometry presupposes an arbitrary definition of a line. . . . Just in the same manner does Political Economy presuppose an arbitrary definition of a man, as a being who invariably does that by which he may obtain the greatest amount of necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries, with the smallest quantity of labour and physical self-denial with which they can be obtained in the existing state of knowledge.” Mill regretted that this “definition of man is not formally prefixed to any work on Political Economy,” for if it were, “it would be less in danger of being forgotten.” He warned the economist to be “on his guard not to ascribe to conclusions which are grounded upon an hypothesis a different kind of certainty from that which really belongs to them. They would be true without qualification, only in a case which is purely imaginary.”¹¹

  All of this is very sound comment on the character and limitation of what we would now call “pure theory,” what Mill refers to in the preface to the Principles as “pure political economy.” But Mill asserted that the a priori method was not only a legitimate method but was the only legitimate method for the study of economics and social phenomena:¹² “it is vain,” he said, “to hope that truth can be arrived at, either in Political Economy or in any other department of the social science, while we look at the facts in the concrete, clothed in all the complexity with which nature has surrounded them, and endeavour to elicit a general law by a process of induction. . . .”¹³ Yet he urged the political economist to study the facts. “Although . . . a philosopher be convinced that no general truths can be attained in the affairs of nations by the à posteriori road, it does not the less behove [sic] him . . . to sift and scrutinize the details of every specific experiment. Without this, he may be an excellent professor of abstract science,” but “he must rest contented to take no share in practical politics; to have no opinion, or to hold it with extreme modesty, on the applications which should be made of his doctrines to existing circumstances.”¹⁴

  Before writing the Principles, Mill wrote his Logic; he again discussed the problem of method, but this time he was concerned with the social sciences in general rather than with political economy in particular. The approach remained substantially the same: “The conclusions of theory cannot be trusted, unless confirmed by observation; nor those of observation, unless they can be affiliated to theory. . . .”¹⁵ This indicates some further recognition of the value of “observation,” due probably to the influence of Comte. It was, however, for “ethology” and particularly for the “general science of society” that the “inverse deductive or historical method”¹⁶ was suggested. This general science of society was concerned with the laws of the development of social institutions. This, he saw, required historical study, not only for verification, but for suggestion of hypotheses:

  while it is an imperative rule never to introduce any generalization from history into the social science unless sufficient grounds can be pointed out for it in human nature, I do think any one will contend that it would have been possible, setting out from the principles of human nature and from the general circumstances of the position of our species, to determine à priori the order in which human development must take place, and to predict, consequently, the general facts of history. . . .¹⁷

  But for political economy the method remained deductive, “reasoning from . . . one law of human nature, and from the principal outward circumstances (whether universal or confined to particular states of society).”¹⁸

  One should not take too seriously what people say about method; what they do is often very different. In the Principles Mill decided to follow the example of Adam Smith in associating “the principles with their applications” (I.xci.22). This, he recognized, “implies a much wider range of ideas and of topics, than are included in Political Economy, considered as a branch of abstract speculation,” for there are, perhaps, no practical questions “which admit of being decided on economical premises alone” (I.xci.23-9). That Mill was wise in choosing to go beyond the bounds of the abstract science can scarcely be doubted. He should, perhaps, have been readier to distinguish those propositions which were precise but limited in application by the nature of the assumptions from which they were deduced, from those propositions which were less precise but were relevant to the real society, not the unreal model. He should also have been more confident, and more venturesome, in his study of the actual. He recognized that in society “custom” was a determinant of income distribution along with “competition.” But he had not yet perceived the possibility of the “scientific” study of custom: “only through the principle of competition,” he said, “has political economy any pretension to the character of a science” (I.239.13-4). Recognition of the modifying influence of custom was essential: “To escape error, we ought, in applying the conclusions of political economy to the actual affairs of life, to consider not only what will happen supposing the maximum of competition, but how far the result will be affected if competition falls short of the maximum” (I.244.22-6). But he gave no estimate of how far short of the maximum competition did fall and no estimate of how much the result was affected. Nor did he see that pure political economy might be able to deal with problems of monopoly and of limited competition. But he did anticipate the results of such modern theory when he argued with reference to retail trade that “when competition does exist, it often, instead of lowering prices, merely divides the gains of the high price among a greater number of dealers” (I.243.7-9).

  Curiously enough Mill said little about another source of divergence between “the laws of the science and the facts of life” arising from the unreality of the concept of the economic man. Professor Edgeworth questioned, in his article in Palgrave’s Dictionary of Political Economy, whether Mill could consistently retain his view of the deductive character of the science as he began to “doubt the universality of the principle of self-interest.” This doubt was reflected in the chapter on communism, where Mill said: “Mankind are capable of a far greater amount of public spirit than the present age is accustomed to suppose possible” (I.205.16-8). But his eulogy of peasant proprietorship, and for that matter of co-operative factories, was based on the expectation of increased productivity from more direct pecuniary incentive to produce, as it would become the interest of the workers “to do the utmost, instead of the least possible, in exchange for their remuneration” (II.792.4-5). The principle of self-interest might not be universal, but it was recognized to be very powerful. Like Alfred Marshall, Mill seems to have been ready to take advantage of the strongest rather than the highest motives in order to get things done.

  In spite of the insistence on the a priori character of the science of economics, the complementary insistence on observation of concrete facts opened the way to a more general attack on problems of society through historical and statistical studies; and indeed Mill did not restrict himself to explanations that could be derived a priori. Though he was not prepared to consider his broader inquiries as “scientific,” he appears to have been quite confident in the reliability of his explanations, predictions, and judgments in the broader field. What I find missing is a recognition of the dependence of many of his prescriptions on the choice of ends. There is, in the last pages of the Logic, a brief discussion of the “Logic of Practice or Art; including Morality and Policy.” He here stated very properly: “A scientific observer or reasoner, merely as such, is not an adviser for practice. His part is only to show that certain consequences follow from certain causes, and that to obtain certain ends, certain means are the most effectual. Whether the ends themselves are such as ought to be pursued . . . it is no part of his business as a cultivator of science to decide, and science alone will never qualify him for the decision.”¹⁹ If we combine this statement on teleology with his statements on the nature of the science one might suppose that Mill would specify the end before prescribing policy. Much of the best writing in the Principles is relevant to the choice of ends, yet there appears to be no recognition of the dependence of his policy prescriptions on the choice of ends. Curiously enough this failure to discuss the choice of ends is explained by the definition of the “science,” and some of the inadequacy of the “abstract science” for purposes of explanation and prediction is related to the neglect of the problems of the choice of ends by the people who are being studied. I propose to elaborate this proposition because I believe it to have contemporary significance.

  The definition of “political economy” quoted above specified the end: “the pursuit of wealth.” But two “perpetually antagonizing principles . . . namely aversion to labour and desire of the present enjoyment of costly indulgences” were noted. Here we have a problem of competing ends: more wealth or more leisure, more wealth or more current income. Some passages in the Principles are relevant. “In England, it is not the desire of wealth that needs to be taught, but the use of wealth, and appreciation of the objects of desire which wealth cannot purchase. . . . Every real improvement in the character of the English, whether it consist in giving them higher aspirations, or only a juster estimate of the value of their present objects of desire, must necessarily moderate the ardour of their devotion to the pursuit of wealth” (I.105.4-10). The first two editions had put this even more strongly, referring to “the all engrossing torment of their industrialism.” “The desirable medium,” he went on to argue, “is one which mankind have not often known how to hit: when they labour, to do it with all their might, and especially with all their mind; but to devote to labour, for mere pecuniary gain, fewer hours in the day, fewer days in the year, and fewer years of life” (I.105.14—106.3). This is good preaching of values; and is highly relevant to the “art” of political economy, but it also illustrates the need to determine what values are held in order to predict, that is, for the purpose of the science. To treat the problem as one of defining the supply function of labour does not change it from a problem of values.

  What Mill thought of as the purely scientific part of economics had only predictive value as long as the specified end was in fact the choice of the people studied. If the chosen end is other than that specified not only is the prescription necessarily different, but this other end enters into the making of the prediction as to the effect of proposed action on which the prescription is based. This relation between the science and the art can be illustrated by a homely example: John Doe is in Toronto one morning and wants to be in Montreal by evening. He has chosen his end; knowledge of the timetables for air and railway travel, of the state of the weather and of the roads, enables him to select the means of getting to Montreal: such knowledge constitutes his science. But suppose the problem really to be that of the scientist in predicting where John Doe (or a thousand like him) will be on a particular night. Knowledge of the timetables (the science relevant to the simpler question) is not enough: the scientist must know what end John Doe has chosen, to stay in Toronto, to go to Montreal, or to go to Windsor.

  Consider next the other “antagonizing” principle, “desire of the present enjoyment of costly indulgences.” My first comment is that this involves confusion between “wealth” and “income.” Surely the motive assumed for the abstract science is not the maximum accumulation of wealth with consumption limited to “productive consumption,” so that even the few luxuries of the poor come under scrutiny as doubtfully proper. “. . . [C]onsumption even of productive labourers is not all of it productive consumption. . . . What they consume in keeping up or improving their health, strength, and capacities of work, or in rearing other productive labourers to succeed them, is productive consumption. But consumption on pleasures or luxuries, whether by the idle or by the industrious . . . must be reckoned unproductive: with a reservation perhaps of a certain quantum of enjoyment which may be classed among necessaries, since anything short of it would not be consistent with the greatest efficiency of labour” (I.52.24-33). If consumption were assumed to be so limited the abstract science would be easier, but Mill does not pretend that it either is, or ought to be, so limited. “It would be a great error to regret the large proportion of the annual produce, which in an opulent country goes to supply unproductive consumption. It would be to lament that the community has so much to spare from its necessities, for its pleasures and for all higher uses. This portion of the produce is the fund from which all the wants of the community, other than that of mere living, are provided for. . . . That so great a surplus should be available for such purposes . . . can only be a subject of congratulation” (I.54.29-30).

  What then of the antagonizing principle? Mill the preacher is offended by the “costly indulgences”: what is to be regretted is not the size of the surplus available for unproductive consumption but the “prodigious inequality with which this surplus is distributed, the little worth of the objects to which the greater part of it is devoted, and the large share which falls to the lot of persons who render no equivalent service in return” (I.54.32-5). For the abstract science the problem is to establish a supply function for savings which emerges from these values, the choices, of the people. For the art a conflict of ends has emerged: is the wealth pursued worth pursuing, would it be worth pursuing if that wealth were more equally divided? Mill returns to this theme in the chapter on the “Stationary State”:

  those who do not accept the present very early stage of human improvement as its ultimate type, may be excused for being comparatively indifferent to the kind of economical progress which excites the congratulations of ordinary politicians; the mere increase of production and accumulation. . . . I know not why it should be a matter of congratulation that persons who are already richer than any one needs to be, should have doubled their means of consuming things which give little or no pleasure except as representative of wealth. . . . It is only in the backward countries of the world that increased production is still an important object. . . .

  (II.754.29—755.13.)

  (This J. K. Galbraith has elaborated in his The Affluent Society.²⁰ )

  The unkind reference to the Americans in the 1st edition was a dramatic condemnation of the motive “assumed” for the science and of the Malthusian sin of the people. “They have the six points of Chartism, and they have no poverty: and all that these advantages do for them is that the life of the whole of one sex is devoted to dollar-hunting, and of the other to breeding dollar-hunters” (II.754^a-a). This is preaching, but success in preaching a different set of values would change the data of the science. The scientific study of the values of the community is, therefore, I reiterate, a major part of political economy in the wide sense as distinct from political economy conceived as an abstract science; assessment of values is relevant to the determination of means, as well as to the choice of ends. The choice of means requires prediction of the effect of any proposed action (prediction that requires a knowledge of the values held by the community); the choice of ends requires an assessment of cost (what is foregone) of any proposed action. Knowledge of values is required for the science; skill in the science is required for realization of the values.

  A very important element remains to be noticed: the means may become partially ends in themselves. Of modern writers, Professor Frank Knight has dealt most effectively with this problem:

  When we consider that productive activity takes up the larger part of the waking lives of the great mass of mankind, it is surely not to be assumed without investigation or inquiry that production is a means only, a necessary evil, a sacrifice made for the sake of some good entirely outside the production process. We are impelled to look for ends in the economic process itself, other than the mere consumption of the produce, and to give thoughtful consideration to the possibilities of participation in economic activity as a sphere of self expression and creative achievement.²¹ . . . Economists and publicists are coming to realize how largely the efficiency of business and industry is the result of this appeal to intrinsic interest in action; how feeble, in spite of the old economics, is the motivation of mere appetite or cupidity; and how much the driving power of our economic life depends on making and keeping the game interesting. A rapidly growing literature on “incentive” is a witness to this awakening.²²

  That Mill was not unaware of this interplay of means and ends is shown in the chapter on the “Stationary State” where he argues that increased production is a matter of minor importance because it means consuming more things that give little or no pleasure, but also argues: “That the energies of mankind should be kept in employment by the struggle for riches, as they were formerly by the struggle of war, until the better minds succeed in educating the others into better things, is undoubtedly more desirable than that they should rust and stagnate” (II.754.24-7).

  Some of the elements of this problem have been exposed (or possibly hidden) in modern discussion of the “net advantages” of particular occupations; but here it is only differential advantages of particular occupations that are considered, not the net advantages of the process of production as a whole. In the calculation of these “net advantages” one needs to consider what the process of production to satisfy the wants of the people does to the character of the people. The means most effective in the supply of their existing wants may mould people into more or less desirable patterns. To Ruskin it appeared that there was a premium on the less desirable characteristics, for success in the business world seemed to depend on these. “In a community regulated by the law of demand and supply but protected from open violence,” Ruskin said, “the persons who become rich are, generally speaking, industrious, resolute, proud, covetous, prompt, methodical, sensible, unimaginative, insensitive and ignorant. The persons who remain poor are the entirely foolish, the entirely wise, the idle, the reckless, the humble, the thoughtful, the dull, the imaginative, the sensitive, the well-informed, the improvident, the irregularly and impulsively wicked, the clumsy knave, the open thief, the entirely merciful, just, and godly person.”²³ One may not accept this condemnation, but one must recognize that the effect of the process on the people is relevant to the choice of the kind of process.

  Mill’s discussion of communism raises another aspect of this when he asks whether communism or competitive capitalism is “consistent with the greatest amount of human liberty and spontaneity” (I.208.34-5). The fluctuation in his assessment of the desirability of communism involves conflict of ends and uncertainty as to the efficacy of means. “After the means of subsistence are assured,” he said, “the next in strength of the personal wants of human beings is liberty . . .” (I.208.35-7). But the schemes which he discussed seemed to involve renouncing “liberty for the sake of equality” (I.209.3-4); and there was reason to fear that equality might weaken the motivation for production. He recognized that the “restraints of Communism would be freedom in comparison with the present condition of the majority of the human race” (I.209.14-5) and he urged his readers to “compare Communism at its best, with the régime of individual property, not as it is but as it might be made” (I.207.23-5). It was not enough for communism to promise “greater personal and mental freedom than is now enjoyed by those who have not enough of either to deserve the name” (I.209.24-6); nor was it acceptable to denounce the restriction on freedom under socialism while accepting the restrictions on freedom of the existing society. “The generality of labourers . . . ,” said Mill, “have as little choice of occupation or freedom of locomotion, are practically as dependent on fixed rules and on the will of others, as they could be on any system short of actual slavery . . .” (I.209.15-9). With this should be read those splendid pages at the beginning of his chapter on the “Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes” (IV.vii), where he discussed “the two conflicting theories respecting the social position desirable for manual labourers,” the “theory of dependence and protection,” and the “theory of self dependence.” Liberty implies independence. There were those who were arguing for a paternal relationship between the rich and the poor, “affectionate tutelage on the one side, respectful and grateful deference on the other” (II.759.25-6) (“spaniel-like servility” was the phrase William Thomas Thornton used). To them Mill pointed out that “All privileged and powerful classes, as such, have used their power in the interest of their own selfishness, and have indulged their self-importance in despising, and not in lovingly caring for, those who were, in their estimation, degraded, by being under the necessity of working for their benefit” (II.760.8-12). He made it clear that even if the “superior classes could be sufficiently improved to govern in the tutelary manner supposed, the inferior classes would be too much improved to be so governed” (II.760.17-9). “Of the working men, at least in the more advanced countries of Europe, it may be pronounced certain, that the patriarchal or paternal system of government is one to which they will not again be subject” (II.761.28—762.2).

  Liberty, spontaneity, equality, productivity, all must be considered and to them we now add the preservation of natural beauty. His plea in the chapter on the “Stationary State” is still worthy of consideration: “solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur, is the cradle of thoughts and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society could ill do without” (II.756.11-4). There is little satisfaction in contemplating a world “with nothing left to the spontaneous activity of nature; . . . [with] every flowery waste or natural pasture ploughed up, all quadrupeds or birds which are not domesticated for man’s use exterminated as his rivals for food . . . , and scarcely a place left where a wild shrub or flower could grow without being eradicated as a weed in the name of improved agriculture” (II.756.15-21). He feared that the earth might lose that “great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would extirpate from it” (II.756.22-4). This became the theme of George Gissing’s novel Demos.²⁴ At the opening of the novel, Stanbury Hill, “remote but two hours’ walk from a region blasted with mine and factory and furnace, shelters with its western slope a fair green valley, a land of meadows and orchard, untouched by poisonous breath.”²⁵ In Chapter vii, John Eldon looks out on a different scene: “building of various kinds was in progress in the heart of the vale; a great massive chimney was rising to completion, and about it stood a number of sheds. Beyond was to be seen the commencement of a street of small houses, promising infinite ugliness in a little space . . . in truth, the benighted valley was waking up and donning the true nineteenth-century livery.”²⁶ But a turn of fortune puts Eldon back in the position of owner and all is changed. “It is springtime, and the valley of Wanley is bursting into green and flowery life, peacefully glad as if the foot of Demos had never come that way. Incredible that the fumes of furnaces ever desecrated that fleece-sown sky of tenderest blue, that hammers clanged and engines roared where now the thrush utters his song so joyously. Hubert Eldon has been as good as his word. In all the valley no trace is left of what was called New Wanley.”²⁷ Whether we consider this a case of competing ends, wealth or beauty, or whether we consider beauty part of the wealth which is to be maximized, the problems raised are still relevant. Professor Joseph Spengler has, for instance, turned to this theme in his address as President of the Population Association of America, “The Aesthetics of Population.”²⁸ “Every year 1.1 million acres reportedly are taken permanently out of crop use by urban and suburban development, together with the expansion of industry, airports, military establishments, and new highways; and another 700,000 acres are lost annually through soil erosion, tree planting, water-logging, salt deposits, and other contamination.”²⁹ There is a “continuing replacement of Arcadian beauty by cardominated, bill-boarded, neon-signed shabbiness.”³⁰ Or again: “these uses chew up and uglify the countryside.”³¹ All of which is not to say that all beauty must be preserved at any cost: but that growth in the gross national product is not the sole object of the community without reference to the consequent destruction of natural beauty.

  III.

  THE PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

  while mill the preacher might doubt the importance of increasing production except in “the backward countries,” Mill the political economist was more realistic and put the problem of production, the causes of productivity and of increasing productivity, at the forefront of his study. Perhaps this was related to his expectation of continued population increase: increasing accumulation and increasing productivity would be necessary even if no further improvement in standards of living were desired; and whatever improvement in the condition of the poor might be achieved by redistribution with a stationary population, the existing standard could not be maintained with increasing population without such increase in productivity. The preacher was contemplating the Stationary State, the political economist was concerned with the practical problems of contemporary society. Increase in the productivity of labour, and accumulation of capital were recognized as urgent necessities. They remain urgently necessary, and modern economists in developing countries, backward or advanced, particularly in countries where population is once again increasing rapidly, do well to reconsider Mill’s treatment if only to stimulate them to develop a modern theory of production.

  INVESTMENT IN HUMAN BEINGS

  One important element in Mill’s treatment is his emphasis on investment in human beings. After a century of neglect this has come to the fore as a result of the immense investment in education required in backward and advanced countries alike. In discussing “Labour as an Agent of Production” (I, ii) he devotes one section (§7) to “labour of which the subject is human beings” (I.40.35). Much of this labour is “incurred from other motives than to obtain such ultimate return, and, for most purposes of political economy, need not be taken into account as expenses of production” (I.41.6-8). But “technical or industrial education” is generally “undergone for the sake of the greater or more valuable produce thereby attained” and should therefore be treated as “part of what the produce costs to society” (I.41.8-19). Similarly “the labour employed in keeping up productive powers; in preventing them from being destroyed or weakened by accident or disease,” though not generally employed by the individual patients from “economical motives,” must be considered “as part of the advance by which society effects its productive operations” (I.41.19-37). There follows a section on the labour of the inventor and the savant. Again there is the difference between the individual and the social aspect: “these material fruits, though the result, are seldom the direct purpose of the pursuits of savants . . . . But when (as in political economy one should always be prepared to do) we shift our point of view, and consider not individual acts, and the motives by which they are determined, but national and universal results, intellectual speculation must be looked upon as a most influential part of the productive labour of society . . .” (I.43.4-16).

  Mill recurs to this theme in the chapter on “Unproductive Labour” (I, iii) where he discusses “utilities fixed and embodied in human beings.” He would have preferred, he says, to “regard all labour as productive which is employed in creating permanent utilities, whether embodied in human beings, or in any other animate or inanimate objects” (I.48.21-3). But he accepted the usage which limited the term to labour which produces “utilities embodied in material objects” (I.49.23). He then broke through this limitation to include as productive, “labour expended in the acquisition of manufacturing skill . . . not in virtue of the skill itself, but of the manufactured products created by the skill” (I.49.28-30). The emphasis is on the “investment” aspect of some part of education: if the labour of the teacher is classed as “unproductive” this is not “derogatory,” but in classing it as “productive” its contribution to increasing future productivity is established. That part of education expense is essentially part of the “accumulation” which is so urgently required. Finally one notes the chapter on the degrees of productiveness (I, vii). “Successful production . . . depends more on the qualities of the human agents, than on the circumstances in which they work . . .” (I.103.13-5). So he discussed as the second of the causes of superior productiveness “the greater energy of labour” (I.103.27). Here the preacher comes back into the picture (the sermon varying somewhat between the editions but remaining essentially the same). In the first edition the essential problem is stated: “An Englishman, of almost every class, is the most efficient of all labourers, because, to use a common phrase, his heart is in his work. But it is surely quite possible to put heart into his work without being incapable of putting it into anything else” (I.105^r-r). Mill had, and continued to have, no doubt about the cause of the high productivity: he had serious doubts as to the ultimate “welfare” of people who were productive of material objects but incapable of enjoying them. But if he would “moderate the ardour of their devotion to the pursuit of wealth” (I.105.10), he would hope not to diminish “the strenuous and businesslike application to the matter in hand, which is found in the best English workmen” (I.105.11-3).

  The third element determining the productiveness of labour is “the skill and knowledge therein existing” (I.106.6). The effects of increased knowledge in increasing wealth “have become familiar. . . . A thing not yet so well understood and recognised, is the economical value of the general diffusion of intelligence among the people” (I.107.25-8). The scarcity of “persons fitted to direct and superintend any industrial enterprise” (I.107.28-9) is only one aspect of the problem: another is the “connexion between mental cultivation and moral trustworthiness” (I.108.35). Mr. Escher of Zurich is quoted at some length: “The better educated workmen . . . are distinguished by superior moral habits . . . they are entirely sober; they are discreet in their enjoyments . . .; they have a taste for much better society, which they approach respectfully . . .; they cultivate music; they read; they enjoy the pleasures of scenery . . .; they are . . . honest and trustworthy” (I.108.36—109.9). Of the uneducated English Mr. Escher says they are “the most skilful,” but the most “debauched . . . and least respectable and trustworthy”: if treated with “urbanity and friendly feeling” they become “unmanageable and useless.” Mill comments, “As soon as any idea of equality enters the mind of an uneducated English working man, his head is turned by it. When he ceases to be servile, he becomes insolent” (I.109.11-28). Again we are going beyond the theory of productivity: for that theory it is important to recognize with Mill that the “moral qualities of the labourers are fully as important to the efficiency and worth of their labour, as the intellectual” (I.109.29-30). But the plea for moral improvement is not primarily a plea for improving productivity: the whole character of society and the future condition of man is involved. We shall return to the issue when commenting on Mills’ chapters on communism and on the probable futurity of the working class. Appropriately, in view of the emphasis on education and the development of knowledge in the beginning of the book, Mill devotes a section of his final chapter on the limits of the province of government to a plea for provision for scientific research and for the maintenance of a “learned class.” “The cultivation of speculative knowledge, though one of the most useful of all employments, is a service rendered to a community collectively, not individually, and one consequently for which it is, primâ facie, reasonable that the community collectively should pay . . .” (II.968.34-7).

  THE THEORY OF FULL DEVELOPMENT

  In the neo-classical economics the theory of production was essentially a theory of allocation of resources, of the “right” proportions of factors in the production of the “right” things (“right” interpreted with reference to least cost and conformity to demand). In the Keynesian economics the concern was with full employment of resources. In the classical economics, as in the new economics of growth and development, the full employment and proper allocation of given resources took second place to a concern for the development of new resources. This is perhaps clearer in Adam Smith than in Mill, but I believe that the continued use of the distinction between productive and unproductive labour indicates a continued concern for the liquidation of the primitive sector of the economy in which menial servants were maintained in idleness on a more or less feudal basis, and for the development of “industry,” the advanced sector of the economy in which workers, well equipped, well managed, well disciplined, would probably be employed at wages considerably higher than those prevailing in the primitive sector. I cannot here examine in detail this interpretation of the concept of productive labour and the related theory of development,³² but I propose to quote from Adam Smith and from Malthus to give the necessary background. “We are more industrious than our forefathers,” said Adam Smith, “because in the present times the funds destined for the maintenance of industry are much greater in proportion to those which are likely to be employed in the maintenance of idleness than they were two or three centuries ago.”³³ And Malthus: “Three or four hundred years ago, there was undoubtedly much less labour in England in proportion to the population, than at present; but there was much more dependence; and we probably should not now enjoy our present degree of civil liberty, if the poor, by the introduction of manufactures, had not been enabled to give something in exchange for the provisions of the great Lords, instead of being dependent upon their bounty.”³⁴ The idle, be it noted, were not unemployed; the problem was to absorb them into “industry” where they would be more productive.

  Much of the difficulty of interpreting, or accepting, the propositions about capital in Mill may be reduced if it is recognized that these chapters are concerned with “development.” As Professor Myint put it in his Theories of Economic Welfare we should not read “our latter-day pre-occupation with the ‘allocative’ problem into the classics through the distorting spectacles provided by the General Equilibrium economists of the Marginal Utility School. It is time we learned to cure ourselves of this theoretical anthropomorphism and to approach the classical economists in the context of their own intellectual climate.”³⁵ In this context the chapters in Mill on capital must be read, not as discussion of the economies of roundabout production, nor even of the employment problems rising from an imbalance of saving and investment, but as discussion of the development of “industry” at the expense of the pre-industrial, quasi-feudal, sector of the economy, with the recruiting of the idle-employed into the ranks of the industrious, with the employment in productive labour of those “whom we shall suppose to have been previously, like the Irish peasantry, only half employed and half fed” (I.56.36-7).

  While continuing the theme of development as being a process of expanding the number of productive labourers, Mill added a discussion of the distinction between productive and unproductive consumption. What productive labourers “consume in keeping up or improving their health, strength, and capacities of work, or in rearing other productive labourers to succeed them, is productive consumption. But consumption on pleasures or luxuries, whether by the idle or by the industrious, since production is neither its object nor is in any way advanced by it, must be reckoned unproductive: with a reservation perhaps of a certain quantum of enjoyment which may be classed among necessaries, since anything short of it would not be consistent with the greatest efficiency of labour” (I.52.26-33). From this discussion of unproductive consumption there develops the proposition that there is a more important distinction than that between productive and unproductive labour, “namely, between labour for the supply of productive, and for the supply of unproductive, consumption” (I.53.27-8). If the former were suspended, “the country at the end of the twelvemonth would have been entirely impoverished” (I.54.20-1); if the latter were suspended, “the sources of production would be unimpaired” (I.54.15-6). Mill went on to say that it would be a great error to regret the “large proportion of the annual produce, which in an opulent country goes to supply unproductive consumption” (I.54.22-4). It is rather a matter for congratulation. It is surprising that he does not here press home the point that this fund for unproductive consumption is the basis for that process of accumulation which provides for a spiral of economic development. He underestimated the effect on human productivity of better living and he underestimated the magnitude of the necessary increase in fixed capital. He was right in directing attention to the increase in that “labour which tends to the permanent enrichment of society.” He was right in directing attention to the “fund from which all the wants of the community, other than that of mere living, are provided for” (I.54.26-7); he was right to continue Ricardo’s concern for “net produce,” and to parallel Marx’s concern for surplus value; he was right because he was concerned with growth. Thrift is important, and a study of its causes is important: but we must not forget “that to increase capital there is another way besides consuming less, namely, to produce more” (I.70.15-6). . . . “[W]hatever increases the productive power of labour, creates an additional fund to make savings from, and enables capital to be enlarged not only without additional privation, but concurrently with an increase of personal consumption” (I.70.3-6). In these circumstances “abstinence” is a rather odd description of the basis for capital accumulation.

  In this context of “development” the difficulties of interpretation of the chapters on capital, even of the fourth proposition, disappear. Capital must be interpreted as “real capital,” wage goods, materials and instruments to supply “productive labour” with the “pre-requisites of production.” “. . . [I]ndustry is limited by capital” (I.63.9): for there cannot be more persons employed in productive labour than can be supplied with wage goods, materials and instruments. Capital “is the result of saving” (I.68.27-8); for there can be no increase in capital if the “net produce” of productive labour is dissipated in unproductive consumption. Clearly more capital requires either less wage goods used to support unproductive labour and transferred to the use of productive labour, or less production of luxury goods permitting the production of more wage goods, material, and instruments. And since the “industrious” are likely to enjoy more wage goods than the “idle” some reduction in the purchase of luxury goods needs to go along with the reduction in the number of servants. Capital “although saved . . . is nevertheless consumed” (I.70.18-9): the food that the servants would have eaten the industrious eat, the food and materials produced in place of the plate and silks are eaten and worked up by the industrious. “Demand for commodities is not demand for labour” (I.78.26) is the fourth proposition and it has produced an extraordinary variety of comment, most of which, including my own comment in a “Centenary Estimate,”³⁶ is misguided because of the failure to recognize the dynamic context. To Cairnes this proposition was simply “a different mode of stating the third fundamental theorem.” In his very interesting and valuable “Notes on the Principles of Political Economy” (see Appendix H below) Cairnes presented an alternative formulation: “In short to establish the doctrine that ‘demand for commodities is not demand for labour’—i.e. does not benefit the labouring classes—all that is needed is the two assumptions 1. that he who profits by (i.e. enjoys) wealth is he who consumes it, and 2. that productive labourers consume saved wealth, while wealth unproductively spent is consumed wholly by the unproductive consumers.”³⁷ Cairnes then illustrated his argument by a reductio ad absurdum, “if it be equally for the benefit of the poorer classes whether I consume my wealth unproductively or set aside a portion in the form of wages or alms for their direct consumption, then on what ground can the policy be justified of taking my money from me to support paupers.” That Cairnes understood Mill’s intention is indicated by the adaptation of this passage from Cairnes in the 6th edition of the Principles (I.84.10-4). There remains the proposition in Chapter vi, “that all increase of fixed capital, when taking place at the expense of circulating, must be, at least temporarily, prejudicial to the interests of the labourers” (I.93.40-94.2). From this proposition he argues, first, that “All attempts to make out that the labouring classes as a collective body cannot suffer temporarily by the introduction of machinery, or by the sinking of capital in permanent improvements, are . . . necessarily fallacious” (I.96.22-5). He then argues that “as things are actually transacted” improvements are not “often, if ever, injurious, even temporarily, to the labouring classes in the aggregate” (I.97.8-9). This is because improvements are “seldom or never made by withdrawing circulating capital from actual production, but are made by the employment of the annual increase” (I.97.12-4). The ultimate benefit is not in doubt but “this does not discharge governments from the obligation of alleviating, and if possible preventing, the evils of which this source of ultimate benefit is or may be productive to an existing generation” (I.99.2-4). To return to the proposition: is not Mill’s problem that of many modern nations, how to increase fixed capital faster than voluntary savings permit: the modern solution is often by planned reduction in consumption or by inflation-induced reduction of consumption. There remains the old-fashioned solution, to save more: but the “extreme incapacity of the people for personal enjoyment, which is a characteristic of countries over which puritanism has passed” (I.171.27-9) can no longer be relied on, and “the silly desire for the appearance of a large expenditure” still “has the force of a passion” (I.171.33-4).

  POPULATION AND PRODUCTIVITY

  The problems of population crop up throughout the Principles. The study of production becomes a study of the race between production and population. In the chapter on the “Law of the Increase of Labour” (I, x), it is held that “It is a very low estimate of the capacity of increase, if we only assume, that in a good sanitary condition of the people, each generation may be double the number of the generation which preceded it” (I.155.11-3). That population does not increase at that pace is not “through a providential adaptation of the fecundity of the human species to the exigencies of society” (I.155.20-1) but through “prudent or conscientious self-restraint” (I.157.35-6). An “acceleration of the rate [of population increase] very speedily follows any diminution of the motives to restraint” (I.159.7-8). Thus the problem is posed: “Unless, either by their general improvement in intellectual and moral culture, or at least by raising their habitual standard of comfortable living, they can be taught to make a better use of favourable circumstances, nothing permanent can be done for them; the most promising schemes end only in having a more numerous, but not a happier people” (I.159.14-8). The problem is here posed as an individual one; in Chapter xiii it is posed as a social one. “The return to labour has probably increased as fast as the population; and would have outstripped it, if that very augmentation of return had not called forth an additional portion of the inherent power of multiplication in the human species. . . . [N]othing could have prevented a general deterioration in the condition of the human race, were it not that population has in fact been restrained. Had it been restrained still more, and the same improvements taken place, there would have been a larger dividend. . . . The new ground wrung from nature by the improvements would not have been all used up in the support of mere numbers.” (I.189.36—190.17.)

  In Book II there is further discussion of the prospects for prudence. In his discussion of communism (Chapter i) he appears less afraid of the population effect than was Malthus: there would be provided “motives to restraint.” “. . . Communism is precisely the state of things in which opinion might be expected to declare itself with greatest intensity against this kind of selfish intemperance. . . . [O]pinion could not fail to reprobate, and if reprobation did not suffice, to repress by penalties of some description, this or any other culpable self-indulgence at the expense of the community” (I.206.9-19). This sounds more like Orwell’s bad dream of 1984 than the sentiments of the author of the essay On Liberty!

  He recurs to the problem in his three chapters on wages (II, xi, xii, and xiii). Again the “motives for restraint” are the primary concern: “No remedies for low wages have the smallest chance of being efficacious, which do not operate on and through the minds and habits of the people” (I.366.6-7). Education might help. “If the opinion were once generally established among the labouring class that their welfare required a due regulation of the numbers of families, the respectable and well-conducted of the body would conform to the prescription . . .” (I.372.16-8). But a more important influence would follow the admission of women “to the same rights of citizenship with men” (I.372.28—373.1). In commenting on “hard-hearted Malthusianism” he said: “as if it were not a thousand times more hard-hearted to tell human beings that they may, than that they may not, call into existence swarms of creatures who are sure to be miserable . . . and forgetting that the conduct, which it is reckoned so cruel to disapprove, is a degrading slavery to a brute instinct in one of the persons concerned, and . . . in the other, helpless submission to a revolting abuse of power” (I.352.6-12). And later: “It is seldom by the choice of the wife that families are too numerous; on her devolves (along with all the physical suffering and at least a full share of the privations) the whole of the intolerable domestic drudgery resulting from the excess. . . . Among the barbarisms which law and morals have not yet ceased to sanction, the most disgusting surely is, that any human being should be permitted to consider himself as having a right to the person of another” (I.372.6-15). To education and a change in the status of women must be added, Mill argued, a dramatic improvement in the condition of the poor. The minor improvement resulting from the repeal of the Corn Laws he did not consider important. “Things which only affect them a very little, make no permanent impression upon their habits and requirements, and they soon slide back into their former state. To produce permanent advantage, the temporary cause operating upon them must be sufficient to make a great change in their condition. . . . Of cases in point, the most remarkable is France after the Revolution” (I.342.21-32). He recurs to this point in Chapter xiii. “For the purpose therefore of altering the habits of the labouring people, there is need of a twofold action, directed simultaneously upon their intelligence and their poverty. An effective national education of the children of the labouring class, is the first thing needful: and, coincidently with this, a system of measures which shall (as the Revolution did in France) extinguish extreme poverty for one whole generation” (I.374.34-9). “Unless comfort can be made as habitual to a whole generation as indigence is now, nothing is accomplished; and feeble half-measures do but fritter away resources . . .” (I.378.11-4). All of this is highly relevant to the problem of the modern world; I propose to underline only one point. With reference to the poorer countries with high fertility one may well ask whether external aid, like poor relief in nineteenth-century England, may simply postpone the necessary adjustment in the birth rate, may be “frittered away,” mere numbers rather than happiness resulting. One may also wonder whether Mill had the answer for his day and for ours. He saw that relief (or aid) must be on a massive scale to permit the dawn of hope. If this is correct, as I believe it to be, we should concentrate our “aid” on a few countries, and those countries must be chosen as most nearly ready for massive improvement. This “hard-hearted Malthusianism” would be hard to practise. The choice of those to be aided would be heart-breaking; and there is the danger that those not chosen will in exasperation and frustration do injury to themselves and us.³⁸

  PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION

  In the “Preliminary Remarks,” Mill distinguished the laws of production from those of distribution. The “manner in which wealth is distributed in any given society, depends on the statutes or usages therein obtaining” (I.21.17-8). So, at the beginning of Book II, he says: “The laws and conditions of the production of wealth partake of the character of physical truths. . . . It is not so with the Distribution of Wealth. That is a matter of human institution solely” (I.199.4-29). In fact Mill has much to say about the effect on productivity of “human institutions” as I propose to demonstrate. The really important distinction that he made was between the inevitability of the consequences which flow from any given circumstances and the freedom to modify the circumstances. Thus in the “Preliminary Remarks” he says: “though governments or nations have the power of deciding what institutions shall exist, they cannot arbitrarily determine how those institutions shall work” (I.21.18-20). And in Book II: “We have here to consider, not the causes, but the consequences, of the rules according to which wealth may be distributed. Those, at least, are as little arbitrary, and have as much the character of physical laws, as the laws of production. Human beings can control their own acts, but not the consequences of their acts either to themselves or to others” (I.200.20-5). One of these “consequences” is reflected in productivity. It is of great importance to recognize the effect of “institutions” on productivity, and in particular to recognize the effect on productivity of institutions devised with a view to improving the distribution of wealth. The smaller the amount to be divided the more seriously must the effect of redistribution on the size of the dividend be examined. The problem becomes one of identifying “useful injustices” (as Sir Dennis Robertson has called them).³⁹

  In the chapter on the “Degrees of Productiveness” the importance of “Security” is emphasized. “This consists of protection by the government, and protection against the government” (I.112.4-5), and much of it seems to be “the effect of manners and opinion rather than of law” (I.114.11-2). The key sentence is this: “the efficiency of industry may be expected to be great, in proportion as the fruits of industry are insured to the person exerting it” (I.114.33-5). This is a recurrent theme. In Chapter ix, when discussing the conduct of large scale enterprise by joint stock, he states two qualifications of the manager: “fidelity and zeal.” The former he thinks it is easy to secure, the latter very difficult. The “directing mind should be incessantly occupied with the subject; should be continually laying schemes by which greater profit may be obtained. . . . This intensity of interest . . . it is seldom to be expected that any one should feel, who is conducting a business as the hired servant and for the profit of another. There are experiments in human affairs which are conclusive on the point. Look at the whole class of rulers, and ministers of state” (I.137.39—138.5). Again, in Chapter xii, the doctrine is applied to agriculture: “Improvements in government, and almost every kind of moral and social advancement, operate in the same manner. Suppose a country in the condition of France before the Revolution: taxation imposed . . . on such a principle as to be an actual penalty on production. . . . Was not the hurricane which swept away this system of things, even if we look no further than to its effect in augmenting the productiveness of labour, equivalent to many industrial inventions?” (I.183.6-14). From taxation we turn to tenure to note the effect in Ireland “of a bad system of tenancy, in rendering agricultural labour slack and ineffective. No improvements operate more directly upon the productiveness of labour, than those in the tenure of farms, and in the laws relating to landed property” (I.183.24-7). So, in Book I, on “Production,” discussion of the expediency of social institutions crept in, and in Book II, on “Distribution,” the problems of justice did not crowd out the problems of expediency through effects on production.

  The chapter on “Property” (II, i) underwent very great changes. In the preface to the 2nd edition, Mill says that the objections stated in the 1st edition to “the specific schemes propounded by some Socialists, have been erroneously understood as a general condemnation of all that is commonly included under that name” (I.xcii.35-7). To meet the objection he enlarged the chapter. In the 3rd edition he rewrote it. “The only objection to which any great importance will be found to be attached in the present edition, is the unprepared state of mankind in general, and of the labouring classes in particular; their extreme unfitness at present for any order of things, which would make any considerable demand on either their intellect or their virtue” (I.xciii.12-6). These changes, and his later posthumous Chapters on Socialism, provide scope for long debates about how socialistic Mill was at various points in his career. What is really valuable is not his changing answers, but his continuing questions. The criteria for judging society as it existed, and society as it might be, emerge from the questions. One of the criteria is the degree of motivation to work:

  The objection ordinarily made to a system of community of property and equal distribution of the produce, that each person would be incessantly occupied in evading his fair share of the work, points, undoubtedly, to a real difficulty. But those who urge this objection, forget to how great an extent the same difficulty exists under the system on which nine-tenths of the business of society is now conducted. . . . From the Irish reaper or hodman to the chief justice or the minister of state, nearly all the work of society is remunerated by day wages or fixed salaries. A factory operative has less personal interest in his work than a member of a Communist association. . . . Mankind are capable of a far greater amount of public spirit than the present age is accustomed to suppose possible. . . . To what extent, therefore, the energy of labour would be diminished by Communism, or whether in the long run it would be diminished at all, must be considered . . . an undecided question.

  (I.203.37—205.40.)

  This is a more favourable judgment than that in the 1st edition, and is seemingly inconsistent with the general attitude of the Principles on motivation and incentive. The explanation of the change and the “inconsistency” lies in the addition of “two conditions . . . without which neither Communism nor any other laws or institutions could make the condition of the mass of mankind other than degraded and miserable. One of these conditions is universal education; the other, a due limitation of the numbers of the community” (I.208.21-5). He may dream of a utopia where pecuniary incentives are unnecessary; but he has a very realistic recognition of the importance of pecuniary incentives for some time to come: “we may, without attempting to limit the ultimate capabilities of human nature, affirm, that the political economist, for a considerable time to come, will be chiefly concerned with the conditions of existence and progress belonging to a society founded on private property and individual competition” (I.214.5-9).

  If productivity is assured under “Communism” there remains the question of “human liberty and spontaneity.” Of liberty as an end in itself I have said something earlier. One sentence has peculiar relevance to the modern world: “No society in which eccentricity is a matter of reproach, can be in a wholesome state” (I.209.33-4). But here the concern is with productivity and I would argue that the atmosphere of liberty and spontaneity is especially conducive to productivity. Indeed I think Mill would so argue, and in support of this view I would cite his attitude to competition as developed in the chapter on the “Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes” (IV, vii) in a section, be it noted, that was added in the 3rd edition. “To be protected against competition is to be protected in idleness, in mental dulness . . .” (II.795.37-8). Competition, innovation, enterprise, are the fruits of liberty, the complement of spontaneity. Mill’s dissent from the socialists’ declamation against competition comes at the end of his discussion of co-operative societies: communism was a matter of the distant future, co-operatives promised improvement in the immediate future. The co-operative movement promised, not only a new dignity to labour and “the healing of the standing feud between capital and labour” (II.792.7-8), but a great increase in the “productiveness of labour.” This increase would result from the “vast stimulus given to productive energies, by placing the labourers, as a mass, in a relation to their work which would make it their principle and their interest—at present it is neither—to do the utmost, instead of the least possible, in exchange for their remuneration” (II.792.1-5). Yet Mill believed that it would be desirable, “for a considerable length of time,” that individual capitalists should “coexist” with co-operative societies. “A private capitalist, exempt from the control of a body, if he is a person of capacity, is considerably more likely than almost any association to run judicious risks, and originate costly improvements” (II.793.3-5).

  Along with his admiration for the co-operative association in industry, Mill had a curiously individualistic attitude to the organization of agriculture. His chapters on “Peasant Proprietors,” “Metayers,” and “Cottiers” all reflect his idealization of the small agriculturists of Wordsworth’s Lakes (I.253n). The theme is essentially motivation to hard work: “ ‘The magic of property turns sand to gold. . . . Give a man the secure possession of a bleak rock, and he will turn it into a garden. . . .’ ” (I.274.19-30.) But it is not just a matter of increased exertion: peasant proprietorship stimulates “mental activity” and is “propitious to the moral virtues of prudence, temperance, and self-control. Day-labourers . . . are usually improvident. . . . [P]easant proprietors . . . are oftener accused of penuriousness than of prodigality” (I.281.28—282.8). Mill indeed recognized the dangers of morcellement and the advantages of grande culture, but he concluded that compared with the English system of cultivation by hired labour peasant proprietorship was “eminently beneficial” and he did not feel “on the present occasion called upon to compare it with the joint ownership of the land by associations of labourers” (I.296.2-4).

  Mill proceeded to examine two other systems of tenure: metayers and cottiers. He contrasts the happy stage of Lombardy and its metayers with the miserable condition of the Irish cottiers. “Under a metayer system there is an established mode in which the owner of land is sure of participating in the increased produce drawn from it” (I.316.5-7). Of the cottier he says: “If the landlord at any time exerted his full legal rights, the cottier would not be able even to live. If by extra exertion he doubled the produce of his bit of land, or if he prudently abstained from producing mouths to eat it up, his only gain would be to have more left to pay to his landlord . . . if he is lazy or intemperate, it is at his landlord’s expense” (I.318.30—319.3). Mill watched closely the revolution in Ireland, and Cairnes (as is clear from Appendix H) kept him posted. Repeal of the Corn Laws “would of itself have sufficed to bring about this revolution in tenure” (I.333.2-3), but it was “immensely facilitated and made more rapid by the vast emigration, as well as by that greatest boon ever conferred on Ireland by any Government, the Encumbered Estates Act” (I.332.6-9). The change, however, was toward the English system of capitalist farming; “The truly insular ignorance of her public men respecting a form of agricultural economy which predominates in nearly every other civilized country” made it doubtful whether action would be taken to promote peasant proprietorship; “Yet there are germs of a tendency . . .” (I.334.7-10).

  EXCHANGE

  “Happily,” said Mill, “there is nothing in the laws of value which remains for the present or any future writer to clear up; the theory of the subject is complete.” This was injudicious. Professor Schumpeter, commenting on the state of the economic science just before World War I in his Preface to Dr. Zeuthen’s Problems of Monopoly,⁴⁰ gave one reason for thinking it injudicious:

  There was a belief that the great work had been done—a belief very similar to that expressed by Mill in that famous passage. . . . In a sense, this attitude was both right and fruitful. Great work had undoubtedly been done, and it was certainly necessary to bend to the task of defending, expounding and applying it. Yet there was some danger of petrifaction ahead, and the almost immediate rise of anti-theoretic schools of thought . . . is the proof that Theory was about to pay the penalty for that air of finality which was beginning to get on the nerves of the rising generation in very much the same way as it did in the case of Mill.

  It appeared injudicious, too, in the light of the new theory of the “neoclassics” which soon emerged as victor (albeit a relatively considerate and co-operative victor) in the “war of the methods.” Because there has been some misunderstanding as to the nature of the advance made from Mill to Jevons, and consequently some misunderstanding of Mill, I propose to state very briefly what I consider to have been the real improvements.

  The new analysis of marginal utility seems to me to be the least important element: the solution of the paradox of water and diamonds was academically interesting but little was added, if anything, to the understanding of the role of demand in the process of exchange. The essential notion of elasticity of demand, present in Adam Smith, was clarified in Mill and only waited to be christened by Marshall. The notion of “consumers’ sovereignty,” again without the name, was basic to the economics of Mill, as of Adam Smith: and it might well be argued that this general notion of appropriate economic organization makes more sense than the precision of the demonstrations of the conditions for maximizing utility, having in mind the fact that the utility for any individual is unmeasurable and that interpersonal comparisons are strictly impossible. Edgeworth’s verdict on Mill’s performance, in his article in Palgrave’s Dictionary of Political Economy, is just: “The general theory of demand and supply seems to be stated by Mill as clearly as is possible without the aid of mathematical apparatus.”⁴¹ If utility analysis added little to the general theory of demand, the utility theorists did make very important advances. Perhaps the most important advances lay in the clear recognition of the simultaneous pricing of goods and factors of production, and of the generality of the notion of “variable proportions” leading to elucidation of the role of substitution. Closely related was the development of the concept of “alternative opportunity” as the basis of cost. Much of the confusion of the classics in dealing with capital appears to me to have been compounded by the capital theory of Jevons and Bohm Bawerk, but the way out was demonstrated by Walras when he treated the pricing of the services of people and of durable goods as essentially the same and went on to discuss the pricing of the durable goods as the sources of those services. Perhaps equally important with these specific advances lay the advance towards more precision in the specification of models with the promise of more rigorous theory and with the clearer obligation to recognize the difficulty of using such theory in understanding the real economic process, in diagnosing its ills and in prescribing remedies.

  When the pricing of the factors of production is seen as part of a whole process of equilibrium, the organization of Mill’s Principles appears very odd. Distribution is the subject of Book II; pricing is left to Book III. It is true that he says that he has not “escaped the necessity of anticipating some small portion of the theory of Value, especially as to the value of labour and of land” (II.455.12-3), but, at the end of Book III, the chapter on “Distribution as Affected by Exchange” is devoted to the thesis that distribution is not affected by exchange. “Wages depend on the ratio between population and capital; and would do so if all the capital in the world were the property of one association, or if the capitalists among whom it is shared maintained each an establishment for the production of every article consumed in the community, exchange of commodities having no existence” (II.695.26—696.2). Similarly, rent: “Exchange, and money, therefore, make no difference in the law of rent” (II.698.9-10). And profits: “Wages and Rent being thus regulated by the same principles when paid in money, as they would be if apportioned in kind, it follows that Profits are so likewise. For the surplus, after replacing wages and paying rent, constitutes Profits” (II.698.18-21). The verdict of Alfred Marshall is found in his Appendix J:

  By putting his main theory of wages before his account of supply and demand, he cut himself off from the chance of treating that theory in a satisfactory way. . . . The fact is that the theories of Distribution and Exchange are so intimately connected as to be little more than two sides of the same problem. . . . If Mill had recognized this great truth he would not have been drawn on to appear to substitute, as he did in his second Book, the statement of the problem of wages for its solution: but he would have combined the description and analysis in his second Book, with the short but profound study of the causes that govern the distribution of the national dividend, given in his fourth Book.⁴²

  Noting Marshall’s assessment of the profundity of Book IV, perhaps one should remember the limitation, as well as the value, of the new pricing theory: Mill ignored the importance of the pricing process in the theory of distribution but his successors were too readily content with a static solution. Mill may have been unsatisfactory in his explanation of why factor prices were what they were, but he had brilliant insights into the probable trend of change. And his successors were too ready to accept a theory of the pricing of factors as a theory (not just a part of a theory) of distribution ignoring the really exciting problems of why particular people had particular factors for sale at these prices.

  To the thesis that distribution is not affected by exchange is added the further thesis that the process of exchange is unaffected by money:

  There cannot, in short, be intrinsically a more insignificant thing, in the economy of society, than money; except in the character of a contrivance for sparing time and labour. It is a machine for doing quickly and commodiously, what would be done, though less quickly and commodiously, without it: and like many other kinds of machinery, it only exerts a distinct and independent influence of its own when it gets out of order.

  The introduction of money does not interfere with the operation of any of the Laws of Value laid down in the preceding chapters.

  (II.506.32-40.)

  What follows is a sequence of chapters on money, monetary theory, and monetary policy, which indicate that he knew that the “machinery” very easily got out of order, so that money was in fact far from “insignificant.” I do not propose to examine these chapters in detail but I assert that they wear well. They need to be read, however, with patience; an initial dogmatic statement is later qualified. His assertion of the “quantity theory,” for instance, is followed by qualifications which “under a complex system of credit like that existing in England, render the proposition an extremely incorrect expression of the fact” (II.516.32-4). Professor Schumpeter has said of these chapters that “they contain some of Mill’s best work. [They display] indeed some contradictions, hesitations, and unassimilated compromises . . . but even these were not unmixed evils since they brought out, in strange contrast to Mill’s own belief in the finality of his teaching, the unfinished state of the analysis of that time, and thus indicated lines for further research to follow.”⁴³ Of the chapters on international trade the judgment is more universally favourable, the development of the relationship between reciprocal demand and the commodity terms of trade being considered by Professor Viner to constitute “his chief claim to originality in the field of economics.”⁴⁴ This favourable judgment is related to his performance in the static sphere; it is only in recent years that the dynamic aspect of his trade theory has been revived. When Mill denounced the fallacy of Adam Smith’s “vent for surplus” approach to the benefit of foreign trade, “that it afforded an outlet for the surplus produce of a country” (II.592.12-3), he turned his back on the development aspects of the problem of unproductive labour, and argued on the level of the static theorists. The new concern for the economics of growth has brought new appreciation of the Adam Smith approach. Professor Allyn Young⁴⁵ and J. H. Williams⁴⁶ were among the first in this generation to recognize the value of that part of international trade theory that had been considered “crude” and fallacious by the orthodox. Professor Myint⁴⁷ has shown that “in general, the ‘vent-for-surplus’ theory produces a more effective approach than the comparative costs theory to the international trade of the underdeveloped countries.” He recognized that this theory “does not provide an exact fit to all the particular patterns of development,” but that it is more relevant than a theory which “assumes that the resources of a country are given and fully employed before it enters into international trade.” Professor Myint was concerned with the relatively backward countries: but no countries are “fully developed” and in all it is necessary to consider more than effective allocation of given resources, in all there are some unused productive capacities, some additional resources to develop. We should pay attention therefore to what Mill has to say about the “indirect effects” of international trade “which must be counted as benefits of a high order” (II.593.24-5). One of these indirect effects is “the tendency of every extension of the market to improve the processes of production” (II.593.25-6); another is that the opening of a new market “sometimes works a sort of industrial revolution in a country whose resources were previously undeveloped for want of energy and ambition in the people” (II.593.39—594.2).

  OF THE FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT

  The “agenda” of government change with changes in the nature of the economy, with changes in the character (particularly the honesty and efficiency) of the government. We do not look at the English prescription for 1848 as likely to be satisfactory for the England of 1965, nor do we look for one prescription appropriate for all countries in 1965. But examination of Mill’s writing on the “influence of government,” on the “economical effects” of the manner in which governments carry on their “necessary” functions and on the proper extension of their optional functions, is not just a matter for the economic historian. As in other parts of the inquiry, questions are raised that still demand answers, and insight may be stimulated to the point where answers relevant to our time may be found. But the answers depend on much more than “economical” effects; liberty and democracy are at issue:

  impatient reformers, thinking it easier and shorter to get possession of the government than of the intellects and dispositions of the public, are under a constant temptation to stretch the province of government. . . [and] many rash proposals are made by sincere lovers of improvement, for attempting, by compulsory regulation, the attainment of objects which can only be effectually or only usefully compassed by opinion and discussion . . . .

  (II.799.11-20.)

  The itch to interfere, to impose one’s will on others, might seem to need restraining, but Mill had no narrow concept of the function of government: “the admitted functions of government embrace a much wider field than can easily be included within the ring-fence of any restrictive definition, and . . . it is hardly possible to find any ground of justification common to them all, except the comprehensive one of general expediency; nor to limit the interference of government by any universal rule, save the simple and vague one, that it should never be admitted but when the case of expediency is strong” (II.803.42—804.6).

  In Book I Mill had emphasized the economic importance of security of person and property, and in Book II he had argued that the rights of property were not absolute. He returns to these matters in Book V. “Insecurity of person and property . . . means, not only that labour and frugality are not the road to acquisition, but that violence is” (II.880.11-7). But there is also the very suggestive qualification: “a certain degree of insecurity, in some combinations of circumstances, has good as well as bad effects, by making energy and practical ability the conditions of safety. Insecurity paralyzes, only when it is such in nature and in degree, that no energy of which mankind in general are capable, affords any tolerable means of self-protection.” (II.881.19-24.) After some discussion of the imperfection of the laws of property, he reverts to the problem of inheritance which he had discussed in Book II. He argues that “no one person should be permitted to acquire, by inheritance, more than the amount of a moderate independence” (II.887.19-21). In Book II he had noted, with scorn, the view that “the best thing which can be done for objects of affection is to heap on them to satiety those intrinsically worthless things on which large fortunes are mostly expended” (I.225.22-4). If restriction of the right to inherit could be made effectual, “wealth which could no longer be employed in over-enriching a few, would either be devoted to objects of public usefulness, or if bestowed on individuals, would be distributed among a larger number” (I.226.4-6). He noted with great approval the endowment of charitable foundations in the United States “where the ideas and practice in the matter of inheritance seem to be unusually rational and beneficial” (I.226.18-9), and he comments that to make similar bequests in England would be to run “the risk of being declared insane by a jury after . . . death, or at the least, of having the property wasted in a Chancery suit to set aside the will” (I.226.n18-21).

  The “optional” functions of government are treated in two chapters: one deals with those “grounded on erroneous theories” (V, x), the other discusses in general the “grounds and limits of the laisser-faire or non-interference principle” (V, xi). In the former I would note his discussion of Protectionism, “the most notable” of the false theories. But the “infant industry” plea is recognized:

  The superiority of one country over another in a branch of production, often arises only from having begun it sooner. There may be no inherent advantage on one part, or disadvantage on the other, but only a present superiority of acquired skill and experience. A country which has this skill and experience yet to acquire, may in other respects be better adapted to the production than those which were earlier in the field: and besides, it is a just remark of Mr. Rae, that nothing has a greater tendency to promote improvements in any branch of production, than its trial under a new set of conditions. But it cannot be expected that individuals should, at their own risk, or rather to their certain loss, introduce a new manufacture, and bear the burthen of carrying it on until the producers have been educated up to the level of those with whom the processes are traditional.

  (II.918.33—919.5.)

  But if infants are to be protected, they must grow up to compete freely with the world. I would also note his treatment of the Combination Laws. Mill recognized “a limited power of obtaining, by combination, an increase of general wages at the expense of profits” (II.930.2-3). But he argued that the “limits of this power are narrow” (II.930.3-4). He denounced those “aristocratic” unions which were “hedging themselves in against competition, and protecting their own wages by shutting out others from access to their employment” (II.931.27-8). He insisted that it is “an indispensable condition of tolerating combinations, that they should be voluntary” (II.933.16-7). He considered mischievous the opposition to piece work and the insistence on equal pay for all workers of a given grade: mischievous because “they place the energetic and the idle, the skilful and the incompetent, on a level” (II.934.4-5). But he argued the right to free association: “though combinations to keep up wages are seldom effectual . . . the right of making the attempt is one which cannot be refused to any portion of the working population without great injustice, or without the probability of fatally misleading them respecting the circumstances which determine their condition. So long as combinations to raise wages were prohibited by law, the law appeared to the operatives to be the real cause of the low wages. . . .” (II.931.37—932.7.) What Mill did not perceive was the change in the status of the worker which strong unions might achieve: conditions of employment other than wages became a matter of contract, and the development of a “grievance procedure” gave protection against management, especially against the petty tyranny of the lower levels. Perception of this change would have led to a very different chapter on the “Probable Futurity of the Working Class” from that actually written.

  The limits of the province of government are discussed in the last chapter of the book. First there is the plea for “privacy”: “there is a part of the life of every person who has come to years of discretion, within which the individuality of that person ought to reign uncontrolled. . . . [T]here is, or ought to be, some space in human existence thus entrenched around, and sacred from authoritative intrusion. . . .” (II.938.4-8.) The second “general objection” is that every increase of the functions “devolving on the government is an increase of its power, both in the form of authority, and still more, in the indirect form of influence” (II.939.14-6). The danger of such power, no less in a democracy than in any other form of government, makes it necessary to develop “powerful defences, in order to maintain that originality of mind and individuality of character, which are the only source of any real progress” (II.940.3-5). A third “general objection” lies in the danger of overloading: “Every additional function undertaken by the government, is a fresh occupation imposed upon a body already overcharged with duties” (II.940.17-9). The final objection is that which Alfred Marshall later stressed in relation to “small business”: “The business of life is an essential part of the practical education of a people . . .” (II.943.1-2). Finally Mill proceeded to discuss some cases of appropriate interference. Public provision of elementary education is defended, but a monopoly of that provision is denounced: “A government which can mould the opinions and sentiments of the people from their youth upwards, can do with them whatever it pleases” (II.950.19-21). Support of research I have already noted as one of his important items of government policy:

  The fellowships of the Universities are an institution excellently adapted for such a purpose; but are hardly ever applied to it, being bestowed, at the best, as a reward for past proficiency, in committing to memory what has been done by others, and not as the salary of future labours in the advancement of knowledge. . . . The most effectual plan . . . seems to be that of conferring Professorships, with duties of instruction attached to them. The occupation of teaching a branch of knowledge, at least in its higher departments, is a help rather than an impediment to the systematic cultivation of the subject itself. The duties of a professorship almost always leave much time for original researches; and the greatest advances which have been made in the various sciences, both moral and physical, have originated with those who were public teachers of them. . . .

  (II.969.17-31.)

  A generous statement this from a servant of the East India Company who was developing further the economics of the stockbroker Ricardo—but Adam Smith and T. R. Malthus were professors.

  IV.

  THE PRINCIPLES AND THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

  i have written about the Principles as an individual book with little reference to the context of the whole thought of Mill or of the thought of the mid-nineteenth century. To have done otherwise would have involved embarking on a book, not an introductory essay. But reference must be made to Mill’s own account of the context in his Autobiography.⁴⁸ The beginning of his study of economics at the age of thirteen was strictly Ricardian:

  Though Ricardo’s great work was already in print, no didactic treatise embodying its doctrines, in a manner fit for learners, had yet appeared. My father, therefore, commenced instructing me in the science by a sort of lectures, which he delivered to me in our walks. He expounded each day a portion of the subject, and I gave him next day a written account of it, which he made me rewrite over and over again until it was clear, precise, and tolerably complete. In this manner I went through the whole extent of the science; and the written outline of it which resulted from my daily compte rendu, served him afterwards as notes from which to write his Elements of Political Economy. After this I read Ricardo, giving an account daily of what I read, and discussing, in the best manner I could, the collateral points which offered themselves in our progress.

  On Money, as the most intricate part of the subject, he made me read in the same manner Ricardo’s admirable pamphlets, written during what was called the Bullion controversy; to these succeeded Adam Smith; and in this reading it was one of my father’s main objects to make me apply to Smith’s more superficial view of political economy, the superior lights of Ricardo, and detect what was fallacious in Smith’s arguments, or erroneous in any of his conclusions.⁴⁹

  Two years later he went over the same ground again:

  my father was just finishing for the press his “Elements of Political Economy,” and he made me perform an exercise on the manuscript, which Mr. Bentham practised on all of his writings, making what he called, “marginal contents”; a short abstract of every paragraph, to enable the writer more easily to judge of, and improve, the order of the ideas, and the general character of the exposition.⁵⁰

  Four years later he reviewed the same material in company with a group of young men who met in Mr. Grote’s house in Threadneedle Street:

  Our first subject was Political Economy. We chose some systematic treatise as our text-book; my father’s “Elements” being our first choice. One of us read aloud a chapter, or some smaller portion of the book. The discussion was then opened, and any one who had an objection, or other remark to make, made it. Our rule was to discuss thoroughly every point raised, whether great or small, prolonging the discussion until all who took part were satisfied with the conclusion they had individually arrived at; and to follow up every topic of collateral speculation which the chapter or the conversation suggested, never leaving it until we had untied every knot which we found. We repeatedly kept up the discussion of some one point for several weeks, thinking intently on it during the intervals of our meetings, and contriving solutions of the new difficulties which had risen up in the last morning’s discussion. When we had finished in this way my father’s Elements, we went in the same manner through Ricardo’s Principles of Political Economy, and Bailey’s Dissertation on Value. These close and vigorous discussions were not only improving in a high degree to those who took part in them, but brought out new views of some topics of abstract Political Economy. The theory of International Values which I afterwards published, emanated from these conversations, as did also the modified form of Ricardo’s theory of Profits, laid down in my Essay on Profits and Interest.⁵¹

  The account in the Autobiography of the impact on the Ricardian, Benthamite Mill, of Coleridge, Maurice, Sterling, St. Simon, and Comte, of Carlyle, and finally of Harriet Taylor, cannot here be quoted, but if not familiar should be read by every reader of the Principles. Here I confine myself to the direct references to the Principles. The point of view is evident in his explanation of the change of his views from the days of his “extreme Benthamism” to the time when he wrote this treatise:

  In those days I had seen little further than the old school of political economists into the possibilities of fundamental improvement in social arrangements. Private property, as now understood, and inheritance, appeared to me, as to them, the dernier mot of legislation: and I looked no further than to mitigating the inequalities consequent on these institutions, by getting rid of primogeniture and entails. The notion that it was possible to go further than this in removing the injustice—for injustice it is, whether admitting of a complete remedy or not—involved in the fact that some are born to riches and the vast majority to poverty, I then reckoned chimerical, and only hoped that by universal education, leading to voluntary restraint on population, the portion of the poor might be made more tolerable. In short, I was a democrat, but not the least of a Socialist. We were now much less democrats than I had been, because so long as education continues to be so wretchedly imperfect, we dreaded the ignorance and especially the selfishness and brutality of the mass: but our ideal of ultimate improvement went far beyond Democracy, and would class us decidedly under the general designation of Socialists. While we repudiated with the greatest energy that tyranny of society over the individual which most Socialistic systems are supposed to involve, we yet looked forward to a time when society will no longer be divided into the idle and the industrious; when the rule that they who do not work shall not eat, will be applied not to paupers only, but impartially to all; when the division of the produce of labour, instead of depending, as in so great a degree it now does, on the accident of birth, will be made by concert on an acknowledged principle of justice; and when it will no longer either be, or be thought to be, impossible for human beings to exert themselves strenuously in procuring benefits which are not to be exclusively their own, but to be shared with the society they belong to. The social problem of the future we considered to be, how to unite the greatest individual liberty of action, with a common ownership in the raw material of the globe, and an equal participation of all in the benefits of combined labour.⁵²

  He then described the production of the book:

  In the “Principles of Political Economy,” these opinions were promulgated, less clearly and fully in the first edition, rather more so in the second, and quite unequivocally in the third. The difference arose partly from the change of times, the first edition having been written and sent to press before the French Revolution of 1848, after which the public mind became more open to the reception of novelties in opinion, and doctrines appeared moderate which would have been thought very startling a short time before. In the first edition the difficulties of Socialism were stated so strongly, that the tone was on the whole that of opposition to it. In the year or two which followed, much time was given to the study of the best Socialistic writers on the Continent, and to meditation and discussion on the whole range of topics involved in the controversy: and the result was that most of what had been written on the subject in the first edition was cancelled, and replaced by arguments and reflections which represent a more advanced opinion.

  The Political Economy was far more rapidly executed than the Logic, or indeed than anything of importance which I had previously written. It was commenced in the autumn of 1845, and was ready for the press before the end of 1847.⁵³

  Finally, there is Mill’s generous, perhaps over-generous, account of the part played by Harriet Taylor:

  The first of my books in which her share was conspicuous was the “Principles of Political Economy.” The “System of Logic” owed little to her except in the minuter matters of composition, in which respect my writings, both great and small, have largely benefited by her accurate and clear-sighted criticism. The chapter of the Political Economy which has had a greater influence on opinion than all the rest, that on “the Probable Future of the Labouring Classes,” is entirely due to her: in the first draft of the book, that chapter did not exist. She pointed out the need of such a chapter, and the extreme imperfection of the book without it: she was the cause of my writing it; and the more general part of the chapter, the statement and discussion of the two opposite theories respecting the proper condition of the labouring classes, was wholly an exposition of her thoughts, often in words taken from her own lips. The purely scientific part of the Political Economy I did not learn from her; but it was chiefly her influence that gave to the book that general tone by which it is distinguished from all previous expositions of Political Economy that had any pretension to being scientific, and which has made it so useful in conciliating minds which those previous expositions had repelled. This tone consisted chiefly in making the proper distinction between the laws of the Production of Wealth, which are real laws of nature, dependent on the properties of objects, and the modes of its Distribution, which, subject to certain conditions, depend on human will. The common run of political economists confuse these together, under the designation of economic laws, which they deem incapable of being defeated or modified by human effort; ascribing the same necessity to things dependent on the unchangeable conditions of our earthly existence, and to those which, being but the necessary consequences of particular social arrangements, are merely co-extensive with these: given certain institutions and customs, wages, profits, and rent will be determined by certain causes; but this class of political economists drop the indispensable presupposition, and argue that these causes must, by an inherent necessity, against which no human means can avail, determine the shares which fall, in the division of the produce, to labourers, capitalists, and landlords. The “Principles of Political Economy” yielded to none of its predecessors in aiming at the scientific appreciation of the action of these causes, under the conditions which they presuppose; but it set the example of not treating those conditions as final. The economic generalization which depend, not on necessities of nature but on those combined with the existing arrangements of society, it deals with only as provisional, and as liable to be much altered by the progress of social improvement.⁵⁴

  I conclude with a quotation from Professor Harold Laski’s introduction to the World’s Classics edition of the Autobiography:

  The modern economist may use a technique more refined than that of Mill; he rarely conveys the same sense of generous insight into his material. The modern logician has an apparatus incomparably more delicate and subtle; but those very qualities make his work less accessible, and therefore, less educative than Mill’s. The tradition is different because he wrote; and that, after all, is the final answer to critical analysis.⁵⁵

  In this judgment I concur.

  [1 ]Frank Knight, “The Ricardian Theory of Production and Distribution,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, I (1935), 3.

  [2 ]R. Redfield, “The Art of Social Science,” American Journal of Sociology, LIV (1948), 181-90.

  [3 ]Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics, Variorum Edition, ed. C. W. Guillebaud (London, 1961), 43.

  [4 ]K. E. Boulding, “Samuelson’s Foundations of Economic Analysis: The Role of Mathematics in Economics,” Journal of Political Economy, LVI (1948), 190.

  [5 ]J. A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis (New York, 1954), 4-5.

  [6 ]Lord Robbins, Theory of Economic Policy (London, 1952), 1 and 4.

  [7 ]John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, ed. W. J. Ashley (London, 1909), xxiv.

  [8 ]Page references to the present edition are given in parentheses in the text.

  [9 ]F. Y. Edgeworth, “John Stuart Mill,” Dictionary of Political Economy, ed. R. H. I. Palgrave (London, 1910), II, 763.

  [10 ]J. S. Mill, “On the Definition of Political Economy; and on the Method of Investigation Proper to It,” Essay V in Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy (London, 1844). Reprinted as number 7 in the Series of Scarce Works on Political Economy, by the London School of Economics and Political Science (London, 1948), 137-40. My italics.

  [11 ]Mill, “On the Definition of Political Economy,” 144-5.

  [12 ]Ibid., 146.

  [13 ]Ibid., 148-9.

  [14 ]Ibid., 155.

  [15 ]J. S. Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, 8th ed. (London, 1872), II, 463.

  [16 ]Ibid., II, 508ff.

  [17 ]Ibid., II, 513.

  [18 ]Ibid., II, 495.

  [19 ]A System of Logic, II, 553-4.

  [20 ]J. K. Galbraith, The Affluent Society (Boston, 1958).

  [21 ]F. H. Knight, The Ethics of Competition (London, 1935), 59.

  [22 ]Ibid., 60-1.

  [23 ]Quoted in ibid., 66.

  [24 ]Published 1886. Quotations are from the edition in the Wayfarers Library (London, n.d.).

  [25 ]Ibid., 1.

  [26 ]Ibid., 62.

  [27 ]Ibid., 428.

  [28 ]Joseph Spengler, “The Aesthetics of Population,” Population Bulletin, XIII (1957), 61-75.

  [29 ]Ibid., 70.

  [30 ]Ibid., 71.

  [31 ]Ibid., 72.

  [32 ]See my two articles, “Adam Smith on Productive and Unproductive Labour: A Theory of Full Development,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, XXVI (1960), 625-30; and “L’industrie de l’automobile canadienne et son intégration dans l‘économie mondiale,” Cahiers de l’Institut de Science Economique Appliquée, H.S., CXXVIII (1962), 121-35.

  [33 ]Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, ed. Cannan (London, 1904), I, 318.

  [34 ]Thomas Malthus, First Essay on Population (London, 1798). Reprinted for the Royal Economic Society(London, 1926), 293.

  [35 ]F. Myint, Theories of Economic Welfare (London, 1948), 13.

  [36 ]V. W. Bladen, “John Stuart Mill’s Principles: A Centenary Estimate,” American Economic Review, XXXIX.2 (1949), 1-12. See also the article on this “proposition” by H. G. Johnson, “Demand for Commodities is Not Demand for Labour,” Economic Journal, LIX (1949), 531-6.

  [37 ]See Appendix H, II.1043.4-9.

  [38 ]See my Preface to Canadian Population and Northern Colonization, ed. V. W. Bladen. Royal Society of Canada, “Studia Varia” series, no. 7 (Toronto, 1962).

  [39 ]Sir D. H. Robertson, Utility and All That (London, 1952), 63. “Surely one of the economist’s most obvious duties is to attempt to disentangle useful injustices from useless or harmless ones. . . . If, in the face of his findings, the Sovereign People then deliberately decides that Justice is at all costs to be preferred to Welfare, or even that Soaking the Rich is at all costs to be preferred to both—well, that is that.”

  [40 ]J. A. Schumpeter, Preface to F. Zeuthen, Problems of Monopoly (London, 1930), vii-viii.

  [41 ]Edgeworth, Dictionary, 760.

  [42 ]Marshall, Principles, Appendix J.

  [43 ]Schumpeter, History, 689.

  [44 ]J. Viner, Studies in the Theory of International Trade (New York, 1957), 535.

  [45 ]A. A. Young, “Increasing Returns and Economic Progress,” Economic Journal, XXXVIII (1928), 527-42.

  [46 ]J. H. Williams, “The Theory of International Trade Reconsidered,” Economic Journal, XXXIX (1929), 195-209.

  [47 ]H. Myint, “The ‘Classical Theory’ of International Trade and the Underdeveloped Countries,” Economic Journal, LXVIII (1958), 317-37.

  [48 ]Page references are to the Columbia edition (New York, 1924). Along with this part of the Introduction should be read Appendix G, in which some letters relating to the writing of the Principles are collected.

  [49 ]Autobiography, 19-20.

  [50 ]Ibid., 44.

  [51 ]Ibid., 84.

  [52 ]Ibid., 161-2.

  [53 ]Autobiography, 164.

  [54 ]Ibid., 173-5.

  [55 ]Autobiography, ed. Laski (London, 1924), xix and xx.

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  8: CW vol. 4 Essays of Economics and Society: Intro by Lord Robbins

  John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume IV - Essays of Economics and Society Part I, ed. John M. Robson, Introduction by Lord Robbins (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967). Chapter: Introduction

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/244/16621 on 2009-10-28

  The online edition of the Collected Works is published under licence from the copyright holder, The University of Toronto Press. ©2006 The University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced in any form or medium without the permission of The University of Toronto Press.

  ---

  The Collected Edition of the works of John Stuart Mill has been planned and is being directed by an editorial committee appointed from the Faculty of Arts and Science of the University of Toronto, and from the University of Toronto Press. The primary aim of the edition is to present fully collated texts of those works which exist in a number of versions, both printed and manuscript, and to provide accurate texts of works previously unpublished or which have become relatively inaccessible.

  Editorial Committee

  f. e. l. priestley,General Editor

  j. m. robson,Associate Editor

  v. w. bladen, alexander brady, j. b. conacher

  d. p. dryer, s. hollander, c. leech, r. f. mcrae

  marsh jeanneret, francess halpenny

  © University of Toronto Press 1967

  Printed in Canada

  London: Routledge & Kegan Paul

  Introduction

  I.

  NATURE OF THE COLLECTION

  the papers collected in this volume have a twofold value. They provide important insights into the evolution of the views of their author on economic and social problems; and, since they come from one of the world’s outstanding economists and social philosophers, they still possess great intrinsic interest. John Stuart Mill’s Principles of Political Economy is one of the great synthetic works of classical economics; anything which throws light on its propositions and their development is therefore of considerable historical importance. The views of the author of On Liberty on any aspect of social and economic policy have still great significance at this stage of human history.

  For good scholarly reasons the papers here reproduced are printed in chronological order. For purposes of discussion, however, they are better classified according to subject matter. From this point of view, they may be considered under six main headings: General Economic Theory (other than money and banking); Money and Banking; Public Finance; Labour; Property and Its Social Control; and Socialism. It is under these headings and in this order that they will be discussed in this Introduction.

  II.

  GENERAL ECONOMIC THEORY

  JUVENILIA

  the papers relating to non-monetary general economic theory begin with a set of three which may be regarded as exposition on the part of the youthful John Stuart of an outlook which he inherited from his father and Ricardo. Their chief value consists in their revelation of the position from which he set out. The review of McCulloch’s Discourse on the Rise, Progress, Peculiar Objects and Importance of Political Economy (reprinted in an Appendix because it was jointly composed with William Ellis) is pure propaganda for the School; it is fairly clear that the eulogy of McCulloch would not have been written later on.¹ The paper on “The Nature, Origin, and Progress of Rent,” a straightforward exposition of Ricardian theory, was written as an appendix to McCulloch’s edition of Smith’s Wealth of Nations and well explains the Ricardian critique of Adam Smith’s views on rent. But the most notable thing about the reprint is the footnote on page 178 where Professor Robson reproduces a marginal note from Mill’s copy, now at Somerville College, in which he shows dissatisfaction with the dogmatic insistence on the doctrine that rent does not enter into cost of production, thus foreshadowing possibly the concessions in this respect appearing in the Principles.²

  The article from the Westminster Review, “The Quarterly Review on Political Economy,” which is the earliest of the three, is also the most extensive. It is an episode in the war between the two Reviews. The article which it attacks—a review of McCulloch’s Discourse—was actually written by Malthus. But Mill’s review, which was obviously written with this knowledge, pretends that the article in the Quarterly Review was written with a view to making Malthus look ridiculous. As a piece of debating, it is excellent rough stuff. As usual, outside his writings on population, Malthus had put his points so poorly that it was not difficult to make logical mincemeat of them; and this the youthful reviewer does with great relish. The article contains no indication that he was yet aware of the vulnerable point in crude assertions of his father’s and Say’s arguments about the impossibility of general gluts. And to those who have read the thorough trouncing from Torrens, evoked by an earlier effort to sustain his father’s preposterous view that differences in the period of investment might all be reduced to labour,³ the attempt to minimize the differences between this view and Ricardo’s must have interest as almost the one instance in the whole corpus of his writings where Mill was not entirely ingenuous. For any who are interested in the finer shades of the disputes between Malthus and the Ricardians, this article is required reading. For the rest, it is chiefly notable as an exceptionally clear exposition of what the Ricardian theory of value really asserted.

  PAPERS ON GENERAL THEORY WRITTEN BEFORE 1848

  Next comes a central group of essays and reviews in which Mill is to be seen working out his own views on general theory in forms later to appear in the Principles. Of these, the five included in the separate volume entitled Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy are by far the most important. Their actual publication did not take place until 1844 and seems to have been stimulated by a desire to set before the world a more systematic and temperate exposition of the rôle of demand in international trade theory than was being expounded with great debating brilliance, but considerable over-emphasis, by Torrens in the famous, or notorious, Budget letters. But they were written in 1829 and 1830 and therefore come first in chronological order as they do in the order of intellectual importance.

  The first of the series is the most famous. The background is fairly well known. The theory of comparative cost, invented by Torrens and Ricardo and expounded by Mill’s father, had indicated the nature of the advantages of territorial division of labour and the limiting cost ratios (in a two-commodity model) between which exchanges advantageous to both parties could take place. But it did not decide at what rate these exchanges would actually take place and therefore the way in which the gains of trade would be divided. Indeed, in the first edition of James Mill’s Elements the exposition actually involved a double counting of the gain, only corrected in the third edition after representations by his son and his son’s friend, George Graham. It was doubtless in the course of attempts to fill this gap that there took place those conversations which, as Mill relates in his Autobiography,⁴ eventually resulted in the writing of the essay, “Of the Laws of Interchange Between Nations; and the Distribution of the Gains of Commerce among the Countries of the Commercial World.”

  This essay is surely one of the most powerful contributions ever made to the evolution of economic analysis. The idea of demand as a function of price was not, of course, entirely new: it is easy to find perceptions of this relationship in earlier literature. But this was the first case in which it was systematically set forth and made the analytical basis of important propositions. Moreover, there is involved in this essay the first systematic presentation of the classical theory of international trade in all its main implications. Ricardo, with the theory of comparative costs and the theory of the distribution of the precious metals, had provided two of the most basic ingredients. But until the demand element was explicitly introduced, the theory was necessarily incomplete. In this essay Mill not only meets this need, in models involving both barter and money, but he also provides a systematic working out of the corollaries as regards tariffs and the terms of trade, the export of machinery, the problem of two countries competing in a third, and the payment of international tribute. Not all the solutions are comprehensive. But for the first time the general outline of a comprehensive analysis is set forth; and, although there was some elaboration in the Principles, we have the authority of Edgeworth for the view that not all this was an improvement.⁵

  The second essay, “Of the Influence of Consumption on Production,” is scarcely less remarkable. Classical teaching on this subject had hitherto been represented by Adam Smith’s proposition that “What is annually saved is as regularly consumed as what is annually spent, and nearly in the same time, too,”⁶ or by the even more doctrinaire Law of Markets, as it was thought to be propounded by J. B. Say and certainly was by Mill’s father, which flatly asserted the identity of aggregate supply and aggregate demand and flatly denied the possibility of general over-production—a principle which, as we shall see later, Mill himself, as a young man, was not unwilling to adduce in a dispute about war expenditure.⁷ Mill’s essay begins with an assertion of the broad principle that “What a country wants to make it richer, is never consumption, but production” (I.263). But in searching for “scattered particles of important truth” amid “the ruins of exploded error” he is led to reformulations which in fact amount both to a refutation of Say’s Law as usually applied to a money economy, and to a view of the operations of the speculative motive which affords what is in effect a theory of the trade cycle. “In order to render the argument for the impossibility of an excess of all commodities applicable to the case in which a circulating medium is employed, money must itself be considered as a commodity. It must, undoubtedly, be admitted that there cannot be an excess of all other commodities, and an excess of money at the same time.” He continues: “But those who have . . . affirmed that there was an excess of all commodities, never pretended that money was one of these commodities; they held that there was not an excess, but a deficiency of the circulating medium.” What this amounted to was “that persons in general, at that particular time, from a general expectation of being called upon to meet sudden demands, liked better to possess money than any other commodity. Money, consequently, was in request, and all other commodities were in comparative disrepute. . . . But the result is, that all commodities fall in price, or become unsaleable. When this happens to one single commodity, there is said to be a superabundance of that commodity; and if that be a proper expression, there would seem to be in the nature of the case no particular impropriety in saying that there is a superabundance of all or most commodities, when all or most of them are in this same predicament.” (I.277.) For some reason or other this remarkable reconstruction of the classical position has seldom received explicit recognition. It can be detected between the lines in the treatment of speculation in the Principles, but it is nowhere so overtly developed; and from that day to this, the neat side-tracking of the crudities of Say’s Law has passed very little noticed. Yet, as Messrs. Baumol and Becker remark, in their excellent résumé of the historical treatment of the issues, “In reading it one is led to wonder why so much of the subsequent literature (this paper included) had to be written at all.”⁸

  The remaining three essays in this collection are not of the same path-breaking importance, but they have considerable interest nevertheless. The third essay, “On the Words Productive and Unproductive,” is devoted to making clear that the use of these words, in the sense in which they had been employed by the English classical economists—as distinct from the Physiocrats—was to indicate the difference between the production of capital in some form or other, and pure services leaving directly or indirectly no lasting sources of enjoyment behind. Attention to such elucidations should have saved many purely semantic polemics in the literature of the hundred years after they appeared.

  The fourth essay, “On Profits and Interest,” consists first of a clarification and amendment of the Ricardian proposition that profits depend upon wages, and then a discussion of the relation between profits and interest, and the influences on the determination of the latter independent of the influence of the former. This part is conspicuous for a very clear exposition of the process of “forced accumulation,” as Mill calls it, through inflationary movements of cash or credit—an exposition which is explicitly stated to be no palliation of the iniquity of the process. “Though A might have spent his property unproductively, B ought not to be permitted to rob him of it because B will expend it on productive labour.” (I.307.)

  The subject matter of the last essay in this series is sufficiently indicated by its title, “On the Definition of Political Economy; and on the Method of Investigation Proper to It.” A scrutiny of earlier definitions and successive refinements of tentatives of his own eventually leads Mill to the conclusion that political economy is best defined as “The science which traces the laws of such of the phenomena of society as arise from the combined operations of mankind for the production of wealth in so far as those phenomena are not modified by the pursuit of any other object” (I.323); and what he calls the a priori method of reasoning from general assumptions is declared to be the only legitimate method of reaching general conclusions, although these conclusions need continually to be tested by reference to specific experience. These conceptions have sometimes been thought to have been discarded in the writing of the Principles. But it is doubtful if this is so. The essay makes it abundantly plain that, for purposes of practical recommendations, the use of the abstract propositions of the science as its author conceived it needed to be supplemented by other knowledge. In the world of reality there are many disturbing circumstances which do not fall within the province of political economy, “and here the mere political economist, he who has studied no science but Political Economy, if he attempt to apply his science to practice, will fail” (I.331). The scope of the Principles was intended to cover not only theory but also applications, as is evident even in its full title, The Principles of Political Economy with Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy, and it is difficult to believe that Mill would have admitted any incompatibility between this objective and his earlier discussion of scope and method. This is not the only time in the history of economic thought that attempts to clarify logical distinctions have been mistaken for prohibitions of catholicity of interest.

  There are two other papers, published before the writing of the Principles, which are concerned with questions of general theory.

  The first is a review of the concluding number of Harriet Martineau’s Illustrations of Political Economy, that entitled The Moral of Many Fables. Mill did not always speak kindly of this lady—he once referred to her as “a mere tyro”⁹ —but here, while making plain its limited pretensions, he treats her little book with a measure of respect. But he brings against it the reproach which by that time (1834) he had begun to feel against the political economy he had inherited from his father and his father’s circle, namely that it took the existing institutional framework as a permanent feature of the human situation. “Thus, for instance, English political economists presuppose, in every one of their speculations, that the produce of industry is shared among three classes, altogether distinct from one another. . . . They revolve in their eternal circle of landlords, capitalists, and labourers, until they seem to think of the distinction of society into those three classes, as if it were one of God’s ordinances, not man’s, and as little under human control as the division of day and night.” (I.225-7.) It is easy to see in these strictures the beginnings of the distinction that plays such a predominant rôle in the Principles between the laws of production which were immutable and the laws of distribution which were contingent on human institutions.

  The second paper is a review of De Quincey’s Logic of Political Economy. This was written very shortly before the commencement of the Principles and it can well be believed that, in the writing thereof, some of the stimulus of De Quincey’s lively exposition was still present in his mind. De Quincey’s politics were antipathetic to Mill, who candidly avows that he found it difficult “to reconcile this wretched party invective with the respect we sincerely wish to feel” (I.404). But he takes De Quincey’s discussions of the theory of value very seriously and reproduces at length the charming parable of alternative sales of a musical box in London and on a boat on Lake Superior with which De Quincey attempts to illustrate the respective influence of difficulty of attainment and usefulness.¹⁰ The paper is also noteworthy for a repudiation of the view, expressed by De Quincey and wrongly attributed by many (including no less an authority than Schumpeter) to Ricardo, that supply and demand are irrelevant to the determination of value.

  PAPERS ON GENERAL THEORY WRITTEN AFTER 1848

  Mill published very little on general economic theory once the Principles had appeared; his interest thereafter was focused upon more detailed applications. There are two papers appearing in this period which might legitimately be brought under this heading, the review of Newman’s Lectures on Political Economy of 1851 and the review of Thornton’s On Labour and its Claims of 1869. Each of these, however, has its centre of gravity in another universe of discourse. The review of Thornton will accordingly be dealt with below under the heading of Labour, and that of Newman under Socialism.

  III.

  MONEY AND BANKING

  mill’s papers relating to money and banking fall into two clearly marked groups. There is a group dealing with the controversies and events of the twenties and early thirties—the left-overs, so to speak, of the great bullionist debate; and there is a group, dealing with banking policy and the conduct of the Bank of England, which is part of the controversy concerning the expediency and results of the Bank Act of 1844. As we shall see, there is some evidence of continuity of thought between the two groups. But there is sufficient difference in content to make it useful to deal with them separately.

  PAPERS OF THE TWENTIES AND EARLY THIRTIES

  The first paper of the earlier group is a review of the pamphlet, Observations on the Effects Produced by the Expenditure of Government during the Restriction of Cash Payments, by William Blake. At the height of the bullion controversy Blake had published a short treatise in which the main principles of bullionist orthodoxy were forcibly expressed,¹¹ but he had changed his mind, and in the pamphlet under review had urged that the rise of prices during the war and the subsequent fall were all attributable to the increase and diminution of government expenditure. This pamphlet had been the subject of critical comment by Ricardo shortly before his death¹² and had been the subject of an exchange of views between the author and McCulloch.¹³ It was only to be expected that it should be singled out for critical examination in the Westminster Review, which in this connection, through its association with James Mill and his circle, stood for the unqualified classical position; and it was in character with this position that the task should have been assigned to John Mill.¹⁴

  It is a crude article imbued with the youthful combativeness and occasional arrogance which we have already noticed in the review of Malthus of about the same period. It begins with a denial of general distress after the war—“We neither saw nor heard it, except in the cant of the agriculturists” (I.3)—and relies on Tooke’s attempts¹⁵ to exhibit the Blakean thesis as wholly mistaken. “No general reasoning could have added to the conviction which everyone must feel, who has perused Mr. Tooke’s detail of facts, that Mr. Blake’s theory is totally erroneous.” (I.21.) The attitude is not sympathetic to this modern reader. Historical scholarship, at the present day, would probably hold that Blake had overstated his case. Moreover, at times his arguments are muddled and do not carry conviction. But to contend that there was nothing in the view that the great variations in government expenditure played some part in the inflationary and deflationary movements of prices is implausible to the modern outlook; and it must be admitted that there is something slightly repellent about the confidence with which the youthful reviewer asserts this point of view.

  Moreover, Mill’s own view at this stage cannot be regarded as free from error. He regards it as a fallacy to suppose that “expenditure, as contradistinguished from saving, can by any possibility constitute an additional source of demand”; and he similarly denounces the conception that “capital which being borrowed by government becomes a source of demand in its hands, would not have been equally a source of demand in the hands of those from whom it is taken” (I.13), neither of which views can in fact be taken to be inevitably fallacious. We have seen already that, in the essay “On the Influence of Consumption on Production,” Mill was to break the impasse created by the proposition that all that is saved is consumed and in about the same time. It is clear that at the time of this early review he was still in the bondage of this kind of thinking. As a critique of Blake’s general position his paper is radically inferior to the section devoted to that subject in Matthias Attwood’s Letter to Lord Archibald Hamilton.¹⁶

  The same spirit of somewhat combative dogmatism inspires the paper, written in 1833, entitled “The Currency Juggle.” This is a violent polemic directed chiefly against the position of Thomas Attwood who, in a recent debate with Cobbett, had advocated currency depreciation as a means for lightening the burden of debt and increasing the volume of employment. It is clear from the opening paragraphs of the paper that the object in writing it was to disassociate the radical movement from this propaganda, which it was felt was likely to bring the cause of reform into discredit; and, given the facts that the restoration of a metallic standard had taken place more than twelve years before and that the country was tired of controversy about the currency, it is not difficult to understand this motive. It is not difficult, moreover, to understand the view that Cobbett’s desire for an overt scaling down of debt, although in Mill’s view a mistaken position, should have been regarded as morally superior to a proposal to bring about the same thing by measures which were likely to rob all existing holders of money, whether or not they were creditors, of some of the value of their holding. What, however, is more difficult to understand is the tone of the argument and the apparent unwillingness to admit any force or quality in the position of the writers attacked. After all, from the point of view of modern analysis, during the period before the restoration of the metallic standard when the economy was being crippled by deflation, the position of the Attwoods seems considerably more defensible than that of the contemporary classical orthodoxy; and although by 1833 the economic situation had changed and the balance of argument was then probably against unorthodox changes, it is difficult to regard all their arguments as being as contemptible as they are made to appear in Mill’s attack. At first sight there is lacking the fairness, the willingness to do justice to opposing points of view, characteristic of Mill in his prime. But in fact, where any question of inconvertible paper was concerned, this attitude persisted till the end, as is shown not only by obiter dicta in the Principles, but also by the preservation of this particular effusion in Dissertations and Discussions. Apparently the traumatic experience of inconvertible paper during the Restriction period had left such a deep imprint on the members of the classical school that one and all seem to have been incapable of calm argument rather than of denunciation in this connection—which was a pity, for it left a gap in the literature not well filled even at the present day.

  The last paper in this group is the article on “Paper Currency and Commercial Distress” from the Parliamentary Review for the session of 1826. This paper, although somewhat prolix and rambling in form, is probably the most significant of the three, both as regards positive content and as an indication of the lines on which Mill’s future thought was to evolve.

  The positive value of the paper consists in its explanation of the course of a speculative boom and its eventual collapse. The vivid account of the origin of such movements in anticipation of shortages of supply, their extension so that the “speculative purchases produce the very effect, in anticipation of which they were made” (I.75), the repercussions of this state of affairs on manufacture, the arrival of increased supplies, and the unloading of swollen stocks—all this is without parallel in the earlier literature; and it is possible to read into it some anticipation of the essay “On the Influence of Consumption on Production” with its masterly invocation of fluctuations in willingness to hold money rather than commodities. Certainly it contains the germs of much of the content of the chapter (III, xii) on the “Influence of Credit on Prices” in the Principles.

  At the same time, in its criticisms of the government’s decision to prohibit the issue of pound notes and the arguments by which that decision was supported, there are to be discovered, at times in a somewhat extreme form, anticipations of Mill’s subsequent position in the controversy between the so-called Banking and Currency Schools. Thus, for instance, he maintains that until paper money has entirely displaced metal there can be no talk of excess. “So long as there remains a sovereign in the country, there has been no over-issue.” (I.83.) To the suggestion that such displacement takes time and that, in the interval, the total circulation may legitimately be described as excessive, he replies by a virtual denial of the existence of any appreciable lags. And he goes on to argue that if there were no paper circulation capable of depreciation in speculative periods, the same effect would be produced by the multiplication of other forms of credit. “It appears, that in periods of speculation, the addition to the circulating medium and the depreciation of its value, are no greater with a local bank paper than without it.” (I.96.) Finally he denies that the movement of interest rates had been in the least influenced by the increased issue of notes.

  Certainly the main positions of the Banking School are all here in embryo. But this brings us to the papers bearing directly on the controversy concerned.

  THE CONTROVERSY ABOUT THE PRINCIPLES OF THE BANK ACT OF 1844 AND ITS OPERATION IN PRACTICE

  This controversy related specifically to the principles appropriate to the regulation of a convertible paper currency. Both the schools of thought involved repudiated any connection with propaganda for inconvertible paper and insisted on the need for convertibility. But, given this degree of common ground, they differed root and branch concerning the need for regulation beyond this requirement. The Currency School, led by Overstone, Norman, and Torrens, argued that regulations were necessary in order that the movements of a mixed circulation might be similar to those which would take place if the currency were wholly metallic: to this end they proposed what was embodied in the famous Bank Act of 1844, a separation of the function of issue from the function of banking in the organisation of the Bank of England, and a rule which brought it about that, beyond a fixed fiduciary issue of an amount smaller than the minimum needs of trade, each note outstanding should be covered by an equivalent gold reserve. The Banking School argued that no such regulation was necessary and further that the separation of the departments imposed undesirable limitations on the proper discharge of the functions of the central bank.

  Beyond these practical issues there lay deeper divisions of view regarding the working of the monetary mechanism and the objectives of monetary policy.¹⁷

  Thus the Banking School regarded the size of the note issue as completely passive to the movement of prices. It did not determine prices; it was determined by them. They contended that it was impossible for bankers to bring about an increased circulation of notes: any attempt to do so was believed to be frustrated by the celebrated principle of reflux. They regarded bank credit as having exactly the same status as convertible notes, not only in relation to prices and incomes but also as part of the total system of circulating media. Their remedy for any menace to the convertibility of the note issue was to increase the central banking reserve. And they argued against the alleged desirability of a system which brought it about that the active circulation was influenced, as the plans of the Currency School held that it should be, by the state of the balance of payments.

  Against this, their opponents planted themselves firmly on the norms indicated by the Ricardian theory of the distribution of the precious metals. They urged that the movements of a mixed circulation should be similar to those which would take place were it wholly metallic. They ridiculed the idea that prices were indifferent to the volume of convertible paper. They maintained that the banks could vary the circulation of notes by variations in the terms of lending and contended that, unless the reflux of notes was instantaneous, the fact of a time lag necessarily involved the possibility of temporarily increased issues. They argued that the possibility of variations in the note issue, other than those similar to what would take place if the currency was purely metallic, increased the possibility of adverse variations in bank credit. And they held that the use of a reserve to insulate the circulation from fluctuations which otherwise would be caused by variations in the state of the balance of payments were likely to delay readjustment and increase the danger to convertibility of a prolonged external drain. They denied the accusation that they regarded absolute increases in the note circulation as necessarily the initiating cause of fluctuations in prices and the external balance, contending that the focus of their precautions was on the prevention of relative over-issue—a state of affairs as likely to result from changes originating on the side of goods as from those on the side of money.

  As happens so often, the verdict of time on this controversy has not been unequivocally in favour of one side or the other. It is clear that the Currency School erred gravely in regarding control of the note issue as a sufficient control of the volume of credit: there are indications that Torrens at least was beginning to see this by the end of his career.¹⁸ The Banking School had more sense of contemporary reality in this respect. It is also clear that, having regard to the possibility of sudden movements on capital account, there was much weight in their plea for a larger reserve. But on matters of deeper analysis, in my judgment, the balance of merit is reversed. The Banking School were wrong about the passivity of issue and the significance of reflux; and they preached a perilous doctrine in urging that the internal circulation should be insulated from changes in the external position. And although it is easy to pick holes in the rigid prescriptions of the Currency School, focused on the current account and relying too heavily on control of the note issue, it is arguable that their assumption of a connection between the internal and external position, only to be violated at peril of continuing disequilibrium, is one which still has relevance to the problems of the present age.

  In this dispute, Mill’s general position was that of the Banking School. His connections with Tooke inclined him to a similar mode of approach; and although, as can be seen in “The Currency Question,” he was not unaware of the vulnerability of some of Tooke’s formulations vis-à-vis Torrens’ expert guerilla warfare, he tended to accept the broad implications of his general position. The chapter in the Principles, “Of the Regulation of a Convertible Paper Currency” (III, xxiv) makes some concession to the Currency School in regard to the possibility of increasing note issues in times of buoyant speculation and therefore, in regard to the effectiveness of the Act of 1844, in arresting speculative extensions of credit. But in the main it is the pure milk of the Banking School. Thus, apart from the exception just noted, it minimizes throughout the importance of the note issue and its relation to the creation of credit in general. It endorses Fullerton’s conception of the central rôle of “hoards” in the settlement of disparities of international indebtedness. And it disputes the desirability of arrangements which seek to make the general movements of the circulation vis-à-vis the outside world approximate to what would be the case were it entirely metallic. It was not by accident that it was singled out for a paragraph by paragraph critical examination in Torrens’ major polemic.¹⁹

  The three papers here reprinted afford useful insights into the evolution and consolidation of this attitude. The first, entitled “The Currency Question,” which appeared in the Westminster Review when the controversy relating to Peel’s proposals for the renewal of the Bank Charter was at its height, is in effect a defence of Tooke against Torrens. The pamphlet, An Enquiry into the Currency Principle, by the respected author of the History of Prices, which was a frontal attack on the whole intellectual basis of these proposals, had elicited a reply from Torrens, An Enquiry into the Practical Working of the Proposed Arrangements for the Renewal of the Charter of the Bank of England, and Mill’s article was an attempt to defend Tooke’s position from what was certainly a highly ingenious and resourceful attack. The main purport of the argument is to demonstrate that “it seems not easy to understand how an increased creation of the written evidences of credit called bank notes, can, of itself, create an additional demand or occasion a rise of price. . . . What does the person do who issues them, but take so much from the third element of purchasing power, namely credit, and add it to the first element, money in hand—making no addition whatever to the total amount?” (I.354.) It protests that the separation of the departments will increase rather than diminish the violence of commercial fluctuations and reaches the conclusion that “the proposed changes in the mode of regulating the currency will be attended with none of the advantages predicted; that, so far as intended to guard against the danger of over-issue, they are precautions against a chimerical evil; that the real evil of commercial vicissitudes, of ‘cycles of excitement and depression,’ is not touched by them, nor by any regulations which can be adopted for bank notes or other mere instruments of credit; and that in what Mr. Tooke justly calls (next to solvency and convertibility) ‘the main difference between one banking system and another,’ namely, ‘the greater or less liability to abrupt changes in the rate of interest and in the state of commercial credit,’ the present arrangements, under the condition of a larger bank reserve, have a decided advantage over the new system” (I.361).

  The two remaining papers, “The Bank Acts” (evidence before the Select Committee on the Bank Acts of 1857) and “Currency and Banking” (replies to the questions of the French Enquête sur les principes et les faits généraux qui régissent la circulation monétaire et fiducière) come from a date when the Peel Act had been some time in operation; and they exhibit the views and arguments characteristic of the chapter in the Principles which had remained and continued to remain substantially unaltered.

  “The Bank Acts,” which is much the longer and more important of the two, involves much repetition, as might be expected when the witness was cross-examined in turn by different members of the committee. But certain positions stand out. Mill is against the separation of the departments because he thinks it inhibits the flexibility of credit policy. He admits the usefulness of the Act in imposing a curb on the expansion of credit at times of speculative excitement. But he urges that in every other respect it is destabilizing. The right way to safeguard convertibility, he urges, is not the separation of the departments but, as Tooke had urged, the keeping of a larger reserve. As for the claim that the movements of a mixed system should conform to the movements which would take place if the currency were wholly metallic, he repudiates it: “no currency can be good of which the permanent average value does not conform to the permanent average value of a metallic currency; but I do not admit the inference that in order to enable it to do this, its fluctuations in value must conform to the fluctuations in the value of a metallic currency; because it appears to me, that fluctuations in value are liable to occur from anything that affects credit; and I think that a metallic currency is liable to more severe revulsions of credit, than a mixed currency, such as ours was before the Act of 1844; and therefore, that a paper currency of the permanent value of a metallic currency, and convertible, but without any other restriction, is liable to less fluctuation than we now have under the Act of 1844” (II.544). And, developing this point, he argues that the advantage of the absence of restriction is that the Bank “will not be obliged to contract credit in cases in which there had been no previous undue expansion of it” (II.544).²⁰

  The replies to the questions of the Enquête add very little to all this. They are, however, notable for a particularly forceful statement of the case where, an external drain having been caused by excessive speculation, the authorities of the central bank are under an obligation to contract their issues to prevent a cumulative breakdown. “L’écoulement ainsi produit n’a pas de limite naturelle, et n’a aucune raison de s’arrêter avant la cessation des causes qui l’ont amené. Il ne cesse et ne peut cesser que lorsque les hauts prix qui lui ont donné lieu ont pris fin par un mouvement de baisse, c’est-à-dire lorsque la spéculation a cédé à une réaction. En ce cas, l’écoulement du numéraire est le remède naturel et indispensable de la maladie, et parvinton à le retarder, on ne réussirait qu’à prolonger le mal et à aggraver la crise finale. Si, en ce cas, la Banque s’abstenait d’agir pour défendre son encaisse, si elle continuait d’escompter aussi largement qu’auparavant, en laissant s’écouler sa réserve métallique, les spéculateurs, trouvant à emprunter au cours ordinaire, ne seraient pas réduits à vendre: ils pourraient prolonger pendant quelque temps encore leur lutte contre les lois naturelles; les prix surhaussés ne baisseraient pas, et partant l’écoulement suivrait son cours jusqu’à ce que la réserve même la mieux fournie y eût passé tout entière. A l’approche de cette catastrophe, la Banque, pour ne pas faire faillite, serait dans la nécessité de produire d’un seul coup la réaction qu’elle aurait dû préparer graduellement. Une diminution des escomptes et une élévation du taux de l’intérêt, qui eussent suffi pour arrêter la spéculation dans les commencements de la sortie des métaux précieux, ne suffiraient plus: il faudrait une action non-seulement plus brusque, mais plus excessive et plus violente. De là, écoulement général du crédit, la panique et la peine, qui est loin de frapper seulement les spéculateurs dont l’imprudence a amené le mal.” (II.604.)

  All of which would have delighted the hearts of Colonel Torrens and the others of his persuasion. But they would have added that there were other cases when to allow an external drain to continue without affecting the internal circulation might lead to equivalent dangers. And if we have regard to the possibility of adverse turns in the terms of trade and to the Ricardian Theory of the distribution of the precious metals, it is not at all certain that they would not have been right.

  IV.

  PUBLIC FINANCE

  the papers on public finance in this collection fall into two entirely distinct groups: a group written in the twenties attacking various aspects of the protective duties of the day, and a group chiefly consisting of evidence on income and property taxation tendered to government committees in the years after the publication of the Principles.

  PROTECTIVE DUTIES

  The two principal papers in the first group are both concerned with the Corn Laws and may be regarded as a repository of the classical doctrine on these duties. The first, taking for granted the interest of the community as a whole in cheap imports, makes great use of standard Ricardian analysis to isolate the interests of the landlords in this respect from those of all other classes. It might be thought that protection to agriculture benefited the farmers. But, in so far as the farmer is a capitalist, in the long run he suffers with the rest, other than the landlords: a high price of corn means higher wages to cover the higher costs of subsistence, and this in turn leads to a lower rate of profit. Moreover, a lower rate of profit, it is noted, means a lower rate of accumulation; and “it is on the accumulation of capital that the advancement of the national wealth is wholly dependant” (I.50; italics added). It is therefore only the landlords who gain from this kind of protection, and the high rents they receive are not merely a transfer from other classes. In order that they may receive this kind of benefit, the community has to suffer the losses due to using resources to produce high-cost corn rather than importing it from lower-cost areas abroad. It would clearly be better to impose direct taxes to provide the subsidy to the landlords.

  The second paper, written three years later apropos of the New Corn Law with its sliding scales, continues the attack. The first article had elaborated the proposition that the existing duties aggravated price fluctuations. This one argues that the sliding scales which were intended to deal with this evil will not do so, and that “the benefit intended to be conferred upon our own consumers by the gradually decreasing scale of duties from 12s. downwards, will be reaped principally, if not wholly, by foreigners” (I.146). It goes on to develop a frontal attack on the whole position that there is something especially sacrosanct about agriculture. “Before we offer up our substance to an allegorical idol, let us hear what title it has to our worship. What is this ‘agriculture,’ of which you speak? When you say that no country was ever prosperous without agriculture, do you mean, that no country was ever prosperous without procuring food? If this be all, the truth of the proposition is not very likely to be disputed. But if you mean that no country was ever prosperous unless it procured food by digging and ploughing, instead of procuring it by spinning and weaving, your assertion is altogether destitute of truth: since the Dutch republic, which procured the greater part of its food without digging or ploughing was one of the most prosperous communities which the world ever saw.” (I.149-50.)

  He then asks: “when you speak of the necessity of protecting agriculture, do you mean the necessity of protecting the mere turning up of the ground? or the necessity of protecting the procuring of food for the people? If you mean the first, show us, if you can, any reason for desiring to procure food by turning up the ground, when we can procure more with the same quantity of labour in any other way. But if, by protection to agriculture, you mean protection to procuring food, there is no dispute about that. We are as desirous as you are, to afford protection to the procuring of food; provided always, that the procuring of food needs protection. But what is this contrivance of yours for protecting it? Simply this: to force the people to obtain ten bushels of corn by turning up the ground, when with the same degree of labour they might obtain twelve by growing it in their looms and in their cotton mills. If this be protection (which it is not, but privilege) it is protection only to the owners of the ground. A prohibition of gas-lights might be called, without any great impropriety, protection to the oil-companies; but would the oil-companies be permitted to term it protection for lighting? Yes; if lighting be protected by being rendered more expensive and more difficult. No, if this be, as it evidently is, the very reverse of protection. If agriculture means only turning up the ground, it deserves no protection. Turning up the ground is not a bonum per se. If it means procuring food, it is protected by excluding cheap corn, precisely in the same manner as the lighting of the streets of London would be protected by imposing a heavy duty upon gas.” (I.150.)²¹

  The remaining papers in this group, the article on “The Silk Trade” and the “Petition on Free Trade,” have not the same intellectual interest. The “Petition” exemplifies Mill’s capacity for lucid and forceful draftsmanship; the disquisition on the silk duties, his capacity for bringing general principles to bear on the argument of particular instances. The only addition to the general position developed in the papers on the Corn Laws is the argument in the paper on the silk trade that “the high rate of wages occasioned by our corn laws, though highly prejudicial to all classes of capitalists, by lowering the general rate of profit, is not more prejudicial to those who are exposed to foreign competition than to those who are not; and that nothing, therefore, can be more utterly unwarranted than the claim of the silk manufacturers to peculiar protection on account of it” (I.135).

  INCOME AND PROPERTY TAXATION

  The bulk of the material in this collection which relates to income and property taxation is in the form of evidence before the two parliamentary committees of 1852 and 1861—the review of Baer of 1873, although valuable as evidence of Mill’s continued capacity to consider new ideas, is not of great significance. This material is intensely interesting as providing a spectacle of Mill under cross-examination by some of the acutest intellects of the day, from Gladstone downwards. But it is extremely unsystematic. The questions and answers pass from one aspect of the subject to another as the interrogation is passed round the members of the committees; and these in turn choose their own order and focus of attention. To realize the significance of what is going on it is necessary, with the aid of the relevant chapters of the Principles, to have a more systematic picture of Mill’s main positions on this group of subjects.²²

  There are three outstanding features of Mill’s attitude to the problems of the taxation of incomes and property. First, he opposed the graduation of taxes on incomes. Secondly, he favoured the exemption of savings. Thirdly, he favoured stringent limitations on inheritance and steep graduation of death duties.

  Mill’s opposition to the graduation of the income tax was based both on grounds of equity and incentive. He was in favour of exemption at the lower end of the scale—which, of course, arithmetically involved a certain degree of graduation since the lump sum exempted must be a diminishing proportion of the actual income taxed. But beyond “the amount . . . needful for life, health, and immunity from bodily pain,”²³ he saw no equitable reason for differentiation. The doctrine that £100 from £1,000 was a heavier (proportionate) impost than £1,000 from £10,000 seemed to him “too disputable altogether, and even if true at all, not true to a sufficient extent, to be made the foundation of any rule of taxation.” But beside that, he argued that to “tax the larger incomes at a higher percentage than the smaller, is to lay a tax on industry and economy; to impose a penalty on people for having worked harder and saved more than their neighbours.”²⁴

  This did not mean that he opposed any differentiation of tax rates. As will be seen from his evidence before the two government committees, he devoted much thought and energy to the search for a just differentiation between “earned” and “unearned” incomes. And this search led him to the conclusion which is the second of the salient features of his principles of taxation, that a just income tax would exempt all savings. He argued this on the ground that what distinguishes the recipients of temporary incomes from those who enjoy incomes in perpetuity is the necessity governing the planning of the former, of saving to provide for themselves and their families when their temporary incomes cease. But he also argued it on the general ground which, despite the opposition of the protagonists of “common sense,” has been argued since by so many high authorities, from Irving Fisher downwards, that the taxation of savings in fact hits income twice. That a non-graduated income tax which exempted savings would be in effect a proportional tax on expenditure did not worry him in the least, since his conception of justice in the taxation of income was exactly that.²⁵

  But while considerations both of equity and incentive led Mill to oppose graduation where the direct results of work and saving were concerned, they led him in just the opposite direction when it was a matter of property passing at death. He believed in freedom of bequest. But he did not believe in freedom of inheritance. He believed with Bentham that, if anything was to be done to diminish inequality, the moment of death was the appropriate time. And in this connection he went further than any of his predecessors, and most of his successors, in this field. He was in favour of setting an absolute upper limit on the amount which might be received by inheritance or gift. But failing this, he regarded progressive duties as highly appropriate. “The principle of graduation (as it is called,) that is, of levying a larger percentage on a larger sum, though its application to general taxation would be in my opinion objectionable, seems to me both just and expedient as applied to legacy and inheritance duties.”²⁶

  It is the appearance of these principles and their defence under cross-examination which lend continuing interest and importance to these records of Mill’s evidence.

  V.

  LABOUR

  we now come to papers in which, in contrast to his more technical preoccupations in the items already discussed, Mill is concerned with economic organization and its evolution in the light of general social philosophy. The first group of these is concerned with labour and its future.

  Mill’s fundamental attitude on this problem is enshrined in the famous chapter “On the Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes” in the Principles (IV, vii). This chapter, according to his account²⁷ , owed much to the influence of Mrs. Taylor, who eventually became his wife. But whatever the inspiration it must always be regarded as one of the most authoritative statements of his general social philosophy and his hopes and fears for the future. The opening sections, with their fine contrast between what he calls the theory of dependence and protection and the theory of self-dependence,²⁸ are indeed among the most outstanding pronouncements on the fundamental principles of classical liberalism; and the fact that in the present age we seem to have chosen as a basis of social policy the former principle rather than the latter does not render them any less relevant. But the two essays here reprinted and to be discussed under this heading throw much useful supplementary light on the thought underlying the chapter.

  The germs of such thought are very clearly to be discerned in the article, from the Edinburgh Review of 1845, on the then-fashionable handbook of benevolent paternalism, Arthur Helps’ The Claims of Labour. The intentions of this article are well stated in an extract from a letter from Mill to Macvey Napier which is reprinted with the editorial note prefatory to the present reproduction. However well intentioned, the tendency of works such as Helps’ book, Mill argues, is “to rivet firmly in the minds of the labouring people the persuasion that it is the business of others to take care of their condition, without any self control on their own part,” and he goes on to maintain that it is “very necessary to make a stand against this sort of spirit while it is at the same time highly necessary . . . to shew sympathy in all that is good of the new tendencies, & to avoid the hard, abstract mode of treating such questions which has brought discredit upon political economists & has enabled those who are in the wrong to claim, & generally to receive, exclusive credit for high & benevolent feeling” (I.364).

  The article certainly fulfils these intentions. After a preliminary survey of the influences from Malthus to Carlyle and the revelations of the great commissions which had led to increased interest in the “condition of the people question,” he plunges into a statement of the paternalist theory which he was proposing to criticize. “Their theory appears to be, in few words, this—that it is the proper function of the possessors of wealth, and especially of the employers of labour and the owners of land, to take care that the labouring people are well off:—that they ought always to pay good wages;—that they ought to withdraw their custom, their patronage, and any other desirable thing at their disposal, from all employers who will not do the like;—that, at these good wages, they ought to give employment to as great a number of persons as they can afford; and to make them work for no greater number of hours in the twenty-four, than is compatible with comfort, and with leisure for recreation and improvement. That if they have land or houses to be let to tenants, they should require and accept no higher rents than can be paid with comfort; and should be ready to build, at such rents as can be conveniently paid, warm, airy, healthy and spacious cottages, for any number of young couples who may ask for them.” He contends that it “is allowable to take this picture as a true likeness of the ‘new moral world’ which the present philanthropic movement aims at calling into existence” (I.372-3).

  Now, if things are to be run this way, he asks, are we prepared to accept the inevitable accompaniments? The states of society which have assumed such duties on the part of the wealthy have been states in which the condition of the poor has been one of virtual unfreedom. Paternal care implies paternal authority. “The higher and middle classes might and ought to be willing to submit to a very considerable sacrifice of their own means, for improving the condition of the existing generation of labourers, if by this they could hope to provide similar advantages for the generation to come. But why should they be called upon to make these sacrifices, merely that the country may contain a greater number of people, in as great poverty and as great liability to destitution as now? If whoever has too little, is to come to them to make it more, there is no alternative but restrictions on marriage, combined with such severe penalties on illegitimate births, as it would hardly be possible to enforce under a social system in which all grown persons are, nominally at least, their own masters. Without these provisions, the millennium promised would, in little more than a generation, sink the people of any country in Europe to one level of poverty. If, then, it is intended that the law, or the persons of property, should assume a control over the multiplication of the people, tell us so plainly, and inform us how you propose to do it.” (I.375.)

  The fact is, he contends, that until there is proper restraint upon numbers, there can be no hope of permanent relief of poverty. “And how is this change to be effected, while we continue inculcating” upon the working classes “that their wages are to be regulated for them, and that to keep wages high is other people’s business and not theirs? All classes are ready enough, without prompting, to believe that whatever ails them is not their fault, but the crime of somebody else; and that they are granting an indemnity to the crime if they attempt to get rid of the evil by any effort or sacrifice of their own. The National Assembly of France has been much blamed for talking in a rhetorical style about the rights of man, and neglecting to say anything about the duties. The same error is now in the course of being repeated with respect to the rights of poverty. It would surely be no derogation from any one’s philanthropy to consider, that it is one thing to tell the rich that they ought to take care of the poor, and another thing to tell the poor that the rich ought to take care of them; and that it is rather idle in these days to suppose that a thing will not be overheard by the poor, because it is not designed for their ears. It is most true that the rich have much to answer for in their conduct to the poor. But in the matter of their poverty, there is no way in which the rich could have helped them, but by inducing them to help themselves; and if, while we stimulate the rich to repair this omission, we do all that depends on us to inculcate upon the poor that they need not attend to the lesson, we must be little aware of the sort of feelings and doctrines with which the minds of the poor are already filled. If we go on in this course, we may succeed in bursting society asunder by a Socialist revolution; but the poor, and their poverty, we shall leave worse than we found them.” (I.375-6.)

  The remainder of the article is devoted to the author’s own proposals for improvement of the condition of the people. It expatiates on the need for education, both at school and beyond, and, with a footnote reference to the experiments of M. Leclaire which figure so largely in the pivotal chapter in the Principles, it hints at Mill’s own solution, “raising the labourer from a receiver of hire—a mere bought instrument in the work of production, having no residuary interest in the work itself—to the position of being, in some sort, a partner in it” (I.382).

  It is arguable that the very uncompromising nature of parts of this article is different in tone and temper from what it would have been if written after the movement towards some sort of socialism which took place in Mill’s thinking after the events of 1848. But on the essential core of the argument against paternalism, there is no reason to believe that Mill’s position altered greatly, and it is a very significant circumstance that he should have still thought it worthy of preservation and republication when in 1859 he came to collect his papers in Dissertations and Discussions.

  The second paper here reprinted, the article on Mill’s friend Thornton’s book On Labour, is of much greater historical significance, for it contains both the celebrated retractation regarding the wages fund and Mill’s most mature reflections on the ethics and economics of collective bargaining and trade unionism.

  The retractation of belief in the existence of a determinate wages fund caused some sensation at the time of its appearance, and indeed it may be held to be one of the influences bringing about the end of the ascendency of classical theory in Great Britain. The treatment of wages in the Principles had followed classical tradition in this respect. In the long run, wages depended on the tendencies of population increase; in the short run, given the labour force, they depended upon a fund of determinate size destined for the employment of labour. Now, confronted with Thornton’s argument that if individual employers’ demand for labour was not thus inelastic, the aggregate demand could not be inelastic either, Mill abandoned this position, saying: “The doctrine hitherto taught by all or most economists (including myself), which denied it to be possible that trade combinations can raise wages, or which limited their operation in that respect to the somewhat earlier attainment of a rise which the competition of the market would have produced without them,—this doctrine is deprived of its scientific foundation, and must be thrown aside.” Thornton’s critique had destroyed “a prevailing and somewhat mischievous error. It has made it necessary for us to contemplate, not as an impossibility but as a possibility, that employers, by taking advantage of the inability of labourers to hold out, may keep wages lower than there is any natural necessity for; and è converso, that if work-people can by combination be enabled to hold out so long as to cause an inconvenience to the employers greater than that of a rise of wages, a rise may be obtained which, but for the combination, not only would not have happened so soon, but possibly might not have happened at all. The power of Trades’ Unions may therefore be so exercised as to obtain for the labouring classes collectively, both a larger share and a larger positive amount of the produce of labour; increasing, therefore, one of the two factors on which the remuneration of the individual labourer depends. The other and still more important factor, the number of sharers, remains unaffected by any of the considerations now adduced.” (II.646.)

  It is clear that the practical implications of this admission fully justified the sensation which it caused. Its intellectual status, however, in the history of economic analysis, is not so impressive. Thornton’s critique had been preceded by a general attack on current formulations of the laws of supply and demand; and in dealing with this, Mill had shown masterly insight and analytical ability. But when he comes to the matter of the wages fund, it is as though the realization that his earlier formulations had been wrong deprived him of his habitual critical insight and compelled merely a bold admission of error. As Taussig has well shown, the analysis at this point becomes faltering and jejune.²⁹ Of course, it was right to admit that the money demand for labour at any moment was much less determinate than the rigid formulations of the wages fund theory had assumed. But it was not helpful to speak as if all that had been said of the dependence of real wages on the real accumulations of the past lost all relevance in the light of Thornton’s strictures; and it is arguable that from the theoretical, as distinct from the practical point of view, the retractation brought as much confusion as clarification. It is not without significance that in the seventh edition of the Principles, the last to appear in his lifetime, Mill made little alteration of what he had said before. A sentence on the power of combinations to raise wages, which earlier had predicted that unemployment would follow any attempt to raise the rate of wages above that which “distributes the whole circulating capital of the country among the entire working population,” was rewritten in terms of the narrow limits “of obtaining . . . an increase . . . at the expense of profits.”³⁰ And in the Preface there is a reference to recent “instructive discussion” between himself and Thornton, the results of which, “in the author’s opinion, are not yet ripe for incorporation in a general treatise on Political Economy.”³¹

  After the drama of the retractation, the second part of the paper, with its reflections on the ethics and economics of collective bargaining and trade unionism, comes as something of an anti-climax. But it is valuable, nevertheless, as affording a more extended treatment than elsewhere of the difficult questions with which it deals. The opening sections, with their illuminating contrast between the a priori and the utilitarian approaches to the problems of productive organization and distributive justice, are as good as anything Mill ever wrote on this matter. And the statement of his attitude to the various problems presented by the activities of combinations of labourers is more thorough and systematic than the treatment of these matters in the Principles. There are no conspicuous departures from the views expressed in that treatise, but there is much more elaboration; and the total effect is a complex one. Mill is desperately anxious to be fair; and because he felt that the unions of that time performed valuable functions in raising the self-respect of their members and providing (perhaps) organizations which might eventually transcend the status of mere sellers of hired labour in the form of self-governing associations of co-operative producers—“a transformation” which “would be the true euthanasia of Trades’ Unionism” (II.666)—he was prepared to find excuses for practices which one would expect him to condemn. Practices restrictive of output are indeed roundly denounced. But in contrast, practices which raise wages in some sectors at the expense of the general body of workers receive a qualified extenuation: “all such limitation inflicts distinct evil upon those whom it excludes—upon that great mass of labouring population which is outside the Unions; an evil not trifling, for if the system were rigorously enforced it would prevent unskilled labourers or their children from ever rising to the condition of skilled” (II.662). But it is urged that there are “two considerations, either of which, in the mind of an upright and public spirited working man, may fairly legitimate his adhesion to Unionism.” The first is the educational and evolutionary value of unionism; the second, “a less elevated, but not fallacious point of view,” namely the Malthusian, is that the unions at least preserve something which would otherwise be swallowed up by the indiscriminate increase of the unreflecting: “As long as their minds remain in their present state, our preventing them from competing with us for employment does them no real injury; it only saves ourselves from being brought down to their level” (II.664).

  Similarly, while violence, defamation of character, injury to property, or threats of any of these evils in the course of trade disputes is condemned, there is a defence of the social compulsions exercised to induce workers to form a union or take part in a strike. “As soon as it is acknowledged that there are lawful, and even useful, purposes to be fulfilled by Trades’ Unions, it must be admitted that the members of Unions may reasonably feel a genuine moral disapprobation of those who profit by the higher wages or other advantages that the Unions procure for non-Unionists as well as for their own members, but refuse to take their share of the payments, and submit to the restrictions, by which those advantages are obtained. It is vain to say that if a strike is really for the good of the workmen, the whole body will join in it from a mere sense of the common interest. There is always a considerable number who will hope to share the benefit without submitting to the sacrifices; and to say that these are not to have brought before them, in an impressive manner, what their fellow-workmen think of their conduct, is equivalent to saying that social pressure ought not to be put upon any one to consider the interests of others as well as his own. All that legislation is concerned with is, that the pressure shall stop at the expression of feeling, and the withholding of such good offices as may properly depend upon feeling, and shall not extend to an infringement, or a threat of infringement, of any of the rights which the law guarantees to all—security of person and property against violation, and of reputation against calumny.” (II.659-60.) All of which, in the twentieth century, sounds rather naive from the author of On Liberty who foresaw so many inimical trends. But it is a revealing picture of the frame of mind of men of goodwill in the sixties and seventies, when defence of combinations of workers seemed to be defence of one of the better hopes of humanity; and it does not in the least settle the question of what Mill’s attitude would have been to more recent manifestations of what such combinations can do when given special privileges by the law.

  VI.

  PROPERTY AND ITS SOCIAL CONTROL

  next comes a group of papers which, in one way or another, spring from Mill’s interest in various aspects of the institutions of property and their susceptibility to social control. This is a sphere in which his thought was avowedly tentative and experimental. He believed firmly that throughout the greater part of civilized history private property in various forms had served positive functions, functions which must be performed somehow if there is to be order and progress—the preservation of peace, the safeguarding of the fruits of accumulation, the reward of enterprise and initiative. But he did not believe that these institutions were immutable. They depended on opinion and volition and were capable of variety and development. They were also perhaps capable of being superseded by other arrangements, if these arrangements were such as to secure the same fundamental desiderata. The distinction, to which he attached such importance, between the laws of production which partook “of the character of physical truths”³² and the laws of distribution which were of human origin, was fundamental to his thinking here; and as is well known—and as we shall be discussing further in the next section—he was not unwilling to contemplate the eventual emergence of certain forms of collectivist ownership and control. But within the sphere of existing institutions, he believed in development and improvement. “The principle of private property,” he argued, “has never yet had a fair trial in any country; and less so, perhaps, in this country than in some others. The social arrangements of modern Europe commenced from a distribution of property which was the result, not of just partition, or acquisition by industry, but of conquest and violence: and notwithstanding what industry has been doing for many centuries to modify the work of force, the system still retains many and large traces of its origin. The laws of property have never yet conformed to the principles on which the justification of private property rests. They have made property of things which never ought to be property, and absolute property where only a qualified property ought to exist. They have not held the balance fairly between human beings, but have heaped impediments upon some, to give advantage to others; they have purposely fostered inequalities, and prevented all from starting fair in the race. That all should indeed start on perfectly equal terms, is inconsistent with any law of private property: but if as much pains as has been taken to aggravate the inequality of chances arising from the natural working of the principle, had been taken to temper that inequality by every means not subversive of the principle itself; if the tendency of legislation had been to favour the diffusion, instead of the concentration of wealth—to encourage the subdivision of the large masses, instead of striving to keep them together; the principle of individual property would have been found to have no necessary connexion with the physical and social evils which almost all Socialist writers assume to be inseparable from it.”³³

  We have seen already, in the discussion of Mill’s attitude to problems of taxation, his willingness to alter existing arrangements in regard to the law of inheritance. The papers discussed in the present section illustrate further in various ways this essentially empirical approach to the possible evolution of various aspects of the institution of property.

  The minutes of evidence here entitled “The Savings of the Middle and Working Classes” together with the short note on “The Law of Partnership” are a product of Mill’s lively interest in the reform of the law so as to permit industrial investment and association without commitment to unlimited liability of the property of the persons concerned. It was his belief that reform of this sort would serve the double purpose of making available for development a larger volume of saving, and at the same time facilitating, on a much larger scale than that then prevailing, the active participation of the working classes in the organization of industry. This involved changes both in the law relating to partnership and the law relating to joint-stock companies, and to both these movements Mill lent the weight of his support. In the papers here reprinted the main burden of his argument is directed to the law of partnership, in respect of which he contended that the prohibitions of associations en commandite, as in the French law, had as little justification as the ancient laws against usury. On the larger question of the desirability of limited liability for investors in joint-stock companies, he expresses here some slight reserve on the ground that the privilege involved, if granted, should be extended to all individuals. But we know from his discussion of this question in the Principles that he was indeed thoroughly in favour of it. Indeed, his statement of the justification of such arrangements may well be regarded as the classic formulation of the principle. “If a number of persons choose to associate for carrying on any operation of commerce or industry, agreeing among themselves and announcing to those with whom they deal that the members of the association do not undertake to be responsible beyond the amount of the subscribed capital; is there any reason that the law should raise objections to this proceeding, and should impose on them the unlimited responsibility which they disclaim? For whose sake? Not for that of the partners themselves; for it is they whom the limitation of responsibility benefits and protects. It must therefore be for the sake of third parties; namely, those who may have transactions with the association, and to whom it may run in debt beyond what the subscribed capital suffices to pay. But nobody is obliged to deal with the association: still less is any one obliged to give it unlimited credit. The class of persons with whom such associations have dealings are in general perfectly capable of taking care of themselves, and there seems no reason that the law should be more careful of their interests than they will themselves be; provided no false representation is held out, and they are aware from the first what they have to trust to.” When the law has “afforded to individuals all practicable means of knowing the circumstances which ought to enter into their prudential calculations in dealing with the company, there seems no more need for interfering with individual judgment in this sort of transactions, than in any other part of the private business of life.”³⁴

  The next set of papers falling within this group are “Leslie on the Land Question” and the manifesto on “Land Tenure Reform.” It is well known from famous passages in the Principles that Mill regarded property in land as needing a justification different in kind from the justification of other forms of property. “The essential principle of property being to assure to all persons what they have produced by their labour and accumulated by their abstinence, this principle cannot apply to what is not the produce of labour, the raw material of the earth.”³⁵ This is not to say that he was hostile to all forms of private land ownership; on the contrary, he attached great, probably exaggerated, value, for instance, to peasant proprietorship. But it does mean that he regarded land, or what Ricardo would have called the original powers of the soil (including position), as having a special significance in economic analysis and a special position in social philosophy: “with property in moveables, and in all things the product of labour . . . the owner’s power both of use and of exclusion should be absolute, except where positive evil to others would result from it: but in the case of land, no exclusive right should be permitted in any individual, which cannot be shown to be productive of positive good.”³⁶ Thus he favoured in certain instances the break-up (with proper compensation) of large estates and their redivision among small proprietors. He favoured special provisions in the law safeguarding the position of tenants. He was fiercely against exclusive rights of access to scenic areas. And he supported special kinds of taxation designed to take from landowners the element of unearned increment in the value of their holdings. “They grow richer, as it were in their sleep, without working, risking, or economizing,” he said. “What claim have they, on the general principle of social justice, to this accession of riches?”³⁷

  The two papers reprinted in this collection, although by no means exhausting Mill’s contribution to this subject, for which it is necessary also to go to the Principles and to the speeches, provide a very fair indication of this general attitude. The review of Cliffe Leslie’s Land Systems is devoted largely to illustrations of the principle that the “maxims of free trade, free contract, the exclusive power of everyone over his own property, and so forth” are not applicable, or not applicable without serious limitations, to the control of landed wealth. As Professor R. D. C. Black has shown in his notable study, Economic Thought and the Irish Question,³⁸ Mill had a much better record than other economists of the day in correct insight into the nature of the economic problems of Ireland, and this paper is perhaps especially valuable as a concise statement of his attitude in this respect.

  The second paper, the Explanatory Statement of the Programme of the Land Tenure Reform Association—the title used on its initial publication—is valuable as an explicit statement of the actual reforms in the law relating to property in land which Mill’s general views on the subject led him to support. Its content is best summarized by the reproduction of the ten points of the programme on which Mill’s paper is a running commentary:

  I. To remove all Legal and Fiscal Impediments to the Transfer of Land.

  II. To secure the abolition of the Law of Primogeniture.

  III. To restrict within the narrowest limits the power of Tying up Land.

  IV. To claim, for the benefit of the State, the Interception by Taxation of the Future Unearned Increase of the Rent of Land (so far as the same can be ascertained), or a great part of that increase, which is continually taking place, without any effort or outlay by the proprietors, merely through the growth of population and wealth; reserving to owners the option of relinquishing their property to the State at the market value which it may have acquired at the time when this principle may be adopted by the Legislature.

  V. To promote a policy of Encouragement to Co-operative Agriculture, through the purchase by the State, from time to time, of Estates which are in the market, and the Letting of them, under proper regulations, to such Co-operative Associations, as afford sufficient evidence of spontaneity and promise of efficiency.

  VI. To promote the Acquisition of Land in a similar manner, to be let to Small Cultivators, on conditions, which, while providing for the proper cultivation of the land, shall secure to the cultivator a durable interest in it.

  VII. Lands belonging to the Crown, or to Public Bodies, or Charitable and other Endowments, to be made available for the same purposes, as suitable conditions arise, as well as for the Improvement of the Dwellings of the Working Classes; and no such lands to be suffered (unless in pursuance of the above mentioned ends, or for peculiar and exceptional reasons) to pass into Private hands.

  VIII. All Lands now Waste, or requiring an Act of Parliament to authorize their inclosure, to be retained for National Uses: Compensation being made for Manorial rights and rights of Common.

  IX. That while it is expedient to bring a large portion of the present Waste Lands under Cultivation for the purposes and on the principles laid down in the preceding articles, it is desirable that the less fertile portions, especially those which are within reach of populous districts, should be retained in a state of wild natural beauty, for the general enjoyment of the community, and encouragement in all classes of healthful rural tastes, and of the higher order of pleasures; also, in order to leave to future generations the decision of their ultimate uses.

  X. To obtain for the State the power to take possession (with a view to their preservation) of all Natural Objects, or Artificial Constructions attached to the soil, which are of historical, scientific, or artistic interest, together with so much of the surrounding land as may be thought necessary; the owners being compensated for the value of the land so taken.

  The two papers next to be considered, that on “Corporation and Church Property” and that on “Endowments,” are concerned not only with the question of the right of the state to modify the conditions of foundations and endowments but also with the question of the support and control of higher education. Separate in the time of their writing by more than thirty-five years, the emphasis of the argument differs; but the essential content remains the same.

  “Corporation and Church Property” is chiefly concerned to show that “there is no moral hindrance or bar to the interference of the Legislature with endowments, though it should even extend to a total change in their purposes” and then to inquire “in what spirit, and with what reservations, it is incumbent on a virtuous Legislature to exercise this power” (I.195). As a utilitarian, believing that, in the end, only consideration of the happiness of individuals should influence moral judgment, Mill is clear that it is intolerable that the wishes of dead men should be allowed to bind the dispositions of resources for more than a limited period after their death. If circumstances change, rendering their instructions no longer appropriate, then it is in the general interest that the legislature should intervene and impose new conditions. If there is proper compensation to the expectations of any persons enjoying benefits under the original dispensation, then it cannot be argued that anyone is injured by such intervention; the corporation as such has no grievance. If the law assumes “that a man cannot know what partition of his property among his descendants, thirty years hence, will be for the interest of the descendants themselves,” it cannot be assumed that “he may know (though he have scarcely learnt the alphabet) how children may be best educated five hundred years hence; how the necessities of the poor may then be best provided for; what branches of learning, or of what is called learning, it will be most important to cultivate, and by what body of men it will be desirable that the people should be taught religion, to the end of time” (I.199).

  This, however, does not mean that endowments and foundations are in themselves undesirable. Much as he admired him, Mill was not in agreement with Turgot, who had taken this view. On the contrary, he urged that they had functions to fulfil particularly in regard to education, in respect of which their existence was a positive good. It was indeed the duty of governments to provide funds for such purposes. But it “is impossible to be assured that the people will be willing to be taxed for every purpose of moral and intellectual improvement for which funds may be required.” If, however, there were “a fund specially set apart, which had never come from the people’s pockets at all, which was given them in trust for the purpose of education, and which it was considered improper to divert to any other employment while it could be usefully devoted to that; the people would probably be always willing to have it applied to that purpose. There is such a fund, and it consists of the national endowments.” (I.216.) While, therefore, it is incumbent on the state to interfere with the conditions of endowments when these have ceased to serve a useful purpose, it is desirable that the interference should involve, not appropriation of the funds for the general purposes of public expenditure, but rather a better discharge of the useful functions originally intended.

  Mill returns to this theme in the second paper and develops at greater lengths the argument for the existence of decentralized initiative in regard to education and research. A certain Mr. Fitch, an authority on the abuses of endowments, had made statements which almost implied the abolition of centres of this sort—“a doctrine breathing the very spirit, and expressed in almost the words, of the apologies made in the overcentralised governments of the Continent for not permitting any one to perform the smallest act connected with public interests without the leave of the Government” (II.616). But the “truth needs reasserting, and needs it every day more and more, that what the improvement of mankind and of all their works most imperatively demands is variety, not uniformity” (II.617). “Because an endowment is a public nuisance when there is nobody to prevent its funds from being jobbed away for the gain of irresponsible administrators; because it may become worse than useless if irrevocably tied up to a destination fixed by somebody who died five hundred years ago; we ought not on that account to forget that endowments protected against malversation, and secured to their original purpose for no more than two or three generations, would be a precious safeguard for uncustomary modes of thought and practice, against the repression, sometimes amounting to suppression, to which they are even more exposed as society in other respects grows more civilised.” (II.621.)

  Beyond this, in this paper Mill is led to argue the positive benefits, especially to higher education, of the existence of suitably constituted endowments. He is not sanguine that free competition in education will provide what is desirable without the help, example, and stimulus of education provided this way. “It must be made the fashion to receive a really good education. But how can this fashion be set except by offering models of good education in schools and colleges within easy reach of all parts of the country? And who is able to do this but such as can afford to postpone all considerations of pecuniary profit, and consider only the quality of the education . . .? The funds for doing this can only be derived from taxation or from endowments; which of the two is preferable? Independently of the pecuniary question, schools and universities governed by the State are liable to a multitude of objections which those that are merely watched, and, in case of need, controlled by it, are wholly free from; especially that most fatal one of tending to be all alike; to form the same unvarying habits of mind and turn of character.” (II.623.) It is not clear to me that in the twentieth century, with the drying up of so many sources of private endowment, Mill would necessarily have frowned on extensive support of higher education from state sources. But it is very obvious that he would still have been foremost among those who seek, by one means or another, to insulate it as far as possible from direct operation and control from parliaments and ministers; and I suspect that he would have shown more approval to a tax system such as that of the United States, which provides direct and powerful incentives to gifts for educational and cultural endowments through its death duties, than that of Great Britain, which actively resists any movement in that direction.

  Finally in this group there comes the short but important paper on “The Regulation of the London Water Supply.” Here is an instance where, the technical conditions of production rendering impossible the existence of such a degree of competition as in his opinion justified the private property system as an agent of supply, Mill was prepared to recommend thoroughgoing municipalization. In such circumstances, he argued, the case for government regulation of some sort was indisputable. Whether this should take the form of control of existing companies or of direct governmental operation, he held, was a matter to be decided on consideration of the technical circumstances in each case arising. So far as London water was concerned, in the absence of a suitable organ of London government, he favoured the appointment of a commissioner with elastic powers of reorganization and control. Had there existed a suitable municipal authority, he would have had “no hesitation in expressing an opinion, that to it . . . should be given the charge of the operations for the water-supply of the capital” (II.435).

  This leads conveniently to our last section.

  VII.

  SOCIALISM

  the two papers bearing on Socialism which appear in this collection are of very different importance. The review of Newman’s Lectures on Political Economy, written as Mill was moving into his phase of greatest sympathy with socialism, is important principally as a demonstration of Mill’s strongly negative reaction to what he thought to be unfair criticism of socialist plans and principles; it is of some interest also as the sole example in the classical literature of any discussion of the problem of pricing under socialism. In contrast, “Chapters on Socialism,” written towards the end of his life, are of major importance as an indication of his final views on the subject.

  The vicissitudes of Mill’s attitude to socialist proposals for the future organization of society are reasonably well known so far as the documentation is concerned.³⁹ There is a phase of considerable sympathy, coinciding with the period of his revulsion from Benthamism: this is mentioned in the Autobiography, but the authentic contemporary expression thereof is to be found in a letter to Gustave D’Eichthal.⁴⁰ This is followed by a mood of greater distance exhibited in the relevant chapter (II, i) in the first edition of the Principles—an exposition which, to Mill’s annoyance but not altogether without justification, impressed some readers as being definitely anti-socialistic. Then under the influence of the aftermath of 1848, Mill, now very much under the influence of his wife in this respect, moves into the position of overt, if cautious, sympathy as expressed in the third edition of the Principles—a phase which in the Autobiography Mill said would class them both “under the general designation of Socialists.”⁴¹ Finally, in 1869, he sat down to write the chapters here reproduced, which were published after his death by his stepdaughter, Helen Taylor, who can certainly be trusted not to have released anything which did not do justice to his most mature views; and these certainly show much greater reserve than is shown in the phase represented by this third edition of the Principles. But the chapters are incomplete, and the question remains: what does this latest phase amount to?

  It is very clear that there had been a sharp recoil from any sort of sympathy with revolutionary socialism in its totalitarian aspects. There is a sharp denunciation of all this in these chapters (see especially II.748-9), and there is a letter to Georg Brandes, of March 1872, on the goings-on of the First International, which makes quite clear the persistence of this mood.⁴²

  So far as the more moderate and limited proposals for piecemeal experiment are concerned, I do not doubt that Ashley is right when he contends that there has been some retreat from the position of the chapters in the third edition of the Principles. It would be wrong to suggest that there is now no sympathy: that is certainly not the case. But there is certainly much more caution and, I would judge, more inclination to insist on what can be done by reform within the institutional framework of the private property system. I am reasonably clear that if the details of the treatment of the main problems of socialist organisation discussed respectively in the Principles and in these Chapters were placed in parallel columns and shown to some outside investigator, ignorant of the context of the query, he would judge the second column to show a position much less positive, much more sceptical, than the first.

  In the last analysis, however, more important than these nuances is the fact that the position of the third edition is by no means so strong as might be judged, either from the indications of change in the Preface or in the relevant passage in the Autobiography. The discussion of socialism in the chapter on property is not to be judged in isolation. It must be evaluated in conjunction with the chapter “On the Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes,” a chapter to which we know Mill attached peculiar importance, the more general sections having been written in close conjunction with his wife. And in that chapter, it is clear that Mill’s utopia is not nearly so much in the duo-decimo editions of the new Jerusalem (to use the contemptuous phrase of the Communist Manifesto), which he had discussed with such fairness and attempt at sympathetic understanding in the chapter on property, but in the development of workmen’s co-operatives—self-governing corporations foreshadowed, as he thought, by the experiments of Leclaire and others in Paris and elsewhere. In the last analysis, that is to say, Mill’s socialism proves to be much more like non-revolutionary syndicalism than anything which would be called socialism at the present day.

  And that, after all, should not be so surprising if we remember the famous passage in On Liberty alluding to these matters. As we have seen, where there was no competition, Mill was not unwilling to experiment with municipal ownership and control. But on a future in which state ownership had become widespread, his verdict was unequivocal. “If the roads, the railways, the banks, the insurance offices, the great joint-stock companies, the universities, and the public charities, were all of them branches of the government; if, in addition, the municipal corporations and local boards, with all that now devolves on them, became departments of the central administration; if the employés of all these different enterprises were appointed and paid by the government, and looked to the government for every rise in life; not all the freedom of the press and popular constitution of the legislature would make this or any other country free otherwise than in name. And the evil would be greater, the more efficiently and scientifically the administrative machinery was constructed—the more skilful the arrangements for obtaining the best qualified hands and heads with which to work it.”⁴³

  VIII.

  CONCLUSIONS

  the papers collected in these volumes are undoubtedly best read in conjunction with the Principles and the essay On Liberty: they throw light on the evolution and significance of these masterpieces, and are in turn illuminated by them. But taken by themselves, they would still represent a very significant achievement, a body of pronouncements on economic theory and the relations between economics and social philosophy which has no obvious rival among the productions of other writers on these subjects in the literature of the period. As to the two chief essays in Some Unsettled Questions, “Thornton on Labour and Its Claims,” “Corporation and Church Property,” the unfinished “Chapters on Socialism”—we should have to look far to discover productions of parallel weight and stimulus.

  When Mill lay dying, it is reported that he said, “My work is done.” By this he obviously did not mean that all the causes he stood for, all the propositions he had advanced, had been triumphant. He meant, rather, that he had had his say, that the circumstances of his life had permitted him adequately to set forth his views on the various matters on which he wished to make a contribution. And that was surely true. He had indeed developed and elaborated a system of thought so comprehensive and impressive that it came to dominate, perhaps more than it should have done, the thought of his generation, and it is not surprising that eventually there should have been some reaction against it, a reaction which we can now see went much too far and ran the risk of losing much of great value. Yet, in the end, the historic value of Mill’s contribution did not reside either in the range or in the finality of the elements of the system; it was rather in the spirit thereof. It is for this reason that for a generation disillusioned with systems, he once more appears as a highly admirable figure: a man with a firm hold on the ultimate values of truth and justice and liberty, with strong principles and a strong belief in their applicability; yet, once the high spirits and arrogance of youth had been transcended, fair in argument, willing to learn from experience, empirical in practical judgment, experimental in action.

  • London School of Economics, December 1966

  Robbins

  [1 ]See a letter to Professor Rau (20/3/52), reprinted in Hugh S. R. Elliot, ed., The Letters of John Stuart Mill (London: Longmans, Green, 1910), I, 168-70.

  [2 ]Principles of Political Economy with Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy, in Collected Works (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965; London: Routledge and Kegan Paul), III, 498.

  [3 ]See my Robert Torrens and the Evolution of Classical Economics (London: Macmillan, 1958), 70-2. This, Mill’s earliest essay in economic theory, will appear in the forthcoming volume of his works devoted to contributions to newspapers.

  [4 ]Autobiography (New York: Columbia University Press, 1924), 85.

  [5 ]F. Y. Edgeworth, Papers relating to Political Economy (London: Macmillan, 1925), II, 22-3.

  [6 ]The Wealth of Nations, ed. E. G. Wakefield (London: Knight, 1835-9), II, 367.

  [7 ]See below, 12. Subsequent references to the present volumes are given in the text.

  [8 ]Gary S. Becker and William Baumol, “The Classical Monetary Theory: The Outcome of the Discussion,” Economica, XIX (Nov. 1952), 355-76.

  [9 ]Letter to Walter Coulson (22/11/50), in Elliot, ed., Letters of John Stuart Mill, I, 157. This was not one of Mill’s more urbane utterances; presumably some of Harriet’s tittle-tattle about Mrs. Taylor and himself had come to his ears: “Mr. Kingsley’s notions must be little less vague about my political economy than about my socialism when he couples my name with that of a mere tyro like Harriet Martineau.”

  [10 ]This passage is retained in the Principles; see II. 462-3.

  [11 ]Observations on the Principles which Regulate the Course of Exchange; and on the Present Depreciated State of the Currency (London: Lloyd, 1810), which Huskisson described as containing “the most complete exposition of the whole doctrine of exchange that I have met with in any language.” The Speeches of the Rt. Hon. William Huskisson (London: Murray, 1837), I, 56n.

  [12 ]See P. Sraffa, ed., The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, IV (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1951), 325-56.

  [13 ]Ibid., IX (Cambridge, 1952), 302.

  [14 ]For a thorough discussion of Blake’s pamphlet and the controversy arising therefrom, see B. A. Corry, Money, Saving and Investment in English Economics, 1800-1850 (London: Macmillan, 1962), 162-8.

  [15 ]Thomas Tooke, Thoughts and Details on the High and Low Prices of the Last Thirty Years (London: Murray, 1823).

  [16 ]A Letter to Lord Archibald Hamilton on Alterations in the Value of Money (London, 1823).

  [17 ]For a fuller discussion of these issues, see my Robert Torrens and the Evolution of Classical Economics, chap. v.

  [18 ]See his unsigned article, “Lord Overstone on Metallic and Paper Currency,” Edinburgh Review, CVII (Jan., 1858), 248-93.

  [19 ]See the 2nd and 3rd editions of his Principles and Practical Operation of Sir Robert Peel’s Act of 1844 Explained and Defended (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1857 and 1858). See also my Robert Torrens and the Evolution of Classical Economics, 336-41.

  [20 ]It is interesting to see that in this evidence Mill speaks out against the issue of small notes, which he had defended so passionately in his youthful paper on the crisis of 1826, his ground now being that the prohibition of issue retained in the country a quantity of gold which could be used to replenish the reserve in case of necessity. See II. 509-10.

  [21 ]This second paper is also notable for the high praise awarded Perronet Thompson’s Catechism on the Corn Laws, one of the leading vehicles of the more popular propaganda on the subject. “Mr. Thompson is master of his subject, and has disposed of the fallacies with great philosophic accuracy” (I.152). But Mill goes out of his way to repudiate any endorsement of Thompson’s pamphlet on rent, which had criticized Ricardo on palpably superficial grounds.

  [22 ]On the contemporary discussion of such issues, Dr. Shehab’s useful monograph, Progressive Taxation (Oxford, 1953), may be consulted.

  [23 ]Principles, III. 809-10.

  [24 ]Ibid., 810-11.

  [25 ]So far as I am aware, he made no reference to the minimum standard in this connection. This might have presented difficulties at that time, but in our own day it is easy to conceive of alleviations through the pension system or the issue of vouchers for tax-free goods.

  [26 ]Principles, III. 811-12.

  [27 ]Autobiography, 174.

  [28 ]Principles, III. 758-66.

  [29 ]F. W. Taussig, Wages and Capital (New York: Appleton, 1899), chaps. xi and xii.

  [30 ]Principles, III. 930.

  [31 ]Ibid., II. xciv.

  [32 ]Principles, II. 199. See also Autobiography, 174-5.

  [33 ]Principles, II. 207-8.

  [34 ]Principles, III. 898.

  [35 ]Ibid., II. 227.

  [36 ]Ibid., 231-2.

  [37 ]Ibid., III. 819-20.

  [38 ]Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960.

  [39 ]There is a chapter discussing these vicissitudes in some detail in my The Theory of Economic Policy in English Classical Political Economy (London: Macmillan, 1961).

  [40 ]Autobiography, 161-4; Francis E. Mineka, ed., The Earlier Letters of John Stuart Mill, 1812-1848, in Collected Works (Toronto: University of Toronto Press; London: Routledge & Kegan Paul), 88-9.

  [41 ]Autobiography, 162.

  [42 ]Elliot, ed., Letters of John Stuart Mill, II, 334-5.

  [43 ]On Liberty (London: Parker, 1859), 198-9.

• Back to Top

  9: CW vol. 6 Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire: Intro by Joseph Hamburger

  John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume VI - Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, ed. John M. Robson, Introduction by Joseph Hamburger (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982). Chapter: Introduction

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/245/21290 on 2009-10-28

  The online edition of the Collected Works is published under licence from the copyright holder, The University of Toronto Press. ©2006 The University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced in any form or medium without the permission of The University of Toronto Press.

  ---

  The Collected Edition of the works of John Stuart Mill has been planned and is being directed by an editorial committee appointed from the Faculty of Arts and Science of the University of Toronto, and from the University of Toronto Press. The primary aim of the edition is to present fully collated texts of those works which exist in a number of versions, both printed and manuscript, and to provide accurate texts of works previously unpublished or which have become relatively inaccessible.

  Editorial Committee

  j. m. robson,General Editor

  v. w. bladen, harald bohne, alexander brady, j. c. cairns, j. b. conacher, d. p. dryer, francess halpenny, samuel hollander, jean houston, marsh jeanneret, r. f. mcrae, f. e. l. priestley

  Introduction

  JOSEPH HAMBURGER

  mill the philosopher, the economist, the general essayist and critic appears here in yet another capacity—as a radical journalist and party politician. Most of the articles in this volume were written to define the purpose of, and give direction to, the Radical party in Parliament during the 1830s; and even the articles on Ireland and the early articles on other subjects provide evidence of Mill’s radical inclinations at other times, though, of course, Mill’s discussion of Ireland is also important in the history of English controversy about that island. Most of these essays were written for journals that Mill helped to establish: the Westminster Review, the Parliamentary History and Review, the London Review, and the London and Westminster Review. The only exceptions were the independently published pamphlet England and Ireland, and his contributions to the Monthly Repository, which was edited by his friend, the Radical and Unitarian, William Johnson Fox. His successive contributions to each of these journals is closely related to the history of Benthamite radicalism; and, especially when combined with his correspondence, they show that Mill’s radicalism during the 1820s and 1830s defined a distinct and important episode in his life, and that he participated in events significant in parliamentary history. This introduction, except for the last part on Ireland, describes Mill’s radicalism during this early period, including his rationale for a Radical party, and his activities on behalf of that party during the 1830s. It also, in describing the relation of the mental crisis to his radicalism, shows that his resolution of the crisis allowed him to continue working and writing for the radical cause despite the changes in outlook and political philosophy that accompanied it.

  Since most of the articles in this volume deal with party programmes and tactics, they emphatically belong in the realm of practice, and they are markedly different from the theoretical writings on politics that we usually associate with Mill.¹ Practically oriented as these articles were, however, they also had a theoretical dimension, for he promoted a political enterprise with arguments that originated in Benthamite political philosophy. Mill’s radicalism, as an extension of the Benthamite position, is readily distinguished from other radical doctrines. Its principled basis allowed him to claim that it was uniquely philosophic, and thus it justified his invention and use of the phrase “Philosophic Radicalism.”

  A RADICAL EDUCATION

  mill’s career as a radical reformer began with his early education. When he was only six his father thought of him as the one to carry on the work begun by Bentham and himself. James Mill, during a period of illness, told Bentham of his hope that, in the event of his own death, his son would be brought up to be “a successor worthy of both of us.”² James Mill, however, lived to carry out his educational mission himself, and he accomplished it with great effectiveness. John Stuart Mill later recalls having had “juvenile aspirations to the character of a democratic champion”; and, he continues, “the most transcendant glory I was capable of conceiving, was that of figuring, successful or unsuccessful, as a Girondist in an English Convention.”³

  Mill’s wish to be a reformer was given additional impetus in 1821 (at age fifteen) when he read Traités de législation, Dumont’s redaction of Bentham. His education up to this time “had been, in a certain sense, already a course of Benthamism”: but the impact of this book was dramatic—it was “an epoch in my life; one of the turning points in my mental history.” All he had previously learned seemed to fall into place; Mill now felt he had direction and purpose as a reformer. Bentham’s book opened “a clearer and broader conception of what human opinions and institutions ought to be, how they might be made what they ought to be, and how far removed from it they now are.” Consequently Mill “now had opinions; a creed, a doctrine, a philosophy; in one among the best senses of the word, a religion; the inculcation and diffusion of which could be made the principal outward purpose of a life.” This new understanding was the initiation of Mill into radical politics, for he now had a “vista of improvement” which lit up his life and gave “a definite shape” to his aspirations.⁴

  Mill’s early assimilation of radicalism was evident in “Brodie’s History of the British Empire” (3-58 below),⁵ an article written at age eighteen. He used Bentham’s ideas to analyze seventeenth-century constitutional conflicts and to criticize Hume’s defence of Charles I. Hume wrote a “romance,” Mill said, which generally “allies itself with the sinister interests of the few” while being indifferent to the “sufferings of the many,” and he failed to consider “the only true end of morality, the greatest happiness of the greatest number” (3-4). Mill savagely criticized Hume as a defender of Stuart despotism, a dissembler, a perjuror (49), who involved himself in a “labyrinth of falsehood” (43). Indulgent to Stuart persecution (17), Hume became “the open and avowed advocate of despotism” (16). When Mill turned his attention to the parliamentary opposition, he tried to cast the Independents as seventeenth-century versions of nineteenth-century Radicals. They were republicans who upheld “the religion of the enlightened, and the enlightened are necessarily enemies to aristocracy” (47).⁶

  Bentham’s views on sinister and universal interests and the need for democratic reforms, and his belief that the most important conflict was between the aristocracy (represented by Whigs and Tories) and the people (represented by Radicals), were passed from Bentham to James Mill and subsequently to John Stuart Mill and the Philosophic Radicals. Bentham was critical of all institutions sanctioned by traditional authority, especially the common law and the British constitution. He regarded all law-making and administration of public affairs as disfigured by the aristocratic (and monarchical) monopoly of power. This monopoly created sinister interests which had many undesirable consequences, including unnecessary wars and unjustifiable empire building, but Bentham especially emphasized domestic corruption. The monarch and the aristocracy obtained benefits, such as sinecures and pensions, denied to others. The government, supposedly acting as trustees for the people, instead adopted the principle that “the substance of the people was a fund, out of which . . . fortunes . . . ought to be—made.” Such predatory activity and the improper distribution of “power, money, [and] factitious dignity” were made possible by “separate, and consequently with reference to the public service, . . . sinister interests.”⁷ This concept of sinister interests was central to Bentham’s radical political analysis.

  Bentham’s remedy was “democratic ascendancy.” Under it, office-holders would be restrained from seeking corrupt benefits. Universal suffrage, secret ballot, and annual parliaments would subject office-holders to scrutiny by those who stood to lose from the existence of sinister interests; thus these democratic practices would promote “the universal interest . . . of the whole people.” Democratic ascendancy was recommended as the best means to the desired goal, the greatest happiness of the greatest number.⁸

  Any persons or groups, whatever their social class or economic condition, could, according to Bentham, have sinister interests, but in the circumstances of the early nineteenth century the aristocracy was the most obvious and compelling example of a class that enjoyed such corrupt interests. His analysis pointed to fundamental conflict, under existing constitutional arrangements, between the aristocracy and the remainder of the populace. In this dispute the aristocracy was represented by the Whigs and the Tories, and the populace by Radicals, whom he also called “People’s-men.”⁹ This conflict superseded the contest of parties familiar to most observers, and although it was invisible to many, to Bentham it was the more significant contest. Whigs and Tories, far from being enemies, were not significantly different. “Both parties . . . acting under the dominion of the same seductive and corruptive influence—will be seen to possess the same separate and sinister interest:—an interest completely and unchangeably opposite to that of the whole uncorrupt portion of the people.”¹⁰ Despite their superficial quarrels, the two aristocratic parties shared a class interest: “That which the Tories have in possession . . . the Whigs have before them in prospect and expectancy.”¹¹

  Bentham laid the foundation of the Mills’ radicalism, but James Mill generated most of the argument and rhetoric that John Stuart Mill adopted in his early years. Young Mill read his father’s works, usually if not always in manuscript, conversed about them at length with him, and proof-read some as well. Among these works was the History of British India, which, James Mill said, “will make no bad introduction to the study of civil society in general. The subject afforded an opportunity of laying open the principles and laws of the social order. . . .”¹² There were also James Mill’s Encyclopaedia Britannica articles, which diagnosed problems and outlined remedies on such matters as government, colonies, education, law, the press, prisons, and poor relief.¹³ And a few years later there were his articles in the Westminster Review on the main Whig and Tory quarterlies and the parties they represented.¹⁴

  Parliamentary reform was regarded by Bentham and James Mill as supremely important, for they assumed that all other reforms, those of tariffs, education, and law, for example, would be achieved without difficulty once the popular or universal interest was represented in Parliament. An early statement of James Mill’s arguments for radical reform of Parliament may be found in his essay “Government,” although John Stuart Mill probably was familiar with them from his father’s unpublished dialogue on government composed on the Platonic model.¹⁵ Written in an austere style for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Government” in fact was a polemical statement, as both Ricardo and John Stuart Mill recognized.¹⁶

  The essay, far more extreme than was apparent, was influential in shaping the political thought of Philosophic Radicalism. Frequently it has been suggested that because it was a defence of the middle class, it was not an argument for complete democracy. This interpretation, however, ignores the fact that it was in its main features consistent with Bentham’s Plan of Parliamentary Reform, a fully democratic work. Certainly John Stuart Mill regarded his father as a democrat. James Mill, he said, “thought that when the legislature no longer represented a class interest, it would aim at the general interest,” and therefore “a democratic suffrage [was] the principal article of his political creed.”¹⁷ James Mill’s severest and most discerning critic, Thomas Babington Macaulay, also recognized that Mill was “in favour of pure democracy.”¹⁸

  James Mill’s rationale for a democratic suffrage was an important link between Bentham’s advocacy of universal suffrage and John Stuart Mill’s radicalism during the 1830s. “Government,” which was more widely read than any of his other political writings, had a powerful impact on the young Radicals, becoming “almost a text-book to many of those who may be termed the Philosophic Radicals.”¹⁹ James Mill’s influence was greatly reinforced by his conversation with the notable, even if not large, group of disciples that gathered around him during the 1820s and early 1830s, including some that John Stuart Mill brought into the fold: Charles Austin, Edward Strutt, John Romilly, William Ellis, and John Arthur Roebuck. James Mill’s impact was enhanced by the distance between these disciples and the aging Bentham (now in his seventies), who at this time was more interested in law reform and codification than in parliamentary politics. Bentham’s distance from the Radicals close to the Mills was accentuated by his intimacy with John Bowring, who was disliked and distrusted by James Mill. In 1825 some of these tensions surfaced when the Mills and their followers reduced their contributions to the Westminster Review and began publication of the Parliamentary History and Review, a journal in which they proclaimed Bentham’s principles without Bowring’s editorial interference.

  Many, in addition to his son, have testified to James Mill’s strengths as a political teacher. George Grote, who began his parliamentary career as a Radical in 1833, recalled James Mill’s “powerful intellectual ascendency over younger minds.”²⁰ Roebuck, despite an early quarrel with James Mill, called him his political and philosophical teacher and said, “To him I owe greater obligations than to any other man. If I know any thing, from him I learned it.”²¹ Another of John Stuart Mill’s young friends, William Ellis, said of his early encounter with James Mill, “‘he worked a complete change in me. He taught me how to think and what to live for.’” Indeed, Mill supplied him “with all those emotions and impulses which deserve the name of religious.”²² Harriet Grote, the historian’s wife, also observed that under James Mill’s influence “the young disciples, becoming fired with patriotic ardour on the one hand and with bitter antipathies on the other, respectively braced themselves up, prepared to wage battle when the day should come, in behalf of ‘the true faith,’ according to Mill’s ‘programme’ and preaching.”²³ Such strong influence allowed John Stuart Mill to say that his father “was quite as much the head and leader of the intellectual radicals in England, as Voltaire was of the philosophes of France.”²⁴

  This comparison with the philosophes, made by John Stuart Mill more than once, identifies the spirit in which he and the other Philosophic Radicals approached politics. His father’s opinions, he said,

  were seized on with youthful fanaticism by the little knot of young men of whom I was one: and we put into them a sectarian spirit, from which, in intention at least, my father was wholly free. What we (or rather a phantom substituted in the place of us) were sometimes, by a ridiculous exaggeration, called by others, namely a “school,” some of us for a time really hoped and aspired to be. The French philosophes of the eighteenth century were the example we sought to imitate, and we hoped to accomplish no less results.²⁵

  The Philosophic Radicals’ sectarian spirit was evident in their use of a distinctive jargon irritating to others. John Stuart Mill’s adopting the utilitarian label as a “sectarian appellation,”²⁶ for example, led Macaulay to ridicule “the project of mending a bad world by teaching people to give new names to old things.” The utilitarians, Macaulay added, invented “a new sleight of tongue.”²⁷ Mill also confessed that “to outrer whatever was by anybody considered offensive in the doctrines and maxims of Benthamism, became at one time the badge of a small coterie of youths.”²⁸

  Mill and others in his coterie displayed this sectarian spirit in the London Debating Society where they preferred to engage in political debate with ideological opposites whose principles were as clear and explicit as their own. Mill’s group, not the liberal moderates or trimming Whigs (such as Macaulay), provided the opposition to the Tories in the Society, and almost every debate, Mill recalled, “was a bataille rangée between the ‘philosophic radicals’ and the Tory lawyers.” The debates, he said, were unusual for being philosophically extreme, so that the opponents were “thrown often into close and serré confutations of one another.”²⁹ In noting that the Society was the only arena in which such conflict was to be found, Mill was making an allusion to the defects of Parliament itself as well as giving a hint of the worldly ambitions which were linked to his and the other Philosophic Radicals’ political speculations.

  Their conduct and opinions did not go uncriticized. Henry Taylor, an official in the Colonial Office and later author of The Statesman, regarded John Stuart Mill’s views in the 1820s as being “at heart something in the nature of political fanaticism,” and in the London Debating Society Taylor spoke against the same facet of radicalism that provoked Macaulay’s famous critique of James Mill.³⁰ William Empson also complained about “the most peremptory and proselytizing seminary of ipse dixitists, (to use one of their own beautiful words,) which has ever existed.” The Benthamite Radicals reminded Empson of “those abstract and dogmatical times when men were principally distinguished by the theory of morals that they might happen to profess.”³¹ Macaulay, at this time a prolific publicist but not yet in the House of Commons, suggested that the disciples of James Mill (whom he called a “zealot of a sect”)³² were potentially dangerous.

  Even now [1827], it is impossible to disguise, that there is arising in the bosom of [the middle class] a Republican sect, as audacious, as paradoxical, as little inclined to respect antiquity, as enthusiastically attached to its ends, as unscrupulous in the choice of its means, as the French Jacobins themselves,—but far superior to the French Jacobins in acuteness and information—in caution, in patience, and in resolution. They are men whose minds have been put into training for violent exertion. . . . They profess to derive their opinions from demonstrations alone. . . . Metaphysical and political science engage their whole attention. Philosophical pride has done for them what spiritual pride did for the Puritans in a former age; it has generated in them an aversion for the fine arts, for elegant literature, and for the sentiments of chivalry. It has made them arrogant, intolerant, and impatient of all superiority. These qualities will, in spite of their real claims to respect, render them unpopular, as long as the people are satisfied with their rulers. But under an ignorant and tyrannical ministry, obstinately opposed to the most moderate and judicious innovations, their principles would spread as rapidly as those of the Puritans formerly spread, in spite of their offensive peculiarities. The public, disgusted with the blind adherence of its rulers to ancient abuses, would be reconciled to the most startling novelties. A strong democratic party would be formed in the educated class.³³

  Such criticism was not likely to undermine the confidence of John Stuart Mill and his fellow enthusiasts. The Philosophic Radicals were distinguished, Mill said, for writing with an “air of strong conviction . . . when scarcely any one else seemed to have an equally strong faith in as definite a creed. . . .” Thus the public eye was attracted by “the regular appearance in controversy of what seemed a new school of writers, claiming to be the legislators and theorists of this new [reformist] tendency.”³⁴

  RADICALISM INTERRUPTED: THE MENTAL CRISIS

  during the middle and late 1820s John Stuart Mill might have felt confidence in his future as a leading member of an influential coterie, but his commitment to radicalism was shaken by his mental crisis and related events, particularly, at the end of the decade, by Macaulay’s critique of James Mill’s “Government,” John Austin’s arguments in his course of lectures on jurisprudence at the University of London in 1829-30, and the early writings of Auguste Comte and the St. Simonians.

  The mental crisis, which beset him in the autumn of 1826, made Mill indifferent to reform. Having been converted, as he reported, to a political creed with religious dimensions, and having seen himself as “a reformer of the world,” he now asked himself if the complete reform of the world would bring him happiness and, realizing it would not, he felt that the foundations of his life had collapsed. “I was thus, as I said to myself, left stranded at the commencement of my voyage, with a well equipped ship and a rudder, but no sail; . . . ambition seemed to have dried up within me. . . .”³⁵ Mill for a time lost his political calling.

  This crisis was responsible, as Mill acknowledged, for an “important transformation” in his “opinions and character.”³⁶ So far as opinions were concerned, the change came, not directly from the crisis, but from certain subsequent events. These events occurred after the period of his greatest dejection had ended but before his recovery of purpose and confidence. In fact, by undermining his old beliefs, the crisis opened the way for a commitment to new ideas. Part of the process was the undercurrent of negative feelings about James Mill that are evident in his record of the crisis.

  The first of these events, the publication in 1829 of Macaulay’s critiques of James Mill’s “Government,” did much to shake John Mill’s beliefs. Macaulay charged James Mill with using a priori reasoning inappropriate to political analysis, and argued that Mill compounded this error by making deductions from inadequate premises. James Mill’s democratic prescription, Macaulay argued, would not necessarily promote policies reflecting the universal interest.³⁷ This attack, John Stuart Mill confessed, “gave me much to think about.” Though, he says,

  the tone was unbecoming . . . there was truth in several of his strictures on my father’s treatment of the subject; that my father’s premises were really too narrow, and included but a small number of the general truths, on which, in politics, the important consequences depend. Identity of interest between the governing body and the community at large, is not, in any practical sense which can be attached to it, the only thing on which good government depends; neither can this identity of interest be secured by the mere conditions of election. I was not at all satisfied with the mode in which my father met the criticisms of Macaulay.³⁸

  Mill now thought there was something “fundamentally erroneous” in his father’s “conception of philosophical Method.”³⁹

  Also contributing to the change in Mill’s beliefs were John Austin’s lectures (which Mill attended during the session that began in November, 1829) and his exposure to St. Simonianism. Whereas Macaulay’s attack undermined his confidence in the soundness of “Government,” and by extension much else, without providing anything to put in its place, John Austin and the St. Simonians suggested to Mill political principles that were alternatives to his old radicalism and that, at least to their authors, seemed incompatible with Benthamite radicalism. Mill’s adoption of several ideas from Austin and the St. Simonians for a while prevented him from resuming his former role as a champion of the older radicalism. Only after an intellectual struggle was he able to accommodate the new ideas to the old.

  The most important of these new ideas concerned political authority. In 1829 he began to develop the view that it ought to be exercised by those with special knowledge of public matters, and began speaking about the “authority of the instructed.”⁴⁰ Since this notion circumscribed the political role of ordinary citizens, he also advocated the multitude’s deference to knowledgeable authority. These opinions, markedly alien to Benthamite radicalism and his father’s political principles, had their origin in writings of the St. Simonians and in John Austin’s lectures on jurisprudence (which is not to say that Austin’s political thought and St. Simonianism were the same).⁴¹

  Austin’s advocacy of vesting authority in those with knowledge was closely tied to his complete confidence that the method of science could be applied to most fields of knowledge. He was so impressed by the achievements of natural science and the progress of political economy that he looked forward to a parallel emergence of political and moral science. By using the principle of utility, these sciences would discover the sources of improvement, and the result would be a science of ethics, including the sciences of law, morality, and political science. Since such scientific knowledge was accessible only to comparatively few, however, authority could be properly exercised only by them, and most persons were expected to accept their conclusions “on authority, testimony, or trust.”⁴²

  These ideas made Austin anything but a radical. He had been an orthodox Benthamite until, in 1827, he began a year-and-a-half stay in Germany, but his new attitudes to authority and trust were incompatible with the democratic arrangements proposed by Bentham. Austin unmistakably rejected radicalism in his denying that “the power of the sovereign flows from the people, or [that] the people is the fountain of sovereign power.”⁴³ He also complained about “the stupid and infuriate majority,” and condemned Radical leaders, saying that “the guides of the multitude [were] moved by sinister interests, or by prejudices which are the offspring of such interests.”⁴⁴ John Mill noted Austin’s move away from radicalism, reporting that in Germany Austin “acquired an indifference, bordering on contempt, for the progress of popular institutions. . . .”⁴⁵ Austin’s relations with Bentham became somewhat strained at this time, and Sarah Austin (whose views were very close to her husband’s) said she “excite[d] horror among [her] Radical friends for not believing that all salvation comes of certain organic forms of government.”⁴⁶

  Another alternative to Benthamism was St. Simonianism. Mill became acquainted with the sect in 1829 and 1830, and he claimed to have read everything they wrote, though, of course, he did not share all their beliefs.⁴⁷ Among other things, he found in St. Simonian writings a theory of history that asserted that society progressed through alternating stages, called organic and critical. Organic epochs are characterized by widely shared beliefs and clearly defined, shared goals. In such periods society is arranged hierarchically, with the truly superior having the power to direct moral, scientific, and industrial activity. Although there is gross inequality, there is no discontent and no conflict. For the St. Simonians, organic eras existed when Greek and Roman polytheism were in full vigour (ending, respectively, with Pericles and Augustus), and when Catholicism and feudalism were at their height.⁴⁸ Critical epochs, in contrast, are characterized by deep scepticism about the values and beliefs of the preceding organic era and finally by rejection of them. All forces join to destroy the values and institutions of the preceding era, and when this destruction is accomplished, one finds irreligion, lack of morality, and egoism, as particular interests prevail over the general interest. In the resultant anarchy, there is conflict between ruler and ruled, and men of ability are ignored. The St. Simonians found examples in the periods between polytheism and Christianity and from Luther to the present.⁴⁹

  St. Simonian ideas, like Austin’s, were far removed from Benthamite radicalism, implying, as they did, that organic were superior to critical periods, and approving cultural and religious unity and hierarchy. All that Benthamite radicalism aimed to achieve assumed the continued existence of a critical epoch, and radicalism’s highest achievement would have involved the most extreme development of the distinguishing characteristics of critical eras. The Radicals’ blindness to the necessary supercession of critical periods by organic ones was, for the St. Simonians, a disqualifying limitation.

  These ideas—both Austin’s and the St. Simonians’—had a powerful impact on Mill. He came to believe that those most instructed in moral and political subjects might “carry the multitude with them by their united authority.”⁵⁰ His assumption that most persons “must and do believe on authority” was an implicit rejection of Benthamite views on the role of a sceptical electorate always alert to the operation of sinister interests.⁵¹ The full extent of his commitment to these new ideas was evident in his “The Spirit of the Age,” which appeared in 1831, but even earlier his changed ideas were reflected in changed activities. Unlike his father, Mill for a few years thought there was little point in stimulating public opinion; he dropped out of the London Debating Society in 1829 and wrote little for publication.⁵² Although he claimed to have “entered warmly”⁵³ into the political discussions of the time when he returned from Paris in September, 1830, his manuscript bibliography records few publications on domestic politics during the reform period, and during the height of the Reform Bill agitation he was “often surprised, how little” he really cared about extra-parliamentary politics. “The time is not yet come,” he wrote, “when a calm and impartial person can intermeddle with advantage in the questions and contests of the day.”⁵⁴

  Mill recovered his sense of calling as a reformer and his radical beliefs, but only after he accommodated his new ideas about the authority of the instructed to Benthamite radicalism. He felt compelled to make the accommodation:

  I found the fabric of my old and taught opinions giving way in many fresh places, and I never allowed it to fall to pieces, but was incessantly occupied in weaving it anew. I never, in the course of my transition, was content to remain, for ever so short a time, confused and unsettled. When I had taken in any new idea, I could not rest till I had adjusted its relation to my old opinions, and ascertained exactly how far its effect ought to extend in modifying or superseding them.⁵⁵

  The process of weaving anew, which involved influences coming from Coleridge, Carlyle, and Harriet Taylor, as well as from John Austin and the St. Simonians, continued for much of his life, but it was a major occupation for him during the 1830s.

  If Mill’s metaphor of weaving suggests a harmonious intertwining, it is somewhat misleading, for initially his old and new ideas were not so much woven together as simply combined. Rather than choose between them, Mill now regarded both the old ideas, which emphasized popular control, and the new, which emphasized instructed leadership, as equally necessary: “the grand difficulty in politics will for a long time be, how best to conciliate the two great elements on which good government depends; to combine the greatest amount of the advantage derived from the independent judgment of a specially instructed Few, with the greatest degree of the security for rectitude of pupose derived from rendering those Few responsible to the Many.”⁵⁶ This combination was necessary because each of its main ingredients was by itself insufficient. Benthamite radicalism provided a popular check on authority but made no provision for instructed authority. By attempting to combine these two approaches, Mill was hoping to provide for “the two great elements on which good government depends.”⁵⁷

  This wish to combine two diverse outlooks led Mill to use the language of eclecticism. He described the truth as “many sided,”⁵⁸ and advocated “a catholic spirit in philosophy.”⁵⁹ Trying to combine fragments of the truth and to reconcile persons who represented different “half truths,”⁶⁰ he sought “practical eclecticism,”⁶¹ and he tried to keep “as firm hold of one side of the truth as [he] took of the other.”⁶²

  At this time Mill thought of his political speculations as taking place on a higher plane than they had occupied earlier. Whereas previously he (like Bentham and his father) had regarded certain model institutions as the end result of speculation, now, without rejecting his old conclusions about model (i.e., democratic) institutions, he went further. In his words, “If I am asked what system of political philosophy I substituted for that which, as a philosophy, I had abandoned, I answer, no system: only a conviction, that the true system was something much more complex and many sided than I had previously had any idea of, and that its office was to supply, not a set of model institutions, but principles from which the institutions suitable to any given circumstances might be deduced.”⁶³ Of course, viewed from this higher plane, James Mill’s contribution to political philosophy was greatly diminished. Thus John Mill became “aware of many things which [his father’s] doctrine, professing to be a theory of government in general, ought to have made room for, and did not.”⁶⁴ He no longer accepted “Government” as embodying scientific theory, and thought his father should have answered Macaulay by acknowledging that the essay was not a scientific treatise but only a tract in support of parliamentary reform.⁶⁵ Although he did not use the phrase in reference to his father, clearly he thought James Mill had grasped only a “half-truth.”

  Mill’s search for ways of combining the diverse understandings of Bentham and his father, on the one hand, and of Austin and the St. Simonians, on the other, was revealed most clearly in his articles on Bailey, Tocqueville, Bentham, and Coleridge (and much later, of course, in Considerations on Representative Government). Whereas he castigated as false democracy the simple majoritarianism which he associated with the recommendations of Bentham and James Mill, he saw true or rational democracy as the kind that, in allowing for representation of minorities, including the minority of the educated, facilitated leadership by the instructed few in combination with a democratic suffrage that provided popular control. This line of thinking was also evident in his belief that the main thrust of eighteenth-century political philosophy, represented by the philosophes on the Continent and in England by Bentham (and, by implication, his father), had to be combined with the main theme of nineteenth-century thought as represented by the German romantics and in England by Coleridge. Whereas Bentham taught the need for popular control, Coleridge, with his notion of a clerisy, promoted the idea of enlightened authority that commanded deference from the populace. “Whoever could master the premises and combine the methods of both [Bentham and Coleridge], would possess the entire English philosophy of their age,”⁶⁶ Mill said, and described his wish to synthesize Bentham and Coleridge as a “scheme of conciliation between the old and the new ‘philosophic radicalism.’”⁶⁷

  In combining the new ideas with the old radicalism, Mill was greatly helped by a theory of history that allowed him to visualize the progressive development of society. He was exposed to such a theory in St. Simonianism, which provided him with a “connected view . . . of the natural order of human progress.”⁶⁸ This permitted him to assume that the combination of enlightened leadership and democratic control would be viable; that is, true democracy as he understood it could come to exist.

  After Mill had persuaded himself that the old radicalism was reconcilable with his new ideas, he could co-operate with the other Radicals in practical politics. While he had some goals that were not theirs, he shared their wish for an extended suffrage, shorter parliaments, and the secret ballot. The “change in the premises of my political philosophy,” he says, “did not alter my practical political creed as to the requirements of my own time and country. I was as much as ever a radical and democrat, for Europe, and especially for England.”⁶⁹ Democracy, however, would have put into practice only some of Mill’s political principles, whereas for the other Radicals it would have been closer to complete fulfilment of their hopes.

  In the absence of complete agreement, relations between Mill and the other Philosophic Radicals were somewhat strained. Since they were willing to apply only some of his political principles, he regarded them as narrow. They saw “clearly what they did see, though it was but little.” As they were narrow, he regarded them as incomplete, “half-men.”⁷⁰ All the same, he was “able to cooperate with them in their own field of usefulness, though perhaps they would not always join [him] in [his].”⁷¹ Mill also subjected his father to two standards of judgment, approving his ideas at one level but not the other. There was oblique criticism of him in an appendix to Edward Lytton Bulwer’s England and the English (London, 1833) and in references to spokesmen for the philosophy of the eighteenth century in the essay on Bentham; also in the Autobiography Mill confessed to feeling quite distant from James Mill’s “tone of thought and feeling,” and said his father probably considered him “a deserter from his standard,” although at the same time “we were almost always in strong agreement on the political questions of the day.”⁷²

  Although Mill was willing to co-operate with the other Philosophic Radicals, their feelings about him were affected by suspicions that his new ideas undermined his status as a Radical. Roebuck complained about Mill’s belief “in the advantages to be derived from an Aristocracy of intellect.”⁷³ Mrs. Grote referred to that “wayward intellectual deity John Mill,”⁷⁴ and after the publication of the article on Bentham, Francis Place expressed the view “that [since] John Mill has made great progress in becoming a German Metaphysical Mystic, excentricity [sic] and absurdity must occasionally be the result.”⁷⁵

  During the 1830s Mill advocated both parts of his political philosophy. On some occasions he explained the need for allowing the “instructed few” a large measure of authority; at other times he emphasized the more restricted vision of Benthamite radicalism, and sought to be the guide and tactician for the parliamentary Radicals. In the latter mood, he looked for fairly quick results, whereas in the former he was trying to prepare the ground for the acceptance of new principles to be realized in the more distant future. Although his explanations of the new ideas mainly appeared in essays published in other volumes of the Collected Works, occasionally these ideas are found in articles in this volume. A notable example is his anticipation of his proposal in Considerations on Representative Government (1861) for a Legislative Commission in an article of 1834 in the Monthly Repository (160).⁷⁶

  THE RATIONALE FOR A RADICAL PARTY

  mill became a political journalist to implement his radical creed. He often wished to be in Parliament with other Philosophic Radicals, and only his official position at India House prevented his going to the hustings.⁷⁷ Consequently he turned to journalism with the belief—or the hope—that “words are deeds, and the cause of deeds.”⁷⁸ He looked enviously at France where “editors of daily journals may be considered as individually the head, or at lowest the right hand, of a political party.”⁷⁹ There was the example of Armand Carrel, who “made himself, without a seat in the legislature or any public station beyond the editorship of his journal, the most powerful political leader of his age and country” (380). With ambition to play such a role, Mill, in co-operation with his father and Sir William Molesworth, set up a new quarterly journal in 1835 (initially the London Review and, after a merger in 1836, the London and Westminster). It was to be “a periodical organ of philosophic radicalism, to take the place which the Westminster Review had been intended to fill.” One of its principal purposes “was to stir up the educated Radicals, in and out of Parliament, to exertion, and induce them to make themselves, what I thought by using the proper means they might become—a powerful party capable of taking the government of the country, or at least of dictating the terms on which they should share it with the Whigs.”⁸⁰ Mill was the real though not the nominal editor, and after Molesworth withdrew in 1837 he became the proprietor as well.

  Mill in his journalism frequently discussed Radical party goals, explaining that constitutional change, that is, organic reform, was essential, but that it was only a means to the real end, improvement. Thus he said that Radicals wanted codification of the laws, cheap legal procedures, access to the courts for the poor, abolition of the corn laws and of restrictions on industry, elimination of useless expenditures, improvement of conditions in Ireland, and a rational administration (348, 397). Thinking the Reform Act of 1832 “wholly insufficient” (186), he did not expect much improvement from the post-Reform Bill parliaments, and therefore advocated organic reform, that is, a more democratic constitution. Of course, if improvements could have been achieved without such fundamental changes, Mill would have been satisfied, but he assumed that the aristocratic classes were unwilling to make more than trivial concessions to liberal opinion. Thus, although constitutional changes were only the means to general improvement, Mill said, “necessary means we believe them to be” (348).⁸¹ Consequently, the demand for organic reforms became the hallmark of Philosophic Radicalism.

  Although Radicals might differ about how far to go in shifting power away from the aristocracy, they agreed about the kind of change required: “it must be by diminishing the power of those who are unjustly favoured, and giving more to those who are unjustly depressed: it must be by adding weight in the scale to the two elements of Numbers and Intelligence, and taking it from that of Privilege” (479). The traditional Radical programme for achieving this change emphasized universal suffrage, secret ballot, and frequent elections. Mill said little about annual parliaments but appears to have wanted shorter, perhaps triennial, ones. He was outspoken in calling for the ballot, not only because it would reduce bribery and intimidation of electors, but because it would help shift the balance of power: once it became a cabinet measure, “reform will have finally triumphed: the aristocratical principle will be completely annihilated, and we shall enter into a new era of government.”⁸² As to the franchise, he wanted to see it greatly extended at this time, but he did not press for universal suffrage, although he regarded it as ultimately necessary and desirable. By arguing that it could be put off for a time, he was not doubting its importance and value but was recognizing that it was unlikely that a broadly based radical movement could be formed if extremists within it insisted on universal suffrage. He therefore called for its gradual introduction and was evidently pleased when its not being a pressing issue allowed him to avoid an unequivocal statement of his opinion (482, 488-9).⁸³ When he could not avoid stating his view, however, Mill, although hesitantly, showed his hand, as when he said of the parliamentary Radicals:

  They are the only party who do not in their hearts condemn the whole of their operative fellow-citizens to perpetual helotage, to a state of exclusion from all direct influence on national affairs. . . . They look forward to a time, most of them think it is not yet come, when the whole adult population shall be qualified to give an equal voice in the election of members of Parliament. Others believe this and tremble; they believe it, and rejoice; and instead of wishing to retard, they anxiously desire . . . to hasten this progress. (397.)

  Of course, this description of the parliamentary Radicals was a description of Mill himself.

  Mill’s wish to promote a Radical party with a programme of organic reform rested on the assumption that a fundamental conflict was taking place between the aristocratic and non-aristocratic classes over control of government. This notion was adopted from Bentham and his father, but the language Mill used to describe the conflict was more varied than theirs: the Disqualified vs. the Privileged; Natural Radicals vs. Natural Opponents of Radicalism; Numbers and Intelligence vs. Privilege; the Aggrieved vs. the Satisfied; the Many vs. the Few. Whatever the labels, Mill, like Bentham and his father, had in mind a conflict between Radicals, as spokesmen for the universal or general interest and representing the “People,” and Conservatives, as spokesmen for particular or sinister interests and representing the Aristocracy. Mill’s analysis was evident in much of what he wrote during the 1830s, but it was presented most elaborately in the remarkable essay, “Reorganization of the Reform Party,” where he described the conflict as arising out of social structure. Political views, he explained, were a matter of social position, interest, and class (465-95 passim, esp. 469).⁸⁴

  Mill’s view of the aristocratic classes was not very different from his father’s. They were, generally, the landed and monied classes, especially the former, and they controlled the legislature, the House of Commons as well as the House of Lords (101-2 and 184). They made laws in their own interest, most notably the monopolistic Corn Laws which made bread unnecessarily expensive for the poor (170, 470), and also in defence of their amusements, as Mill explained in his early article on the Game Laws, which had important consequences for a great part of the agricultural population (101-3, 107). They also biassed justice by administering the laws in their own class interest (471, 483). Furthermore, they administered the Poor Laws; and the army, navy, and civil patronage belonged to them exclusively (170). Altogether the government was “a selfish oligarchy, carried on for the personal benefit of the ruling classes” (479). The Church, too, was but a branch of the aristocracy (471).⁸⁵ In short, the aristocracy had vast unjust power; it was exploitive, selfish, and indifferent to the interests of others. Clearly its members, the bulwark of what Mill called the Privileged, Conservative, Satisfied Classes, exploited their sinister interest at the expense of the people (469-70).

  In opposition to the aristocratic classes, Mill portrayed the combination of groups that made up the Numbers and Intelligence and who, in their struggle against Privilege, became “natural Radicals” (468, 470). All who suffered deprivation as a result of aristocratic exclusions—whether through legislation or custom—were the Disqualified, and therefore by definition opposed to the Privileged.

  All who feel oppressed, or unjustly dealt with, by any of the institutions of the country; who are taxed more heavily than other people, or for other people’s benefit; who have, or consider themselves to have, the field of employment for their pecuniary means or their bodily or mental faculties unjustly narrowed; who are denied the importance in society, or the influence in public affairs, which they consider due to them as a class, or who feel debarred as individuals from a fair chance of rising in the world; especially if others, in whom they do not recognize any superiority of merit, are artificially exalted above their heads: these compose the natural Radicals; to whom must be added a large proportion of those who, from whatever cause, are habitually ill at ease in their pecuniary circumstances; the sufferers from low wages, low profits, or want of employment. . . . (470.)

  Such was Mill’s attempt to define the comprehensive coalition of the discontented.

  Turning to the sources of such discontents, Mill looked to amount of property and to occupational and financial circumstances—in other words, to class. First, there were the middle classes, the majority of whom, including the bulk of the manufacturing and mercantile classes (except those in protected trades), were on the side of change. In addition, there were the ten-pound electors in the towns, who belonged to the “uneasy classes,” for they lived a life of struggle and had no sense of fellow feeling with the aristocracy (476). In part these were Dissenters, who had their own grievances against the Church to supplement those they experienced as members of the middle class. “Between them and the aristocracy, there is a deeper gulph fixed than can be said of any other portion of the middle class; and when men’s consciences, and their interests, draw in the same direction, no wonder that they are irresistible” (476).⁸⁶

  There was another aspect of middle-class discontent about which Mill was perceptive, perhaps because he personally experienced it. It arose less from inequities leading to material deprivation than from resentments about social status, and it was experienced by “the men of active and aspiring talent” who had skilled employments “which require talent and education but confer no rank,—what may be called the non-aristocratic professions. . . . ” Such persons were natural Radicals, for, Mill asked, “what is Radicalism, but the claim of pre-eminence for personal qualities above conventional or accidental advantages” (477)? As examples Mill mentioned stewards and attorneys, but one recalls his claims for “the most virtuous and best-instructed” in “The Spirit of the Age,”⁸⁷ and his observation that journalists and editors, who were influential but regarded as ungentlemanly, did not enjoy public recognition of their real power (163-4). All such persons together might be called the intelligentsia. Of course, the word was not used in England in Mill’s time, but there can be little doubt that he had in mind the phenomenon to which it refers when he discussed the political outlook of such persons.⁸⁸

  There is a class, now greatly multiplying in this country, and generally overlooked by politicians in their calculations; those men of talent and instruction, who are just below the rank in society which would of itself entitle them to associate with gentlemen. Persons of this class have the activity and energy which the higher classes in our state of civilization and education almost universally want. . . . They are, as it is natural they should be, Radicals to a man, and Radicals generally of a deep shade. They are the natural enemies of an order of things in which they are not in their proper place. (402-3.)

  In this statement, which suggests his resentment at exclusion from a deserved political station in society, Mill (despite his position in the East India Company) identified with the class of which he said, “We are felt to be the growing power . . . ” (403). His identification with such persons may explain the bitterness that is evident in some of his observations about the aristocracy (162).

  Mill gave equal prominence to the working class as the other main constituent part of the opposition to the aristocracy. This was not only a matter of taking note of Chartism during the late 1830s, for before then Mill complained about the injuries done to “the people of no property, viz. those whose principal property consists in their bodily faculties.” Like the middle class and those with small property, “the most numerous and poorest class has also an interest in reducing the exorbitant power which is conferred by large property” (218, 219). So Mill included in the large, naturally radical body “the whole effective political strength of the working classes: classes deeply and increasingly discontented, and whose discontent now [1839] speaks out in a voice which will not be unheard” (478).

  In discussing both middle and working classes as the opposition to the aristocracy, Mill was not unaware of conflicts of interest that divided the working from the middle classes. He took note of disagreements about universal suffrage; of quarrels between supporters of the Church and Dissenters; and above all, of “an opposition of interest, which gives birth, it would seem, to the most deep-rooted distrusts and aversions which exist in society—the opposition between capitalists and labourers” (479). When the Chartists were providing evidence of class conflict between proletariat and bourgeoisie, Mill proposed that such antagonism be subordinated to the other kind of class conflict—between the aristocracy and the non-aristocratic classes—that was required by his political position. He appealed to the middle and working classes to co-operate in taking the next step, which was opposition to the aristocracy by a parliamentary Radical party (480-1). Since many middle-class radicals would not agree to universal suffrage, such co-operation required postponement of that demand, which was what the Chartists most wanted. The wish to postpone universal suffrage was also supported by Mill’s belief that education ought to precede full democracy. Meanwhile it was necessary to redress the practical grievances of the working classes without yet allowing them full participation. “The motto of a Radical politician should be, Government by means of the middle for the working classes” (483).⁸⁹ Despite this concession to middle-class fear of the working class, Mill went far in asking that there should be “some members returned chiefly by the working classes. We think it of importance that Mr. Lovett and Mr. Vincent [both Chartists] should make themselves heard in St. Stephen’s as well as in Palace yard [i.e., in the House of Commons as well as in public meetings], and that the legislature should not have to learn the sentiments of the working classes at second-hand.” (489.)

  Mill’s supportive words for the middle class, like his father’s, were not intended to promote the interest of that class to the exclusion of the working class, nor was he particularly sympathetic to the middle class. He criticized the shopocracy (162) and, in urging that the working classes have some representation, said, “We would give [them] power, but not all power. We wish them to be strong enough to keep the middle classes in that salutary awe, without which, no doubt, those classes would be just like any other oligarchy. . . . ” (489.) It is evident that Mill was far from being comfortable with middle-class rule:

  The people of property are the stronger now, and will be for many years. All the danger of injustice lies from them, and not towards them. Nothing but the progressive increase of the power of the working classes, and a progressive conviction of that increase on the part of their superiors, can be a sufficient inducement to the proprietary class to cultivate a good understanding with the working people; to take them more and more into their councils; to treat them more and more as people who deserve to be listened to, whose condition and feelings must be considered, and are best learned from their own mouths; finally, to fit them for a share in their own government, by accustoming them to be governed, not like brute animals, but beings capable of rationality, and accessible to social feelings. (219-20.)

  Mill’s view of party politics during the 1830s was shaped by his belief that party conflict ought to reflect the class conflict between the aristocracy and its opponents. A Radical party should represent the anti-aristocratic interest of the diverse groups which Bentham and James Mill called the numerous classes or the People. Their party was to rest “on the whole body of radical opinion, from the whig-radicals at one extreme, to the more reasonable and practical of the working classes, and the Benthamites, on the other.”⁹⁰ Far from excluding the working classes, Mill said, “A Radical party which does not rest upon the masses, is no better than a nonentity” (396). The labels he used for this party varied—it was the Radical party, popular party, Reform party, liberal party, Movement party—but whatever the label, “the small knot of philosophic radicals,” as he called them, to whom Mill offered guidance throughout the decade, was to be the most advanced part of it, and he hoped it would provide the party with leadership.

  On the other side of the great conflict Mill looked for an aristocratic party made up of both Whigs and Tories. The Whigs were included despite their use of a liberal and reformist rhetoric that superficially distinguished them from the Tories. They were attached to the existing distribution of power as much as the Tories and were equally “terrified at the remedies” (297). In response to popular pressure the Whigs occasionally made concessions, and at these times Mill allowed a place for the most liberal of them in a comprehensively defined Radical or Reform party, but his wish and expectation was that they would combine with the Tories in an aristocratic party. This would be the party of “the English oligarchy, Whig and Tory,” and its organ (Mill said in 1834) was Lord Grey (262).

  Since Radicals and Conservatives had clearly defined views on the large issue of democracy and aristocracy, they deserved to survive, but the Whigs, because of their half-hearted equivocations, did not. Thus he regarded the Whigs as “a coterie, not a party” (342), and rather optimistically noted that Conservatives and Radicals were gaining strength “at the expense not of each other, but of the Indifferents and the juste milieu,” and, he added, “there will soon be no middle party, as indeed what seemed such had long been rather an appearance than a reality” (341).⁹¹ The realignment of parties Mill wanted would remove the equivocating Whigs and make political conflict an accurate representation of the underlying class conflict. He did not use the word “realignment,” but the phenomenon to which it refers was in his mind, as it was in Bentham’s and James Mill’s. Forcing the Whigs (other than the most liberal of them) to acknowledge their shared aristocratic interest with the Tories would create a place for a Radical party that was not a subordinate partner in an uneasy alliance with the Whigs. The proper alignment would come, he said, “when the present equivocal position of parties is ended, and the question is distinctly put between Radicalism and Conservatism” (477).⁹²

  Mill’s view on party realignment illuminates his use of the phrase “Philosophic Radical.” His fairly precise notion of the meaning of the term—which he himself coined—sharply contrasts with the loose usage among historians, for whom it has referred to such things as Benthamism, utilitarianism, liberalism, laissez-faire doctrine, and radicalism so loosely defined as to include the mixture of economic and political ideas of Adam Smith, Bentham, the Mills, Nassau Senior, and Cobden.⁹³ Mill invented the phrase to identify a small group among the many radicals who existed during the 1820s and 1830s. This group was deeply influenced by James Mill and most had associated with John Stuart Mill in the London Debating Society and in the production of the Parliamentary History and Review. Among them were George Grote, who later distinguished himself as an historian of Greece and of Greek philosophy; John Roebuck, who had a long and prominent career as a member of Parliament; and Charles Austin, who had a dazzling success at the bar. Older than most of the others, Joseph Parkes, a successful attorney and political agent, played a part in their deliberations; although less an enthusiast than the others, he shared some of their convictions. Francis Place, the legendary Radical tailor, must be included, although his age and his participation in the Radical movement from the 1790s gave him a special position. It also would be difficult to exclude Harriet Grote, whose lively political interests and aggressive temperament made her an active participant. Others became associated with the Philosophic Radicals during the 1830s—Henry Warburton, Charles Buller, and Sir William Molesworth being most noteworthy. What characterized the group was their association with the Mills and a belief—held by some with greater enthusiasm than by others—that by means of party realignment the Radicals could replace the Whigs. This belief was promoted by several of these Philosophic Radicals in their journalism and their parliamentary careers.

  Mill used the adjective “philosophic” in describing the Radicals with whom he felt a close affinity because they took a principled—a philosophic—position on politics. Mill’s political philosophy—or perhaps one should say half of it, the part derived from Bentham and James Mill—was mainly occupied with justifying democracy against aristocratic government. He contrasted the Philosophic Radicals with historical Radicals who demanded popular institutions as an inheritance from the distant past; with metaphysical Radicals whose belief in democracy was based on a notion of abstract natural rights; with Radicals marked by irritation with a particular policy of government; and with “radicals of position, who are radicals . . . because they are not lords” (353).⁹⁴ Mill’s favoured Radicals deserved to be called philosophic because they traced practical evils back to their cause, which was the aristocratic principle. Thus their motto was “enmity to the Aristocratical principle” (353).⁹⁵

  This justification for the adjective “philosophic” makes the label appropriate not only for Radicals, for there was an opposing position which was also philosophic. There was a type of Tory “who gives to Toryism (what can be given to it, though not to Whiggism) something like a philosophic basis; who finds for [his] opinions the soundest, the most ingenious, or the most moral arguments by which they can be supported” (335). This was “speculative Toryism,” such as Coleridge’s:

  As whatever is noble or disinterested in Toryism is founded upon a recognition of the moral duty of submission to rightful authority, so the moral basis of Radicalism is the refusal to pay that submission to an authority which is usurped, or to which the accidents of birth or fortune are the only title. The Tory acknowledges, along with the right to obedience, a correlative obligation to govern for the good of the ruled. . . . (478-9.)⁹⁶

  In the House of Commons, however, Toryism was quite different; it acted on behalf of the aristocratic “selfish oligarchy” (479); it was the Toryism for which Sir John Walsh “gets up and vents . . . shattered and worn-out absurdities,” including a defence of Tory policy in Ireland (335). Even Peel was disdained by Mill (403-4). Yet because Toryism could address the large question of aristocracy and democracy it was capable of having philosophic status. The Whigs, in contrast, although “a portion of the privileged class,” and “hostile to any thorough reform,” pretended to favour reform on behalf of the people, and consequently could be seen to be unprincipled. “Since the questions arising out of the Hanoverian succession had been set at rest, the term Whig had never been the symbol of any principles” (342).

  A consequence of Mill’s “philosophic” approach to politics was a preference for conflict between extreme parties, a preference which placed the highest priority on the issue of aristocracy versus democracy. Mill, in describing how the Philosophic Radicals and the Tories gained domination of the London Debating Society, said, “our doctrines were fairly pitted against their opposites,” and with evident pride he reported that these debates “habitually consisted of the strongest arguments and most philosophic principles which either side was able to produce.”⁹⁷ Later he encouraged such conflict in the House of Commons because it would be a contest “between the representatives of the two great principles,—not between two men whose policies differ from one another only by the shadow of a shade” (495). In such a contest the Whigs would be set aside and “the question [would be] distinctly put between Radicalism and Conservatism” (477).

  Mill’s confidence that the Whigs could be set aside, to be replaced by a Radical party led by the Philosophic Radicals, may seem surprising in retrospect. Yet he clearly believed that if the Philosophic Radicals played their cards correctly, that is, aggressively, the Radicals would become an independent party and might ultimately gain office. As unrealistic as this view appeared to many contemporaries,⁹⁸ it did not seem impossible to Mill (or to his father or to the other Philosophic Radicals).⁹⁹ That he seriously entertained this possibility is an indication of his doctrinairism and his high political ambition during the 1830s. Sophisticated and careful as Mill was, his words show that he thought the Philosophic Radicals eligible for the highest offices. There were Radicals in and out of Parliament, he said, with the talent and energy which in time would qualify them to play a distinguished part in either a government or an opposition (386).¹⁰⁰ He also spoke about the prospective party of moderate radicals as “our party,”¹⁰¹ and discussed what would happen “the moment a Ministry of Moderate Radicals comes into power.” “All things,” he said, “are ripe for it,” and its leader “is sure of everything, to the Premiership inclusive” (494, 495).¹⁰² A similar speculation in the Spectator did not exclude Mill; in describing a possible Radical cabinet, in addition to Durham (as Prime Minister), Grote (Exchequer), Hume (Home Secretary), Buller (Colonies), Warburton (Board of Trade), Molesworth (Board of Control), John Romilly (Solicitor General), it mentioned, without suggesting offices, Roebuck, Charles Austin, and Mr. John Mill.¹⁰³

  Since Mill denied the Whigs their usual position as a major party, they regarded his views on parliamentary politics as doctrinaire. His arguments indeed had many doctrinaire features (which were present despite his reaction against his own early Benthamite sectarianism): he looked for large-scale change, and he depreciated reforms that did not contribute to the redistribution of power;¹⁰⁴ he was uncomfortable with compromise, and he criticized compromisers and trimmers as unprincipled;¹⁰⁵ he assumed that considerable changes could be achieved easily;¹⁰⁶ and, as mentioned, he regarded conflict with an ideological opposite as the worthiest kind, and so was critical of moderates who stood for gradual change. This last feature of the Philosophic Radicals’ approach was identified by the Whig publicist Francis Jeffrey as early as 1826, when he responded to James Mill’s castigation of Whigs as insincere reformers and moderates: “The real reason of the animosity with which we [Whigs] are honoured by the more eager of the two extreme parties, is, that we . . . impede the assault they are impatient mutually to make on each other, and take away from them the means of that direct onset, by which the sanguine in both hosts imagine they might at once achieve a decisive victory.”¹⁰⁷ Although other moderate critics of the Philosophic Radicals did not match Jeffrey’s incisive rhetoric, they recognized the doctrinairism. Fonblanque, once a Radical himself, late in the 1830s called them (and especially John Mill) Ultras, fanatical Radicals, pseudo-Liberals, Detrimentals, Wrongheads, and, since their tactics would have led to a Tory government, Tory Radicals.¹⁰⁸

  Mill was aware of the “philosophic” origin of the ambition he entertained for radicalism. And he was also aware of British uneasiness with anything theoretical. “There is no passion in England for forms of government, considered in themselves. Nothing could be more inconsistent with the exclusively practical spirit of the English people.” (339.) Indeed, England was “a nation practical even to ridiculousness; . . . a nation given to distrust and dislike all that there is in principles . . ., and whose first movement would be to fight against, rather than for, any one who has nothing but a principle to hold out” (392-3). In this uncongenial environment, Mill tried—though hardly with success—to conceal the theoretical aspect of his political enterprise. He used the phrase “Philosophic(al) Radical” rather infrequently (165, 191, 212, 353),¹⁰⁹ and he tried to divert attention from the “philosophic” side of his radicalism by using equivalent phrases, these too used sparingly. They included “thorough Reformers” (292, 322, 378, 380), “complete reformers” (301, 307), “enlightened” Radicals (378), “decided Radicals” (389), “real reformers” (326), and “more vigorous Reformers” (322). Mill explained that “because this designation [Philosophic Radicals] too often repeated gave a coterie air which it was felt to be objectionable, the phrase was varied.”¹¹⁰ Despite such attempts to evade criticism, the Philosophic Radicals, including Mill as their self-appointed spokesman, attracted increasing attention as the size of the Whig majority in Parliament diminished and Radical votes became more important.

  RADICAL PARTY TACTICS

  since mill wished to promote Radical leadership of the reform party in Parliament, the tactics he recommended to the other Philosophic Radicals focused on their relations with the Whigs. Much of what he suggested depended on his estimate of Whig policy on reform. Those in the Whig government, like their supporters, varied greatly in their reformist zeal, but they were sufficiently favourable to reform for Lord Grey’s government to cultivate a liberal image by calling itself the Reform Ministry.

  This image, when combined with pressures for additional reform from the press and the liberal wing of their own party, created a dilemma for the Whig leadership, according to Mill. In the face of demand for reform, the Whigs had to choose either to make concessions and become more reformist than Whig, or they could refuse concessions and become hardly distinguishable from the Tories. They “must either join with the Tories in resisting, or with the Radicals in carrying, improvements of a more fundamental kind than any but the latter have yet ventured to identify themselves with” (326). Whichever choice they made, the reform cause would be promoted. If they chose concession, considerable improvements would be made: “there is hardly any limit to what may now be carried through the Ministry” (192). On the other hand, if the Whigs resisted and were forced to coalesce with the Tories, much good would result even if the government was then openly opposed to additional reform. For then the Radical party would be invigorated and the country would be “delivered from the anomalous state, in which we have neither the benefits of a liberal government, nor those of a liberal opposition; in which we can carry nothing through the two Houses, but what would be given by a Tory ministry, and yet are not able to make that vigorous appeal to the people out of doors, which under the Tories could be made and would be eagerly responded to” (385). If this situation occurred, of course, the realignment strategy would have been implemented; that is, the Radicals would have ceased to be a mere appendage to the Whigs and the Radical party would have achieved independent existence.¹¹¹

  The Whigs may have faced a dilemma, but Mill was not without one of his own, for he wanted both additional reform and the establishment of an independent Radical party, and Whig policy that promoted one of these goals made the other harder to attain. If the Whigs made concessions to the pressures for additional reform, Radicals, even extreme Radicals, became more generous in the support of the government, and thus the achievement of independence for the Radical party became more difficult. On the other hand, the gaining of such independence would be facilitated by Whig resistance to further reform. For Mill’s former goal to be achieved, the Whig leadership would have had to move to the left; for the latter, they would have had to move to the right. Since Mill wanted both results, he was inevitably dissatisfied, no matter what the Whigs did. His response to the dilemma changed as the decade unfolded. During the first four years or so following the Reform Bill, Mill thought the Whigs could be persuaded to make concessions, and therefore he recommended conditional support of their governments. Increasingly during these years, however, he became disappointed with them, despite the abolition of slavery and the passing of the New Poor Law. A turning-point came later in the decade when the Whigs’ unequivocal refusal to consider reform of the constitution put an end to Mill’s expectations that Radicals and Whigs might co-operate. Thereafter he urged the Philosophic Radicals to adopt a more independent line of conduct, and he experienced exhilaration at the prospect of a separate Radical party. Yet, even in this mood, he complained about the lack of movement towards the implementation of the Radical programme.

  Either of Mill’s goals, however, could be promoted by pressure on the Whig government, and therefore throughout the decade he called on the Philosophic Radicals to “attempt much” (395). They were supposed to “put forward, on every fitting occasion, with boldness and perseverance, the best political ideas which the country affords” (191). Despite their small numbers, the strong public support for radicalism would allow a few to accomplish great things: “there is a vitality in the principles, there is that in them both of absolute truth and of adaptation to the particular wants of the time, which will not suffer that in Parliament two or three shall be gathered together in their name, proclaiming the purpose to stand or fall by them, and to go to what lengths soever they may lead, and that those two or three shall not soon wield a force before which ministries and aristocracies shall quail” (397-8).¹¹² Despite what Mill saw as their great opportunity, however, some of the Philosophic Radicals were unaggressive. Grote, from whom so much was expected, deeply disappointed Mill. “Why does not Mr. Grote exert himself” (314n)?¹¹³ The Radicals, Mill said, were without policy, a leader, or organization, and therefore they failed to call forth their strength in the country (467). Mill sometimes called them torpid (327) and ciphers (165) and accused them of lacking courage (212), though there were exceptions, notably Roebuck, whom Mill generally praised.¹¹⁴

  Putting pressure on the Whig government should have been easy, Mill thought, for he assumed that the great burst of reform agitation that forced aristocratic acceptance of the Reform Act manifested a fundamental change, making public opinion permanently favourable to further reform. Therefore he thought opinion would support either a Whig-led reform party or a genuine Radical party in opposition to both Whigs and Tories. The events of 1831-32 revealed a public angry and outspoken enough to be capable of intimidating the governing classes (430).¹¹⁵ These events changed the understanding of the constitution, “which [since the Reform Bill] enables the people to carry all before them when driven by any violent excitement” (299). Mill thought the governing classes knew it could happen again: “where the public voice is strong and unanimous, the Ministry must now go along with it” (317). Although public opinion became much less agitated after the Reform Bill passed into law, Mill assumed that “there [was] a great deal of passive radicalism in the electoral body,”¹¹⁶ and he confidently announced that “England is moderate Radical” (389).¹¹⁷ He also thought this latent opinion could be reawakened at any time, and therefore that the “progress of reform appears . . . certain” (292).¹¹⁸

  The period immediately following the Reform Bill understandably began with high Radical hopes. The aristocracy apparently had suffered a severe defeat, and the Whigs, despite their sponsorship of the Reform Bill and their hopes for party advantage from it, were worried about its long-term consequences. In May 1832 Mill thought there was “nothing definite and determinate in politics except radicalism; and we shall have nothing but radicals and whigs for a long time to come.”¹¹⁹ It is not known what Mill thought when his Radical friends in Parliament sat on the opposition benches,¹²⁰ but it should have gratified him, for it set them off from the Whigs as the nucleus of a new party. He also must have been pleased by Grote’s motion on the ballot, which was supported by 106 votes and threw Whigs and Tories together to defeat it by a majority of 105.¹²¹ After his initial enthusiasm, however, the first session of the Reform Parliament was, on the whole, disappointing to Mill. Although the Whigs adopted the reform label and introduced some measures of reform, he depreciated most of the proposed legislation because it was so far removed from the organic reform sought by genuine Radicals. Slavery was abolished; the Bank Charter was renewed; and free competition in the China tea trade was established as part of the renewed East India Company charter. Mill was not opposed to these things, but they fell far short of what he wanted. When the government defended its record in the first session with its pamphlet The Reform Ministry and the Reformed Parliament, Mill, in his review of it, complained that it “passes over three-fourths of the essentials of the case.” The Whigs must be judged, he wrote, not only by what they had done, but by considering “what they have opposed, and so prevented from being done.”¹²²

  In these circumstances—the Whigs were the only agency through which reform could be achieved, yet they proposed only changes that Mill regarded as insufficient—it was difficult to withhold support, and yet it was also difficult to be enthusiastic. So Mill acceded to the Philosophic Radicals’ voting in support of the government, but he called on them to be demanding, and he held out the threat of renewed agitation of public opinion and a return to the nervous days prior to the Reform Bill.

  Three events in 1834 reduced Mill’s uneasiness about Philosophic Radical support of the Whig government. First, the resignation of Stanley and Graham in May signalled a reduction of conservatism in the cabinet (252, 285). Next, the government sponsored the Poor Law Amendment Act. Although not an organic reform, it was far-reaching and dear to all whose views on administration and poor relief had been shaped by Bentham and the political economists. This was the one achievement of the session, Mill said; he had not expected such a development, especially as there was no public clamour for it; consequently “we give them [the Whigs] due honour” (285). Finally, Lord Grey retired and was replaced by Melbourne. The retirement of Grey, a man of the 1790s, would allow the Whigs to be more responsive to the needs of a new age (263-5). As this period of Whig-Radical relations ended, Mill thought that the Whigs might regain the popularity they enjoyed in 1832, and that their errors of omission would be forgiven. “From us, and we believe from all the enlightened reformers, they may expect, until they shall have had a fair trial, not only no hostility, but the most friendly encouragement and support. They must now throw themselves upon the people.” (243.)

  Such a trial had to be postponed, for in November, 1834, the Whigs were turned out and replaced by a Tory government under Peel. Mill and the Philosophic Radicals were jubilant, for they correctly assumed that this would be a brief interlude, and they were delighted to witness the Whigs in defeat. The Whigs now joined the Philosophic Radicals on the opposition benches, and the Radicals—about seventy of them—co-operated with the Whigs to expel Peel from office.¹²³ When the Whigs under Melbourne returned to the government benches in April, 1835, the Philosophic Radicals’ old problem—of defining their relation to the Whigs—returned in an acute form, for they had to adopt a position that took into account both their recent co-operation with the Whigs in opposition and their long-standing enmity to them.

  Mill now offered guidance to the Philosophic Radicals from the pages of the London Review, which began publication just as the change in government took place (297). In a brief comment which was a postscript to his father’s political article, Mill said he did “not call upon the thorough Reformers to declare enmity against [the Whig Ministry], or to seek their downfall, because their measures will be half-measures . . . nor even because they will join with the Tories in crying down all complete reforms . . .” (292). At the same time, Mill suggested that the Philosophic Radicals refuse any offers of office. This he called “qualified and distrustful” support, and in the next issue he warned that such co-operation might not last very long (297).¹²⁴ In keeping with this advice, the Philosophic Radicals sat on the government side, to indicate their support of the Whig Ministry, but below the gangway, to demonstrate their distance and independence from it.¹²⁵

  A crisis in this arrangement occurred as the Municipal Corporations Bill passed through Parliament, for this legislation and the way it was amended raised fundamental questions for the Radicals. The Bill provided for the elimination of the “little oligarchies,” as the Webbs later called them, that ruled in towns, and replaced them with town councils elected by household suffrage.¹²⁶ Although not fully democratic, the Bill went rather far in that direction. It pleased the Radicals, even delighted some of them, including Mill, who said “the destructive part . . . is of signal excellence,” and he acknowledged that, despite deficiencies in its constructive part, there was much merit, particularly the extension of the suffrage to householders, for which the Ministers were “entitled to great praise” (303). Overall, Mill said, it was “one of the greatest steps in improvement ever made by peaceable legislation in the internal government of a country” (308). The features of the Bill that elicited such praise were not altered by several amendments made in the House of Lords.

  Yet the Philosophic Radicals were so eager to assert their fundamental principles that several of them, including Mill, responded angrily to the Lords’ amendments. It was the Lords’ tampering that caused the difficulty, because the Radicals, recalling the submission by the House of Lords in 1832, interpreted the post-Reform Act constitution as tolerating an upper house only so long as it remained quiescent. The suggestion that the House of Lords had a veto indicated that the Lords, as Roebuck said, “have not yet acquiesced in this arrangement,” as they did not comprehend their “real position.”¹²⁷ For Mill the Bill was “a challenge of the House of Lords to mortal combat” (302); and to allow the Lords’ amendments to stand would be “to abandon all the ends to which the Reform Bill was intended as a means” (343). Roebuck, Place, Molesworth, and even Grote were extremely angered, even more, it seems, than Mill.¹²⁸ Their anger was so great that they criticized the House of Lords as a second chamber, and in the end, Mill joined them. “An entire change in its constitution is cried out for from the remotest corner of the three kingdoms; and few would be satisfied with any change short of abolishing the hereditary principle” (313). He proposed an upper house chosen by the lower. The choice was to be made from the existing peerage supplemented with qualified persons not in the Commons who were to be given peerages. This was not the best design he could make, but only the result of his attempt to “remodel” the existing House of Lords. Its purpose was a second chamber “unlikely to set itself in opposition to what is good in the acts and purposes of the First.”¹²⁹ As well as attacks on the Lords, this episode produced complaints about the “truckling” by the Whig government and its moderate radical supporters (317).

  Mill continued, however, to recommend cautious and selective support of the government, despite his disapproval of its yielding to the Lords on the Municipal Corporations Bill. Although he complained about the appearance of a tacit compromise between the government and the thorough reformers, he said, in October, 1835: “We do not wish the Radicals to attack the Ministry; we are anxious that they should co-operate with them. But we think they might co-operate without yoking themselves to the ministerial car, abdicating all independent action, and leaving nothing to distinguish them from the mere Whig coterie. . . .” (316.) In April, 1836, Mill continued to argue that the Whigs deserved support from the thorough reformers, for they introduced or at least promised a marriage bill that removed certain grievances of dissenters; a bill for the registration of births and deaths; a bill to consolidate turnpike trusts; an Irish Corporation reform bill; and a measure of church reform (322-5). A far cry from organic reform, these proposals were yet enough to justify his call for support of the government. Despite his distrust of Whigs, he was reluctant to call for an attempt to turn out the government (344). At the same time, however, he asserted Radical independence and looked forward to the realignment of parties (326-7).

  Mill’s mixed view reflected certain difficulties which he and the other Philosophic Radicals faced. Their principles made co-operation with the Whigs disagreeable and directed them to an independent course of action. The political situation in 1836 also might have encouraged them to adopt aggressive tactics, for Melbourne’s majority, including Irish and moderate radicals, was perhaps fifty or sixty, and Mill thought Melbourne dependent on the small group of Philosophic Radicals for support.¹³⁰ Other circumstances, however, called for restraint, for it became evident that the large number of moderate radicals, whose support was required for the implementation of the Philosophic Radicals’ realignment strategy, might not go along with an attempt to turn out the Whig government. These so-called “200 ballot men,” the “nominal” Whigs, supported Grote’s ballot motion and were more reformist than the Whig leadership, but probably would keep the Whigs in office rather than risk a Tory government.

  Among the small group of Philosophic Radicals there was disagreement. Aggressive, anti-Whig tactics were advocated by Molesworth and Roebuck, strongly supported by Francis Place and Harriet Grote. Molesworth’s “Terms of Alliance between Radicals and Whigs” (January, 1837) was a clear and forthright statement of their position.¹³¹ Others were more cautious, though not without sympathy for the extremists; these included Grote, Buller, Warburton, and Hume. Both Joseph Parkes and Fonblanque were vigorously opposed. The issue was hotly debated (as Harriet Grote put it) “as to the true play of the Rads.”¹³²

  Mill, like the Philosophic Radical group as a whole, was of two minds. He took note of “the plan which [Molesworth] and several other of the radical members have formed and are executing. I think them quite right.”¹³³ He also said, “As for me I am with the extreme party; though I would not always go so far as Roebuck, I entirely agree with those who say that the whole conduct of the Whigs tends to amortir l’esprit public, and that it would be a good thing for invigorati[ng] and consolidating the reform party if the Tories were to come in.”¹³⁴ In this spirit he lamented Fonblanque’s desertion, evident in his effective criticism of the Philosophic Radicals and in his appeal to moderate radicals for support of the Melbourne government. Mill said it was only Fonblanque’s “past reputation for radicalism which prevents him from being mistaken for a ministerialist with radical inclinations” (380). He also complained that since 1835 Fonblanque had “acted as if his first object was to support and glorify the ministers, and the assertion of his own political doctrines only the second” (379).¹³⁵ Yet in the same letter in which he identified himself with the extreme party, Mill also noted, “the country does not go with us in [the extreme tactics] and therefore it will not do for the radicals to aid in turning out the ministry; by doing so they would create so much hostility in their own party, that there would be no hope of a real united reform party with the country at its back, for many years. So we must linger on. . . .”¹³⁶ Doctrine called for one line of conduct; circumstances pointed to another: as Mill said, they were in a “false position.”¹³⁷

  In late 1837 Mill suddenly broke loose from the “false position” by declaring open hostility to the Whig government. He was provoked to do so by Lord John Russell’s “Finality” speech, and he was joined in this move by other Philosophic Radicals, who recently had been deeply disappointed by the thinning of their ranks in the elections of August, 1837.¹³⁸ In response to Radical amendments to the Address urging consideration of an extended suffrage, ballot, and shorter parliaments,¹³⁹ Russell said the amendments would repeal the Reform Act, whereas he regarded that Act as a final measure and not one he was willing to repeal or reconstruct.¹⁴⁰ Not only did Russell declare his opposition to further constitutional reform, but he carried with him a majority of the moderate radicals, who refused to vote for the Radical amendments.¹⁴¹ Most of the Philosophic Radicals, both in and out of Parliament, were depressed by this development, but Mill was angry. He attended a meeting at Molesworth’s house in order to rouse the others. He argued that “the time is come when all temporizing—all delicacy towards the Whigs—all fear of disuniting Reformers or of embarrassing Ministers by pressing forward reforms, must be at an end.”¹⁴² Now outspoken in advocating complete separation from the Whigs, he urged the Philosophic Radicals to “assume the precise position towards Lord Melbourne which they occupied in the first Reformed Parliament towards Lord Grey. Let them separate from the Ministry and go into declared opposition.” (412.)

  Events arising out of the Canadian rebellion of 1837-38 were to be the occasion for Mill’s last call for the organization of a Radical party in opposition to Whigs and Tories. Initially, Canadian events clouded his hopes for renewed Radical activity, for the Philosophic Radicals’ response contributed to their isolation from the moderate radicals. When in January, 1838, the government proposed the suspension of the Canadian constitution for four years and the creation of a high commissioner, the Philosophic Radicals were opposed, but failed to gain support from liberal reformers and moderate radicals.¹⁴³ Edward Lytton Bulwer taunted them about their disagreements with other reformers:

  Those who were called philosophical Radicals, . . . were . . . the same small and isolated knot of Gentlemen, who, on the first day of this session declared so much contempt of the Reform Bill, and so much hostility to the Government [in response to Russell’s Finality speech], who now differed also from the whole people of England in their sympathy for a guilty and absurd revolt. Whether those Gentlemen called themselves Radicals or not, the great body of Liberal politicians neither agreed with them in their policy for Canada nor their principles for England.¹⁴⁴

  The small size of the Philosophic Radical vote (six to thirty-nine at this juncture) demonstrated their isolation.

  Mill defended the Philosophic Radicals in the London and Westminster for January, 1838, but Fonblanque in the Examiner, like Bulwer in the House of Commons, criticized the “Grote conclave” for sympathizing with colonial rebellion. “The London Reviewer,” he wrote, “asserts that the alliance between the Ministry and the Radicals is at an end; but how many members out of the Radical minority of little less than 200 have spoken or acted as if the alliance was at an end, or as if they desired it to be at an end. . . ?”¹⁴⁵ Fonblanque’s observations must have had a ring of truth, for Mill was acutely aware of the cleavage between the Philosophic Radicals and the other, more moderate radicals in the House of Commons. He had already complained that the Canadian question “suspends all united action among Radicals, . . . sets one portion of the friends of popular institutions at variance with another, and . . . interrupts for the time all movements and all discussions tending to the great objects of domestic policy” (408). He was so dismayed by this development that the next two numbers of the London and Westminster Review appeared without his usual political article (though he did publish the essays on Vigny and Bentham, as well as shorter articles), and the number for October, 1838, did not appear at all.¹⁴⁶ Mill could well say that the Canadian question “in an evil hour crossed the path of radicalism.”¹⁴⁷

  Mill’s outlook changed suddenly in October, 1838, when he learned of Durham’s resignation as Governor General in Canada, consequent on the Whig government’s failure to sanction the ordinances by which he granted amnesty to most of the captured rebels but transported a few of their leaders to Bermuda. In view of Durham’s anger towards the Melbourne Ministry, Mill thought Durham might be prepared to lead the liberal reformers and moderate radicals in a challenge to the Whig government, especially as he had always been much more a reformer than his Whig colleagues—indeed, so much so, that in 1834 he had called for the ballot, triennial parliaments, and household suffrage.¹⁴⁸ The opportunity to turn this event to Radical party advantage was greatly facilitated by the presence of Buller and Wakefield on Durham’s staff in Canada. They sent Mill information about Durham’s outlook and tried to direct Durham’s attention to the possibility of turning the Canadian affair to domestic political advantage. Wakefield reported to Molesworth that Durham “is mortally but coolly and immovably offended at everything Whig,”¹⁴⁹ and Buller, having read Mill’s recent political articles, wrote, “You will see what attitude the Radicals ought to assume with respect to his returning now at open defiance with Whigs and Tories. . . . Circumstances seem to be approaching, in which it will be perfectly possible for us to force him into power. The cue of all Radicals then is to receive him not as having failed, but as having done great things. . . . But you know best what is to be done.”¹⁵⁰ Durham was to be cast as the popular leader who could bring together the coalition of moderate radicals, liberal reformers, and Philosophic Radicals that Mill wished to establish as the party of the “natural Radicals.”

  Mill’s depressed mood now quickly evaporated. Durham’s resignation, he said, “has awakened me out of a period of torpor about politics.” With obvious enthusiasm he wrote to Molesworth: “The present turn in Canada affairs brings Lord Durham home, incensed to the utmost (as Buller writes to me) with both Whigs and Tories—Whigs especially, and in the best possible mood for setting up for himself; and if so, the formation of an efficient party of moderate Radicals, of which our Review will be the organ, is certain—the Whigs will be kicked out never more to rise, and Lord D. will be head of the Liberal party, and ultimately Prime Minister.”¹⁵¹ Even in his Autobiography, years later, Mill observed that “any one who had the most elementary notions of party tactics, must have attempted to make something of such an opportunity.”¹⁵²

  Durham sailed for England on November 1st and was due to arrive a month later. Mill thought there was “a great game” to play in the next session of Parliament. He realized Durham’s course of action was uncertain, but he believed the result “will wholly depend upon whether Wakefield, we ourselves, and probably Buller and his own resentment,” on the one hand, “or Bulwer, Fonblanque, Edward Ellice, the herd of professing Liberals, and the indecision and cowardice indigenous to English noblemen,” on the other, “have the greatest influence in his councils.” Mill added, “Give us access to him early and I will be d....d if we do not make a hard fight for it.”¹⁵³

  Mill’s article “Lord Durham’s Return” (December, 1838)—quickly published in an unscheduled issue of the London and Westminster—carefully followed Buller’s advice to show Durham not as having failed, but as having done great things. Although most of the article was a defence of Durham’s conduct and policy in Canada, Mill carefully combined with the Canadian matter an account of the significance of Durham’s resignation for domestic politics. When he told Molesworth that Durham was returning prepared to set up for himself, Mill explained that “for the purpose of acting at once upon him and upon the country in that sens I have written an elaborate defence of him.”¹⁵⁴ Durham’s mission to Canada, he wrote, could become “the turning point of English politics for years to come,” because it involved “the prospects of the popular cause in England . . . [and] the possibility of an effective popular party” (447). He held out the hope that this could become a major party and “break the power of the aristocratic faction” (448). Here he saw an opportunity finally to achieve the party realignment to which his Philosophic Radical doctrine was directed.

  A meeting was held to co-ordinate the efforts of those working with Mill. Rintoul, editor of the Spectator, agreed to publish extracts of Mill’s article before it could appear in the London and Westminster Review.¹⁵⁵ Wakefield, who returned from Canada ahead of Durham, went with Molesworth to Plymouth to meet Durham, apparently in hope of persuading him to act on his resentment and of stage-managing an enthusiastic popular reception.¹⁵⁶ On the Whig side, Edward Ellice, a former Whig whip and owner of vast tracts of land in Canada, tried to blunt Radical efforts. To his son, who had accompanied Durham as a private secretary, Ellice wrote that the public “are not prepared for a Durham, Wakefield, and Buller Cabinet, and mark my words, that if they come home with that expectation, they will be laughed at.”¹⁵⁷ He warned Durham against the “recommendations of the writer in the Westmr. Review!”¹⁵⁸ He also saw danger in Buller, who, though “an intelligent, handy, and most amiable fellow . . . has neither experience, or prudence, and is in the hands of the younger Mill (I wish it were the elder one) a person very much of his own character—with considerable learning, and critical talent—but also a ‘denisen of Utopia.’”¹⁵⁹

  Mill’s efforts went for nought. Durham refused to play the part for which he was cast by Mill. Although he felt personal animosity towards his former colleagues and remained moderately radical in opinion, he was unwilling to attempt a party rebellion, especially in view of the disagreements among reformers. He also was reported to have called the Radicals “great fools.”¹⁶⁰ Mill at last recognized that his goals for a Radical party were impracticable. Durham’s conduct, he said,

  cannot lead to the organization of a radical party, or the placing of the radicals at the head of the movement,—it leaves them as they are already, a mere appendage of the Whigs; and if there is to be no radical party there need be no Westminster Review, for there is no position for it to take, distinguishing it from the Edinburgh. . . . In short, it is one thing to support Lord Durham in forming a party; another to follow him when he is only joining one, and that one which I have so long been crying out against.

  He also said, “if the time is come when a radical review should support the Whigs, the time is come when I should withdraw from politics.”¹⁶¹ And this he now proceeded to do.

  DEMISE OF THE PHILOSOPHIC RADICAL PARTY

  when his article “Reorganization of the Reform Party,” which had been planned for publication in January, 1838, finally appeared in April, 1839, it could serve only as an epitaph to Radical hopes, and Mill regretted its appearance “in a posture of affairs so unsuitable to it.”¹⁶² He published two more numbers and then ended his connection with the review, deciding that it was “no part” of his “vocation to be a party leader.”¹⁶³

  Now in 1839, little more than a decade after the dream of establishing a powerful parliamentary party first took shape, John Stuart Mill began to share a sense of failure with the other Philosophic Radicals. The moderate reformers continued to oppose the aggressive tactics designed to force the Whigs to coalesce with their “natural” aristocratic allies, the Tories. The Melbourne government’s existence became increasingly tenuous, and moderate reformers and Whigs alike became more and more critical of those on their left who threatened it. The Edinburgh Review described the extreme Radicals as “a small, conceited, and headstrong party” that should be called “the sect of the Impracticables.”¹⁶⁴ The cleavage between the Radicals and the moderate reformers remained, and the expected merger of Whigs and Tories into an aristocratic party did not take place. On the contrary, the Whigs continued to look upon the Tories as their strongest opponents, whereas the Philosophic Radicals were regarded as merely an annoying faction. Both in public opinion and in electoral organization, the Tories throughout the decade increased their strength. In 1839, far from having merged into an aristocratic party, the Whigs and Tories were poised against one another in a fairly even struggle; the aristocratic factions that Mill had been opposing for more than a decade continued to dominate the political scene.

  The Philosophic Radicals were too disheartened by 1839 to celebrate their part in provoking the resignation of the Whig government, an event which two years earlier would have brought them to a high pitch of excitement.¹⁶⁵ Nor were they much moved by the increase in conversions to the ballot. When the Whig Macaulay defended Grote’s motion in 1839, Mill said the ballot “is passing from a radical doctrine into a Whig one.”¹⁶⁶ As Chartism rose to prominence the Philosophic Radicals also lost their sense of leadership in the democratic movement. Although they might have welcomed it—after all, the Philosophic Radicals could agree in principle with the six points of the Charter—they were made uneasy by some of the violent Chartist rhetoric and by the Chartists’ criticism of private property and opposition to repeal of the Corn Laws. They also disapproved of the Chartists’ use of the language of class, which rested on assumptions that challenged Philosophic Radical doctrine about universal and sinister interests.¹⁶⁷ The Philosophic Radicals were also depressed by the attrition of reform sentiment after the passing of the Reform Bill; as Mill said, “Their lot was cast in the ten years of inevitable reaction, when the Reform excitement being over . . . the public mind desired rest.”¹⁶⁸

  Mill and his associates recognized that they had so dwindled as to become insignificant. They could no longer regard themselves as the nucleus from which a great party would soon grow. Macaulay said in 1839 that the Radical party was reduced to Grote and his wife; and Grote himself was depressed by the diminution, saying he “felt indisposed to remain as one of so very small a number as now constituted the Radical cluster.”¹⁶⁹ Mill was poignantly aware that hopes for the party, both as it existed and as he had imagined it, had dissolved. “Even I,” he said, “who have been for some years attempting it must be owned with very little success, to induce the Radicals to maintain an independent position, am compelled to acknowledge that there is not room for a fourth political party in this country—reckoning the Conservatives, the Whig-Radicals, and the Chartists as the other three.”¹⁷⁰ As Mill put it in his Autobiography, “the instructed Radicals sank into a mere côté gauche of the Whig party.”¹⁷¹

  The bitterness turned several of the Philosophic Radicals against active politics. Harriet Grote, for example, confessed feeling “sick and weary of the name of politics”; at times, she said, “I sigh over those ten years of infructuous devotion to the public service; unrequited even by [Grote’s] constituents . . . and only compensated by the esteem and admiration of some dozen high-minded men.”¹⁷² Mill’s feelings, as Caroline Fox reported, were similar: “‘No one,’ he said with deep feeling, ‘should attempt anything intended to benefit his age, without at first making a stern resolution to take up his cross and to bear it. If he does not begin by counting the cost, all his schemes must end in disappointment.’”¹⁷³ He also confessed being “out of heart about public affairs—as much as I ever suffer myself to be,” and soon he had “almost given up thinking on the subject.”¹⁷⁴

  Of course the Philosophic Radicals did not cease to have political opinions, but now that they acknowledged the disappointment of their ambition for radicalism, their attitude to the Whigs softened considerably. Mill, Buller, and even Roebuck began contributing to the Edinburgh Review, and Mill appears to have been the intermediary between Napier, the editor, and some of the former contributors to the London and Westminster.¹⁷⁵ Harriet Grote made peace with the Whigs by accepting an invitation to Holland House, and George Grote, who ten years earlier avoided aristocratic company as a matter of principle, now accompanied her “without any twinges of conscience.”¹⁷⁶ Mill’s views had altered sufficiently for him to tell Fonblanque in 1841 that “there is nothing of any importance in practical politics on which we now differ for I am quite as warm a supporter of the present [Whig] government as you are.”¹⁷⁷

  Since parliamentary politics ceased to be a preoccupation, several of the Philosophic Radicals turned to authorship. Molesworth worked on his edition of Hobbes, and Grote on his History of Greece. Even Place and Roebuck took to writing history. And Mill too began his series of essays on French historians, though his main preoccupation was with his System of Logic, on which he had been working at intervals throughout the previous decade. Now that his plan for a parliamentary party devoted to fundamental constitutional changes had failed, his interest in politics, with its emphasis on institutions, diminished, and he turned to the realm of thought. Having been disappointed as a politician, he downgraded political activity and looked to philosophy for improvement. He consoled himself with the belief that he was entering an era when “the progress of liberal opinions will again, as formerly, depend upon what is said and written, and no longer upon what is done. . . .”¹⁷⁸

  IRELAND

  that mill’s disillusionment, which put an end to his hopes for a Radical party, did not conclude his radicalism, is nowhere so evident as in what he said and wrote about Ireland. In his journalism just after the famine, the Principles of Political Economy (1848), and speeches, mainly in the House of Commons from 1866 to 1868, he poured forth a powerful condemnation of the social system and economy in Ireland and of the way that country was governed by England. His essay on Irish affairs in the Parliamentary History and Review perhaps is partially an exception, for it focusses mainly on Ireland as an issue in British domestic politics. The 1848 speech and the pamphlet England and Ireland (1868), however, demonstrate Mill’s radical rejection of old ways and his search for far-reaching remedies.

  The extent of Mill’s radicalism was evident in his sympathetic understanding of Irish rebelliousness. He even suggested a moral basis for outrages against the landlord; the Whiteboys and Rockites, he said, “fought for, not against, the sacredness of what was property in their eyes; for it is not the right of the rent-receiver, but the right of the cultivator, with which the idea of property is connected in the Irish popular mind” (513). Mill also claimed that the more a person emphasizes obstacles to reform, “the further he goes towards excusing, at least as to intention, the Irish revolutionary party” (503). Moreover, there was the example of the French Revolution. Before 1789 the peasantry in France was more destitute and miserable than Irish cottiers, but the revolution led to a great shift in peasant ownership: “the result was the greatest change for the better in their condition, both physical and moral, of which, within a single generation, there is any record.” Who was to say, Mill asked, that Irish anticipations of similar benefits from an Irish revolution were wrong? (503.)

  Mill’s sympathetic understanding was not directed only to material circumstances in Ireland, for he was also sensitive to the stirrings of Irish nationalism. He knew that conditions had improved since the famine, especially because of emigration, and that many old grievances had been removed. Yet to be complacent—for gentlemen “to soothe themselves with statistics”¹⁷⁹ —was to bask in a fool’s paradise and to misunderstand Fenianism, which was “a rebellion for an idea—the idea of nationality” (510).¹⁸⁰ The rulers of Ireland “have allowed what once was indignation against particular wrongs, to harden into a passionate determination to be no longer ruled on any terms by those to whom they ascribe all their evils. Rebellions are never really unconquerable,” Mill added, “until they have become rebellions for an idea.” (510.)

  Disaffection was so great that only a remedy of revolutionary proportions would have a chance of relieving it. Thus in 1868 Mill asserted that “revolutionary measures are the thing now required,” and he added, “In the completeness of the revolution will lie its safety” (518-19). He also said, “Great and obstinate evils require great remedies.”¹⁸¹

  Mill’s analysis in this case emphasized economic considerations, both in the identification of abuses and in the prescription of remedies, but since he focussed on the conflict of interest between landlord and tenant, it is reminiscent of his Philosophic Radical assumption that the class conflict between aristocracy and the people took precedence over all other issues. His analysis in 1868, which is similar to what he wrote about Ireland in his Principles of Political Economy, recognized a variety of causes for Irish rebelliousness, but the land question, he said, outweighed all others.¹⁸² Irish wretchedness was the result of “a radically wrong state of the most important social relation which exists in the country, that between the cultivators of the soil and the owners of it” (502). Against the background of overpopulation and underemployment (84-5), the specific problem was vulnerability to arbitrary eviction and arbitrary increases of rent of tenants who worked the land (516-17). Consequently, the bulk of the population “cannot look forward with confidence to a single year’s occupation of [the land]: while the sole outlet for the dispossessed cultivators, or for those whose competition raises the rents against the cultivators, is expatriation” (515). As a result, improvements were not made, and poverty was added to insecurity: “these farm-labourers are entirely without a permanent interest in the soil” (514).¹⁸³

  Mill’s remedy was to alter the system of land tenure by changing the relationship between landlord and tenant. He proposed making “every farm not farmed by the proprietor . . . the permanent holding of the existing tenant” (527). The rent would be fixed by an official tribunal; the state would guarantee that the landlord received the rent and that rents were not arbitrarily increased.¹⁸⁴ In this way Mill proposed to eliminate exploitation by landlords and, by making tenants secure, give them incentives to make improvements.

  The genuinely radical character of this proposal arose from its implications for the doctrine of private property. Mill argued, as he had already done in the Principles of Political Economy, that land has characteristics that distinguish it from property created by labour and skill.¹⁸⁵ In contrast, land is “a thing which no man made, which exists in limited quantity, which was the original inheritance of all mankind, and which whoever appropriates, keeps others out of its possession. Such appropriation,” he goes on, “when there is not enough left for all, is at the first aspect, an usurpation on the rights of other people.” (512.) Using ideas and language from Locke’s famous chapter on property, Mill changed Locke’s argument as it applied to land,¹⁸⁶ asserting that the idea of “absolute property in land,” especially when the land is “engrossed by a comparatively small number of families,” is an obstacle to justice and tranquillity (512). Vicious conditions in Ireland were “protected and perpetuated by a wrong and superstitious English notion of property in land” (502). Indeed, there was a contradiction between English law and Irish moral feelings (512-13).¹⁸⁷

  The pamphlet England and Ireland, in which, as Mill said, he spoke his “whole mind,”¹⁸⁸ was written late in 1867 against the background of intense Fenian activity in England as well as in Ireland, marked by the killing of a policeman during the rescue of captured Fenians in Manchester and the trial and execution of the rescuers.¹⁸⁹ Mill’s pamphlet, which was “probably the most influential single contribution to the extended debate on Irish land problems which was carried on in England between 1865 and 1870,”¹⁹⁰ caused a great furore, largely because it aggravated fears about the security of property in England where landlords were apprehensive that radical Liberals and spokesmen for the working classes would use Mill’s observations about property in Ireland as authority for an attack on the landed classes generally.¹⁹¹ There were many who were surprised that Mill cast doubts on the doctrine of private property, among them former Philosophic Radicals such as Joseph Hume and John Arthur Roebuck.¹⁹² Mill explained that he put forth extreme views to startle his readers and prepare them at least to accept other measures. He subsequently said his proposals “had the effect of making other proposals, up to that time considered extreme, be considered comparatively moderate and practicable.”¹⁹³

  Radical as Mill’s views were on land tenure and landed property in Ireland, he rejected the most radical political solution, that of separation. He understood that the Fenians wanted independence and that, regardless of concessions, it might be impossible to divert them from this nationalist goal.¹⁹⁴ Yet he had recently written in Representative Government that the Irish and Anglo-Saxon races were “perhaps the most fitted of any two in the world to be the completing counterpart of one another.”¹⁹⁵ When in 1868 he considered the relation between the two countries, he concluded that Irish independence would be bad for Ireland and dishonourable to England (520-1, 523-4, 526).¹⁹⁶ Therefore he ended the pamphlet with a statement of hope that reconciliation was still possible (531-2).¹⁹⁷

  In his discussions of Ireland Mill revealed an intense moral concern as an aspect of his radicalism that was much less evident in what he wrote as a Philosophic Radical, where he generally argued on grounds of consequences and utility. That Ireland engaged his moral feelings is evident in his eloquent statements of sympathy for the Irish—they were the “poorest and the most oppressed people in Europe” (66)—and in his outrage with the causes of this condition: “The social condition of Ireland . . . cannot be tolerated; it is an abomination in the sight of mankind” (503). Mill made it clear that within the rationalist and utilitarian there was indignation, sympathy, and moral passion.

  [1 ]See Essays on Politics and Society, Collected Works [CW], XVIII-XIX (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977).

  [2 ]Letter from James Mill to Jeremy Bentham, 28 July, 1812, in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, ed. John Bowring, 11 vols. (Edinburgh: Tait; London: Simpkin, Marshall; Dublin: Cumming, 1843), X, 473.

  [3 ]John Stuart Mill, Autobiography, CW, I, ed. J. M. Robson and Jack Stillinger (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), 65-7.

  [4 ]Ibid., 67-71.

  [5 ]Page references to material printed in this volume are given in the text.

  [6 ]Mill had to acknowledge, however, that among the Independents there was a willingness to persecute (47) and that they participated in the regicide, which was an “act of a nest of despots, [who were] removing a rival despot out of their way” (53).

  [7 ]Plan of Parliamentary Reform, in the Form of a Catechism, with Reasons for Each Article: With an Introduction, Showing the Necessity of Radical, and the Inadequacy of Moderate, Reform (London: Hunter, 1817), xi-xii, ccxxiii.

  [8 ]Ibid., xxxvi-xxxvii, cclxix-cclxx, cccvi.

  [9 ]Ibid., cccvi.

  [10 ]Ibid., cccvi-cccvii.

  [11 ]Ibid., cccvii.

  [12 ]Letter to David Ricardo, 19 Oct., 1817, The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, ed. Piero Sraffa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952), VII, 195-6.

  [13 ]Reprinted in Essays (London: printed Innes, n.d. [1825]).

  [14 ]“Periodical Literature: Edinburgh Review,” Westminster Review, I (Jan., 1824), 206-49; “Periodical Literature: Quarterly Review,” Westminster Review, II (Oct., 1824), 463-503.

  [15 ]Autobiography, CW, I, 67. See John M. Robson, The Improvement of Mankind: The Social and Political Thought of John Stuart Mill (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968), 17, n42, for the suggestion that “Government” may have been based on this dialogue. “Government” was written for the Supplement to the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (Edinburgh: Constable, 1824), IV, 491-505. Parts (in half-volumes) were issued separately between 1815 and 1824; the part containing this article appeared in September, 1820.

  [16 ]Ricardo thought Mill was right to avoid discussion of the secret ballot, as “it would have given the article too much the appearance of an essay on Reform of Parliament which it was perhaps desirable to avoid” (letter to James Mill, 27 July, 1820, Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, VIII, 211); John Stuart Mill thought his father should have acknowledged that he was “writing an argument for parliamentary reform” (Autobiography, CW, I, 165).

  [17 ]Autobiography, CW, I, 109. James Mill’s belief in democracy was deliberately obscured in “Government” as a matter of prudence and rhetoric. His well-known eulogy of the middle class, far from indicating a wish to restrict the suffrage to the middle class, served to show that the suffrage could be safely entrusted to the classes with lesser rank because they would be guided by the exemplary middle class. For a fuller discussion of Mill’s essay as a defence of universal suffrage and of the middle-class theme, see Joseph Hamburger, Intellectuals in Politics: John Stuart Mill and the Philosophic Radicals (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), 36-8, 49-52; and Joseph Hamburger, “James Mill on Universal Suffrage and the Middle Class,” Journal of Politics, XXIV (1962), 172-83. Although Mill pointed to an electorate without pecuniary or property qualifications, he suggested the exclusion of men under forty and of women. Women’s interests, he argued, were involved in their father’s and husband’s; and men under forty were protected by virtue of older men’s not distinguishing between their sons’ interests and their own (“Government,” Utilitarian Logic and Politics: James Mill’s “Essay on Government,” Macaulay’s Critique and the Ensuing Debate, ed. Jack Lively and John Rees [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978], 79-80). Unlike class and property qualifications, age and gender were not regarded as relevant to definitions of democracy.

  [18 ]Speech of 10 July, 1833, Speeches by Lord Macaulay, ed. George Malcolm Young (London: Oxford University Press, 1952), 126.

  [19 ]John Stuart Mill, “Mr. Mill,” CW, I, 594.

  [20 ]The Minor Works of George Grote (London: Murray, 1873), 284.

  [21 ]Letter to Henry Brougham, 29 June, 1836, Brougham Papers, University College, London.

  [22 ]Florence Fenwick Miller, “William Ellis and His Work as an Educationist,” Fraser’s Magazine, n.s., XXV (Feb., 1882), 236. John Black, editor of the Morning Chronicle, remembered “the force of [James Mill’s] personal character. . . . Young men were particularly fond of his society; and it was always to him a source of great delight to have an opportunity of contributing to form their minds and exalt their character.” (“Death of Mr. James Mill,” Morning Chronicle, 25 June, 1836, 3.)

  [23 ]Harriet Grote, The Personal Life of George Grote (London: Murray, 1873), 23. Joseph Parkes said of Henry Warburton that James Mill had been “his chief political instructor” (Obituary, The Times, 21 Sept., 1858, 7; evidence of Parkes’s authorship: letter from Parkes to Brougham, 23 Sept., 1858, Brougham Papers, University College, London).

  [24 ]Autobiography, CW, I, 213. For their activities, see the Introduction to CW, I, xii-xiii.

  [25 ]Ibid., 111.

  [26 ]Ibid., 83.

  [27 ]Macaulay, “Bentham’s Defence of Mill: Utilitarian System of Philosophy,” Edinburgh Review, XLIX (June, 1829), 296.

  [28 ]Autobiography, CW, I, 81. Whereas his father avoided using terms like democracy and universal suffrage, John Stuart Mill showed no such restraint (for example, “Speech on the British Constitution,” 19 May, 1826, in James McCrimmon, “Studies toward a Biography of John Stuart Mill,” Ph.D. thesis, Northwestern University, 1937, 358).

  [29 ]Autobiography, CW, I, 133. On economic issues the opposition came from the Owenites.

  [30 ]Autobiography of Henry Taylor (London: Longmans, 1885), I, 78-9, 90-5; Macaulay, “Mill’s Essay on Government: Utilitarian Logic and Politics,” Edinburgh Review, XLIX (Mar., 1829), 159-89. See also Robson, Improvement of Mankind, 24, n6.

  [31 ]“Bentham’s Rationale of Evidence,” Edinburgh Review, XLVIII (Dec., 1828), 463. The phrase ipse dixitism derives from Bentham. See, e.g., Rationale of Judicial Evidence, ed. J. S. Mill, 5 vols. (London: Hunt and Clarke, 1827), I, 127. For Mill’s use of the term, see ibid., 126n, and “Speech on the British Constitution,” in McCrimmon, “Studies,” 346.

  [32 ]“Utilitarian Theory of Government, and the ‘Greatest Happiness Principle,’” Edinburgh Review, L (Oct., 1829), 124.

  [33 ]“The Present Administration,” Edinburgh Review, XLVI (June, 1827), 260-1. Whereas Macaulay’s analysis in 1827 indicates that the Philosophic Radicals are dangerous, in the better known 1829-30 articles he leans more to the view that they are ridiculous.

  [34 ]Autobiography, CW, I, 103.

  [35 ]Ibid., 137, 139, 143.

  [36 ]Ibid., 137.

  [37 ]“Mill’s Essay on Government,” 161-2, 168-9, 176-7, 181-2. For discussion of the Mill-Macaulay controversy, see the introduction by Lively and Rees to Utilitarian Logic and Politics, 1-51; and Joseph Hamburger, Macaulay and the Whig Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 49-62.

  [38 ]Autobiography, CW, I, 165.

  [39 ]Ibid., 167.

  [40 ]Letter to Gustave d’Eichthal, 7 Nov., 1829, Earlier Letters [EL], ed. Francis E. Mineka, CW, XII-XIII (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963), XII, 40.

  [41 ]For a different estimate of the connection between Mill’s views in 1831 and his father’s, see William Thomas, The Philosophic Radicals: Nine Studies in Theory and Practice, 1817-1841 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 176. See Richard B. Friedman, “An Introduction to Mill’s Theory of Authority,” in Mill: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Jerome B. Schneewind (New York: Anchor, 1968), 379-425, for the illuminating suggestion that Austin’s views on authority influenced Mill. The questions as to whether Mill was exposed earlier to Austinian or St. Simonian ideas on this subject and as to which had the greater influence remain unanswered.

  [42 ]The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (London: Murray, 1832), 61-4.

  [43 ]Ibid., 323. For evidence of Austin’s orthodox Benthamite radicalism before 1827, see his “Disposition of Property by Will—Primogeniture,” Westminster Review, II (Oct., 1824), 503-53.

  [44 ]Province of Jurisprudence, 59, 86.

  [45 ]Autobiography, CW, I, 185.

  [46 ]Letter to Jane Welsh Carlyle, 25 Dec., [1832], National Library of Scotland.

  [47 ]Autobiography, CW, I, 171, 173-5.

  [48 ]The Doctrine of Saint-Simon: An Exposition, ed. and trans. Georg G. Iggers (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958), 52-3, 93, 198, 206-7.

  [49 ]Ibid., 52, 54-5, 206-7.

  [50 ]“Rejected Leaves of the Early Draft of the Autobiography,” CW, I, 616.

  [51 ]Letter to d’Eichthal, 9 Feb., 1830, EL, CW, XII, 48.

  [52 ]Mill thought it was “utterly hopeless and chimerical to suppose that the regeneration of mankind can ever be wrought by means of working on their opinions” (ibid., 47; Autobiography, CW, I, 137, 163). This opinion influenced the argument in On Liberty, CW, XVIII, 257. Henry Cole said the London Debating Society was “in a bad way, doubtless owing to the secession of Mill and his friends” (entry of 19 Feb., 1830); after Goldsmid introduced the question, “that the utilitarian system of philosophy is pernicious and absurd,” Cole said there was no debate, but only “a satyrical [sic] reply from C. Buller he being the only disciple of that system present” (entry of 8 Jan., 1830; Cole’s Diary, 1827-1834, Victoria and Albert Museum).

  [53 ]Autobiography, CW, I, 179.

  [54 ]Letter to John Sterling, 20 to 22 Oct., 1831, EL, CW, XII, 78. This letter was written less than two weeks after the riots at Derby and Nottingham. Mill was not completely indifferent, however; he wrote an article recommending several friends as parliamentary candidates (Examiner, 2 Sept., 1832, 569); he contributed £1 to the National Political Union (British Library, Place Collection of Newscuttings, Set 63, Vol. 1, f. 276); and he attended the meeting to organize the Parliamentary Candidates Society on 14 Mar., 1831 and contributed £1 (letter from Francis Place to Bentham, 18 Mar., 1831, Bentham Papers, University College, London).

  [55 ]Autobiography, CW, I, 163-5. “The decade 1830 to 1840 was that in which he put together the strands of the past with the filaments of the present, and it ended with the assertion of his independent position” (Robson, Improvement of Mankind, 32).

  [56 ]“Rationale of Representation” (July, 1835), CW, XVIII, 24.

  [57 ]Mill also said, “what was good in the influences of aristocracy, is compatible, if we really wish to find it so, with a well-regulated democracy” (“De Tocqueville on Democracy in America [I],” [1835], CW, XVIII, 54). Mill’s wish to combine the two outlooks was also evident in his consideration of the “three great questions in government.” Bentham provided an answer to only one of them, “By what means are the abuses of . . . authority to be checked?” Bentham’s proposal of democratic checks was accepted by Mill, but he was worried that these checks might restrict public functionaries too much. To the other questions, however, Bentham gave no answer whatsoever: “To what authority is it for the good of the people that they should be subject?” and “How are they to be induced to obey that authority?” (“Bentham,” Essays on Ethics, Religion, and Society, CW, X, ed. J. M. Robson [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969], 106.) Consideration of these questions and possible answers to them arose from the work of Austin, the St. Simonians, and Coleridge.

  [58 ]Autobiography, CW, I, 169-71.

  [59 ]Letter to Sterling, 4 Nov., 1839, EL, CW, XIII, 411.

  [60 ]Autobiography, CW, I, 171.

  [61 ]Letter to d’Eichthal, 7 Nov., 1829, EL, CW, XII, 42.

  [62 ]Autobiography, CW, I, 169.

  [63 ]Ibid.

  [64 ]Ibid., 165.

  [65 ]Ibid., 165, 177.

  [66 ]“Coleridge,” CW, X, 121.

  [67 ]Autobiography, CW, I, 209. Also the London Review “ought to represent not radicalism but neoradicalism” (letter to Edward Lytton Bulwer, 23 Nov., 1836, EL, CW, XII, 312).

  [68 ]Autobiography, CW, I, 171.

  [69 ]Ibid., 177.

  [70 ]Letter to Thomas Carlyle, 22 Oct., 1832, EL, CW, XII, 126-8.

  [71 ]Letter to Carlyle, 17 Sept., 1832, ibid., 117.

  [72 ]Autobiography, CW, I, 189.

  [73 ]Pamphlets for the People (London: Ely, 1835) (no. 20, 22 Oct., 1835), 3. All the same, Roebuck in his Pamphlets for the People reprinted extracts from the London Review and approved Mill’s Review for its “general tendency . . . [and] most of the leading doctrines”; all contributors (and Roebuck was one of them) shared “a common purpose, and agree[d] in the general principles of their moral and their political system” (“Democracy in America”; “The London Review and the Irish Church Question,” ibid., 1-4, 7). Political co-operation continued, despite their personal quarrel, so that Mill said his differences with Roebuck “became so strongly pronounced that we ceased to be allies either in opinion or in action except as to the immediate objects of radicalism” (“Early Draft,” CW, I, 154).

  [74 ]Letter to Place, 16 Aug., 1837, British Library, Add. MSS 35150, f. 279.

  [75 ]Letter to Thomas Falconer, 2 Sept., 1838, British Library, Add. MSS 35151, f. 86.

  [76 ]Among other examples, see 164 for an allusion to Coleridge’s conversation about clergy and clerisy; and 227-8 for a theoretical defence of state responsibility for religious instruction on the ground that religion is closely connected with conscience and duty (the editor, W. J. Fox, in a footnote—227n—took exception to this suggestion that the state might legislate in matters of religion).

  [77 ]“I often wish I were among them [the Radical party in the House of Commons]; now would be the time for knitting together a powerful party, and nobody holds the scattered threads of it in his hands except me. But that cannot be while I am in the India House. I should not at all mind leaving it if I had £300 a year free fromanxiety and literary labour, but I have at most £100.” (Letter to John Pringle Nichol, 29 Jan., 1837, EL, CW, XII, 324.) “For the first time these ten years I have no wish to be in Parliament” (letter to John Robertson, 6 Aug., 1837, ibid., 345).

  [78 ]“Armand Carrel,” London and Westminster Review [L&WR], XXVIII (Oct., 1837), 69.

  [79 ]“Letter from an Englishman to a Frenchman, on a Recent Apology in the ‘Journal des Débats,’ for the Faults of the English National Character,” Monthly Repository, VIII (June, 1834), 393-4.

  [80 ]Autobiography, CW, I, 207, 221. “The principal radicals in parliament and many of those out of it have a scheme for starting a new quarterly review. . . . The first promoters of it were Roebuck, Buller, and I. . . . ” (Letter to Carlyle, 22 Dec., 1833, EL, CW, XII, 201.)

  [81 ]See also 401; and compare 61.

  [82 ]Letter to Alexis de Tocqueville, 7 Jan., 1837, EL, CW, XII, 317. For an account of Mill’s view on the secret ballot at this time in relation to his later opposition to it, see Bruce Kinzer, “J.S. Mill and the Secret Ballot,” Historical Reflections / Réflections Historiques, V (Summer, 1978), 19-39.

  [83 ]In 1839 he favoured household suffrage (467). “Happily there is no necessity for a speedy decision of the question” (“Rationale of Representation” [July, 1835], CW, XVIII, 32).

  [84 ]The argument in this article was anticipated in “Parties and the Ministry” (395-6, 401-3).

  [85 ]See also 287, 262-3, 270-1.

  [86 ]The Scots and Irish were also included (472-3, 477-8).

  [87 ]“The Spirit of the Age. No. 5,” Examiner, 29 May, 1831, 340. “Society may be said to be in its natural state, when worldly power, and moral influence, are habitually and undisputedly exercised by the fittest persons whom the existing state of society affords. . . . Society may be said to be in its transitional state, when it contains other persons fitter for worldly power and moral influence than those who have hitherto enjoyed them.” (“The Spirit of the Age. No. 3,” ibid., 6 Feb., 1831, 82.)

  [88 ]For scepticism about the use of the term “intellectuals,” see Thomas, Philosophic Radicals, 449-50.

  [89 ]Also, “the Radicals may claim to themselves, as their peculiar office, a function in politics which stands more in need of them than any other: this is, the protection of the poor” (396).

  [90 ]Letter to Bulwer, 3 Mar., 1838, EL, CW, XIII, 380. In another formulation Mill described “a phalanx, stretching from the Whig-Radicals at one extremity (if we may so term those among the persons calling themselves Whigs who are real Liberals) to the Ultra-Radicals and the Working Classes on the other” (467).

  [91 ]Also, “it deserves notice as one of the signs of the times, that the Whig coterie is not renewed. There are no young Whigs.” (344-5.)

  [92 ]For an account that attempts to explain Mill’s politics without reference to the quest for realignment, see Thomas, Philosophic Radicals, passim.

  [93 ]Mill said in 1851, “ ‘Philosophic Reformers’ is a worn-out and gone by expression; it had a meaning twenty years ago” (letter to John Chapman, 9 June, 1851, in Later Letters [LL], ed. Francis E. Mineka and Dwight N. Lindley, CW, XIV-XVII [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972], XIV, 68).

  [94 ]Mill also classified Radicals, other than Philosophic Radicals, as “demagogic radicals, such as Wakley, and . . . the historical radicals of the Cartwright school, and . . . the division of property radicals if there be any” (letter to Albany Fonblanque, 30 Jan., 1838, EL, CW, XIII, 370).

  [95 ]Mill also used the adjective “educated,” but the adjective “philosophic” was not merely a synonym for “educated.”

  [96 ]Speculative Toryism, it may be noted, although opposed to Philosophic Radicalism in the realm of practical politics, somewhat resembled the position associated with Austin and the St. Simonians and Coleridge, which, according to Mill, complemented Benthamite radicalism in the realm of philosophy. See also 402 on men of speculative ability who were “theoretically Tories.”

  [97 ]“Early Draft,” CW, I, 132. Extreme Tories sometimes had a reciprocal perception. Disraeli said, “A Tory and a Radical, I understand; a Whig—a democratic aristocrat, I cannot comprehend” (Whigs and Whiggism: Political Writings, ed. William Hutcheon [London: Murray, 1913], 19). Also, the Radical or Utilitarian party was called “a more shrewd, intelligent, and philosophical class of men than the Whigs, accustomed to a closer method of reasoning” (James B. Bernard, Theory of the Constitution [London: Ridgway, 1834], 5). For an illuminating account of the sources of Mill’s beliefs about conflict, see Robson, Improvement of Mankind, 191-9.

  [98 ]Palmerston, in asking whether Molesworth thought of coming into office with his own followers, advised “if he meant to be a leader of a party, to improve his knowledge of Parliamentary strategy” (Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates [PD], 3rd ser., Vol. 41, cols. 489, 521-3 [6 Mar., 1838]). Lord John Russell taunted the Radicals with the problems they and the country would have if Grote were Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House, and he asked whether Molesworth’s administration could command a majority (Letters to the Electors of Stroud, on the Principles of the Reform Act, 6th ed. [London: Ridgway, 1839], 32, 35).

  [99 ]Roebuck looked forward to the time when “we . . . shall take up our position at the head of the opposition” and when “we shall govern” (letter to Brougham, 7 Sept., 1836, Brougham Papers, University College, London). James Mill foresaw the time when the “powers of government will be put in [the Philosophic Radicals’] hands” (“State of the Nation,” London Review, I [Apr., 1835], 18).

  [100 ]Also, “If Radicalism had its Sir Robert Peel, he would be at the head of an administration within two years . . .” (404). Here Mill alludes to Peel’s skills in parliamentary management; for his estimate of Peel’s politics, see 403-4.

  [101 ]Letter to Robertson, 30 Jan. or early Feb., 1838, EL, CW, XIII, 371.

  [102 ]Mill later recognized that he “had expected too much” and that he had had “an exaggerated sense of the possibilities” (Autobiography, CW, I, 203, 205).

  [103 ]Spectator, 9 Dec., 1837, 1164, 1166; see also ibid., 16 Dec., 1837, 1192.

  [104 ]For example, in 1826 Mill did not think Catholic Emancipation very significant, as it would not improve conditions in Ireland; it was hotly debated by both aristocratic parties because it would not remove the “great abuses” which benefited the class represented by both those parties (66-7). For Mill’s view on the abolition of slavery, see 180 below. In “these days of Movement, the place which any session, any single event, will occupy in history, depends not upon the intrinsic importance of the event, or value of the Acts of Parliament which have passed during the session; but upon the far greater consideration, how much it has helped forward the Movement, or contributed to hold it back” (284).

  [105 ]Mill referred to the “middle course which so often unites the evils of both extremes with the advantages of neither” (216).

  [106 ]For example, “The approaching session will be next to that of 1830/1831, the most important since 1688—and parties will stand quite differently at the commencement and at the close of it” (letter to Tocqueville, 7 Jan., 1837, EL, CW, XII, 317). Mill also spoke of “the practicability of Utopianism” (“Rationale of Representation” [1835], CW, XVIII, 42).

  [107 ]“Moore’s Life of Sheridan,” Edinburgh Review, XLV (Dec., 1826), 35.

  [108 ]Examiner, 6 Aug., 1837, 497; 27 Aug., 1837, 545; 3, 10, and 17 Sept., 1837, 563, 581, 595; 28 Jan., 1838, 49; 4 Feb., 1838, 65-6; letter to Lord Durham, 2 Jan., 1837, Lambton Papers, in the Lambton Estate Office, Chester-le-Street, County Durham. Fonblanque regarded the reasoning of Mill and his associates as bizarre but purposeful; he characterized it in the following way: “With a Whig Ministry we play second or third parts, but with a Tory Ministry we should fill the first ranks in opposition. Therefore, as what is best for the exhibition of ourselves is best for the public, it is best for the public that there should be a Tory Ministry.” (Examiner, 4 Feb., 1838, 66.)

  [109 ]See also “Mr. Mill,” in CW, I, 594; letter to Fonblanque, 30 Jan., 1838, EL, CW, XIII, 370. For use of the phrase by others, see Spectator, IX, 1051 (Nov., 1836); 1251 (31 Dec., 1836); XII, 34 (12 Jan., 1839); Examiner, 23 Jan., 1838, 808; Morning Chronicle, 29 Jan., 1838, 3; William James, in PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 40, col. 1169 (15 Feb., 1838).

  [110 ]Letter to Fonblanque, 30 Jan., 1838, EL, CW, XIII, 370. This letter arose out of disagreements about Mill’s attribution of Philosophic Radical opinions to Fonblanque and criticism of Philosophic Radicals by Fonblanque.

  [111 ]Mill referred to the Radicals as needing “to shake off the character of a tail” (letter to Bulwer, 3 Mar., 1838, EL, CW, XIII, 380); and he asked, “why have they sunk into a mere section of the supporters of the Whig Ministry” (344-5)?

  [112 ]Also, “what a power they [the complete reformers] might wield, if they . . . were not, unhappily, (with some meritorious exceptions,) the least enterprising and energetic” (301).

  [113 ]“Nobody disappointed my father and me more than Grote. . . . We had long known him to be fainthearted. . . .If his courage and energy had been equal to the circumstances, or to his knowledge and abilities, the history of those ten years of relapse into Toryism might have been very different.” (“Early Draft,” CW, I, 155.) This passage was left out of the Autobiography, where Mill wrote, “I can perceive that the men were less in fault than we supposed, and that we had expected too much from them” (CW, I, 117).

  [114 ]On Roebuck, see 191, 200-1, 202, 307n, 385-6, 389, 452n-3n. On Buller, see 324. On Hume, see 326.

  [115 ]He says, “we now know that they [the Ministers] will yield to gentle violence” (285); “did any political body . . . ever reform itself, until it trembled for its existence” (491)?

  [116 ]Letter to Fonblanque, 3 Feb., 1838, EL, CW, XIII, 374.

  [117 ]“To the people . . . let them hold themselves in readiness. No one knows what times may be coming. . . . Let England and Scotland be prepared at the first summons to start into Political Unions. Let the House of Commons be inundated with petitions. . . . ” (Ibid., 26.) It hardly need be said that Mill’s estimates were exaggerated and even unrealistic. This was a feature of the doctrinairism mentioned above, xxxii-xxxiii. Another example: “If any ministry would now bring forward the ballot, they would excite greater enthusiasm than even that which was excited for the Reform Bill” (letter to Tocqueville, 7 Jan., 1837, EL, CW, XII, 317).

  [118 ]“Radicalism is a thing which must prevail” (407).

  [119 ]Letter to Carlyle, 29 May, 1832, EL, CW, XII, 107.

  [120 ]For evidence that the Radicals sat on the opposition benches, see Hamburger, Intellectuals in Politics, 122-3.

  [121 ]PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 17, col. 667 (26 Apr., 1833).

  [122 ]“The Ministerial Manifesto,” Examiner, 22 Sept., 1833, 593.

  [123 ]Estimates of the size of the Radical group varied: Parkes said there were seventy or eighty; Richard Potter said there were more than fifty; Thomas Young put the number at seventy-eight (letter from Parkes to Durham, 26 Jan., 1835, Lambton Papers; letter from Young to Edward Ellice, 3 Mar., 1835, Ellice Papers, National Library of Scotland; Potter’s Parliamentary Diaries, Vol. 8, f. 2 [entry of 18 Feb., 1835], London School of Economics and Political Science).

  [124 ]See also a letter from Mill to Aristide Guilbert, 8 May, 1835, EL, CW, XII, 261. James Mill made similar recommendations (“State of the Nation,” London Review, I [Apr., 1835], 16-18).

  [125 ]Henry Reeve, “Personal Memoir of Mr. Grote,” Edinburgh Review (July, 1873), 138, 232.

  [126 ]Sidney and Beatrice Webb, English Local Government (1908), 11 vols. (Hamden: Archon, 1963), III, 748-9.

  [127 ]Roebuck, “The Crisis: What Ought the Ministers to Do?”, Pamphlets for the People (no. 12, 27 Aug., 1835), 8; “The Conduct of Ministers Respecting the Amendments of the House of Lords,” ibid. (no. 14, 10 Sept., 1835), 1.

  [128 ]PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 30, cols. 1162-8, 1435-6. Mill criticized the Philosophic Radicals for not forcing more divisions, “not to carry their propositions, but to force public attention to the subject” (308n; evidently written and published in September at the earliest).

  [129 ]“The House of Lords,” Globe and Traveller, 16 Oct., 1835, 2.

  [130 ]“Without the systematic support of the Radicals, [the Ministry] could not exist for a day” (345).

  [131 ]L&WR, XXVI, 279-318. Mill, who corrected and altered this article, called it “a coup de parti, a manifesto as we say of the radicals (or rather for the radicals) on the subject of the Whigs” (letter to Tocqueville, 7 Jan., 1837, EL, CW, XII, 316). Harriet Grote called Molesworth “the Mirabeau of the day. . . . His [article] has given him a high reputation among our Philosophical Radicals.” (Letter to Frances Eliza von Koch, 7 Feb., 1837, The Lewin Letters: A Selection from the Correspondence and Diaries of an English Family, 1756-1884, ed. Thomas Herbert Lewin [London: Constable, 1909], I, 353.)

  [132 ]Letter to Place, 28 Jan. [1837], British Library, Add. MSS 35150, f. 235.

  [133 ]Letter to Tocqueville, 7 Jan., 1837, EL, CW, XII, 316-17.

  [134 ]Letter to Guilbert, 19 June, 1837, ibid., 338.

  [135 ]Fonblanque had financial difficulties in maintaining the Examiner, and money for the paper was raised by Ellice and Durham. “The rescue completed the conversion of the Examiner from radicalism to moderate Whiggism. . . . The Examiner had by 1838 become an organ of the ministry,” according to Thomas, who argues that “It would be over-simple to conclude that Fonblanque had been bought. . . . But he had compromised his independence, and if his critics like Roebuck and Mill had known of the scheme to pay his debts, they would have been more indignant than they were.” (Philosophic Radicals, 328-9.)

  [136 ]Letter to Guilbert, 19 June, 1837, EL, CW, XII, 338.

  [137 ]Letter to Tocqueville, 7 Jan., 1837, ibid., 317. Greville said the Radicals found their “hands tied,” and therefore they “lingered on,” but they were “very irate and sulky.” Yet, “as they still think that there is a better chance of their views being promoted by the Whigs remaining in, they continue to vote with them in cases of need” (The Greville Memoirs, 1814-1860, 8 vols. [London: Macmillan, 1838], III, 401; entry of 25 June, 1837).

  [138 ]Roebuck, Hume, Ewart, and Thompson were defeated, and Grote ranked last among the four successful candidates in the City of London; he won by a margin of six votes (he had led the poll in 1832). Hume was soon returned for Kilkenny. Fonblanque said the election marked “the wide chasm that now separates the main body of the Radicals from the extreme section” (Examiner, 4 Mar., 1838, 130). Unlike his fellow-Radicals, Mill managed to find comfort in the election results: “The Radicals seem to have lost most only because they have lost some of their most leading men, but those will come in again for some other place very soon; and a great number of the new members are very decided Radicals . . .” (letter to Robertson, 6 Aug., 1837, EL, CW, XII, 345). See also 388-9.

  [139 ]Amendments were moved by Wakley, seconded by Molesworth, and supported in speeches by Hume and Grote. Grote said, “Conservative principle was really predominant in Parliament, and when he said Conservative he meant the negation of all substantial reform” (PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 39, cols. 37-48, 58-60 [20 Nov., 1837]). Molesworth said the Whig Ministry “adopts Tory principles in order to retain office” (ibid., Vol. 41, cols 488-9, 577 [6, 7 Mar., 1838]). Hume said, “Little now remains either in principle or in act between the Tories and the Whigs” (letter to Place, 1 Jan., 1838, British Library, Add. MSS 35151, f. 48). And Grote added, it was “not at all worth while to undergo the fatigue of a nightly attendance in Parliament for the simple purpose of sustaining Whig conservatism against Tory conservatism” (letter to John Austin, Feb., 1838, in Harriet Grote, Life of George Grote, 127).

  [140 ]PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 39, cols. 46, 69-70 (20 Nov., 1837).

  [141 ]Wakley’s first amendment, for an extension of the suffrage, received twenty votes; among the twenty were Grote, Hume, and Leader (Wakley and Molesworth were tellers) (ibid., col. 81 [20 Nov., 1837]). In view of this result, Wakley did not bother to divide the House on his two other amendments.

  [142 ]“To the Electors of Leeds,” Morning Chronicle, 4 Dec., 1837, 1 (advertisements), and Spectator, 2 Dec., 1837, 1149. Although the article was nominally by Molesworth, Mill wrote all but a few words at the beginning and the end (Bibliography of the Published Writings of John Stuart Mill, ed. Ney MacMinn, J. R. Hainds, and James McNab McCrimmon [Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1945], 49-50). For Mill’s account of the meeting at Molesworth’s house, see EL, CW, XII, 365.

  [143 ]PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 37, cols. 37, 137-44; Vol. 38, cols. 211, 216-48. Roebuck lost his seat in 1837, but he spoke at the bar of the House as agent for the Canadian legislature.

  [144 ]Ibid., Vol. 40, cols. 398-9 (23 Jan., 1838).

  [145 ]Examiner, 4 Feb., 1838, 66, 65. Fonblanque referred to the “***** conclave,” but he left no doubt that the asterisks stood for Grote.

  [146 ]Mill did include a brief article in the second edition of the July number, which was published in August: “Lord Durham and His Assailants” (437-43 below). The second edition was probably made necessary by demand for Mill’s article “Bentham.”

  [147 ]Letter to Bulwer, 5 Mar., 1838, EL, CW, XIII, 382.

  [148 ]Mill said that generally, though rich landowners would support one of the aristocratic parties, there were exceptions. “In all privileged classes there are individuals whom some circumstance of a personal nature has alienated from their class, while there are others sufficiently generous and enlightened to see the interest of their class in the promotion of the general interest. . . . Lord Durham is such a man.” (473.) For an account of Durham’s opinions and his reputation among Radicals, see Thomas, Philosophic Radicals, 338-71.

  [149 ]Letter of 29 Sept., 1838, in Millicent Fawcett, Life of the Right Hon. Sir William Molesworth (London: Macmillan, 1901), 201.

  [150 ]Letter to Mill, 13 Oct., 1838, Report of the Public Archives for the Year 1928, ed. Arthur G. Doughty (Ottawa, 1929), 74-6.

  [151 ]Letter of 19 Oct., 1838, EL, CW, XIII, 390.

  [152 ]Autobiography, CW, I, 223.

  [153 ]Letter to Robertson, [Nov., 1838,] EL, CW, XIII, 391-2.

  [154 ]Letter of 14 Nov., 1838, ibid., 391. Mill closely followed Buller’s agenda for such an article and he even used some of Buller’s language.

  [155 ]Spectator, 24 Nov., 1838, 1108-9. This was probably how Durham became acquainted with Mill’s defence of his conduct.

  [156 ]Some of the Philosophic Radicals did not approve of Mill’s defence of Durham’s ordinance; indeed Roebuck said it justified “an act of undisguised tyranny” (letter to Brougham, 31 Aug., 1838, Brougham Papers, University College, London). Roebuck’s views were probably dictated by his personal sentiments (he was born in Canada) and his service as agent of the Canadian legislature which put him in close touch with Papineau, the leader of the rebellion. Mill defended Durham’s ordinance against the criticism of it in Parliament by John Temple Leader, who cooperated with Roebuck, especially after Roebuck’s loss of his seat (440-3).

  [157 ]Letter of 23 Oct., 1838, Ellice Papers, National Library of Scotland.

  [158 ]Letter to Durham, 29 Nov., 1838, in Chester New, Lord Durham (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929), 479.

  [159 ]Letter from Ellice, sr., to Durham, n.d. [c. Dec., 1838], Lambton Papers.

  [160 ]Letter from E. J. Stanley to Parkes, 20 Jan., 1837, typescript, University College, London. Durham’s observation was made before the controversies about Canada.

  [161 ]Letter to Robertson, 6 Apr., 1839, EL, CW, XIII, 396-7.

  [162 ]Ibid., 397.

  [163 ]Letter to Sterling, 28 Sept., 1839, ibid., 406.

  [164 ]Thomas Spring-Rice, “Present State and Conduct of Parties,” Edinburgh Review, LXXI (Apr., 1840), 282-3.

  [165 ]The Government resigned in May, 1839, after it carried a bill for the suspension of the Jamaican constitution by only five votes. Ten Radicals (including Grote, Hume, Leader, and Molesworth) voted with the Tories, and ten others stayed away. The Whigs continued in office, however. For Mill’s reaction, see EL, CW, XIII, 400.

  [166 ]Letter to John Mitchell Kemble, 14 Oct., 1839, ibid., 410.

  [167 ]Even Mill referred to “brutish ignorance” and to “the barbarians” who would gain influence through universal suffrage; he did not condemn all Chartists, however, for whereas the “Oastlers and Stephenses represent only the worst portion of the Operative Radicals,” the intelligent leaders of the Working Men’s Association in London, who framed the Charter, “represent the best and most enlightened aspect of working-class Radicalism” (485).

  [168 ]Autobiography, CW, I, 203-5.

  [169 ]Harriet Grote, The Philosophical Radicals of 1832: Comprising the Life of Sir William Molesworth, and Some Incidents Connected with the Reform Movement from 1832 to 1842 (London: Savill and Edwards, 1866), 63; Greville Memoirs, IV, 176.

  [170 ]Letter to Macvey Napier, 22 Apr., 1840, EL, CW, XIII, 430.

  [171 ]Autobiography, CW, I, 205.

  [172 ]Letter to Leon Faucher, 27 Aug., 1839, in Lady Eastlake, Mrs. Grote (London: Murray, 1880), 75; letter to Raikes Currie, Nov., 1842, in George Grote, Posthumous Papers: Comprising Selections from Familiar Correspondence during Half a Century, ed. Harriet Grote (London: Clowes, 1874), 70-1.

  [173 ]Caroline Fox, Memories of Old Friends, ed. Horace N. Pym, 3rd ed. (London: Smith, Elder, 1882), I, 138 (entry of 20 Mar., 1840). She added, “This was evidently a process through which he (Mill) had passed, as is sufficiently attested by his careworn and anxious, though most beautiful and refined, countenance.” She also described a walk with Mill and Sterling: “They talked on politics. I asked if they would really wish for a Radical Government. . . . John Mill sighed out, ‘I have long done what I could to prepare them for it, but in vain; so I have given them up, and in fact they have given me up.’” (Ibid., 151, entry of 27 Mar., 1840.) And in 1833 he had written, “every honest and considerate man, before he engages in the career of a political reformer, will inquire whether the moral state and intellectual culture of the people are such as to render any great improvement in the management of public affairs possible. But he will inquire too, whether the people are likely ever to be made better, morally or intellectually, without a previous change in the government. If not, it may still be his duty to strive for such a change at whatever risks.” (“Alison’s History of the French Revolution,” Monthly Repository, 2nd ser., VII [Aug., 1833], 514-15.)

  [174 ]Letter to d’Eichthal, 25 Dec., 1840; and letter to Robert Barclay Fox, 9 Sept., 1842, in EL, CW, XIII, 456, 543.

  [175 ]Letters to Napier, 27 Apr., 1840, 21 Sept., 1840, ibid., 431, 444.

  [176 ]Harriet Grote, Life of George Grote, 132.

  [177 ]Letter of 17 June, 1841, EL, CW, XIII, 478.

  [178 ]Letter to George Henry Lewes, [30 July, 1841,] ibid., 483.

  [179 ]Speech of 12 Mar., 1868, PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 190, col. 1518.

  [180 ]Also, “So deadly is the hatred, that it will run all risks merely to do us harm, with little or no prospect of any consequent good to itself” (509).

  [181 ]Speech of 12 Mar., 1868, cols. 1517-18.

  [182 ]Ibid., col. 1516. See also Principles of Political Economy, CW, II-III, ed. J. M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965), II, 316-19, 324-8.

  [183 ]Scepticism about the argument that the land tenure system was the main cause of Ireland’s economic difficulties can be found in Barbara Lewis Solow, The Land Question and the Irish Economy, 1870-1903 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 12-13, 195. “From the premise that the land law contained investment disincentives, we can draw no conclusions about actual historical development without an examination of the concrete economic situation. Such an examination for post-Famine Ireland will reveal a pattern of tenure customs in which eviction was rare, rents were moderate, and tenant investment incentives were established.” (13.)

  [184 ]See also speech of 12 Mar., 1868, cols. 1523-4, 1527-8, 1532; Autobiography, CW, I, 280.

  [185 ]See Principles of Political Economy, CW, II, 208, 228-32, 326. A hint of this doctrine appeared as early as 1826; see 108. Steele has argued that Mill’s extreme and emotional position in the 1868 pamphlet sharply contrasted with cautious, moderate judgments on the same issues in his Principles of Political Economy, even as revised in 1865. He acknowledges that Mill in the Principles challenged belief in absolute private property in land at an abstract level; and that there was plenty in the Principles to inspire hostility to landlordism. But he also holds that Mill was reluctant to alter laws of property; that “he substantially withdrew the harsh criticism of Irish landlords and retracted the endorsement of fixity of tenure.” Steele concludes that the 1868 pamphlet “unsaid—though it did not refer to—virtually everything about Irish land in the latest editions of the Principles.” (E. D. Steele, Irish Land and British Politics: Tenant-Right and Nationality, 1865-1870 [London: Cambridge University Press, 1974], 49-50, 53, 55; E. D. Steele, “J. S. Mill and the Irish Question: The Principles of Political Economy, 1848-1865,” Historical Journal, XIII [1970], 216, 226-8, 232-3, 236.)

  [186 ]Another modification of Locke’s argument occurs in the speech of 12 May, 1866, PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 183, col. 1095; Mill alludes to Locke’s argument (in The Second Treatise of Government [1690], Chap. v) that private property in land had its origin in improvements and says that “unless we recognise on the same ground a kindred claim in the temporary occupier [i.e., the tenant], we give up the moral basis on which landed property rests. . . . ”

  [187 ]This argument was akin to Mill’s characterization of political economy as a science that requires flexible application in light of particular circumstances (speech of 12 Mar., 1868, cols. 1525-6). See also his spirited defence of political economy at 91-2.

  [188 ]Autobiography, CW, I, 280.

  [189 ]E. D. Steele, “J.S. Mill and the Irish Question: Reform, and the Integrity of the Empire, 1865-1870,” Historical Journal, XIII (1970), 419, 425.

  [190 ]R. D. Collison Black, Economic Thought and the Irish Question, 1817-1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), 53. See also 60-2 on the parliamentary debate concerning Ireland, in which Mill’s pamphlet was discussed by, among others, Mill himself (on 12 Mar., 1868). See also 34, 51, 53-7, 70 on Mill’s views on Irish land tenure in relation to classical economic theory and contemporary pamphlet literature.

  [191 ]Steele, “Mill . . . Principles of Political Economy,” 216; Steele, “Mill . . . Integrity of the Empire,” 420, 437. For an account of the press reaction to Mill’s pamphlet, see the latter, 438-42.

  [192 ]Steele, “Mill . . . Integrity of the Empire,” 438. On Hume and Roebuck, see Steele, “Mill . . . Principles of Political Economy,” 218, 220. In 1837 Mill said the people of property ought to consider “that even their interests, so far as conformable and not contrary to the ends for which society and government exist, are safer in the keeping of the Radicals than anywhere else” (398). Thus “the Radicals are the only true Conservatives” (399).

  [193 ]Letter to Philip Henry Rathbone, 9 Jan., 1869, LL, CW, XVII, 1545. See also letter to John Elliot Cairnes, 10 Mar., 1868, ibid., XVI, 1373; Autobiography, CW, I, 280.

  [194 ]Speech of 12 Mar., 1868, col. 1518.

  [195 ]Considerations on Representative Government, CW, XIX, 551.

  [196 ]See also 214-18; LL, CW, XVI, 1328. Steele suggests that Mill was moved by concern for the security of England against invasion as well as a combination of complacency about English institutions, patriotism, and imperialist sentiments which prevented him from seriously considering independence (“Mill . .