John Stuart Mill

1806–1873

Nationality: English

Historical Period: The 19th Century

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) was the precocious child of the Philosophical Radical and Benthamite James Mill. Taught Greek, Latin, and political economy at an early age, He spent his youth in the company of the Philosophic Radicals, Benthamites and utilitarians who gathered around his father James. Mill went on to become a journalist, Member of Parliament, and philosopher and is regarded as one of the most significant English classical liberals of the 19th century.

See also our collection of extracts, essays, and other resources on Mill.

See the Liberty Matters online discussions on J.S. Mill & Life Writing and Reassessing the Political Economy of John Stuart Mill

For additional information about John Stuart Mill see the following:

• detailed Table of Contents of the 32 vol. Complete Works
• Essays on JS Mill
• Timeline on the Life and Work of J.S. Mill
• at our sister website Econlib: the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics entry on Mill

Quotes from John Stuart Mill:

• John Stuart Mill on the “religion of humanity”
• John Stuart Mill on the wife as the “actual bondservant of her husband”
• John Stuart Mill on the dangers of the state turning men into “docile instruments” of its will
• John Stuart Mill on “the sacred right of insurrection”
• John Stuart Mill discusses the origins of the state whereby the “productive class” seeks protection from one “member of the predatory class” in order to gain some security of property
• John Stuart Mill uses an analogy with the removal of protective duties and bounties in trade to urge a similar “Free Trade” between the sexes
• John Stuart Mill on the need for limited government and political rights to prevent the “king of the vultures” and his “minor harpies” in the government from preying on the people
• John Stuart Mill on the “atrocities” committed by Governor Eyre and his troops in putting down the Jamaica rebellion
• John Stuart Mill in The Subjection of Women argued that every form of oppression seems perfectly natural to those who live under it
• John Stuart Mill was convinced he was living in a time when he would experience an explosion of classical liberal reform because “the spirit of the age” had dramatically changed
• John Stuart Mill in a speech before parliament denounced the suspension of Habeas Corpus and the use of flogging in Ireland
• John Stuart Mill’s great principle was that “over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign”
• John Stuart Mill denounced the legal subjection of women as “wrong in itself” and as “one of the chief hindrances to human improvement”

Titles from John Stuart Mill:

• Author: BOLL 5: John Stuart Mill, “Of the Limits to the Authority of Society over the Individual” (1859)
• Author: BOLL 48: J.S. Mill, “Utilitarianism” (1863)
• Author: BOLL 57: J.S. Mill, “The Spirit of the Age” (1831)
• Author: BOLL 62: J. S. Mill, “On Representative Government” (1861)
• Author: BOLL 67: John Stuart Mill “The Difficulties of Socialism” (1879)
• Author: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, in 33 vols.
• Author: On Liberty and The Subjection of Women (1879 ed.)
• Author: Principles of Political Economy (Ashley ed.)
• Author: The Subjection of Women (1878 ed.)