Mill, John Stuart
Mill, John Stuart
I. POLITICAL CONTRIBUTIONSJohn C. Rees
II. ECONOMIC CONTRIBUTIONSV. W. Bladen
I. POLITICAL CONTRIBUTIONS
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) was born in London, the eldest son of James Mill, a leading disciple and friend of Jeremy Bentham. In his Autobiography (1873) the younger Mill described the remarkable education he received from his father, beginning Greek at the age of three and Latin at eight. At 15, massively instructed in a wide range of subjects, including economics, history, philosophy, and even some branches of natural science, he first read Bentham and emerged with a unifying conception of things and a sense of purpose in life. In 1823 he followed his father into the service of the East India Company and remained with the company until he retired in 1858.
For some years Mill vigorously promoted the Benthamite cause by speech and pen, but during a period of serious mental depression that started in 1826, he became convinced that there were serious weaknesses in his inherited opinions. At the same time he was subjected to new influences “which enlarged my early narrow creed,” among them the ideas of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Carlyle, Goethe, the Saint-Simonians, and Comte. In these crucial years he came to value poetry and art, both for themselves and as a means of cultivating the feelings and character, and he developed a fuller conception of happiness as involving the rich and varied growth of personality. His conception of social and political affairs also underwent a change: he came to appreciate the Saint-Simonian division of history into organic and critical periods; to see that political institutions must be related to the state of society; and to accept the important role an intellectual elite can play in shaping and making coherent the attitudes and beliefs of a society in a stage of transition. It was at this time too that his fears about the growth of mass conformity and its stifling effect on individual freedom took firm root.
In the decade beginning in 1831 Mill published several articles containing clear signs of his changed outlook; notable among them are the series of articles entitled “The Spirit of the Age” (1831), the essay “Civilization” (1836), and his studies of Bentham (1838) and Coleridge (1840a). His judgment on Bentham is especially interesting, manifesting as it does some of the vital differences that were to distinguish Mill from his educators. He praised Bentham’s contribution to the philosophy of law and his work for the reform of legal institutions; he greatly admired his methodological principle of breaking up wholes into their parts and abstractions into things; but he rejected a conception of man which, he claimed, has no room for the pursuit of spiritual perfection as an end in itself. Moreover, Bentham’s theory of government, he argued, ignores the dangers arising from a despotic public opinion and the importance of establishing checks on the will of the majority. Mill’s new attitude toward these two related matters was strongly confirmed by a careful reading of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, and he wrote lengthy reviews of the two parts of Tocqueville’s work when they appeared (1835; 1840b).
Meanwhile, Mill had met Harriet Taylor, the wife of a London businessman, and there soon began what he called “the most valuable friendship of my life.” They were married in 1851, two years after Mr. Taylor’s death. Mill’s extremely high estimate of his wife’s abilities and of her contribution to his own writings has generally been regarded with skepticism, although quite recently, through works by Hayek (1951) and Packe (1954), there has been a reaction in her favor. However, it must be emphasized that the claims of Hayek and Packe for Mrs. Mill have been strongly contested.
Mill’s first major work, A System of Logic, was published in 1843 and ran to several editions, as did the Principles of Political Economy, after it appeared in 1848. With these two works Mill’s reputation as an outstanding thinker of his day was firmly established. The later editions of the Political Economy show a more pronounced sympathy for socialism and for the claims of the working class than Mill’s early opinions would have permitted, and it is probably here that Mrs. Mill’s influence is most generally allowed, when it is admitted at all. On Liberty (1859) came out in the year after Mrs. Mill’s death, and Mill insisted that it was a joint product. Mill now spent much of each year in France, where his stepdaughter, Helen Taylor, managed a small house at Avignon, near her mother’s grave. His main work on political institutions, Considerations on Representative Government, appeared in 1861, and in the same year he wrote for Fraser’s Magazine a set of essays on moral philosophy (1861b) which came out as a book, Utilitarianism, in 1863. The most notable of his remaining works are Auguste Comte and Positivism (1865) and The Subjection of Women (1869). From 1865 to 1868 Mill represented Westminster in Parliament. He died at Avignon in 1873. His Autobiography, edited by Helen Taylor, was published later in the same year.
Mill’s social and political thought can usefully be approached in terms of four major concerns: (1) the problem of method in the social sciences; (2) his elucidation of the principle of utility; (3) the freedom of the individual; and (4) his theory of representative government. All four are related, and the interdependence among the last three, at least, has long been recognized.
Method in the social sciences
In his Essay on Government (1820) James Mill had tried to demonstrate the necessity for representative government by arguing from the postulate that men’s actions always conform to what they take to be their interests and that men’s interests in turn can be analyzed in terms of pain and pleasure. Accordingly, a representative assembly should have sufficient power to check the rulers, who, like all other men, are concerned only with advancing their own interests, yet who will thus be made accountable to a body whose interests are identical with those of the whole community. This identity of interests between the representative assembly and the community is possible if the franchise is extended. John Stuart Mill and his circle of young utilitarian radicals initially regarded James Mill’s essay as a masterpiece; yet when the new influences began streaming in upon the younger Mill, he began to have doubts which were considerably increased by Macaulay’s famous attack on James Mill’s essay in the Edinburgh Review (1829). But he became convinced that the various types of reasoning employed by his father and by Macaulay were both wrong, and he was thus led to his own conclusions about the proper methods of study in social matters, later published in Book 6 of A System of Logic (1843).
Mill denied that the actions of rulers can adequately be explained in terms of their interests. Such an explanation leaves out factors like a sense of duty, philanthropy, and the traditional attitudes of a community, as well as group or class sentiment and inherited standards of behavior among rulers themselves. The force of these traditional standards may override the personal interests of the rulers. Moreover, Mill believed, accountability to the governed is not the only way of ensuring an identity of interest between rulers and ruled, since to some extent their interests in fact coincide: it is in the interest of both, for example, that law and order be maintained. Nevertheless, the selfish interests of rulers do play an important, if by no means exclusive, part in shaping their conduct, and constitutional checks are therefore necessary.
Where James Mill and Bentham had gone wrong, according to the younger Mill, was in supposing that social phenomena depend on one causal factor or law of human nature, with others producing only trivial effects. In fact, the several aspects of human nature contribute to determining social phenomena, and none of these aspects is negligible. Mill believed that a science of society is possible. Its model should be astronomy, even though the science of society would never achieve the kind of precision in its predictive powers that astronomy has. James Mill’s error was to adopt the deductive method of geometry; social science must rest on the laws of individual psychology which are discoverable by direct observation and experiment, and unless generalizations about social phenomena can be connected with, and shown to be derived from, these inductive laws, they cannot be regarded as having a scientific basis.
John Stuart Mill set great store by “ethology” (his term for knowledge of the formation of individual, group, and national character), whose laws are derived from those of psychology by deducing what sort of character will be produced, given the laws of mind and a specific set of circumstances. But psychological and ethological laws do not suffice to explain sociological phenomena, since the special circumstances of the society in which a particular phenomenon occurs must be taken into account. The propositions of sociology are therefore only crude, i.e., related to tendencies. The main aim of sociology must be to discover empirical generalizations about social development, generalizations that do not have the status of laws but that nevertheless can be related to the laws of human nature. Mill thought that an appreciation of the enormous importance of the state of intellectual knowledge as an agent of social change and as the chief cause of social progress might contribute to the discovery of such sociological “laws”.
Mill’s belief in the importance of knowledge explains his concern to ensure the existence of an active intellectual elite in an age of mass pressures. In his view the state of knowledge is the product of a small minority, and progress will give way to “Chinese stationariness” unless society secures to its potential innovators the means for their creative role; and among these means the first requirement is the freedom of the individual. Not that freedom is merely an instrumental value for Mill, but it is fundamental even as such.
Utility. The principle of utility, as Mill expounded it in Utilitarianism (chapter 2), “holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” By “happiness” Mill meant pleasure and the absence of pain. “Pleasure and freedom from pain,” he argued, “are the only things desirable as ends,” and all desirable things are desirable “either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.” On the evidence of this passage alone, Mill appears to be expounding the orthodox Benthamite creed. But it is well known that later in the same chapter he went on to maintain that the quality of pleasure is no less important than its quantity. Indeed, he insisted that the pleasure derived from the higher faculties is more valuable than any other sort and could even be said to have an “intrinsic superiority.” Mill’s elucidation of the principle of utility is clearly inspired by, and intelligible only by reference to, an ideal of human development that he had earlier in his life explicitly contrasted with Bentham’s narrow and constricting conception of man, with its failure to recognize adequately the role of such powerful factors as a sense of honor and a sense of personal dignity. Without ever retracting his affirmation that happiness is the sole desirable end, he so described its constituent elements that they reflected his own scale of values. Prominent in that scale was the Greek ideal of self-development, individual spontaneity, mental cultivation, and the importance of men “for ever stimulating each other to increased exercise of their higher faculties” (On Liberty, chapter iv).
One of Bentham’s teachings that Mill never abandoned was that appeals to “the moral sense” or “right reason” merely serve to enthrone sentiment as its own reason and are incapable of providing a real solution to moral problems. Such appeals play the same sort of role in moral argument as reliance on intuition does in knowledge of truths in mathematics. Mill rejected the claim that truths of this kind can be known independently of observation and experience and was keen to demonstrate the falsity of this claim, since it seemed to him to support prejudices in favor of outdated institutions that have no backing in reason and rely on the alleged validity of intuition. Mill argued that if the principle of utility replaces “the moral sense,” moral questions become amenable to rational consideration and the principle of utility itself supplies a tangible if not foolproof criterion for deciding moral issues.
Mill shared Bentham’s conviction that moral values and the feeling of moral obligation can become purely secular phenomena, however much they may have owed to religion in the past. Every society, he contended, derives its cohesion from a common set of beliefs and values which have, until recent times, been supplied by supernatural religion. With the decline of the religious sanction, however, a secular vision of life must become the source of the necessary integrating beliefs and values. Mill did not conceal his hope that an elevated brand of utilitarianism, such as he sketched in his posthumously published essay, “Utility of Religion,” would take the place of religion. He looked forward to a time when men would come to feel it their duty to serve humanity at large, when society would strive to cultivate in all its members a profound sense of unity with each other and a deep concern for the general good. While these are, to be sure, earthly goals, the conception and mode of life involved may well merit the name of religion, and Mill was sure that it was a better sort of religion than the supernatural one that was widely thought to have an exclusive right to the title. It was above all Comte who convinced him of the need for, and feasibility of, a “religion of humanity.” While Mill thought that such a religion of humanity could secure a hold over men’s minds, he did fear that it might militate against freedom and individuality.
Freedom of the individual
Freedom of speech and publication are prominent among the conditions of good government in Benthamite political thought, and some of Mill’s earliest journalistic efforts were based on this view. By the time he came to write On Liberty, his emphasis had changed: what had become central was the fear that society would become increasingly hostile to the full and varied expression of individual character. For his watchword Mill now took Wilhelm von Humboldt’s assertion of the absolute importance of the rich and diverse development of the human personality, thereby provoking the charge that he (Mill) had abandoned the principle of utility. However, he took care to say in his introductory chapter that his ultimate standard for judging all ethical questions was still utility; but, he insisted, “it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of a man as a progressive being.”
It was Mill’s realization that popular government is no guarantee of freedom that gave much of the driving force to On Liberty. Tocqueville’s account of democracy in America strengthened Mill’s misgivings about the Benthamite assumption that to identify the interests of rulers and ruled is a necessary and sufficient condition of good government. Even a government based on the will of the people can exercise tyranny, and more than that, the informal pressures of society can become oppressive, especially in England, where, in contrast with France, the weight of public opinion was heavier than that of the law. Mill believed that the restrictions imposed on individuals, whether by law or by opinion, ought to be based on some recognized principle rather than on the preferences and prejudices of powerful sections of the public, and he set himself the task of formulating such a principle and of illustrating how it would work.
He described his principle in a number of different ways. At first he permitted social control only if it serves “to prevent harm to others” or to deter a person from inflicting “evil” on someone else; and here the line of division is between conduct which “concerns others,” for which a person is answerable should it result in “harm,” and conduct “which merely concerns himself,” over which society has no jurisdiction at all. But later Mill talked about infringing “the interests” or “the rights” of others; and at other times he referred to the violation of “a distinct and assignable obligation” or a “perceptible hurt” to an “assignable individual.” This variety of definitions of the sphere of liberty gives rise to complex problems of interpretation but should not obscure Mill’s intention to make the area of freedom as large as possible and his clear recognition of the need for some restraint, both as a condition of social life of any sort and as a safe-guard of freedom itself. Nor did Mill recommend indifference to conduct that falls short of accepted standards of private morality, even when it does not actually violate the interests of others; yet we should only try to persuade someone to give up his self-regarding vices, not to coerce him.
On Liberty is probably best known for the eloquent justification of liberty of thought and discussion contained in its second chapter. Mill contended that freedom of expression is no less necessary when an honest government is backed by the people than when the government is corrupt or despotic; and small minorities—even a single dissenter—have as much right to express their views as do large or overwhelming majorities. His case, argued at length, rests on the claim that to suppress an opinion is wrong, whether or not that opinion is true. For if it is true, we are robbed of the truth, and if it is false, we are denied that fuller understanding of the truth which comes from its conflict with error. And when, as often happens, the prevailing view is part truth and part error, we shall know the whole truth only by allowing free circulation of contesting opinions.
Mill’s argument here is strictly utilitarian, in terms of the social benefits to be derived from a policy of freedom and access to truth. In his plea for individuality, however, there is an appeal to the idea of intrinsic goodness which he combined with instrumental arguments. The free development of individuality is indeed socially advantageous; it makes for improvement, progress, and variety in ways of living. But it means also that men may choose to live their own lives in their own distinctive ways, and Mill insisted that a man’s own mode of “laying out his existence” is best simply because it is his own mode. Moreover, it is only by cultivating individuality that we can become well-developed human beings, and “what more or better can be said of any condition of human affairs than that it brings human beings themselves nearer to the best thing they can be?” Mill therefore believed in liberty both as a good in itself and as a means to hap piness and progress: for him the ideas of happiness and progress were thoroughly infused with his conception of a freely choosing human agent.
It has often been said in criticism of Mill that in his zeal for liberty and his opposition to the extension of state interference, he attached too little importance to justice and welfare and failed to realize that these values can be promoted by government action without serious danger to freedom. It may not be possible to dismiss such a charge entirely, but in Mill’s defense one can point to those passages of the Principles of Political Economy (especially book 2, chapters 1 and 2; book 4, chapters 6 and 7), where he showed himself to be fully aware of the injustices involved in the existing system of private property. One should also mention his fair-minded account of socialism and communism, his enthusiasm for the cooperative movement, and his idea of “the stationary state,” in which there would be no more “trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other’s heels, which form the existing type of social life” and where “while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear being thrust back, by the efforts of others to push themselves forward” (book 4, chapter 6, paragraph 2). He looked forward to the ultimate victory of socialism over the private property system, but it was to be a socialism which respected individuality. For the foreseeable future, the main task was so to improve the system of private property as to ensure that everyone shared in its benefits, and the measures on which Mill chiefly relied to achieve this end were a limitation on the inheritance of property, the restriction of the growth of population, and a great increase in the quantity and quality of education.
Representative government
In his major work on political institutions, Considerations on Representative Government, the decline of individuality and the growing power of mass opinions are major reasons for Mill’s advocacy of a number of reforms to protect minorities and to ensure that the influence exerted by educated minds on government is greater than that to which their numerical strength entitles them. But it is a wide-ranging book, and its interest lies as much in the discussion of general principles as in the particular recommendations regarding the ballot, proportional representation, and plural voting, not to mention the treatment of local government, federalism, and nationality.
If Mill’s treatise has not stood the test of time as well as, say, Aristotle’s Politics or Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, nevertheless there is still much to admire; as when, for example, he asserts that institutions need to be adapted to the place where they have to work (his dealings with India had an important influence here) or that a despotic regime may not only help stabilize a society but may even prepare its people for the exercise of the responsibilities of a free electorate. Mill put heavy emphasis on a people’s being properly equipped to assume these responsibilities; for representative government as he conceived it is the best possible form of government because, among other things, its very operation requires such activities of its citizens as are likely to increase both the desire and the capacity to make it work more effectively. One of its greatest virtues is that it puts power in the hands of those whose needs are sure to be considered only when they can voice them and whose rights and interests are sure of protection only when they can stand up for them. In saying this, Mill was surely stating an important part of the case for liberal democracy as it would commonly be made in the contemporary world.
John C. Rees
[For the historical context of Mill’s political thought, seeDemocracy; Freedom; Liberalism; Representation; Utilitarianism; and the biographies ofBentham; Comte; Saint-Simon.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The bibliography for this article is combined with the bibliography of the article that follows.
II. ECONOMIC CONTRIBUTIONS
The essence of John Stuart Mill’s economics is found in his Principles of Political Economy, published in 1848, and the best introduction to the Principles is Mill’s Autobiography (1873). Here he described the strictly Ricardian economics taught him by his father, James Mill, and his later economic studies with a group of young men at George Grote’s house. He also related the effect that Coleridge, Maurice and Sterling, Saint-Simon and Comte, Carlyle, and finally Harriet Taylor had in modifying his Ricardian Benthamite ideas. Highlighting the role that Harriet Taylor played in the writing of the Principles, he said that the chapter “On the Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes” was “entirely due to her” (1873, p. 208). Insofar, at least, as the Principles were intended by Mill to be “more than a mere exposition of the abstract doctrine of Political Economy” (1848, p. xcii), the Autobiography does much to explain them.
Harold Laski, for one, realized that there was more to Mill’s Principles than technical economics: “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” (see Laski in Mill [1873] 1958, p. xix). Indeed, economists now answer with greater precision and certainty many of the questions that Mill asked, but there are many other questions that they have ceased to ask because, dissatisfied as they may be with Mill’s answers, they see no better way of approaching them. Yet some of these questions are more important than those economists now deal with, and even Mill’s answers would appear better if modern economists truly appreciated the questions he was in fact asking. In particular, he has been misinterpreted because it has been supposed that he was answering the questions posed by the neoclassical school of the later nineteenth century. Yet theirs was an economics of equilibrium; his was an economics of growth and development.
Method
Mill had discussed the problems of method in the essay “On the Definition of Political Economy; and on the Method of Investigation Proper to It,” published in the Westminster Review in 1836. This is an excellent statement of the value, character, and limitation of pure, abstract theory. In Book 4 of A System of Logic (1843) he discussed the problems of method in the social sciences generally: while still arguing the deductive character of political economy, he stressed the importance of the “inverse deductive or historical method.” In the Principles, Mill decided to follow the example of Adam Smith, whose work “associates the principles with their applications” ([1848] 1965, p. xci). This approach, he saw, “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 no practical questions which can be decided “on economical premises alone” (ibid.). Mill recognized that competition is limited in the real world (in part by custom), so that the results of analysis of a competitive model must be treated as “truths only in the rough” (ibid., p. 422). He did not seem to notice that his doubts about the universality of self-interest raised doubts about the validity of any analysis based on the concept of the economic man. This economic man was defined as a “being who desires to possess wealth” (1844, p. 137), but Mill in the Principles indulged in some fine preaching against the obsessive pursuit of wealth: “it is only in the backward countries of the world that increased production is still an important object” ([1848] 1965, p. 755). Much of the interest in the Principles resides in its discussion of values: policy can be determined only after a choice of ends, and problems arise out of a conflict of ends. What Mill did not notice, and what is still often ignored, is that the prediction of behavior depends on an understanding of the values held by society. Values are part of the data of the “science” of economics as well as a basis for the practical art.
Production
However much Mill the preacher might doubt the importance of increasing production, Mill the economist was realistic enough to devote Book 1 of the Principles to the causes of productivity and of increasing productivity. Modern economists in developing countries, advanced or backward, would do well to study this book. Not least important is his concern with human resources and investment in people. Proper understanding of the book requires recognition that the problems he discussed are those of growth and development. For instance, the continued distinction between productive and unproductive labor is related to his concern for the liquidation of the primitive sector of the economy, in which menial servants are maintained in idleness on a more or less feudal basis, and for the development of industry, the advanced sector. Similarly, the propositions about capital, which have caused so much controversy (“the demand for commodities is not demand for labour” [(1848) 1965, p. 78]), make sense only in the context of the development of industry at the expense of the preindustrial sector.
Population
The problems of population control crop up throughout the Principles. The possibility of “restraint” is the issue: “general improvement in intellectual and moral culture” or a rise in the “habitual standard of comfortable living” is necessary if an improvement in productivity is not to have as a consequence “a more numerous, but not a happier people” (ibid., p. 159). Mill discussed the race between productivity and population further: he appeared less afraid of the effect of “communism” on population growth than was Malthus, but his advocacy of repression by public opinion of “this or any other culpable self-indulgence” (ibid., p. 206) sounds more like Orwell’s bad dream of 1984 than the sentiments of the author of the essay On Liberty. He recurred to the problem in his chapters on wages, where he effectively argued that what is needed is a dramatic improvement: “a system of measures which shall (as the Revolution did in France) extinguish extreme poverty for one whole generation” (ibid., p. 374). Further discussion of the problem is found in Book 4, Chapter 3. All of this has a new relevance as economists become involved in the problems of the newly developing countries.
Distribution
Mill made a great point of distinguishing between the laws of production and the laws of distribution. The former, he said, “partake of the character of physical truths. . . . It is not so with the Distribution of Wealth. That is a matter of human institution solely” (ibid., p. 199). Book 2, “Distribution,” is, therefore, first concerned with the institution of property and with systems of socialism. Mill recognized that the “rules . . . are what the opinions and feelings of the ruling portion of the community make them.” But these opinions and feelings are not “a matter of chance” (ibid., p. 200); and how the chosen institutions work is as little arbitrary and “as much a subject for scientific enquiry as any of the physical laws of nature” (ibid., p. 21). Although he insisted on the distinction between the laws of production and the laws of distribution, he in fact showed the importance of security and pecuniary incentive for productivity, in ideal forms of socialism and in actual institutions of peasant proprietorship and métayage. His interest in cooperatives (Book 4, Chapter 7) is partly based on the expectation of “a vast stimulus to productive energies” (ibid., p. 792). The chapters on wages, profits, and rent are not without interest in the context of development, but they are unsatisfactory in the context of equilibrium analysis. His argument that distribution is not affected by exchange (Book 3, Chapter 16) is now hard to accept: he ignored the pricing process in the theory of distribution, and his successors were too readily content with his static solution. Yet Mill, in Book 2 and in Book 4, had some brilliant insights into the dynamics and the probable direction of change.
Exchange
Mill was injudicious in claiming that “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” (ibid., p. 456). Nevertheless, Book 3, “Exchange,” is the most modern of the five books. The general theory of demand and supply is clearly stated. In this book are chapters on money, monetary theory and monetary policy, and international trade. Schumpeter in his History of Economic Analysis (1954, p. 689) has said that the chapters on money contain some of Mill’s best work; and the chapters on international trade are described by Viner (1937, p. 535) as Mill’s “chief claim to originality in the field of economics.” Viner’s favorable judgment refers to Mill’s performance in the sphere of static analysis; in the context of growth and development Mill’s discussion of “indirect benefits of commerce” is also noteworthy. “The opening of a foreign trade . . . sometimes works a sort of industrial revolution in a country whose resources were previously undeveloped for want of energy and ambition in the people” ([1848] 1965, pp. 593–594). But Mill had political effects in mind too: “The great extent and rapid increase of international trade . . . is the great permanent security for the uninterrupted progress of the ideas, the institutions, and the character of the human race” (ibid., p. 594).
Progress
Book 4, “Influence of the Progress of Society on Production and Distribution,” contains the chapters on the dynamics of distribution referred to above and rated by Alfred Marshall as a short but profound study of the causes that govern the distribution of the national dividend; it also contains two important chapters involving social values. “Of the Stationary State” (Book 4, Chapter 6) ends with a magnificent plea for the preservation of natural beauty which may well have inspired Gissing’s novel Demos. “On the Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes” (Book 4, Chapter 7) contains a brilliant discussion of the “two conflicting theories respecting the social position desirable for manual labourers,” the “theory of dependence and protection,” and the theory of “self-dependence.” The part played by industrialization in developing such self-dependence, thus providing the basis for democracy, had been stressed by Adam Smith and Malthus.
The functions of government
Book 5, “On the Influence of Government,” in addition to six chapters on taxation, contains five chapters on the functions of government. The agenda of government changes with changes in the nature of the economy and with changes in the character (particularly the honesty and efficiency) of the government. We should not expect the English prescription for 1848 to be satisfactory for contemporary England, but Mill’s discussion of the functions of government is not just material for the economic historian. He raised questions that still demand answers; and he reminds us that the appropriate answers depend on much more than economic effects, that liberty and democracy are at issue. The plea for “privacy” in the last chapter should not be ignored: it seemed to him 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” (ibid., p. 940).
Strong as was his plea in Book 1 for security of property, he also argued in Book 2 that the rights of property are not absolute, and in Book 5 he argued for considerable restriction on the rights of inheritance and bequest. He noted with approval the endowment of charitable foundations in the United States and commented that a man would make a similar bequest in England “at the risk of being declared insane by a jury after his death” (ibid., p. 226). The discussion of the economic importance of “limited liability” and of sound laws relating to insolvency (Book 5, Chapter 9) reminds us of the importance of examining some of the institutions we take for granted. The discussion of protection for infant industry (Book 5, Chapter 10) is still relevant; “the superiority of one country over another in a branch of production, often arises only from having begun it sooner” (ibid., p. 918). Finally, attention is directed to education: public provision is defended but monopoly denounced (ibid., pp. 949–950). He made a plea for support of research and scholarship, particularly for support of university professor-ships: “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” (ibid., p. 969). This is a generous tribute from the servant of the East India Company who was developing the economics of the stockbroker Ricardo; but then Adam Smith and T. R. Malthus were professors.
V. W. Bladen
[For the historical background of Mill’s economic thought, see the biography ofRicardo.]
WORKS BY MILL
ECONOMIC WORKS
(1822) 1936 Two Letters on the Measure of Value, Contributed to the Traveller (London) in December, 1822. Reprint of Economic Tracts, No. 16. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.
(1836) 1948 On the Definition of Political Economy; and on the Method of Investigation Proper to It. Pages 120–164 in John Stuart Mill, Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy. London School of Economics and Political Science.
(1844) 1948 Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy. London School of Economics and Political Science, Series of Reprints of Scarce Works on Political Economy, No. 7. London School of Economics and Political Science. ? Five essays, of which the fifth was previously published in 1836.
(1848) 1965 Principles of Political Economy, With Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy. 2 vols. Edited by J. M. Robson. Collected Works, Vols. 2–3. Univ. of Toronto Press. ? This edition collates numerous earlier editions. The two volumes are paginated continuously.
POLITICAL AND OTHER WORKS
(1831) 1942 The Spirit of the Age. Introductory essay by Friedrich A. von Hayek. Univ. of Chicago Press. ? Five articles first published in the Examiner.
(1835) 1962 Tocqueville on Democracy in America (Vol. I). Pages 187–229 in John Stuart Mill, Essays on Politics and Culture. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. ? First published in Volume 21 of the Westminster Review.
(1836) 1962 Civilization. Pages 51–84 in John Stuart Mill, Essays on Politics and Culture. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. ? First published in Volume 25 of the Westminster Review.
(1838) 1962 Bentham. Pages 85–131 in John Stuart Mill, Essays on Politics and Culture. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. ? First published in Volume 29 of the Westminster Review.
(1840a) 1962 Coleridge. Pages 132–186 in John Stuart Mill, Essays on Politics and Culture. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. ? First published in Volume 33 of the Westminster Review.
(1840b) 1962 Tocqueville on Democracy in America (Vol. II). Pages 230–287 in John Stuart Mill, Essays on Politics and Culture. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. ? First published in Volume 72 of the Edinburgh Review.
(1843) 1961 A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive: Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation. London: Longmans.
(1859) 1963 On Liberty. Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill.
(1861a) 1962 Considerations on Representative Government. Chicago: Regnery. ? A reprint of the original edition.
(1861b) 1957 Utilitarianism. Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill. ? First published in three parts in Volume 64 of Eraser’s Magazine.
(1865) 1961 Auguste Comte and Positivism. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press. ? First published in two parts in Volume 83 of the Westminster Review.
(1869) 1911 The Subjection of Women. London and New York: Longmans.
(1873) 1958 Autobiography. With an appendix of hitherto unpublished speeches and a preface by Harold J. Laski. Oxford Univ. Press. ? Published posthumously. There have been several editions of the Auto-biography, including one in 1944 from the original manuscript in the Columbia University Library, published by Columbia University Press, and The Early Draft . . . , published in 1961 by the University of Illinois Press.
(1874) 1958 Utility of Religion. Pages 45–80 in John Stuart Mill, Nature and Utility of Religion. New York: Liberal Arts Press. ? Written between 1850 and 1858. Published posthumously.
COLLECTED WORKS
Bibliography of the Published Writings of John Stuart Mill. Edited from his manuscript, with corrections and notes, by Ney MacMinn, J. R. Hainds, and James McNab McCrimmon. Northwestern University Studies in the Humanities, No. 12. Evanston, 111.: Northwestern Univ., 1945.
Collected Works. Univ. of Toronto Press, 1963—. ? A projected multivolume publication.
Essays on Politics and Culture. Edited and with an introduction by Gertrude Himmelfarb. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962. ? These essays were originally published between 1831 and 1874.
SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cannan, Edwin (1893) 1953 A History of the Theories of Production and Distribution in English Political Economy, From 1776 to 1848. 3d ed. London and New York: Staples.
HalÉvy, Élie (1901–1904) 1952 The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism. New ed. London: Faber. ? First published in French.
Hayek, Friedrich A. VON (editor) 1951 John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor: Their Correspondence [i.e. Friendship] and Subsequent Marriage. Univ. of Chicago Press. ? An errata slip indicates the correct title.
Macaulay, Thomas B. (1829) 1898 Mill on Government. Volume 7, pages 327–371 in Thomas B. Macaulay, The Works of Lord Macaulay. Albany ed. London: Longmans.
Mill, James (1820) 1955 Essay on Government. New York: Liberal Arts Press.
Myint, Hla 1948 Theories of Economic Welfare. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press.
Myint, Hla 1958 The “Classical Theory” of International Trade and Underdeveloped Countries. Economic Journal 68: 317–337.
Packe, Michael St. John 1954 The Life of John Stuart Mill. London: Seeker & Warburg.
Schumpeter, Joseph A. (1954) 1960 History of Economic Analysis. Edited by E. B. Schumpeter. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
Stephen, Leslie (1900)1950 The English Utilitarians. London School of Economics and Political Science, Series of Reprints of Scarce Works on Political Economy, Nos. 9–11. 3 vols. London School of Economics and Political Science; Gloucester, Mass.: Smith. ? A sequel to the author’s History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century. A detailed study of Bentham and the two Mills.
Taylor, Overton H. 1960 A History of Economic Thought: Social Ideals and Economic Theories From Quesnay to Keynes. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Viner, Jacob 1937 Studies in the Theory of International Trade. New York: Harper.