James Mill’s Utilitarian Logic and Politics

James Mill’s (1773–1836) role in the development of utilitarian thought in

the nineteenth century has been overshadowed both by John Stuart Mill
(1806–1873) and by Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832). Of the three, the elder
Mill is considered to be the least original and with the least important, if
any, contributions to utilitarian theory. True as this statement may be, even
those who have tried to challenge some of its aspects take the common
portrayal of Mill – “the rationalist, the maker of syllogisms, the
geometrician” – as given. This book does not. Studying James Mill’s
background has surprising results with reference to influences outside the
Benthamite tradition as well as unexpected implications for his
contributions to debates of his time. The book focuses on his political ideas,
the ways in which he communicated them and the ways in which he formed
them in an attempt to reveal a portrait of Mill unencumbered from the
legacy of Thomas Babington Macaulay’s (1800–1859) brilliant essay
“Utilitarian Logic and Politics”.

Antis Loizides is Lecturer at the Department of Social and Political

Sciences, University of Cyprus.
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James Mill’s Utilitarian Logic and Politics

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James Mill’s Utilitarian Logic and Politics

Antis Loizides
First published 2019
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To Marina & Aliki
Contents

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations

Introduction
1 The rise and fall of the historian of British India
2 A classical education
3 History, philosophy, and the History
4 Induction and deduction
5 Rational persuasion
6 Good government
Conclusion

Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments

A generous grant by the A.G. Leventis Foundation has been instrumental in

the completion of this book; I am thankful to the Research Committee of
the University of Cyprus (UCY) for awarding the grant, allowing me to
visit libraries and attend conferences. I have also been lucky teaching for
the last six years at the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the
University of Cyprus; the passion of students and teachers here for the
history of political thought and political theory has proved to be quite the
motivation.
It’s always exciting interacting with people who just love books. I owe
thus special thanks to the staff of UCY Library, the Library of Geneva, the
British Library, Senate House Library, London Library, the Library of the
University of Sussex, LSE Library, QMUL Library and UCL Library. The
librarians at the University of Aberdeen, University of Edinburgh and the
National Library of Scotland have been especially accommodating during
my visits. Additionally, without an online world of information, I truly
would have been at a loss; thus I must acknowledge several online
depositories: www.Archive.org, Google Books, HathiTrust’s Digital
Library, Electronic Enlightenment, ARTFL Encyclopédie Project, JISC,
Online Library of Liberty, Perseus Digital Library and the various
repositories of ProQuest.
It must be obvious from the last remark that, as I am based in Cyprus, I
depended on the “kindness of strangers”, either because, in their
institutional capacity, they could provide access to scans of material or, as
specialists, they could forward their work to me. I have enjoyed exchanging
emails with Neil De Marchi and David McInerney, who were keen to send
me their work on James Mill. Similarly, I wish to thank Callum Barrell for
his support, his valuable thoughts on the elder Mill and his willingness to
share his work, while reading and commenting upon my own. Needless to
say, I have learned a lot from all three.
 Georgios Varouxakis was the one who encouraged me to write a book on
James Mill. Insightful, generous and helpful, as always, Georgios read and
commented upon the first draft. I can never thank him enough, not just for
greatly improving this book with his input—though I bear sole
responsibility for any errors and defects that might remain— but also for his
constant support throughout the years. Terence Ball, Kyriakos Demetriou,
and Frederick Rosen have each in their way helped me more than they
could ever realize. Both their conversation (in person and/or via email) and
their works have been sources of stimulus, inspiration, and emulation.
Hopefully they have some idea how grateful I am. Richard Bourke, Janet
Coleman, Stuart Jones, Sofia Kanaouti, Duncan Kelly, Gregoris Molivas,
Alan Ryan, Philip Schofield and Richard Whatmore have also been
supportive in more ways than one. I would also like to thank Robert
Langham for believing in this project, convincing me that Routledge would
be a good home for it. I am also indebted to Tom Bedford for his hard work
in copyediting this book. I should also note that without the late Robert
Fenn’s indefatigable exertions in identifying James Mill’s numerous articles
and in transcribing his manuscripts, I would have never thought of engaging
with the elder Mill’s thought. It’s a great loss to Millian studies that his
work remained unfinished.
I owe a special thanks to close friends and colleagues for their tireless
cheering on a daily basis: Demetris Lazarou, Anastasia Yiangou,
Constantinos Georgiou, Antigoni Heracleidou, Yiannis Trimithiotis,
Demetris Trimithiotis, Sofia Stavrou, Costas Melakopides, Stamatoula
Panagakou, Marios Nikolaou, Chris Constantinou, Stella Michaelidou and,
last but not least, Charis Georgiou. It goes without saying, but sometimes
it’s just better to say it, that my family has also played an important part in
the completion of this book, and not just in understanding why I missed so
many Sunday lunches or in making sure that my share of the feast would
make its way to me nonetheless! Similarly, George Loizides and Sarah
Cahill had to put up with me, and put me up, practically every time I flew
into London; I thank them with all my heart.
My greatest debt is to Marina, my incomparably better half, and to Aliki,
the light of our lives—since our little Alice came into our world, our home
has indeed become a wonderland. I would have never guessed that chasing
our “little brat” around the house, trying to get my copy of James Mill’s
biography back, could be so much fun! Sharing a life with them gives new
meaning to eutuchia and eudaimonia.
Abbreviations

Bentham Bowring, J., ed. (1838–1843) The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 11 vols. (Edinburgh: William
Tate).
CPB Mill, J. Commonplace Books, 5 vols. ed. R.A. Fenn. London Library, vols. 1–4; LSE
Library Archives (Mill-Taylor Collection), vol. 5. Volumes 1–4, eds. R.A. Fenn and K.
Grint, can be accessed at www.intellectualhistory.net/mill
CW Robson, J.M., gen. ed. (1986–1991) Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, 33 vols. (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press).
Hazlitt Waller, A.R.; Glover, A., eds. (1902) The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, 12 vols.
(London: J.M. Dent).
History Mill, J. (1817a) History of British India, 3rd ed., 6 vols. (London: Baldwin, Cradock and
Joy, 1826).
Ricardo Sraffa, P., ed. (1951–1977) The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, 11 vols.
(Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2004).
Stewart Hamilton, W., ed. (1858–1878) Collected Works of Dugald Stewart, 11 vols. (Edinburgh:
Thomas Constable).
Introduction
James Mill’s (1773–1836) role in the development of utilitarian thought in
the nineteenth century has been overshadowed both by John Stuart Mill
(1806–1873) and by Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832). Of the three, the elder
Mill is considered to be the least original and with the least important, if
any, contributions to utilitarian theory. Yet, almost half a century after his
death, some still thought that there was “no considerable movement in the
early years of the century […] outside the unobtrusive yet substantial
influence of the elder Mill”.1 To the extent that there was truth in that
remark, perhaps there was much more to James Mill than meets the eye.
The focus of this book is primarily on his political ideas, the ways in which
he communicated them and, to some extent, the ways in which he formed
them.
James Mill was the author of The History of British India (1817a),
Elements of Political Economy (1821a), Analysis of the Phenomena of the
Human Mind (1829) and Fragment on Mackintosh (1835a). Between 1806
and 1836, he wrote more than 150 articles in various periodicals and
contributed a dozen essays in the Supplement to the IV, V and VI Editions of
the Encyclopaedia Britannica (Napier, 1824). Prior to those, he made
countless contributions in the Literary Journal and St. James’s Chronicle,
for which he served as editor between 1802 and 1806, as well as editing and
translating an award-winning French essay in 1805.2 Even though he relied
on his journalistic activities, especially between 1802 and 1819, for his
livelihood, Mill was engaged in a number of debates throughout his career:
writing on education, for example, he took the side of Joseph Lancaster
(1778–1838) over Andrew Bell (1752–1832); writing on India, he argued
against mismanagement owing to Orientalist, and other, “misconceptions”;
discussing good government, law reform and aristocratic privileges he
combated what he perceived as the Tory, Whig and Church establishment;
he wrote on the side of associationist psychology, not “innate-principle
metaphysics”;3 and he wrote a long, vitriolic book defending Hobbes,
Bentham, and himself against the Common-Sense philosophy of James
Mackintosh (1765–1832). Mill’s intellect was indeed “emphatically
polemical”.4
 Hardly do scholars take into consideration all these different aspects of
Mill’s work. For this reason, his method—philosophical and rhetorical—
and ideas—social, political, and educational—have often been
misrepresented. Notwithstanding the transitory character of his essays, there
are more important obscuring factors at work. First, Mill’s (in)famous essay
on government (1820) has established him as “the rationalist, the maker of
syllogisms, the geometrician”,5 or, as his most famous critic—Thomas
Babington Macaulay (1800–1859)—put it, an “Aristotelian of the fifteenth
century, born out of due season”.6 Even John Stuart Mill became fully
convinced of the unsuitableness of his father’s method of politics—both the
Autobiography (1873) and in more detail, A System of Logic (1843) brought
its shortcomings to the surface. Second, James Mill’s contributions to the
aforementioned debates are typically read through Bentham. As the story
goes, Mill parroted Bentham, with the addition of a deductive, rationalistic,
dogmatic, and simply too serious frame of mind. Viewing Mill as the
militant Benthamite, Leslie Stephen (1900) and Elie Halévy (1904) argued
that there was an underlying unity in Mill’s diverse endeavors: to propagate
Benthamite utilitarianism. Mill’s “genius for logical deduction and
exposition” of others’ ideas (as well as his “energetic temperament and
despotic character”), Elie Halévy noted, made him the “ideal disciple for
Bentham”—the one who took from Bentham “a doctrine” and gave back “a
school”.7 Third, the elder Mill is remembered as the source of immense
pressure to John Stuart Mill and held responsible for the younger Mill’s
“mental crisis”.8 James’s demanding educational method shocked even his
friends, despite their amazement at its results.9
Some commentators have already put the elder Mill’s place in the
Benthamite movement for reform to the test.10 William Thomas has
questioned whether the younger Mill’s Autobiography, being intended,
among other things, to rehabilitate his father’s reputation, is reliable as an
account of his father’s views on and, consequently, role in Philosophical
Radicalism.11 Thomas’s conclusion cuts both ways, however. If the younger
Mill’s account is unreliable as regards the positive things he had to say
about his father, what makes it reliable as regards the negative? Studies of
John’s account of his childhood have suggested that to some level it was not
reliable.12 The elder Mill had indeed won the wager “in the education of a
son”.13 But, one legitimately wonders, at what cost? On account of this, and
in spite of its intention, John’s Autobiography did not rehabilitate his
father’s reputation, and in fact had quite the opposite effect.14
Terence Ball, Robert Fenn, and William Burston have dealt with the
caricature of Mill as Bentham’s mouthpiece decisively.15 As their studies
have shown, any interpretation of Mill’s political thought must begin with
his Scottish background, his classical training, and a close study of his
manuscripts. Taking a similar route, Kris Grint and Anna Plassart have
recently shown Mill’s radicalism and distinctiveness as regards his views on
the liberty of the press and religion.16 Despite all these studies of Mill’s
thought, the standard view as regards his “logic of politics” remains
unchallenged. This book argues that commentators mistook his method of
rhetoric, one which served both didactic and persuasive aims, for his
method of philosophy.
The first step to substantiate the above claim is to examine Mill’s
reception. Chapter 1 follows the rise of his reputation with the History of
British India to its decline with the essays in Encyclopaedia Britannica.
The immediate reception of Mill’s History was overwhelmingly positive.
He had convinced his readers both of what the task of the historian
consisted in, drawing from ancient and modern sources, and that he had not
come up short in comparison to that standard. However, the publication and
extended circulation of the Encyclopaedia Britannica essays, in which Mill
advanced Benthamite views in a logical guise, led to attacks coming from
both within and without political radicalism—he was either too little or too
much of a radical. By the late 1820s, Mill’s reputation was completely
overturned: he was charged with being the main advocate of a narrow,
dogmatic and a priori political creed. The wave of criticism spilled over to
History, which was reinterpreted along similar lines.
Chapter 1 identifies the main elements of the caricature of Mill. At the
same time, it attempts to trace the steps through which that caricature was
solidified in the minds of his contemporaries via the reception of two
works: the History and the essay on government. The consolidation of that
caricature had as much to do with the political gospel Mill was preaching as
with the manner in which he was preaching it. Frequently, commentators
take these two aspects of his propagandizing activities as one and the same.
Subsequent chapters attempt to clear up the confusion. As Chapter 2
suggests, the key to that clarification is his education in Scotland.
Although Mill’s Scottish education manifested itself in more ways than
one, his was primarily a classical education. Chapter 2 examines classical
education in Scotland to identify some prevailing trends in classical
reception. Trying to sketch the intellectual environment in which Mill’s
love for the classics was molded allows us to identify both the ways in
which he followed these trends and the ways in which he deviated from
them. Cicero dominated the scene; but Plato, Aristotle, and Demosthenes
played no minor parts in courses on logic, moral philosophy and rhetoric.
Mill had certainly learned the lesson of his teachers at the University of
Edinburgh well: virtue was defined in terms of a duty to justice, liberty and
truth. In the Socratic tradition, the first and foremost duty of the philosopher
was promoting social welfare. Mill’s reading of Plato, his exemplification
of the vita activa, and the preference for a Demosthenian type of rhetoric
are all traced in discussions about Cicero in eighteenth-century Britain.
These classical underpinnings resurface in later chapters: Mill’s castigation
of Neo-Platonist readings of Plato reappeared in his views on Hindu
society, and he proved himself a firebrand, adopting the method of rational
persuasion, in the debates on the education of the poor and parliamentary
reform. Thus, attending to the different aspects of Mill’s background allows
for a better understanding of both the substance and the method of
presentation of his arguments.
In Chapter 3, I test this conclusion on History of British India. I argue
that reading this work as simply caught in the crossfire between the Scottish
conjectural historiographical tradition and the ahistorical Benthamite
utilitarianism gives a distorted view of many of the historian’s claims. I
investigate how other historiographical, rhetorical, and philosophical
practices pervade Mill’s pages—influences from Athens and Rome, France
and Germany complemented those from Scotland and England. In the first
section, I examine the rhetorical practice of self-justification in Scottish
historiography, the comparative method of Scottish and French historians,
as well as the critical method of the historiography of philosophy. No matter
how peculiar (and intolerant, most would add) it appears to us, History was
in many ways a history “proper”. In the second section, I turn to alternative
sources of some of its utilitarian themes. Mill’s readers would not
necessarily trace back to Bentham remarks on the relationship between
security, progress, and happiness or on the correlation between the
condition of women and the civilizational stage of a society or even the
utility of writing history. In short, the History’s relationship to both the
“conjectural” and “utilitarian” traditions was more complex than it has been
supposed.
Chapter 4 makes a similar claim about Mill’s “deductive” essays:
commentators have mistaken his method of instruction for his method of
science. The chapter begins with Mill’s response to the “common
expression” that “Theory” stood in opposition to “Practice”. It then takes a
closer look at his purported distrust of the Method of Induction, his views
on philosophical method—i.e., “Analysis and Synthesis”—as well as the
“Didactic Art”, emphasizing the need to distinguish between scientific,
empirical and rhetorical induction as well as between scientific
demonstration and rhetorical demonstration. Not only was Mill’s use of the
Synthetic—deductive—method founded on experience, it also drew on a
tradition of rhetorical practice aiming both to instruct and to convince. Once
again his background comes to the fore: ideas from Plato and Aristotle as
well as from Bacon, Hobbes, Condillac, Dugald Stewart and James
Finlayson inform his understanding of method.
Distinguishing between the method of science and the method of
communication of science creates an interpretative space in which we can
re-assess Mill’s actual arguments in public debates. Chapter 5 focuses on
his contributions to two such debates: on the education of the poor in the
1810s and on parliamentary reform in the 1820s. Tracking Mill’s arguments
in these debates, I suggest that his method was that of “rational persuasion”.
In contrast to the traditional interpretation of his method of persuasion as
repetitive, adversarial, and intellectualist, I argue that, beneath the perceived
rigidity of his didactic method, he invited his readers to weigh his
arguments, follow his chain of reasoning, and accept his conclusions on the
basis of the reasons offered. But this was a dynamic process. In the first
debate, in the face of a deadlock, due to the loss of momentum in the
promotion of the education of the poor, Mill made his argument more
radical than it was at the beginning; in the second debate, facing a similar
deadlock when the momentum was in favor of change, he made his
argument more moderate. In both cases, he tried to adapt to the views and
address the concerns of his audience, to gain their assent to his positions.
Mill counted on a communicative interaction with his audience. In neither
debate did he show himself to be dogmatic. What mattered most was
actually changing attitudes and influencing action on issues of great social
concern.
Chapter 6 makes use of the above conclusion to propose a different
reading of Mill’s essay on government. To this effect, I take issue with two
misconceptions: first, that “Government” (1820) presented the whole of
Mill’s utilitarian political theory in compact shape; second, that his intended
audience were the proponents of moderate reform. The first misconceived
interpretation focuses on the deductive nature of Mill’s argument to the
complete exclusion of earlier ideas on good government. The second
situates the essay in the Radicals-vs.-Whigs debate that took place in the
late 1820s. However, a close study of Mill’s views on the conditions of
good government in pre-1820 works suggests that his emphasis on just one
condition of good government—the identification of interests—was a
strategic choice. To uncover the reasons for that choice, I turn from the
Whig to the Tory critique of utilitarian radicalism. Shifting the focus in this
way seems to account for Mill’s stress on “the passions, the wants, and the
weaknesses of ordinary humanity” as the foundation upon which a scheme
of representation ought to be constructed.17

Notes
1 Anon., 1882a: 117.
2 I follow Robert A. Fenn’s bibliography of James Mill. See Fenn, 1987: appendix II.
3 For the phrase, see J.S. Mill, Autobiography, CW: I.185, I.233.
4 ibid., 211.
5 See Mack, 1963: 19.
6 Macaulay, 1829: 161.
7 Halévy, 1904: 251. See further, Thomas, 1969.
8 Skorupski, 1989: 13, 360n4. See e.g. Levi, 1945; Mazlish, 1975: 12–43. For Harriet Grote’s
characterization of the younger Mill as an “overstrained infant”, see H. Grote to A. Bain, 24
Oct. 1873, in Lewin, 1909: II.318.
9 For example, see Francis Place’s letters to his wife in August 1817, in Wallas, 1898: 73–5.
10 See Thomas, 1969, 1971, 1979: ch. 3; Carr, 1971, 1972.
11 Thomas, 1979: 115. See, J.S. Mill to G. Grote, 26 Nov. 1865, CW: XVI.1120–11; J.S. Mill,
Diary Entry: 12 Jan. 1854, CW: XXVII.642.
12 Stillinger, 1991. See also, Robson, 1964. Compare with H.I. Mill to J. Crompton, 26 Oct. 1873,
in Hayek, 1951: 286n28.
13 J. Mill to W. Forbes, 7 Jul 1806, in A.J. Mill, 1976: 10–11. See also, J. Mill to A. Walker, 26
Feb. 1820, NLS MS 13725 f.13r. See also, J. Mill to F. Place, Dec. 1814 cited in Burston, 1973:
87.
14 Compare, e.g., J.S. Mill, Autobiography, CW: I.53 with I.613.
15 See, e.g. Burston, 1973; Ball, 1982 and 1992; Fenn, 1987.
16 Grint, 2017; Plassart 2017. Victor Bianchini has of late published a number of articles dealing
with the elder Mill’s economic theory with new analytical tools (see, Bianchini, 2015a, 2015b,
2016a and 2016b).
17 See, e.g., Anon. (1818a): 314–15.
1 The rise and fall of the historian of British
India

In 1865, George Grote told John Stuart Mill that “[i]t has always rankled in
my thoughts, that so grand and powerful a mind as [James Mill’s] left
behind it such insufficient traces in the estimation of successors”. John was
wondering the same thing. Ten years earlier he had asked himself: “Who
was ever better entitled to take his place among the great names of
England?”1 No wonder Terence Ball found the elder Mill “arguably among
the most underrated and least understood of modern political thinkers”. Ball
did point to a possible explanation:
He is pictured today, if he is remembered at all, as Bentham’s faithful disciple and
mouthpiece, and as the Gradgrind who imposed upon his long-suffering son the extraordinary
education described at length in the latter’s Autobiography. Although this present-day picture
does, like any memorable caricature, contain a grain of truth, it obscures much more than it
reveals. In particular, it misrepresents the way in which Mill’s own contemporaries regarded
him, and it underrates his influence and importance as a political thinker.2

As subsequent chapters discuss in detail, commentators today often

misidentify the context(s) in which Mill’s contributions appeared—e.g., the
essay “Government” (1820) or his History of British India (1817a) are
discussed on the basis of what followed their publication rather than what
preceded it (for example, the debates of Whigs vs. Radicals and Romantics
vs. Utilitarians, respectively). Other times, despite correctly identifying
some of the contexts of Mill’s works, commentators neglect an important
part thereof—e.g., the essay on government was more indebted to much
earlier views than often assumed and his History was more than just the
oxymoron of a Benthamite history. Yet, the fault is not the modern critic’s
alone. The caricature of James Mill has been a long time in the making. Its
origin lies in sketches, reviews, and reports of some of his contemporaries.
Depictions which balanced the scale have dropped out of sight. Not only
have the colors, which would make for a lively portrait, been filtered
through greyscale lenses, the likeness itself seems distorted. But to be able
to look past James Mill’s caricature, we must first try to understand how it
came to be.
In this chapter, I consider first his rise to prominence due to the widely
positive reception of History. Contemporary reviewers almost uncritically
accepted the premises laid out in the History’s “Preface” as regards the task
of the historian and the grounds on which British Indian policy should be
placed and evaluated. Then, second, I trace how Mill’s reputation was
overturned in just a decade—the focus progressively shifting from the
History to the articles in the Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica,
particularly the one on government. As the sample of Mill’s writing grew
and the circle of young radicals espousing Benthamite ideas widened,
reviewers in periodicals, pamphlets and books increasingly objected to
Mill’s style and method, manner and matter. What were individual voices,
exceptions to an overwhelmingly positive response, in the late 1810s,
became the norm by the late 1820s.

I The rise of the historian of India

At the turn of the twentieth century, Leslie Stephen was baffled as to the
reasons why James Mill, previously unacquainted with the subject,
embarked on writing a history of India.3 In his authoritative study on
philosophic radicalism, Elie Halévy made a couple of suggestions. For
example, Mill could have gotten the idea from Jeremy Bentham’s “Essay on
the Influence of Time and Place in Matters of Legislation”, which used
examples from the history, culture, laws, and government of India to reach
conclusions on legislation. Halévy also suggested that Mill could have
engaged in such a project in an attempt to define the ideas of civilization
and progress, using India as a case study—Mill had criticized, Halévy
noticed, earlier attempts to determine degrees of civilization or stages of
progress as extremely vague.4 Both suggestions gain credence even by a
quick glance at the first two volumes of Mill’s History. However, Mill
could not have seen Bentham’s MS in 1806, and Etienne Dumont had made
only limited use of said MS in his edition of Bentham’s Traités de
Legislation in 1802.5 Likewise, Mill had objected to ambiguity in reference
to “degree” of civilizations three years after commencing the work on India
—Mill’s frustration could have been the result of his study of India rather
than the cause of it. However, as David John McInerney suggests, Mill
could have been “inspired to make a name for himself” as the
“philosophical historian of India” following a remark in the Edinburgh
Review in 1805 to the effect that the learned still “wait patiently” for the
appearance of an exceptional historian of India, whose abilities would be
completed by “the taste and philosophy of a Hume or a Robertson”.6 For
Jeng Guo Chen, it was not really surprising that a Scot felt qualified to
undertake such a task.7
In the preface of his magnum opus, Mill had situated his original interest
in, and subsequent study of, India within a broader quest for knowledge
“respecting my country, its people, its government, its interests, its policy,
and its laws”. In 1816, writing to Macvey Napier while the History was
nearing publication, Mill noted that he had collected “all the information in
which we Europeans are very materially interested”.8 Although Mill
intended to write an “introduction to the knowledge of India”, he conceived
it essentially as a British history, attempting to correct British
misconceptions and prejudices about Indian society as well as exemplify
principles of legislation via the “many important experiments” British
experience in India had to offer.9 Right from the outset, Mill gave clues as
to what he was attempting to do: criticize traditional views about (Indian)
society as well as draw lessons from “natural experiments” found in history.
The latter was quite important since no artificial experiments could take
place at the level of society; philosophers had to rely on the “experience of
states” to identify causal relations in social phenomena.10 Consequently,
Mill imagined his History to be no “bad introduction to the study of civil
society in general”.11 Such knowledge would, in turn, allow reaching
conclusions closer to home. Already in 1804 he had noted in passing that a
history of British settlements is a subject rich in “every kind of instruction,
and a subject which throws much light upon many important branches of
modern policy”.12
 Mill’s endeavor was not easy. And, he was not shy about what it took to
bring it to completion. But he acknowledged that undertaking the venture in
1806, he had underestimated the difficulties which lay ahead; had he
known, he confessed, he would have shrunk from such a task.13 With
reason, Alexander Bain remarked: Mill’s “plan of living by literature” could
not be sustained with a twelve-year project. As it turned out, however, it
was worth the trouble. Even if he did not expect anything to come out of it,
writing the History led him finally to financial security.14
Mill’s financial difficulties, in the late 1800s and throughout the 1810s,
were no secret. No longer the editor of either the Literary Journal or St.
James Chronicle, he had no steady income, yet despite the financial burden
of a growing family, he managed to pay off old family debts. It was
Bentham’s, Thomas Thomson’s and Francis Place’s friendship that kept
Mill afloat. When the office of Assistant to the Examiner of India
Correspondence became available, all his friends with influence at East
India House tried to secure the position for him—the canvassing beginning
in early 1818. Despite the fact that Mill’s History “was despised by people
such as the high Tories, the Board of Control of India and the Board of
Directors of the East India Company”,15 Mill already enjoyed the support of
some high-ranking officials at India House—something which he thought to
be the reason for his appointment.16 The irony of the appointment did not
go unnoticed: Halévy wondered whether the East India Company ought to
have been congratulated “for having been magnanimous enough to pardon a
bitter critic” or “for being cunning and silencing a dangerous adversary?”17

The task of the historian

The Magna Charta of historians, James Mill noted in 1803, was found in
Cicero’s On the Orator (II.62): “For who does not know history’s first law
to be that an author must not dare to tell anything but the truth? And its
second that he must make bold to tell the whole truth? That there must be
no suggestion of partiality anywhere in his writings? Nor of malice?”18
Lucian agreed: “[a]bove all and before everything else, let his [the
historian’s] mind be free, let him fear no one and expect nothing, or else he
will be like a bad judge who sells his verdict to carry favour or gratify
hatred”. According to Lucian, “history has one task and one end—what is
useful—, and that comes from truth alone”.19 Being a historian meant being
fearless, incorruptible, free, a friend of free expression and the truth, intent […] giving
nothing to hatred or to friendship, sparing no one, showing neither pity nor shame nor
obsequiousness, an impartial judge, well disposed to all men up to the point of not giving one
side more than its due, in his books a stranger and a man without a country, independent,
subject to no sovereign, not reckoning what this or that man will think, but stating the facts.20

Lucian’s dialogues feature frequently in Mill’s Commonplace Books. In the

section “Fallacies”, Mill cited Lucian’s Hermotimus in an attempt to show a
common error among the learned: trusting too much on authority.
Hermotimus asked Lucinus how can one know which (philosophical)
authority is in the right; Lucinus replied that one should act as a judge
(δικαστικῶς): to let both sides speak, while staying clear-headed and
keeping in mind to question the evidence, to disbelieve (μέμνησο
ἀπιστεῖν)21—this could have been Mill’s credo in History.
Before venturing into writing his own history, Mill had already tried to
delineate common deficiencies of modern historians:
The events and transactions which strike the eyes of all mankind are related, and they are
represented in a light differing but little from that in which they appeared to vulgar eyes even
at the time of their occurrence. The more hidden and important springs of political
movements are unknown, and unattended to. Of the vast complexity of modern policies, of
the variety of objects which the subject comprehends, no adequate notion is entertained, nor is
knowledge acquired of one half of the parts of which that subject consists. That philosophical
sagacity, that enlightened, comprehensive range, and discernment of mind which marks the
circumstances of the world at any given period, and perceives the course which human
actions must take from the circumstances in which human nature is placed, is a quality which
in general is not brought to the composition of history.22

Historians often miss the “great bonds of connection which unite together
events”, Mill thought. Escaping the beaten track was not easy. Some
historians, such as David Hume and John Millar, did afford examples on
how to do it, however. Hume was “the first author who exhibited the
complete union of history and philosophy”. For Mill, not only did Hume
shift the focus from kings to the people; most importantly, Hume pointed
out “the manner in which the principles of human nature in conjunction
with the circumstances in which the people were placed” produced political
changes, referring particular facts to general laws.23 The philosophy of
history provided, Mill translated from Charles Villers, the thread for
guiding one out of “the labyrinth of time” and the “shapeless mass of
unconnected facts”.24 Such a method identified “the more important and
hidden relations by which the series of human events is affected” and the
circumstances within which human affairs could be improved.25
In the preface to the History of British India, Mill expanded on the
aforementioned ideas: a historian needs to be aware not to mix her/his ideas
with what s/he reports, especially since what really is of interest to a
philosophical reader are not brute facts but human nature, morality and
politics.26 The duty of the historian, Mill noted, is to “convey just ideas” on
legislative, administrative, judicial, mercantile, military acts, institutions
and policies. For a just idea to be formed (and communicated), one needs to
penetrate the surface, the “obvious outside”, to the causes, natural
tendencies and the role particular circumstances play in social phenomena.
Going beyond the meticulous collection of facts, the historian extracts “the
precious ore from a great mine of rude historical materials”. For this reason,
on one hand the historian needs to sift evidence, to distil from incomplete,
biased, varying or even conflicting testimonies a correct account of an
incident. On the other hand the historian needs to ascertain the real causes,
real effects, and real tendencies of acts, institutions and policies. It is not
enough to determine whether means fit the ends. One needs also to discern
between good ends and bad ends. In short, the historian needs to possess
“the powers of combination, discrimination, classification, judgment,
comparison, weighing, inferring, inducting”,27 as well as
the most perfect comprehension of the principles of human society; or the course, into which
the laws of human nature impel the human being, in his gregarious state, or when formed into
a complex body along with others of his kind. The historian requires a clear comprehension of
the practical play of the machinery of government; for, in like manner as the general laws of
motion are counteracted and modified by friction, the power of which may yet be accurately
ascertained and provided for, so it is necessary for the historian correctly to appreciate the
counteraction which the more general laws of human nature may receive from individual or
specific varieties, and that allowance for it with which his anticipations and conclusions ought
to be formed.28

Mill admitted that the above characteristics set the bar quite high. The
reason for setting the bar this high was simple: being able to learn from
history signified the intellectual maturity of a civilization, since history
provided lessons for the guidance of the future.29 Setting foresight as a
mark of intellectual maturity as well as the importance of studying
“barbarous societies” for insights in jurisprudence were expected side-
effects of a classical education.30
Another side-effect of a classical education was Mill’s insistence that
there were two aspects of historical writing: political and moral. In 1804,
quoting from Livy’s History of Rome (bk. I, Praef. 8–10), Mill noted that
the political part of history consists in the policies and internal operations
which established and enlarged states/empires during peace and war. The
moral part of history consists in “the domestic and social habits” of the
people under study, “their predominant virtues and vices, and the particular
causes in their situation from which these habits flow”. Commenting on the
frequent neglect in treating this part, Mill added:
This is by far the most difficult and delicate part of the duty of the real historian. This requires
one of the rarest of human characters, a master in the science of human nature. This is what
entitles the true historian to some of the highest honours of human genius. This is what ranks
him among a different class of beings from the maker of the register book of common facts. It
is by this alone that the register of these facts is rendered of any value. “Hoc”, to use again the
language of Livy, “hoc illud est praecipue in cognitione rerum salubre ac frugiferum”.31

In 1809 Mill offered an expanded account of such views: one essential part
of histories involved analyzing the great principles of society and
government, tracing the phenomena of government to far more general
laws, accurately tracking “the progress of the human race from barbarity to
refinement”, and assigning instructively the causes for that progress.
However, most “modern historians” ignored the other essential part of such
histories: the cultivation of social sympathies, the development of human
character—i.e., displaying human passions in varying situations to inspire
the love of (public) virtue. Philosophical histories address both the intellect
and the affections; they move past a bare chronicle of events to find out the
causes, principles and laws of social phenomena and—through an
investigation into human nature—to cultivate public virtue by “lavishing
the finest efforts of their [i.e., the historians’] genius in the decoration of
every signal instance of public virtue, by shewing in skillful colours the
contempt and indignation which justly belong to those who” damage public
interests. Without the moral part, philosophical histories contain little more
than “dry statement of vulgar, historical facts”; consequently, they are read
with “a cold interest”, and only as a chore.32 Hence, the tracing of the
causal chain of events, decisions, and actions through a close examination
of evidence and testimonies was but half of the task of philosophical
historians; for their work to be complete, historians had to impress love of
public virtue onto the mind of their readers.
Mill’s “Preface” clarified that his was a “critical” and a “judging”
history.33 He dove into the reportedly confused mass of historical record to
make sense of the chaos, making the same journey easier to navigate for
other historians; at the same time, he took the trouble to justify his
conclusions without omitting the (long, dry, factual) process through which
he reached them because it would have been even more difficult for
interested readers to follow the same process de novo.34 In this sense, much
like other modern histories, Mill’s was a history which laid emphasis on the
intellectual part. And he was aware that neither the young nor those “in
whom imagination and feeling predominate”35 were likely to find such a
history agreeable. Still, he did attempt to fulfil the second characteristic of a
philosophic history. He had taken up the opportunity to instruct on
“common morality”—i.e., praise virtue, but especially to censure vice, all
the while identifying the causes which produced either—and on a couple of
occasions, he would attempt to paint with bright colors the actions of
individuals in service of public interests.36
According to Mill, since the British were responsible for the government
of India, it was important to ascertain correctly the Indian state of
advancement in the scale of civilizations: “[n]o scheme of government can
happily conduce to the ends of government, unless it is adapted to the state
of the people for whose use it is intended”. For Mill, civilization manifests
itself in “the religion, the laws, the government, the manners, the arts, the
sciences, and literature” of a people.37 India failed on all points on his
scorecard. During the first wave of critical engagement with the History, all
reviewers agreed with Mill’s delineation of the task of the historian and
followed his designation of India as “rude”. However, none of them
accepted all of his reasons for the designation or approved his critique of
English practices and institutions. The door was left thus open for retraction
in the second wave of reviews. Most importantly, by the late 1820s, the
very idea of the existence of something like a “scorecard” of evaluation of
civilizations was rejected.

Reviewing Mill: the history of British India in the periodical

press
In August 1817, Francis Place reported a typical day at Forb Abbey: at the
end of a long day of teaching, working, and walking, Bentham, Mill, and
Place gathered around 9pm to enjoy a cup of tea and “to read the periodical
publications; and eleven o’clock comes but too soon, and we all go to
bed”.38 Since the establishment of Edinburgh Review and up to the 1840s,
Joanne Shattock points out, the “quarterlies continued to make reputations
and to serve as an entree to the world of serious literature as well as
providing a forum for established writers, scholars, theologians, politicians,
scientists” and others.39 Not only does periodical criticism, William Hazlitt
pointed out in 1823, suit “the spirit of the times, but advances it. It certainly
never flourished more than at present. It never struck its roots so deep, nor
spread its branches so widely and luxuriantly”.40 John Morley agreed;
almost a hundred years later he reported that the nineteenth-century
Reviews, just as the Encyclopaedie in the eighteenth, were the source of
“the best observation of fresh flowing currents of thought, interest, and
debate”.41 As George Nesbitt summarized the point, “by 1820 the review
was an institution”.42 Reviews of Mill’s History could either make or break
his reputation; they made it, as his appointment to the East India Company
attests.
The History could not have attracted more attention upon its publication:
the Morning Chronicle and The Times engaged in a debate over its merits in
reference to the government of India; the present and future usefulness of
the work was at once granted and denied. For the Morning Chronicle, the
History taught “many an important lesson, of which they [the ‘India
Rulers’] appear to be very much in want”. The Morning Chronicle thus
found material for the improvement of government to the benefit of the
people of India. In contrast, The Times thought Mill’s History subversive
and radical. Not only was that “untravelled individual” unqualified to pass
judgment on those authorities who had been the source of information
regarding Indian affairs. But also, for The Times, the historian seemed to
argue that “there is no public happiness but in revolution”. The History had
thus “no means of opening to itself a way of publicity and reputation, and
which will sink when we drop the mention of it”. Interested readers had
better look elsewhere for “enlarged views, faithful narrative, or profound
reflection”.43
Mill’s reviewers were baited and hooked: the “Preface” had defined
usefulness to the task of governing India as the test which his work had to
pass. And it did pass that test, according to all other critics. Mill argued that
increasing knowledge of British India affairs would result in their better
management.44 So he stated the facts of the various cases at hand and the
reasons for his conclusions, especially in ascertaining the state of the
civilization of India. As already noted, the last was the most important piece
of knowledge relevant to good management. At the same time, it made it all
the more necessary for Mill to pre-empt possible objections to his
qualifications as a historian, i.e. that he had never been to India and that he
did not speak the languages.45 Mill was successful on both counts:
reviewers followed the lead of the Morning Chronicle rather than that of
The Times. No other reviewer objected to Mill remaining in his “closet in
England”46 as they completely agreed with his sketch of the traits of the
historian. They followed suit in reiterating that “the progress of the Hindoos
in civilization has been prodigiously over-rated”.47 Mill’s criticisms of
traditional views of India were thus deemed on point; still, The Times was
onto something in censuring his performance—reviewers did give a jab or
two at times, though not on the issues that matter from today’s standpoint.
In order to appreciate the reasons for the decline in the reputation of Mill,
we must first identify the reasons for its rise. Expectedly, reviews dealt with
Mill’s skills as a historian. Further, reviewers commented on his treatment
of Indian institutions as well as of English institutions. The Asiatic Journal
would frequently take notice of Mill’s History. Surprisingly, however, its
1818 review was quite favorable, if not laudatory.48 The anonymous
reviewer adopted the claims from the “Preface” almost to the letter,49
limiting her/his review to a discussion of Mill’s views on Hindu
civilization. The reviewer was confident that, despite the historian’s style,
the value of the overall performance was immense: “[t]o say of this work
that it gives the only satisfactory account of India is the least of its praise.
We have no hesitation in declaring that we know of no work, ancient or
modern, capable of affording an equal degree of instruction”.50 This was
high praise indeed. Moreover, the reviewer pointed out that Mill provided
both the facts and the reasons which supported any of his conclusions—thus
providing the means to form one’s own opinion on any of the subjects
discussed. This was a testament to the historian’s “fair and manly temper”:
“Mr. Mill has carefully and impartially weighted the evidence on which
[…] [his] opinions rested, and adopted no conclusion till after the most
severe scrutiny”. As the reviewer went on, Mill managed to escape from the
errors of former writers on India: “[t]he most exaggerated notions with
respect to this people [Hindus] had been adopted by one writer from
another without examination”.51 Following a brief summary of his
discussion on aspects of Hindu civilization, the reviewer concluded: “Mr.
Mill has, we think, successfully demonstrated, not only that the Hindus are
at present in a low state of civilization, but that there is not the least
foundation for the opinion that they were ever in a more advanced state”.52
The British Review notice offered the most detailed discussion of Mill’s
work. For a work which according to The Times was subversive, Mill’s
History was also unexpectedly very favorably treated, given that, edited by
William Roberts (1767–1849) at the time, the British Review had both
Church and Crown attachments.53 In over a hundred pages, the anonymous
critic quoted and paraphrased freely from the History without putting its
author’s claims to the test—except on issues that potentially struck a chord
at home. The reason was simple: Mill exhibited such rare “qualities and
attainments […], that to pass sentence on a work which calls for and
displays the exercise of all of them, must approach to presumption”. He was
the only person who did not shrink “back at the prospect of the Herculean
labour which it [i.e. a history of British India] demanded”. At the same
time, for the critic, Mill’s intellectual forays in “abstract” and
“metaphysical” theories—though not without fault—put him on guard
against traditional prejudices and allowed him to strip “from the objects
[i.e., Hindu culture] the delusive tints with which they were thus disguised”.
And even though the reviewer did not refrain from commenting on Mill’s
“political biasses” (which, the reviewer thought, led him to “extravagant”
remarks at times), s/he noted that the historian was never drawn “into the
slightest misrepresentation in his account of facts”—impartiality was Mill’s
most remarkable trait as a historian. In short, “No person can rise from the
perusal of it [i.e. Mill’s work] without being conscious that his mind has
been enriched with new views of human society”. According to the
reviewer, the History was read only as a work of instruction, without
kindling “any sympathetic emotion”. Still, Mill himself “is on a level with
other modern historians, who […] address themselves exclusively to the
understanding”.54
Like the British Review, Walter Coulson’s review in the Edinburgh
Review exalted Mill’s skills and abilities.55 While Mill was modest on
whether or not he himself possessed the necessary traits of the historian he
had sketched, Coulson spent no time debating: Mill possessed all of them
“in perfection”. However, according to Coulson—Bentham’s former
amanuensis—Mill lacked a power of imagination and passion which at
times made for dry narration.56 The Eclectic Review author did not agree:
Mill’s prose “is always, clear, vigorous, and distinct, and not unfrequently
characterised by as much of polish and ornament as can well consist with
closeness and strength”.57 Probably, this was a backhanded compliment,
since, in the old debate between Rhetoric and Logic, as we shall see in
Chapter 2, ornament and close reasoning went largely against each other.
The British Critic—a periodical with Church of England affiliations—had
already published a considerably shorter review, offering a rudimentary
glance over the subject matter, generally admiring of the History’s “great
merit, and […] very unusual value”.58 However “masterly” was Mill’s
performance, the critic painted in a stronger light the deficiencies already
identified by the British Review: abstract theorizing and cold statement of
facts without eloquence made reading a book, on an issue of undeniably
national importance, a difficult exercise. What made things worse,
according to the British Critic, the historian was impartial to a fault, with “a
cold-heartedness in his manner, and a feeling of indifference towards his
country, which ever and anon alienate from him the affection of his reader,
and throw his best virtues into the shade”.59 When Mill took a shot at
eloquence—calculated to act on social sympathies and excite admiration for
the exhibition of public virtue60—it was viewed by the British Critic author
as ill-directed: the historian emphasized the public virtue of two foreigners,
Frenchmen no less—very recently enemies of Britain.61
Mill could have worn the British Critic’s accusation of “too much
impartiality” as a badge of honor—his motto was “Amicus Socrates, amicus
Plato, sed magis amica Veritas”.62 As we saw, impartiality in judging and
sifting evidence was a trait of philosophic histories. The Monthly Review
was the first to recognize in Mill a “philosophical historian”.63 Thanks to
paying lip service to no authority as regards India, the reviewer noted, the
historian had managed to trace “the progress of the human race from
barbarity to refinement”. In short, India was half-civilized at best—there
were no vestiges of advanced civilization, no cultural decline, as there had
never been a high civilization in India in the first place. Mill had thus
cleared through the fog of embellished claims which created the illusion of
the cultural and material riches of India. All reviewers were agreed: Indian
cultural achievements had been grossly exaggerated, and Mill had done a
great service to the government of India in exposing the backwardness of its
people.64
With the exception of Coulson, the reasons why these reviewers saw
value in the conclusions as regards India’s societal state only partly
coincided with Mill’s. The historian thought that understanding the actual
state of Indian society would promote better administration, first, by
highlighting the futility of exporting English institutions to a foreign
country, and thus examining the merit of British policies in India—i.e.,
whether they produce “utility or mischief”.65 Second, by seeing the value in
bridging the gap between rulers and ruled by increasing the numbers of
British people in India (both serving as an intermediary between rulers and
ruled and as moral examples). And, third, by providing an apparatus to the
British people in evaluating British rule in India—the standard, as we saw,
was the welfare of the people of India themselves. Of the three, the last
seemed the most important, as the same apparatus could be used to similar
advantage at home.
The British Review critic agreed with Mill that increasing knowledge of
Indian affairs would lead to their better management, whether that involved
better monitoring of parliamentary processes or executive decisions on
Indian soil. While the anonymous reviewer followed Mill’s general
conclusion in reference to the state of civilization in India; s/he rejected
many of his specific conclusions, especially those which had direct or
indirect bearing to how things were done at home. For example, the
reviewer was not so fond of Mill’s trust in “artificial” hypotheses and in
“positive institution” as regards the origin of the Hindu caste system.
Rather, s/he thought that the “spontaneous course of human affairs” had led
to the separation of people into different employments. The problem with
the caste system was that there was no political power vested in the higher
classes, to guard against oppression, leading indeed to “despotism in its
rudest shape”. The reviewer criticized Mill for confusing “rights created by
positive law, with rights which depend wholly on the general principle of
utility”. The historian’s confusion, the reviewer went on, led him to argue
that in order for the sovereign to have legitimate authority, the sovereign
“must take no more than is necessary, and it must take what is necessary in
the least hurtful way”. Thus, “Mr. Mill limits the right by the principle of
utility; but the question is, what is the sovereign entitled to take, according
to the existing system—not, what would it be for the public benefit that he
should be entitled to take”. In like manner, the reviewer rejected Mill’s
opinion that the intricate legal system should be simplified in order for the
people to be able to understand and abide by it: it is “chimerical” to hope
that untrained minds could understand the multitude of relations and the
many modes of acquisition and alienation of property that exist in a
community. The disagreement between reviewer and author in reference to
law went even deeper: “We think that the English law makes a wise choice,
and shall continue to think so, till Mr. Mill can adduce an instance of a
country where pure justice is administered in the expeditious mode to which
he is so partial”, i.e. the method of immediate, direct, simple
investigation.66
For Coulson, on the contrary, the illusion of an advanced culture and of a
territory with unlimited resources blinded even those who were accustomed
to inquire into political matters. Coulson saw Mill’s account as a call to the
British people “to ensure the utmost vigilance and probity on the part of
their delegated masters” since “the distance from the seat of government,
and the abjectness and ignorance of the people” of India made good
government impossible. The “necessity of inspection” was substituted by
apathy precisely because of the myth of high civilization, but also because
the materials for “sound information” were not readily available: “not one
question had been put, in the British Parliament, respecting the condition of
the fifty millions of Hindoos over whom that body possesses a Sovereign
power, and is bound, if there be any reciprocity of duties between rulers and
subjects, to exert a Sovereign’s care”.67
It was precisely the last feature which made Coulson’s review in the
Edinburgh Review atypical for an Edinburgh Review piece. First, Coulson
accepted Mill’s principle that better knowledge leads to better management;
and one gains better knowledge when one sees through eyes free of the
“interest in praising all its [i.e. the management’s] acts”. Second, Coulson
agreed there were insufficient securities against abuse: no shame, no
sympathy, and no dread of revolution in India as there was no public
opinion, no common interests with the ruled and no substantial means of
uprising for the ruled. Finally, Coulson’s review followed Mill’s discussion
of managerial forms and accepted that the “aristocratic” part of the
administration of India co-operated with the “monarchical” part to pursue
their own interests against those of the “democratic” part.68 However, all
three “theoretical” ideas provided the foundation for the Benthamite
(radical) contribution in the discussion for parliamentary reform—later in
the same issue of the Edinburgh Review, James Mackintosh respectfully
disagreed with Jeremy Bentham’s Plan of Parliamentary Reform (1817),
where Bentham had argued that none of the above securities existed in
Britain, leading to the people’s ruin.69
For the British Critic, the English people had indeed a duty of improving
the condition of the millions of Indians. However, that duty would be better
served by teaching morality as well as industry by example, as in teaching
children—drawing an analogy between “rude” people and children was
another side-effect of classical education.70 Since “they must see the effects
of religion in restraining bad passions, and in improving a rational
philanthropy in every department of social intercourse”, “a pretty extensive
colonization” by “better teachers than a dissolute soldiery” was a requisite.
Only then would “their subjection to a Christian and enlightened
Government [be] a blessing to themselves”. The British Critic thus found
hope in the zeal exhibited by a “small church establishment” established at
Calcutta.71 The Eclectic Review seemed to agree with the British Critic on
the beneficial influence of Christianity in India, noting that Mill, by giving
priority to the civilizing effect of “philosophy” rather than religion, left
“himself open to the suspicion” of non-belief, even though the historian
never “[stooped] to speak disrespectfully of Christianity”.72 Certainly, the
Eclectic Review author had a point; Mill was aware that having “an opinion
contrary to that of the world”, such as his religious beliefs, “could not
prudently be avowed to the world”.73
In 1815, having just published a review on Dugald Stewart in the British
Review under Roberts, Mill was “proud” of himself that he managed to
make “a jugical review preach flat atheism”.74 Three years later, when the
time came for a review of Mill’s History, the British Review was not
“fooled” again. From early on the reviewer established that “Mr. Mill in his
remarks on India institutions and India politics has a constant reference to
the institutions and politics of England”.75 Likewise, the Eclectic Review
critic pointed out Mill’s back and forth between India and England but with
explicit reference to the constitution; the reviewer criticized Mill for
depicting the British form of government in much bleaker colors than what
was “really” the case.76 Although the author rejected Mill’s radical
conclusions, s/he at times did praise his condemnation of certain
institutions, such as “lawyer-craft”.77 Similarly, the Monthly Review took
notice of Mill’s attacks on British institutions, but not quite as critically as
other reviews. Noting that the historian belonged to the “liberal school”, the
reviewer had more to say about his style when criticizing English practices,
referring to his frequent “dogmatic abruptness”, such as his scorn for
“practical statesmen”. But, the author pointed out, had Mill been more
moderate and careful in the presentation of his claims, he would have lent
himself to more sympathetic ears: Mill’s reasoning was “more vulnerable in
the form than in the substance”. Still, the reviewer did not seem to follow
wholeheartedly Mill’s censures of British institutions.78
Mill’s reviewers were reluctant to follow him in his radical conclusions;
they were also not impressed by his limited display of “imagination and
sympathy”. Nevertheless, Mill’s History was instantly recognized as the
work of a master on British India. One thing was clear to the Monthly
Review critic: “the author of such a work will make a false calculation if he
enters into new topics for the sake of reputation: he has merely to revise the
old, to recast and to polish”.79 By the time this remark appeared, in August
1821, Mill had already published his Elements of Political Economy
(1821a) and stand-alone versions of essays published in the Supplement to
the Encyclopaedia Britannica, e.g., that of government (1821c). As we shall
see, the Monthly Review’s remark is dramatically ironic.

II The fall of Bentham’s Lieutenant

Long after the History was published, Grote would not hesitate to praise its
author:
We know no work which surpasses his History of British India in the main excellences
attainable by historical writers: industrious accumulation, continued for many years, of
original authorities; careful and conscientious criticism of their statements; and a large
command of psychological analysis, enabling the author to interpret phenomena of society,
both extremely complicated, and far removed from his own personal experience.80

In reality, however, it was not long before the “model historian”,81 who
produced “the greatest historical labour that has appeared since the days of
Gibbon”,82 became completely forgotten. In 1854, less than twenty years
after Mill’s death, his son complained that “[t]here is hardly a more striking
example of the worthlessness of posthumous reputation than the oblivion
into which my father has fallen among the world at large”.83
In this section, I investigate what led to the complete reversal of Mill’s
fame. For example, by 1840, Horace Hayman Wilson’s new edition of the
History identified “inaccuracies both of fact and opinion”. These were
thought to be due to the historian’s “imperfect knowledge of the country,
and acquaintance with any of the languages spoken in it”—qualities which,
as we saw, Mill had convinced his early reviewers to be unnecessary, and
even inimical, to the task of writing a history of British India. Wilson, in
editing the History, could have followed, with just slight modifications,
Mill’s own advice on the need for a new edition of David Hume’s historical
work:
If anyone were to publish an edition of his history with notes pointing out the eagerness with
which he has used not only lawful but poisoned arms against religion and liberty, exposing
 the unfounded assertions, the weak reflections, and the barbarous phraseology which he so
often employs, he would abate that false admiration so long attached to his works, and confer
a great obligation upon the public.84

What was worse for Mill, Wilson traced the origin of “harsh and illiberal”
administrative conduct in India, “wholly incompatible with the full and
faithful discharge of their [i.e., the administrators’] obligation to
Government and to the people”, to “impressions imbibed in early life from
the History of Mr Mill” (as the History became a textbook at East India
colleges). The effect of the History was thus the reverse of the one
intended.85
By the time Wilson’s edition of the History appeared, Wilson was
preaching to the choir. Mill’s History received much criticism by
Orientalists like Wilson in the 1820s. However, it was the negative
reception of Mill’s encyclopaedic entries which would tip the scale against
him. The prevalent depiction of Mill as “the rationalist, the maker of
syllogisms, the geometrician”86 has its origin in a series of works discussing
Mill’s historical method, philosophical outlook and political views from
1825 onwards. In what follows, I divide the various discussions of Mill’s
works into two groups. In the first part, I focus on three unconvinced critics
of Mill’s History: Alexander Walker (1765–1832), William Hazlitt (1778–
1830) and Frederick D. Maurice (1805–1872). As all three voices are
echoed in recent discussions of Mill’s History, grouping them together
makes for easy reference, even though Hazlitt’s critique has less to do with
Mill’s History than with the Benthamite philosophical outlook more
broadly. In the second part, the attention moves from Mill’s History to his
Encyclopaedia Britannica essays, specifically the essay on government, via
critics such as William Thompson (1775–1833), Leveson Smith, and
Thomas Babington Macaulay. James Mill’s nineteenth-century portrait is
completed with some strokes from John Stuart Mill and Thomas Carlyle
(1795–1881) via Charles Dickens (1812–1870).

Dissenting voices, part one: deconstructing James Mill

Mill made the acquaintance of Alexander Walker soon after the publication
of his History. By then, Walker was retired with the rank of Lieutenant-
Colonel from a long and honorable military service in India. He considered
the abolition of female infanticide practiced by Jarejah Raj-puts, “solely
effected by persuasion and reason”, to be his greatest triumph.87 Walker
achieved the effect by getting community Chiefs to renounce the practice as
discordant to the true faith, for a price—figuratively and literally. Still,
Walker was convinced that “it is not too much to expect, that the instruction
and lights they have lately received, may produce a beneficial change in
their sentiments”.88 In Walker’s recounting of the incident, there was a
contrast between the motives of the Raj-puts and those of the Company—
selfish versus altruistic.89
As Mill was preparing the second edition of his History, Walker was
about to go through the first. Mill, naturally, kindly asked Walker to “place
a sheet of paper by your side when you read, and jot down your strictures as
you proceed”; he also asked Walker to “mark well the points on which you
think that I am materially wrong”. The historian then promised “I shall
carefully reconsider the grounds of those opinions from which you dissent
[…] and shall faithfully adhere to the side to which the balance of evidence
appears to me to incline”. Even though Walker could disagree on facts, Mill
thought that Walker would not disagree with him on the moral side of the
issue—in his book “the interests of truth and humanity [were] sincerely
pursued”.90 Walker accepted the invitation and acknowledged the
historian’s sincerity.91
In the ensuing correspondence, Walker highlighted two very important
errors: Mill’s assessment of the state of Hindu civilization and of the
character of the people of India. In the first case, Walker suggested the very
idea of civilization was contested, having no “fixed standard of
comparison”. For example, in Greek states, Walker argued, there was no
question about the freedom, the comfort and the happiness of individuals
and communities; at the same time, however, they had quite barbarous
practices and customs. Likewise, in the times of Bacon and Newton, “many
innocent creatures were put to death for witchcraft”—Charles I himself
consulted astrologers. Even in their own day, Walker pressed, surveying
Europe, one will find governments “resisting the progress of improvement.
An abundance of errors and ignorance will be found to pervade every
country”. Then he drove the point home:
 If we were to examine and scrutinize the institutions and manners of the people who appear to
us the most highly civilized, we shall find them far from a perfect state; nay in many respects
they would deserve the name of barbarians. I confess myself quite at a loss what criterion to
assume for fixing the point of civilization unless it be either some ancient or modern nation
who may appear to have stood the highest in the scale; for any other test must be imaginary.
We may select some particular record of history of more honesty and probity and in which the
business of government was understood with more intelligence and attention to happiness;
but this will be found to have been owing to some powerful mind and individual and some
fortunate occurrences rather than to any fast rooted system in the government or the society.

Walker admitted that some admirers of Indian civilization “may have over-
rated their claims”. He highlighted however that “there seems a general
disposition in this country to undervalue” Indians; he criticized Mill in
placing them “far too low” in the scale of civilizations.92
In his reply on November 6, Mill conceded all the points to Walker. He
admitted that he “may have leant too strongly to the other side” against
Orientalists having found that their mistaken attribution of a high
civilization in India had led British rulers to many injustices. Mill
responded that the evidence he presented, that “long and minute induction”
of particulars, led to the conclusion that Hindu civilization had advanced
just short of Britain under the rule of Henry IV.93 Walker was not
convinced. He retorted that Hindu civilization was in a better condition than
fourteenth-century Europe in terms of the “arts of regular life”, science and
moral virtues. He added, “I am ready to admit that the state of society in
India is very unequal, but it every where affords traces of having been once
in a superior condition and in some situations it is equal to what we can
generally at present produce in Europe”. Walker urged Mill to compare
European and Indian soldiers when encamped together; “in all the essential
qualities of temperance, decency and morals, the comparative estimate was
in favour of the sepoys”.94
In the last letter quoted above, Walker voiced another objection to Mill’s
sketch of the Hindus: “you have taken a dark and a severe view of the
Hindu character which does not agree either with my experience or
observation”. He confessed that he had started “to think that there is little
chance of introducing any great change” in Mill’s sentiments, simply
because the historian reached them “under the most sincere impression of
their truth”. Walker then added:
 For the sake of the Hindus and their amelioration this is unfortunate. It will add to the state of
disgrace and reproach under which they already labour with many people; and the authority
of your name will be produced to sink them still lower in the scale of society. The continual
association of immorality and vice with their character will only expose them to the further
contumely and contempt of our countrymen who are appointed to rule over them. I know that
this is the very reverse of your intention, but such is the tendency of our nature and such is the
spirit that I have often had occasion to check in its exercise.95

For Walker, East India officers were not in a position to form accurate ideas
of the character of Indians. Seldom did they come into contact with the
natives in their private lives; more importantly, “the degrading treatment of
the natives by Europeans […] has banished from their company, natives of
spirit and of high pretensions”. What was worse, “[it] has in fact become
the interest and from thence the habit, of the Company’s servants to hold
out unfavourable opinion of the people of India”.96
Although Walker had retired from India House affairs, he continued his
efforts to goad the East India Company into action on female infanticide,
especially between 1817 and 1819—on the close of ten years since his
negotiations with the Jahrejahs. As very little progress had been achieved in
the time since, the East India Company was contemplating changing
strategy. Just two months before the commencement of his correspondence
with Mill, Walker addressed a letter to the Court of Directors of East India
insisting that female infanticide should be suppressed without recourse to
coercive methods (as proposed by Walker’s former associates).97 It seems
that Walker feared that Mill’s History would rationalize the need for, and
convince of the efficacy of, such methods.
Walker was not the only one who thought Mill’s depiction of Hindus was
flawed. Between December 1818 and March 1819 in letters to the editor of
the Asiatic Journal, “Yavat-Tavat” and “Sadik” charged Mill with
misrepresenting Hindu civilization. Examining Mill’s treatment of Hindu
algebra, Yavat-Tavat accused him of being “grossly prejudiced” against the
Hindus and of misstating facts or ignoring sources to fit his narrative of the
low state of Hindu civilization.98 Sadik thought that never setting foot in
India vitiated Mill’s ability “to make a fair estimate of evidence relating to
what is Indian”—s/he focused on Mill’s treatment of Hindu agriculture.
Sadik amply acknowledged Mill’s efforts in writing such a history with an
“independent spirit”; s/he also pointed out what he was up against: “[a] true
disciple of Jeremy Bentham, and a severe censor of political conduct, Mr.
Mill may bring down upon himself a swarm of English lawyers, and of
Anglo-Indian politicians, for he spared neither them nor their heroes”.
However, not only did Sadik think that a sojourn in India would have
allowed Mill better to assess the evidence he had in front of him; most
importantly, s/he thought that the historian had “withheld testimonies which
are favourable to them [Hindus]”: “[h]aving a set of preconceived opinions
adverse to the Hindus, this gentleman, from all his reading, seems to have
selected only such matters as accord with those opinions”.99 Both Yavat-
Tavat and Sadik thought that Mill’s treatment of these two aspects of Hindu
civilization100 was indicative of selectiveness and, more or less, evidence-
tampering throughout the discussion of Hindu civilization—not of
impartiality and fairness. Francis Whyte Ellis and Vans Kennedy made
similar charges, though with much more detail and strength, in late 1818
and early 1820 in Literary Societies in Chennai (Madras) and Mumbai
(Bombay), on Hindu law and morality, respectively. Like Walker and the
Asiatic Journal correspondents, they accused Mill of grossly
misrepresenting Hindu character. They thought Mill “careless and ignorant”
primarily because he had not been to India and was too trusting on
authority.101 Mill could not have heard the lectures of these two critics
when they were delivered; he and others could have read them only after his
fame as the historian of British India was established.102 For example, John
Crawfurd’s History of Indian Archipelago (1820) hailed Mill for providing
“a satisfactory refutation of the pernicious prejudice that an Indian
residence is indispensable to an understanding of Indian affairs”.103
The above discussion leads us to another unconvinced critic of Mill:
William Hazlitt. The disagreement between Mill and Hazlitt was at a more
fundamental level: the a priori or “theoretical” nature of Benthamite
utilitarianism. Hazlitt drew a bleak sketch of Bentham and “his school of
thought” in a number of short essays in the 1820s, amounting to a sort of a
series of “philippic[s] against Bentham”.104 Although Mill was mostly
absent in Hazlitt’s attacks on Benthamite utilitarianism, he was not simply
guilty by association:
one of this school of thinkers declares that he was qualified to write a better History of India
from having never been there than if he had, as the last might lead to local distinctions or
 party-prejudices; that is to say, that he could describe a country better at second-hand than
from original observation, or that from having seen no one object, place, or person, he could
do ampler justice to the whole. It might be maintained, much on the same principle, that an
artist would paint a better likeness of a person after he was dead from description or different
sketches of the face, than from having seen the individual living man.105

Hazlitt objected to Mill’s attempt to present a glaring weakness to his

history as a strength—just like the Sophists were trying to make a weak
argument actually appear stronger (“τὸν ἥττω λόγον κρείττω ποιεῖν”).106
What was more, the historian’s method rendered him a member “of the dry
and husky class” of “people who have no notion of any thing but
generalities, and forms, and creeds, and naked propositions”, setting aside
the ability to feel for fellow human beings. Hazlitt protested however that
“Truth does not lie in vacuo, any more than in a well. We must improve our
concrete experience of persons and things into the contemplation of general
rules and principles; but without being grounded in individual facts and
feelings, we shall end as we began, in ignorance”.107
Drawing on the familiar antithesis between theory and practice, Hazlitt
argued that abstraction, generalization, in short theorizing, was not the only
thing that was wrong with Bentham’s philosophy; Bentham’s utilitarianism
was one-sided, recognizing nothing else as constitutive of human nature
other than reason.108 It was a philosophy which lacked an intermediate
ground between calculation and action: rules, principles, and habit.109 More
importantly, Hazlitt argued:
We must have some outstanding object for the mind, as well as the eye, to dwell on and recur
to—something marked and decisive to give a tone and texture to the moral feelings. Not only
is the attention thus roused and kept alive; but what is most important as to the principles of
action, the desire of good or hatred of evil is powerfully excited. But all individual facts and
history come under the head of what these people call Imagination.110

Imagination, for Hazlitt, works in effect instinctively.111 “Passion”, Hazlitt

noted, “is the essence, the chief ingredient in moral truth; and the warmth of
passion is sure to kindle the light of imagination on the objects around it”;
this means, however, that “whether a thing is good or evil, depends on the
quantity of passion, of feeling, of pleasure and pain connected with it, and
with which we must be made acquainted in order to come to a sound
conclusion”.112
 Similarly, in his 1829 “Sects and Parties”—published amidst a heated
debate on utilitarian logic and politics between the Westminster Review and
Edinburgh Review—Hazlitt added to the popular perception of Benthamites
as “reasoning machines”.113 “Man is not a machine”, Hazlitt protested;
mechanical rules thus do not apply: “[T]he decisions of abstract reason
would apply to what men might do if all men were philosophers: but if all
men were philosophers, there would be no need of systems of philosophy!”
Alluding to the felicific calculus, Hazlitt pointed out that Bentham’s
“logical apparatus, which will work infallibly and perform wonders, taking
it for granted that his principles and definitions are universally true and
intelligible” simply cannot do what it was intended to do.114 Hazlitt thus
objected to Benthamite utilitarianism’s demand of impartiality.115 To this
effect, criticizing the cosmopolitan character of utilitarianism, courtesy of
Stoic philosophy, Hazlitt added: “we must draw the circle of our affections
and duties somewhat closer”.116 “Feelings”, as Hazlitt’s “Sentimentalist”
pointed out, “cannot be made to keep pace with our bare knowledge of
existence or of truth; nor can the affections be disjoined from the
impressions of time, place, and circumstance, without destroying their vital
principle”.117
In 1828, Frederick Denison Maurice imitated Hazlitt’s column “Spirits of
the Age”; and drew a number of “Sketches of Contemporary Authors” of
his own. Their subject matter coincided frequently—they both discussed,
inter alia, James Mackintosh, Lord Byron, Walter Scott, William
Wordsworth, Francis Jeffrey. Jeremy Bentham was Hazlitt’s first “spirit”;
James Mill was Maurice’s penultimate “sketch”.
For Maurice,118 Mill’s mode of thinking and writing can be summarized
thus:
Take the system of the human mind of Locke, the theory of religion of Hume, the principles
of government and legislation of Bentham, and the political economy of Ricardo; deprive
these of all which made them peculiarly the property of their inventors, of all their air of
originality, of all their individual lineaments, and join them together in one mass, and you
have the creed of the Historian of British India. But many of the doctrines which he holds
have undoubtedly been stated by him more clearly than by any one else; and in his great work
he has applied them to a wide range of subjects, and supported them in appearance by such a
multiplicity of facts, that it certainly deserves to be held among the oracular books of the sect.
Maurice, soon to be a close friend to John Stuart Mill, applied Hazlitt’s
critique of Benthamite one-sidedness to James Mill; at the same time, and
with no way of knowing, Maurice repeated Walker’s critique of Mill’s
failure to look behind the surface of reports on Indian society, to understand
its “real” character.
Philosophical ability, according to Maurice, involved “the deducing
subtle conclusions from vast and complicated premises, and the binding
together and arranging masses of disjointed facts by the application of great
general laws”.119 But that was half of the philosopher’s task. Mill failed to
harmonize “logical perfection with the strength of sentiment”. He failed as
a philosopher because he missed that
[l]ike the fountain, which nourishes the roots of the oak, a feeling lies deep and fresh at the
root of all valuable moral truths. It goes along with them in all their progress; and if we find
that which professes to be such a truth, unaccompanied by this inward life, we may be sure
that it is either an error, or the produce of some other mind[.]

For Maurice, the task of the philosopher is to teach his age “that there are
many faculties in the mind”; all—“beauty, morality, religion, truth”—must
be cultivated, without resolving any one into the other. What was more, for
Maurice
If we cultivate the understanding, and make it the guide and master of the feelings, their
natural goodness will be entirely stifled or perverted; and it is only in the full development of
these, that happiness and virtue are to be found. But if we cherish, in the first place, all the
better impulses, and let them govern both the understanding and the reason, as their
instruments, the intellectual powers will be called forth just as strongly as if their perfection
were the final object of desire, and instead of being limited to our personal sphere, will be
taught to expand more widely, and to embrace to every portion of which the free sympathies
of man will more nearly or more distantly unite him.120

Thus, just like Hazlitt, Maurice argued that Mill was one of those “single-
motive” theorists of Bentham’s stamp who failed to see beyond self-
interest. Unlike Hazlitt, Maurice agreed with the utilitarians on expanding
the “circle of sympathy”—still, Maurice thought virtue impossible on
utilitarian intellectualist grounds.
Maurice’s treatment of Mill’s History was rather the reverse of its
reviewers (Coulson excepted). For example, Maurice applauded Mill’s
treatment of British statesmanship. Unlike Mill’s reviewers, Maurice found
Mill’s work to be useful “to every benevolent reformer who has accustomed
his mind to trace and to lament the influence of bad institutions on national
well-being”. Of course, Maurice did not go as far as Mill either in the extent
or the manner of change needed. He noted
Every nation has within itself the germs and types of those institutions which are the most
likely to produce its happiness, and which can alone be in conformity with its hereditary
spirit. But these institutions must needs be altered, to fit them to the varying occasions and
silent revolutions of society.121

Relatedly, Maurice, like Walker, found “no clear account of what

‘civilization’ is” in Mill’s treatment of Indian institutions. According to
Maurice, the historian missed something which could not be found in
administrative reports and blue books; something which no one writing in a
“closet” could ever find: “every portion of mankind, […] every age”,
Maurice noted, has been assigned a “peculiar character”—”these epochs
and modes of national existence”, he explained, “were each of them as
marked in their own individual being as are single men”.122 Maurice’s
criticism reflected what Hazlitt was saying when the latter stated that “I
humbly conceive that the seeing half a dozen wandering Lascars in the
streets of London gives one a better idea of the soul of India, that cradle of
the world, and (as it were) garden of the sun, than all the charts, records,
and statistical reports that can be sent over”.123
Like Walker, Maurice saw in the elder Mill “a person of unwearied
diligence, of great acuteness, of well-compacted and highly disciplined
intellect; and above all, of a strong and large benevolence”. However,
making connections between History and Mill’s essay on government,
Maurice charged the historian with failing to take into account that “[t]here
is a growth and progress of a people which acts from an interior law of its
own, and makes the application to it at any period, of a merely abstract
theory, a folly and an impossibility”. To understand the laws, institutions,
the literature and religion of a community—that is, its level of civilization
—the philosopher needs “to seize the idea on which their social system is
founded”. The same institutions cannot be applied to any place, at any time;
Mill was thus blind to what type of changes would have worked in India—
his universalist principles were not suited for capturing the particularities of
Indian society. For Maurice, Mill’s blindness was reinforced by his inability
to admit “that a great truth cannot have been the contemporaneous produce
of the same mind as a host of errors, all of which that truth excludes”.
In 1828 and 1829 the Asiatic Journal published two critiques of Mill’s
History. Ten years after the original laudatory review of Mill’s History in
the journal, nothing of that review made it into these two short notices. The
first notice, planned to inaugurate a series of critical notices on Mill’s
History, focused on Mill’s negative treatment of the East India Company. It
was the only notice criticizing explicitly this aspect of Mill’s work.
Interestingly, the author did not make any use of the fact that Mill by 1828
had quickly risen through the ranks at Leadenhall Street. Like Yavat-Tavat
and Sadik in late 1818 and early 1819, the author of the projected series of
critical notices (a plan which fell through) intended to combat the
“exaggerated idea” concerning “the accuracy of this writer [James Mill]
with regard to facts”.124 The author thought that the series, through “the
exposure of […] [Mill’s] errors”, would “diminish his general authority as a
writer; it will prove him not to be that historical and political oracle which
he imagines himself to be, and which, there is reason to believe, he is
considered by many others”.125 Making the same point as regards Mill’s
treatment of facts, the second notice focused on specific incidents in Mill’s
narration:
It will then be a fit occasion to point out other, and perhaps, more momentous, misstatements,
as well as defects, both of matter and arrangement, which blemish and considerably impair
the utility of the elaborate work of Mr. Mill, a writer who is to be watched with the more
caution, since he has sufficient ability not merely to conceal his errors, but sometimes to
recommend and enforce them. It will above all be requisite to point out to the student of
Indian history his deep and vital mistakes, his unjust and indefensible prejudices, in nearly all
that relates to the law, the ethics, the moral condition, the manners, the science, and literature
of Hindostan; mistakes into which he has been betrayed by an ill-fated adoption of partial and
incompetent authorities, and the systematic rejection of testimony which, whether
preponderant or not, ought at least to have been candidly weighed against them.126

Whereas the first notice unambiguously called for a new history of British
India, the second simply pointed out Mill’s erroneous method of a “critical”
or a “philosophical” history, one which was liable to become subservient to
creeds and dogmas.127 Both authors agreed that Mill was an iconoclast with
an indefatigable zeal for demolition, but, for the second author (rather
Maurice-like), even though Mill managed to translate the “language of
Bentham […] into the language of society and good-breeding”, the a priori
rules of Bentham’s school receive “no exceptions, no modifications from
extrinsic circumstances” and the “wants and conditions of specific
communities, and the reverence and affection with which those
communities may cling to them [e.g., manners, practices, laws], go for
nothing”.128 Thus, the negative reception of Mill’s articles in the
Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica spilled over into judgments on
his History.

Dissenting voices, part two: solidifying James Mill’s caricature

James Mill and Macvey Napier, the editor of the Supplement to the
Encyclopaedia Britannica, met sometime in May 1814 to discuss how Mill
could be of assistance to Napier’s project. Over the years, they exchanged
ideas on a number of prospective subjects. By 1816, the two men were in
communication specifically about Mill’s article on government. Five years
later, with completely different personal and professional circumstances for
Mill, they would still be in communication for potential contributions to the
Supplement.129
The essay “Government” was first published in the Supplement in
September 1820. For the moment, suffice it to say that Mill’s well-known
work put forward a simple argument: individuals seek happiness and avoid
misery, securing the means to happiness requires labor and labor requires
pain; appropriating the outcome of the labor of others, i.e., exercising power
over others, is a less painful way to secure the means to happiness. Human
nature does not change in a political/social union: while the power of
government is supposed to protect individuals in their pursuit of happiness,
it often abuses that power for the benefit of the ruling classes. The only
security against the abuse of power is to diffuse that power across the whole
community, identifying the interests of the rulers with those of the ruled.
However, since comprehensive participation in community matters is akin
to a physical impossibility, the only tolerable way to secure that
identification is through representation—the first, and most necessary, step
in securing a government with appropriate “checks” in place. How is that
representation achieved? With frequent elections and the vote vested in men
over forty, with some property.
Not until 1825 did the first sustained critique of Mill’s argument appear.
By then, to Mill’s satisfaction, “Government” and some of his other
contributions to the Supplement had become “the text-books of the young
men of the Union at Cambridge”,130 when a number of Mill’s essays made
it into a single volume rather than various reprints circulating privately.
Around this time, a second—expanded—collection appeared, the review of
which led to a full-blown dispute between the Edinburgh Review and
Westminster Review both on methodological and political grounds. Here, I
briefly track the key notices from friendly and not so friendly pens which
not only created but also essentially solidified the caricature of James Mill.
William Thompson was the first to present an argument countering
Mill’s. Thompson found the historian’s reluctance to alter the paragraph, in
which (in two lines) the interests of women were subsumed in those of their
over-forty husbands or fathers (or sons or brothers), to call for an extensive
reply. Thompson did not have to try hard to demolish Mill’s argument; he
did not even have to use premises not admitted by him. Mill’s arbitrary
identification of interests, Thompson pointed out, had three possible
explanations: a. women are incapable of becoming rational and susceptible
to happiness like men (the old Aristotelian thesis); b. “might makes right”,
and men are stronger than women; c. man’s insatiable desire for power for
some reason does not apply in their relationships with women. Mill’s view,
Thompson noted, that the interest almost of all women “is involved either in
that of their fathers or in that of their husbands” was “refined sophistry”.131
Mill’s “grand governing law of human nature”, Thompson argued, is that
the demand of power of all human beings over their fellow-creatures, where not restrained by
checks, is boundless, as well in the number of persons over whom it would extend, as in its
degree over the actions of each; and would reduce each and all, if unrestrained, at least to the
condition of negroes in the West Indies.132

The reference to a “grand governing law” could have been simply rhetorical
fanfare. Thompson thus allowed a certain leeway to the historian:
Under the existing and all past circumstances of society, Mr. Mill’s proposition is doubtless
correct as applied to the immense majority of men: while these or similar circumstances
 operate upon them, men will, almost universally, use power for their own exclusive, obvious
and immediate, benefit.133

Thompson did not necessarily agree that the majority of men act in the
manner described by Mill for the reasons suggested. Still, by subsuming the
interests of women under those of men, Mill denied even the circumspect
version of the principles he himself used. How could Mill argue that human
beings operate only under self-interest, while in so important a part of men’s
life—in their associations with women—they exhibit sympathy and
benevolence? At the same time, Mill undermined his own utilitarian
argument, Thompson noted: assuming that adults were half of the
population, and that women formed also half of the population, then the
25% adult men decided on the happiness of the 75% children and women,
without sufficient checks to protect against the adult man’s insatiable desire
for power over others. On Mill’s own grounds, Thompson argued, since that
representative government affords that security, women also must be
granted access to legislative assemblies. Thompson did not venture to
speculate why Mill failed to see such an obvious error in his reasoning.
However, he did mention:
“Women and children!” how contemptuous the classification! weakness and ignorance the
common qualities! what volumes it speaks as to the sympathy and respect of the writer for the
equal capacity of enjoying, and therefore the equal right to enjoyment, of women and men. If
this writer possess women and children, it would be curious to observe how his principles
modify his conduct, whether their happiness is in his mind so identified and included in his as
to be taken for the same; and whether, if so, if he use so meekly over these his dependants that
almost despotic power which laws give him, such forbearance does not arise from that
superior knowledge and benevolence which would lead him to exercise aright similar power,
though equally unrestrained, over his fellow men.134

Thompson gave quite the blow to both Mill the philosopher and the man.
Before turning to Thomas Babington Macaulay, one should briefly pause
to consider a lesser-known notice of Mill’s essay. Published in 1827 from
the MS of Leveson Smith, at that time recently deceased, it did not feature
in any of the periodicals. Smith’s essay identified a number of faults with
the historian’s performance. There was an underlying hypocrisy in Mill’s
style. Mill was “a democratical politician, perpetually railing at priestly
juggleries and aristocratical exclusions”. However, Mill refused to use
“figurative and spirited writing”, a powerful aid in the popular
dissemination of his views. He essentially withheld “knowledge from the
majority of readers”, since his “austere, logical style can carry conviction
only to minds that from habit, or great natural powers of attention, are able
to follow a train of syllogistic deductions”.135 Furthermore, for Smith,
written in a tone marred with extreme dogmatism, Mill’s essay also evinced
narrow as well as trite views. For example, Mill did not account for the
internal sources of happiness (just the physical) and his focus on protecting
property was also blind to other important ends of human action.136 At the
same time, he failed to distinguish the temporary from the permanent good
of the majority. Mill could thus be charged with leaving the door open to
the poor majority to appropriate the property of the rich minority or causing
unnecessary pain to a wrongdoer to appease the masses.137 He agreed with
Mill that government ought to promote the interests of the community.
Smith disagreed however that the best way to achieve this was through
extensive participation. He considered two problems: practicability and
suitableness. With reference to practicability, Smith essentially repeated the
recent criticisms against universal suffrage in reviews of Jeremy Bentham’s
Plan of Parliamentary Reform.138 With reference to suitableness, Smith
argued that the “bulk of mankind are morally and intellectually incapable of
the direct and perpetual management of their political affairs”. A main
reason for this was the majority’s inability to refuse gratification of a
present good even in the prospect of enjoying a greater though remote
good: “if the majority of the community were intrusted with the affairs of
the body, it would not follow its own true interests—there would be sources
of error, passion, and ignorance; and over these there could be no control
from any balancing power”.139 In short, Smith found Mill’s essay a poorly
disguised tract for parliamentary reform. Its author had failed to prove that
entrusting legislative power to the majority, when one grants that it will not
always know its best from its worst interest, was a lesser evil than keeping
the present system.
Macaulay’s devastating critique loses much of its originality with
Hazlitt’s philippics against Benthamite utilitarianism, and Thompson’s,
Smith’s, and Maurice’s notices of Mill’s “Government”, in mind. As it was
published in the Edinburgh Review, Macaulay managed to do what the
others could not: compel the utilitarians to reply—John Stuart Mill even
credited Macaulay with forcing him to rethink about the utilitarian method
of politics.140
Macaulay began his review with the perceived strength of Mill’s essay:
“No man”, his admirers maintained, “who has understanding sufficient to
carry him through the first proposition of Euclid; can read this master-piece
of demonstration and honestly declare that he remains unconvinced”. If
Mill’s reasoning was what made his essay “perfect and unanswerable”, then
all Macaulay had to do was to show that the author’s reasoning either rested
on false principles or that there was a non sequitur involved, that is, either
Mill’s conclusion was unsound though valid, or that his conclusion was
invalid and thus, unsound. Macaulay, however, went for both. He had thus
good reason to start with the essay’s style:
The style which the Utilitarians admire, suits only those subjects on which it is possible to
reason a priori. It grew up with the verbal sophistry which flourished during the dark ages.
With that sophistry, it fell before the Baconian philosophy, in the day of the great deliverance
of the human mind. The inductive method not only endured, but required, greater freedom of
diction. It was impossible to reason from phenomena up to principles, to mark slight shades
of difference in quality, or to estimate the comparative effect of two opposite considerations
between which there was no common measure, by means of the naked and meagre jargon of
the schoolmen. Of those schoolmen, Mr Mill has inherited both the spirit and the style. He is
an Aristotelian of the fifteenth century, born out of due season.

There was something antiquarian in Mill’s method: “[c]ertain propensities

of Human Nature are assumed; and from these premises the whole science
of Politics is synthetically deduced!” Mill’s argument was no different than
arguing “from the nature of heat to the treatment of fever”. It had been a
long time since deduction, Macaulay added, had lost in its battle with
induction as the method of science.141
Macaulay’s main argument was that Mill’s a priori reasoning exposed
him to facts of everyday experience contradicting his theory. Not only did
Macaulay try to show how Mill’s premises did not correspond to actual
historical facts, but he also tried to show that Mill’s, and the utilitarians’,
view of human nature was incomplete: “Mr. Mill has chosen to look only at
one-half of human nature, and to reason on the motives which impel men to
oppress and despoil others, as if they were the only motives by which men
could possibly be influenced”.142 Although Macaulay agreed with the
school of Bentham that “men always act from self-interest”, he repeated
censures of earlier critics, such as those of Hazlitt and Maurice, pointing out
the Benthamites’ hostility to imagination, sensibility, and experience.
Macaulay agreed with Thompson as well: Mill both denied his own
principles by subsuming the interests of women to those of men and chose
to disregard the obvious contradiction of the identification of interests
between men and women with known societies: “without adducing one fact,
without taking the trouble to perplex the question by one sophism, he [Mill]
placidly dogmatizes away the interests of one half of the human race”.
However, like Smith, Macaulay applied the same critique to Mill’s most
important claim: that representative government, with a low property
qualification for suffrage, would lead to good government and protect
property. Macaulay argued that given Mill’s premises about human nature,
human interests, and human motivation, his conclusion ought to have been
that the poor majority would dispossess the rich minority of its property, not
that universal suffrage would establish the identity of interests between
rulers and ruled.143 Building on old foundations, Macaulay demolished
Mill’s pretensions to a convincing argument. Macaulay indeed proved that
not only was Mill’s method outdated by a couple of centuries, which
invalidated Mill’s claims to scientific principles, but also that Mill’s
unusually close and strong chain of inference from laws of human nature—
regarding the only security for good government (identity of interests via
universal suffrage)—was not as close and strong as Mill claimed it was.
In 1833, Edward Lytton Bulwer (1803–1873), in his book England and
the English, included a few observations on James Mill. It was put together
from rough notes by John Stuart Mill. Unlike in the case of Bulwer’s
section on Bentham, the younger Mill found his editorial meddling with the
supplied notes too extensive and too unfair: Bulwer had “cut and mangled
and coxcombified the whole thing till its mother would not know it”.144
Even though the younger Mill disowned writing it, the piece was typical of
his own treatment of his father’s works. On one hand, it quickly tried to
establish the elder Mill’s intellectual independence from Jeremy Bentham,
highlighting their differences as philosophers—Mill was the metaphysician
of the two—as well as dwelling on their differences in attention to detail—
Mill was impatient with details. On the other hand, it suggested that the
elder Mill’s better-known essays “have been both praised and animadverted
upon as if they claimed the character of complete scientific theories” rather
than “outlines to be filled up”.145 Additionally, the brief notice hastily
defended Mill against Macaulay, having already admitted to a proper basis
for criticism earlier in the notice. True, Mill’s principles were too narrow
and his application on too grand a scale. At the same time, however, the
notice was unrestrained in its praise for the practical effect of Mill’s
unpractical views: “few in our own times, we might say in any times, could
have accomplished what he has done”, since his works “have contributed
more than any publications of our time to generate a taste for systematic
thinking on the subject of politics, and to discredit vague and sentimental
declamation”. A man of deep moral convictions, the notice concluded,
writing in an age and state of society in transition, James Mill “rather warns
us against the errors that tend to make us miserable, than affords us the
belief that by any means we can attain to much positive happiness”.146
John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography was fuller in treating James Mill’s
ideas, views, and works, but did not essentially sketch a different picture of
him. As already mentioned, John Mill seemed to think he would have
rehabilitated his father’s memory; he did not. As Jack Stillinger has shown,
“the early chapters on [John Stuart] Mill’s education are usually read as just
the opposite of tribute: they are, more than anything else, an anguished
indictment of his father’s bad temper, cruelty, rigidity, and lack of
feeling”.147 James Mill, Donald Winch noted concisely,
seems to personify many of the worst characteristics of “steam intellect” utilitarianism. The
list of charges against him is formidable: he has been described as pedantic, dogmatic,
pontifical, narrow, austere and authoritarian. Readers of his son’s Autobiography will not be
able to avoid the impression of a stern, humourless disciplinarian, antipathetic to spontaneity
and feeling.148

The younger Mill’s Autobiography has carved in stone the popular

depictions of his father’s mode of thought. As William Thomas has put it,
“it is ironic that his pious revisions [in Autobiography] in favour of his
father’s views have led his readers to pity the pupil rather than admire the
teacher”.149
John Stuart Mill began writing the Autobiography in 1854; at the time, he
was actively thinking about his father’s legacy, as we saw, and the need to
identify and rectify the omissions of his father’s “system of opinion”.150 I
mention the timing of the Autobiography’s early-writing stages and the
younger Mill’s diary on account of a different reason: in April 1854,
Charles Dickens’s Hard Times began making its appearance. In said novel,
according to F.R. Leavis, one may identify two aspects of Victorian
utilitarianism in the characters of Gradgrind and Bounderby. Leavis claimed
that utilitarianism in Gradgrind, unlike in the case of Bounderby, “is a
serious creed, devoutly held, and so, if repellent (as the name conveys), not
wholly unrespectable”. “Yet”, Levis noted, Gradgrind
is represented as a kind of James Mill; an intellectual who gives his children, on theory, an
education that reminds us in a very significant way of the Autobiography of the younger Mill.
And it is hardly possible to question the justice of this vision of the tendency of James Mill’s
kind of Utilitarianism, so blind in its one-sidedness, so unaware of its bent and its
blindness.151

Don Habibi has recently noted in passing that “Charles Dickens, caricatured
[John Stuart] Mill’s emotion-starved upbringing and satirized utilitarianism
as the stern, bleak, unimaginative ‘Gradgrind’ school of education in Hard
Times”.152 However, according to K.F. Fielding, the identification was
both unfair to James Mill and unjustified by what his son wrote in the Autobiography. As far
as Dickens had any special target for his satire of Gradgrind’s “factual education”, it can
hardly have been the system privately adopted by James Mill, but one that was publicly put
into practice in many of the schools.153

Of course, such readings of Autobiography ignore mitigating aspects of the

younger Mill’s depiction of his father’s personality. For example, John
Stuart mentioned to his father’s credit that he “occasionally convinced
[James Mill], and altered his opinion on some points of detail”. Likewise,
John Stuart Mill thought that his father—at least, in intention—was “wholly
free” from the sectarian spirit of the younger radicals and, as regards the
theory of utility, less liable to criticism than those younger radicals. Thus it
often goes unnoticed that by 1836, John Stuart Mill was increasingly
“inclined to think that [his] father was not so much opposed as he seemed,
to the modes of thought” in which John believed himself to differ from his
father.154
It goes without saying that Dickens had not seen John’s Autobiography,
published posthumously in 1873. But there were rumors going around
London about him since the late 1810s. For example, in October 1818,
James Mill told David Ricardo how John Stuart had recently been
submitted to a “rigid examination” on account of the younger Mill’s claims
about his education—appearing “either folly or cheat” to his esteemed
interlocutors.155 Writing to Alexander Walker in early 1820, James Mill
was full of pride about his son’s achievements: “He is not 14 years old till
next May—and he is not only a good Greek and Latin scholar, but he has
actually read, all the Greek and Latin classics”. The younger Mill,
according to his father, was equally proficient in history, mathematics,
logic, political economy and had a good knowledge of chemistry.156
According to John Stuart Mill’s own account, roughly a decade later, John
Sterling reported “how he and others had looked upon me (from hearsay
information) as a ‘made’ or manufactured man”.157 In a letter to Thomas
Carlyle in 1832, John Stuart Mill confirmed the one-sidedness of his
education, “having been brought up more exclusively under the influence of
a peculiar kind of impressions than any other person ever was”. He
immediately added, “[f]ortunately however I was not crammed; my own
thinking faculties were called into strong though but partial play; & by their
means I have been enabled to remake all my opinions”.158
Dickens had inscribed Hard Times to Carlyle; there is a case to be made
that Carlyle influenced Dickens.159 Given the younger Mill’s attachment to
Carlyle in the 1830s and early 1840s, Carlyle seems a much better source
for the Gradgrind association to James Mill. In Sartor Resartus (Frazer’s
Magazine, 1833–1834), Carlyle alluded to the mechanical philosophy of
Bentham:
“Shall your Science”, exclaims he [Diogenes Teufelsdröckh], “proceed in the small chink-
lighted, or even oil-lighted, underground workshop of Logic alone; and man’s mind become
an Arithmetical Mill, whereof Memory is the Hopper, and mere Tables of Sines and Tangents,
Codification, and Treatises of what you call Political Economy, are the Meal?”160

This passage includes a double pun at James Mill’s expense and his
contributions to Political Economy, the “dismal science”—a pun which
Carlyle often used, according to Rodger Tarr. Tarr, in his explanatory note
on the text, quotes from Carlyle’s journal on Jeremy Bentham:
I name him as the representative of a class, important only for their numbers; intrinsically
wearisome, almost pitiable and pitiful. Logic is their sole foundation, no other even
recognized as possible: wherefore their system is Machine, and cannot grow or endure; but
 after thrashing for a little […] must thrash itself to pieces, and be made fuel.—Alas poor
England stupid, purblind, pudding-eating England! Bentham with his Mills grinding thee out
Morality.161

Around the same time, Mill had made it explicitly into a work of fiction,
written by Maurice. His logical style stepped anew into the spotlight.
Discussing the essay on government, Eustace Conway, not sharing his
interlocutor’s rather bleak opinion about Mill’s style, said: “My reason for
delighting in this book is, that it gives such fixedness and reality to all that
was most vaguely brilliant in my speculations—it converts dreams into
demonstrations”.162 By 1834, James Mill’s caricature was complete; he was
still alive and breathing.

III Conclusion
In the late 1810s and early 1820s, Mill had finally managed to win the
praise of his contemporaries after a long and rather unsuccessful career as a
journalist and educational activist. However, how he decided to invest that
success led to his discredit. In this chapter, I have tried to show that by the
late 1820s, the grounds which led to Mill’s rise to fame as the historian of
India were practically the same grounds on which his “fall from grace” took
place. Indeed, important critics spoke out loud soon after the publication of
Mill’s History, both privately and publicly. Still, as the book’s reception
was overwhelmingly positive, these dissenting voices faded into the
background, effectively silenced by admiring crowds.
In the years following the publication of History, ideas congenial to Mill
were frequently echoed in Parliament, thanks to David Ricardo (Mill was
the one who pressured him out of retirement in 1819), in the Political
Economy Club, founded in 1821 (Mill was among the founding members),
in debating societies by young enthusiastic men (since 1823, driven by
Mill’s eldest son), and in the Westminster Review (since its founding in
1824). All these were happening around the time James Mill would
spearhead a campaign to establish a university in London without a
religious entry requirement—that “godless school”, the “infidel College in
Gower street”.163 The result of these activities was the transformation of
utilitarian politics into a formidable foe.164
Only when a torrent of works appeared against Mill’s Essays (from
Thompson’s onslaught on Mill’s infamous paragraph—“the worst in point
of tendency” Mill ever wrote—to Macaulay’s review, “[t]he bitterest and
ablest attack ever publicly made” on Mill)165 did the negative reception
cross over to Mill’s History. When the History appeared, Bentham’s Plan of
Parliamentary Reform (1817) was already making waves in the periodical
press, but the 1818–1821 reviews of the History ran parallel to that
discussion. However, Mill’s Essays widened the context in which the
History was read. In the second half of the 1820s, critics came to view
Mill’s History as a species of Benthamite propaganda, and its author as the
archetype of a Benthamite propagandist, with all the faults that came to
entail. Even though Mill’s reviewers did notice, and often criticized, most
of Mill’s claims regarding politics at home, only The Times questioned the
value of Mill’s History on account of its radical implications. Other
reviewers had not been so ready to stress its Benthamite credentials or
associate it with the Benthamite argument for reform.
John Stuart Mill thought that “the oblivion into which” his father had
fallen “among the world at large” was partly because “the system of opinion
with which he was identified has fallen much into the background of late
years”.166 However, the decline of the elder Mill’s status took place before
that “system of opinion” had lost its appeal. I have argued that critics
attacked his political arguments, their scientific basis, and their deductive
presentation and that attack eclipsed the success of History—by
highlighting its Benthamite credentials, including its lack of first-hand
experience (which made it “theoretical”). Not much has changed since.
Subsequent chapters argue that such views should not be taken at face
value. Beginning with Chapter 2, I argue that we must pay more attention to
Mill’s background to make better sense of some of his authorial choices in
his better-known writings.

Notes
1 J.S. Mill, Diary Entry: 12 Jan. 1854, CW: XXVII.642; G. Grote to J.S. Mill, 20 Nov. 1865, in
H. Grote, 1873: 278; J.S. Mill to G. Grote, 26 Nov. 1865, CW: XVI.1120–1.
 2 Ball, 1992: xi.
3 Stephen, 1900: II.6.
4 Halévy, 1904: 250–1, 274. See Mill, 1809e: 413; see also, History: II.141n.
5 Bentham, 1802. For Dumont’s use of Bentham’s essay, see Bentham: I.171n.
6 McInerney, 2002: 20 (referring to Rendall, 1982: 49 who cited Murray, 1805: 301).
7 Chen, 2000: 185.
8 History: I.i; J. Mill to M. Napier, 23 Oct. 1816, in Napier, 1879: 16.
9 History: I.xxix, 2–3.
10 See Mill’s note on Aristotle (EN 1103b2) in CPB: V.151r.
11 J. Mill to D. Ricardo, 19 Oct. 1817, in Ricardo: VII.195–6. Mill hoped that his History would
be instructive, even if only a little entertaining, despite being “a motley kind of a production,
having been written at such distant times, and with so many interruptions”. J. Mill to D.
Ricardo, 6 Oct. 1816, in Ricardo: VII.76–7.
12 Mill, 1804b: 707.
13 History: I.ii; J. Mill to M. Napier, 23 Oct. 1816, in Napier, 1879: 16.
14 Bain, 1882: 61. See also, J.S. Mill, Autobiography, CW: I.30; cf. Thomas, 1975: xxxiv–xxxvii.
15 Chen, 2000: 184.
16 See J. Mill to T. Thomson, 22 Feb. 1818, in Bain, 1882: 166. Bain, 1882: 183, 185 and 59–61,
65–70; Wallas, 1898: 78–9. Mill thought that the Directors appointed him because of George
Canning’s support (see Bentham: IX.483); Bain, 1882: 142n; cf. J. Mill to E. Dumont, 13 Dec.
1819, in Ricardo: VIII.40n1. Canning did not cave in to pressure to reject Mill’s candidacy
because of the latter’s radicalism—which for Canning was not a problem (Temperley, 1905:
262; Bell, 1846: 272–3). For Place taking credit for the appointment, see F. Place to G. Grote,
13 Nov. 1831, British Library, Place Papers Add MS 35144, f.163v.
17 Halévy, 1904: 302. See also, H. Grote, 1873: 21. On January 4, 1828, the Bengal Hurkaru
accused James Mill of being bought off with his employment at East India House, securing
also the silence, due to Mill’s influence, of the Morning Chronicle and Westminster Review on
Company matters (Stokes, 1959: 60, 324nE). Even though Mill frequently criticized the East
India Company, he also, at times, praised their government in India (see, for example, History:
VI.17–18).
18 Mill, 1803d: 108. Translation is Sutton’s (Cicero, 1967b).
19 Lucian, “Historia”, 38, 9. Translation is Kilburn’s (Lucian, 1959).
20 ibid., 41. Translation is Kilburn’s.
21 Lucian, Hermotimus 47 (in CPB: III.95r, 97r). I translated ἀπιστεῖν as “question the evidence”
to reflect its rhetorical pedigree—pistis refers to the means of persuasion. Also, I added
“disbelieve” as a translation of ἀπιστεῖν to reflect Lucinus’s scepticism.
22 Mill, 1805d: 561–2.
23 ibid., 564 and Mill, 1803h: 325–6. For Mill, John Millar produced the most important
philosophical history (1803h: 326–7; compare with, History: II.139n1).
24 Villers, 1805: 331–2.
25 Mill, 1805h: ii.
26 History: II.72, I.iv (n. 2), xviii (n. 1).
27 ibid., I.v-vii, xii–xiii, xvii–xviii.
28 ibid., I.xviii.
29 ibid., I.xix, II.60
30 Aristotle, P 1260a12; R 1360a30.
31 Mill, 1804b: 712. Mill quoted from Livy (Praef. 10) with no translation and no references. The
Latin reads “this especially is what makes the study of history salutary and fruitful”.
32 Mill, 1809a: 101–3.
33 History: I.v-vi. See also, Mill, 1817c: 502, 506–8 and 1830: 23–4.
34 In 1805, Mill (1805a: 1183) complained that Marcus Rainsford’s An Historical Account of the
Black Empire of Hayti (1805) did not offer ample materials “as to enable to reader to draw
accurate conclusions for himself”. See also, Mill, 1817c: 500–1.
35 Mill, 1809a: 101.
36 The problem reviewers found with that was that Mill made exceptions to his “literary stoicism”
with French, not British, men; e.g. Anon, 1818d: 639.
37 History: II.135–6.
38 See Francis Place’s letters to his wife in August 1817, in Wallas, 1898: 76–7.
39 Shattock, 1989: 18.
40 Hazlitt, “The Periodical Press” (1823), see Hazlitt: X.202.
41 Morley, 1917: I.85.
42 Nesbitt, 1934: 19.
43 Morning Chronicle, 31 Mar. 1818 (issue 15261): 2; 3 Apr. 1818 (issue 15264): 2; The Times, 1
Apr. 1818 (issue 10322): 2, and 3 Apr. 1818 (issue 10324): 2–3.
44 History: I.vi–vii.
45 ibid., I.ix–xv.
46 ibid., I.xii.
47 Examiner 1818 (issue 532): 156.
48 The review however was incomplete. Neither did the number in which the review appeared nor
subsequent ones contain, as far as I was able to ascertain, a continuation of it.
49 Correspondents would not be so accommodating in subsequent numbers, as we shall see.
50 Anon., 1818c: 43.
51 ibid., 43, 44.
52 ibid., 54.
53 Norgate, 1896: 395; Roberts, 1850: 40.
54 Anon., 1818b: 213–18, 521–5.
55 According to Grote, Coulson’s review was “excellent”. See, “Diary” (end of 1818), in H.
Grote, 1873: 34.
56 Coulson, 1818: 2, 44. See also, Bentham: X.450.
57 Anon., 1820: 98
58 Anon., 1818d: 638.
59 ibid., 639.
60 Mill, 1809a: 101. See also, J.S. Mill, Autobiography, CW: I.19.
61 Anon., 1818d: 639.
62 Mill, 1803d: 108. The Latin proverb has its origin in Aristotle, EN 1096a16.
63 Anon., 1821: 338, 163. For the term, see History: II.82. The Monthly Review critic did point
out that Mill could have tried to give “attraction to his instruction”.
64 See e.g., Anon., 1818b: 215–16; Coulson, 1818: 19; Anon., 1818d: 623; Anon., 1820: 106;
Anon., 1821: 343–4.
65 For the phrase, see Mill, 1805d: 562.
66 Anon., 1818b: 526–7, 221–2, 224, 226, 227, 233–4.
67 Coulson, 1818: 1–2.
68 Coulson, 1818: 2, 10, 25.
69 See infra, Chapter 6.
70 See, for example, Aristotle, P. 1260b5–7 and EN 1172a20–l.
71 Anon., 1818d: 636–8.
 72 Anon., 1820: 243.
73 J.S. Mill, Autobiography, CW: I.45.
74 See, J. Mill to F. Place, 6–13 Sept. 1815, British Library, Add. Mss. 35152, f.163v (quoted in
Fenn, 1987: 34).
75 Anon., 1818b: 234.
76 Anon., 1820: 110–11.
77 ibid., 234. See History: V.90ff. In 1828, Josiah Conder, editor of Eclectic Review at the time,
found Mill “very tedious in his long lawyer dissertations”. In 1828, Conder himself
“endeavoured to give the results of all his [i.e., Mill’s] ‘argufying’ with all his facts, corrected
by other authorities. It has been a work of immense toil” (E. Conder, 1857: 256 cited in
Lazenby, 1972: 257n11). See, J. Conder, 1828.
78 Anon., 1821: 156. See History: III.444.
79 Anon., 1821: 163.
80 Grote, 1866: 283.
81 Macaulay, 1835: 225. See also, Macaulay, 1833: 159.
82 Anon., 1821: 337.
83 J.S. Mill, Diary Entry: 12 Jan. 1854, CW: XXVII.642.
84 Villers, 1805: 108n(a).
85 Wilson, 1840: ii, viii–ix. David Smith challenged recently this claim about the use of Mill’s
History in Haileybury (D. Smith, 2003: 49–50).
86 Mack, 1963: 19.
87 Anon., 1832: 206. For details on Walker’s career, see Philippart, 1823: 147–58.
88 Walker, 1808: §262–9, §285. See further, Cassels, 2010: 112ff.
89 Walker, 1808: §222. This would fit well in Mill’s narration, that is, how the proper estimation
of the state of civilization of Hindu society could assist in ruling India with the best interests of
Indians themselves in mind, which was something that Mill did on a different occasion. See,
History: I.357. Mill’s History did not reach down to the particular event; only incidentally did
Mill mention the practice. See, History: II.233.
90 J. Mill to A. Walker, 14 Sept. 1819, NSL MS 13724 f. 114v.
91 A. Walker to J. Mill, 29 Sept. 1819, NSL MS 13724 f. 122r-v.
92 A. Walker to J. Mill, 21 Oct. 1819, NSL MS 13724 ff. 165r-7v. See also, Walker, 1808: §212–
14. In his Report, Walker referred to infanticide; in his letter to Mill, he mentioned killing
prisoners under false pretences.
93 J. Mill to A. Walker, 6 Nov. 1819, NSL MS 13724 f. 178r. For a transcription, see Chen, 2000:
309ff.
94 A. Walker to J. Mill, 21 Nov. 1819, NSL MS 13724 f. 190v-91v (the date is not clear on this
letter; it seems it was originally dated 19 Nov., but was then changed to 21. For a transcription,
see Chen, 2000: 311ff). The contradiction between Walker’s two accounts as regards the state
and character of Hindu society—the private account between him and Mill and the public
account in his report on female infanticide—is more apparent than real. Even if we take
Walker’s report of the “rudeness” of Indians at face value, female infanticide could have been
one of those instances of “inequality” between Indian and European civilization.
95 A. Walker to J. Mill, 21 Nov. 1819, NSL MS 13724 f. 189v-90r.
96 A. Walker to J. Mill, 6 Mar. 1820, NSL MS 13725 f.15v.
97 See Cassels, 2010: 116–18.
98 Yavat-Tavat (1818) and (1819).
99 Sadik (1819).
100 Philo-Hindu (1819) had replied that Mill’s critics focused on minor issues.
101 See Kennedy (1823); Ellis, 1827: 10–12. The quote appears in Bayly, 2011: 66. However, as
we saw, Mill was criticized for trusting no authority and for taking up for himself the task of
putting the established authority of others to the test. In an article in the British Review in 1817,
Mill pointed out that the collection of facts by missionaries, limited as it was, was still the best
source of knowledge of the everyday life of Indians; still, Mill qualified the value of their
conclusions, since missionaries were unable to understand “the deep connexions and
coherences, the more comprehensive ties” of the phenomena they witnessed (Mill, 1817c:
500).
102 These lectures were noticed in 1828 in the Eclectic Review (see Anon., 1828b: 18ff; and Anon.,
1828c 270ff, for comments on Ellis’s and Kennedy’s treatment of Mill, respectively).
103 Crawfurd, 1820: III.53. See further, Chen, 2000: 184, 304ff.
104 For the phrase, see W. Hazlitt to J. Scott, Jan. 1821, in Sikes et al., 1979: 203. On Hazlitt and
Bentham, see Park, 1969 and Wu, 2005.
105 Hazlitt, “On Reason and Imagination”, Hazlitt: VII.51, published originally in The Plain
Speaker (1826).
106 Utilitarians were frequently called “Sophists”. See, e.g., Hazlitt, “The New School of Reform”,
Hazlitt: VII.189. The dialogue (between “Sentimentalist” and “Rationalist”) was also published
in Hazlitt’s Plain Speaker.
107 Hazlitt, “On Reason and Imagination”, Hazlitt: VII.44–6.
108 ibid., 50. Hazlitt used a similar example in “Jeremy Bentham”, Hazlitt: IV.194–5. The essay
was published originally in Hazlitt’s column “The Spirits of the Age” in the New Monthly
Magazine and Literary Journal (January 1824), and in The Spirit of the Age; Or Contemporary
Portraits (1825).
109 Hazlitt, “Jeremy Bentham”, CW: 4.193.
110 Hazlitt, “On Reason and Imagination”, Hazlitt: VII.50.
111 ibid., 49.
112 ibid., 46.
113 Hazlitt, “Sects and Parties”, Hazlitt: XII.362. Published originally in The Atlas (2 August
1829). See also, J.S. Mill, Autobiography, CW: I.111.
114 Hazlitt, “On People of Sense”, Hazlitt: VII. 250–1. Published originally in Hazlitt’s column
“Table-Talk” in the London Magazine (April 1821).
115 Hazlitt, “The New School of Reform”, Hazlitt: VII.189.
116 Hazlitt, “Jeremy Bentham”, Hazlitt: IV.194. For the idea that utilitarian impartiality is not “any
thing more than the old doctrine of the Stoics”, see Hazlitt, “The New School of Reform”,
Hazlitt: VII.189.
117 Hazlitt, “The New School of Reform”, Hazlitt: VII.189.
118 The following discussion draws from Maurice, 1828b unless otherwise stated.
119 Maurice, 1828c: 66.
120 Maurice, 1828e: 289.
121 Maurice, 1828d: 218–19.
122 Maurice, 1828a: 33.
123 Hazlitt, “On Reason and Imagination”, Hazlitt: VII.51. Of course, Mill would not approve of
the idea that institutions have a “soul”. He had criticized Villers for his “momentary departure
into the regions of the unmeaning”, talking about the spirit and body of institutions (Villers,
1805: 48n). However, Mill did ascribe to the idea of a “national character” (see e.g., Mill,
1813b:102, 114; and History: I.401, V.308n, 506).
124 Anon., 1828a: 602.
125 Anon., 1828a: 596–7.
126 Anon., 1829: 538.
127 Anon., 1828a: 596 and Anon., 1829: 526.
128 Anon., 1829: 527.
129 Bain, 1882: 128–9. J. Mill to M. Napier, 2 July 1816, in Napier, 1879: 16; J. Mill to M. Napier,
3 Jan. and 10 July 1821, in Napier, 1879: 26–7.
130 J. Mill to J.R. McCulloch, 18 Aug. 1825, in Bain, 1882: 292; J. Mill to D. Ricardo, 13 Nov.
1820, in Ricardo: VIII.291.
131 Thompson, 1825: 8–9.
132 ibid., 7 (the whole passage was originally italicized).
133 ibid., 14.
134 ibid., 14–15. When the autobiography of Mill’s famous son appeared, describing an
educational regimen of Spartan-like discipline, and no mention of a mother, the pieces of the
puzzle fell naturally in place.
135 L. Smith, 1827: 3.
136 ibid., 3–6.
137 ibid., 7–8.
138 See infra, Chapter 6 for these arguments.
139 L. Smith, 1827: 15, 18.
140 J.S. Mill, Autobiography, CW: I.165.
141 Macaulay, 1829: 160–2.
142 ibid., 169.
143 ibid., 178, 180ff.
144 J.S. Mill to T. Carlyle, 2 Aug. 1833, CW: XII.172.
145 John Stuart Mill repeated the view that his father’s essays were “outlines” and that his father
was impatient with details in his overall laudatory “Preface” for the second edition (1869) of
James Mill’s Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (or. ed. 1829). See J.S. Mill,
“Preface”, CW: XXXI.99, 102–3.
146 Bulwer, 1833: II.345–55.
147 Stillinger, 1991: 31. Cf. Thomas (1971).
148 Winch, 1966: 20.
149 Thomas, 1971: 359.
150 J.S. Mill, Diary Entry: 12 Jan. 1854, CW: XXVII.642. Just two years earlier, the prodigal son
returned to his utilitarian home with a review of William Whewell’s works on moral
philosophy (see, e.g. Robson, 1964)—for the past two decades Mill had both been learning
from and trying to discredit Whewell (Millgram, 2014). Was Whewell, with his edition of
Mackintosh’s Dissertation (1836), the one who initiated the younger Mill’s trajectory back to
Utilitarianism? Whewell meant his edition to be a corrective to the elder Mill’s A Fragment on
Mackintosh (1835). James Mill, Whewell noted, had attempted to lower Mackintosh’s
reputation with “captiousness, contumely and buffoonery” (Whewell, 1862: xii. Whewell’s
1836 and 1837 editions did not include that comment).
151 Leavis, 1948: 30. Alan Ryan has also recently dismissed Leavis’s association of Gradgrind to
James Mill (Ryan, 2011: 666n13).
152 Habibi, 2001: 71.
153 Fielding, 1956: 148.
154 J.S. Mill, Autobiography, CW: I.111, 208–11, 208n (cancelled note l-l), 33. See also J.S. Mill to
J.P. Nichol, 14 Oct. 1834, CW: XII.238; J.S. Mill to E. Lytton Bulwer, 23 Nov. 1836, CW:
XII.312–13; J.S. Mill to J. Sterling, 22 Apr. 1840, CW: XIII.428.
155 J. Mill to D. Ricardo, 26 Oct. 1818, Ricardo: VII.314. See further, Stillinger, 1991.
156 J. Mill to A. Walker, 26 Feb. 1820, NLS MS 13725 f.13v.
157 J.S. Mill, Autobiography, CW: I.163. See also, Gelpi, 1975: 57.
158 J.S. Mill to T. Carlyle, 22 Oct. 1832, CW: XII.128. James Mill’s genuine interest in the
education of his children, and the kind of individuals they would turn into, cannot be doubted.
Reporting on the time before his father’s death, Henry Mill noted: “When he thought that he
should not recover, he used to say to me or George that he would willingly die, if it were not
that he left us too young to be sure how we should turn out” (Bain, 1882: 408).
159 For a recent discussion of Carlyle’s influence on Dickens, see Czarnecka (2014).
160 Carlyle, 2000: 52.
161 ibid., 293. See also, Rosen, 2003b: 169ff.
162 Maurice, 1834: I.84.
163 The Standard¸ 19 June 1828 (issue 340): 2. Earlier, in 1826, The Times featured a satire on the
time’s sages; an oft-quoted stanza was devoted to the two Mills. The ode alluded to James Mill
raging a war against the aristocracy and John Stuart Mill having been arrested for
disseminating materials on contraception. See, Sir T-S L-E [Thomas Moore], “Ode to the
Goddess Ceres”, Times 21 Feb. 1826 (issue 12896): 4.
164 For more details, see Hamburger, 1963.
165 J.S. Mill, Autobiography, CW: I.106n (cancelled text); and “Preface to James Mill’s Analysis”,
CW: XXXI.101.
166 J.S. Mill, Diary Entry: 12 Jan. 1854, CW: XXVII.642.
2 A classical education

It was no coincidence that James Mill defined the task of the historian with
reference to Cicero or Lucian. He was an accomplished classical scholar.
Upon his arrival in London in 1802, Mill’s classical background did not
find many opportunities to shine in his journalistic undertakings—but when
it did, it shone brightly.1 Having received a thoroughly classical education,
it should come as no surprise that, as late as 1818—thus far without secure
employment—Mill considered applying for the Greek Chair at the
University of Glasgow. The education of his children—his eldest began
ancient Greek at three, read Plato at six, and began Latin at eight—paints a
clear picture of what Mill thought about the worth of the classics.2
Similarly, his Commonplace Books showcase an extensive ancient Greek
and Roman reading:3 philosophers, orators, poets, and historians such as
Plato, Aristotle, Isocrates, Demosthenes, Herodotus, Thucydides,
Xenophon, Diogenes Laertius as well as Cicero, Seneca, Quintilian, Tacitus,
Livy, Pliny and Virgil parade through the massive manuscript material.4
Plato’s Socrates appears in these pages more frequently than William Paley,
David Hume or Adam Smith. Plato’s and Aristotle’s works, combined,
appear as frequently as Jeremy Bentham’s.
It is telling that Alexander Bain and Ian Cumming suggested that Mill
had studied little other than Latin and Greek prior to going to the University
of Edinburgh. Cumming went as far as to suggest that Mill’s classical
education was not just a great preparation for university education or a
writing career: Mill’s training at Logie Pert and Montrose affected him
greatly. Such a focus could not have been irrelevant to the fact that, at the
turn of—and throughout—the nineteenth century, competence in classics
became a mark of distinction across the British Isles.5 Likewise, William
Burston suggested that “Mill found Greek philosophy a lasting inspiration
to his philosophical thinking”.6 However, Burston, Bain, and Cumming
neither identified the ways in which Mill responded to dominant trends in
classical reception nor did they suggest how that classical training
manifested itself in Mill’s career.
In what follows, I turn, first, to what preoccupation with the classics
entailed in Scottish schools and universities in the eighteenth century.
Second, I trace aspects of the teaching of classics at Edinburgh through
Andrew Dalzel, Dugald Stewart, and Hugh Blair, Professors of Greek,
Moral Philosophy and Rhetoric, respectively. Third, as Cicero emerges as a
key figure in the teaching of ancient languages, moral philosophy and
rhetoric, I pause briefly on three themes in Cicero’s reception in the
eighteenth century: the question of Cicero’s authorial voice, Cicero’s
philosophic defence of the active life, and the comparison between Cicero
and Demosthenes. Finally, I point to three classics-inspired currents in
Mill’s words and deeds: the focus on Plato’s dialectic method; his active
involvement in various projects for the common good; and the choice of
logos over pathos in his attempts at persuasion. Subsequent chapters follow
up and show the lasting impact of these ideas.
Any venture into Mill’s classical background has to start with Plato; his
admiration for Plato’s works was no secret. According to his son’s
Autobiography (1873), “[t]here is no author to whom my father thought
himself more indebted for his own mental culture, than Plato”. Later in the
book, the younger Mill made a different kind of claim: James Mill was “the
last of the eighteenth century”, extending “its tone of thought and sentiment
into the nineteenth (though not unmodified nor unimproved)”.7 James Mill
read Plato differently from many either then or now. This chapter responds
thus to the younger Mill’s invitation: it examines one particular aspect of
his father’s extension of the eighteenth-century “tone of thought and
sentiment”: reading the classics. I suggested elsewhere that Mill’s reading
of Plato was Ciceronian.8 Here, I examine how Cicero could have been
Mill’s source, and what that entailed. Of course, no comprehensive survey
of classical reception in Scotland can be attempted here. Instead, I focus on
showing how Mill responded to eighteenth-century trends in classical
reception, both in his rare ventures into classical scholarship and in his
propagandizing activities. Mill’s classical education is one aspect of his
Scottish background not examined in the few studies on Mill’s pre-Bentham
influences.9
A reason for that neglect is that rarely did Mill cite classical sources in
his well-known works. Still, he pushed the bandwagon, which shifted the
focus from Rome in the eighteenth century to Athens in the nineteenth, a bit
further down the road. He did so directly, i.e., as one of the original
members of London’s Athenaeum Club—an exclusive club formed in 1824
boasting its Greek influences—and as part of the Election Committee which
selected the first 100 members.10 He did so indirectly too. Members of the
Athenaeum Club, such as George Grote, Connop Thirlwall, Edward Bulwer
Lytton, Thomas Babington Macaulay and John Stuart Mill would be on the
forefront of publications on the history and philosophy of ancient Greece
from 1824 onwards.11 Mill’s influence on Grote’s and his son’s classical
reading is well-documented;12 the classical undercurrents of Mill’s own
thought are not.

I Classical education in Scotland

James Mill was one of the students from the parish school at Logie Pert
whose education was to be sponsored for the Kirk.13 Mill’s benefactors had
learned of his penchant for the classics, and made sure he received that
“grand old fortifying classical curriculum”.14 Right after Logie Pert and
before attending the University of Edinburgh for seven years (and the
courses for two degrees),15 Mill spent a number of years at Montrose. The
Montrose Grammar School was famous for being the first place in Scotland
to teach Greek, and up until 1815, Latin and Greek were the only subjects
taught there.16 Montrose was one of the few schools teaching Greek at all—
in eighteenth-century Scotland the ancient tongues did not enjoy the same
status as in the rest of Britain.17
In 1836, William Hamilton argued that the conditions for the
development of classical studies in Scotland were lacking in comparison
with the rest of Britain and other European countries. The reasons for that
were, first, the learned professions (law, medicine and divinity) were not
particularly associated with classical learning in Scotland (Roman law did
not have the same bearing on Scottish law; theological studies in Scotland
did not have as long a tradition as in England and in Germany for example;
medicine had broken away from its ancient sources). Second, secondary
education in Scotland had failed to keep the torch of classical education
burning; grammar schools were rare, compared with the five hundred
grammar schools in England. For Hamilton, “[u]ntil a sufficient number of
these be established over Scotland […] it is impossible that the universities
can perform their proper function in the cultivation of learning”.18
There were other factors at work fostering the neglect of classical studies
in Scotland. Students from grammar schools or elite secondary schools
were not the only ones to receive a good education—a number of parish
schools proved to be on par. For John Kerr, “there is no country in the
world where elementary and higher education have been separated by so
thin a line as in the best class of Scottish parish schools”. It was a source of
national pride that students from all backgrounds had the potential for a
university education.19 This had much to do with that feature which made
the Scottish educational system stand out: students could go straight from
parish schools to the university. Cumming reported that as “late as 1865–66,
29 per cent of the students in the Humanity Classes at the University of
Edinburgh entered directly from parish schools or elementary schools of
either the Free Church or the Church of Scotland”.20 The limited—or the
complete lack of—focus on the classics in most of the elementary and
secondary institutions made it necessary for universities to fill in the gap.
This gap, however, had essentially been established to secure audiences for
university professors.
Relatedly, by the late eighteenth century, English rose as the dominant
language of university instruction; to this effect, according to M.L. Clarke’s
seminal study, “little Greek was learned at school and not a great deal at the
university”. As Latin had been the medium for university instruction in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it fared much better than Greek, which
students were not expected to know.21 Furthermore, it was no coincidence
that in Glasgow and Edinburgh classics were simply not a priority: being
industrial towns, their universities maintained close ties with
industrialists.22 Classics were not considered a “useful” education. So when
James Mill went to Edinburgh in the 1790s, it was no longer assumed that
students were even versed in Latin—not to the degree they had been just
half a century earlier at any rate.
Classical education had failed to convince the Scots of its usefulness in
the “Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns”. Even though the Quarrel
never attracted widespread interest in Britain,23 it did take the particular
shape of a debate on university curricula, resulting in the thorough
transformation of the teaching of classics in the nineteenth century.24 The
1831 report for the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the State of
Universities of Scotland noted as a matter of regret
that an intimate acquaintance with the Classics, particularly the Greek authors, is not more
general than it now is among the best educated classes of society in Scotland. Nor is this the
only or worst defect in the present Course of Study. It is ill contrived for its primary purpose,
namely, to awaken and invigorate the intellectual powers, and to train the mind to the
acquisition of knowledge.25

By the second half of the nineteenth century, in Scottish secondary

education, only 25% studied Latin and 6% Greek; whereas 92% studied
English, 75% writing, and 74% arithmetic.26 “English” was code for a
variety of modern studies. Soon enough, however, ancient Greece would re-
appear in the foreground.27
Latin had priority, even in cases such as Montrose’s, where both
languages were taught—as we saw in passing, the reason was securing
audiences for Greek professors at the universities. According to the 1645
General Assembly of the Church of Scotland deciding on the “advancement
of Learning, and good Order in Grammar Schools and Colleges”, “none be
admitted to enter a student of the Greek tongue in any college unlesse after
trial he be found able to make a congruous theme in Latine”. What was
more, the General Assembly ordained that “neither the Greek language nor
logick, nor any part of philosophie, be taught in any grammar school or
private place within this kingdom to young schollers, who thereafter are to
enter to any college”. Even though such studies were only allowed as
preparation for university education, they were never meant to replace
university education—unless students showed extraordinary skill, they were
expected to enroll to junior Greek classes, even if they had studied the
language.28 In 1672, by an act of the Scottish Privy Council, grammar
schools were not allowed to teach Greek—teaching Greek was officially
deemed a university affair. As Mill’s case shows, there were exceptions to
this rule. Still, no wonder why a typical grammar school curriculum shows
little sign of Greek. Higher classes at grammar schools “read Terence,
Horace, Virgil, Juvenal, Cicero, Livy, Florus, Sallust, &c.; the lower classes
Ovid, Velleius Paterculus, Nepos, Claudian, Curtius, Phaedrus, the
Colloquia of Corderius, Erasmus, and the lowest class the Vocables of
Wedderburne”. The highest class studied rhetoric, with exercises in
composition, including orations.29
Once students found themselves at the University of Edinburgh, to
complete a Degree in Arts, they had to go through the classes of Latin,
Greek, Mathematics and Logic, Rhetoric, Moral and Natural Philosophy.30
At the preparatory Humanity Class, students trained in translation from
English to Latin and vice versa as well as in composition—the link to the
grammar schools was there most evident, as Virgil, Ovid, Quintus Curtius,
Livy, Cicero, Horace were the main Latin authors used in the junior and
senior classes. Students from grammar schools frequently enrolled directly
to the senior Greek class—and occasionally went through it twice (as did
Mill).31 Homer, Herodotus, Xenophon and sometimes Plato were the
authors with whom students engaged in the senior Greek class (advanced
students in the junior class also translated Homer, Xenophon, and from the
New Testament, among others). As preparation to the Logic and Rhetoric
classes, students enrolled in the senior Greek Classes attended
General Lectures […] upon the Antiquities and Institutions of the Greeks, and on the
Athenian and Lacedemonian Constitution and Government, upon the Philosophy of the
Greeks, and the Doctrines of the principal Sects among them, […] and also on Eloquence,
with an analysis of an Oration of Demosthenes, when that author is in the course of perusal.

With such credentials, the Report concluded, the “Greek Class, upon the
whole, seems to be conducted with much efficiency, and if the elements of
the language are to be continued to be taught in the University, does not
seem to admit of any very essential improvement”.32
It should be noted that, for Hamilton, the Degree of Arts “conferred no
honour”; excellence formed “no object of ambition”.33 Likewise, even
though divinity students had to attend the Literary Classes (along with
Mathematics, Logic, Moral Philosophy, and Natural Philosophy, during four
sessions), to be ordained as a Minister or get a license to preach, students
were “left to the low standard and fortuitous examination of all or any
members of the Presbytery (clergy of a district) to which he may apply”.
This was why Hamilton complained that classical scholars had not been
found “for nearly two centuries” among the clergy.34

II Teaching the classics

The report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the State of Universities
of Scotland noted as a matter of regret that students engaged only
superficially with the classics. That was a charge, however, which did not
apply to late-eighteenth-century Edinburgh. Its most esteemed professors
pressed that antiquity had much to offer: Adam Ferguson and Dugald
Stewart as Professors of Moral Philosophy, Hugh Blair as Professor of
Rhetoric, and Andrew Dalzel as Professor of Greek. For them, classical—
philosophical, literary, and historical—works as well as the lives of seminal
figures offered valuable lessons to young scholars, serving as models of
excellence. This was in contrast to the attention paid to prosody and
composition of verses in the ancient tongues all around England—for Mill,
such an engagement with the classics had little effect on the moral and
intellectual development of students and was of no permanent worth.35
Even though Mill sat both in Dalzel’s and Stewart’s classes—both quite
gifted in teaching—we lack a record of what Mill thought of his Greek
professor. Bain noted that Dalzel had taken notice of Mill; some report that
Dalzel recommended Mill as a tutor to the Marquis of Tweeddale (who set
up a small pension for Mill).36 A private tutor was a fitting trade for a
university student or graduate in the Athens of the North.37 To tutor at such
an esteemed house, a recommendation from Dalzel was most likely
necessary,38 even if we assume that demand for classical education had
increased in Edinburgh as it did in England.
In Dalzel’s hands, “the Greek Chair in Edinburgh was elevated from
being the mere schoolmaster’s rostrum to a living fountain, whence flowed
in abundant streams, not only accurate knowledge of the language of
Greece, but enthusiasm for its study all over Scotland”.39 Citing Henry
Cockburn’s memoirs, Bain noted that Dalzel attached little importance to
teaching the elements of ancient Greek, “but as an enthusiast about
learning, he excited the minds of the students, as well as secured their
affection”.40 Lord Cockburn’s detail of Dalzel was more vivid than Bain’s:
He could never make us actively laborious. But when we sat passive, and listened to him, he
inspired us with a vague but sincere ambition of literature, and with delicious dreams of virtue
and poetry. He must have been a hard boy whom these discourses, spoken by Dalzel’s low,
soft, artless voice, did not melt.41

Clarke, picking up on Cockburn’s (and Bain’s) account, doubted whether

Dalzel’s students did, in fact, learn much Greek, even though Dalzel
actively attempted to restore the study of Greek in Scotland.42 That Mill
was an accomplished Greek scholar, as his critique to Thomas Tayor’s
translated Plato makes evident,43 was rather due to his Montrose training;
Mill’s solid foundation in the classics suggests a reason why Dalzel would
have recommended him as a tutor.
According to Dalzel, Greek and Latin provided the “best foundation on
which to raise a superstructure of science, and other literary improvement”,
so he praised British scholars who were caught up to their continental
colleagues’ “noble enthusiasm for the learning of ancient Greece”.44 At the
time, ancient Greek works and history were gradually becoming more
relevant. Frank M. Turner has pointed to two primary indicators that
substantiate a shift from the ascendancy of Latin writers in the eighteenth
century to anything Greek in the nineteenth century: the complete reversal
in the publication frequency of historical, philosophical and literary works
on Rome as well as the research interests of eminent classicists.45
Dalzel’s lectures discussed the institutions, the habits, and the culture of
the ancient Greeks, but this focus was only a means to more modern ends.
This was usual in preoccupation with the classics; often debates on classical
texts masked other ends in view: classics offered the opportunity for
political and/or polemical application.46 For example, Dalzel would follow
the lectures on Athens’s and Sparta’s constitutions with a lecture on the
merits of the British constitution—subtly warning about the threat to the
balance of Britain’s mixed constitution by the Crown’s growing influence.
In similar vein, for Dalzel, Greek studies gave Liberal Education a literal
meaning: “it might be shewn, that the flame of liberty which has always
glowed in England was much cherished by the manner of thinking derived
from the Greek writers”. “It cannot be doubted”, he went on, “that the
Grecian spirit which has always prevailed in England tended greatly to
counteract the encroachments of despotic power, and to bring about that
republican mixture in our Constitution, which has been the subject of so
much admiration”. For Dalzel, ancient Greece showed what “human
genius” achieved when “allowed full scope to exert itself, unshackled by
the chains of servitude, unawed by the nod of tyrants”.47 In his biography of
Mill, Bain entertained the thought that Mill’s Greek studies probably
“imbued him with the democratic ideal of Government”. Even though one
can see how Dalzel’s lectures could support that claim, Bain recognized that
“very few have ever been made liberal politicians by classical authors
alone”, identifying thus “an independent bias” towards democracy on Mill’s
part,48 especially at a time when the aftershock of the French Revolution
was still felt.
James Mill was fortunate to study at Edinburgh in the 1790s, not just on
account of Dalzel’s teaching. By then, the Moral Philosophy Chair at
Edinburgh, thanks to Adam Ferguson (1764–1785) and Dugald Stewart
(1785–1820), managed to be on par with that of Glasgow, which had
featured Frances Hutcheson (1730–1746), Adam Smith (1752–1764) and
Thomas Reid (1764–1781) in the recent past. Interestingly, Ferguson,
Smith, and Reid appear a number of times in James Mill’s check-out list at
the Theological Library.49
Like Dalzel, both Ferguson and Stewart shared the goal of “mould[ing]
teenage boys into virtuous, polite, tolerably learned, self-confident,
upstanding, patriotic young gentlemen”.50 Drawing inspiration from the
ancients, these professors called their students to get to work for the
betterment of society. Ferguson was praised, while still occupying the
Chair, for “taking a route different from his contemporaries”; “direct[ing]
philosophy to the heart”, Ferguson had “endeavoured to animate the
coldness of modern times with the ardent spirit of antiquity; and to a
mercenary and luxurious age, has lifted up the voice which called the
Greeks and Romans to virtue and glory”.51 Stewart succeeded Ferguson in
the Moral Philosophy Chair in 1785. It had taken him no time at all to earn
his students’ affection; thanks to Ferguson himself, Stewart had surpassed
his teacher’s popularity among students.52
 Unlike in Dalzel’s case, Mill expressed his admiration of, and gratitude
to, Stewart a couple of times:
I must not omit to express the great satisfaction I received from your telling me that Professor
Stewart expresses some curiosity respecting me. You say he wishes he could recollect my
being at his class. I doubt not he would know me if he saw me. He must at least have been
perfectly familiar with my face for all the years I remained about Edinburgh, I used, as often
as I possibly could, to steal into his class to hear a lecture, which always was a high treat. I
have heard Pitt and Fox deliver some of their most admired speeches, but I never heard
anything nearly so eloquent as some of the lectures of Mr. Stewart. I never heard anything
like so fine a speaker. The taste for the studies which have formed my favourite pursuits, and
which will be so to the end of my life, I owe to Mr. Stewart.53

In a letter to David Ricardo, Mill grouped Stewart together with Locke and
Bacon, as ones who endorsed “the ardent spirit of free, independent
inquiry”, since “to travel fearlessly in whatsoever road appears to […] lead
to the temple of Truth” is “the only course by which the highest
improvement and felicity of the race can ever be attained”.54
Typically, in Scottish universities in the second half of the eighteenth
century, the Moral Philosophy course included natural theology in the first
year, ethics in the second, jurisprudence in the third, and political economy
in the fourth.55 At Edinburgh, the Moral Philosophy course was divided in
four parts: “relating to the Nature of the Human Being; to the Relations in
which that being is placed; to the Duties deduced from that nature and those
relations; and to the means by which individuals and nations may promote
and guard their virtue and their happiness”. Natural theology was included
in the second and third part along with practical ethics; government,
jurisprudence and political economy appeared in the fourth part of the
course.56 Classical texts were usually incorporated in lectures about virtue,
justice, law, and government. Moral philosophy sessions often did more
than just incorporate classical texts. For example, in a series of lectures at
Lincoln’s Inn in 1799, James Mackintosh paused a moment to discuss the
usefulness of classical education in teaching morality:
We should certainly endeavour to attain our object by insinuating morals in the disguise of
history, of poetry, and of eloquence; by heroic examples, by pathetic incidents, by sentiments
that either exalt and fortify, or soften and melt, the human heart. If philosophical ingenuity
were to devise a plan of moral instruction, these, I think, would be its outlines. But such a
plan already exists. Classical education is that plan; nor can modern history and literature
even be substituted in its stead.57
Mackintosh simply tried to make public what to classically educated
individuals was commonplace. Throughout nineteenth-century Britain,
those who had had a classical education rejected off-hand the charges of
uselessness—even though most agreed that university teaching hardly took
advantage of all that was best in the classics. For them, classical education
fostered “independent activity of thought” and trained the analytical powers
of the mind; such an education was a source of valuable experience as well
as of models of form and style. Most importantly, classics were considered
to offer a “point of intellectual sympathy among men over a considerable
surface of the world”, as “all the intellect of civilized Europe breathes their
spirit and takes their form”.58
In his Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers of Man (1828),
Stewart admitted actively citing classical authors, particularly Cicero, in his
courses, thinking such integration as “most likely to awaken classical
associations in the minds of my hearers, favourable to the truths which I
wished to inculcate”.59 But citing one’s classical sources did not form a
uniform practice. For example, while Stewart cited ancient sources in
Active and Moral Powers of Man—much like Francis Hutcheson’s
Philosophiae Moralis Institutio Compendiaria (1742) and Adam Smith’s
Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)—Stewart had refrained from doing so
in his Outlines of Moral Philosophy (1793)—much like Ferguson’s
Institutes of Moral Philosophy (1769) and Principles of Moral and Political
Science (1792).
Stewart’s use of the ancients in order to impress upon his students values
he himself subscribed to formed a rather standard practice. Ferguson and
Smith (as well as Hutcheson) had admitted to doing the same. In his
Principles, which was to function as a textbook for his course, Ferguson
even took a moment to respond to a charge of being partial to Stoics in
some of the sections of that work.60 Ferguson went on to list Lord
Shaftesbury, Montesquieu, and Hutcheson, among others, as admirers of
stoic philosophy, being “acquainted with its real spirit”.61
Unlike in Ferguson’s case, Cicero was not always the source for
information on the Stoics for Smith’s moral philosophy course.62
Expectedly, such a course would have gone through the history of moral
philosophy—including the ancient Greek and Roman philosophical schools.
It strikes one as no surprise that in the advertisement for the 6th edition of
his Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith pointed to his re-arrangement and
enrichment of the material on the Stoics in order “to explain more fully, and
examine more distinctly, some of the doctrines of that famous sect”.63
Gloria Vivenza (2001) has shown the extent of Smith’s debts to classical
authors, particularly the Stoics. Similarly, notwithstanding the addition of a
rather Stoic section on virtue in the 6th edition (Part VI), in all previous
editions, according to D.D. Raphael and A.L. Macfie, the “pervasive
character of Stoic influence” was quite clear.64
There is another, obvious, link to the classical tradition in university
teaching: Rhetoric. According to Wilbur Samuel Howell, in the first half of
the eighteenth century in England the art of rhetoric—as it took form in
John Ward’s lectures on oratory—was thought to consist of little more than
Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Cicero’s De Oratore and De Partitione Oratoria,
Horace’s De Arte Poetica, Plutarch’s Cicero, and Quintilian’s Institutio
Oratoria.65 Of all these ancient authors, Cicero reigned supreme. In 1776,
the translator of Cicero’s Brutus, Edward Jones, thought it unnecessary and
impertinent to say anything to recommend the rhetorical treatises by Cicero,
an author “so universally celebrated”.66 For the eighteenth-century
Ciceronians, taking their cue from Cicero, Howell notes,
rhetoric was certainly the chief art of discourse, and it consisted of all the principles and
precepts which regulated all speaking and all writing addressed to popular audiences on
occasions when some doctrine had to be taught, some thesis proved, some great achievement
or great man celebrated for public enlightenment, or some course of action proposed as the
best response to the facts of the case and to the human interests and feelings concerned.67

Progressively, however, this “Old Rhetoric” would be resisted, and a

different take would rise on how oral, and written, discourse ought to
proceed, in search of a more direct, simpler, and rational means of
persuasion. As Howell has documented, the “New Rhetoric” shifted the
focus from Cicero’s to Demosthenes’s and Aristotle’s rhetorical practice
and theory. The “New Rhetoric” of the second half of the eighteenth
century “tended to treat the Ciceronian tradition as something which needed
to be measured against the requirement of a new time and to be rejected
wherever it failed to meet the standard that the new time would impose”.68
 Even though the Greek and Roman rhetorical traditions would be
reassessed in the second half of the eighteenth century, the Greek and Latin
tongues retained their usefulness in rhetoric classes. Take for a first example
a 1790 synopsis of lectures on the Belles Lettres and Logic from the
University of St. Andrews. Before turning to the history of Athenian and
Roman public speaking, the tutor used Dionysius of Halicarnassus,
Herodotus, Demetrius Phalereus, Quintilian, and Cicero to draw examples
on ornament in compositions, in the overall introduction into language and
style. The tutor quoted from Quintilian, and other “ancient critics”, on the
differences between tropes and figures and listed Xenophon, Plato,
Euripides, Sophocles, Cicero, Livy, and Virgil as eminent performers in the
elegant style of composition—one which combines perspicuity with
ornament, adapting to the nature of the subject discussed (e.g., be it oratory,
history, criticism or poetry). Demosthenes, and to a much lesser degree
Cicero, according to the textbook, displays an unimaginative and
intellectualist style.69 Likewise, John Lawson spent a whole lecture at
Trinity College, Dublin, on Plato’s Phaedrus as well as comparing
Aristotle’s and Cicero’s rhetorical treatises—Lawson expected, or rather
hoped, that his readers would follow up on the subject with the originals at
hand. However, Lawson criticised those who attempted to imitate Cicero,
but also those who went out of their way to avoid Cicero’s example.
Finding a balance by incorporating elements of good practice and avoiding
bad practice, Lawson referred to Cicero, Quintilian and Aristotle as well as
Demosthenes in preparing a convincing argument (one which addresses the
understanding, in contradistinction to a persuasive argument which
addressed the passions).70 Joseph Priestley, at Warrington in 1762, also
distanced himself from classical authors. But although Priestley
incorporated Cicero and other ancient authors minimally in his lectures (the
published version mostly translated ancient texts), he referred to these
ancient rhetoricians casually, that is, as if the audience was already familiar
with their works. For example, Priestley directed the attention of his
audiences for “a specimen of the most excellent declamation upon a great
variety of […] topics” (in the technical sense) to a number of works by
Cicero and Quintilian. Still, like Lawson, Priestley would not hesitate to
criticise or praise Cicero when he thought censure or approval was merited
—either in passing references, comparing various works by Cicero or
comparing Cicero with Demosthenes.71
At Edinburgh in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, William
Greenfield succeeded Hugh Blair to the Rhetoric chair. Divinity students
did not have to attend the Rhetoric course; but Mill had first attended
courses for the Arts degree before spending “four winters” as a Divinity
student. So, Mill must have attended the course, even though he never made
any mention of it—the Theological Library records reveal his interest in
rhetoric during his university years. Greenfield’s Essays on the Sources of
the Pleasures Received from Literary Compositions (1809)—a work based
on some of his lectures, published anonymously—and notes from his
lectures in 1785–1786 show that Greenfield often took a different direction
than Blair, one that seemed at the cutting-edge of the theory of literary
criticism.72 He placed emphasis on contemporary authors, moving past
Blair’s deference to the classics,73 even though he would sometimes treat
traditional subjects in the traditional way (e.g., discussing Cicero on the
subject of Figures, as well as a brief comparison between Cicero and
Demosthenes with modern writers).74
The study of Aristotle’s and Cicero’s rhetorical theory as well as
Demosthenes’ and Cicero’s rhetorical practice, as we saw earlier, had been
transferred to the senior Greek and Latin classes, in which students received
preparatory instruction for the Logic and Rhetoric courses.75 To see aspects
of that preparation which Mill could have received at Edinburgh, one may
turn to Hugh Blair’s lectures on Rhetoric and the Belles Lettres and, earlier
than that, those of Adam Smith (between 1748 and 1751), since their
lectures on rhetoric spent a lot of time on the classics. If Mill sat in James
Finlayson’s class in the 1795–1796 sessions, he would have heard his
teacher recommend study of Blair’s lectures on rhetoric.76
Blair defined eloquence as the art of persuasion, an art whose aim is to
influence conduct and persuade to action.77 For the purposes of this chapter,
the key word was “action”—bringing to the fore a link to the moral
philosophy course. Just like Dalzel and Stewart, Blair was trying to inspire
his students into virtuous action with eloquence as an effective means to
that purpose—the proponents of the “New Rhetoric” laid special emphasis
on the relation between the pursuit of truth, a necessary constituent of
virtue, and rhetoric.78 Blair’s inculcation of virtue in his final lecture did not
make it to the published work:
There remains Some advice which I would offer you, not as it is proper to be given in this
place, but as proceeding from the real Sentiments of my heart.—I would thereof advise you to
cultivate a taste for Virtue and Religion. This is a duty you owe to your friends, and I believe
there is no one thing So favourable to the study of the liberal arts as the cultivation of a manly
Spirit of Truth and piety, without this we can never relish the most refined beauty & pleasure
the human Soul is capable of enjoying and Virtuous minds alone are capable of that tender
Sensibility which is absolutely necessary for excelling in the fine arts, and especially for the
Noble purposes of Life. It is only persons of this temper of mind who can recommend
religion & Virtue with Success to others, and the greatest applause an Orator can receive, is
that the Speaker, discovers himself to be a person of a worthy mind and endowed with the
Same dispositions with which he endeavours to inspire his hearers.79

The link between education, the cultivation of virtue and activity was as
ubiquitous in the classical and rhetorical courses as it was in the moral
philosophy course.

III Cicero in the eighteenth century

By the late eighteenth century, there was already an established practice in
place for teaching moral philosophy, drawing on Cicero—his “modified
Stoicism” became “almost conventional”.80 There was a similarly prevalent
practice drawing on Cicero on rhetoric, with an important difference: at the
threshold of the eighteenth century, largely due to the Ramist reforms,
Cicero’s and Aristotle’s rhetorical theories (comprehensive enough to be
considered “antistrophos to dialectic” by Aristotle81) had been curbed to
voice and gesture during delivery, i.e., elocution.82 I have already tried to
show how teachers at Scottish universities reinforced the first but resisted
the second tradition.
It is also well known that Cicero’s name stretched beyond courses in
moral philosophy and rhetorical theory. According to Günter Gawlick,
Cicero’s fame in the Enlightenment reached an astonishing peak:
Enlightenment thinkers “admired the statesman, the orator and the
philosopher in him to an extent which, to the twentieth-century observer,
seems largely unwarranted”. Matthew Fox notes that “the central feature of
the Enlightenment reception of Cicero is that the intellectual climate
changes significantly, and along with it the use to which Cicero’s work can
be put”.83 Here, I track three discussions on Cicero: the question concerning
his Academic or Stoic credentials; his defense of the active life and the
contrast with Demosthenes.84 A sketch along these lines—inevitably short
and imperfect—sets up a bridge from Cicero’s reception over to Mill’s
engagement with the classics, directly and indirectly.

Cicero’s true voice

Ferguson did not expand on Cicero’s philosophical credentials, despite the
extensive use of the latter’s orations in the History of the Progress and
Termination of the Roman Republic (1783). On just one occasion, when the
narrative reached the historical events surrounding Cicero’s Pro Murena
speech, Ferguson did point out that Cicero ridiculed Stoic philosophy,
during an ad hominem attack on Cato (who embraced Stoicism)—Ferguson
recognized, however, that Cicero’s ridicule aimed only to make the case for
Murena stronger.85 Ferguson’s treatment in this work focused exclusively
on Cicero as a statesman and an orator, a typical treatment in the
eighteenth-century Anglophone culture.86 Still, it is suggestive of the
varying weight assigned to Cicero’s statements regarding Stoicism at the
time.
In one of the earliest English translations of On Ends, Cicero appeared as
someone who had preserved the best thoughts of the philosophical schools
—Academics, Epicureans, Stoics, Peripatetics—even if he was not one of
the best philosophers himself. For Henry Dodwell, Cicero was primary an
Academic, while he also admired most of the Stoics—Dodwell cited On
Duties as evidence of Cicero adopting Stoic ideas through Panaetius.
Cicero’s greatest philosophical service, Dodwell highlighted, was
translating the philosophical ideas of others. Interestingly, Dodwell tried to
respond to objections from a modern standpoint—especially Christian—to
Cicero’s philosophy: if one “would judge Cicero as a Philosopher”,
Dodwell noted, “he ought to do it, not by the Principles of the Christian
Religion, but by the Principles of the Academical Sect of Philosophy which
was professed by him”.87
 In his translation of Cicero’s On Ends and Academic Questions, William
Guthrie (1744) went a little further than Dodwell. Guthrie too considered
Cicero an Academic: “explaining every System of Philosophy, but adopting
none”. In an effort to explain what this meant to Cicero, Guthrie argued that
the most important characteristic of the (new) Academy was sincerity—
sincerity that although one cannot be absolutely certain of the truth as
regards two opposing sides, and thus no one is infallible, one side might
still be more probable than the other. By accepting probability, for Guthrie,
not only did Academics propose moderation as key in moral action, they
managed to preserve moral agency. The difference between a Sceptic and
an Academic was something which “shallow Smatterers in Free-thinking
have never attended to, and proves, with how little Reason they affect to
tread in the Steps of our Author”, i.e., Cicero.88 Thomas Francklin, the
translator of De Natura Deorum (1749), agreed with William Guthrie that
Cicero, as an Academic, “looked upon probability, and a resemblance of
truth, as the utmost [one] could arrive at”. This could mean that Cicero was
consistent in ascribing probability to the Stoic view in the final sentence of
De Natura Deorum, even though Academics, Francklin noted, “would not
allow the certainty of anything” and “doubted everything”.89
It is not clear who in particular were the “shallow Smatterers in Free-
thinking”, whom Guthrie mentioned; however, it is clear that Guthrie was
referring to the use of Cicero in the debate on natural religion and free
thinking at the time.90 Two such individuals, friends actually, who had
employed Cicero on the side of free thinking were John Toland and
Anthony Collins. Toland’s Ciceronianism appeared full-fledged in Cicero
Illustratus (1712), a book proposal of sorts (written in Latin) intended to
attract funding for a new edition of Cicero. It would be new, Toland
claimed, both in its approach to how classical scholarship should be done
but also in its treatment of Cicero’s thought.91 Collins, at the same time as
Toland, was thinking of preparing such an edition as well.92 Like Toland,
Collins’s book A Discourse of Free-thinking (1713) had enlisted Cicero in
the cause for free-thinking. According to Gawlick, so similar were Collins’s
and Toland’s treatments of Cicero that Toland was thought to be the author
of Collins’s anonymously published Discourse, “one of the most discussed
books of the time”.93 Collins’s appropriation of Cicero and other classical
figures in the cause of free thinking immediately provoked a reply by
Richard Bentley, who in his Remarks Upon a Late Discourse of Free-
thinking (1713) took special care in rebutting Collins’s (and consequently
Toland’s) appropriation of Cicero.
Gawlick noted that Toland’s Cicero Illustratus remained practically
unknown.94 However, in the 1715 translation of Cicero’s Tusculan
Disputations, the translator also translated a section of Toland’s Cicero
Illustratus. Interestingly, the translator included Toland’s extraordinary
praise of Cicero as a philosopher, statesman and orator as well as his
censures on the modern pedagogical use of Cicero, but ignored Toland’s
emphasis on the need for a new method in identifying Cicero’s authorial
voice.95 Toland noted that Cicero did not always reveal his true views, “but
what the case, time, place, and audience demanded”. Frequently, he added,
writers quote from Cicero’s dialogues “in order to confirm things, which are
diametrically opposed to his true opinions; as if it were sufficient, that this
or that was stumbled upon in Cicero, without taking into account who was
speaking”, and are often misguided by Cicero’s attempt to spare himself
from prosecution, masking his real views by siding with more conventional
opinions, especially in works intended for the public.96 Such statements
allowed Matthew Fox to note that Toland “calls upon his readers not only to
regard Cicero as a pioneer of scepticism, but to approach his texts in an
appropriately sceptical manner”.97
Although Toland included a long quote from Cicero against superstition
of any kind,98 it was Collins who took the further step of enlisting Cicero to
the cause of free-thinking. Like Toland, Collins claimed that “[t]he true
method of discovering the Sentiments of Cicero, is to see what he says
himself, or under the Person of an Academic”.99 Following this rule of
common sense, added Collins, in understanding Cicero, readers
will find him as great a Free-Thinker as he was a Philosopher, an Orator, a Man of Virtue,
and a Patriot. And they will never meet with any Passages which in the least favour
Superstition, but what he plainly throws out to save himself from Danger, or to show his
Rhetorical Ability on any Argument, or employs in his Orations to recommend himself to the
Roman Mob, who, like all other Mobs, were extremely superstitious[.]100

For Collins, free-thinking meant “The Use of the Understanding, in

endeavouring to find out the Meaning of any Proposition whatsoever, in
considering the nature of the Evidence for or against it, and in judging of it
according to the seeming Force or Weakness of the Evidence”.101 This
definition resonated well with Collins’s title-page quote from Cicero’s De
Natura Deorum: “what is so ill-considered or so unworthy of the dignity
and seriousness proper to a philosopher as to hold an opinion that is not
true, or to maintain with unhesitating certainty a proposition not based on
adequate examination”.102
Richard Bentley claimed that not only did Collins fail to see that Cicero
had positive doctrines;103 but also Collins was guilty of exactly the same
fault he himself had ascribed to his adversaries: i.e., attributing to Cicero
ideas not spoken in his own name, but by characters of his dialogues.
Collins, Bentley went on to argue, omitted to note that Cicero approvingly
mentioned the Academics as good friends, who led good lives, not as ones
whose doctrines he approved.104 Benjamin Hoadly also took special care to
reply to Collins’s portrait of Cicero as a free-thinker, briefly examining, for
an example of Collins’s faulty reading and bad scholarship, Cicero’s views
on the immortality of the soul. For Hoadly, being “a Man of sense”, able to
examine popular errors, did not mean being “a down-right Infidel and
Atheist”. Reading Cicero as free-thinker, according to Hoadly, “is either No
Thinking at all; or, Thinking with the utmost Slavery and Prejudice”. Such
readings of Cicero, Hoadly concluded, made one wonder whether authors
such as Collins “understand Tully themselves; or are fit to direct others with
what Bias to read him; or whether any of them are qualified to give us a
New Edition of that Noble Author”—an allusion to Toland’s Cicero
Illustratus.105
By the time of William Enfield’s 1791 translation of Johann Jakob
Brucker’s Historia Critica Philosophiae (1742–1744, 5 Vols.), the verdict
was final: “Cicero appears rather to have been a warm admirer, and an
elegant memorialist of philosophy, than himself to have merited a place in
the first order of philosophers”. As far as his philosophical doctrines were
concerned, “following the Academic method of philosophising, he
instituted no system of his own, but either employed himself in opposing
the tenets of other sects, or, where he chose to dogmatise, selected from
different sects such opinions, as, he apprehended, could be most plausibly
supported, or would most easily admit of rhetorical decoration”. A case in
point was Cicero’s adoption of Stoic principles in On Duties.106

Cicero and the active life

In his classic work, Peter Gay argues that “[w]hile Lucretius supplied the
philosophes with passionate slogans and an attitude, their real favorite,
Cicero, gave them even more—a philosophy”. Even if Montesquieu’s,
Voltaire’s, and Diderot’s admiration of Cicero seems misplaced from our
standpoint, Gay noted, their admiration had much to do with “what the
philosophes thought a philosopher should be: the thinker in action”.107
Cicero’s profile as both philosopher and statesman, Sharpe adds, drawing
on Gay, was in the best position possible to offer a philosophical defense for
the active life.108 Matthew Fox, however, argues that Cicero’s fame across
the Channel suffered on this point: British readers at this period “seem more
aware than their predecessors of the difficulty of integrating the veneration
of Cicero as a philosopher with admiration of him as a political figure”.109
Fox pointed to a short work by Lord Lyttelton, Observations in the Life
of Cicero (1733) as an example of the difficulty just noted. Right on the
outset, Lyttelton stressed that Cicero’s reputation was obtained by “the
Partiality of learned Men”, not “from the Suffrage of historical Justice”.
Lyttelton went on to focus on a number of instances of Cicero’s conduct to
substantiate his claims that Cicero often acted “more like an ambitious
Orator than a philosophical Republican”: his “Virtues were blended with
many Weaknesses and pernicious Failings”; and that “notwithstanding his
exalted Notions of Integrity, he sometimes yielded to the Corruption of the
Age, and sacrificed the Welfare of his Country to his private Interests and
Passions”. Cicero, Lyttelton continued, was all the more to blame, since his
writings do set up the standards for both public and private virtue.110
However, the fact that Lyttelton’s work, as well as the negative reviews of
Conyers Middleton’s biography of Cicero (1741), did not gain much
popularity (especially when compared to the popularity of Middleton’s
work itself) suggests, as Matthew Fox concedes, a rather typical “uncritical
veneration for the textual Cicero”.111
 Cicero’s contour as a statesman, according to Lyttelton, could not endure
the scrutiny of the historian. Neither could Cicero’s standing as a
philosopher endure such scrutiny, according to David Hume.
Notwithstanding his debts to Cicero,112 Hume pointed out that there are two
different ways of conducting moral philosophy: the easy and the abstruse.
The former, shaped for activity and business, “enters more into common
life; moulds the heart and affections; and by touching those principles
which actuate men, reforms their conduct, and brings them nearer to that
model of perfection which it describes”. The latter, cut off from business
and action, regrets “that philosophy should not yet have fixed, beyond
controversy, the foundation of morals, reasoning, and criticism; and should
for ever talk of truth and falsehood, vice and virtue, beauty and deformity,
without being able to determine the source of these distinctions”; abstract
speculation strives to correct such misgivings. The generality of mankind,
Hume went on to note, prefer the easy philosophy to the abstract and
profound and throw blame and contempt on the latter (even though in
reality the “anatomist” is indispensable to the “painter”). Thus, the “fame of
Cicero flourishes at present”, Hume added, “but that of Aristotle is utterly
decayed”.113 However, it did not matter what the actual merits of Cicero as
a philosopher are; as Gawlick pointed out, Hume astutely noted that the
ease of Cicero’s philosophy allowed it to be more popular and hence
useful.114
In the 1702 English translation of De Finibus, Dodwell tried to defend
Cicero against a common objection to his philosophy: that he preferred the
active to the contemplative life.115 Dodwell brought to Cicero’s defense
examples ranging from ancient philosophy to church history: the active life
aimed at the good of the community, i.e., to contribute to the happiness of
the community. For Cicero’s “beloved Plato”, Dodwell tried to explain,
“Men were born more for their Countries, than themselves”, aiming to serve
rather “the publick than their own private Interests”.116 Dodwell went on to
identify the “Progress of Munkery” as the source to the disapproval of the
active life—contemplation brought one nearer to God.117 However, he
added, drawing on the Apostolic work of the early Church,
the doing good to Souls in general by an Active Life, is much more valuable, in God’s esteem
than any Contemplation for the cultivation of our own private Souls, if we be otherwise
 qualified for the doing Service to the Interests of Souls in general. The Rewards that may be
expected from God for promoting those publick and general Ends of God may turn to more
account as to the promotion of our own private Spiritual Interests, than the benefit that could
have been expected if the same time had been in Retirement and Contemplation.118

The idea that knowledge should be in the service of practice was one aspect
of Cicero’s philosophy, according to Dodwell, perfectly in line with
Christian principles.119
On the one hand, as we already saw, Toland did not think that Cicero’s
ideas were in line with Church doctrines—one should take care when
quoting from Cicero to distinguish between Cicero’s own voice and the
voice of his characters. Moreover, unlike Dodwell, Toland thought that
Cicero had surpassed all Romans and all Greeks “by a long way, and for
that reason the whole race of humans”.120 On the other hand, to a certain
extent, Toland agreed with Dodwell: Cicero provided the principle
according to which “our history is to be gauged, since we are not at all
accustomed to measure matters by individual sympathies”: those who are in
charge of public affairs should always have in sight the welfare of all
citizens; i.e., the actions of those who govern should neither be for their
own benefit, nor for the benefit of just one part of the commonwealth.121 It
was rather expected that Toland would highlight this Platonic advice. He
intended his prospective edition of Cicero for the benefit of “Chief and
Noble men, also Philosophers, Politicians, Judges, and all Magistrates
whosoever”.122 Public activity was the thread holding this group together—
Cicero’s works were meant for action not contemplation.
As we saw, William Guthrie thought that individuals like Collins and
Toland misunderstood Cicero’s Academic credentials. So, in his preface to
his translation of Cicero’s On Duties (1755), Guthrie seemed to go back to
Dodwell: “Our holy Religion was so far from altering or depressing
Cicero’s Doctrines, that it ennobled and improved them; so that, they may
justly be look’d upon as containing a System of unrevealed Christianity”.
But moving past both Dodwell and Toland, Guthrie, like Lyttelton, deplored
Cicero the Orator and the Politician, as well as the Philosopher. If Cicero’s
philosophy appeared sound, Guthrie clarified, it was only in what he had
copied from the Greeks—Panaetius in particular. Not only had Cicero failed
to surpass Greek philosophy; he had imitated Greek philosophers poorly.
Likewise, in his public life, Cicero had failed to follow his own advice.123
Guthrie did not deny that Cicero’s philosophical and rhetorical works
possessed great value, however. Commenting on On Duties I.62–70 (chs.
19–20), Guthrie picked out these chapters, serving as “common Place” for
the “finest Sentiments” of the best Roman historians and poets—history and
literature were accepted mediums for moral instruction. In said chapters,
Cicero tried to define megalopsuchia in doing the dutiful and the honorable
thing: there is loftiness of spirit when, based on justice, spiritedness is
directed towards the “public Good”. Unless sided with justice, not only is
spiritedness vicious; it is barbarous, i.e., “destructive of humanity”,
destitute of civilized feelings.124 For Cicero, Guthrie translated, “all Men of
Courage and Magnanimity should be, at the same Time Men of Virtue and
of Simplicity, Lovers of Truth and Enemies of Deceit; for these are the main
characters of Justice”—fortitude, Cicero went on, echoing Plato, requires
knowledge animated by “public Utility”.125
Guthrie could not have disagreed with either Toland or Hume that Cicero
provided a kind of philosophy shaped for activity and business—though he
must have certainly disagreed with their anti-clericalism. But Cicero’s
defense of the active life brings us back to the earlier discussion that the
Moral Philosophy course in Scotland was a course in the service of virtue.
Hume’s reply to Hutcheson (a model teacher—a model which Ferguson and
Stewart emulated) suggests that he was greatly affected by Hutcheson’s
remark that his Treatise “wants a certain Warmth in the Cause of Virtue,
which, you think, all good Men wou’d relish, & cou’d not displease amidst
abstract Enquirys”. Hume went on to note that his Treatise (Book III) took
the “Catalogue of Virtues from Cicero’s Offices”, not from religious texts. It
comes as no surprise that in the postscript of that letter to Hutcheson, Hume
debated with Hutcheson (like himself, a “great Admirer of Cicero”), via
Cicero’s On Ends, on the springs of virtuous action.126
Even though all commentators agreed that Cicero espoused Stoic
philosophy in On Duties—after all, he himself admits doing so, even if
rather eclectically (I.i.6)—it took Enfield’s 1791 translation of Brucker to
offer an explanation why. Brucker suggested that Stoic philosophy was
rather a good fit to the character and office of lawyers and magistrates in
Rome on account of the utility of its moral doctrine to civil policy—
adopting Stoic rather than Epicurean philosophy meant to Brucker choosing
public virtue over the “ignoble sloth” of “selfish spirits”. According to
Brucker, Cato the Younger was the model Stoic in Cicero’s time.127 As we
saw, Cicero ridiculed Cato’s stoicism in Pro Murena, something which
Brucker found inconsistent, since Cicero embraced the Stoic doctrine of
natural equity and civil law.128 In any case, the stoic virtues which Cato
exhibited, and Cicero mocked, were colorfully painted (if not ironically) by
Lucan: “Such was the character, such the inflexible rule of austere Cato—to
observe moderation and hold fast to the limit, to follow nature, to give his
life for his country, to believe that he was born to serve the whole world and
not himself”.129 The last, as we saw, was an idea Cicero found in Plato, as
well.

Cicero vs. Demosthenes

The previous two themes in eighteenth-century Ciceronian reception have
received much attention of late. Even though the eighteenth-century
rhetorical tradition has been the subject of quite extensive study, less
attention has been paid to the contrast between Cicero and Demosthenes
itself. For example, George A. Kennedy has pointed to a “preference among
intellectuals for Plato and Demosthenes over Cicero and Quintilian”, but in
the five eighteenth-century rhetorical trends he lists there is no indication
why one would make such a choice—other than the progressive rise of
Hellenism itself. Τhe reassessment of Cicero’s standing as a rhetorician and
an orator was unavoidable, especially given his reassessment as a
philosopher and a statesman. Wilbur Samuel Howell does hint at one
possible reason (in examining Adam Smith’s rhetorical theory) for the
preference for Demosthenes: Demosthenes’s brand of oratory seemed to be
more relevant to the demands of the time.130 For Howell, late-eighteenth-
century rhetoricians tried to include both persuasion and instruction as their
subject matter; they focused on the facts of the case and proceeded
inductively in their argumentation; they aimed at the truth, rather than just
winning an argument, and kept both a simpler and unstudied form.131
 In the 1672 English translation of his Comparaison de Démosthène et de
Cicéron, René Rapin (1621–1687) identified a long tradition of comparing
Demosthenes and Cicero going back to Plutarch, Quintilian and Longinus
with no suggestion of a way of deciding who was the better orator. Rapin
however did identify a possible guide out of this conundrum: which one had
the skill to make the best impression on their audience.132 To make such an
impression, not only were education, integrity and other personal abilities
necessary, Rapin explained (chs. 4–10), but also, the ability to understand
and adapt to the temper of one’s audience (chs. 11–12). As far as actual
rhetorical practice was concerned, Rapin went on, there was in
Demosthenes’s “austere kind of Eloquence very much solid & judicious
reason, which had in it nothing that was either superficial or weak; and his
reproaches how severe soever, were always taken in good part, because he
back’t them with such weighty reasons and arguments as were irresistible”.
Demosthenes “had the art of putting into that language, as plain as it was,
and into all his words, all the life and vigour that he pleas’d by the
vehemence of his action”.133 Cicero, in contrast, had the “admirable talent
of affecting the heart upon pathetick subjects, by that wonderfull art of
moving the passions”. Rhetoric, Rapin added, makes its power known best,
“by the great motions, and violent impressions, she makes on the heart in
stirring the passions”. Cicero’s eloquence was irresistible too, Rapin noted;
he charmed and rendered his audience powerless both by the “natural” and
“artificial beauties” of his style.134 In short,
Demosthenes, by the impetuousness of his temper, the force of his [arguments], and the
vehemence of his [pronunciation], was more pressing and forcible then Cicero, as Cicero by
his soft and gentle way, his [smoοth] insinuating passionate touches, and all his naturall
graces, did more affect and move. […] One dazzled the mind by the splendor of his lightning,
and surprised the soule by the mediation of the amazed understanding, but the other by his
pleasing and taking passages, would slip into the very heart, & had a way of insinuating
himself into, and making use of the interests, inclinations, passions and opinions of those he
spoke to.135

As Howell notes, Rapin saw Demosthenes as the master of “the rhetoric of

the mind and understanding”, whereas Cicero, of that of “the heart and
will”. For Howell, Rapin—because he sided with Cicero rather than
Demosthenes, linking rhetoric more to emotional appeals than appeals to
logic, to the exclusion of instruction—“was somewhat at odds with the new
rhetoric of his time”.136 Indeed “somewhat”: Howell neglected to consider
that Demosthenes’s logical appeals, as Rapin pointed out,137 were grounded
on enthymematic rather than inductive reasoning—a type of reasoning
firmly in the “old” rhetorical tradition.
François de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon (1651–1715) placed
Demosthenes directly against Cicero in two short dialogues in his
Dialogues of the Dead (1685). In these, Fénelon put forward the idea that
eloquence had both a didactic and a persuasive component, and both
components were supposed to be in the service of truth and justice—ideas
fully developed in his Dialogues concerning Eloquence (1722). In the first
dialogue between the dead orators, each claiming to be the better one,
Demosthenes said to Cicero: “Your flashes of wit pleased, my words like
thunderbolts bore everything down before them. Your audience cryed out,
how nobly he talks! Mine, come, let us march against Philip”; he then
added “Your orations were adorned, mine without any ornament. I had
nothing in my discourse but strong, plain and close reasons, from whence I
drew conclusions, as piercing as the lightning which cannot be resisted”.138
Fénelon drew thus exactly the same picture of Cicero and Demosthenes as
Rapin, but to the opposite effect: Demosthenes was the better orator exactly
because he was the “master of the rhetoric of the mind and understanding”,
as Howell put it. In the second dialogue, Demosthenes made Cicero admit
that both had been nothing more than orators—Cicero falsely claiming the
title of a philosopher too. To that effect, both ended up admitting that Plato
was the only true rhetorician, being concurrently a true philosopher.139
Demosthenes was again the superior of the two; but this time, because he
had no misgivings about his abilities or accomplishments. Demosthenes
ended the dialogue thus: “the true use of elegance is to set truth in its fairest
light, and to incline others to follow their greatest interest; that is, to
cultivate justice and all other virtues. This is the use that Plato has made of
his eloquence, in which neither of us has follow’d his example”.140
Charles Rollin questioned “whether Fénelon was representative of
French taste when he placed the Eloquence of Cicero below that of
Demosthenes”.141 Indeed, Gilbert-Charles Gendre, in his Traité de
l’Opinion (1735), followed both Rapin and Rollin in preferring Cicero over
Demosthenes; he added that, in their treatments of the subject, they
overlooked that Demosthenes was accomplished in only one rhetorical
genre, whereas Cicero excelled in all of them: “soit qu’il défende Milon,
soit qu’il accuse Verrès, soit qu’il louë Pompee et Cesar, soit qu’il tonne
contre Catilina et contre Antoine”.142 I mention Gendre, even though his
work was not translated into English, because of William Young’s History
of Athens (1786). In this popular work, Young paused just a moment to
consider the comparison between Demosthenes and Cicero in typical
fashion, i.e., citing a number of sources—Gendre being one of them—and
then stating his preference. Young produced a different reason why most
French writers were unable to prefer Demosthenes, suggesting that the
difference was due to the receiving audiences:
Cicero and Demosthenes will severally most please according to the temper of the reader;
whether he is of a persuasive, or of a commanding spirit; whether of an acute mind well
informed and well arranged, or of a bold and intuitive genius; whether, and in what degree, a
friend to public liberty; for it is not enough to be learned, the people must be free, who can
relish the eloquence of Demosthenes.143

Young seemed to be in agreement with Dalzel on the similarity between

Greeks and Britons in their love for liberty.
By the time of Hugh Blair’s lectures on rhetoric, the comparison between
Cicero and Demosthenes was commonplace. Not even in Edinburgh was
Blair the first to include such a comparison in his lectures—Adam Smith
had preceded him. So, given the long history of treatments of the relative
merits of both orators in rhetorical treatises, there was no novelty in Blair
when he noted that eloquence was an art which, practiced with considerable
success in different ways by Demosthenes and Cicero, received its greatest
attention in the Athenian and Roman republics—the stress being on
“republic”. However, Blair did try purposely to bring something new to the
comparison, drawing from Hume, Rapin and Fenelon among others.144 It
was common to think, he argued, that their different rhetorical styles owed
primarily to a difference of audience, i.e. the constitution of the popular
assemblies: “the refined Athenians followed with ease the concise and
convincing Eloquence of Demosthenes; […] a manner more popular, more
flowery, and declamatory, was requisite in speaking to the Romans, a
people less acute, and less acquainted with the arts of Speech”.145 Blair
perhaps had Adam Smith in mind, who, in his own lectures on rhetoric, not
only examined the differences of Demosthenes’ and Cicero’s styles but also
spent a session discussing the differences between their audiences as the
most important source of variance of style.146 Blair disagreed: the audience
played practically no role in their styles. Simply, Blair noted, Demosthenes
and Cicero represent two kinds of Orator: “[t]he highest degree of strength
is […] never found united with the highest degree of smoothness and
ornament; and the genius that carries ornament to its utmost length, is not of
such a kind, as can excel as much in vigour”. Together Demosthenes and
Cicero form the perfect Orator, but such perfection “is not to be expected
from the limited powers of human genius”. However, to the British public,
Blair went on to add, drawing from Hume, a Demosthenes is more suited
than a Cicero.147
Hume was more insistent than Blair that classic rhetoric was suitable to
modern audiences. For Hume, “our modern eloquence is of the same stile or
species with that which ancient critics denominated ATTIC eloquence, that
is, calm, elegant, and subtile, which instructed the reason more than
affected the passions, and never raised its tone above argument or common
discourse”. Yet Demosthenes and Cicero, Hume went on to note, left Lysias
far behind in excellence by the well-timed use of the “pathetic and sublime,
which, on proper occasions, they threw into their discourse, and by which
they commanded the resolution of their audience”.148 As Hume asked,
to what a pitch did the ATHENIANS carry their eloquence in the deliberative kind, when
affairs of state were canvassed, and the liberty, happiness, and honour of the republic were the
subject of debate? Disputes of this nature elevate the genius above all others, and give the
fullest scope to eloquence; and such disputes are very frequent in this nation.149

For Hume, could Demosthenes’ style

be copied, its success would be infallible over a modern assembly: It is rapid harmony,
exactly adjusted to the sense: It is vehement reasoning, without any appearance of art: It is
disdain, anger, boldness, freedom, involved in a continued stream of argument: And of all
human productions, the orations of DEMOSTHENES present to us the models, which
approach the nearest to perfection.150

Adam Smith disagreed with both Hume and Blair, however: neither could
Demosthenes nor Cicero be copied with the same success to any other
audience than their own—no matter the similarities in deliberative
assemblies, the differences were greater still.151 It is important to highlight,
that despite Cicero’s hold on eighteenth-century audiences, the Scots—
Hume, Smith, and Blair—agreed that Demosthenes won the battle.152 This
is an interesting agreement because, as Howell has shown, Smith clearly put
forward a new rhetoric, whereas Blair was oscillating between the old and
the new, and Hume was closer to the old rather than the new tradition.153

IV James Mill’s Ciceronian moments

According to Myles Burnyeat, in late 1835, the East India College
presented to James Mill, on the event of his retirement from the East India
Company, a copy of Immanuel Bekker’s Greek edition of Plato’s works
(1826). However, the 11-volume set had already been available for general
use at the college library, suggested by the annotations “on points of Greek
much too elementary for James Mill”. The gift must have been James Mill’s
own request; it would have been odd for his colleagues to choose to honor
him with a used book. What makes the request even more surprising is that
James Mill was already in possession of that specific edition of Plato’s
work—around the same time, John Stuart Mill had just finished publishing
four (out of nine) translations of Plato using that same Bekker edition.
Burnyeat has told this story to bring to light James Mill’s obsession with
Plato.154
The details of the story do not seem to be corroborated by what we know
about the Mills. James Mill did not retire from the East India Company at
the end of 1835.155 Moreover, the East India College did present the Bekker
Plato to a Mill, but it was to James Bentham Mill (1814–1862), James
Mill’s second son. As the dedicatory inscription suggests, the set was in
honour of James Bentham Mill’s excellent performance. After all,
according to the elder Mill, James junior “had the highest mark in
everything” for September 1835, and was likely to listen to his father to
strive “hard to have the same in the remainder”.156 However, that James
Bentham accepted Bekker’s Plato as the award for all of his hard work
makes Burnyeat’s point even stronger, speaking volumes on the place Plato
seemed to occupy in the Mill family.
 Andrew Bissett, in his biographical article on James Mill in the seventh
edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, mentioned Mill’s habit of
attributing “a considerable share of influence in the formation of his
intellectual character to his reading the works of Plato”.157 Bissett’s source
was most likely John Black, editor of the Morning Chronicle, who in his
obituary of the elder Mill reported having heard him “speak with great
warmth of the impression which the writings of Plato made on his youth”,
regulating “his conduct strictly according to an elevated ethical
standard”.158 As we saw, in his Autobiography, the younger Mill testified of
his father’s debt to Plato for his “mental culture”, something which led
James Mill to recommend Plato to young scholars. For John Stuart, both he
and his father were “pupil[s] of Plato, and cast in the mould of his
dialectics”.159 This, as we shall see, was just an example of how the elder
Mill’s “typical” classical education manifested itself in not so typical ways
in his work as an author and activist in London.

Mill against the “injurious misapprehension” of Plato

In the early 1800s, a not-so-young Scot in London, Mill took up the
opportunity to put on the hat of the Greek scholar. The occasion was the
publication of the 1804 English edition of Plato’s works by Thomas Taylor.
Taylor’s Plato offered a unique opportunity for Mill, “a keen student of
Plato”,160 to highlight what he thought important in Plato’s works. And Mill
welcomed Taylor’s magnum opus with two long, markedly critical,
reviews.161
Myles Burnyeat has recently argued that Mill, having turned to Plato on
his own initiative, “had the luck to fall in love with a Plato unencumbered
by the NeoPlatonic interpretation”. According to Burnyeat, Mill was
“astoundingly original”, since “no-one at the time would have taken Cicero
as their guide to Plato”.162 Mill, Burnyeat argued, was drawn to the critical
spirit of Socratic questioning; a questioning which was essential to James
Mill, John Stuart Mill and George Grote—the “Plato-loving reformers”—in
their campaign “to make Britain a more rational, more democratic, and
more secular society than it was when they were growing up”.163 In 1809,
Mill noted:
 That author, who was in the most peculiar manner the favourite of Cicero, and recommended
by that accomplished judge as the finest teacher, both of eloquence and of ratiocination;
whose writings were always the principal part of those admired Socraticae chartae, the
principal source, according to Horace, of that wisdom which is the spring and origin of every
thing exquisite in literature,—has been less read in modern times, than any other of the classic
authors of Greece or Rome.164

Mill blamed Neo-Platonism, in conjunction with classical education’s focus

on prosody, for the general neglect in studying Plato. He went on to add:
One of the most remarkable features of the writings of Plato is, that he affirms nothing;
whereas the friends of Mr Taylor [the Neo-Platonists] are the most desperately affirmative of
all human beings. In most of the Dialogues of Plato, the object is to refute the tenets and
expose the ignorance of some of those sophists who travelled about Greece, under pretence of
teaching eloquence and philosophy, and who, in general, filled the minds of the youth with a
spirit of mere logomachy, and with the worst impressions of right and wrong, with regard
both to public and to private life. The ingenuity, the acuteness, the address, the eloquence
with which this delicate and important task is performed, render the perusal of these
Dialogues among the most improving exercises which can engage a juvenile mind. Hardly
any thing, in the way of example at least, can be conceived more calculated to sharpen the
faculties; to render acute in discerning, and ingenious in exposing fallacies; to engender a
love of mental exercise; and to elevate with the ambition of mental excellence.

Socrates works hard in Plato’s dialogues, Mill argued, “to expose some of
the false impressions which are most apt to prevail in the minds of men, and
to lead to the most dangerous consequences”, and even when he appears to
propose something positive, it is only “to give specimens of investigation,
to let in rays of light, to analyse particular points, and by throwing out
queries or hypotheses, to encourage speculation, rather than lay down and
establish any system of opinions”.165
Frank Evans claimed that James Mill “had certainly not gone very far in
Plato”; Mill expressed “a conventional eighteenth-century judgment” by
distinguishing between Plato and Neo-Platonism, and associating the
former with elegance as well as eloquence when treating moral and political
subjects, and the latter with mysticism and obscurity and dealing with
“supernaturals”.166 Recently, Leo Catana (2013) has come to add to Evans’s
claims by exploring the ethical and theological contexts which informed the
eighteenth-century contempt of Neo-Platonism. In Catana’s view,
“Brucker’s outlook was […] at the core of the Taylor–Mill controversy
1804–1809”.167 As Catana clarifies, “Brucker’s 18th-century followers had
already increased in numbers over the last decades of the 18th century, and
they were probably sufficient in number and academic status to make Mill
confident that Taylor was a solitary and easy target, working against the
current”.168
Catana recognizes some tensions in unifying Brucker and Mill in a front
against Taylor. First, both Brucker and Mill turned to Cicero’s Academic
Questions to paint Plato’s philosophical portrait, but Mill in a different
manner than Brucker—unlike Brucker, for whom Plato had a positive
system, Mill viewed Plato as an “undogmatic sceptic”. Second, Mill
ignored Brucker’s method of judging ancient philosophers “on the basis of
their conformity with Protestant doctrine”. Third, Mill, Catana argues,
“perpetuates Brucker’s implicit distinction between revelation and
philosophy, when he cites Brucker’s claims about Neoplatonists being
superstitious”, even “though he may not have liked the distinction itself if
he had thought carefully about it”. However, Catana argues that these
tensions were not enough to contradict his conclusion: according to Catana,
it is unlikely that Burnyeat was right emphasizing Mill’s originality.169
Mill drew from a fountain of commonplace material on the classics to
argue for the usefulness of cultivating an inquisitive spirit in classical
education. Mill’s view that studying Plato is both instructive and
pleasurable was indeed a usual eighteenth-century view. Moreover, Mill
chose not to undermine Cicero’s authority—as we saw, Guthrie as much as
Brucker doubted Cicero’s philosophic aptitude—directing his severe
censures on the authorities Taylor used. Likewise, it was common to deride
the Sophists, taking Plato’s presentation of their method and ideas at face
value; also typical, though to a lesser degree, was pressing on the
distinction between Plato and Neo-Platonists.170 Nor was quoting Cicero’s
Academic Questions, to argue that Plato was not a Dogmatist, original;
William Guthrie had already done so in 1744.171 In James Finlayson’s
lectures on logic from 1795–1796, Plato was presented as one who tried to
bring together the different philosophies of his predecessors; as such, the
tenets of Plato, “being derived from so many different sources”, Finlayson
noted, could not be expected to “coalesce into a plain System”. At the same
time, the obscurity owing to such variety made it very difficult to ascertain
Plato’s real tenets.172
 However, it was not in these views that Mill’s originality lay. Catana
perceptively noted that behind Mill’s claim, following Brucker, that the
Neo-Platonists were “lying professors of miracle-working, of conversing
with the gods, of revelations from heaven, and other cheats by which they
could purloin the admiration of an ignorant and absurd multitude”,173 lurks
an accusation. As Catana puts it: for Mill, “the ancient Neoplatonists
belonged to a less developed political culture, in which charlatans could
manipulate the ignorant masses with their lies and tricks”.174 But there is
something more to this. As in the case of Cicero’s dialogues, for Mill the
dialogic form allowed Plato to engage with different ideas and explore
alternative positions—Plato frequently attempted to outdo orators, poets
and, of course, Sophists using their own tools.175 Most importantly, in the
early days of philosophic thinking, Mill noted,
[t]he great puzzle to the antient philosophers was the nature of abstract terms. The sophists
availed themselves of the obscurity attending them, to invent quibbles, and to prove by
invincible argument what no man would believe. Plato labored to explain them, and in the
attempt displays the powers of a genius truly gigantic; but still it is evident that he fell short
of the discovery at which he aimed.176

Socrates, according to Enfield’s translation of Brucker, “justly conceived

the true end of philosophy to be […] to free mankind from the dominion of
pernicious prejudices”.177 But the key to that freedom was by attacking the
obscurity surrounding abstract terms through philosophical analysis. In
Mill’s view, Plato’s dialectics should be put to work for the betterment of
society. And this he attempted to do.

Philosophy in action
In his biography of James Mill, Alexander Bain argued that both the elder
Mill’s essay “Government” (1820) and his personal influence constituted a
catalyst in the movement for reform, making “in all probability […] our
political history very different from what it might otherwise have been”.178
The younger Mill publicly noted that “[b]y his writings and his personal
influence”, his father “was a great centre of light to his generation”; his
influence flowing “in minor streams too numerous to be specified”.179 The
reason was that, once James Mill embraced “profound” doctrines,
notwithstanding being “original”, he was “ready to defend them against all
the world”.180
On the occasion of the publication of Bain’s companion biographies of
the Mills in 1882, the Athenaeum reviewer summarised the major “streams”
of James Mill’s influence:
Almost all the workers of his generation turned to James Mill for council and aid. Bentham
made him his right hand; Romilly and Brougham invariably turned to him for advice; Ricardo
would not have published but for his pressure; Grote recognized in him his intellectual father;
Fonblanque and Black sat at his feet; Joseph Hume was an old schoolfellow, and got his few
ideas from him; the early advocates of education, Allen and Lancaster, found in him a warm
supporter; the first Westminster Review was dominated by him; in short, no considerable
movement in the early years of the century was outside the unobtrusive yet substantial
influence of the elder Mill.181

For the younger Mill, James Mill “was sought for the vigour and
instructiveness of his conversation, and did use it largely as an instrument
for the diffusion of his opinions”. Not only was James Mill “full of
anecdote, a hearty laughter, and when with people whom he liked, a most
lively and amusing companion”, but also
It was not solely, or even chiefly, in diffusing his merely intellectual convictions, that his
power shewed itself; it was still more through the influence of a quality, of which I have only
since learnt to appreciate the extreme rarity: that exalted public spirit and regard above all
things to the good of the whole, which warmed into life and activity every germ of similar
virtue that existed in the minds he came in contact with; the desire he made them feel for his
approbation, the shame at his disapproval; the moral support which his conversation and his
very existence gave to those who were aiming at the same objects, and the encouragement he
afforded to the faint-hearted or desponding among them, by the firm confidence which
(though the reverse of sanguine as to the results to be expected in any one particular case) he
always felt in the power of reason, the general progress of improvement, and the good which
individuals could do by judicious effort.182

John Stuart acknowledged that his father had much to do with creating “a
recognized status in the arena of opinion and discussion to the Benthamite
type of radicalism quite out of proportion to the number of its adherents”.183
This was why in 1835, for example, John Arthur Roebuck called James
Mill’s “Government” “all-important”, claiming that a large part of Mill’s
(and Bentham’s) once “visionary and chimerical” views concerning the
defects of the British constitution, in the 1830s formed “part of our every-
day political creed”.184 For Henry Brougham, “[w]hen the system of legal
polity was to be taught, and the cause of Law Reform to be supported in
this country, no one could be found more fitted for this service than Mr.
Mill; and to him more than to any other person has been owing the diffusion
of those important principles and their rapid progress in England”.185
A number of testimonials corroborate the above sketch.186 But perhaps
the most colorful portrait of Mill’s abilities was Harriet Grote’s:
This able dogmatist exercised considerable influence over other young men of that day, as
well as over Grote. He was, indeed, a propagandist of a high order, equally master of the pen
and of speech. Moreover, he possessed the faculty of kindling in his audience the generous
impulses towards the popular side, both in politics and social theories; leading them, at the
same time, to regard the cultivation of individual affections and sympathies as destructive of
lofty aims, and indubitably hurtful to the mental character. So attractive came to be the
conceptions of duty towards mankind at large, as embodied in James Mill’s eloquent
discourse, that 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.187

Not long after Harriet Grote’s sketch, Walter Bagehot reported that he had
found a vivid picture of the elder Mill “in the reminiscences of a few old
men, who still linger in London society, and who are fond of recalling the
doctrines of their youth […], James Mill must have pre-eminently
possessed the Socratic gift of instantaneously exciting and permanently
impressing the minds of those around him”.188 If nothing else, these
extracts suggest that Mill must have had some success in influencing
opinions and actions putting Plato’s dialectics to work for social
improvement.

Choosing logos over pathos

According to George Grote, the pre-eminent nineteenth-century scholar on
ancient Greek history and philosophy, James Mill’s
unpremeditated oral exposition was hardly less effective than his prepared work with the pen;
his colloquial fertility on philosophical subjects, his power of discussing himself, and of
stimulating others to discuss, his ready responsive inspirations through all the shifts and
windings of a sort of Platonic dialogue, all these accomplishments were, to those who knew
him, even more impressive than what he composed for the press. Conversation with him was
not merely instructive, but provocative to the dormant intelligence. Of all persons whom we
have known, Mr. James Mill was the one who stood least remote from the lofty Platonic ideal
 of Dialectic—Τοῦ διδόναι και δέχεισθαι λόγον (the giving and receiving of reasons)
competent alike to examine others, or to be examined by them on philosophy. When to this
we add a strenuous character, earnest convictions, and single-minded devotion to truth, with
an utter disdain of mere paradox, it may be conceived that such a man exercised powerful
intellectual ascendency over younger minds.

Grote was one of those who remembered and attested such “intellectual
ascendancy” with gratitude. He admitted owing “to the historian of British
India an amount of intellectual stimulus and guidance such as he can never
forget”.189 The contrast between the dogmatic Mill, which his rivals saw in
his works, as we saw in Chapter 1, and the Socratic Mill, which his
associates saw in him, as these testimonials suggest, leads us to take a
closer look at Mill’s argumentation practice—the last three chapters engage
with Mill’s theory and practice in detail.
According to Bain, “the rousing of sentiment against reason was
repugnant to [Mill’s] whole being, so far as we know anything about
him”.190 But this did not mean that there was no place for emotion in
persuasion. Writing in 1806, Mill explained:
[W]hen we speak in this manner [i.e., as regards the “real perfection” of eloquence] we have
the eloquence of Demosthenes in our eye, not that of Edmund Burke, or of the French orators.
In several of the finest orations of Demosthenes, we find scarcely any thing beside a clear and
forcible statement of what is to be done, with the motives recommending it. But that which is
to be done, and the motives which lead to it, are stated with so much skill, though without a
single passionate expression that they make the profoundest impression, and inspire the
strongest resolve.

Inspiration is an affair of the emotions; the love of virtue is not inculcated,

Mill added, with “heat and violence”, but with “earnestness and
warmth”.191 Writing to his friend William Allen in 1811, trying to sway him
over a disputed point in their joint venture for the education of the poor,
Mill confessed:
On reading over what I have written, I am afraid I have expressed myself in favour of my
own opinion, with an appearance of warmth, which may induce you to yield more to my will,
than to my reason. I beg you will let it have no such effect. The appearance of warmth is
natural to me—but it implies no blind attachment to my own thoughts—& I shall most
cheerfully alter the address in any matter you & your friends may think proper.192

Warmth and earnestness were no substitute for reason. But Mill recognized
their effect on an audience.
 Mill’s manuscripts abound in monologues and dialogues; in one such
monologue, Mill set up an imaginary courtroom: his protagonist, trying to
defend himself against a libel suit on account of a piece of writing which
highlighted the faults of the rulers (and thus brought about their wrath),
claimed that he would attempt to
carefully abstain from every thing not essentially necessary to my defence—but as you see
the extent of the subject, I trust you will protect me in the use of the arguments which it
requires. You may be assured it will be my earnest desire to make no unnecessary demand
upon your time and attention. But as I conceive that the very vitals of human happiness
depend upon this question, and as this cause, if you do what I conceive to be your duty, may
do much to placing it on a proper basis, for ever, you will excuse my anxiety to do every thing
within the limits of my power, to present to your minds all that I think conducive to forming a
right judgement on the question.193

Evidently, Mill’s archetype defendant was Plato’s Socrates.194 The key was
setting out a solid, simple and easy to follow argument:
The proposition with which we set out is, that the people ought to receive information
respecting their government, and information not calculated to mislead. But for this purpose,
gentlemen, both sides must be heard: therefore the side which blames, as well as the side
which praises: the liberty of blame ought to be as ample as the liberty of praise. But the
liberty of praise is without limit; therefore, so ought to be the liberty of blame. Gentlemen,
this is demonstrative, and unanswerable. If reason only were concerned, not a word more
would be necessary to be said. It is good for mankind, that the subject should be truly
informed respecting the conduct of their governors, but this without unlimited power of
blame, they never can be. Can you gentlemen perceive a single flaw in this chain of
reasoning? It is short, and clear, and easily comprehended. If there were any defect you would
not fail to discern it. But you do not discern any. Thus gentlemen, it ought to govern your
resolves. The fear, however, of the ghosts remains, after the existence of the ghosts is no
longer believed.195

Even though Mill’s defendant tried first to secure the audience’s sympathy
and later on to appeal to their imagination, the emphasis was on addressing
their “minds”.
Mill’s defendant’s apology offered a typical example of what Hugh Blair
called “Eloquence of the Bar”, i.e. when the speaker aims
to inform, to instruct, to convince: when his Art is exerted, in removing prejudices against
himself and his cause, in chusing the most proper arguments, stating them with the greatest
force, arranging them in the best order, expressing and delivering them with propriety and
beauty; and thereby disposing us to pass that judgment, or embrace that side of the cause, to
which he seeks to bring us.196
In Lecture 28, dealing specifically with Eloquence of the Bar, Blair laid
down some principles: in aiming to convince an (informed) audience about
what is “just and true”,197 the exposition must be calm and temperate, and
“connected with close reasoning”. Little imagination is allowed, avoiding
thus “a suspicion of his [the advocate’s] failing in soundness and strength of
argument”—purity, neatness, perspicuity, brevity, and distinctness are thus
key ingredients of both oral and written composition. It is important to do
justice to both sides of the argument—no artifice, no concealment in
presenting the opposing case. At the same time, in pleading a cause, a
proper degree of warmth is needed—warmth as in seriousness and
earnestness in the cause advanced.198 Mill, as we saw, adopted a similar
vocabulary.

V Conclusion
I have argued that Mill’s classical education manifested itself, both directly
and indirectly, in different ways in his theory and practice. Mill was a Scot
in London in more ways than one. First, we saw that by the time Mill went
to university, a classical education was rather uncommon in Scotland unlike
the rest of Britain. Mill’s competence in Greek especially was quite rare. He
could pick a bad translation apart on account of both linguistic infidelities
and literary inelegance; but, most importantly, he could pick it apart on
account of philosophical incompetence—an incompetence which affected
practical usefulness in the inability to sift through obscure abstract ideas.
Second, as I tried to show, once Mill found himself at Edinburgh, he was
exposed to a live link between reading the classics and cultivating
individual excellence through engagement in social improvement. The idea
of the philosopher in action was one which followed Mill throughout his
life in London. Battling down commonplaces, prejudices and “vague
generalities” with the pen was one way the philosopher acted, but Mill was
also actively involved in a number of projects in the early nineteenth
century. Third, as we saw in the case of Cicero, not only were virtue, action
and the pursuit of truth embedded in scholarly work on the classics, not
only were they exemplified in the work of philosophoi and phileleftheroi—
whom Lyttelton called “philosophical republicans”— but also, virtue,
action and the pursuit of truth needed to inform the way ideas were
communicated about the betterment of society. Even though Cicero’s fame
reached an astonishing degree in the eighteenth century, Mill, like others in
Edinburgh, practiced Demosthenes’s “rational persuasion”.
Mill’s aims were indeed to inform, to instruct, and to convince—for
polemical, however, causes: educational and political reform. The
Enlightenment reception of Cicero and Demosthenes allows us to offer an
explanation why Mill presented his arguments in the way that he did.
Chapter 4 expands on the method of scientific investigation, on its relation
to political philosophy and the method of instruction and persuasion (what
has been dubbed “New Rhetoric”). Yet, situating Mill’s method of
persuasion in a setting responding to and eventually transforming the civic
republican tradition is but half the work. The other half is examining his
actual arguments. Chapter 5 takes up this thread by examining Mill’s
arguments in the debate on the education of the poor and the debate on
parliamentary reform. Chapter 6 moves to consider specifically his
infamous essay on government. None of these works have attracted the
attention Mill’s History of British India has. It seems appropriate then to
first examine whether paying attention to Mill’s background in that
“oracular book of the utilitarian sect” offers any new insight. Chapter 3
takes up this task.

Notes
1 See, e.g., Mill (1803d and 1803f) debating chronology issues concerning Roman history. In
History, Mill frequently cited Herodotus on chronology, castes, taxation, and religion as well
as the customs of the ancients—he even paused to comment on some translation issues on
Herodotus’ reports about the architecture of pyramids. See, e.g., History: I.134, 154, 158, 174,
259, 292; II.10, 20–21.
2 Bain, 1882: 166; J.S. Mill, Autobiography, CW: I.9.
3 Mill’s CPB form a variously-organised collection of quotations, ideas, and at times, short drafts
—assorted together from as early as his days at the University of Edinburgh—on a number of
issues and themes. The only extensive study on Mill’s CPB is Grint, 2013.
4 Fenn (1987: iii) estimated that a book would amount to 1200–1300 pages.
5 Cumming, 1962: 156; Bain, 1882: 8ff. See Bowen, 1989; Larson, 1999; Hagerman, 2013: ch.
1; Goldhill, 2002.
6 Burston, 1973: 61.
7 J.S. Mill, Autobiography, CW: I.25, 213.
 8 Loizides, 2013: ch 3.
9 See, e.g., Lazenby, 1972; Haakonsen, 1985; Fenn, 1987; Chen, 2000; McInerney, 2002;
Plassart, 2008, 2015, 2017.
10 Bain, 1882: 357. See further, Black, 2012:59ff; Cowell, 1975: 23.
11 For an early list of members, see Rules and Regulations for the Government of the Athenaeum
(London Athenaeum Club, 1840). For a discussion of works by these authors, see Loizides,
2013: ch. 1.
12 See, e.g. Pappé, 1979; Glucker, 1987 and 1996; Demetriou, 1996 and 1999; Giorgini, 2009.
13 Bisset, 1842: 77.
14 The phrase is Matthew Arnold’s. See, Arnold, 1871: 51.
15 Bain, 1882: 13–19.
16 Harvey, 1868: 27; Strong, 1909: 168n3.
17 See, Clarke, 1945: ch. 4 and 1959: ch 11.
18 Hamilton, 1836: 108–18.
19 Kerr, 1910: 179; Grant, 1876: I.335–6.
20 Cumming, 1962: 154.
21 Clarke, 1959: 133, 143–4. See also, Report made to his Majesty by a Royal Commission of
Inquiry into the State of Universities of Scotland (House of Commons, 1831a): 25–6.
22 Frijhoff, 1996: 57–8.
23 See Edelstein, 2010: 5.
24 See, e.g. Stray, 1998.
25 House of Commons, 1831a: 26.
26 Anderson, 1985: 183.
27 The classic treatments are Jenkyns, 1980 and Turner, 1981.
28 Strong, 1909: 90–9.
29 Kerr, 1910: 260, 172.
30 In what follows, I draw from House of Commons, 1831a: 119–38, 165.
31 Bain, 1882: 13–5.
32 For the origin of the Greek chairs in Scottish universities, see M.A. Stewart, 1990.
33 Hamilton, 1836: 117.
34 House of Commons, 1831a: 153–6; Hamilton, 1836: 116–17.
35 Mill, 1809d: 188–9. Mill had taught his son this lesson well, see Loizides, 2013: ch. 4.
36 Lazenby, 1972: 309n94. See further, Bisset, 1839: 219; Bain, 1882: 16, 29–30. See also, J.S.
Mill, Autobiography, CW: I.7.
37 Law, 1965: 161ff.
38 Bain (1882: 28) reported Mill obtaining “a tutorship in the family of a Scottish nobleman in
East Lothian” by the recommendation of his Professor of Logic, James Finlayson. Either Mill
tutored at two noblemen’s families in East Lothian, or this account may simply suggest a
different, or an additional, referee for Mill at the Marquis of Tweeddale.
39 Anon., 1862: 181.
40 Bain, 1882: 14n.
41 Cockburn, 1856: 20.
42 Clarke, 1959: 144–5. Notes from four “philological lectures” in March 1786 seem to
contradict, though the sample is insufficient to make a proper estimate, Clarke’s view that
students did not learn much Greek from Dalzel (see Robert Eden Scott, “Notes from Four
Philological Lectures” delivered by Andrew Dalzel, Professor of Greek at the same university
[University of Edinburgh] in the year 1786 from March 2 to March 14. Aberdeen University
Library, GB 0231 MS 189: 1r-9r).
43 Burnyeat, 2001b: 17–18.
44 Dalzel, 1821: I.5–8.
45 Turner, 1989.
46 See further, Loizides, 2013: ch. 1.
47 Dalzel, 1821: II.465n, 471; I.5–8.
48 Bain, 1882: 35.
49 ibid., 18–19.
50 Sher, 1990: 118.
51 Cited in ibid., 119.
52 A. Dalzel to R. Liston, 16 Feb. 1779, in Innes, 1861: 30–31. For Stewart’s debts to Ferguson’s
mode of teaching, see Sher, 1990:124–5.
53 J. Mill to M. Napier, 10 Jul. 1821, in Napier, 1879: 27. See also, Mill, 1806g: 562 and 1829:
I.59.
54 J. Mill to D. Ricardo, 3 Dec. 1817, in Ricardo: VII: 211.
55 Vivenza, 2001: 41 referring to Macfie, 1955: 83–4. See also, Morgan, 1937: 258–9 (cited in
Tannoch-Bland 2000: 68n8).
56 House of Commons, 1831a: 130–31.
57 R.J. Mackintosh, 1836: I.118.
58 See Loizides, 2013: ch. 1.
59 Stewart: VI.116n.
60 Ferguson, 1792: 7.
61 ibid., 8. For Ferguson, Cicero served as “a kind of de facto Stoic source” (Hill, 2006: 38),
thinking that “Cicero in his mere speculations was an Academic, and professed indiscriminate
Scepticism. But, when he came to instruct his son in the duties of morality, he seized on the
principles of the Stoic philosophy, as the most applicable to the conduct of human life”
(Ferguson, 1792: 8).
62 Vivenza, 2001: 42; Raphael and Macfie, 1976: 5–7. Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius formed
additional sources.
63 Smith, 1759: 3.
64 Raphael and Macfie, 1976: 5–7.
65 Howell, 1971: 90.
66 Jones, 1776: iii.
67 Howell, 1971: 77.
68 Howell, 1971: 447 (italics added). In his magisterial study, Howell identified Adam Smith and
George Campbell as trend-setters, by advocating a “New Rhetoric”. For Howell, Hugh Blair,
Joseph Priestley, and John Lawson, among others, wavered between the “Old” and the “New”.
See Howell, 1971: ch. 6.
69 Anon., 1790: 63–4, 71, 100–3, 106–8.
70 Lawson, 1759: 44ff, 119, 128ff. Lawson discussed Plato’s Phaedrus in detail with surprising
enthusiasm (ibid., 329ff).
71 Priestley, 1777: 21. See further, e.g., ibid., 54, 118–121, 234.
72 See Moonie, 1998. Going through Robert Eden Scott’s notes (Aberdeen University Library,
GB 0231 MS 189) from Greenfield lectures, one witnesses a teacher fully possessed of his
subject, combining ideas from Campbell, Blair, Smith, Burke, Beattie, Kames, and others.
73 Sloane, 1998: 102–5; Moonie, 1998: 109–10; see also, Horner, 1993: 70–71.
74 Robert Eden Scott, “Notes from a Course of Lectures upon Belles Lettres delivered by William
Greenfield at the University of Edinburgh in the years 1785–6—from Nov. 22 1785 to April 19
1786”. Aberdeen University Library. GB 0231 MS 189: 75v and 78r.
 75 See House of Commons, 1831a: 122, 124.
76 John Lee, Notes from the Lectures of Professor Finlayson on Logic (1795–1796 and 1796–
1797), 2 vols. (Centre for Research Collections: University of Edinburgh, MS Dc 8.142/1–2):
I.314.
77 H. Blair, 1789: II.157.
78 Howell, 1971: 441–7.
79 Cited in Hatch, 1998: 88.
80 Vivenza, 2001: 42.
81 Aristotle, R 1354a1. “Antistrophos” is typically translated as “counterpart”.
82 Howell, 1971: 75–79.
83 Gawlick, 1963: 657. Fox, 2013: 320.
84 For the classic treatment on the Enlightenment reception of Cicero, see Gawlick, 1963. For
some recent treatments, see East, 2013; Fox, 2013; Ingram, 2015; Sharpe, 2015. For Cicero’s
English editions in the eighteenth century and earlier, see Brüggemann, 1795.
85 Ferguson, 1792: 8; 1783: II.120.
86 East, 2013: 20.
87 Dodwell et al., 1702: [xxi–xxiv], [xxxviii].
88 Guthrie, 1744: iii–vi.
89 Francklin, 1749: 220n(k), 80n(n), 158n(h).
90 For more details on the debate, see Beiser, 1996: ch. 6.
91 East, 2013: 41ff.
92 ibid., 323.
93 Gawlick, 1963: 673.
94 ibid., 673.
95 Anon., 1715: xii–xxiv translating Toland 1712: chs 3–9.
96 Toland 1712: ch. 16. Quotations from Toland’s Cicero Illustratus are from East’s translation
(East, 2013: 367–428 at 394–399).
97 Fox, 2013: 329.
98 See East, 2013: 397–8.
99 Collins, 1713: 135, 138–9.
100 ibid., 139.
101 ibid., 5.
102 Cicero De Natura Deorum, bk I.i. Translation is Rackham’s (Cicero, 1967).
103 Bentley, 1713: 70.
104 ibid., 47–8.
105 Hoadly, 1713: 15–16. For a similar focus on Cicero’s views on the immortality of the soul, see
Whitson, 1713: 41.
106 Enfield, 1791: II.20.
107 Gay, 1967: 105–7.
108 Sharpe, 2015: 348.
109 Fox, 2013: 320. Perhaps the appropriation of Cicero by free-thinkers could plausibly offer a
reason why.
110 Lyttelton, 1733: 3–4. Lyttelton mentioned Marcus Cato, Quintus Hortensius, Quintus Catulus,
and Marcus Brutus as examples of “philosophical Republicans”.
111 Fox, 2013: 320.
112 See, e.g., Olshewsky, 1991.
113 Hume, 1748: 3–7.
114 Gawlick, 1963: 658.
115 Dodwell et al., 1702: [xxxixff].
116 ibid., [xl].
117 ibid., [xlii].
118 ibid., [xliv-xlv].
119 ibid., [xliv].
120 Toland 1712: ch. 16 (East, 2013: 394–9), ch. 4 (East, 2013: 374).
121 Toland 1712: ch. 21 (quoting On Duties, I.85–87; East, 2013: 426).
122 Toland 1712: ch. 10 (East, 2013: 382).
123 Guthrie, 1755: i-v.
124 The Latin reads: “non modo enim id virtutis non est, sed est potius immanitatis omnem
humanitatem repellentis” (Cicero, 1913: On Duties [De Officiis], I.62).
125 Guthrie, 1755: 39n(d), 36–7.
126 D. Hume to F. Hutcheson, 17 Sept. 1739, in Greig, 1932: 32, 34–5. See Sher, 1990.
127 Enfield, 1791: II.7, 20–21.
128 ibid., 23, 18.
129 Lucan, Pharsalia: II.380–3 cited in Enfield, 1791: II.36. Translation is Duff’s.
130 Kennedy, 1999: 260. Howell, 1971: 573.
131 Howell, 1971: 441–7.
132 Rapin, 1672: 19–20.
133 ibid., 129.
134 ibid., 143, 145.
135 ibid., 171–2.
136 Howell, 1971: 522.
137 Rapin, 1672: 126.
138 Fénelon, 1760: 122. The thunderbolt or lightning metaphor was first made by Longinus in On
the Sublime (12.4).
139 Fénelon, 1760: 120–25.
140 ibid., 128.
141 Howell, 1971: 531 on Rollin, 1726–1728: 389–95.
142 Gendre, 1750: 147.
143 Young, 1786: 286. Young cited Dionysius of Halicarnassus explicitly counteracting Gendre’s
account (who drew from Quintilian) as regards Demosthenes’s one-sidedness.
144 H. Blair, 1789: II.191ff.
145 ibid., 189–190.
146 See A. Smith, 1983: lectures 25 and 26.
147 H. Blair, 1789:II. 190–1. Expectedly then, writing soon after his arrival in London in 1802,
Mill found the debates in the House of Commons wanting in comparison to those in the
General Assembly in Scotland: “They speak such silly stuff, and are so much at a loss to get it
out, that they are like boys in an evening society at college, than senators carrying on the
business of a great nation”. J. Mill to T. Thomson, 13 Mar 1802, in Bain, 1882: 39. See further,
Bain, 1882: 39n(*).
148 Hume, 1987: 108.
149 ibid., 103.
150 ibid., 105–6.
151 A. Smith, 1983: 161. See also, Priestley, 1777: 113–14.
152 See Howell, 1971: 569–73, 614–16, 656–8.
153 See ibid., ch. 6.
154 Burnyeat, 2001b: 26–7. See further, J.S. Mill, Autobiography, CW: I.9, 24. For John Stuart
Mill’s translations of Plato, see CW: XI.36–238.
155 James Mill hoped that if he took “care till good weather comes, [he] shall be well again”. See
J. Mill to Lord Brougham, 17 Jan. 1836, in Bain, 1882: 405; see further, Foster, 1913: 172.
156 J. Mill to J.B. Mill, 18 Oct. 1835, in Bain, 1882: 397. For the inscription praising J.B. Mill, see
Burnyeat, 2001b: 26. It seems that the 11-volume set soon followed J.B. Mill to India, where
he was appointed to the India Civil Service in early 1836 and then to Unst, where he settled in
1852. See, J.S. Mill to H.I. Mill, 2 July 1865, CW: XVI.1074n1. J.B. Mill’s copy of Bekker’s
Plato is currently located at the Library of the University College London along with other
books from his library, donated by his sister, Harriet Isabella—appointed the executor and
beneficiary of J.B. Mill’s estate. See, Rye, 1910: 122. James Bentham Mill died on 8 June 1862
(“Deaths”, Gentleman’s Magazine 113 (1862, July): 116).
157 Bisset, 1842: 79.
158 Cited in Bain, 1882: 456.
159 J.S. Mill, Autobiography, CW: I.24–5, 24nC, 48–9.
160 Stephen, 1900: II.3.
161 Raine, 1969: 20. See Mill (1804a and 1809d); Taylor (1804).
162 Burnyeat, 2001c: 105.
163 Burnyeat, 2001a: 20–21.
164 Mill, 1809d: 193.
165 Mill, 1809d: 200.
166 Evans, 1940: 1071–2 citing Mill, 1809d: 199–200.
167 Catana, 2013: 195. Catana assumes that Mill was familiar with Brucker in 1804, but does not
offer an explanation why Mill did not use Brucker in the 1804 review, if indeed he was.
168 ibid., 213.
169 ibid., 194, 196; 204–5; 207.
170 See further Loizides, 2013: ch. 2.
171 Guthrie, 1744: xi–xiii.
172 Lee, Notes from the Lectures of Professor Finlayson on Logic (University of Edinburgh, MS
Dc 8.142/1–2): I.44–5. Interestingly, Finlayson made a three-fold division of Plato’s
philosophy: the Contemplative (“Theology, Geometry and Physics”), the Dialectical (“the
Doctrine of Evidence”) and the Practical (“Moral Philosophy”).
173 Mill, 1809d: 193.
174 Catana, 2013: 198.
175 Mill, 1809d: 199–200.
176 ibid., 210.
177 Enfield, 1791: 158–9.
178 Bain, 1882: 215–17.
179 J.S. Mill, Autobiography, CW: I.213, 93, 105 (also, J.S. Mill, “Letter on James Mill” (1842),
CW: I.535–8); Bain, 1882: 419–47.
180 J. Mill to D. Ricardo, 16 Dec. 1816, Ricardo: VII.106.
181 Anon., 1882a: 117.
182 J.S. Mill, Autobiography, CW: I.105.
183 ibid., 100.
184 See Roebuck, 1835: “The Crisis”, 16 and “The Municipal Elections”, 10. Following Mill’s
death, Roebuck told Brougham that “[h]e was my political and philosophical teacher. To him I
owe greater obligations than to any other man” (29 June 1836; quoted in Thomas, 1969:
249n2). In “Of What Use is the House of Lords?” (1n), Roebuck stated “now once for all”, that
 the “principles which I shall in this paper attempt to illustrate, have been long since established
by Mr Mill in the article Government”. However, these reports seem inconsistent with
Roebuck’s negative depiction, to say the least, of his meeting with James Mill (Leader, 1897:
29); for a similar depiction, see also J.L. Mallet on the reasons for Mill’s absence from the
Political Economy Club’s meetings (cited in Winch, 1966: 192–3).
185 Brougham, 1838: II.304.
186 See, e.g., William Ellis’s 1873 note of gratitude to Mill and the notices of Mill’s death in 1836
in Bain, 1882: 182n and 456ff (appx. D). Mill’s obituary in the Examiner (26 Jun. 1836) called
him a “master-mind” and John Black in Morning Chronicle (25 Jun. 1836) had called him “one
of those men who stamp a new character on their age”. See also Fawcett, 1901: 66; Stewart,
1882; Anon. 1882b and 1882c; Stuart-Glennie, 1882; Escott, 1882.
187 H. Grote, 1873: 23.
188 Bagehot, 1879: VII.231.
189 G. Grote, 1866: 283–5. John Stuart Mill was very pleased with Grote for “doing justice” to his
father, see the letters to Grote on 26 Nov. 1865 and 4 Feb. 1866, CW: XVI.1121 and 1144.
Grote had come a long way since his first impression: as he complained to a friend, James
Mill’s “mind has, indeed, all that cynicism and asperity which belong to the Benthamian
school, and what I chiefly dislike in him is, the readiness and seeming preference with which
he dwells on the faults and defects of others—even of the greatest men!” (G. Grote to G.W.
Norman, May 1819, in H. Grote, 1873: 21).
190 Bain, 1882: 59.
191 Mill, 1806d: 265.
192 J. Mill to W. Allen, 17 Jan. 1811, in Fenn, 1987: 54–55. Mill was referring to the “Address of
the Committee for promoting the Royal Lancasterian System for the Education of the Poor”,
published in 1811.
193 CPB: I.92r.
194 CPB: I.5r. The debt to Socrates is evident both on account of the numerous mentions of Plato’s
Apology of Socrates as well as Mill’s fictional character’s own words: “I have endeavoured to
prove to you, gentlemen, that I am not guilty, that I merit praise rather than blame, not to speak
of punishment”.
195 CPB: I.3r. Mill’s next note on the same manuscript leaf cited Cicero’s Pro Murena.
196 H. Blair, 1789: II.160.
197 ibid., 239.
198 ibid., 247–53.
3 History, philosophy, and the History

Readers of James Mill’s History of British India (1817) find the work
steeped both in Benthamite utilitarianism and the tradition of Scottish
conjectural histories. Commenting on Book II—Mill’s notorious analysis of
Hindu institutions—Alexander Bain pointed out that “[t]he best ideas of the
sociological writers of the eighteenth century were combined with the
Bentham philosophy of law, and the author’s own independent reflections,
to make a dissertation of startling novelty to the generation that first
perused it”.1 However, Mill followed a number of historiographical
traditions in the early nineteenth century. I argue that Mill’s relationship to
both the “conjectural” and “utilitarian” traditions was more complex than it
has been supposed.
In the two sections that follow, I try to trace the historiographical,
rhetorical, and philosophical practices underlying Mill’s various claims in
History. In the first section, I turn to three eighteenth-century traditions,
other than Conjectural History, which permeate the book: first, the
rhetorical practice of self-justification in Scottish historiography—how the
preface served as a vehicle for the historian to explain his method in and
reasons for writing. Second, I briefly examine the comparative method of
Scottish and French historians—how they suggested dealing with one
potential problem for the historian, that is, the problem of bias. Third, I turn
to the method of the critical history of philosophy—how historians tried to
free “history from uncertainty, from fables, and from the errors with which
it had been handed down”. In the second section, I explore alternative
sources of some of Mill’s utilitarian themes. As his classical background
allowed circumventing the adoption of an ostensibly Benthamite
vocabulary in the History, I begin with a brief examination of connections
between happiness, security and social progress in ancient Greek and Latin
texts which Mill’s audience would have found familiar. Then, I discuss how
Mill’s treatment of the condition of women in Asian “rude” societies
provided him with the opportunity to criticize “superficial commentators”
on the subject. Finally, I consider briefly Mill’s views on the utility of
writing history. Knowledge of the past—even if only to learn from the
“folly”, not from the “wisdom”, of our ancestors2—had clear implications
for good government; however, Mill’s emphasis on past experience as a
guide for the future contradicts a popular view that for Mill “abstract theory
should trump empiricism”.3
Historians have stressed that “Mill’s relation to the Scottish
Enlightenment was idiosyncratic”4—an idiosyncrasy, however, which is
attributed to Benthamite utilitarianism. Donald Winch noted that
“Utilitarianism, in [Mill’s] hands, was more than a pragmatic test of the
fitness of laws and institutions; it became a universal principle for judging
all societies at all times”.5 As scholarly commentary stresses, Mill’s
“philosophical history” was thus dominated by “theory”. Eric Stokes
insisted that “[a]bove all”, Mill “strove to deduce the Indian problem and its
solution from a single principle, to break through the loose arguments and
suggestions of ordinary opinion and to reason with the rigorous logic of his
‘abstract or geometrical method’”. The nature of the utilitarians’ “practical
aims was deduced logically from their abstract theory”.6 As James H. Burns
has put it, Mill’s magnum opus was fraught with “a theory invented to
preserve as much as actual observation would allow to be preserved of a
pre-established and favourite creed. It was not an inference from what was
already known. It was a gratuitous assumption. It preceded inquiry, and no
inquiry was welcome, but that which yielded matter for its support”.7 Burns
used Mill’s own words on the Orientalists to show the limitations of his
method.
Given the variety of criticism Mill’s History received in the 1820s, it is
not surprising to find that after all this time not much has changed. At the
turn of the century, Leslie Stephen and Elie Halévy, separated by a
generation, did not engage with the detail of Mill’s magnum opus. However,
when they did, their treatment failed to add anything new. For example, like
Hazlitt and Maurice, Stephen noted that “it is characteristic of the
Utilitarian attitude to assume that a sufficient knowledge of fact can always
be obtained from bluebooks and statistics. Some facts require imagination
and sympathy to be appreciated, and there Mill was deficient”.8 Likewise,
George Peabody Gooch thought Mill’s History devoid of imagination and
sympathy—its worth lay solely “in its mass of information and its analytical
power”.9 Of course, as we saw, both Mill’s “collection of facts” and his
“analysis” of them were criticized already by the early 1820s, not just his
lack of narrative skill.
The criticism that the History was merely part and parcel of the
Benthamite faith, as we have seen, developed in the mid-1820s and took
full effect by the late 1820s. The first to engage seriously with Mill’s
method was Duncan Forbes in the mid-twentieth century. Forbes argued
that Mill’s History had come to fill a gap in Bentham’s system while
serving as an “instrument of Benthamite propaganda” on the ground of a
“scale of nations”. Inasmuch Mill claimed that his was a “judging history”,
Forbes argued, his apparatus—“Newtonian science, deistic religion, laissez-
faire economics and the general principles of utility”—was essentially
irrelevant to the undertaking. Although Mill’s choice of subject was not
local, Forbes concluded, his understanding was:
Historical thinking […] which makes no attempt to transcend the mental limitations of its
own world, because it does not admit the existence of mental worlds different from its own,
cannot be called “universal” in any sense which is truly historical, however broad the area
surveyed.10

In the attempt to correct the neglect of studies as regards Mill’s debts to

Scottish conjectural histories, Forbes argued that the parochialism which
characterized Mill’s History was a shared feature of eighteenth-century
rationalist historiography. Importantly, it was also, according to Forbes, a
necessary corollary of Mill’s disguised critique of British politics.11
Forbes’s reading has been highly influential.
Commentators agree that India could provide Mill with both a testing
ground for Benthamite principles in a global setting and a cover for a
radical critique of local politics. Eric Stokes, for example, focused
particularly on studying the implications of Benthamite principles for
governing India—exploring the ways in which Bentham’s saying that “Mill
will be the living executive—I shall be the dead legislative of British India”
was true.12 As Winch pointed out that “Mill’s special contribution lay in
combining the idea of progress with the principle of utility, thereby
strengthening the normative or propagandist aspects of both traditions”.13
Similarly, Javed Majeed has explored in depth the view that a history of the
interaction between Britain and India provided Mill with a unique
opportunity to assess British institutions. Mill’s project involved defining a
utilitarian, secular framework which allowed comparing, contrasting and
evaluating different cultures with direct bearing on reforming political
institutions both at home and abroad. Mill’s, Majeed goes to show, was a
“rhetoric of reform”.14 However, John W. Burrow noted that
if Mill tended, as he probably did in part, to see what he disliked in India as a reflection or
even aggravation of what he disliked in England this was probably the result of a rationalistic,
radical cast of mind applied to both societies than because he was using India primarily as a
mask for an attack on English institutions.15

Resisting the “allegorical” reading of Mill’s History, Burrow did so without

retracting anything from the standard view of Mill’s rationalistic outlook.
Scholars have recently pointed out that the transition itself from Millar to
Bentham was not smooth. Jane Rendall has provided some useful
“guidelines” of the Scottish “philosophical history”: first, the
acknowledgement that all aspects of a people’s life are closely interrelated
(economy, government, culture, social life, etc.); second, a careful study of
all these different aspects of the life a people would allow placing them on
an “evolutionary scale” (i.e., there are several civilizational steps from
“rudeness” to “refinement”, which one may identify and accurately place a
civilization on one of those steps); third, the main, but not the sole,
mechanism in determining that placing was the mode of subsistence of a
particular people or society (i.e, economic advancement—hunting, pastoral,
agricultural, and commercial—defined the political, social, and cultural life
of a people); fourth, moving from one stage to another “was slow,
undirected, sometimes accidental, but rarely the result of deliberate human
intervention”.16 But as Rendall has shown, despite common origins, other
Edinburgh-educated individuals had reached widely different conclusions
from Mill regarding India’s “rudeness”. Utilitarianism and rationalism were
the differentiating agents in Mill’s mix. Jenifer Pitts’s argument in a way
expanded Rendall’s, by presenting the evidence for a more nuanced
understanding of how Mill’s Benthamite credentials led to a peculiar use of
conjectural historiography. According to Pitts,
 James Mill saw himself at once as a utilitarian and as an heir to the philosophical history of
the Scottish Enlightenment. While he was perhaps not making a self-conscious effort to marry
these two very different traditions, Mill adopted a standard of utility from Bentham and an
idea of progressive social development from Scottish thinkers such as Smith and Ferguson.
What emerged was a problematic fusion: an index of progress in which utility is the sole
standard against which any nation can be measured.17

Pitts moves the focus slightly yet importantly: Mill’s attempt to combine the
two traditions eventually did injustice to both—Mill managed to disfigure
both traditions.
Adam Knowles has recently argued that Mill thought he could reform
India, because he had erased India’s past, himself imagining India as a
“civilizational tabula rasa before him, a space open to a complete
reworking”. Knowles adds that “[r]ude, for Mill, was an a priori concept
retroflexively defined, or a type of a priori a posteriori concept”, which
made “Mill’s process of selective reasoning […] no less dogmatic for being
broad, and it relied on an essentially circular logic”:
All of these cultures [Hindu, Babylonians, Aztecs, Chinese] were rude merely because they
were different from modern Europe, which also continued to be unacceptably rude. Europe’s
rudeness consisted of having the means for utilitarian change and yet too often failing to
employ them. One cannot be faulted for declaring Mill hopelessly Eurocentric, but this
description can be considered too imprecise. More accurately stated, Mill was hopelessly
egocentric.18

Knowles is of course right to point out contradictions between Mill’s direct

and indirect aims. No one can deny that Mill’s thinking was parochial,
Eurocentric or even culturally insensitive. Frederick Denison Maurice’s
review (1828) may have been the first to call Mill out on all these points.
Moreover, Alexander Walker pressed on to Mill, in their extended
correspondence, where he went too far or unjustifiably far, and warned him
that he was not as clear in his definitions as Mill thought he was. Similarly,
as far as the contradictions in Mill’s aims are concerned, Walker rushed to
caution Mill that his work could rationalize inhumane treatment in the
process of “civilizing” “rude” Indian society.
When one characterizes Mill’s thinking as egocentric, racist or
prejudiced, we may need to take a step back and examine whether such a
claim is warranted in light of Mill’s utilitarianism—a cosmopolitical
doctrine, as we saw, even for the most outspoken critic at the time. One may
not be inclined to take Mill at his word when he wrote to Alexander Walker
that
My object in this inquiry has been frequently misunderstood by Indian gentlemen, whose
sympathies are engaged on the side of the Hindus, & who have accused me of being
prejudiced against them. Now assuredly I am not prejudiced against them, for never was there
a human being more anxious to do them good.19

Neither may one be apt to believe John Stuart Mill that “[t]here never was a
man more free from any feelings of hatred” than his father, trying as Mill
younger was to correct “an utterly false impression of the character &
temper of his [father’s] mind” disseminated via the Edinburgh Review. 20 At
the very least, we need to keep in sight that neither Walker nor Maurice
failed to highlight Mill’s genuine interest in the wellbeing of Hindus, while
both being quite critical of Mill’s History. Of course, in utilitarian thought,
good motives, though important in the estimation of the agent, are
unimportant in the estimation of consequences.
Two recent studies have extensively dealt with the question of situating
the History in its intellectual context, making an effort to identify both
Mill’s intentions and what made his utterances on Hindu civilization
possible. Jeng Guo Chen and David McInerney developed two distinct
arguments in dealing with the complexity pertaining to Mill’s argument.21
Chen has paid attention to the transformation of the stadial view of
civilization from a materialist perspective to an idealist one and the
consequent shift of focus from modes of sustenance and property ownership
to manners and customs—commerce was insufficient to designate a country
as civilized without complete equal protection of all members of society by
law. Without ignoring Mill’s religious background, Chen argues that Mill’s
forays into utilitarian terrain gave a distinctive teleological tint to the
Scottish conjectural historiography, especially as that took form in the
Edinburgh Review. On the contrary, McInerney, questioning the teleological
view by means of Mill’s empirical epistemology, has argued that the
differences between William Roberston and James Mill on the Hindus were
the result of the inconsistencies in the method and argument of the former,
not the latter. For McInerney, Mill actually used William Robertson’s views
in earlier works (e.g., The History of the Reign of Charles V (1769) and
History of America (1777)) to refute Robertson’s claims in An Historical
Disquisition Concerning the Knowledge Which the Ancients had of India
(1791)—“Robertson sober, as it were, contrasted with Robertson drunk”.22
Both studies have broadened our understanding of Mill’s History, its
context and the ways in which Mill’s arguments developed out of his
Scottish heritage. In what follows, I offer a number of suggestions on how
we can go beyond these accounts in order to reflect more accurately Mill’s
eclectic intellectual armory.

I Historiography with and without the Scots

James Burns speculated that John Stuart Mill’s praise for his father’s
History, as the first who “threw the light of reason on Hindoo society”, was
because the younger Mill saw a proto-Comtean account of societal
development in it—a first attempt “to establish a properly deductive
relation between the facts of history and the laws of human nature”.23
However, this seems to teleologically posit conjectural histories to form a
stage in the development of nineteenth-century philosophies of history,
either in the materialist Marxist or the idealist Comtist variants of a science
of history.24 Instead of what followed, let’s take another look at what
preceded Mill’s History.
Dugald Stewart is the source for the “standard” definition of conjectural
history:
In […] want of direct evidence, we are under a necessity of supplying the place of fact by
conjecture; and when we are unable to ascertain how men have actually conducted
themselves upon particular occasions, of considering in what manner they are likely to have
proceeded, from the principles of their nature, and the circumstances of their external
situation. In such inquiries, the detached facts which travels and voyages afford us, may
frequently serve as landmarks to our speculations; and sometimes our conclusions a priori,
may tend to confirm the credibility of facts, which, on a superficial view, appeared to be
doubtful or incredible.

For Stewart, it was important to draw on the known principles of human

nature to explain how a phenomenon may have been produced when it was
impossible to “trace the process by which an event has been produced”.
Noting the affinities between the Scottish and the French on this matter,
Stewart claimed that, for examples, Smith’s Considerations Concerning the
First Formation of Languages (1767), Hume’s Natural History of Religion
(1757), Montesquieu’s De l’Esprit des Loix (1748) and Kames’s Historical
Law-Tracts (1758), as well as works by Millar, contain applications of
theoretical history.25
Roger L. Emerson has argued that Scottish conjectural histories do not
present as sharp an intellectual break with earlier traditions as it has been
supposed. A number of sources of conjectural history, which can be brought
under four categories, account for that: the Bible, the Classics, modern
philosophy and travel literature. Firstly, eighteenth-century conjectural
historians, Emerson points out, “strove to reconcile biblical accounts to
what they took to be rational standards and true beliefs about their own
world and the ways in which it had evolved over time”.26 For example,
William Robertson searched for the principles of the formation of the eras
in Hindu chronology in order “to reconcile their chronology to the true
mode of computing time, founded on the authority of the Old Testament”.27
Secondly, Emerson calls attention to the fact that “the men who helped to
fashion the Athens of the North were well versed in classical history and in
ancient speculations about the progress of mankind and its social
institutions”.28 For example, Plato’s Republic provided a conjectural
account based on the complex relationship between needs, resources, and
expansion that transforms the society of needs to a society of excess—the
cause of moving from one stage to another was human agency.29 Thirdly,
Emerson mentions the revival of science teaching in early-eighteenth-
century Scotland fostering Newtonian ideas and creating an appreciation of
the analytical/synthetic method,30 a method which emphasizes collection of
facts, observation, and experiments as well as the usefulness in and
necessity of drawing general principles. As we shall have occasion to
discuss in Chapter 4, this appreciation corresponds both to Mill’s references
to “inductions of particulars” as the foundation of his general conclusions,31
and to Mill’s enthusiasm in reading Macvie Napier’s paper on Bacon:
I am truly obliged to you, not only for sending me your paper on Bacon, but for writing it. His
is a battle which I have often to fight in conversation at least; for Englishly-educated people
are all hostile to him, as they (at least the greater part of them) are hostile to everybody who
seeks to advance the boundaries of human knowledge, which they have sworn to keep where
they are. Your learned and valuable collections of facts will make me triumphant.32
Finally, Emerson highlights that just when the Scots “were becoming
interested in the problems of cultural development and had accepted
philosophical views which placed a premium on factual information”, a
mass of reports—products of trade, warfare, emigration, and missionary
activities—on the lives, habits, customs, and mores of “primitive men”
would provide them with the data they needed to “create theories which
embraced the experience of all nations”.33 As we saw, for Mill that mass
evidentiary material forced the historian to take up the role of the judge,
sifting through a number of testimonies as much supplementary as
conflicting.
For Mill, his History (above all the “General Reflections” in Book II)
aimed at offering a corrective on the subject of the “different stages of
social progress” to Millar’s works. For Mill, in spite of his important
contribution to the field, Millar offered only “detached considerations
applied to particular facts, and not a comprehensive induction leading to
general conclusions”.34 However, the fact that Mill situated himself in the
historiographical tradition of Millar has led commentators to exclude other
sources that could have had a similar impact on writing History. For
example, Mill’s note on the limited applicability of Millar’s theory to India
echoed Montesquieu’s view that Chinese legislators “confondirent la
Religion, les Loix, les mœurs & les manières; tout cela fut la Morale, tout
cela fut la Vertu” (De l’Esprit des Lois, bk. 19, ch. 17). Even if we grant
that Mill was indeed “le dernier survivant” to the “grande école” of Kames
and Ferguson, as John Stuart Mill put it,35 Emerson’s analysis allows us to
explore the possibility that Mill was as likely to draw from other sources.
Identifying some of these sources goes to show that Mill’s History was a
“motley kind of a production”, though not just on account of “having been
written at such distant times, and with so many interruptions”.36

Rhetoric and history: self-consciousness and self-justification

John Stuart Mill considered the “Preface” in History “among the most
characteristic” of his father’s writings.37 There are a number of points to be
made in favor of such an estimate. First, the “Preface” was a polemical
piece of writing: it was meant to be a pre-emptive response to critics. The
bulk of the text dealt with potential objections to writing a history of India
from a “closet” in London, being dependent on translations of important
documents and second-hand reports. Second, relatedly, James Mill
explained away such limitations by reference to both facts (such as India’s
vastness) and theory (such as the “science of human nature”). Not only did
Mill refer to the authority of India gentlemen to establish the first, but also
he alluded to the long tradition of examining witness testimony as regards
the second. Third, Mill stressed the educational value of his work, despite
any shortcomings either in the collection of facts or in their analysis.
Including the reasons for his conclusions suggests that Mill’s intended
audience was a portion of the educated public with a particular interest in
British-Indian affairs: interested parties had to start from somewhere—an
imperfect history was better than no history at all. Fourth, Mill did not leave
to chance readers not realizing the extent of the work that had taken place.
The materials for a history of British India were in a state of complete
disarray; however, what was more important than that, these materials
failed to distinguish fact from fiction. Finally, Mill appealed to sympathetic
understanding, admitting his own limitations both as a historian and as a
human being. Beyond “simple” matters such as not being able to verify
references or being able to locate and consult some material, Mill did not
neglect to point out “how probable it is, that more impartial and more
discerning eyes [than his] will discover many [defects] which are invisible
to mine”; he pleaded not to be judged by what he had not done.38 However
typical as these may appear, they do not seem to have been simply the
product of Mill’s “arrogance”.39
Writing to Alexander Walker, Mill offered considerable insight into his
state of mind in writing the “Preface”:
It would have been very absurd in me not fully to admit, that great advantages were given by
being in India. And my sole object was to prevent those advantages from being valued so
high, that a history of India, from a man who had not been in India, might not be looked upon
a priori as a thing only to be contemned. This chance was not very small, judging by the
remarks which I was accustomed to hear. But it is not impossible that I may have urged the
evidence on the other side a little too far & have given real cause to imagine that I valued the
advantage of local knowledge, & the means of improvement in India much less than I do.
And to this I shall be careful to attend in my new edition.40
Not only did Mill acknowledge the value of “seeing the country and
conversing with its people”;41 he admitted to Walker that he should have
used more qualified language with regard to “India gentlemen”.42 However,
Mill thought the reputation of William Jones (and William Robertson) so
“imposing” and “brilliant” which made “obtain[ing] a hearing against it”
nearly impossible.43 As McInerney put it, Mill had to reduce the status of
the authorities on India “to a point where Mill’s voice could be heard”.44
When the time for a second edition came, Mill thought no revision
necessary—perhaps because he had won over his reviewers (or the
reviewers that mattered). On 25 August 1831, during an inquiry into East
India Company affairs in the process of deliberations on renewing its
Charter, Mill was asked directly: “Do you conceive that it is possible for
any person to form an adequate judgment of the character of a people
without being personally acquainted with them?” Moments earlier Mill
admitted that his knowledge of India was based exclusively on what he had
“read and heard”, and he had not read or heard anything directly from
natives. Deflecting, Mill responded: “If the question refers to myself, I am
far from pretending to a perfect knowledge of the character of the people of
India”.45 We may ask ourselves then, why did Mill appear so confident
about his conclusions in his “Preface”?
Mill had already stated in his “Preface” that in ideal conditions a
historian would have combined both the advantages of the “European-bred”
with those of the “India-bred” historian.46 The stake Mill had in being
treated fairly and not being denied the value of his work, led him to
overstate his case that not even an approximation to these ideal conditions
existed. Actually, the stakes were even higher, once we consider Mill’s
considerable investment, in terms of time, effort and resources, in writing
the History at a time of financial hardship for him. The investment’s pay-
out has led scholars to follow Mill’s History in various directions, yet
primarily by looking forward. Such a focus has led to the neglect, for
example, of how Mill’s “Preface” followed a number of rhetorical
conventions. This last point does not undermine the claim that the “Preface”
was one of Mill’s most characteristic pieces of writing; still, it opens up
possibilities of authorial intention which have not been taken under
consideration in studies of Mill’s works.
 David Allan has shown that Scottish historians, since the post-
Reformation era, “possessed a habitual desire to explain the profoundly
meaningful purpose of their historical works”. In a discourse dominated by
Calvinism and humanism, Allan notes, Scottish historians were engaged in
three other distinct projects: “the education of a social leadership, the
definition, and inculcation of virtue and the causal explanation of historical
change”.47 For Allan, there is continuity in the historians’ self-conscious
purpose, one which stretches well into eighteenth-century Scotland. So
when James Mill saw himself in the tradition of Millar, it was a tradition
enmeshed, as Allan has shown, in the “rhetoric of experimental science and
methodological invention”. However, as Allan cautions, both were “as
much a commonplace of early modern scholarly literature as the oratorical
posturing and moralistic utterances”.48
In the “Preface” to the History of Scotland (1759), Robertson was
anxious to show to his readers that different as his treatment was from
earlier historians, it was on account of “plac[ing] facts in a different light”,
“draw[ing] characters with new colours”, and contradicting the “testimony
of contemporary, or of less remote Historians”. Not only did he have access
to more sources than earlier historians, Robertson noted, his treatment was
free from party prejudice—he included some of these original sources “as
vouchers for [his] own veracity”. Likewise, in History of the Reign of the
Emperor Charles the Fifth (1769), Robertson tried to explain why he
selected the subject at hand how and why it was instructive (e.g. to trace
causes and events that throw new light on the action of states). Robertson
admitted that in his critical disquisitions he wore the hat of the “lawyer or
antiquary” rather than that of the historian, by providing proofs and
illustrations in the interest of accuracy, but also of easing the labor of
subsequent researchers. At the same time, the conviction of the usefulness
of such a task helped him, Robertson confessed, to persevere in executing a
plan that was too extensive and in an undertaking too arduous. Similarly, in
History of America (1777), Robertson tried to explain the timing and
rationale of publishing a History of America in the shadow of an armed
conflict, the ways in which his differed from previous treatments of the
subject, the successes and failures he encountered along the way in
collecting and consulting sources—as well as the debts he incurred to
individuals who assisted his research. He also included some remarks on
the task and requisite traits of the proper historian: attention to detail,
devotion to truth and presentation of evidence.49
John Millar spoke out the unspoken warrant that made histories
instructive: “Man is every where the same; and we must necessarily
conclude, that the untutored Indian and the civilized European have acted
upon the same principles”. It is important to identify and describe the stage
of any society in the natural history of mankind, because “the character of
individuals is influenced by their education, their professions, and their
peculiar circumstances”. However, Millar cautioned that “it is dangerous to
tamper with the machine, unless we are previously acquainted with the
several wheels and springs of which it is composed”. Still, like Robertson,
Millar pointed out, in passing, the shortcomings of previous treatments and
the need to adduce a number of facts to corroborate and confirm his
conclusions. However, conjectural or theoretical history functioned as a sort
of inference to the best explanation; filling in the blanks where the light of
archives or records was missing had to be based on established laws of
human nature. For Millar, “by real experiments, not by abstracted
metaphysical theories, human nature is unfolded; the general laws of our
constitution are laid open; and history is rendered subservient to moral
philosophy and jurisprudence”.50
Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747–1813), Professor of Civil History at the
University of Edinburgh, agreed with Millar: “All laws of morality, and
rules of conduct, are deduced from experience, and are constantly submitted
to its test and examination. History, which adds to our own an immense
treasure of the experience of others, furnishes innumerable proofs by which
we may verify all the precepts of morality and of prudence”.51 Of course,
Tytler and Millar went only a little bit farther than David Hume:
Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new
or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal
principles of human nature, by shewing men in all varieties of circumstances and situations,
and furnishing us with materials, from which we may form our observations, and become
acquainted with the regular springs of human action and behaviour.52

By the time of Mill’s History, historians’ vocabulary had long expanded to

include observation and experiment as well as laws of nature in order to
reinforce—not undermine—the educational worth of their works.
The traditional values of veracity, impartiality, and narrative liveliness
were complemented with a scientific spirit—a spirit with deep roots,
however. As we saw, for the ancients, Mill seemed to think, historians
needed to have parrhesia and to be able to suspend judgment in considering
evidence. At the same time, lovers of wisdom, that is, philosophers, Mill
argued in 1803—quoting Cicero’s Tusculanae Disputationes (II.5)—invite
and bear criticism and refutation:
those men may dislike such treatment who are bound and devoted to certain predetermined
opinions, and are under such obligations to maintain them that they are forced, for the sake of
consistency, to adhere to them even though they do not themselves wholly approve of them;
we, on the other hand who pursue only probabilities, and who cannot go beyond that which
seems really likely, can confute others without obstinacy, and are prepared to be confuted
ourselves without resentment.53

The polemical applications of Mill’s “Preface”, just like Robertson’s and

Millar’s, were to be expected. Historians had to prove that their accounts
superseded earlier ones. Neither were such attempts for self-justification
relevant to the methodology of conjectural histories nor exclusive to them.

Reason and history: comparative method, associationism, and

national character
Hugh Blair had much to say on the subject of historical composition, being
part of his lectures on rhetoric and the Belles Lettres. Through a long
comparison of ancient and modern historians, Blair made a number of
useful insights on the task of the historian. For example, Blair, like Mill,
distinguished between the moral and the political part of history writing, the
importance of showing “sentiments of respect for virtue, and of indignation
at flagrant vice” as well as “the unfolding of secret causes and springs” of
actions of agents.54 But how Blair concluded his discussion is the most
relevant here:
I cannot conclude the subject of History, without taking notice of a very great improvement
which has, of late years, begun to be introduced into Historical Composition; I mean, a more
particular attention than was formerly given to laws, customs, commerce, religion, literature,
and every other thing that tends to show the spirit and Genius of nations. It is now understood
to be the business of an able Historian to exhibit manners, as well as facts and events; and
 assuredly, whatever displays the state and life of mankind in different periods, and illustrates
the progress of the human mind is more useful and interesting than the detail of sieges and
battles.55

History, Blair noted, “is designed to supply the want of experience”.56

Mill admittedly wrote a history of India for a European audience;
particularly, a British audience, educated, and interested in British state
affairs. This did not have to do with the fact that he was a “European-bred”
historian—notwithstanding what he thought of the importance of the traits
of the “real” historian requisite for the task. Rather, it had simply to do with
Britain governing India. Mill wrote History with an express purpose: the
people of Great Britain had to become aware of “the true state of the
Hindus in the scale of civilization”, “charged as they are with the
government of that great portion of the human species”. Since Aristotle, it
was an accepted maxim of politics that, as Mill put it, “[n]o scheme of
government can happily conduce to the ends of government, unless it is
adapted to the state of the people for whose use it is intended”.57
As we saw, Stewart thought the method of French and Scottish historians
formed part of the same tradition. Winch, however, notes that the Scottish
laid far less emphasis than the French on reason as a determining force in history and human
affairs; they depicted history as a blind social process in which order and gradual
improvement occur without the conscious intervention of individual reason. The French
writers in the same tradition saw the history of the race more as a clearsighted march towards
perfection, in which man’s reason inexorably overcame the forces of superstition, intolerance,
and tyranny.58

Winch followed Forbes, who had argued that “Mill rationalist as he was,
was also a firm believer in progress, and in his historical thinking followed
Condorcet […] for whom the ‘progress of society’ was an absolute
presupposition”.59 Stewart’s grouping of the Scots and the French was not
as wide off the mark as Winch’s words may suggest. Some find in
Robertson’s History of the Reign of Emperor Charles the Fifth “an
exemplary Enlightenment statement of how Europe had moved from the
darkness of the middle ages into light through its adherence to reason”.60
Similarly, Mill identified a self-sustaining religious and political despotism
in Hindu society which kept the overwhelming majority in the dark, in
misery. Mill’s way out of such a vicious circle, according to Winch, lay in
stressing “the importance of reason in human affairs”.61 Winch’s
interpretation resonates well with the view that Mill provided a plan of
reform of India based on Benthamite utilitarianism—he rejected experience
in favor of a priori principles, i.e., deduction, not induction, since there was
no other avenue open to a “closet” historian, one who did not trust
experience.
Once again a letter to Alexander Walker provides us with some insight
into Mill’s frame of mind. Mill agreed with Walker that there was “no
standard of civilization, & of course no precise & accurate ideas, or
language in which to convey them”. He thus had just one avenue open:
comparison. As he told Walker, he tried
to institute comparisons, as extensive as possible, embracing all the circumstances which
constitute the grand features of human society, & by observing the nations with whom the
Hindus had the greatest number of circumstances in common, & appealing to the common
opinions of mankind with respect to these nations, ascertain whereabouts among the other
inhabitants of the globe they might in respect to valuable arguments be supposed to be placed.

Comparison is based on knowledge derived from experience. As McInerney

(2002) convincingly shows, Mill’s treatment of evidence and testimony was
founded upon an empiricist epistemology. Still, Mill admitted that “it is not
impossible that I may have leant too strongly to the other side” in trying to
show that previous estimates of Hindu civilization by Orientalists, placing
the Hindus higher on the scale of civilizations, “had led the British rulers of
India into injustices to the Hindus”.62
Given the acknowledged affinity between Mill and the philosophes, the
article on comparison, as it appeared in the Encyclopédie (1751–1772),
unsurprisingly offers an insight into Mill’s “Preface”.63 According to Louis
Jaucourt, in comparing, “nous rapprochons les idées les moins familieres de
celles qui le sont davantage; & les rapports que nous y trouvons établissent
entre elles des liaisons très propres à augmenter & à fortifier la mémoire,
l’imagination, & par contre – coup la réflexion”. Jaucourt’s treatment so far
was essentially repeated in Blair’s Lectures. 64 Importantly, however,
Jaucourt warned against a potential danger in the process of comparison:
Comme en comparant des objets ensemble, il regne entre eux divers rapports de figure,
d’étendue, de durée, & d’autres accidens, on se sert de ces rapports en qualité d’images &
d’exemples pour illustrer ses pensées, soit en conversation, soit par écrit: mais il ne faut pas
leur donner une valeur plus étendue, ni prendre les similitudes pour des identités; ce seroit
 une source féconde d’erreurs & de méprises, dont on doit d’autant plus se garder, que nous
sommes naturellement disposés à y donner notre acquiescement. Il est commode à l’esprit
humain de trouver dans une idée familiere, l’image ressemblante d’un objet nouveau: voilà
pourquoi ces images qui roulent sur les rapports lui plaisent; & comme il les aime, parce
qu’elles lui épargnent du travail, il ne se fatigue pas à les examiner, & il se persuade aisément
qu’elles sont exactes. Bien – tôt il se livre aux charmes de cette idée, qui ne peut cependant
tendre qu’à gâter le jugement, & à rendre l’esprit faux.

For Mill, this was the “fallacy of preconception”. For example, he pointed
out that the “absurdities” in Hindu mythology have been explained as
allegorical, we extract “a recondite and enigmatical meaning” from such
materials; however, Mill argued, “to suit our own views, we may form out
of it not only a sublime theology, but a sublime philosophy, or any thing we
please”.65 Quoting Laurence Stern, Mill noted: “it is the nature of an
hypothesis, when once a man has conceived it, that it assimilates every
thing to itself as proper nourishment; and from the first moment of your
begetting it, it generally grows the stronger by every thing you see, hear,
read, or understand”.66
Mill’s insistence in his “Preface” about the danger of the spectator
imposing upon the spectacle her/his presumptions referred to a
methodological danger already identified and cautioned against since
Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae. There was a long established maxim in the
scholastic tradition, that quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis
recipitur,67 that is, what one comes to know is shaped by who one is. Using
premises of comparative theorists in the eighteenth century such as
Robertson and William Jones, Mill tried to turn a potential objection on its
head; not “conjecture”, commonly used, but a scientific method guarded the
historian from these dangers—throughout History, “conjecture” frequently
appears as a derogatory term, interchangeable with “hypothesis” and
“supposition”.68 Scientific method cut through both the historian’s
prejudices and the discordant materials of historical fact.
Mill’s choice of scientific weapon was Associational Psychology. For
example, writing on character formation on account of Robert Owen’s A
New View of Society (1813), Mill took a moment to discuss how the awful
conditions in a factory influenced the character of factory workers: “the
effects of their situation upon their minds are, if possible, still more
deplorable” than upon their body, i.e. growing up “sickly, feeble, and not
unfrequently decrepid [sic] objects”. He added:
Shut up for almost the whole of that period of time which they pass without sleep, with their
eyes and all their faculties exclusively fastened day after day upon one and the same narrow
circle of objects and operations, their minds are accessible to a smaller number of ideas, and
get less of any thing which can be called mental exercise, than any other set of human being,
even than the savages in the forest.69

In striking allusion to Plato’s allegory of the cave, Mill’s reference to

“savages of the forest” being in a better mental (and physical) condition is
telling about the effect of the environment (mental and physical) on groups
of individuals. To this effect, Mill cited the Latin text of Cicero’s De Lege
Agraria (II.35 [95]): “It is not so much by blood and race that men’s
characters are implanted in them as by those things which are supplied to us
by nature itself to form our habits of life, by which we are nourished and
live”.70
Melvin Richter (2006) has recently explored how a number of debates
involved the use of the comparative method in the eighteenth century,
paying attention particularly to Montesquieu, Voltaire, Hume, Abbé Raynal,
Diderot, and Herder.71 As Richter noted, comparing “modern ‘primitives’
with the inhabitants of the ancient world known from classical sources” was
quite typical in the eighteenth century. The meeting point of such treatments
was the comparative concept of “national character”.72 Richter notes that
“the ubiquity of ‘national character’ as a concept more often concealed
differences than pointed to consensus”. For example, “some argued that
political regimes determined the institutions and the ‘manners’, or moeurs,
of a people. Others thought that moeurs overrode the effective capacity of
regimes to legislate. Religion was frequently denoted the ultimate
determinant of character”.73 Readers of Mill’s History are familiar with his
attempt to show how local political regimes were in a symbiotic
relationship with religious institutions, interested only in keeping the
majority of the population in subjection. This in turn made the task of
governing India difficult for the British—impossible even, should the
British fail to identify the state of affairs between political and social factors
and to ascertain the Hindus’ stage in societal development. Even though
“India gentlemen” denied that Mill’s was an accurate depiction of either
Hindu society or character, the historian followed established practice by
paying particular attention to describing both Hindu character itself and
how it was formed.
At the same time, the Cicero quote brings also to the surface how the
classics functioned as authoritative sources for any sort of argument. Mill’s
exceptional classical training notwithstanding, quoting the classics was not
idiosyncratic. In Adam Ferguson’s article “History”, published in the third
edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1788–1797), the section “On the
Composition of History” began with the same Ciceronian rules on historical
writing that Mill was to refer to just six years later.74 It is interesting to note
that comparison entered at two points in Ferguson’s account. First, it was
important to the study of history to consider “the different characters of the
people who in all ages constituted [the different states in the world], their
different geniuses and dispositions, &c. by which they were either prompted
to undertake such and such actions of themselves, or were easily induced to
it by others”. Second, weighing evidence in trying to establish facts,
historians had to compare different testimonies on the same events. Veracity
and impartiality, Ferguson noted, was an accepted mandate of the historian;
such qualities manifested themselves in examining the available data with
due diligence.75 To this discussion, I now turn.

Philosophy and history: the critical-historical method

Mill’s “Preface” cited a number of sources in the importance of
distinguishing between fact and opinion when considering evidence.
Although Isaac de Beausobre and Pierre Bayle received admiring mentions,
the “Preface” described and responded primarily to Edward Gibbon’s
statement of the “paradox of historical creativity”.76 For Gibbon,
Lorsqu’il s’agit d’une histoire, dont les variations permettent quelque liberté à la critique, et
même à la conjecture; l’historien philosophe choisira parmi les faits contestés, ceux qui
s’accordent le mieux avec ses principes et ses vues. Le désir de les employer, leur donnera
même un degré d’évidence qu’ils n’ont pas; et la logique du cœur ne l’emportera que trop
souvent sur celle de l’esprit.[…] Lorsqu’elles décrivent les faits, il souhaiteroit de connoitre
les causes les plus cachées qui les ont produit. Il voudroit pénétrer dans les conseils, et
jusqu’à dans la pensée de leurs auteurs, pour y voir les circonstances qui ont fait éclorre les
plus grands desseins, le but qu’ils se proposoient, les obstacles qu’ils ont rencontré, et les arts
par lequels il les ont vaincu. Un esprit philosophique se plaît à suppléer tous ces termes
 intermédiaires; et à tirer du vrai, le vraisemblable et le possible. S’il donne à ses réflexions la
forme d’une histoire, il est obligé de prendre un ton plus forme. Ses hypothèses deviennent
des faits, qui semblent découler des faits généraux et avérés.77

According to Gibbon, the philosophic historian attempts to reconstruct the

past in the most probable and possible manner. However, the philosophic
historian must be careful to “limit the distortions of […] extraneous
explanatory connectives” which s/he uses in the process of recreating the
past.78 Mill had thus ample warning that the historian was as liable to fall
prey to the “fallacy of preconception” as everyone else.
Johann Jakob Brucker’s Historia Critica Philosophiae (1742–1744)
provided Mill with an example of freeing “history from uncertainty, from
fables, and from the errors with which it had been handed down”.79 As we
saw, in the 1809 review of Plato’s English edition, Mill employed Brucker
in trying to “free” Plato from the Neo-Platonic tradition. The Brucker
references served as authoritative sources for Mill’s claims—claims which
had already appeared five years earlier without mention of Brucker. As a
reader of the Encyclopédie, Mill was definitely familiar with Brucker to a
certain extent, even if only at second hand or unknowingly: forty-three
articles on philosophers and philosophical movements drawing from
Brucker’s work have been identified.80
Brucker, to whom Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire (1776–1789) turned frequently on ancient philosophy, identified a
problem in dealing with past or foreign philosophical systems, similar to
Gibbon’s “paradox”. But he offered some “rules and cautions” in order to
avoid it. An important “rule” followed by Brucker was being “particularly
careful not to ascribe modern ideas and opinions to the antients, nor to
torture their expressions into a meaning which probably never entered into
their thoughts, in order to accommodate them to a modern hypothesis or
system”.81 The key lay in being “philosophical” when dealing with the past.
According to Mario Longo, Brucker transformed philosophy into a
methodological concept which specified the limits of historiographical
investigation. It was meant as a tool which avoided imposing “its categories
and judgements on the work of the historian”.82 Adhering to his
predecessors’ example, Brucker thought, first, the historian needed to
orderly and completely collect sources; second, to analyze their authenticity
as well as the accuracy of their references. Finally, the historian needed to
identify the theoretical presuppositions and polemical intentions of the
authors when comparing and discussing testimonies.83 In the attempt to
study the history of philosophical systems, Brucker noted, he “endeavoured
to discover the general principles on which each system is built; and then,
to trace out the particular conclusions which have been deduced from
these”. Should the scholar come across a doubtful passage, the
interpretation to be preferred was that which best agreed “with the
fundamental principles and the spirit of the system”.84 History needed
philosophy, understood both as critical questioning of reports, evidence, and
testimony, and as a guard against modern prejudices, biases and
preconceptions.
By the late eighteenth century, as we saw, there was a long tradition of
trying to make history more philosophical, both in being more scientific in
its treatment of causal relations and more sceptical in its treatment of
evidence. The connection between history and philosophy was not always
viewed in such terms. According to Karen O’Brien, in viewing the task of
the historian in terms of identifying hidden causes, penetrating the mind of
the main actors, and employing a philosophical spirit, Gibbon responded to
an old foe: Aristotle’s rejection of history in Poetics 9.85 For Aristotle,
“poetry is more philosophical and more serious than history. Poetry tends to
express universals, and history particulars”.86 Aristotle’s discussion had still
some currency in mid-eighteenth-century Britain. Speaking to the Glasgow
Literary Society in 1759, James Moore repeated Aristotle’s view that the
poet represents “human actions as they naturally might have happened; the
Historian, by relating them as they actually did happen”.87 For Aristotle,
poetry deals with constructed sequences of events, whereas history with
mere reports of such sequences. In constructing these sequences, as part of
a plot, poetry engages in a higher form of knowledge; being constrained by
generalizations on causal relations, poetry showcases—and in so doing,
instructs and entertains—a general understanding about what is probable or
necessary, under certain circumstances, to happen. Aristotle thought that
history, in contrast, deals only with particulars; as such it could offer no
insight into why something happened.88
 It was common in discussions of historical composition to compare the
historian to the poet and the orator—Moore, Blair, and Ferguson did that
mainly in terms of style and arrangement. However, by 1788, John Hill
could reverse Aristotle’s casting of poetry as more philosophical than
history. Hill pointed out that “[i]n every literary area, the poet has been the
first to offer the fruits of his genius”. History, in contrast, “is never one of
the earliest efforts of national genius”. Historical composition is a product
of intellectual maturity—individual and social.89 Hill’s statement reflected
ideas found in Kames’s Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural
Religion (1751), Ferguson’s Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767),
Millar’s Origin of Ranks (1771), Monboddo’s Of the Origin and Progress of
Language (1773–92), and Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776), works which,
as John Regan puts it, “participated in a discussion in which poetry was
increasingly identified as an index not only to cultural but also to societal
development”.90
At the outset of the chapter examining Hindu literature in Book II, Mill
claimed that “[t]he first literature is poetry. Poetry is the language of the
passions, and men feel before they speculate”. It was typical of Mill to try
to offer an explanation why: he cited Stewart’s Elements of the Philosophy
of Human Mind (1792–1827) to warn against another “infirmity of the
human mind”, that is, that “[t]he highest abstractions are not the last result
of mental culture, and intellectual strength”. In fact, “[t]he propensity to
abstract speculations is […] the natural result of the state of the human
mind in a rude and ignorant age”. On the one hand the Hindus generally
never wrote anything in any form other than verse, which of itself was
sufficient to mark a “rude” nation. On the other hand one may find “now
and then”, “here and there”, “something which approaches the confines of
reason and taste”, some “happy description” or some “vivid conception of a
striking circumstance” in Hindu poetry; but these are not sufficient to rate
such poetry highly. For Mill, stylistically, Hindu poetry contains “inflation;
metaphors perpetual, and these the most violent and strained, often the most
unnatural and ridiculous; obscurity; tautology; repetition; verbosity;
confusion; incoherence”. Morally, their representations of a series of actions
—themselves fictitious, extravagant, unnatural, ingenious, monstrous, in
violation of “the physical and moral laws of the universe”—contain nothing
“to engage the affections, awaken sympathy, or excite admiration,
reverence, or terror”.91 Not only did Mill not deny public usefulness to
poetry;92 he thought that it was one thing to argue that the development of
philosophy and science followed that of poetry and quite another to argue
that the society “best fitted for attaining excellence in poetry” was one in
which “the imagination is still vigorous, and the understanding has just
begun to be exercised by scientific pursuits”. The latter “unmeaning
theory”, Mill noted, was “well calculated to repress the efforts of poetical
genius”.93 Still, Regan was right to point out that, for Mill, the
“pervasiveness of versification in Hindu texts of science, history,
lexicography, and religion was suggestive of a cultural development
inimical to the encroachment of the sober prose discourses which
constituted civil society”.94
With regard to the association of poetry with societal development, Mill
could have drawn not just on the Scots, but also on ancient philosophy. For
example, in Plato’s Republic (bks VI and VII), Socrates used the allegories
of the Divided Line and the Cave to distinguish between imagination and
belief in empirical knowledge (which is not “real” knowledge, but opinion).
Imagination meant taking the word of others for truth—uncritically relying
on authority to go about our lives. In contrast, belief was the closest one
could get in the physical world, in the world of the senses, to truth. It is a
higher level than imagination in terms of intellectual development, as
individuals rely on their own powers—their own senses—in living their
lives. In the highest form of social organization, Kallipolis—in which the
philosopher-kings follow a route of ascent and descent from and back to the
physical world—philosophy rules and poetry is expelled, as Plato casts
poetry in the realm of imagination. Such a view was familiar enough for
those who took Hugh Blair’s course: as the intercourse among mankind
became more extensive and frequent, “the understanding” was more
exercised, “the fancy” was less—“clearness of style, in signifying their
meaning to each other, was the chief object of attention. In place of Poets,
Philosophers became the instructors of men”.95
More concretely, however, Mill’s History seems to draw from Brucker.
There is a distinct similarity between Mill’s discussion of Hindu poetry and
his criticisms of Neo-Platonists—Brucker had severely criticized the
Oriental element in their appropriation of Plato, and Mill directly referred to
the Neo-Platonists in his discussion of the allegorical element of Hindu
Mythology. For Mill’s purposes, neither was it important that Brucker
thought true philosophic thinking began with the Greeks, nor that Greek
philosophy was divided in periods of infancy (poets; ancient lawgivers) and
maturity (philosophers; philosophical sects).96 The only reference to
Brucker in Mill’s History is from the chapter on the philosophy of the
Chaldeans.97 In said chapter, Brucker’s “negative view of Barbarian
philosophy is clear[l]y seen”. Brucker tried to show that the Chaldean “wise
men” were “priests of a corrupt and false religion”, who secured the
protection and respect of a superstitious king and people, by means of the
art of divination from the stars. Not only was their philosophy, as all
Eastern speculation, Brucker argued, based on tradition (unquestioned
veneration of authority) not on reason (i.e., free and careful examination),
but also “they made use of symbolic language to reveal their teachings only
to the initiated or to the exponents of their sect”.98 A history of philosophy,
Brucker had argued, was a history of the development of the human mind.99
Philosophy, according to Brucker, “expounds the principles and rules of
divine and human truth and teaches on what foundation the happiness of the
human race may be acquired, preserved, and increased. In this way
philosophy, by resting on its own foundations, produces science; but if it is
not capable of being translated into practice, it is unworthy of the name of
wisdom”. For Brucker, once we identify the steps that the human mind
takes from infancy to maturity, “it becomes clear how much of the path
remains to be trodden, what pitfalls are to be avoided, what harbour is to be
sought” in the active pursuit of knowledge, truth and happiness.100 For Mill,
agreeing with Brucker, oriental philosophy could not have been philosophy
properly so-called as it did nothing to add to that pursuit, but everything to
prevent it. This brings us to Mill’s views on the pursuit of happiness as the
test of any civilization.

II Utilitarianism with and without Bentham

Eric Stokes (1959) has conclusively proved that Mill’s argument on legal
reform in India was fundamentally Benthamite. Even though classical
influences on modern legal ideas cannot be underestimated, discounted or
ignored,101 there is no reason to doubt that Mill’s “reliance has all along
been, and continues to be”, on Bentham for drafting a “good system of
judicial procedure, with a judicial establishment adequate to the
administration of it”, in India and in Britain. But the reason does not seem
to be because, according to Bentham, “[f]or these three or four-and-twenty
years he [Mill] has numbered himself among my disciples; for upwards of
twenty years he has been receiving my instructions”.102 Adam Knowles
seems right to point out that Mill’s History “provided only weak,
platitudinous examples of the application of the utility principle”,103 even
though Mill praised Bentham whenever he had the opportunity.104
In this Section, I follow the implications of the absence of a clear
statement of the Principle of Utility for some of Mill’s claims in History. I
take my cue from Mill’s retort in 1835 upon being called Bentham’s
mouthpiece. Speaking about Étienne Dumont and himself, Mill noted:
These men were familiar with the writings of Mr. Bentham; one of them, at least, before he
was acquainted with his person. And they were neither of them men, who took any body for a
master, though they were drawn to Mr. Bentham by the sympathy of common opinions, and
by the respect due to a man who had done more than any body else to illustrate and
recommend doctrines, which they deemed of first-rate importance to the happiness of
mankind.105

Scribbling down in his Commonplace Books, Mill found encouragement in

works which inculcated “independence of mind, the thinking for oneself,
the freedom of the trammels of antecessors, the calling no man master, the
following the light of reason, the not putting out one’s own eyes, to use
dead men’s eyes”. At the same time, Mill found remarkable “that all the
men whose minds in the field of morals and legislation have benefited their
species, have been abused as contemners [sic] of authority. Luther, Bacon,
Locke, Bentham”. He then added a note from Seneca’s Epistles (80.1): “Do
I then follow no predecessors? Yes, but I allow myself to discover
something new, to alter, to reject. I am not a slave to them, although I give
them my approval”.106
 The “common opinions” which Mill mentioned had much to do with the
promotion of happiness as the ultimate test of progress and of civilization,
through the improvement of current, and the establishment of new, social
and political institutions,. In History, Mill argued that the historian needs to
discern between good ends and bad ends, praise the pursuit of the former,
and condemn the pursuit of latter, especially when it was the result of
mistaken priorities, as we saw. But what constituted the end? And how were
the priorities formed? To answer these questions, later commentators
frequently cite a passage from Mill’s History discussing Hindu
technological ingenuity as regards astrology:
In looking at the pursuits of any nation, with a view to draw from them indications of the state
of civilization, no mark is so important, as the nature of the End to which they are directed.
Exactly in proportion as Utility is the object of every pursuit, may we regard a nation
civilized. Exactly in proportion as its ingenuity is wasted on contemptible or mischievous
objects, though it may be, in itself, an ingenuity of no ordinary kind, the nation may safely be
denominated barbarous.107

Classically trained readers would instantly recognize themes from

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Politics: that the function of human
beings is activity (of the soul) in accordance with aretê (excellence, virtue);
that intelligence without aretê may be in the service of the lowest ends; that
the highest and best end is happiness; and the master science, i.e.,
architectonic technê, that brings all other pursuits under one consistent end
is political science; that the polis is the only, i.e. the natural, place to
achieve happiness; and that human beings can only be perfected in a just
and well-ordered polis. The good to which Mill is referring to, “utility”,
coincides largely with that of the ancients: happiness. For Mill, “the
foundation of all improvement in the condition of human life” went hand in
hand with “the knowledge of what conduces to the augmentation of human
enjoyment and the diminution of human misery”.108 Unsurprisingly,
throughout History, happiness and misery, enjoyment and suffering were
defined in terms of pleasure and pain.109
Mill’s History argued that so long as the religion, the laws, the
government, and the mores of a society are conducive to the happiness of
the whole society, that society is civilized. However, in short, for Mill, the
religious system and local forms of government made the people of India,
“in mind and body, […] the most enslaved portion of the human race”.110
Liberty, equality, justice, the constituent parts of happiness, were the most
important criteria of civilization; in India, there was despotism, inequality,
and injustice. For example, the laws extended “coercion, and the authority
of the magistrate, over the greater part of human life”, leaving “men no
liberty even in their private and ordinary transactions”. Without the
distinction between the public sphere, which entails obligations enforced by
the executive power, and the private sphere, which entails obligations
enforced by self-interest and morality, the people depended for their
happiness solely on the benevolence of their rulers. Both the caste system
and the position of women were similarly suggestive of the state of
civilization of India, since “[t]he history of uncultivated nations uniformly
represents the women as in a state of abject slavery, from which they slowly
emerge, as civilization advances”.111 Likewise, vagueness and ambiguity in
the legal system, with only a particular group—those on the top of the caste
system—having access to its interpretation, Mill argued, essentially left the
“gate […] open to unlimited injustice”. As lawmaking and administrating
justice through an interpretation of the laws fell on the same individuals,
this particular group of individuals possessed all political power, which
made them “by necessary consequence the masters” of the actions of any
other member of the society.112 Even though the ways in which Mill tried to
deal with these issues did indeed draw from Bentham’s corpus, identifying
possible sources in how Mill framed these issues allows one to see how he
modified some of Bentham’s ideas about their solutions.

Happiness and progress

According to Mill, “[d]espotism is more destructive of leisure and security,
and more adverse to the progress of the human mind, than anarchy itself”.
He quoted Adam Smith for this insight. However, given that Mill added a
little to Smith’s original text, the quotation marks he used were misleading.
Smith did not speak of a “progress of the human mind”—though he
wondered whether despotism did indeed prevent the “growth of
Philosophy” in the East.113 It seems that Mill drew on Smith to serve two
purposes. First, to suggest happiness correlates to security, which in turn
fosters improvement—both personal and social. Further on this, Mill cited
Colonel Mark Wilks:
If the comparative happiness of mankind in different ages be measured by its only true and
rational standard, namely, the degree of peace and security which they shall be found
collectively and individually to possess, we shall certainly discover, in every successive step
towards remote antiquity, a larger share of wretchedness to have been the portion of the
human race.114

The origin of government, Mill argued, can be traced to “[t]he misery and
disorder which overspread human life, wherever self-defence rests wholly
upon the individual”.115 Progressively, that is, as societies get orderly and
safe, ruling power is reduced to a proper limit. It is thus important for a
people, Mill argued, not only to be secure but also to believe that they are
secure: “[t]he public do not enjoy the advantages of security, unless they
have what is called the sense of security”.116 The reason seems to be simple
enough, which forms the second purpose Mill had in citing Smith: in well-
ordered societies, in which an improved state of property and security
exists, the “necessities of life” no longer occupy one’s attention to such an
extent as to “create perpetual solicitude”. One’s energy—mental and bodily
—is spent on more agreeable concerns.117
Mill’s views, notwithstanding his modern references and the Hobbesian
echoes, were not really that new. As George Nadel put it more than fifty
years ago, scholars at times view “as new and revolutionary certain ideas
put forward by men like Bayle and Hume which, in fact, were merely
paraphrases or quotations from the classics, drearily familiar to any
educated person living between the Renaissance and the nineteenth
century”.118 For example, Mill’s readers would have had knowledge of
Lucretius’s On the Nature of Things, who presented the fullest account of
the supposed movement from barbarous solitude to just society in the
ancient world.119 Given the centrality of Lucretius and Cicero in classical
education, Mill’s readers would not necessarily identify Mill’s statements
about happiness and security as of Benthamite origin—and as we saw, in
the early reviews of Mill’s History, they did not. Mill shared this passion for
classics with many of his contemporaries—as evidenced by the founding of
the Athenaeum—but not with Bentham. That is why Mill kept returning to
the classics, adding to his Commonplace Books “admirable”, “remarkable”,
and “good”, quotations from Plato, Aristotle and Cicero, long after he met
Bentham. He would have had a better chance of resonating with his readers
by using familiar ideas, with utilitarian underpinnings, from Plato, Aristotle,
and Cicero.120
According to Mill, the Principle of Utility was “founded by Plato”, “the
philosopher of the most brilliant imagination”, as outlined in three
dialogues: Protagoras, Meno, and Republic. In Protagoras, both
interlocutors agreed that pleasures (and pains) need to be weighed and
compared against their short-term and long-term consequences, including
attributes such as intensity and quantity. However, such a calculation was
not enough, Protagoras and Socrates agreed, as a person needs knowledge
or correct opinion about the consequences of any given choice; that was the
art of measurement—combining calculation with knowledge. As people
never knowingly choose the lesser instead of the greater good, possessing
this art is the key to a good life, Socrates argued.121 Plato’s Republic moved
the discussion from the individual to society. While Mill identified
utilitarian thinking in passages in which calculation and reason appeared as
the most important functions of the soul,122 he also pointed out that, for
Plato, justice can make the state happy by uniting interests:123 the end to be
sought was the happiness of all, not of just one rank.124
Plato’s Protagoras featured the famous myth about the genesis of poleis,
i.e., how human beings managed to establish and maintain political
communities. Protagoras shows that no “need, however urgent”,125 can
alone sustain cities without its citizens sharing αἰδῶ τε καί δίκην. “Respect
for others” and “justice” are not negotiable; those who fail to adjust their
actions in accordance with these virtues will be expelled from society. Even
though some consider Protagoras to advocate the position that people
without institutions and conventions do not rise above the status of brutes, it
is perhaps more accurate to say that human beings get out of an
uncomfortable, solitary state into a political state through “time, bitter
experience and necessity”.126 Some even claim that Protagoras viewed
history “in terms of gradual stripping away of ignorance, superstition and
other obstacles to progress”.127 Art, not nature, leads human beings into
agreeing to pursue the common interest. Humans recognize the utility of
society, but also the utility of social virtues. Their early sociability (religion,
language) allows for temporary union in the face of greater dangers, but
only artificial virtues manage to preserve the political union.128
An anonymous seven-centuries-old text found in the Neo-Platonist
Iamblichus’s (c. 242–327) Exhortation to Philosophy 129 discussed in
greater detail the comparative merits of eunomia over anomia, well-
orderedness over its absence.130 According to the anonymous writer,
individuals in the state of nature cannot engage in productive activities, as
they are cautious and suspicious, while they are constantly planning how to
deal with expected mischief from others. When people live in fear tyrants
take advantage to acquire and solidify absolute rule. The extant text by the
Anonymous Iamblichi thus displays similarities with Protagoras and Plato
on the benefits of social order, but the view that fear does not allow the
human mind to be creative, or society to advance morally and
technologically, seems to be of Protagorean origin.131 Although the
accounts offered by the obscure author in Iamblichus and the sophist in
Plato’s Protagoras resonated well with Mill’s classical interests,132 it is
improbable that Mill’s audience would have been similarly familiar with
these texts. Still, Mill could not resist citing Plato’s Laws, for a conjectural
account of how society would be after a cataclysmic event.133 He expected
his audience to recollect similar themes in classical texts.
In 1806, Mill welcomed John Mason Good’s English edition of
Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things (1805).134 As in the case of his review
of Thomas Taylor’s Plato, Mill debated with the translator on matters of
doctrine as well as translation. Part of Lucretius’s poem drew from the old
phusis–nomos debate, tracing the emergence of organized societies out of
the state of nature.135 Siding with Protagoras and the Anonymous rather
than Plato’s Callicles, Lucretius pointed out that “neighbors, in their
eagerness neither to harm nor be harmed, began to form mutual pacts of
friendship”.136 For Lucretius, fear of vengeance “poisoned the blessings of
life”:
[T]he situation sank to the lowest dregs of anarchy, with all seeking sovereignty and
supremacy for themselves. At length some of them taught the others to create magistracies
and established laws, to induce them to obey ordinances. The human race, utterly weary as it
was of leading a life of violence and worn out with feuds, was the more ready to submit
voluntarily to the restraint of ordinances and stringent laws.137
Mill’s Ciceronism induced him to scold the translator for adopting the
ethics of Epicurus: “What shall we say of a philosophy which accounted it
the chief happiness of a being born to activity, and who can procure no
happiness either to himself or to others but by action, to pass his life in
complete indolence, to be wholly void of care, and to slumber away his
existence in profound ease and repose?”138
In On Duties (3.11), Cicero had Socrates cursing those who first
separated utility (utilitas) from justice (honestum)139—Protagoras and Plato
were not alone in linking justice with social utility. Importantly, Mill took
note of Cicero’s Letters to Atticus (bk 8, lt. 11) on the task of the statesman
as defined in On the Commonwealth (bk. 5): “this guide of the
commonwealth aims at the blessedness of the life of his citizens, that they
should be solid in their resources, rich in property, well endowed with glory,
honorable in virtue. I want him to be the person to perfect this task, which is
the greatest and best among mankind”.140 Likewise, Mill cited Cicero’s
Letters to Quintus (1.24), “that those who govern others must gauge their
every act by this one test—the greatest possible happiness of the governed
[…]. And indeed it is the duty not only of one who governs allies and
citizens, but also of one who governs slaves and dumb animals, to be
himself a slave to the interests and well-being of those he governs”.141
The security of the people is the most important law, Cicero argued in On
the Laws (3.8): ollis salus populi suprema lex esto. Even though Mill did
not refer to this passage, it appeared in Locke’s Second Treatise of
Government (1689: ch. 13, §158) and, translated, in Hobbes’s Leviathan
(1651: ch. 30, p.1), chapters from which Mill saved extracts in his
Commonplace Books.142 Mill did refer to On the Laws (III.31–32),
discussing how national character depends on its leaders:
[…] Immoral leaders are all the more damaging to the commonwealth because they not only
harbor their own vices but they instill them into the state; the fact that they are corrupted is
not the only damage they cause, but the fact that they corrupt others: they are more harmful as
examples than for their failings. This law is applied to the whole order, but it can be
narrowed: there are relatively few men, bolstered by honor and glory, who can corrupt or
correct the morals of the state.143

Cicero, in this passage, referred once again to On the Commonwealth. In

Book 5 (§7), which Cicero had referred to in his letter to Atticus (which
Mill cited), we read: “everyone makes use of the advantages of the
community as well as his own, so that there is no possibility of living well
in the absence of a good commonwealth, nor is anything more blessed than
a well-ordered state”.144

Progress and equality

One could argue “respect for others” and “justice” was Protagoras’s deus ex
machina in bringing and keeping the polis together. Not only did Mill find,
in this dialogue, the art of measurement to be an early statement of
utilitarian principles (as did his son),145 he also found useful ideas on
punishment and political education.146 Likewise, Mill found in Plato’s
Republic “a masterly development” of the principle of identification of
interests between rulers and ruled,147 social justice being a main part of it,
as we saw. In this section, I consider some problems for the importance of
justice and respect for others occasioned by Mill’s History: recognizing the
interests of those who lack political power, especially women.
As we saw in passing earlier, Mill’s History considered the condition of
women as a benchmark of civilization: as society advances women become
equal partners to men. In contrast, Mill’s “Government”, as we saw in
Chapter 1, was first attacked on account of his notorious remarks about
women’s interests being included in those of their fathers and husbands.148
Terence Ball has eloquently exposed the contradiction between these two
statements as regards Mill’s recognition of the interests of women:
The “decisive criterion” that he applies to Indian society is not applied to English society. It is
curious that Mill, who in his History thought it a sign of “extreme degradation” that Hindu
women “are not accounted worthy to partake of religious rites but in conjunction with their
husbands”, was nevertheless prepared to exclude English women from that pre-eminently
political rite—voting—on the ground that their husbands may speak in their stead. Is the latter
position, as advocated in his Essay, not tantamount to keeping women “in a state of
dependence”? In identifying a girl’s interest with her father’s, and a woman’s with her
husband’s, is Mill not in effect endorsing the Hindu maxim that “Their fathers protect them in
childhood; their husbands protect them in their youth […]”? And is this not in turn
tantamount to saying, with Menu, that “a woman must never seek independence […] at no
time is a woman fit to be trusted with liberty”? And finally: is not Mill’s exclusion of women
from the franchise merely an anglicized and politicized version of the very practices for
which he condemns the Hindus?149
Typically commentators point out John Stuart Mill’s remark that he and
other “younger proselytes” disagreed with the elder Mill’s position on
women’s enfranchisement, while “Mr. Bentham, on this important point,
was wholly on our side”.150 However, Bentham himself had argued in the
Plan of Parliamentary Reform (1817) that deciding on female suffrage was
“altogether premature”.151 A decade later, Bentham re-affirmed that
“prepossession against their admission is at present too general, and too
intense, to afford any chance in favour of a proposal admission”.152
Mill usually began the chapters which were meant to provide reasons in
identifying the Hindus as having not advanced beyond a “rude” state of
society by comparing their practices with “rude” ways of thinking and of
acting, individually and socially.153 Reporting on manners, Mill had this to
say about women:
The condition of the women is one of the most remarkable circumstances in the manners of
nations, and one of the most decisive criterions of the stage of society at which they have
arrived. Among rude people, the women are generally degraded; among civilized people they
are exalted.154

The strikethrough text disappeared from the first to the second edition. Still,
Mill’s point throughout the discussion remained the same: philosophical
inquiry identified a “uniform concomitant” of social rudeness or refinement
in women being degraded or exalted respectively.155 Still, this discussion
was a characteristic example of Mill’s interest in “institut[ing]
comparisons”, as he told Walker, with “nations with whom the Hindus had
the greatest number of circumstances in common”, to prove that Hindus
were not civilized, rather than compare India with England and show
England’s backwardness on this matter.156
Mill’s whole discussion moved beyond Bentham’s suggestive footnote in
Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation that “[i]n certain
nations, women, whether married or not, have been placed in a state of
perpetual wardship”.157 As he pointed out in Time and Place:
It may be better, that in Bengal at least, among people of Asiatic race, the husbands should be
disposed to expect that their wives should keep confined, and that the women should be
disposed to submit to such confinement: while, in England it may be better that the husband
should not be disposed to entertain any such expectation, nor the wife to comply with it.158
Such a view of the subject simply did not do for Mill: “Superficial
contemplators have, in general, contented themselves with remarking, that
it was a diversity of manners; or was the effect of a diversity of climate; and
that what in one place was gross bore a different interpretation in
another”.159 Mill credited Millar with establishing the link between the
condition of women and stages of society.160 According to Millar, women
in early ages
[h]aving little attention paid them, either upon account of those pleasures to which they are
subservient, or of those occupations which they are qualified to exercise, …. are degraded
below the other sex, and reduced under that authority which the strong acquire over the weak:
an authority which, in early periods, being subject to no limitation from the government, is
exerted with a degree of harshness and severity suited to the dispositions of the people.161

Mill thought Millar’s discussion so influential that, since Millar’s

“philosophical inquiry”, “it has been universally considered as an infallible
criterion of barbarous society, to find the women in a state of great
degradation”.162 In the History, he summarized Millar’s argument in a
sentence: “the history of uncultivated nations uniformly represents the
women as in a state of abject slavery, from which they slowly emerge, as
civilization advances”.163
Mill painted a dark picture of the condition of women in India. Neither
did women associate on equal terms with men, nor did they become their
“copartners”. Rather, they were forced into an almost inconceivable state of
dependence and humiliation.164 Both Millar and Mill identified the basis of
this social injustice as the inability, due to education and habit, of the
“barbarian” to discipline his impulses (primarily, but not confined to, sexual
impulses), leading him to “abuse his power over every creature that is
weaker than himself”. Millar did not hesitate to point out that not only does
world history confirm such a conclusion, but also, the “vestiges of ancient
manners which are often discovered among nations considerably advanced
in civilization and refinement”.165 Meanwhile, according to Mill:
As society refines upon its enjoyments, and advances into that state of civilization, in which
various corporeal qualities become equal or superior in value to corporeal strength, and in
which the qualities of the mind are ranked above the qualities of the body, the condition of the
weaker sex is gradually improved, till they associate on equal terms with the men, and occupy
the place of voluntary and useful coadjutors.166
In the discussion referred to by Mill, John Millar made an attempt to
delineate what the absence of mental qualities in the pursuit of sexual
pleasures of “savages” entailed: no imagination, no hope, no anticipation,
and no fear, among others.167 In contrast, Mill’s discussion was unclear on
how qualities of the mind are causally related with cultural refinement. I
think there are two credible interpretations of what Mill was claiming. One
looks to the future, the other to the past. Beginning with the former, writing
in 1854, John Stuart Mill wished to record his “deliberate opinion” that
“any great improvement in human life is not to be looked for so long as the
animal instinct of sex occupies the absurdly disproportionate place it does
therein”. As part of the correction to this “evil”, John Mill argued, “women
should cease to be set apart for this function, and should be admitted to all
other duties and occupations on a par with men”.168
There is another way of interpreting the passage on women and
refinement. The criterion for the demarcation for the “gradation of
pleasures” was something which preoccupied Mill at least as early as
1806169—that is, before he met Bentham. Plato (e.g., Republic 580d–583a)
and Aristotle (e.g., Nicomachean Ethics 1174al–3 or 1177a5–10) could
have been Mill’s sources. However, Francis Hutcheson appears a more
likely source in this case. Throughout the discussion, Mill constantly refers
to the degrading and humiliating treatment of women—dignity seems to be
a pervading concern in Mill’s treatment. Hutcheson distinguished between
qualities of pleasures by reference to a sense of dignity: “when we gratify
the bodily appetites, there is an immediate sense of pleasure, such as the
brutes enjoy, but no further satisfaction; no sense of dignity upon reflection,
no Good-liking of others for their being thus employed”.170 In his
marginalia to Hutcheson’s book, Mill noted that “[h]uman nature not made
up solely of desires, and propensities, which it is to obey indiscriminately. It
has a principle of selection. That principle its ultimate end. An ultimate end
is a thing felt, not reasoned about”.171 There is thus a qualitative difference
in conducing “to the augmentation of human enjoyment and the diminution
of human misery”, and as men become receptive to this difference, the
condition of women improves. At a higher state of civilization, Mill argued,
“the mind of man is susceptible of pleasure from the approbation, pain from
the disapprobation, of his fellow-creatures”, which makes human beings
“capable of restraint from the operation of manners”.172 In any case, either
reading of the passage suffices to suggest that by relegating sexual
pleasures to a lower stage in human refinement, due to a difference in
quality, Mill’s application of the principle of utility in History once again
went beyond Bentham.

The utility of history: atqui consilium futuri ex praeterito venit173

I have argued so far that Mill’s History did not simply mesh Benthamite
utilitarianism and Scottish conjectural history together. Many classical,
rhetorical and philosophical traditions lay at the background of many of
Mill’s claims in “Preface” and Book II. Now, I circle back to a prominent
feature of discussions of History noticed at the beginning of this chapter:
that Mill’s view that “general rules […] are the only sure guides of future
conduct” was a consequence of his propagation of the utilitarian theory.
Scholars seize upon this view, prevalent in History and the Encyclopaedia
Britannica essays, to argue that for Mill “abstract theory should trump
empiricism”.174 I submit that such a claim involves confusions in reference
both to Mill’s History and the essay on government in particular. Here, I
focus on History to highlight two different aspects of Mill’s argument: first,
the relation between historical examples and general rules; second, the
importance of history for good government.
Starting with the first, we should be careful not to misunderstand what
Mill meant when he wrote that general rules are the only sure guides of
future conduct. This was actually from a note in Mill’s Commonplace
Books on Henry Bolingbroke’s Letters on the Study and Use of History
(1752). The full note reads:
Particular examples are chiefly of use in furnishing the materials of general rules; and the
general rules, thus formed, are the only sure guides of future conduct. “That the study of
history may make us wiser and more useful citizens, we must apply ourselves to it, in a
philosophical spirit and manner. We must rise from particular to general knowledge”. […]
The benefit of general rules is that they are medium likenesses to all of the individual cases
under them.175

Mill highlighted Bolingbroke’s attempt to combine theory with history; as

Bolingbroke noted,
 He who studies history as he would philosophy, will soon distinguish and collect them
[“general principles”, “rules of life and conduct”], and by doing so will soon form to himself
a general system of ethics and politics on the surest foundations, on the trial of these
principles and rules in all ages, and on the confirmation of them by universal experience.176

Nadel situates Bolingbroke in the “exemplar theory” literary genre. In this

genre, history dealt only with singulars, not universals—as we already saw,
this definition went as far back as Aristotle’s Poetics. As per Nadel’s useful
summary, the genre addressed the “man of action”, supplying exemplary
conduct, in particular, historical moments, in order to inspire or deter—
examples were direct, vivid and persuasive. Such history offered a guide to
life by expanding and extending individual experience, but only by being
truthful and impartial.177 However, Bolingbroke’s third letter cautioned
about the application of examples in different circumstances—he even
mentioned Guicciardini’s scepticism on whether one could draw examples
from history.178 In this respect, even though Mill, like Bolingbroke, did not
question the educational task of historical compositions, he did take
seriously the methodological limitations of exemplar histories. Mill’s
criticism of Millar that “[f]rom insulated expressions, or facts, no general
conclusion can safely be drawn”,179 was in that spirit. Mill insisted that
Book II formed a long and extensive “induction of particulars” with a
comprehensive scope, hopefully sufficient to exhibit the grounds of his
conclusions as regards Hindu civilization.180
According to Mill, the philosophic historian had the resources to fill in
blanks in an undocumented past. As long as the historian distinguishes
between real and suppositional knowledge,181 he argued, “we have perhaps
but little to regret in the total absence of Hindu records”.182 But being able
to reconstruct the mode of life and character of people in the past is one
thing; being able to prove a claim about the state of social advancement is
another—for example, the lack of historical records itself is telling, as is the
versification of historical, legal, and philosophical texts. The importance of
historical records for good government is yet another thing, distinguishable
from the first two.
A “perfect history” begins with prose writing, Mill argued, “expressly
destined to exhibit a record of real transactions”; legends, myths, allegories
in the place of legal, philosophical, historical books are the “offspring of a
wild and ungoverned imagination”. Mill lamented that the Hindus had no
books of history, in the “true” sense of historical writing: “This people,
indeed, are perfectly destitute of historical records”. The Hindus “had not
reached that point of intellectual maturity at which the value of a record of
the past for the guidance of the future begins to be understood”. For Mill,
“uncultivated minds” lack the capability of reflection to know the value
“[o]f an accurate record of antecedent events, yielding lessons for the future
by the experience of the past”. The problem consisted in that, since “all our
knowledge is built upon experience, the recordation of the past for the
guidance of the future is one of the effects in which the utility of the art of
writing principally consists”.183 For someone who supposedly thinks that
theory trumps experience and that India presented a civilizational tabula
rasa, a lack of records of past experience should not have mattered. In
contrast, Mill argued, time and again, that history is magistra vitae. The
Ciceronean phrase used is proof enough that Mill’s was not a minority view.
For Alexander Tytler, it was an “indispensable duty” of active members of a
political community to “be acquainted with the science of Politics”. History,
Tytler stressed, is “the school of Politics”.184
The full force of Mill’s remarks on the value of history for good
government presents itself only when read in conjunction with his treatment
of religion as one of the three means of limiting absolute power. First,
revolutions are the natural consequence of a people suffering so much that
they no longer have anything to lose. Second, despotic rule can with
difficulty be imposed upon a people who are active, brave, and spirited.
Third, priests can protect the people against abuse of sovereign power, only
when they themselves enjoy sufficient power among the people. However,
even if they do enjoy such power, they may choose to side with the
sovereign and delight in the spoils of complete oppression of the people.185
Mill essentially argues that fear of revolution is the only limiting agent to
absolute power, and religion can be used by the sovereign to circumvent
any resistance. If history is indeed a “school of politics”, a guide to life and
extended experience, and if the interpretation of history is the privilege—
given its allegorical nature—of a select priesthood, then the people have no
means of learning from the past, guiding them into a better future. They live
perpetually in the present.186
 For James Mill, individuals, such as priests, who have “influence over
the minds of men”,187 may thus attempt to form habits or associations
which will not enable others to pursue their own good; or, what may come
to be the same thing, influencers may stir education to the pursuit of what
the sovereign thinks that the good of the people consists in. That was why
he thought that “The power of generating opinions by any thing but
evidence, a power so useful for wicked purpose, so utterly needless for any
good purpose, should be invariably wrested from the hands of the masters,
and would-be oppressors of mankind”.188
If the “political” aspect of Mill’s History is indeed evident of enlightened
views on the subject, the “moral” aspect is not readily so. As we saw, Mill’s
moralizing in History was to be expected to some extent.189 But many of
his contemporaries, friends even, objected to the language in which Hindu
character was clothed.190 Scholars have thus argued that Mill was “the
fanatic Utilitarian thinker with a passionate prejudice—Hitlerean in places
—against Hindus”.191 Unquestionably, it is impossible to avoid feeling
uneasy with many of Mill’s remarks. Still, I offer three examples which
may serve to widen the lenses with which one may read Mill’s “national-
character” studies in Books II and III.
For the first example, Mill was not reluctant to point out when he found
good practices among “backward” Asian societies. With reference to the
rules of evidence, he argued that “[o]n many points”, the system established
by the Muslim conquerors of India, “are not inferior; in some they are
preferable, to those of the European systems. Its exclusion of evidence, for
example, is not so extensive, and in the same proportion, not so
mischievous as the English”.192 However, due to his use of the four-stage
social theory, with commercial society as the last stage, most later studies
have depicted Mill as prejudiced in favor of England and Europe. Mill
could not caution against such prejudice hard enough:
Under the influence of a vulgar infirmity, That Self must be excellent, and every thing which
affects the pride of Self must have surpassing excellence, English institutions, and English
practices, have been generally set up as a standard, by conformity or disconformities with
which, the excellence or defect of every thing in the world was to be determined. With
moderate taxes, under a government which protects from foreign violence, the only thing
necessary for the happiness and the rapid improvement of the people of India, is a good
administration of justice. But to this great object the circumstances of the people, and the
 moral habits left in their minds by superstition and despotism, oppose a formidable resistance.
To afford in any tolerable degree the protection of law to the people of India is a far more
difficult process than it is in England; and for its accomplishment, a far more perfect system
of legal and judicial provisions, than what is witnessed in England is indispensably required.
Of this the rulers in India have not attained the slightest conception; and hence the many-ill
contrived measures to which they have had recourse.193

In England a range of other institutions mitigated the many failings of the

political system—Mill was an active member of one such institution, the
West London Lancasterian Association. In India, there was no similar
margin of error. But this did not give license to the British to err to the
opposite extreme. In 1816, Mill had made his point clear: in societies where
“every man is accustomed to combine for himself the means for warding off
evil, and attaining good”,
[t]here the machine of society cannot be easily disordered, and human happiness is placed on
a much more secure foundation. Then, if any of the larger arteries of the body politic is
obstructed, the nourishment of the system is carried on by the admirable service which may
be rendered by the smaller. To a system which has thus a vis medicatrix in all its parts, no
shock can be given that is not immediately repaired. Were the greatest disorder introduced,
things of their own accord would hasten to their proper place.

Mill referred to the Jesuit missionaries’ work in Paraguay as a cautionary

tale. By doing everything for them, the Jesuits left the people of Paraguay
“nothing to do or care about themselves”; they thus rendered them
“perfectly helpless” in the event of a “derangement in the machinery which
conducts them”.194
The second example shows Mill missing the mark completely, trying to
draw a moral lesson in reference to barbaric English practices: the “Black
Hole” incident.195 During an attack at the outposts at Calcutta in 1756, a
number of English were taken prisoners by Siraj ud-Daulah following their
failed attempt at retreat. The 146 prisoners were detained in “unhappily a
small, ill-aired, and unwholesome dungeon, called, the Black Hole”; only
23 survived the night. Mill’s narration of the “[indescribable] horror of the
situation” was prefaced by a direct criticism of his fellow citizens: “the
English had their own practice to thank for suggesting it to the officers of
the Subahdar as a fit place of confinement”. As he explained in a footnote:
The atrocities of English imprisonment at home, not then exposed to detestation […], too
naturally reconciled Englishmen abroad to the use of dungeons; of Black Holes. What had
they to do with a black hole? Had no black hole existed, (as none ought to exist any where,
 least of all in the sultry and unwholesome climate of Bengal,) those who perished in the Black
Hole of Calcutta would have experienced a different fate.

In 1829, the Asiatic Journal seized upon these remarks to show that “Mr.
Mill has forced into comparison things between which there are no moral
proportions whatsoever, and the whole passage is an unseemly blemish in
his history”. The author then, perhaps ironically, noted: “Acrimonious
critics might infer from it an insensibility to suffering which, I am
convinced, is quite foreign from the nature and feelings of the writer”.196
The third example moves away from the History to show the extent of
Mill’s excitement in seeing a “degree of order, energy, and ability almost
surprising in a people newly emancipated from slavery”. Reviewing Marcus
Rainsford’s Historical Account of the Black Empire of Hayti (1805), which
traced the slave uprising at Saint-Domingue, Mill thought Rainsford’s work
taught a lesson everyone should know:
The events which have recently taken place at St. Domingo, certainly render its history an
object of peculiar interest and importance to mankind. They prove, that negroes,
notwithstanding their dusky colour, woolly hair, flat noses, and thick lips, are men, and as
such must be treated, at the peril of those who wish to treat them otherwise. This is a point,
some may think, so obvious that such a proof was not very necessary; yet the thing
undoubtedly has been, and perhaps is, still disputed; at least, if we may judge of the opinions
of men from their actions. It is therefore of considerable consequence to have the fact
ascertained by so striking an instance. The lesson, it is to be hoped, will not be altogether
without its use. It will tend to enlighten the understanding of many on an important subject,
and point out to them the proper mode of combining their own interests with that of their
fellow creatures.

The emancipated slaves of St. Domingo showed clear signs of

“understand[ing] the nature, appreciat[ing] the value, and [being] capable of
the enjoyment of liberty”—material prosperity did not long stay behind.197
Revisiting the matter in 1816, Mill pointed out that “the negroes, even when
corrupted by West India slavery, are in a state far less removed from
civilization than those interested in defaming them have eagerly represented
them”. Then Mill added:
[have the emancipated slaves not] displayed virtues which even their most partial friends
would not have ventured to predict of them? Have they not, in very trying circumstances,—
obliged to commence in a state of anarchy, with a government to form, and self-control to
learn,—displayed a moderation, a tractability, a readiness to fall into proper courses, which is
altogether astonishing, which may put to shame the people of some countries in which
 civilization was supposed to have made the greatest progress? The negroes […] have become
a community of men, exhibiting no contemptible portion of human wisdom and virtue.

“[T]here is nothing”, Mill went on, “in the mental condition of the slaves in
the West Indies, which should prevent a beginning from being now made in
the glorious work of changing their slavery into freedom”.198 Mill’s History
tried to show why the change of slavery into freedom was not yet possible
for the Indians. As “a steadfast believer in human equality who repudiated
all notions of biological inferiority” and “[a] vigorous proponent of nurture
over nature, he insisted that human behavior was shaped entirely by
environmental forces”,199 Mill was convinced that moral, not biological,
conditions made the Hindus, physically and morally, “the most enslaved
portion of the human race”.

III Conclusion
Historical writing was quite important for James Mill. If history was indeed
a school of politics, then a critical history made for a critical citizen and
politician. But there was a limiting factor to history being such a school:
people naturally try to fit new data to old conceptions. Eighteenth-century
historians, philosophers, philosophical historians, and historians of
philosophy thus identified a type of (to put it in contemporary psychological
garb) “confirmation bias”—the tendency to favor confirming evidence, and
discount or trivialize disconfirming evidence, when a hypothesis is
tested.200 As Mill put it in 1830: “Men judge of an object by the things in it
to which they direct their attention. A strong bias of the mind directs the
attention to that part of the circumstances to which, the bias inclines; and
upon that part exclusively the opinions of ordinary men are formed”.201 It
formed part of the task of the historian to develop resistances to this bias.
Mill’s methodological solution was twofold; first, gather as much data as
possible from as many sources possible; second, present all of them, or
most of them, so that the reader may be able to assess whether the
conclusion reached is warranted.202
Much of Mill’s twentieth- and twenty-first-century reception seems to
suffer from a sort of confirmation bias too. In Section I, I tried to show how
Mill’s History drew from a number of historiographical traditions—
rhetorical, historical and philosophical—not just conjectural or theoretical
history. I do not claim that Mill was a “model historian”, notwithstanding
feats of industriousness, attention to detail (at least, as regards views he
wished to discredit), and comprehensiveness. However, he did try to satisfy
standards of excellence widely accepted at the time, even though these soon
became obsolete—the paradigm shift was taking place as Frederick
Denison Maurice was reviewing Mill’s life’s work. In Section II, I turned to
a similar task and suggested that Mill’s utilitarian views did not begin and
end with Bentham. What we today identify as Benthamite utilitarianism
was not perceived in that light when Mill first published his History, though
eventually it was to. Mill’s background allowed him to use examples, ideas
and images from authoritative texts, classical and modern, to make a point
true to utilitarian principles, while at the same time being inspired by those
sources—Plato and Cicero as well as Hutcheson and Millar. Finally, we saw
that Mill never denied that experience was indispensable to the skilled
administrator. Understanding the physical and moral conditions which
influenced Hindu character was quite important in the process of the British
establishing institutions and enacting government policies that would
actually help the Indian people.203
Chapter 1 showed how Mill’s History was re-read along Benthamite lines
just before the 1830s. Since the 1950s, the History has been read as torn
between two traditions—for most, rehashing the old argument, Bentham
won over Millar. In this chapter, I have argued for a more complex picture
than that. A similarly complex picture as regards his political essays comes
to the surface when we look past Mill’s deductive method. But first we
must answer why he chose to use that method—Chapter 4 takes up this
task.

Notes
1 Bain, 1882: 177.
2 Bentham, Book of Fallacies (1824), in Bentham, II.401.
3 Poovey, 2004: 186, 188. Poovey cites Thomas Babington Macaulay’s 1829 review of Mill’s
“Government” to argue that Macaulay disagreed with Mill’s deductive method as defined in
Mill’s “Preface” in History.
4 Chen, 2000: 300.
 5 Winch, 1966: 390.
6 Stokes, 1959: vii, 66. For Stokes, Mill, in his essay on government, “had set out a chain of
deductive reasoning from ‘the principles of human nature’ which was intended to be a
summary exposition of the whole Utilitarian doctrine”. See infra Chapter 6 for a rebuttal.
7 Burns, 1976: 18 (History: II.144).
8 Stephen, 1900: II.23–4. See also Halévy, 1904: 271.
9 Gooch, 1913: 306.
10 Forbes, 1951/1952: 28, 20; Halévy, 1904: 302.
11 Forbes, 1951/1952: 23. See also, Stokes, 1959: 57. For a critique of Forbes, see McInerney,
2002: 131ff.
12 Bentham: X.450.
13 Winch, 1966: 388.
14 Majeed, 1992: chs. 4 and 5. According to Chen (2000: 9), Mill’s “rhetoric of reform”, was the
reason for Edward Said’s (1978) “preference” of Mill over William Jones.
15 Burrow, 1966: 45.
16 Rendall, 1982: 43.
17 Pitts, 2005: 127.
18 Knowles, 2011: 55–7. See also, Mazlish, 1975: 118; Thomas, 1979:109; Majeed, 1992: 211.
19 J. Mill to A. Walker, 5 Oct. 1819, NSL MS 13724 f. 132v. For a transcription, see Chen, 2000:
315ff.
20 J.S. Mill, “Letter to the Editor of the Edinburgh Review, on James Mill” (1844), CW: I.536;
J.S. Mill to M. Napier, 14 Oct. 1843, CW: XIII.598.
21 Chen, 2000 and McInerney, 2002.
22 Carnall, 1997: 221 cited at McInerney, 2002: 9. Mill’s debts to Robertson are indirectly
summarized by Mill himself in Mill, 1804b:707–11.
23 Burns, 1976: 19; J.S. Mill, “Auguste Comte and Positivism” (1865), CW: X.320.
24 See Emerson, 1984. See also, Allan, 1993: 151ff.
25 “Life and Writings of Adam Smith” (1793), in Stewart: X.33–7.
26 Emerson, 1984: 69.
27 Robertson, 1791: 362 cited in McInerney, 2002: 56.
28 Emerson, 1984: 70.
29 Without a stabilizing and moderating group of citizens—the Guardians—expansion of
economic relations did not necessarily mean improvement in Socrates’s tale of two cities.
30 Emerson, 1984: 71–2.
31 History: II.135–6 and 181. See also, History: V.537.
32 J. Mill to M. Napier, 30 Apr. 1818, in Napier, 1879: 19.
33 Emerson, 1984: 74.
34 History: II.139n.
35 J.S. Mill to A. Comte, 28 Jan. 1843, CW: XIII.566.
36 J. Mill to D. Ricardo, 6 Oct. 1816, in Ricardo: VII.76–7.
37 J.S. Mill, Autobiography, CW: I.29.
38 History: I.xxviii.
39 Contra Mazlish, 1975: 117.
40 J. Mill to A. Walker, 5 Oct. 1819, NSL MS 13724 f. 132v.
41 History: I.x.
42 Mill had made a similar concession to Napier, a year and a half earlier. Responding to Napier’s
criticism concerning his treatment of John Playfair’s Remarks on the Astronomy of Brahmins
(1790), Mill again admitted in being too severe in the manner of stating his case, but for good
 reason: ‘[…] as I had not only an opinion of his to controvert, but was also under the necessity
of guarding my readers against what I knew was great—the weight of his authority—and as I
am but too apt, in my eagerness to give the matter of my reasons, to think too little of the
language in which they are clothed, I am not insensible to my peccability in this respect’ (J.
Mill to M. Napier, 30 Apr. 1818, in Napier, 1879: 18–19). Once again, Mill asked for advice on
how to better express himself in the prospect of a future edition. Once again, if the advice was
offered, Mill did not take it.
43 History: I.138.
44 McInerney, 2002: 88.
45 Minutes of Evidence taken before the Select Committee on the Affairs of the East India
Company (House of Commons, 1831b): 397.
46 History: I.x. For the terms, see J. Mill to A. Walker, 5 Oct. 1819, NSL MS 13724 f. 132r.
47 Allan, 1993: 65.
48 ibid., 150.
49 Robertson, 1759: iii–viii; 1769: ix–xv; 1777: v–xvii.
50 Millar, 1771: iii.
51 Tytler, 1782: 2.
52 Hume, 1748: 60.
53 Mill, 1803f: 374. Translation is Yonge’s (Cicero, 1872).
54 See H. Blair, 1789: III.47ff.
55 ibid., III.71.
56 ibid., III.39.
57 History: II.135.
58 Winch, 1966: 389.
59 Forbes, 1951/1952: 24. Cf. McInerney, 2002: 132.
60 Haydn, 2006: 205.
61 Winch, 1966: 290. Forbes pointed to Thomas Babington Macaulay’s “Minute of Education”
(1835) to show how Mill’s philosophy, “expressed in ‘Macaulayese’”, resonated well with the
Anglicist position on Hindu society against the “Romantic attitude of sympathetic
understanding” (Forbes, 1951/1952: 23–4).
62 J. Mill to A. Walker, 6 Nov. 1819, NSL MS 13724 f. 178r.
63 I owe the Encyclopédie insight to Richter, 2006.
64 H. Blair, 1789: I.387ff.
65 History: I.325. One may tune in to the History Channel and observe advocates of the “Ancient
Astronaut Theory” explain how Hindu sacred texts actually preserved, in imagery the
“primitive” humans could understand, a battle between technologically advanced alien races.
66 CPB: II.38v quoting Stern, 1795: II.179. Mill had also called this preconception “self-
deception” (CPB: III.112v).
67 Mill made use of this maxim in his Encyclopaedia Britannica essay “Education” (1819b).
68 See e.g., History: I.138n, 142, 145, 145n1, 309, 325; II.120, 121, 131, 138, 144.
69 Mill, 1813b: 94.
70 ibid., 101–2 (translation is Freese’s [Cicero, 1930]). The Cicero quote appears in two separate
sections in Mill’s CPB: II.57v (extended) and V.55r.
71 Excluding Herder, Mill’s CPB and History cite a number of works by these writers.
72 The idea that a gathering of people—a society, a city—shares a common character was quite
old: Plato’s Republic (549a) spoke of a πολιτείας ἦθος and Isocrates’s Ad Nicoclem (2.31) of a
πόλεως ἦθος. Nor was the comparative purpose of pointing to “national character” new—
 everyone who took classics at school has read Pericles’s exaltation of the character of
Athenians in Funeral Oration, comparing it with that of Spartans.
73 Richter, 2006: 150–1.
74 Ferguson, 1797 (section III); Mill, 1803d: 108.
75 Ferguson, 1797 (“General Definition” and Section III).
76 For the phrase, and a brief discussion of it, see O’Brien, 1997:177–8.
77 Gibbon (c1765–1770), “Mémoire sur la Monarchie des Mèdes”, in Sheffield, 1814: III.128–9.
See also, History: I.iv (note 2), xviii (note 1).
78 O’Brien, 1997: 178.
79 Longo, 2011: 478.
80 Casini, 1962: 259n95 cited in Catana, 2005: 73n3. For the argument advanced in this chapter, it
does not really matter whether in the 1809 review Mill had simply explicitly referred to
sources implicitly used earlier or if he had found independent corroboration to views already
held.
81 Enfield, 1791: I.6.
82 Longo, 2011: 487.
83 ibid., 478.
84 Enfield, 1791: I.5.
85 O’Brien, 1997: 178–9.
86 Aristotle, Poetics 1451b5. Translation is Heath’s (Aristotle, 1996). In late-eighteenth-century
translations, “σπουδαιότερον” (translated “serious” by Heath) was rendered as “more
instructive” (Pye, 1792: 25) or “more excellent” (Twining, 1815: 78).
87 Moore, 1759: 138.
88 See further Powell, 1987; Carli, 2010.
89 Hill, 1775: 189–90.
90 Regan, 2014: 73.
91 History: II.44–5, 70.
92 See Loizides, 2016.
93 Mill, 1806e: 391–2.
94 Regan, 2014: 76.
95 H. Blair, 1789: I.132.
96 On barbarian philosophy see, Brucker, 1742–1744: I.46–363; on Greek philosophy, ibid.
I.364–1357. In the section devoted to Barbarian philosophy, Brucker discussed philosophy in
four geographic areas: the East (Hebrews, Chaldeans, Persians, Indians, Arabs, and
Phoenicians), the South (Egyptians and Ethiopians), the West (Gauls, Britons, Germans,
Ancient Romans), and the North (Scythians, Thracians and Getae).
97 History: I.317n2; Brucker, 1742–1744: I.102–42 (bk II, ch. 2).
98 Longo, 2011: 520–21.
99 Brucker, 1742–1744: I.21. Translation is Longo’s (2011: 490).
100 Brucker, 1742–1744: I.7, 21. Translation is Longo’s (2011: 485–6, 490).
101 See, e.g., Sellers, 2009.
102 J. Bentham to Rammohun Roy, c. early 1828, Bentham: X.590.
103 Knowles, 2011: 42 on History: II.134.
104 See, e.g., History: I.237n1 and V.54n1, 99n1, 515n1.
105 Mill, 1835a: 123–4.
106 CPB: III.94r. The translation is Gummere’s (Seneca, 1917).
107 History: II.134.
108 History: II.44.
109 See, e.g., History: I.250, I.347, I.385. For a discussion of the classical underpinnings of Mill’s
conception of happiness, see Loizides, 2019a.
110 History: II.167.
111 History: I.193, 383–4, 385.
112 ibid., I.188, 212.
113 History: II.206; Smith, History of Astronomy in Wightman and Bryce, 1980: 51.
114 History: II.185n5. Like in Smith’s case, Mill took Wilks’s statement out of context, since Wilks
did seem to romanticize savage life as being except from the “querulous spirit” of the moderns.
See Wilks, 1810–1817: I.2–3
115 History: I.217.
116 Mill, 1813a: 462; History: V.126.
117 History: I.201, 385.
118 Nadel, 1964: 292.
119 The influence of Lucretius and the epicurean tradition more generally in seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century Britain is well-established in Rosen, 2003b.
120 In 1809, Mill had the bitter experience of the Edinburgh Review editors’ negative reception of
Bentham, which resulted in the removal of laudatory references of Bentham’s work in an
article by Mill (Mill, 1809f. See J. Mill to J. Bentham, 31 Oct. 1809, in Bentham: X.452).
121 CPB: V.49r; V.83; V.107; I.52r. The relevant discussions are in Plato, Protagoras 351b-9b and
Meno 88a-d.
122 Republic 426d-e (note in Mill’s copy of Bekker, 1826: VI.467), 601d-3a, 604d (notes in
Bekker, 1826: VII.195ff).
123 Plato, Republic 351c-d and 462b at CPB: I.165r and I.166v.
124 CPB: V.49r, V.107, I.52r on Protagoras 351b-9b, Meno 88a-d and Republic 420b. See also
Mill’s notes on Republic 416a at CPB: I.166r (Bekker, 1826: VI.449); 462a-e at I.166v
(Bekker, 1826: VI.527–8); and 412c-d in Bekker, 1826: VI.443.
125 Kerferd, 1981: 142
126 Guthrie, 1971: 66, 68. See also, Burnet, 1932: 117.
127 Jones, 2000: 29.
128 For the “Great Speech” see Protagoras, 320c–322c.
129 Iamblichus’s Exhortation as well as Life of Pythagoras was cited in various editions of ancient
Greek texts such as by Plato and Aristotle. Even though Mill did seem to be familiar with
works by Neo-Platonists in his two reviews of Taylor’s Plato, there is no evidence that he read
these two works. However, Iamblichus’s On the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans and
Assyrians was an important source in Brucker’s treatment of “barbarian” philosophy (which
informed Mill’s History). This book is held in John Stuart Mill’s library, as preserved at
Somerville College, Oxford.
130 Patricia O’Grady traces the intellectual path of the ideas found in the text from Protagoras to
Democritus, Plato, and Panaetius (on whom Cicero’s On Duties relies) to Iamblichus. O’Grady
pointed to commonalities with Cicero’s On Duties II.52 and III.17, though I.62 may be even
closer. See further, O’Grady and Silvermintz, 2008.
131 DK89.1A7 (Sprague, 2001: 276–8).
132 The Anonymous was responding to Callicles’s claims in Plato’s Gorgias, a dialogue which
both Mills translated—the elder, a section (CPB: V.4r–6r), the younger abridged the whole
(CW: XI.97–150). The younger Mill also translated Protagoras (CW: XI.39–61)
133 History: I.148n citing Plato, Laws 677a.
134 See Mill, 1806c. Mill’s Commonplace Books contain only one direct reference to Lucretius
(CPB: III.178v).
135 Lucretius, On the Nature of Things 5.925–1160.
136 ibid., 5.1019–20. Translation is Smith’s (Lucretius, 2001).
137 ibid., 1141–51. Translation is Smith’s (Lucrecius, 2001).
138 Mill, 1806c: 74.
139 Mill marked this comment in his copy of the 1642 edition of Cicero’s works (Cicero, 1642).
140 CPB: I.168v and V.152v. Translation is Zetzel’s (Cicero, 1999).
141 CPB: I.208r. Translation is Williams’s (Cicero, 1960).
142 CPB: I.161v and I.29r.
143 CPB: II.22v. Translation is Zetzel’s (Cicero, 1999).
144 Translation is Zetzel’s (Cicero, 1999).
145 J.S. Mill, Utilitarianism (1861), CW: X.205.
146 On punishment, see CPB: I.139r; 146v; on political education, see CPB: V.62r, V.123r.
147 Mill, 1835a: 279–91.
148 See Ball (1980 and 1995: ch. 8); History: I.383–99; Mill (1820).
149 Ball, 1980: 95.
150 J.S. Mill, Autobiography, CW: I.107. Ball (1980) questions whether Bentham was less
ambivalent in his published works than James Mill as regards female suffrage.
151 Bentham, 1817: xciv–xcv.
152 Bentham, Constitutional Code (1827–1830), in Bentham: IX.108.
153 See e.g., History: I.175–6, I.192–3, I.283–4, II.1–2, II.44–5.
154 ibid., I.385.
155 ibid., I.397–8.
156 J. Mill to A. Walker, 6 Nov. 1819, NSL MS 13724 f. 177v. As part of Mill’s discussion
appeared in an anthology (Campbell, 1824) and was noticed in the Yellow Dwarf (no. 9, 28
Feb. 1818), some did think Mill’s chapter offered insights that general readers might find
interesting.
157 Bentham, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789) in Bentham: I.125n.
158 Bentham, Influence of Time and Place in Matters of Legislation, in Bentham: I.179.
159 History: I.397.
160 ibid., I.383n2.
161 Millar, 1771: 22.
162 Mill, 1809e: 428.
163 History: I.383–4. Chen (2000: 205) finds Mill closer to Alexander (1783) than Millar; but
Mill’s History contains no mention of the former (neither do his CPB).
164 History: I.385. Mill used “co-partners” in the first edition.
165 Millar, 1771: 1–4; History: I.383–4.
166 History: I.385.
167 Millar, 1771: 4.
168 J.S. Mill, “Diary”, 26 Mar. 1854, CW: XXVII.664. See Johnson, 1989: 65–7 for a discussion as
regards the influence of the father’s History on the son’s Subjection of Women (1869).
169 CPB: IV.3r–8r.
170 Hutcheson, 1755: I.29. “Brutes” was not a synonym of “savages”; it is more akin to animals or
animal instinct. Interestingly, Mill took a number of notes on his copy of Hutcheson’s book,
now at Somerville College, criticizing Hutcheson in not understanding as well as Locke the
doctrine of the association of ideas.
171 Note on Hutcheson, 1755: I.38.
172 History: II.433–4.
173 CPB: I. 98r quoting Seneca, Epistles (83.2). For an extended discussion on the utility of history
writing in light of Mill’s epistemological views, see McInerney, 2002.
174 Poovey, 2004: 186, 188.
175 CPB: II.36v. In his editorial note on this passage, Robert Fenn points out “text much altered by
Mill”. However, Fenn’s note is misleading. Even though Mill altered the text “history may
make us wiser and more useful citizens” and pasted it to the remainder, he did preserve
Bolingbroke’s meaning (see Bolingbroke, 1752: 47–8).
176 Bolingbroke, 1752: 53.
177 Nadel, 1964: 292–304.
178 Bolingbroke, 1752: 49.
179 History: I.390n.
180 History: I.vi, II.135–6, 139n1, 181.
181 McInerny, 2002: part 1.
182 History: I.147.
183 ibid., I.143–4, 143n1; II.45, 60, 63, 460.
184 Tytler, 1782: 2–3.
185 History: II.431–4.
186 As John Stuart Mill put it: “The greater part of the world has, properly speaking, no history,
because the despotism of Custom is complete. This is the case over the whole East. Custom is
there, in all things, the final appeal: justice and right mean conformity to custom” (On Liberty,
CW: XVIII.272).
187 History: II.431.
188 Mill, 1813b: 18–21; 1835d: 273, 287; CPB: I.20r.
189 Chen, 2000 and Thomas, 1975 argue that Mill’s religious background gave a rigid moral
outlook to his views on civilization. However, Plassart (2017) has recently argued for a more
nuanced understanding of the relationship between moral progress, religion and society on the
part of Mill.
190 Mill’s excuse to Walker as regards the use of strong language simply does not do; his revisions
on the passages of his criticisms ranged from minimal to none at all.
191 Kopf, 1991: 26 (cited in Chen, 2000: 9–10).
192 History: II.453.
193 History: V.490.
194 Mill, 1816g: 266. For a similar point, see Mill, 1816h: 307–8. Contra Winch, 1966: 202.
195 History: III.147ff.
196 Anon., 1829: 528–9.
197 Mill, 1805a: 1174–8.
198 Mill, 1816d: 81–2, 84.
199 Koditschek, 2011: 83–4.
200 Klayman, 1995.
201 Mill, 1830: 25.
202 That was why Horace Wilson could edit and publish Mill’s History, and not write a completely
new work, correcting anything he thought Mill distorted, missed, or failed to see.
203 For example, Mill came closer to William Jones than Charles Grant, when he claimed that
education and justice should be administered in the vernacular languages. See Majeed, 1992:
140–1; Stokes, 1959: 57–8.
4 Induction and deduction1

In his biography of James Mill, Alexander Bain made a number of claims

with regard to Mill’s “Government”: first, that the essay was a catalyst in
the movement for reform, making “in all probability […] our political
history very different from what it might otherwise have been”. Second,
that the essay provided a unique opportunity for Mill to expound on “the
whole theory of Government in a compact shape”. Third, that Mill
depended on the deductive method—the method of geometry—having
quickly discarded the applicability of inductive logic in politics.2 As long as
such rendering of Mill’s method remains unchallenged, the result is an
inability to see anything beyond his fits of demonstration. Hence, in this
chapter, I take issue with Bain’s last claim, that is, the claim regarding
Mill’s deductive “Logic of Politics”.3
Thomas Babington Macaulay’s reading of Mill’s “Government” has been
quite influential. Even though it was not original in its claims, as we saw in
Chapter 1, it has set the terms of the examination of Mill’s famous essay—
commentators, as William Thomas has put it, have been reading “their Mill
in Macaulay’s critique rather than the original”.4 Macaulay, championing
the “Method of Induction”, did not seem to deny the possibility of a science
of politics, but he did seem to deny the possibility of it being established
with Mill’s method.5 In his “master-piece of demonstration”—the irony was
unmistakable—not only had Mill “synthetically deduced” the “whole
science of Politics” from few laws of human nature, but also, these laws
lacked sufficient inductive foundation—“an enlarged collection of facts”—
Macaulay argued.6 Macaulay thus managed to shift the attention from
Mill’s specific political argument to the suitableness of the deductive, a
priori method to the study of politics in general.
John Stuart Mill, Alexander Bain, and Henry Sidgwick took for granted
that James Mill employed the deductive method. According to Bain, John
Stuart Mill pinpointed a serious methodological error on the part of his
father: in political analysis “no trustworthy conclusions can be drawn
without at least a concurrence” of the deductive and the inductive method.
Hence, John Stuart Mill came to consider his father’s method in
“Government” to be wholly inappropriate—being deficient both in the
discovery of causes of phenomena and in inductive justification of its
claims. In short, James Mill’s essay on government, according to his son,
employed a deductive method modeled after “pure geometry”—it was
“purely ratiocinative”. To this effect, John Mill argued, “not being a science
of causation at all”, the method of geometry did “not require or admit of
any summing-up of effects”. For this reason, the younger Mill argued that
the geometrical method of the “interest-philosophy of the Bentham school”
had to give way to an analytical, inductive and “historical”—i.e., “inverse
deductive”—method in the study of complex political phenomena.7
As we saw in Chapter 1, Mill’s readers recognized that he tried to disarm
the critics of reform with the use of demonstration, despite Mill’s attempts
to hide that “Government” was an essay on parliamentary reform.8 Later
commentators have agreed that Mill was “deliberatively or tactically
ambiguous” with his aims in the said essay, even though some do doubt his
radical credentials.9 How could Mill demonstrate the science of politics and
remain tactically ambiguous? Likewise, how could John Stuart Mill wonder
about his father making such “large allowance in practice for considerations
which seemed to have no place in his theory”,10 especially when the
younger Mill himself pointed out that this essay constituted an outline to be
filled, as we saw. These inconsistent views on James Mill’s essay on
government call for a reconsideration of his method. In this chapter, I
explore Mill’s background in logic and in rhetoric, paying particular
attention to his Scottish and classical background to argue that the charges
against his use of demonstration may have been ultimately beside the point.
In Section I, I challenge the claim that the deductive cast of many of his
essays and most of his arguments was due to a “distrust” on Mill’s part
towards induction tout court. I argue that Mill thought induction to be an
essential part of any theory. First, I show that he perceived the distinction
between theory and experience as a false dichotomy—theory needed to be
based on experience and experience to be informed by theory. Then, I
distinguish between scientific induction and empirical induction; I argue
that Mill did not deviate from established practice in rejecting the latter type
of induction. For this reason, I turn to Mill’s views on proper philosophical
method through the distinction between the “Philosopher” and the
“Empiric” as regards political analysis. I suggest that Mill was familiar with
and actually employed the method of Analysis and Synthesis, in his
manuscript writings on government. But then a question presents itself: why
were many of Mill’s Encyclopaedia Britannica essays devoid of
“Analysis”?
To answer this question, in Section II I discuss “Synthesis” as the method
both of instruction and of persuasion. I argue that Mill’s background in
rhetoric offers an opening in revisiting his use of the deductive method.
First, I try to show that Mill associated empirical induction with the use of
induction in rhetorical arguments; he thus thought rhetorical induction to be
a poor choice as a “scheme of persuasion”. After showing that Mill once
again followed established practice by using Synthesis as the method of
instruction, I argue that coming from the perspective of rhetoric allows us to
differentiate between apodictic syllogism (demonstration) and rhetorical
syllogism (enthymeme). I do not doubt that Mill did indeed employ
demonstration, but I try to show that it was rhetorical demonstration; the
missing “proofs” and implicit warrants of Mill’s conclusions were already
accounted for in the views of his intended audience. The use of
enthymematic reasoning in “Government”, and other essays, suggests that
Mill counted on a communicative interaction with his audience rather than
discounted it beforehand—though this is a question for subsequent
chapters.

I The method of philosophy: analysis and

synthesis
William Thomas has argued that James Mill held to deductively derived
political views “with a tenacity which avoided and abbreviated empirical
enquiry”. The elder Mill’s cast of mind, Thomas added, “led him to trust to
rules and principles and not to empirical evidence”, consistently preferring
“the schematic and dogmatic to the empirical and inductive”.11 Others have
concurred, arguing to the effect that Mill’s “rationalism” operated “separate
to lived experience”.12 Similarly, focusing on the section on “Speculation &
Practice” from Mill’s Commonplace Books, Kris Grint has recently argued
that “the inductive approach […] was anathema to Mill”. Examining Mill’s
intellectual and political context, Grint suggests that Mill’s views on
induction may have represented a break from Scottish Enlightenment
practice, though he concedes that no conclusion can be drawn safely.13
However, as I try to show, care should be taken in distinguishing between
scientific and empirical induction. Mill criticized the latter, not the former.
And this takes him closer to, rather than farther away from, his Scottish
Enlightenment heritage.

Speculation vs. practice: a false dichotomy

The “old quarrel”14 between knowledge geared for theory and knowledge
geared for practice goes back to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Briefly,
Aristotle argued that in dealing with formed opinions (EN 1140b27),
practical wisdom is not “concerned with universals only—it must also
recognize the particulars” since “practice is concerned with particulars. This
is why some who do not know, and especially those who have experience,
are more practical than others who know” (EN 1141b8–19). In his
Metaphysics, Aristotle drove this last point home, arguing that “with a view
to action, experience seems in no respect inferior to art, and men of
experience succeed even better than those who have theory without
experience” (M 981a12–14).15 As Stephen Toulmin puts the point today,
“practitioners do not see how […] theories increase our confidence in
untying the knots in which our lives enmesh us”.16
In 1805, Mill had argued that a theory can either be founded on
hypothesis or induction; the former, “not drawn from experiment and
observation”, could not “bear an exact and enlightened analysis”.17 In one
of his very first articles, Mill echoed Aristotle, that in certain subjects—
such as banking—
There is a number of circumstances too which cannot be sufficiently known to the mere
philosopher, which may limit, and sometimes even overthrow his general conclusions, and
 which the man who is thoroughly acquainted with them from practical intercourse, is alone
perfectly fitted to explain.

Each, that is the philosopher and the man of practice, has their advantages,
Mill admitted. What was really required was to combine the qualifications,
unite the labours, of both in striving after perfection in the treatment of any
subject.18 Similarly, in 1806, Mill turned against those who vilified
“speculation”; I quote a sample of a thesis reiterated time and time again:
Every general conclusion that can be formed […] is a speculation or the result of a
speculation; and every conclusion respecting contingent objects must be founded upon
experience. The question therefore can never be between speculation, and no speculation; but
only between one speculation and another; between a good speculation and a bad one. The
man who draws the most limited conclusions is just as complete a speculator as the man who
draws the most extensive. The peasant sees an apple fall from a tree, and speculates that a
pear will fall in like manner. Sir Isaac Newton, from seeing an apple fall, speculated to the
whole extent of the planetary system. But Sir Isaac Newton’s conclusions were just as much
experimental as those of the peasant; and those of the peasant as much speculative as those of
Sir Isaac Newton.

Mill went on to distinguish between “matter-of-fact men”, those “who draw

hasty conclusions from a few familiar facts”, and “comprehensive
inquirers”, those “who stretch their views to the greatest possible number of
facts, and who forbear to draw their conclusions till they are sure they
comprehend in them every thing which belongs to the subject”. For Mill,
“[w]hile these grand comprehensive inquirers are reviled by the pigmies of
the former description as speculators, they themselves, forsooth, are the
only men of experience!”19
The proper meaning of “theory” was “viewing or observing, and
correctly recording the matters observed”—either in the attempt to account
for a natural phenomenon or to guide conduct.20 According to Mill, theory
referred to “the right ordering of the instances of the past” (i.e., the results
of experience) and the subtraction of “just inferences” from history for “the
guidance of the future”. Unguided by theory, practice generalized individual
cases with a “rude glance”, a rash or even accidental “inference from one
particular case for the guidance of another”. Such practice was “[r]andom
imitation”, “empiricism”, “mere mechanism; and had as well be done by
inanimate matter”.21 As he put the point in 1819, “the great task of the
philosopher” is “theorizing the whole”:
 What we mean by “theorizing the whole” […] is, to observe exactly the facts; to make a
perfect collection of them, nothing omitted that is of any importance, nothing included of
none; and to record them in that order and form, in which all that is best to be done in practice
(that is, in what manner the sequences established in nature may be turned most effectually to
the production of a certain end) can be most immediately and certainly perceived.22

Theory systematized experience in such a way as to lead to good practical

rules. According to Mill, since general principles were based on experience,
“[t]o recommend the separation of practice from theory is, therefore,
simply, to recommend bad practice”.23 The younger Mill remembered with
regret how unreasonable his father was in being angry with him around
1819 for failing to give a correct definition of “theory”.24 At this time,
James Mill identified the word “theorist” as one of those “words and
phrases, which have been used to screen misrule, in every country in which
the voice of reform has begun to be raised”.25
What is most important, Mill was referring to a well-known distinction
drawn by Dugald Stewart, whose influence, as we saw, Mill acknowledged
explicitly. Reviewing the recently published second volume of Stewart’s
Elements of the Philosophy of Human Mind (1792–1827) in 1815, Mill
claimed that his former teacher had instructively—and originally—
illustrated “the purposes to which the powers of abstraction and
generalization are subservient”, as well as “the errors to which we are liable
in speculation and the conduct of affairs, in consequence of a rash
application of general principles”.26 In said volume, Stewart had drawn
attention to “two sets of political reasoners:” the first “consider the actual
institutions of mankind as the only safe foundation for our conclusions, and
think every plan of legislation chimerical, which is not copied from one
which has already been realized”. In contrast, the second “apprehend that,
in many cases, we may reason safely a priori from the known principles of
human nature combined with the particular circumstances of the times”.
Stewart went on to argue that, though the latter “are accused of trusting to
theory unsupported by experience, […] it ought to be remembered, that the
political theorist, if he proceeds cautiously and philosophically, founds his
conclusions ultimately on experience, no less than the political empiric”.27

Scientific and unscientific induction

According to James Mill, the “theoretical man” and “the practical man”
differ only in that “the theoretical man generalizes slowly and cautiously;
the practical man rashly”, that is, the former “draws his general rules from a
full induction of particular cases”, whereas the latter “generalizes his own
individual case, and makes it a rule for all others”.28 Thus, the difference
between “philosophy” and “empiricism”, Mill argued, was well represented
by Bacon who warned against the danger of the “mind’s premature and
precipitate haste, and its leaping or flying to general statements and the
principles of things”.29 Mill had isolated a passage in his copy of one of
John Milton’s logical treatises—drawing on Aristotle’s Metaphysics—
arguing that the senses, observation, induction, and experience all play their
part in reaching the general rules of technai. “Experience” could very well
provide a test for the general rules drawn from an induction from
particulars.30
The issue was thus not whether induction had any part to play in the
formation of rules. Rather it was concerned with sufficient inductive
foundation for universals, either general rules of action or laws of human
nature. Writing in 1816, Mill refrained from drawing on “general
principles” for a subject which had not yet had the benefit of extensive
experience (i.e., on the disposition of unmarried individuals or those with
small families to accumulate wealth)—when “general principles afford us
no means” of accurate foreseeing, “[w]e must wait for experience to
determine”.31 In 1818, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica essay on colonies,
Mill stated explicitly that history provides the “experimental proof” of
general propositions: “the more profoundly he [i.e., Mill’s reader] is read in
history, the more thoroughly will be convinced of the universality of the
fact”.32 In earlier writings, Mill praised writers who inductively traced
causes and used the laws established to “throw no little light upon the
nature of human society”.33 Likewise, on a number of occasions Mill noted
in his History of British India (1817) that he was attempting to reach a
general conclusion after having surveyed a number of instances, i.e.,
drawing on an “induction of particulars”—“[f]rom insulated expressions, or
facts”, Mill noted, “no general conclusion can safely be drawn”.34 Mill even
accused Edmund Burke of habitually drawing “a general rule from the
induction of a small and insufficient number of particulars”.35 On one hand
this habit exhibited by Burke brought to the surface a rather “curious law of
human nature”. On the other hand, as we shall see later on, Burke’s report
on the trial of Warren Hastings highlighted the use of inductive reasoning in
attempts to influence public affairs (in Burke’s case, through a criticism of
legislation). Both seem to provide insights into Mill’s “distrust” of
induction.
In his review of Stewart’s Elements, Mill pointed to the great need in
logic for “an accurate map of the inductive process” and “a complete
system of rules, as complete, for example, as those which Aristotle
provided for the business of syllogistic reasoning”. Such a “map” would
direct “the inquirer in the great business of interpreting nature, […] adding
to the stock of human instruments and powers”.36 There was an urgent need
for such a “map”, especially when the “highest abstractions are not the last
result of mental culture”, but
some of our most general and comprehensive notions are formed at that very early period,
when the mind, with little discriminating power, is apt to lump together things which have but
few points of resemblance; and that we break down these genera into species more and more
minute in proportion as our knowledge becomes more extensive, more particular, and
precise.37

James Finlayson, Mill’s professor of Logic at Edinburgh, had warned his

students about the mistake in thinking that “the Mind proceeds slowly and
very gradually in Abstraction”. Not only does the mind fix itself “on the
Similitude which Objects bear to one another, rather than the Diversity”,
Finlayson noted, “the Mind performs these operations very quick[ly]”.38
Induction per enumerationem simplicem was not without problems. In
1804, Mill via Bacon argued that half of “popular errors” were due to
fallacious argument from experience.39 Mill also took a note of the relevant
text in his copy of Bacon’s Novum Organum:
For the induction which proceeds by simple enumeration is a childish thing, its conclusions
are precarious, and it is exposed to the danger of the contrary instance; it normally bases its
judgement on fewer instances than is appropriate, and merely on available instances. But the
induction which will be useful for the discovery and proof of sciences and arts should
separate out a nature, by appropriate rejections and exclusions; and then, after as many
negatives as are required, conclude on the affirmatives. This has not yet been done, nor even
certainly tried except only by Plato, who certainly makes use of this form of induction to
some extent in settling on definitions and ideas.40
Mill alluded to this passage in an 1804 defense of the method of “Newton,
Bacon, and all their followers” against Thomas Taylor’s remarks in his
edition of Plato’s works.41
Those who practice “philosophic induction”, Mill scribbled down in his
Commonplace Books, go through particulars “with a mind that pervades;
that separates, and combines; that goes beyond, in short, to something more
extensive and noble”; only then is there “sufficient evidence of a law”.42
The proper distinction was thus not between theory and experience, but
between philosophical induction and empirical induction. In a section on
fallacies in his Commonplace Books, Mill referred to Stewart’s distinction
between philosophical criticism and experimental criticism, criticism based
on “induction, properly so called” and criticism based on “statements of an
empirical and unenlightened experience” (i.e., “accumulation of parallel
passages and of critical authorities”), to add to his stock of arguments
against the opponents of “theory”.43 For Stewart, the “principles which we
obtain from an examination of the human constitution, and […] the general
laws which regulate the course of human affairs”, offer a “much surer
foundation” for political reasoning, as these principles are “the result of a
much more extensive induction than any of the inferences that can be drawn
from the history of actual establishments”.44

Political theory and the method of analysis and synthesis

In his private notes on fallacies, Mill contrasted Stewart’s two sets of
political reasoners, the “Philosopher” and the “Empiric”, as regards their
treatment of the machinery of government. According to Mill, “when they
[i.e., the practitioners] tell us we have experience of the machine in the
lump, we tell them that this is a gross, and ignorant experience, which
yields no salutary guidance; no clear ideas; no lamp to the steps”. Mill
argued that the Philosopher’s experience, in contrast to the Empiric’s,
“accompanies analysis; to the very termination of its progress; it is
experience not of the gross lump, in its gross results, but of the elementary
powers of which it is composed, which is the really useful experience—the
experience which affords a masterly direction, which never misleads”. Such
analysis offers a “clear and distinct knowledge”, of the “powers, one by
one, of which the agency of this machine consisted”, of all “the various
combinations, in which they were calculated to act”. This allows the
Philosopher to show that “there were in his machine certain powers which
counteracted the rest; and that if these were taken away, and others put in
their place, the good effects in which […] [the Empiric] now gloried, would
be greatly increased”.45 The philosopher does not apply experience “in the
gross to the gross, in which mode, exactness is impossible”, but “in the
elements to the elements”:
It is not by looking at a steam-engine in the gross, that a man becomes qualified to judge of
the action of other machines. It is by contemplating its action in its elements, taking its parts
one by one, considering first the properties of each, and then the nature of their combinations,
that a man becomes qualified to reason from one machine to another.46

Mill’s imagery of a “machine” is quite relevant; it bridges his ideas on

philosophical method with those on parliamentary reform.
The metaphor of a machine was itself recurrent in methodological
discussions. Both Hobbes and Condillac tried to explain the method of
Analysis and Synthesis with such a metaphor. “[T]he matter, figure, and
motion of the wheels” of a watch or a small engine, Hobbes argued, “cannot
well be known, except it be taken insunder and viewed in parts”.47 For
Condillac, Stewart reported, analysis meant taking the parts of a machine
apart, studying them and then putting them back together.48
According to Hobbes’s Elements of Philosophy (1656), the resolutive–
compositive method is the most suitable method in moral and political
philosophy, by trying to find “out effects by their known causes, or […]
causes by their known effects”. In short, for Hobbes “the best way to
understand a system, process, or event is to resolve it into its components,
analyze these components, and then recompose them via a theory that
explains their interrelationships and interactions”.49 In his notes on
“Speculation & Practice”, Mill quoted Hobbes to the effect that “[t]he
principles of the politics consist in the knowledge of the motions of the
mind”,50 having also clarified that “[a]ll our knowledge of human nature is
experimental”.51 Mill was thought to be the “first person who saw”
Hobbes’s “importance as a political thinker, and had the courage to
proclaim it”.52
 Mill mentioned the method of Analysis and Synthesis in his
Commonplace Books explicitly in reference to Condillac’s “art of
induction”.53 For Condillac, analysis referred to “composing and
decomposing our ideas to create new combinations and to discover, by this
means, their mutual relations and the new ideas they can produce”.54
However, according to Stewart, Condillac’s metaphor had a serious
omission: “there is undoubtedly a sort of mental decomposition of the
machine, in as much as all its parts are successively considered in detail;
but it is not this decomposition which constitutes the analysis. It is the
methodical retrogradation from the mechanical effect to the mechanical
power”.55
Stewart’s Elements examined in detail Analysis and Synthesis in the
chapter on the “Logic of Induction”. As per Stewart’s summary, the first
step of the method of philosophy “is to ascertain the simple and general
laws on which the complicated phenomena of the universe depend”—
Bacon’s Scala Ascensoria. Experiments with artificial circumstances and
observation of natural circumstances uncover natural conjunctions, which
often seem random and irregular. The second step would be, from the
general Laws of Nature, to trace an established order; as Stewart put it,
“[h]aving obtained these laws, we may proceed safely to reason concerning
the effect resulting from any combination of them”, that is, by reasoning
synthetically—Bacon’s Scala Descensoria.56 As Newton put it in Opticks
(1704):
By this way of Analysis we may proceed from Compounds to Ingredients, and from Motions
to the Forces producing them; and in general, from Effects to their Causes, and from
particular Causes to more general ones, till the Argument end in the most general. This is the
Method of Analysis: And the Synthesis consists in assuming the Causes discover’d, and
establish’d as Principles, and by them explaining the Phaenomena proceeding from them, and
proving the Explanations.57

In his review of Stewart’s Elements, Mill argued that utilitarians followed

the methodological course “pointed out by Sir Isaac Newton, as the only
true mode of philosophizing”.58 Twenty years later, Mill argued that
philosophizing is performed “by analysis or synthesis, syllogism or
induction”. Assuming the Causes discover’d, and establish’d as Principles
is to state them “nakedly, without the analysis which leads to them”—
without the evidence for “referring as many of them [i.e., particular
phenomena] as possible to the operation of a single cause”. Reasoning
synthetically from comprehensive principles to particulars, in order to
explain a phenomenon, according to Mill, is “the very business of
philosophy”.59
When Stewart argued that the principles which we obtain from an
examination of the human constitution, and the general laws which regulate
the course of human affairs, provide a much surer foundation for political
reasoning,60 he was drawing on Bacon himself. But his was not an
idiosyncratic reading. George Grote, a close friend and ally of Ricardo,
Bentham and the Mills, argued that, for Bacon, in “Sciences which have
real truth for their object […] the general principles cannot be laid down à
priori, but must be evolved step by step, & by gradually widening our
induction”.61 As regards human action, Bacon recognized the need to
combine experience with reason, “drawing back a perverted doctrine to the
laws of human nature and experience, and restoring its connection and
intimacy with this great paternal roof”.62
James Finlayson seemed to also draw on Bacon in his discussion of
Analysis and Synthesis in his lectures on logic. Finlayson discussed the
Method of Analysis, or of resolution, in the traditional matter: taking a body
as found in nature, “compound and adulterated”, and resolving it in its
component parts. Analysis is also the method of invention; that is, once we
ascertain a particular truth, we ascent to establish a general one. The
Method of Synthesis, or composition, follows the reverse order: tracing a
simple body through all its compositions. It is also the method of teaching,
by descending from general truths to particular ones. Finlayson pointed to
three rules pertaining to both methods: a. the evidence must be present in
every step of the process; b. that we reach conclusions only with clear and
determinate ideas; c. begin with things which are simple and best known
and gradually proceed to obscure and unknown things.63 The Synthetic
method is strictly followed in mathematical sciences; in other sciences,
John Lee noted diligently in Finlayson’s class, “Analysis and Synthesis are
often blended”.64
But there is another, perhaps more obvious source, for James Mill’s use
of the method of Analysis and Synthesis: Plato. In the 1795–1796 session,
James Finlayson followed the lecture on Analysis and Synthesis with a
lecture on the Socratic Method, being “in its form a mixture of the Analytic
and Synthetic methods”.65 Hence, Mill would not think it a break with his
Edinburgh heritage to draw on Plato’s Gorgias to distinguish between
knack, action based on unreflective or unexamined experience, and art,
action based on reason: “the first [is] without knowledge, save the narrow
and confined experience of the particular case; the other [is] founded on the
knowledge of causes and effects”. As the younger Mill put it: “[a]n art
would not be an art, unless it were founded upon a scientific knowledge of
the properties of the subject-matter: without this, it would not be
philosophy, but empiricism; ἐμπειρία, not τέχνη, in Plato’s sense”.66
The currency of ancient Greek thought in nineteenth-century Britain—
which made Athens, Plato and Aristotle especially relevant in
philosophical, educational, social and political debates, as we saw in
Chapter 2—has long been established. Most importantly, James Mill and
John Stuart Mill added to these debates and have been credited, along with
George Grote, with the revival of Platonic studies in the nineteenth century.
The two Mills were “Greece-intoxicated men”, fascinated by Plato’s
thought. However, it ought to be stressed that theirs was an especially
radical reading of Plato, focusing on Plato’s dialectic method.67 As we saw,
for James Mill, Plato attempted to “expose some of the false impressions
which are most apt to prevail in the minds of men, and […] lead to the most
dangerous consequences”.68
According to John Stuart Mill, both himself and his father were
“Platonists”, having “been nourished in, and have endeavoured to practise
Plato’s mode of investigation”. This is important to the argument advanced
here because the younger Mill claimed that Plato’s method was
“unsurpassed as a discipline for correcting the errors, and clearing up the
confusions incident to […] the understanding which has made up all its
bundles of associations under the guidance of popular phraseology”. Given
the admiration of Plato’s method by Bacon, which James Mill had marked
out in his copy of Bacon as we saw, it should not come as a surprise that,
according to John Stuart Mill, Plato aimed to “enforce the absolute
necessity, as the foundation for all safe practice, of a just and unambiguous
definition of the subject-matter”. This was achieved through “philosophical
analysis, […] a process of composition and decomposition, or rather
decomposition and recomposition, first distinguishing a whole into its kinds
or parts, and then looking at those kinds or parts attentively, in such a
manner as to extract from them the idea of the whole”. The substance, the
younger Mill noted, of Plato’s “two-fold process of analysis and synthesis”
is that in moral or political studies, “the desideratum is not so much new
facts, as a more comprehensive survey of known facts in their various
bearings, all which are sure to be successively forced upon the attention by
a well-conducted and unbiased inquiry into the meaning of established
terms”.69 Around the time John Stuart was translating Plato, he and some
friends—branded “the Brangles” by Harriet Grote (1792–1878)—took up
the study of logic as well as metaphysics.70 The last book which they
studied was James Mill’s Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind
(1829)—the elder Mill had entered into the analysis of the various bearings
of established terms, such as power, wealth, dignity, and virtue, among
many others.
James Mill directly referred to the method of Analysis and Synthesis in
his Elements of Political Economy (1821); he noted that achieving a
practical end requires breaking down and analyzing complex wholes in
their constitutive parts. Synthesis corresponds to rearranging the elements
to produce the desired effect. The key to the process was having a distinct
conception of the ends, that is, the effects to be produced; only then could
one proceed to form those combinations of elements “by which the ends
will be most advantageously produced”.71 What is more, Mill’s discussion
of the two types of political reasoners closely followed Stewart’s emphasis
on power, that is on the forces that cause the “motions of the wheels”—the
motives that turn the wheels of the machinery of government. James Mill
and the other Philosophic Radicals followed thus the “common practice” of
philosophers: “when they are discussing means, begin by considering the
end, and when they desire to produce effects, think of causes”.72 But if Mill
admitted that synthesis without analysis was insufficient as a method of
philosophical analysis, why did he follow the method of Synthesis in
“Government” and other essays? To answer this question, we need to take a
step back and revisit Mill’s criticism to empirical induction.
II From philosophy to rhetoric: instruction and
persuasion
As we already saw, in the 1830s, John Stuart Mill felt that there was
something fundamentally wrong with his father’s philosophical method. In
his 1869 edition of James Mill’s Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human
Mind, John remarked on James’s “bent of mind” of “impatience of detail”.
James had “occasionally gone further in the pursuit of simplification, and in
the reduction of the more recondite mental phenomena to the more
elementary”, than John felt “able to follow”. Consequently, the younger
Mill noted, James Mill “has left some of his opinions open to objections,
which he has not afforded the means of answering”.73 For the younger Mill,
James Mill’s attempt “to make the human mind as plain as the road from
Charing Cross to St. Paul’s” was bound to fail.74 The younger Mill carefully
noted the grounds of disagreement with his father’s analysis of mental
phenomena as well as the evidence for his own views on the subject.
However, as regards his father’s discussion of political phenomena, John
Mill failed to make the distinction between the method of science and the
method of communication—i.e., between the method of philosophy and the
method of rhetoric.
James Mill’s advice regarding method when advancing an argument was:
ascertain first what the questions are and then employ (inductively derived)
general principles to illuminate and explain a series of historical
phenomena. Mill thought that such a mode of proceeding “might have been
in the highest degree useful, and might, better than almost any other scheme
of persuasion, have succeeded in removing prejudices, and gaining converts
to rational doctrines”.75 Indeed, Mill believed that the syllogistic
appearance of an argument made it imposing. However, commentators fail
to consider that Mill was adamant that the “agreement or non-agreement
with matter of fact”, and the agreement or non-agreement of the principles
invoked “with the good of human kind”, decided the truth of an argument,
not whether it was strong on syllogistic principles.76 Formal logic made for
validity but not necessarily truth. Likewise, rhetoric communicated ideas
with the intention of persuasion, irrespective of truth. Mill’s reference to
“schemes of persuasion” and the twin goals of “removing prejudices, and
gaining converts to rational doctrines” enables us to examine a hitherto
unexplored connection to Mill’s method: the role of inductive and
syllogistic reasoning in rhetorical arguments.
Traditionally rhetoric was contrasted with logic, often being dismissed as
mere ornament and eloquence; however, by the late eighteenth century, the
study of rhetoric and Belles Lettres would be rehabilitated, as we saw, to the
point of receiving a special place in Scottish university curricula.77 For
Vincent M. Bevilacqua, it was a commonly held assumption in the Scottish
Enlightenment that rhetoric and logic were “connate intellectual functions
founded on similar mental faculties”. In stylistic-belletristic rhetoric, the
appropriate domain of rhetoric was the effective expression of already
established scientific truth, rather than discovery and evaluation, which
constituted the province of logic.78 According to George A. Kennedy, there
was a broader Scottish Enlightenment project “to create a new
philosophical rhetoric based on the new logic, with the addition to it of a
new psychology as developed by the British Empiricist philosophers,
paying some lip service to classical rhetoric but differing from it in
fundamental ways”.79

Induction and rhetoric

As we saw in Chapter 2, in the eighteenth century a “new rhetoric” came to
be distinct from the ornamental rhetoric of the seventeenth century. As
Barbara Warnick has put it, “the new rhetoric […] focused on expository
and didactic discourse, based its proofs on the facts of the matter being
discussed, and was couched in a plain, unstudied style”.80 An important
difference between the “old rhetoric” and the “new rhetoric” was that the
former viewed enthymeme as the basis of rhetorical argument. The
inductive method’s focus on observation and experiment put example in the
center of rhetorical argument.81 However, both “new rhetoric” textbooks,
such as George Campbell’s, and neo-classical rhetoric textbooks, such as
Richard Whately’s,82 saw problems with some of the uses of inductive
evidence in arguments aiming to convince reason, such as testimony and
drawing from an insufficient number of examples.83 As we saw in Chapter
3, by the mid-eighteenth-century, even the main field of application of
examples—exemplar history—would question their “non-philosophical”
use. In order to see how Mill’s distrust of empirical induction relates to
rhetorical practice, we can turn to his background in rhetoric as well as in
ancient Greek thought.
In 1809, James Mill argued that classical studies at the universities had
mistaken priorities. The “Socraticae chartae”, i.e., the practical philosophy
of the Academic, Peripatetic, and Stoic schools, “those precious remains so
strenuously recommended by Horace and Cicero, as the fountain of genius,
to both the orator and the poet”, he noted, “are abandoned for the Choruses
of Euripides”. For Mill, much good “might be derived from an
improvement in the plan of our Greek and Roman studies”.84 His call to
improve university education was not accidental. The Edinburgh Review, in
which Mill’s call appeared, was at the time in a bitter dispute with Oxford
University, with regard to Oxford’s recent curriculum reform.85 In his
Commonplace Books, Mill referred to Edward Copleston’s reply to the
Edinburgh Review “for proving that to teach Aristotle is to teach what is
best for the mental culture of Englishmen in the 19th century”. Copleston
defended the focus on Aristotle at Oxford, arguing Aristotle’s logic and
rhetoric exposed “all the trick and mystery of false reasoning”.86 Mill
thought that “[t]eaching a mind ‘l’accoutume insensiblement à ne se payer
que de raisons solides’ is a most important point of education”. The French
passage, from which Mill quoted, went on to suggest that Alexander was
indebted to Aristotle for such an education.87 Not accidentally, Mill quoted
heavily from the pseudo-Aristotelian Rhetoric to Alexander as well as
Aristotle’s Rhetoric in his notes on “Speculation & Practice”, trying to draw
the same “distinction drawn by Bacon, between the empyrical, and the truly
inductive philosopher”.88
Less than a decade later, Mill “made” his eleven-year-old son study
Aristotle’s Rhetoric “with peculiar care, and throw the matter of it into
synoptic tables”.89 This gives us a clue where to start. Aristotle’s advice
was that if one has an enthymeme—a syllogism working with premises
accepted by the audience (R 1355a27–28)—then the example should be
used as a supplement, a testimony or a witness. It seems that for Aristotle, it
would actually be more convincing to state enthymematically the
generalization (which could have been established by an enumeration of all
cases, of all known particular instances)90 and then provide examples (R
1394a9–18). In 1803, Mill had recommended such a method to statesmen
debating the correct course of action with reference to Britain’s war with
France—i.e., state general principles first, and then draw examples from
history.91
For Aristotle, there are only two kinds of logical argument, two types of
proof, which create belief: enthymeme and example—rhetorical syllogism
and rhetorical induction (R 1356b1–6). The adjectival use of rhetoric is
important: syllogism and induction function differently in science, dialectic,
and rhetoric. A rhetorical induction does not ascend from a particular to a
universal but instead moves from a particular to a particular (R 1357b26–
30). As Myles Burnyeat has put it, rhetorical induction is “an induction
indeed, but one from which you cannot expect everything you would
normally expect from epagôgê”.92 Others have made the stronger claim that
induction and example “differ both in premises and conclusion: epagôgê
reasons from all the particulars to a covering generalization, while example
from one or two of the particulars to a conclusion about a new particular”.93
As we saw, missing the connection to Plato’s distinction between
empeiria and technê, William Thomas had claimed that Mill did not
“associate scientific method with experiment or a wide induction”.94
Thomas thus pointed to an 1809 review on a book on political economy to
prove his claim about Mill’s distrust of induction.95 In said review, Mill
argued that the author unsuccessfully employed the method of induction—a
method “highly satisfactory in all subjects to which it is applicable”. A
more careful mode of proceeding must be sought for in matters of public
policy, Mill thought, since “in order to rise from particular facts to general
laws, a multitude of instances must be observed and scrutinized”, and since
“the train of facts in regard to one nation is, properly speaking, but a single
instance; and affords, by no means, a sufficient foundation on which to
build inductive conclusions so extremely general and comprehensive”.
Insufficient inductive justification creates problematic general principles;
employing these doubtful propositions in attempts to clarify issues of policy
or even some kinds of theoretical questions rather obscures than
illuminates.96 Aristotle himself had made a similar point as regards modes
of persuasion in financial matters: arguing from the individual experience of
one’s own city (a historical example) was insufficient to draw a general
conclusion about financial matters in general (R 1359b22–31). So when
Mill criticised the method of induction in the 1809 review on political
economy, he used a particularly Aristotelian argument.

Synthesis as a method of teaching

In Part IV of The Preceptor: Containing a General Course of Education
(1748), Robert Dodsley reprinted William Duncan’s Elements of Logick
(1748)—a popular textbook on logic in the eighteenth century.97 Following
established practice, Duncan discussed briefly the method of resolution and
composition—analysis was the method of discovery, synthesis the method
of instruction. The latter came after the former. Being a method of
investigation, analysis, Duncan went on, is at first “little better than a mere
groping in the Dark”. Time is necessary to fully reach the end, through
revision and comparison, of the process. Once one reaches the end,
communicating these discoveries is much easier:
For as we here begin with intuitive Truths, and advance by regular Deductions from them,
every Step of the Procedure brings Evidence and Conviction along with it; so that, in our
Progress from one Part of Knowledge to another, we have always a clear Perception of the
Ground on which our Assent rests. In communicating therefore our Discoveries to others, this
Method is apparently to be chosen, as it wonderfully improves and enlightens the
Understanding.98

In both Adam Smith’s and George Campbell’s discussions of rhetoric,

laying down certain principles known—or having already been proved—
and proceeding to account for a number of phenomena—“connecting all
together by the same Chain”—was typically called the “didactic” method.
Smith argued that “[i]t gives us a pleasure to see the phaenomena which we
reckoned the most unaccountable all deduced from some principle
(commonly a well-known one) and all united in one chain, far superior to
what we feel from the unconnected method where everything is accounted
for by itself without any reference to the others”.99 According to Campbell
the method which “ought to be pursued in the application of knowledge
already acquired”, i.e., in the case of instruction, is the synthetic method.100
Addressing the understanding, Campbell noted, instructors aim either to
teach something new or to demonstrate the validity of a controversial
position. In the latter case, persuasion and belief are created by arguments,
which in turn depend on intuitive or deductive evidence.101
Although the method of Synthesis offers “the shortest way of
communicating the principles of a science”, Campbell argued, seldom is it
convincing: “there is a necessity of recurring to the tract in which the
knowledge we would convey was first attained”—i.e., the method of
analysis. Similarly, Smith had argued that “[t]he People, to which
[rhetorical discourses] are ordinarily directed, have no pleasure in these
abstruse deductions; their interest, and the practicability and honourableness
of the thing recommended is what alone will sway with them and is seldom
to be shewn in a long deduction of arguments”.102 Although Stewart agreed
with both Smith and Campbell that “the order of invention is, in most cases,
the reverse of that fitted for didactic communication”,103 and that the
former may be a better plan of instruction when dealing with individuals
who will “enter on the career of invention and discovery”, Stewart thought
that it is “not so practicable to carry into effect” in public instruction. In
such a case the synthetic method may be more suited for teaching.104 In the
last quarter of the eighteen century at Edinburgh, William Greenfield did
not uncritically receive the method of analysis and synthesis as the method
of investigation and communication. Still, he agreed with Stewart that
Synthesis “is to be preferred where the truths [to be communicated] will be
readily received and they are not remote from common apprehension or
where there is no mystery how the author arrived at their discovery”.105
In 1814, Mill noted “that the moderns have not so much as attempted an
improvement in the didactic art, the art of communicating ideas”, leaving it
“entirely in the state in which they received it from the ancients”. For Mill,
the shape the didactic art had in classical logic and in classical rhetoric was
not “well adapted to the end which we have here in view; the conveying the
knowledge of truth and of error to minds unacquainted with them, by such
gradations of proof as every sound understanding can pursue”. Essentially,
what was needed to the ars traditiva, the art of transmission of ideas, was a
combination of rhetoric and the “syllogistic art” in “the teaching of truth”.
Thus, in the didactic art,
 truth is proved, or error disclosed, by those gradual steps which ensure conviction; in which
nothing is misplaced, nothing omitted, and nothing superfluous; where the reader never
begins but with a known truth, and never advances to a proposition which is not either proved
by what goes before, or is too well known for its proof to be required.

For Mill, not only was the didactic art by definition communicative; it also
required other particular skills: first, passing from known truths to the truths
desired to be established—this meant taking into consideration what truths
were known to the audience. Second, persevering “till the effect intended to
be accomplished is produced”—this meant removing whatever objection
might have come up in the process of advocating an argument.106
In 1820, James Mill advised David Ricardo, who was about to join him
in writing for the Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, that not
much could be done in an encyclopaedia article: it “should be to a certain
degree didactic, and also elementary—as being to be consulted by the
ignorant as well as the knowing; but the matter that has been often
explained, may be passed over very shortly, to leave more space for that
which is less commonly known”.107 Interested, but not fully informed,
readers, Mill argued, should be enabled, by the writer, to “join together the
distant parts” of a “long and intricate discussion”, so that they “comprehend
the whole”.108 In writing his own articles, Mill was anxious about “making
every thing clear, and establishing it on the ground of evidence”, hoping
that his readers would find everything completely clear as well.109 In 1835,
explicitly trying to “instruc[t] on the nature of the [law] reforms we ought to
have”, Mill adopted the method of Synthesis, expecting “acquiescence in
each proposition on the very first announcement”, since “[e]very step in this
inquiry is so obvious and certain”.110 Instruction and conviction went hand
in hand in Mill’s mind. In 1802, he noted that
It is very rare, indeed, the man who has been accustomed to manufacture his thoughts only for
his own sake, and without an immediate view to transmit them in the most effectual way into
the minds of others, possesses the secret, because he has not been obliged to study it, of that
lucidus ordo, which is so great an instrument both of perspicuity and of persuasion.111

Distinguishing between demonstrative syllogism and rhetorical syllogism

may serve to explain how Mill’s essays and articles made the transition
from instruction to persuasion.
Synthesis as a method of persuasion
According to Aristotle, demonstration is a sort of sullogismos (APr 25b31)
which advances teaching,112 i.e., bringing about understanding of
something new through what we already know (APst 71a5–6, 71b25).
Demonstration, Robin Smith argues, is not a method of discovery, even
though science must possess demonstrations, i.e., a system of proofs.113 In
contrast to a dialectical syllogism, “someone who is demonstrating does not
ask for premises but takes them”, i.e., asserts or assumes them (APr
24a24).114 In short, according to John Corcoran, for Aristotle, “a
demonstration is a discourse or extended argumentation that begins with
premises known to be truths and that involves a chain of reasoning showing
by evident steps that its conclusion is a consequence of its premises”.115
Since we are more easily convinced, Aristotle argued, “when we suppose
something to have been demonstrated” (R 1355a4–5), the pistis—the means
to persuasion—to be used is enthymeme—a demonstration for rhetorical
purposes (R 1355a7–8). Enthymematic arguments “excite more favourable
audience reaction” (R 1356b25), especially when some learning takes place
(R 1410b20–25). This makes the rhetorical syllogism the most convincing
or most important body of proof. However, a speaker ought to be aware that
enthymeme and demonstration differ (R 1355a9–12) since it would allow
her/him to construct the most persuasive argument as regards her/his
audience (R 1395b38–1396a4). As Robin Smith puts it, “[t]o the possessor
of science, different things are familiar and obvious than what is familiar
and obvious to us in our uneducated state”.116
Crucially, however, much hinges on what enthymêmata, the body or
substance of persuasion (R 1354a15), are, i.e. on what counts as a rhetorical
syllogism, as well as on the ability of the speaker to choose the best scheme
of persuasion (R 1354b24–25). Enthymeme draws its conclusions from few
premises, “and often less than those of the primary syllogism”—the
audience supplies the missing premises (R 1357a17–19). An enthymeme is
a syllogism from probabilities (eikota) or signs (sêmeia) (R 1357a32–
1357b20); but rarely are enthymematic premises necessarily true. Usually,
they are true for the most part (R 1357a32–3).
 Since principles pertaining to a particular science are provided by the
experience relevant to that science (APr 46a17–20), it is possible, by
fastening to those principles and to tekmêria (necessarily true signs)
specific to a particular science, to move from the context of rhetoric to the
context of demonstration (R 1358a10).117 The argument advanced is
rhetorical when premises remain unstated (R 1359a11–12)—that is, they are
expected to be supplied by the audience—and when the premises remain
true for the most part—that is, “probable as a universal related to a
particular” (i.e., a common belief concerning a generalization from
experience, not an exhaustive induction of observable facts; R 1357a1).118
According to Thomas Farrell, “the enthymeme is partisan argument as
collaborative utterance, an utterance whose well-foundedness would need to
be confirmed or redeemed by the proper audience”; hence, enthymeme
validates itself by a “necessary discursive move back to an audience who
must subscribe to taken-for-granted background suppositions”.119
James Mill was quite familiar with Aristotle’s rhetorical works; still, it
seems reasonable to wonder whether he would draw the same lessons from
the classical tradition. James Finlayson’s course on Logic spent
considerable time on the syllogism.120 For Finlayson, enthymeme was
rhetorical syllogism: the syllogism in which “one of the Premises only is
expressed, and something is left to be supplied by the Mind”. The validity
of a rhetorical syllogism, according to Finlayson, was verified by supplying
the missing premise.121 In earlier lectures, Finlayson distinguished between
Demonstrative Reasoning and Physical or Moral Reasoning. The difference
between the two modes of reasoning was not one of degree in the
conviction of the truth of the conclusion; one may be as fully convinced of
the truth of the Pythagorean Theorem as of Alexander conquering Persia.
The difference consists in the nature of their conclusions: the former
reaches a necessary and universal truth, the latter does not—it is simply
impossible to conceive the opposite of the conclusion of demonstrative
reasoning. But since physical or moral reasoning derives from “evidence
depending on facts” the opposite of the conclusion of moral reasoning is “a
possible thing”. To this effect, Finlayson argued, “[t]he Arguments brought
in Support of Physical Reasoning are not one, but many; and these if
disunited or used separately are of no Force”. Moral reasoning, “therefore,
is not one independent Chain of Proofs, but several, so connected one with
another, that to omit one, would ruin the whole Fabric”.122 It was clear that
the syllogism’s usefulness did not consist in its being a method of
discovery: “The Forms of the Syllogism can be of no Service in
establishing First Principles. First Principles are either intuitive truths, to
which the Mind immediately assents, or they are general Principles formed
by an Induction of Particulars”. Yet, as Finlayson tried to explain to his
students, syllogism is “of equal Service to the Moralist, the Metaphysician,
the Theologician, and the Lawyer”. Syllogism “is the only method of
verifying Evidence”; at the same time, it “is necessary in the
Communication of Truths which we know, to others, which sufficient Force
to convince them”. Further, Finlayson added, syllogism “assists us to form a
judgment of the Opinions of others, and to estimate the validity of the
Proofs which they produce in Support of those Opinions”.123
In 1759, John Lawson drew directly from Aristotle’s Rhetoric to argue
that “the Science which seems most conducive to instruct an Orator in the
Art of Reasoning, is Geometry”. Logic provides acuteness and subtlety;
geometry provides clearness, strength, and precision. Geometry is thus the
best foundation for “rational Eloquence”, Lawson noted—the emphasis was
once again on its being a foundation, not the whole of rhetoric. Among the
couple of things Lawson cautioned the Orator about when employing
rhetorical demonstration—other than the ones cautioned by Aristotle—was
the “[n]ecessity of repeating, of enlarging upon what hath been said, and of
presenting it in different Lights, in order to impress it on the Mind”.124
Joseph Priestley added to Lawson’s account that “it is universally
allowed that the form in which evidence is presented by Euclid […] is that
in which it gains the readiest and most irresistible admission into the human
mind”. Moralists, and anyone interested in truth, Priestley argued, should
pay close attention to such a method. First, one must offer definitions and
state any principle assumed (if it is not possible to actually prove it);
second, the proposition to be proved or question to be examined must also
be clearly set out at the beginning, and the subject divided into all the parts
in which it consists (along with any fact that may illuminate the issue at
hand); third, the arguments must be carefully chosen and properly arranged,
according to their likelihood and weight; fourth, the whole subject with its
implications should be brought together; and finally, all objections should
be anticipated and addressed.125 Priestley’s would not be a bad summary of
the structure of many of Mill’s essays.

III Conclusion
Wilbur Howell has argued that a distinguishing feature of the “old”,
deductive logic was that it operated both as a method of inquiry and a
model of presentation.126 James Mill’s argumentation method, serving the
twin aims of instruction and persuasion, was caught at the crossroads
between Logic and Rhetoric, old and new. This may seem to explain why
John Stuart Mill, like his father’s critics, mistook the demonstrative
appearance of “Government” for trying to present a complete science of
utilitarian politics, even though John Stuart was aware of the polemical aim
of “Government”.
I have tried to show that the elder Mill did not think that “theory” should
trump “experience”. Neither did he distrust induction as a method for
science. Rather, the “synthetical” character of his essays was supposed to
serve two purposes: be didactic on the subject he was treating as well as
persuasive on the practical manifestations of the said subject, by “forcing”
its conclusions on the minds of its audience. However, many of Mill’s
readers have mistaken his use of demonstration for dogmatism. To
substantiate this claim, in Chapter 5, I explore two sets of writings by Mill:
on the education of the poor in the 1810s, and on parliamentary reform in
the 1820s. Similarly, the discussion on rhetorical demonstration bears new
questions on an old subject: if Mill adapted his argument to his audience in
his persuasive essays, what was Mill’s intended audience in “Government”
and what were the taken-for-granted background suppositions? I try to
answer these questions in Chapter 6.

Notes
1 An earlier version of this chapter appeared in Modern Intellectual Review (Loizides, 2018).
2 Bain, 1882: 215–17.
 3 For an examination of the first claim, see Thomas, 1969 and 1979: ch. 3. For the second, see
infra Chapter 6.
4 Thomas, 1969: 250.
5 See, e.g., Macaulay, 1829: 168, 187. See further, Lively and Rees, 1978.
6 Macaulay, 1829: 160, 162.
7 Bain, 1882: 217. John Stuart Mill, Autobiography, CW: I.211, 167–9; A System of Logic
(1843), CW: VIII.889–94 (see further, Logic, bk. 6, chs. 7–11). Also, Sidgwick, 1891: 11, 11n.
8 D. Ricardo to J. Mill, 27 July 1820, in Ricardo: VIII.211. See also, D. Ricardo to J. Mill, 30
Aug. 1823, ibid., IX.375; J. Mill to D. Ricardo, 13 Nov. 1820, ibid., VIII.291.
9 Fenn, 1987: 142. For a summary of interpretations of Mill’s “Government”, see Grint, 2013:
ch. 2. See also, infra, Chapter 6.
10 J.S. Mill, Autobiography, CW, I.211.
11 Thomas, 1971: 750.
12 Regan, 2014: 83.
13 Grint, 2013: 73, 92–3.
14 See Burke, 1770: I.76.
15 Translation is Ross’s (Aristotle, 1924 and 2009). Echoing Plato’s Gorgias (448c, 462b-c), for
Aristotle, the rules of arts are created through experience, i.e., a correct induction of particulars
(M 981a1–5).
16 Toulmin, 2001: 123.
17 Villers, 1805: 318n (cf. Mill, 1806g: 561–2). For the distinction between hypothesis and
induction, see Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, in Stewart: II.403 (cf. Stewart:
II.417).
18 Mill, 1802b: 259.
19 Mill, 1806b: 61.
20 Mill, 1829: II.311 and 1836b: 227.
21 CPB: I.106v, 107r, 112r–113v. See also, CPB: I.108v, 109r, 114v; V.125.
22 Mill, 1819b: 27.
23 ibid., 12. See also Mill, 1802a: 1–2; 1805c: 383; 1815a: 184, 193; 1836a: 561–2; 1836b. See
also, Fenn, 1987: 58–9, 97–9, 128. For a discussion of the relevant parts of Mill’s MS see,
Grint, 2013: ch. 4 (section 5).
24 J.S. Mill, Autobiography, CW: I.35.
25 Mill, 1819a: 711.
26 Mill, 1815c: 181.
27 Elements, in Stewart: II.220. Compare with George Campbell’s discussion on “empirics” and
“visionaries” (G. Campbell, 1776: 15).
28 CPB: I.108v.
29 CPB: I.106v. See Bacon, 1660: 57–8 (Bacon, 2000: 52 [aphorism 64]).
30 Milton, 1806: 198.
31 Mill, 1816e: 94.
32 Mill, 1818: 264.
33 Mill, 1803j: 578–80. See also, e.g., 1805b: 255; 1806a: 10; 1806h: 298. See further Marchi,
1983: 160–61.
34 History: II.135–6, 181; I.390n.
35 ibid., V.246.
36 Mill, 1815a: 193; see also 1806g: 578.
37 History: II.70.
38 David Pollock, An Epitome of Logic, Delivered in Lectures in the University of Edinburgh by
James Finlayson, A.D.P. 1796–7, 5 Vols. (Centre for Research Collections: University of
Edinburgh. MS Gen 774–78D): I.194–5. Besides Stewart and Finlayson, Mill also found the
idea in Condillac (CPB: I.85) and Thomas Brown (Mill, 1829: I.178).
39 Mill, 1804c: 386–7.
40 Bacon, 1660: 113–4 (2000: 83–4).
41 Mill, 1804a: 460–1.
42 CPB: I.112v, 114v.
43 CPB: IV.41vb3. See “On Taste”, in Stewart: V.352–3.
44 Elements, in Stewart: II.222 (cf. reference in Mill, 1829: II.277). See further, Haakonsen, 1985.
45 CPB: ΙII.111v.
46 CPB: I.115r.
47 Hobbes, De Cive, in Molesworth, 1839: II.xiv (italics added).
48 See Elements, in Stewart: II.280–1.
49 Hampton, 1986: 7. See also, Martinich, 2005: 170–1; Talaska, 1988. See further, Molesworth,
1839: I.66, 73–4. J.W.N. Watkins has argued that Hobbes was indebted to Paduan methodology
(Watkins, 1973: ch. 3, §9–11).
50 CPB: I.108v.
51 CPB: I.108r. Here, Mill was defending Stewart against Francis Jeffrey, via Hume, on the
difference between observation and experimentation in mental sciences.
52 See Lewes, 1857: 495. See also, G. Grote to W. Molesworth, 28 Oct. 1838, in H. Grote, 1873:
129.
53 CPB: I.112v, I.165r.; V.84–85. Mill did not ignore Condillac’s opposition to Synthesis.
54 Condillac, 1746: 49.
55 Elements, in Stewart: II.281.
56 Outlines of Moral Philosophy, in Stewart: II.7.
57 Newton, 1730: 380–1.
58 Mill, 1815a: 195.
59 Mill, 1835a: 307, 274, 48, 25–6.
60 Elements, in Stewart: III.ch. 4.
61 University of London Library MS429/3 f. 8 (on Bacon, Novum Organum, aphorism 29).
62 University of London Library MS429/3 f. 74 (on Bacon, Novum Organum, aphorism 95). See
also, Grote, 1821: 7.
63 Pollock, An Epitome of Logic (University of Edinburgh, MS Gen 774–78D): IV.11–37.
64 Lee, Notes from the Lectures of Professor Finlayson on Logic (University of Edinburgh, MS
Dc 8.142/1–2): I.213.
65 ibid., I.219–20.
66 Plato, Gorgias 463b. See CPB: I.108v, 112v (also, I.106v, 113r-v; CPB: I, 162v-163r). J.S.
Mill, “Definition of Political Economy” (1836 [1831]), CW: IV.312.
67 Loizides, 2013: chs. 2–3 and 5–6.
68 Mill, 1809d: 199. See also, Burnyeat, 2001a: 20–1; Jenkyns, 1980: 233.
69 J.S. Mill, Autobiography, CW: I.25; “Phaedrus”, CW: XI.96, 93.
70 See Lady Eastlake, 1880: 44–5. Due to the “Brangles” meetings, the younger Mill began
putting his ideas for a book on logic on paper. For Mill’s account, see Autobiography, CW:
I.123, 167.
71 Mill, 1821a: 13–15.
72 J.S. Mill, “Fonblanque’s England”, CW: VI.353.
73 J.S. Mill, “Introduction”, CW: XXXI.102–3.
 74 J. Mill to F. Place, 6 Dec. 1817, in Halévy, 1904: 491.
75 Mill, 1809b: 52–3.
76 Mill, 1812f: 90–1.
77 See Bator, 1989.
78 Bevilacqua, 1968: 564–5.
79 G.A. Kennedy, 1999: 277, 281–2.
80 Warnick, 1982: 263, 263n1.
81 Howell, 1971: 259–260, 441–47.
82 Kennedy, 1999: 285.
83 See Campbell, 1776: 76–8; Walzer, 2003: 59. See also, Whately, 1836: 74–80.
84 Mill, 1809d: 188–9.
85 See Ellis, 2012: ch. 2.
86 Since Mill believed the universities, in the way classics were taught—including Aristotle’s
Ethics and Politics—were trying to thwart rather than develop the ability to think for one’s self,
he may have written the note with a touch of irony. He thought the ancient universities to be
“excellent schools of Priggism”, “prone to Toryism” and part of the ecclesiastical
establishment, whose “fixed creed and fixed forms” aimed “to keep the human mind where it
is” (CPB: III.33 and V.65r). See also, Mill, 1835a: 31.
87 CPB: III.34. Mill quoted from Bernier, 1671: 64 and referred to Copleston, 1810: 23–30.
88 CPB: I.106.
89 Bain, 1882: 166–9. J.S. Mill, Autobiography, CW: I.14.
90 See Aristotle, APr 68b28–29 (Aristotle, 1989).
91 Mill, 1803g: 738.
92 Burnyeat, 1994: 17.
93 ibid. See Benoit, 1980: 188.
94 Thomas, 1979: 118.
95 See Thomas, 1969: 256n46.
96 Mill, 1809b: 52–3.
97 Stewart, 2006: 99. See, Dodsley, 1748: II.2–194. James Finlayson encouraged his students to
read Duncan’s textbook, see Lee, Notes from the Lectures of Professor Finlayson on Logic
(University of Edinburgh, MS Dc 8.142/1–2): I.314.
98 Duncan, 1748: II.274–7.
99 A. Smith, 1983: 146.
100 G. Campbell, 1776: 84–5. Campbell (1776: ch. 6) had produced one of the most famous
critiques of Aristotelian syllogistic reasoning. See Howell, 1971: 401.
101 G. Campbell, 1776: 24–5; ch. 5. Intuitive evidence referred to evidence arising from
intellection, consciousness and common sense; deductive evidence referred to evidence arising
from a reasoning process—demonstrative or inductive. The distinction was also employed by
Stewart (Outlines, in Stewart: II.27–31).
102 G. Campbell, 1776: 84–5; A. Smith, 1983: 146.
103 Dissertation in Stewart: I.3n.
104 Active and Moral Powers in Stewart: VI.134. Cf. Political Economy in Stewart: IX.223.
105 Robert Eden Scott, “Notes from a Course of Lectures upon Belles Lettres delivered by William
Greenfield at the University of Edinburgh in the years 1785–6—from Nov. 22 1785 to April 19
1786”. Aberdeen University Library. GB 0231 MS 189: 87r-v (Lecture 47, 30 March 1876).
106 Mill, 1814b: 326–7, 326n. Here, Mill alluded to Bacon’s ars traditiva, as sketched in
Advancement of Learning (1605). The “Art of Tradition” was the fourth of the four intellectual
 arts; the other three were the “Art of Inquiry”, the “Art of Judgment” and the “Art of
Memory”. The art of tradition involved three parts: discourse, method and rhetoric.
107 J. Mill to D. Ricardo, 11 Sept. 1819, in Ricardo: VIII.67.
108 Mill, 1802b: 264.
109 J. Mill to D. Ricardo, 13 Nov. 1820, in Ricardo: VIII.291.
110 Mill, 1835e: 1, 13.
111 Mill, 1802b: 259. See also, Mill, 1806d: 266. The classical-minded reader of Mill would
recognise the allusion to Horace’s Art of Poetry (line 41).
112 Barnes, 1969: 138ff. Translation from Prior Analytics is Smith’s (Aristotle, 1989) and from
Posterior Analytics is Barnes’s (Aristotle, 1975).
113 R. Smith, 2008: 52 and 995: 47; Barnes, 1969: 138.
114 Hintikka, 2004: 96. See also, R. Smith, 2008: 53 and 1995: 48.
115 Corcoran, 2009: 5.
116 R. Smith, 2008: 54–5.
117 According to Aristotle, the full examination of some subjects is best left to the corresponding
science itself (R 1359b17–20).
118 See further, Raphael, 1974.
119 Farrell, 2000: 99.
120 See Pollock, “An Epitome of Logic” (University of Edinburgh: MS Gen 774–78D): III.83–
176.
121 ibid., 151.
122 ibid., II.73ff.
123 ibid., III.171–4.
124 Lawson, 1759: 131–2.
125 Priestley, 1777: 42ff.
126 Howell, 1971: 259–60.
5 Rational persuasion

Assessing James Mill’s Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind

(1829), Leslie Stephen identified some limitations in play, which clearly
stretched beyond that book:
Mill, as a publicist, a historian, and a busy official, had not much time to spare for purely
philosophic reading. He was not a professor in want of a system, but an energetic man of
business, wishing to strike at the root of the superstitions to which his political opponents
appealed for support.1

True as the remark about Mill being “an energetic man of business” was, I
have tried to show that not only did the vita activa constitute a philosophy
of living, aiming at social happiness, but also that a philosophical system
was vital in the attainment of practical ends. Taking his cue from Plato, Mill
thought striking at the root of superstitions was the task of philosophy; all
of his persuasive essays take up this challenge. Yet, no effort has been made
by Mill’s critics to trace his argumentation practice in a series of texts
intended to influence beliefs and/or behaviors.
In this chapter, I argue that the traditional interpretation of Mill’s method
of persuasion should be revised. A detailed survey of two sets of texts in
public debates in the 1810s and the 1820s paint a rather different picture of
Mill’s method of argumentation, as rational persuasion. Mill invited his
readers to counter his objections, weigh his arguments, and accept his
conclusions on the basis of the reasons offered. Section I discusses Nadia
Urbinati’s and Helen McCabe’s recent studies of James Mill’s method. In
short, they have pointed out three distinct problems with it: a. that he
accepted no truth to be had in his opponents’ side of the question; b. that he
repeated the same argument time and again until his audience acquiesced; c.
that his argument was intellectualistic, aiming at the understanding rather
than the passions—as such he dissolved conventional associations with
negative dialectics while being unable to create new associations in the
place of the old (i.e., inspire action). Section II briefly examines matters of
definition to lay the groundwork for a reframing of Mill’s argumentation
practice. Sections III and IV track Mill’s contributions in the debates on the
education of the poor and parliamentary reform, respectively, seeing Mill’s
“didactic art” at work. I try to show that focusing on the Encyclopaedia
Britannica essays narrows our perception of Mill’s argumentation practice.
Not only did he change argumentative strategies when he thought the
circumstances merited it, but he also sought to find solutions when the
debate led to a deadlock—the common good remained the guiding
principle.

I A straw man?
In this section, I briefly revisit Helen McCabe’s and Nadia Urbinati’s
discussions of James Mill’s method of persuasion. Both scholars focus on
the elder Mill’s work in an attempt to make better sense of the writings of
John Stuart Mill. Their studies of the elder Mill’s works are thus by
necessity succinct and in broad strokes; the story in the younger Mill’s
Autobiography about escaping the narrow sectarianism of his late teens and
early twenties, as well as Thomas Babington Macaulay’s familiar criticisms,
more or less set the narrative.
Writing on John Stuart Mill’s “philosophy” of persuasion—the why
behind the how—McCabe argues that “[t]hroughout his life J.S. Mill wrote
primarily for a public audience, with the intent of affecting political
outcomes through mobilising public opinion either to bring weight to bear
on elected politicians, or to change social mores”.2 McCabe identifies three
criteria that situate a text in the domain of rhetoric: a. public audience; b.
intention to mobilize public opinion; c. intention to influence political or
social practice. According to McCabe, J.S. Mill, following his “mental
crisis”, adopted a “new” method of persuasion having realized that the
“old” method, i.e., his father’s, was ineffective. McCabe argues that the
younger Mill developed a dialectical method based on a less intellectualist
psychology than that of his father’s method (i.e., based on associationist
psychology).
 In discussing the younger Mill’s rhetorical project, Urbinati and McCabe
follow his account of the limitations of his father’s method closely. Both
Urbinati and McCabe do much to show that the younger Mill revealed
different layers of his thought to different audiences, trying to lead a hostile
or conventional audience to unconventional “truth” without creating a
deadlock. According to McCabe, J.S. Mill would attempt to reform
opinions and ideas which held social well-being back through a step-by-
step process. The way to do so was by not directly attacking them, but by
admitting some of their premises, by seeing grains of truth in their mistaken
views, and gradually unveiling the parts of a more enlightened view.3 This
“method of reform” constituted one of John Stuart Mill’s “Coleridgean
foundations”.4
According to Urbinati, drawing on John Stuart Mill’s own account of his
debating activities, James Mill encouraged the use of an adversarial
rhetoric. Effective rhetorical style for the elder Mill, Urbinati reports,
accompanied detailed analysis and negative dialectics in public debate.
They combined to form a process of disputation, dissection, and
questioning which ceased when the “correct” definition of an idea was
reached—skeptical indifference towards opinions ended when “truth” was
grasped. Hence, being a “dogmatic polemicist and expert in the use of
diatribe”, James viewed public debate “as a tool for propagating a creed and
attacking antagonists”, a weapon directed against errors, opinions and
prejudices. It was not “a method of self-critical analysis”.5 Although neither
McCabe nor Urbinati clearly distinguish between influencing attitudes and
influencing behavior, they seem to argue that, even if James Mill’s method
of persuasion did manage to influence attitudes, it failed to influence
behavior.6 John Stuart Mill, McCabe and Urbinati argue, perceived the
above limitations to his father’s project, and sought to rectify them.
Urbinati argues that John Mill came to think that “truth” ought to be
conquered by one’s own efforts. “Old-style radicalism”, Urbinati notes,
dogmatically imposed truth in people’s minds, making it “a form of
coercive intervention even when performed for a good cause”. Benthamite
radicalism seemed to be engaged in a “project of indoctrination rather than
a process of emancipation from mental passivity of any kind”. To be
persuasive without being coercive, Urbinati adds, “a certain style of
reasoning and speech was required that made the person an agent of her
critical reflection and understanding”.7 Benthamites did not dismiss
discussion, but it was discussion oriented towards victory,8 not “a
communicative interaction among individuals who are well disposed to
understand each other and want to be convinced by reason”.9 While John
Stuart Mill’s On Liberty (1859) and The Subjection of Women (1869) fit this
bill, A System of Logic (1843), Principles of Political Economy (1848), the
essay on William Whewell’s moral philosophy (1852), Utilitarianism
(1861) and An Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy (1865) do
not. Mill’s Logic and Hamilton especially were quite polemic writings
addressed to a particular group of intellectual foes—foes whose arguments
had direct bearing on political issues. Throughout the many editions of
these works, John Stuart addressed objections and criticisms by directly
attacking his critics. Similarly, as Georgios Varouxakis has shown, Mill’s
contributions to the American Civil War debate were quite adversarial.10
In an effort to account for the elder Mill’s method of persuasion, McCabe
argues that it was based on Hartlean psychology. Such a psychology
involved, first, “repeating rational arguments until people were forced to see
their truth, and thus assent to them”; second, “educating people so that they
associated the right things with pleasure, and the wrong things with pain”.11
The former was directed to the persuadee’s mind, the latter to her/his
emotions. According to McCabe, James Mill—unlike his son—had failed to
take into consideration that such an approach to persuasion was ultimately
self-defeating. First, repeating opinions, so that people were forced to see
their truth, could not have had the effect the elder Mill desired. Repeatedly
attempting to gain rational assent, rather than leading to practical assent,
makes people stubbornly cling “to their beliefs through a misplaced sense
of pride, and to associate defeat with changing their mind”. Second, either
trying to replace other’s opinions en masse or trying to associate the right
thing with pleasure and the wrong thing with pain, McCabe notes, only
seems to result in making the new opinions inauthentic. This means,
however, that these new opinions cannot induce people to action. Having
not owned the process of forming the new opinions—the associations
between doing the right thing and pleasure as well as between doing the
wrong thing and pain are artificially sustained—individuals do not care
enough to take action in correcting the evils of society. Hence, James Mill’s
rationale of persuasion was inherently defective: not only could analysis
dissolve previous associations, McCabe argues; what was still more
important, rational argument could only lead to the creation of weak
associations. The result was neither virtue nor action, but disillusionment
and apathy.12

II Rhetoric, rational persuasion, and the

importance of evidence
Urbinati and McCabe provide more depth to the familiar criticism of Mill
as “the rationalist, the maker of syllogisms, the geometrician”.13 They do
not consider Mill’s method of persuasion persuasive. Not only do the
testimonials of Mill’s character, as we saw in Chapter 2, suggest that Mill
was quite influential with the spoken and written word, but also, as we saw
in Chapter 4, Mill’s enthymematic argumentation by definition counted on
exchange with his audience. A closer look at his writings suggests that Mill
was aware of many of the elements Urbinati and McCabe claim that his
argumentation practice did not have room for. For example, Mill admitted
that anyone could combine “truth and error”; it was thus “worthy of a little
pains to make the separation”.14 As another example, Mill knew that
“dogmatism in a writer never was a cause of fame”:
In a speaker, or a talker, an air of assurance often gains an opinion of knowledge. Not so, in
the written page, which a reader has before him for cool consideration. There, an appearance
of demanding our submission, without cause, inspires disgust, and often obscures substantial
merit.15

Those who publish their views, believing them to be true, grounded on

evidence, regardless of their correspondence to established views, Mill
thought, are “public-spirited and brave”.16 But even then, for a third
example, Mill thought that “[t]he people are not to be insulted for their
errors; but weaned from them; even when the time is most fully come for
acting on principles better than theirs”.17
 Drawing on classical sources, Mill thought that “the first thing to be
considered, and clearly defined in our thoughts” in an attempt at persuasion
“is, what do we desire to make out; next what requires to be established by
proof; in the third place what must be refuted; in the last place how we shall
best accommodate what we have to say to the minds of those whom we
address”.18 As eloquence “is a power—and all power may be turned to
good or to bad purposes”,19 it was imperative to decisively engage with
arguments in service of the latter kind of purposes. Still, Mill recognized
that simple, logical arguments could not easily depose with long-held
beliefs—the “hankering to believe” what “ought not to be believed” was
due to a habit of inattention to evidence.20 There was nothing mysterious in
the process, Mill thought; belief is an instance of inseparable association,
created on evidence of one’s own experience or another’s testimony.21 To
this effect, for example, Mill advised Ricardo to press the moral part of his
argument “in the midst of the other more abstract and less familiar topics”,
as it was better calculated to engage and direct the attention of his readers to
the evidence of the case, and thus gain their assent on the abuses involved
in the contract between the Bank of England and the British Government.22
Persuasion is “a successful intentional effort at influencing another’s
mental state”, including beliefs or opinions, and dispositions to act,
“through communication in a circumstance in which the persuadee has
some measure of freedom”.23 Intentional effort to influence another’s
mental state suggests that the author or a speaker acknowledges there are
more mental states available than one, and that s/he can (successfully) make
a case for a different opinion or disposition to act than the one the reader or
hearer already happens to have (irrespectively of the mental state the
persuader has in reality). A method of persuasion refers to how an author or
a speaker undertakes to influence the beliefs or the actions of an audience.
As it seems reasonable to assume that the author or speaker will employ the
method s/he considers most likely to have that effect, much depends on the
author’s intended audience.
By referring to “rational persuasion”, I already suggest much of what
makes Mill’s method. The attempt at persuasion is “rational”, when “the
arguer wishes to persuade the Other to accept the conclusion on the basis of
the reasons and considerations cited, and those alone”. This means that, in
“entering the realm of argumentation, the arguer agrees to forswear all other
methods that might be used to achieve this: force, flattery, trickery, and so
forth”.24 By definition, rational persuasion involves the use of arguments,
but not all such attempts at persuasion are rational. Anthony Blair defines
three criteria so that the giving and receiving of reasons count as attempts at
rational persuasion. The first two speak to the matter of the reasons
exchanged; they must be (minimally) plausible and relevant (even if
deficient) reasons. The third criterion speaks to the manner these reasons
are used to influence opinions or behaviors: they must “engage the intellect
of the persuadee so as to invoke his or her conscious and deliberate
consideration of the grounds and their bearing and force” in support of the
end in view.25 Although arguments may fail to satisfy criteria of adequacy
—they may be irrelevant, weak or fail to address objections (deliberately or
not)—the rationality in the attempt at argumentative persuasion, according
to Blair, lies in trying to satisfy them: “it is rational to be persuaded of a
claim by considerations that have probative relevance to it, merit
acceptance and survive challenges or doubts”.26 To this effect, Ralph H.
Johnson noted that an argument “is discourse directed toward rational
persuasion”.27 In this way, argumentation—the activity of “τοῦ διδόναι και
δέχεισθαι λόγον”, to put it in George Grote’s terms, for doing something,
including influencing opinions or influencing behaviour—is defined as “a
verbal, social, and rational activity aimed at convincing a reasonable critic
of the acceptability of a standpoint by putting forward a constellation of one
or more propositions to justify this standpoint”.28 The end of such an
activity then is to induce another to do something—to adopt a particular
opinion or a particular action—through the use of arguments. As Blair puts
the point, “[t]o advocate an argument is to invite someone to accept its
reasons and to accept its conclusion because of those reasons”.29 Inviting
some other to accept reasons or conclusions is a social communicative act.
As we saw in Chapter 4, there was a legitimate rhetorical practice which
emphasized rational persuasion in eighteenth-century textbooks of rhetoric.
It was a tradition, which, as we saw in Chapter 2, grew within the
eighteenth-century debate on Cicero and Demosthenes as model
rhetoricians—Scottish writers being more inclined towards the rational,
rather than the vehement, aspect of that model of oratory.
 According to James Mill, truth does not “stand in need of any auxiliary
methods, beyond those of fair argument and rational persuasion”.30 It was
clear to Mill that part of that meant that writers keep “the real question
steadily in view” and do their utmost to remove “the principal ground of
prejudice against it”.31 Indeed, as McCabe has pointed out, Mill held that
“if one telling will not suffice, to tell a second time, or any number of times;
to permit no time and no opportunity to be lost; to make one operation
follow incessantly upon the heels of another, till the effect intended to be
accomplished is produced”.32 McCabe was right about the Hartlean
foundations of Mill’s argumentation practice. This is but half the picture,
however. It ignores that Mill was not always receptive to Hartlean ideas,
and even rejected some of them completely.33
As we saw earlier, repetition was deemed important in Synthesis or
Geometry as instructive tools, but it was also a common enough proverb
that repetitio mater studiorum est—not incidentally, Mill made the
comment about repetition when trying to define the didactic art. Yet, Mill
pointed out in 1815 that repetition is not always educative.34 There is thus
another reason why Mill repeated himself: the limitations in what one could
publicly write. In the mid-1820s, going through a recent edition of
Voltaire’s Oeuvres, Mill took note of a letter to Helvetius, in which Voltaire
argued that unpopular truths need to be repeated by the wise—united in a
sort of an esprit de corps—over and over again to help against those who
wish to suppress them.35 Mill echoed Voltaire in the first number of the
Westminster Review, inaugurating a series of writings on parliamentary
reform.36 Repetition was necessary for unpopular opinions to reach
everyone’s mind and heart, in spite of attempts to silence them. But it was
necessary on account of another reason as well:
It is not, however, without advantage for the friends of any great organ of public good, to
review the reasons of their attachment; to re-animate their zeal by renewed reflection on the
merits of the object which they pursue; and to rouse themselves to still greater exertions by
mutual recollections and exhortations.37

Keeping the lantern burning in the minds and hearts of those who are
already converted to the cause was as important as enlisting the help of new
followers.
 Although this frame of explanation is better suited to account for Mill’s
practice, rather than pointing out Mill’s associationist psychology, he did
not simply repeat the same argument over and over; a thorough look at the
progression of Mill’s argument on the education of the poor and on
parliamentary reform shows that Mill developed different parts of his
argument in different articles—Mill took care to adapt to the different
audiences he had in mind and the grounds of their views. In 1821, Mill
included this exact idea in the draft he prepared for the regulations of the
newly founded Political Economy Club, that is, the need to
study the means of obtaining access to the public mind, through as many as possible of the
periodical publications of the day, and to influence, as far as possible, the tone of such
publications in favour of just principles of Political Economy.38

Mill’s contributions to the debate on the education of the poor responded to

calls for rational argument, and when the occasion allowed it, he even tried
to stir the emotions of his readers towards “noble” ends. In different
periodicals, Mill focused on different parts of the argument. Writing on
parliamentary reform, even without the necessity of curbing his argument,
that is, even when Mill’s publications appeared “uncensored” and “uncut”
in the Westminster Review and Parliamentary History and Review, he still
subjected his texts to the utilitarian calculus, trying to figure out the best
way into the minds of his readers—the focus changed while the principles
remained constant. In this second set of texts, Mill did not so much focus on
the practical side of the issue, as in the case of the education of the poor, but
on the principles which guided thinking about good government. The higher
ranks of society thought about government in a way that suited their own
private interests—what Mill termed “aristocratical logic” or the “logic of
power”. Thus, it was necessary to expose this fallacious thinking, lying
underneath a host of prejudices, sustained by habits of inattention to
evidence, i.e., the reasons which ground opinions.

III Educating the poor: James Mill in the 1810s

For much of the 1810s, James Mill was engaged in projects aiming to
promote the education of the poor.39 He embraced quite enthusiastically the
idea of a system of instruction—the monitorial system of Andrew Bell and
Joseph Lancaster—which aimed in affording to the children of those with
small or no pecuniary means the ability to read, write and to do basic
calculations.40 According to Edward Wakefield, Mill, as a member of such
educational initiatives, was “always at work, but never show[ed] himself”;
Bain added that, though Mill kept in the background, “it was always to him
that recourse was had, when difficulties came”.41 It comes as no surprise
then that Mill took it upon himself to explain and defend the rationale of
such educational endeavors in the periodical press between 1811 and
1816.42 When those efforts came under attack from Church of England
members, Mill published a number of essays, reviews and reports in The
Philanthropist, the Monthly Review, the Edinburgh Review, and the Eclectic
Review.
In 1811, the Quarterly Review argued that the Bell–Lancaster
controversy hinged on two issues. The first involved a debate on who was
the originator of the monitorial system of education; the second involved
the practice of this new system.43 A number of particular features of
Lancaster’s method were criticised—his methods of punishment were
especially censured—but the bulk of argument against him centered on
religious instruction. For Lancaster, “education ought not to be subservient
to the propagation of the peculiar tenets of any sect”, since, if extended to
members of other denominations, such education exercises “undue
influence”—and, Lancaster added, the strong would be taking advantage of
the weak.44 This meant that religious instruction was left to Sunday schools,
parents, and family friends; the religious instruction incorporated at
Lancasterian institutions during reading and writing was limited to the
common ground between Christian denominations.
Sarah Trimmer had already argued in 1805 that the question in the Bell–
Lancaster controversy, was not about “[w]hich society of Christians holds
the true doctrine” but
Whether the members of the Church of England can, consistently with their principles, depart
from the established system of education, which requires the carrying on from day to day a
continued series of religious instruction founded on the Church Catechism, of which the
Creed is a principal part, and adopt in its room a system from which this Catechism and the
Liturgy of the National Church are excluded.45
Lancaster, Trimmer and Herbert Marsh, who joined in the controversy from
the pulpit in 1811, agreed that plans of mass instruction were a national
affair of grave importance. However, for Marsh, not only did such a
national concern fall within the exclusive control of the national church, the
Church of England, but also, most importantly, mass, non-denominational
instruction would ultimately weaken the Church of England:
If the predilection for any peculiar sect was thereby exci[s]ed, one point at least was gained,
and that an important one,—that the children educated in such seminaries, would acquire an
indifference to the establishment. And not only indifference but secession from the
Established Church will be the final result.

Since early education is key to the perseverance of an establishment,

neutrality, as regards religious instruction, constitutes essentially an act of
hostility to the establishment, Marsh argued. Lancaster’s system becomes
then the “most powerful engine that ever was devised” against the
established church.46 But that was not all: since Church and State are
“contracting parties”, under the British Constitution, Marshal added, they
stand or fall together: “by detaching men from the Church we create
divisions in the State, which may end with the dissolution of both”.47
Lancasterian institutions were a threat to the stability of the whole. For
Marsh, Bell could do the job equally well as Lancaster without posing such
a threat to the establishment, since schools for the poor would incorporate
religious instruction.48 According to the Quarterly Review author, Marsh
was an “able reasoner” who exposed the “specious and insidious argument
that no injury is done to the national religion” by “teaching nothing but
what all Christians agree in revering”.49
The Anti-Jacobin Review critic challenged the proponents of Lancaster’s
system to offer an argument against Trimmer’s warning that Lancasterian
institutions posed a serious danger to the Church of England.50
Additionally, the Anti-Jacobin Review had noted that “the impolicy of
teaching peasants to write is indeed so glaring, that, among men of sound
principles and good understandings, we are rather surprised that there
should be two opinions about it”.51 Bell himself had already made a similar
statement—one which Lancaster used against Bell, and Marsh rushed to
avert attention from it.52
 By 1812, according to Mill, the argument for the necessity of educating
the poor, either for reasons of charity, social utility or equality, was gaining
ground.53 Religious instruction was at the core of the debate. Mill
summarized the debate in a short sentence: for the Church side,
notwithstanding the acknowledged advantages attached to educating the
poor in schools for all, non-denominational instruction meant giving up a
greater advantage: the influence of the Church of England. The controversy
essentially concerned a question of utility, according to Mill. But it was not
really a question of which was the greater good—education or faith— but
rather, the choice was between a known good and an imagined evil.54
Hence, Mill’s argument focused primarily on showing that education
produced no “evil”. In every periodical in which he wrote on the subject,
Mill held fast to his views in trying to meet Marshal’s and others’
objections. Mill’s argument, as it appeared in The Philanthropist—in which
Mill had full license to develop his views— remained essentially stable.
Not only did Mill repeat the main points in other periodicals, he also
brought other sides of the question into view.
In 1812, in The Philanthropist,55 Mill faced Marshal et al. head on,
acting in “self-defense” on behalf of the friends of the Lancasterian system.
According to Mill, the facts of the case were simple: England had failed in
providing for the education of the poor. Due to Lancaster’s enthusiasm, no
longer was it necessary for the “formation of the mind” of the poor to be
left to chance. Schools could be erected in various areas, where school-
masters could train monitors and monitors could teach the basics to large
classes of students; one school could teach reading, writing, and arithmetic
to thousands. In contrast, the Church of England had done nothing to
improve the education of the poor expansively. That failure to act had been
justified in reference to the expense involved in mass education. But now
that justification ceased to exist.56
Mill was clear in his introduction: he aimed to expose the sophistry of the
argument against Lancaster. Looking to the past suggested that the cry that
“The Church is in danger”, Mill argued, had always been used against
improvement. It was important to clarify that those individuals who made
that cry, a small yet loud group of Churchmen, should not be mistaken for
the whole; Mill’s reply was directed against these individuals rather than the
establishment as such. The debate was about a choice between benefiting
mankind, through the dissemination of knowledge, or allowing individuals
to use the name of the Church “either led by the most anile bigotry or in
pursuance of their own ends”.57 Mill focused on a number of different
arguments advanced by Lancaster’s critics against general education. The
Church’s failure to promote general education as well as arguing that the
Church was in danger by general education, suggested, Mill noted, that
knowledge was thought to be useless, or, if useful, not suitable to their
interests, or even, what was worse, dangerous to the Church. None of those
alternatives was flattering to Lancaster’s critics, Mill thought, but he paid
particular attention to the last one.58
Mill examined three kinds of perceived harm that general education
could possibly inflict: a. on Christianity in general; b. on the particular
creed of the Church of England; and c. on the State. In reference to the first,
reading, writing and arithmetic, Mill noted, were only one part of
education; Christianity formed another. Both were useful for the purposes
of life; the choice was between no education at all, or non-denominational
education, leaving religious education to parents and Sunday schools. Upon
this “rational plan” both goods could be achieved—the teaching of the first
did not cancel out the teaching of the second.59 As far as the second danger
was concerned, in Lancasterian institutions, Mill noted, there was no
preferential treatment of any religious creed—no one could point to a fact
to the contrary. Moving quickly past the suggestion that asking for
preferential treatment meant conceding that the Church of England could
not stand on even ground with other creeds, Mill wondered what would be
worse, in the unlikely event that one could indeed prove preferential
treatment against the Church: growing up “ignorant, vicious, profligate
Church of England men” or “intelligent, orderly, virtuous Dissenters”?60
This argument led Mill to examine the third purported danger, that the
Church was an engine of the State, and that the State did indeed need
support from the Church. Mill via the authority of William Paley tried to
show that such a claim, denying its divine origin, degraded religion, by
making it “a secondary thing to politics”. It was even easier to counter the
second leg of the argument: the government is legitimized on no other
ground than the principle of utility. Not only could the Church’s backing
allow the State to neglect its “real and intrinsic support”, amounting to
protection to misrule, but also education allowed people to know that the
State functioned on the principle of general utility and thus support it.61
Since knowledge protects against corruption, as long as the Church and the
State look to social well-being, Mill argued, they “have nothing to fear from
the education of the poor in the Lancasterian schools”.62
As we saw, accusing Lancaster of plagiarism was the second way to
discredit general education.63 So in the Philanthropist, Monthly Review and
Eclectic Review, Mill extensively considered the originality aspect of the
Bell–Lancaster controversy, giving each their due. Still, he urged
Lancaster’s critics to keep in mind that the subject at hand was the
education of individuals who would otherwise have no education, unless it
was basic and cheap: “saving the teacher much time and labour”, while
“promoting diligence and activity”, ought to be justification enough. “All
this may be very pretty”, i.e., giving books to all children and cultivating
penmanship, Mill argued, “but it is nothing to the purpose”.64 Mill thought
Lancasterian schools “more economical and efficacious”, but the question
was not to be decided on those grounds: everything else being equal, that
Lancaster’s schools were non-denominational was sufficient “to turn the
scale in his favour”.65 However, other essays came to fill in the blanks;
essays in which the last point gave way.
In the Eclectic Review, Mill argued that the “good work” for the
education of the poor required a common ground, uniting “charitable
persons of all sects and parties”. To those who worried about non-
denominational schools weakening “true religion”, Mill once again pointed
to history and experience, since the same objection was urged in the past
against Luther, and against toleration: “Now that a toleration, unexampled
in the annals of history, has been for years extended in this country, to all
the divisions of religion, the true religion, instead of losing its votaries,
seems to be better known and to acquire a greater influence. The nation
becomes more religious”.66 Furthermore, re-directing Marsh’s fire, to show
that Lancaster’s system had only “good effects” to come as regards the
Church, Mill pointed to the effects of the similar educational system
provided at parochial schools in Scotland; in the Edinburgh Review, Mill
also added the example of Ireland.67
 Mill was thus quite clear: the Church of England had nothing to fear from
Lancasterian schools. Not only, by Lancaster’s critics own admissions,
would the children of the poor “have been brought up in gross ignorance,
and consequently, in vice and irreligion”, but also “[t]hey could never […]
have been members of the English, or any other Church”.68 What is more,
Mill argued that, since neither had the Church nor the State provided the
children of the poor with education, sending them to Lancasterian schools
to learn to read their bibles and their prayer books, “children are qualified to
understand their catechism, and to improve the examinations of the curate,
and are prepared to embrace the principles of the Church”.69 And even if
the state did decide to engage in establishing a system of national education,
Mill argued, “from their known wisdom and equity, to say nothing of their
liberality and moderation, it may be safely presumed, they will decide in
favour of the unexcluding principles of the Lancasterian institution”.70 In
the Monthly Review, Mill revisited the religious argument; in the Edinburgh
Review, he moved to re-examine State assistance.
In the Monthly Review, Mill appealed to the “sincere” and “rational
friends of the Establishment”. He asked them to see beyond “the arts of
persuasion” employed by Churchmen, who only pretended to approve mass
education. Churchmen focused on forewarning about the “neutrality” of
Lancasterian schools, Mill argued, because they could not openly oppose
education for the poor anymore. The religious objection, however, had the
same practical effects.
Mill attempted to bring to the fore the impracticality of segregating
education as well as appease critics regarding the dangers of non-
denominational education. First, Mill reminded his audience of the
difficulty of establishing schools for the poor and pointed out how much
more expensive it would make it trying to run two such schools in any one
community. Moreover, the burden of running two schools in one
community meant that some districts would not get a school at all; rather
than increasing the opportunities for education among the poor, two schools
would lessen them. So Mill wondered whether segregating districts in such
ways was really worth the added expense or was really improving the
education received at Lancasterian schools, which left religious instruction
to parents and clergy.71 Most importantly, Mill argued, Lancasterian schools
assisted, rather than substituted, the clergy and parents in religious
instruction by teaching children to read the Bible. Second, Mill also
reminded his readers that the Church had not engaged actively in the past in
the education of the poor, questioning thus the motives for the Church’s
zeal of late. Mill seemed to ask his “rational” readers not to sacrifice a
proven advantageous institution for the sake of serving the questionable
motives of individuals who had never before seen any importance in similar
educational plans. Third, the Church of England had nothing to fear. In
“point of rationality”, the Church had the advantage over the few
“dangerous” Dissenters—granting that Dissenters were dangerous was a
large concession on Mill’s part. Teaching the poor to read and write would
lead them away from the “irrational declamations which now seduce them”,
not closer to them. Importantly, even if we do accept that Church and State
are allied, Mill added, since the former was not in danger by Lancasterian
institutions, the latter was not in danger either—the State would not be in
danger even if Dissenter numbers increased, themselves being so attached
to the British Constitution.72
In the Edinburgh Review, Mill made an even larger concession to ensure
the education of the poor: he asked “assistance toward this great work from
the State”. He was hesitant about enlisting the State to the cause on both
economic and ethological grounds. First, it was a “maxim of politics, which
philosophy had extracted from experience, that wherever private interests
are competent to the provision and application of their own instruments and
means, such provision and application ought to be left to themselves”.
Second, there was a considerable risk in entrusting education to
government, or to people supported by the government, in that education
could be used to inculcate “habits of servility and toleration of arbitrary
power”. But still, diffusing reading and writing to the whole people was too
“great a good” not to be willing to take a risk by trusting the State. But there
was a catch: the State would consider raising taxes solely for the education
of Church-of-England members oppressive and intolerable,73 hence a more
inclusive principle needed to be in play.
What is most important, Mill’s rhetoric in the Edinburgh Review seemed
to take up the ideal of social equality, which he suggested but left
unexplored in The Philanthropist. He argued that the “[t]he ‘alliance of
Church and State’ […] seems to mean merely the alliance of the majority
with the majority, in order to keep down the minority, which does not
appear either to be a very just or a very necessary measure”. Mill thus
moved beyond crass expediency, when he protested against the “alliance”,
since if “secur[ing] the excellence of any political institution” meant
connecting it with “a corporation of priests, dependent upon it by their
interests, and consequently bound, as far as interest is concerned, to support
it”, it would support it both “when it invades the rights of the people, as
well as when it protects them”. Nonetheless, enlisting the assistance of the
State and of the propertied classes for expanding education was necessary,
but only “to give the work a beginning”. Ultimately education would be
placed “on that foundation which it must always be most desirable to place
it,—the unconstrained support of those who have been brought to desire it”,
the lower classes themselves.74
By 1816, Mill was clear that education was “a benefit equally due to all”,
which had been only conferred on one portion of the community—it was a
good which the religious side of the debate wanted to distribute on
exclusionary principles.75 The State ought to fund reading, writing, and
accounts on non-exclusionary principles and leave religious education to
the interested parties themselves.76 Once enough evidence had accumulated
regarding religious teaching in non-denominational schools, Mill came to a
hard realization, forcing him to revise his argument: students did not
tolerate being in the same room with individuals from other denominations
when reading the Bible.77 In 1812, agreeing with Lancaster’s critics, Mill
had stressed that the importance of being “educated together” ought to be
evident to “a wise system of policy”, as it produced “unity and harmony of
feeling”, “mutual sympathy and benevolence”, i.e., “mollifying the
discordant feelings apt to arise from religious diversities”. Inculcating the
ability “to agree to differ; i.e. to have different opinions, without quarrelling
with one another, or hating one another on that account”,78 was admittedly
so important that, in light of the new evidence in 1816, the only alternative
was to drop religious teaching completely rather than abandoning schools
for all. Around this time, however, the West London Lancasterian
Association ceased to be active, following disagreements with the Royal
Lancasterian Association (by 1816 the British and Foreign Schools Society)
due to the latter’s insistence that the Bible should be the only book read at
Lancasterian schools and its demand that all children who did not attend a
place of worship on Sunday should be banned.79
For Mill, “[t]here is nothing which any one man sees to be an error,
which any other man who has the common use of common faculties may
not also be made to see is an error, if the proper instruments of proof are
only presented to him”.80 We have already seen how Mill hoped to expose
the “sophisms” of Lancaster’s critics, whose claims were backed by
“mischievous” principles. However, it was one thing to expose underlying
fallacies and quite another to attempt to combat commonplaces, but Mill’s
attempt could easily be mistaken for adversarial spirit or antagonism.
In one of his installments on the debate, Mill examined the commonplace
that education will only make the poor “discontented with their lot”: since
“we cannot elevate their conditions”, there is no point in “elevating their
minds”. “It is a strange thing”, Mill noted, bringing forward the ignorance
of the poor “as a reason against assisting them to acquire knowledge and
strength [in reasoning]”. The idea that some kinds of labor are degrading
persists, Mill argued, because “[d]uring ages of ignorance it was customary
to look with contempt and disgust upon the poverty-enduring portion of
mankind; and by association, with similar contempt and disgust upon the
operations in which they were habitually engaged”. Hence, believing that
there is something in the nature of labor, manual or intellectual, which
makes it inherently disagreeable, Mill noted, is a common misconception.
Classing some occupations higher than others owes more to this
misconception rather than anything inherent in the occupations themselves.
Bad smells, the absence of light, bad quality of air, and fatigue accompany a
number of different occupations, including activities done for amusement.
For Mill, most individuals need to work; they cannot obtain the necessities
for well-being otherwise. But work being necessary does not automatically
mean that it is disagreeable. Labor becomes disagreeable “only according to
the motive which produces it”. With sufficient incentive, disagreeableness
fades: “where slavery is not instituted, labor is free and men are prompted
to the various degrees of it by the motives they act upon them”. Excess of
labor will render any kind of work disagreeable but only because of the
increase of laborers and the consequent decrease of salaries which lead to
insufficient incentives being attached to labor. Education and knowledge,
Mill argued, “are the most probable means of removing that disproportion”,
since it will give some laborers the capability to seek employment with
better terms, and perhaps force those to whom they are indebted for their
abject condition to adduce sufficient motive to make “lower” occupations
more agreeable. But even if worst came to worst, and no alternative
“channel of occupation” was open,
education, which, however elementary, must have some efficacy in opening the eye of the
understanding, would enable the laboring classes to see somewhat more clearly their own
situation as it really is, and by the right ordering of their conduct, to obtain a greater measure
of happiness.

Education, rather than rendering laborers unhappy with their lot, may
enable them “to trace the causes by which […] [their lot] is unavoidably
produced, and to draw from it more completely the advantages which it is
capable of [w]ielding”.81
Moreover, Mill thought that “the more absurd and indefensible any thing
appears, which is seriously urged as a ground for pernicious conduct, the
more indispensable it is to avoid every appearance of a passionate, partial,
or precipitate decision” in the attempt to refute it. One must hear the other
side with attentiveness and impartiality: “nothing should be condemned
rashly”.82 So, in his essays and reviews, Mill made recurrent appeals to
evidence and facts, to intelligence and reason against weak argument and
untrue principles. For Mill, general education progressed slowly due to two
reasons: ignorance of the benefits of education and indifference to the
interests of mankind. “Education may be of great advantage; but what cares
he for the advantage of other men, whose thoughts are solely engaged about
himself”?83 Both causes of the slow progress of education needed to be
controverted to influence action—information was not enough.
Mill thought that nobody would deny that education was one of the most
important correctives to the condition of the lower classes—especially the
condition of their character.84 But in the earliest of the installments to the
debate, in the “Address of the Committee for promoting the Royal
Lancasterian System for the Education of the Poor”—which, according to
Bain, bore the “unmistakable traces” of Mill’s hand—Mill tried to show
that the education of the poor would “be attended with the most beneficial
effects”, for the whole of society.85 For example, Mill pointed out, that
It is probably not sufficiently considered to what an extent that dependence [i.e., the
dependence of “the superior and middling classes” “upon the cooperation and fidelity of our
subordinate brethren”] reaches; the poor are our inmates, and our guardians. They surround
our tables, they surround our beds, they inhabit our nurseries. Our lives; our properties; the
minds, and the health of our children, are to an inconceivable degree dependent upon their
good or evil qualities.86

Mill personally undertook to convince William Allen, a fellow member of

the Royal Lancasterian Society, to include the above “statement of the
influence which the moral & intellectual state of the lower orders has upon
the moral & intellectual state of the higher” in the “Address”. It was, Mill
argued, the “most powerful [reason] which it is possible to present to the
higher orders to interest themselves in the right training of the lower orders
& to be altogether free from any application that can tend to excite
alarm”.87
The emphasis on such social benefits had also been developed from
within the ranks of the Church of England. Thomas Robert Malthus had
argued in his famous Essay on Population (1798) that not only would some
form of parochial education, similar to the one in Scotland, have “the effect
of making them [the lower orders] bear with patience the evils which they
suffer”; more importantly, it would be less likely for them to be carried
away by “ambitious demagogues”. At the same time, actively engaging—
either directly or indirectly, i.e., by donations—in the betterment of the
condition of the poor benefits both the giver and the receiver.88
The extrinsic-value line of argument was not always at the forefront of
Mill’s contributions; he also argued that there was intrinsic value in
improving the intellectual and moral condition of the poor classes. For Mill,
“[a] man who can read and write feels himself a different sort of being, in a
different stage of existence, from the one who cannot”.89 In 1813, Mill tried
to direct his readers’ attention to something less tangible, counting on the
sympathetic capacities of those
who are capable of feeling the value of that inward happiness which results from a mind lifted
somewhat above the objects of mere animal pursuit,—qualified in some degree for the task of
reflection,—and open to the innumerable delights which it brings, can require no extraneous
 motives to ensure their zealous concurrence in any scheme which is likely to confer such
unspeakable advantages on so large a class of society.90

Reminiscent of the younger Mill’s discussion of the qualitative differences

in the different kinds of life, James Mill pled to “[l]et one generation only
of our countrymen be made to taste of knowledge in proper perfection, and
there is no danger that any coming generation will be left without it”.
Knowledge has that quality, the elder Mill noted, that when it connects with
the human mind, the connection becomes indissoluble.91
That bright picture of the possibility of “the life of an intellectual
being”,92 however, was in stark contrast to reality. Mill pressed on the
current state of the education of the poor, especially orphans: they were the
victims of neglect, abuse, and exploitation. “Let us not disguise the name”,
Mill noted: pauper apprenticeship was slavery, “slavery of the most strict
and most terrible kind”. Mill pushed the point that these children were
victims, “helpless, unprotected, unseen and unregarded. They suffer, they
linger, and they die; not a human being, for the most part, inquires what has
become of them”. And if the State could not care less about the condition of
parish apprentices, Mill hoped to induce “the people to have their eyes
upon” them and to consider saving parish apprentices from “cruelty and
oppression” their duty.93 True public spirit—“a habitual and generous
concern for the good of mankind”—is the “finest and rarest of all the fruits
of cultivation”.94
Even though the emphasis so far has been on Mill’s contributions to the
debate as instances of “rational persuasion”, not all of them were of this
sort. Early in the debate, Mill reviewed a poem on instruction celebrating
the anniversary of the setting up of the society for promoting Lancasterian
schools. Mill considered this an appropriate venue for bursting into a paean
for the Muses, on how art exposes the weak arguments as well as the dire
consequences of the actions of those who “counteract and discredit the
propagation of knowledge among the poor”. According to Mill, not only
does art shed light on the figures of the “lovers of the dark scene”, but it
also excites admiration for the noble character traits of those who combat
the “enemies of the bright”. Art exposed the enemies of education, Mill
added, “not surely for the sake of rendering” the character of the critics of
Lancasterian schools revolting, “but to make the undesirable, the dismal
consequences, to which their unhappy purposes lead, the more distinctly
seen, the more sure of being locked to the memory, and of operating with
their due force upon the active principles of man”.95 This was not an
isolated opinion. For Mill, “dramatic and epic poems, as well as novels and
romances” shared with “fictitious histories” the task of illustrating the
moral qualities of their main actors so that they can “come home to the
bosom of […] [their] readers, and call forth their love or their detestation”.
It is impossible to read works with such characteristics, Mill added, and
“rise without a warmer love of one’s country than before; without a stronger
disposition to make for it every sacrifice”, and “to account life not worth
preserving, where freedom, independence, liberty, are not enjoyed, where
tyranny reigns, or oppression operates”.96

IV Reforming parliament: James Mill in the 1820s

James Mill’s personal circumstances changed drastically in the years
between 1816, when his last article specifically on the education of the poor
appeared, and 1824, when his first article in the Westminster Review was
published. Inevitably there were marked differences between the two sets of
writing. On the one hand, Mill wrote significantly fewer articles in the
1820s on parliamentary reform than those on education in the previous
decade. Since Mill now had full license to develop his views, he did not
have to spread them out, or thin them out, so that his voice could be heard.
Also, no longer did Mill have the need to publish to provide for his family.
On the other hand, in the second series of articles, Mill more or less
expounded a familiar position, a position which had been circulated by
many—e.g., Jeremy Bentham (1817) and George Grote (1821)—not solely
Mill.
According to William Thomas, “it was by an unjust quirk of publicity
that his [James Mill’s] followers came to be called Benthamites”. Mill’s
personal magnetism, moral earnestness and talent “for seeing a spark of
idealism and blowing it into a flame”, Thomas adds, add credibility to John
Stuart Mill’s claim that it was his father’s personal views “which gave the
distinguishing character to the Benthamite or utilitarian propagandism of
that time”.97 Thomas quotes John Mill to also show that the younger
Benthamites instilled into the elder Mill’s views “a sectarian spirit, from
which, in intention at least, my father was wholly free”. Thomas thus
concludes, “[h]owever moderate James Mill’s actual views, he had by the
late 1820s become the oracle of an intolerant sect”.98 Thomas identifies a
tension between Mill’s explicit reference to parliamentary reform as the
primary end of the philosophic radicals and his silence over the means to
achieve it—the tension between Mill’s radical theory and his practical
concessions. However, Mill’s Commonplace Books suggest that his “actual”
views on reform were not moderate.99 This makes it all the more important
to examine Mill’s argument in essays prior to the Reform Act of 1832.
The setting up of the Westminster Review forced James Mill to step out of
the background and assist in making it an organ of radical opinions. His
first two articles, out of ten, attacked the established organs of party
propaganda: the Edinburgh Review and Quarterly Review. A mature John
Stuart Mill, reminiscing on the Westminster Review set-up, seemed to be
thoroughly impressed with this father’s performance in attacking the
Edinburgh Review: “So formidable an attack on the Whig party and policy
had never before been made; nor had so great a blow been ever struck, in
this country, for radicalism: nor was there, I believe, any living person
capable of writing that article, except my father”.100 The elder Mill’s
companion article on the Quarterly Review hardly received any mention by
the younger Mill. For good reason. Beyond the obvious difference, as
regards the subject matter, there was a noticeable change of direction in
James Mill’s method of argumentation.
The two articles were intended to be read as one. The introduction of the
first article is in effect an introduction to both; periodicals, Mill argued,
need immediate success:
It cannot wait for that success which depends upon the slow progress of just opinions, and the
slow removal of prevalent errors. It must aim at that immediate applause which is bestowed
only for immediate pleasure; for gratification administered to the mind in its present state; for
encouragement of the favourite idea, flattery of the reigning prejudice.101

According to Mill, both the Edinburgh Review and the Quarterly Review
pandered to the prejudices of the ruling, that is, the aristocratic, classes.
 Wherever a government is not so constituted as to exist solely for the good of the community,
aggregately considered, its powers are distributed into a certain number of hands, in some
cases bearing a greater, in some a less proportion to the whole community; but a number
always small in comparison with the population at large. This body, sharing among them the
powers of government, and sharing among themselves also the profits of misrule, we
denominate the aristocratical body; and by this term, or the aristocratical class, or in one
word, the aristocracy, we shall be careful to distinguish them. The comparatively small
number possessing political power compose the real aristocracy, by whatever circumstances,
birth, or riches, or other accident, the different portions of them become possessed of it.102

English aristocracy, Mill went on, consists in the ministerial and the
opposition parties. The difference between these two “sections” of the
aristocracy is that the former were satisfied with their share of the
advantages of power, while the latter not. Neither cared for the good of the
whole community—just for the one to be in, the other out.
Mill’s main argument against the Whigs and, in consequence, the
Edinburgh Review’s wholehearted diffusion of Whig views, was what he
termed as “see-saw” politics:
It is the interest of the Opposition, therefore, to act, in such a manner, or rather to speak,—for
speaking is their action,—so as to gain favour from both the few and the many. This they are
obliged to endeavour by a perpetual system of compromise, a perpetual trimming between the
two interests. To the aristocratical class they aim at making it appear, that the conduct of their
leaders would be more advantageous even to that class, than the conduct of the ministry,
which they paint in colours as odious to the aristocracy as they can. On the other hand to gain
the favour of the popular class, they are obliged to put forth principles which appear to be
favourable to their interests, and to condemn such measures of conduct as tend to injure the
many for the benefit of the few. In their speeches and writings, therefore, we commonly find
them playing at seesaw. If a portion of the discourse has been employed in recommending the
interests of the people, another must by employed in recommending the interests of the
aristocracy. Having spoken a while on the one side, they must speak a while on the other.
Having written a few pages on the one side, they must write as many on the other. It matters
not how much the one set of principles are really at variance with the other, provided the
discordance is not very visible, or not likely to be clearly seen by the party on whom it is
wished that the delusion should pass.103

This constant oscillation between irreconcilable and contradictory positions

and the delusion that Whigs have a distinctive political position, Mill
argued, is presented as the “middle course”, a feat of moderation and
wisdom. Not incidentally Mill offered examples from the “variegated
representation” scheme (i.e., representation of various interests in the House
of Commons) and the disenfranchisement of rotten boroughs,104 as counter-
examples of wisdom and moderation. Although typical in its explicit use of
associationist psychology and in its implicit view of political behavior as
knavery, Mill’s article included little of the rhetorical tropes of his earlier
polemic pieces, just a heap of textual evidence of the Edinburgh Review’s
“see-saw” politics. Notwithstanding the implied radical views on good
government and on the history of the formation of the aristocracy, Mill’s
article thus took the form of an exposé on sketchy practices of influencers
and politicians. He had a lot of things to praise the Edinburgh Review for,
and its contributors, but he left them for another occasion,105 should the
impact of his exposé be lessened.
Mill’s article on the Quarterly Review tried to pick up the thread from
where it was left in the first article. Both the Quarterly Review and the
Tories had a much easier task than that of the Whigs and the Edinburgh
Review: no need to compromise, no need to hide their party prejudices, no
need to ostensibly take the good of the community into consideration—
hence, no need for talent. All that mattered was the good of the ruling party
—to share in the spoils of government. The guiding question for Mill was
“whether there is any thing in our institutions, and how much, which
operates to the detriment of the people, and ought to be changed”.106 The
Quarterly Review’s answer varied from little to no room for change. In the
Quarterly Review, Mill noted,
The people are represented as altogether vile, and any desires which they may exhibit to see
the powers of government so disposed of, that they may have some security that these powers
shall not be employed for the benefit of the aristocracy at their expense, as inconceivably
wicked; as contrary, above all things, to religion; also contrary to law, and to order.107

Mill once again examined a number of passages from the publication under
scrutiny; however, this time, he focused explicitly on their argument for the
status quo, and the consequent attack on anything that might endanger it.
Mill’s review of Quarterly Review practices focused on what he dubbed
the ministerial party’s, and Quarterly Review’s, “aristocratical logic”, the
logic of power. Mill went on to list sixteen species (e.g., misrepresentation,
dishonesty, suppression of evidence, begging the question, argument from
authority, appealing to fear, ridicule, spite, etc.) of this the art of defending
power, i.e., “argumentum ab invidia ductum, or Dirt-flinging argument”,108
as expounded in Jean Le Clerc’s Opera Philosophica (1698). Mill inserted
numbers in quoted passages, showing how the Quarterly Review fell back
to assumption and abuse in their treatment of parliamentary reform. To
quote just one example of Mill’s logical dissection:
Figure (5) is prefixed to an assumption, that the mass of the nation are contented [“the mass
of the nation will for some time longer persist in their preference of the old-fashioned
government of king, lords, and commons, to that perfect state of political regeneration in
which the absence of all abuses must put an end to their comfortable enjoyment of hourly
complaint and remonstrance”]. This is directly contradictory to the assumption to which
figure (3) was prefixed [i.e.: “We could not easily point out, in the whole course of our
recollection, a single year during which the cowardly merit of being satisfied and contented
with their condition could be fairly imputed to our countrymen”]. True; but this was necessary
for the purpose of the Reviewer. And contradictions, though they are contrary to the rules of
ordinary logic, are by no means contrary to the logic of power.109

Mill cited passage after passage trying to establish a pattern of

misinformation, misrepresentation and unbridled hatred as regards change
or the forces that are conducive to change for the better (e.g., liberty of the
press, parliamentary reform)—Mill turned logic into a critical tool in the
service of parliamentary reform.
At the same time, Mill’s timing in reference to the use of logic in the
cause of reform was not incidental. In 1823, his eldest son stepped with full
fervor into the London Debating Club with sharpened logical armaments.
The description of “a Benthamite, as a dry, hard logical machine”110 did not
take long to follow Peregrine Bingham’s (1788–1864) 1824 edition and
publication of Bentham’s papers on political fallacies. More so, when, by
1826, Bingham and Charles Austin set up the Parliamentary History and
Review in which parliamentary debates were published according to
subjects, not in chronological order, and “accompanied by a commentary
pointing out the fallacies of the speakers”.111
Between 1825 and 1830, James Mill wrote a number of articles dealing
directly with the moderate-reform argument. His timing was thus significant
in another respect: just as the editor and the reviewers of the Edinburgh
Review “were very much aware of the proselytizing function of their
periodical”,112 so were the “philosophical reformers”. In 1825, Mill
discussed the Edinburgh Review’s stance on parliamentary reform. In 1827
and 1828 Mill discussed, and criticized, parliamentary conduct and the
composition of the legislative assembly; in 1830, he wrote a long article
specifically on the ballot. These articles commenced from the same premise
that “securities are necessary to prevent the powers which are lodged in the
managing hands [of ‘the general affairs of the community’] from either
exceeding the requisite amount, or being applied to improper purposes”.113
The 1825 article on the Edinburgh Review in particular presented a
concise version of Mill’s argument in the Encyclopaedia Britannica essay
on government. Around this time, some of Mill’s essays in the supplement
circulated, becoming, as we saw, “the text-books of the young men of the
Union at Cambridge”. In contrast to his two earlier articles in the
Westminster Review, the 1825 article could be easily recognized as being
from the same pen as the Encyclopaedia Britannica essays. As Mill told
John Ramsey McCulloch: the Edinburgh Review “deserve[d] no quarter” on
parliamentary reform: “It is of too great importance to let either puerilities
or sophisms be there taken for wisdom. Oh, Party! Party! what a corrupter
thou art!”114 Even though Mill’s argument for the ballot constituted an
important difference between the mid-to-late-1820s articles and the essay
on government, these articles had much in common with the latter’s
deductive style. However, by 1830 Mill made important concessions—not
on the means or the end of good government but on the capability of the
higher classes to achieve good government.
In 1825, Mill argued that the House of Commons did not serve its
purpose: to be a check on bad government. To serve as such a check, on the
one hand, the Commons had to be vested with enough power to counter-
weigh that of the Crown and the Lords, and on the other hand to actually
represent the people. The burden of proof thus rested on those who asked
for extended duration of the term of office for elected MPs, for limited
numbers of electors and for open, rather than secret, voting, since all these
three measures limited the extent, and the effect, of the representation of the
people in the House of Commons.115 He had offered some sort of
demonstration for his conclusions but admitted that he lacked the space to
present the links in the deductive chain properly.116
There were two inter-connected views, Mill reported, that rejected such
“radical” measures, stemming from the premise that the British Constitution
was intended to uphold a balance of power between the Crown, Lords, and
Commons. However, the House of Commons had essentially subsumed the
other two, creating thus a need for replicating the balance of power within
the Commons. The most important consequence of this complication was
that it necessitated (indirect) participation of the Crown and the Lords in the
Commons. The better solution to this complication was the variegated
representation scheme: the interests of all the different classes of society
had to be represented in the Commons: “the interest of the class of land-
owners, the interest of the class of merchants and manufacturers, the
interest of lawyers, the interest of learned men, and the interest of the
people, or the mass living by the sweat of their brow”. But, Mill argued,
these consisted of “the separate, distinct, and in some respects, hostile
interests, of the principal classes of men into which the community is
divided”.117
Mill explicitly referred to this scheme as developed in James
Mackintosh’s 1818 review of Bentham’s Plan of Parliamentary Reform
(1817), but traced the doctrine, as he had done in his essay on government,
to late-eighteenth-century Tory practice. Unexpectedly then, in reviewing
Edinburgh Review ideas on reform, Mill adduced a passage infused with
that “aristocratical logic” which he had identified in the Quarterly
Review.118 Piece by piece Mill tried to take Mackintosh’s “logic of power”
apart in the remaining article. Mill’s conclusion was not moderate, even if it
seemed so: “What we desire to obtain is, an elective body whose interests
are identified with those of the community. This is our end. And provided
that it is equally well obtained, that is, with equal certainty, and equal
advantage in all other respects, we are indifferent as to the means”. The
identity of interests depended upon uniformity, universality, and secrecy of
suffrage—the substance of Bentham’s Plan.119 In 1828, Mill accused the
legislative assembly of hypocrisy in condemning bribery at elections while
adopting no measures to prevent it, such as the ballot.120
Subsequent articles expanded the argument in bulk as well as stated the
grounds which warranted Mill’s conclusions. “A great majority” of the
legislative assembly, Mill pointed out in 1826, “is composed of the landed
aristocracy; and a still greater majority is nominated and sent there by the
will of that aristocracy”.121 Mackintosh agreed and approved.122 However,
Mill found fault with the prevalence of such private, partial, sinister interest
for one particular reason: popular dissatisfaction could never influence the
actions of such a band of brothers.
 When men are combined into an acting body, and have a kind of principle of unity bestowed
upon them, it is universally recognized, that the interest of the body is the ruling principle of
action. Their sympathies are with one another, not with those exterior parties whose interests
come in competition with theirs. And as for virtue, in their case, who knows not, that in most
minds, virtue consists in doing good to those with whom we sympathize? If there is any class
of sensitive creatures, totally removed from our sympathies, we little regard the effects which
our actions may have upon them.123

For this last claim, Mill was drawing from his Analysis,124 which was still
in progress at that time.
For Mill, different motives “predominate in the breast of individuals”
than those “which act upon the class as a class, and by which, as a class,
they must be governed”. Mill accepted that “other motives, […] always
may, and very often do, actuate individuals” but what mattered most was
ascertaining “the course of action to which that desire [i.e., to render the
advantage as great as possible] must conduct the class”.125 Additionally, in
claiming that virtue consists in benefiting those whom we deem peers, Mill
defined the honestum in terms of the utilitas. Virtue was a cluster of
associations, which included self-regarding (prudence, fortitude) and other-
regarding virtues (justice, beneficence).126 For Mill, that cluster was
comprised of, among other ideas, the feelings resulting from doing good to
others, of the pleasures the benefactor feels with the benefited, the
expectation of reciprocation when acts of virtue are committed, and the
pleasures of approbation. That was why, in connection with the last, praise
and blame, Mill argued, are
the great instruments we possess for ensuring moral acts on the part of our Fellow-creatures;
and when we squander away, or prostitute those great causes of virtue, and thereby deprive
them of a great part of their useful tendency, we do what in us lies to lessen the quantity of
Virtue, and thence of Felicity, in the world.127

Not only David Hartley but also Adam Smith informed this last part.
Mill’s psychological theory rendered it possible to expand the circle of
sympathy to include “any class of sensitive being”. However, for most
human associations the circle was much tighter. In 1814, Mill had already
identified the reasons for the selfish propensities in individuals, i.e., a bad
education:
Under the coarse and unskilful tuition of rude and ignorant ages the dissocial passions are
little subject to restraint; the selfish passions are allowed to operate freely and expand
 themselves; and no pains are employed to cultivate and to strengthen those principles of the
mind by which we derive pleasure and pain from the happiness and misery of our fellow men.
The youth under such a discipline, grows up into a man, having little regard for any other
feelings than his own; occupied abundantly with the desire of his own happiness, but seldom
troubling himself about the fate of others; little disposed to put himself to any inconvenience
for promoting their happiness, or to make any sacrifice for alleviating their misery.128

In Analysis, Mill traced how human beings form attachments of friendship,

kindness, and compassion to others, beginning with family, party, country,
and mankind. Such relationships evince “a principle of unity”, as we saw, in
which the members of a family, party, country, and even mankind, share in
the causes of pleasure and pain—for example, if the well-being of a child
does not form the primary concern in a family, it cannot be properly called a
“family”.129
Mill’s views on the connection between education, virtue and the
promotion of social happiness varied little throughout his career. Writing in
1805, Mill argued that “the business of all men who wish to benefit their
species is to cultivate their reason not to listen to their passions, or temper,
but to acquire a steady and perfect habit of consulting their reason solely, in
a case in which it alone can give proper advice”.130 As we saw, in his
magnum opus, Mill argued that, at a higher state of civilization, “the mind
of man is susceptible of pleasure from the approbation, pain from the
disapprobation, of his fellow-creatures”, which makes human beings
“capable of restraint”.131 In the 1820s, Mill repeated these old views:
Of all the crimes which it is possible for a human being to commit against his fellow
creatures, that of corrupting the springs of government is beyond all comparison the worst.
Other crimes strike at the well-being of one, or at most, of a few individuals. This strikes at
the well-being of all the myriads, of whom the great body of the community is composed,
from generation to generation.132

Mill naturally drew from familiar sources. Around this time, in his copy of
Bekker’s Plato, Mill marked a relevant passage:
Is there any greater evil we can mention for a city than that which tears it apart and makes it
many instead of one? Or any greater good than that which binds it together and makes it one?
There isn’t. And when, as far as possible, all the citizens rejoice and are pained by the same
successes and failures, doesn’t this sharing of pleasures and pains bind the city together? It
most certainly does.133
Mill did take a note of this passage in his Commonplace Books,
categorizing it in materials concerning reform. It was an “admirable passage
—for quotation on any occasion, when the necessity of this community of
interests is to be displayed”.134 In 1835, he used it explicitly in his response
to James Mackintosh and Thomas B. Macaulay as well as implicitly,
without reference to or acknowledgment of Plato, in his essay on the reform
of the Church.135 Furthermore, as we saw, in his copy of Cicero’s Opera
Omnia, Mill marked a passage in Cicero’s On Duties:
[…] And so, we have heard, Socrates used to pronounce a curse upon those who first drew a
conceptual distinction between things naturally inseparable. With this doctrine the Stoics are
in agreement in so far as they maintain that if anything is morally right, it is expedient, and if
anything is not morally right, it is not expedient (Off. 3.11).136

In the third book of On Duties, Cicero brings honestum and utilitas together
in a simple rule of conduct (3.19): “This, then, ought to be the chief end of
all men, to make the interest of each individual and of the whole body
politic identical. For, if the individual appropriates to selfish ends what
should be devoted to the common good, all human fellowship will be
destroyed” (3.20). When people fail to recognize that they “are bound to
their fellow-citizens” by mutual obligations, social ties, and common
interests, “the whole structure of civil society” falls apart (3.28).
The elder Mill’s writings in the mid-to-late-1820s revealed another
important piece in his argument for reform. According to Mill,
Those who have observed the workings of human nature upon the greater as well as the
smaller scale, are well aware of this most important fact, that every class or combination of
men have a strong propensity to get up a system of morality for themselves, that is,
conformable to their own interests; in other words, to urge upon other men, as good, such
lines of conduct as are good for them; as evil, such as are evil for them, whether good or evil
to other people.

What is more, Mill added, “among the maxims laid down and approved for
the classification of actions as good and bad, as right and wrong, there are
many by which actions are received into the class of good, solely or chiefly
because they are good for the aristocracy, though not good for the rest of the
community”.137 In 1829, Mill tried to explain that “Our proneness to
sympathize with the Rich and Great […] has been described as a readiness
to go along with them in their affections; to desire the accomplishment of
their ends; and to lend ourselves for the attainment of them”.138 Analyzing
this “law of nature” Mill essentially argued that the lower ranks develop
some kind of “Stockholm Syndrome”, identifying with their captors and
sharing in their values. To this effect, given that “our opinions are the
fathers of our actions” and given that “the actions of men are governed by
their wills, and their wills by their desires”, and “their desires are directed to
pleasure and relief from pain”,139 it was vital that individuals do not take
the opinions of others upon trust or let others choose opinions for them
about what is in their interest to pursue.140 Creating habits of examining the
evidence which grounds opinions was thus quite important—a habit which
begins, Mill maintained, with self-examination.141 Quoting William Jones,
Mill pointed out that
“mankind cannot long be happy without virtue, nor actively virtuous without freedom, nor
securely free without rational knowledge”: but that happiness is placed within the reach,
commonly of the individual, and always of the community, in proportion as honest industry
flourishes, in proportion as sound religion inculcates pure morality, and the diffusion of
rational knowledge secures public and private liberty. To promote these desirable objects, let
every reformer take one individual in hand and begin […] with himself.142

Establishing habits of attending to evidence puts one on guard against “the

rewards of believing in a certain way” which “makes the understanding, not
the regulator of the will; but the pander to all its vices”.143 Thus, “[t]he
power of generating opinions by any thing but evidence”, according to Mill,
“a power so useful for wicked purpose, so utterly needless for any good
purpose, should be invariably wrested from the hands of the masters, and
would-be oppressors of mankind”.144 Expectedly, Mill concluded that in
order for social and political education not to create “habits of servility and
toleration of arbitrary power”, it needs to be “joined to another inestimable
blessing”: the liberty of the press. Uncensored public discussion, for Mill,
had the Socratic function of developing an ability to form one’s own
estimate of things.145
In all these publications in the 1820s, Mill tried to substantiate the
argument that an assembly constituted on the principle of “variegated
representation” could not combine the various group interests to make a
whole—identified with that of the whole community. Rather, interests
would only combine in the higher ranks of society to keep the middle and
lower ranks away from power.. After all, Mill argued that “[t]he group,
called a Party, or Class, generates associations, which have produced great,
we may say terrible, effects, in human life”.146 Thus in 1828, Mill argued
that
We are disposed to state a very decided, and well considered opinion, that no set of men,
entrusted with legislation, on the face of the whole earth, have shewn a more steady and
exclusive selfishness of purpose, less of regard for the well-being, in any shape, of the people
put under them, and a more determined and unvarying hostility to every proposal of
improvement which would benefit the people by diminishing the advantages of misrule, than
your history will shew to have been maintained and fostered by you, nay, erected for
yourselves into a standard point of morality.147

Mill questioned the motives of the legislators behind the

disenfranchisement of rotten boroughs since members from such boroughs
were often among the most virtuous. The real solution of the problem of
bribery and illegitimate entry into the House of Commons, Mill argued, was
the ballot. “This point, like all others”, Mill argued, “must hereafter be
debated on the ground of reason; nor will it be long that the weight of
evidence can be withstood. Let Reason use her weapons, with perseverance,
as well as courage; the result of the conflict may be foretold”.148
From the very beginning, Mill’s 1820s political tracts tried to make one
thing clear: “What the people of England want, is, such a mode of placing
members in the House of Commons, as wilt prevent the predominance in it
of any particular interest, and render predominant the common—the general
interest”.149 In 1830, attempting once again to counter the arguments
against the ballot, Mill tried something different. Sure enough, Mill had not
changed his mind that government must be left to “rational conviction”,
neither naked force, nor fraud being “competent to insure the obedience of
mankind”.150 Mill addressed those who “care for evidence” and “know how
to value it”.151 This time, however, his guide was not the essay on
government, but the History of British India.152
Evidently more polished than any other of his articles in the previous
fifteen years, Mill’s “Ballot” accepted the premises of the aristocratical
logic, i.e., the assumptions and the abuse of the people on the part of the
enemies of the ballot:
 The voter for a member of parliament has a trust placed in his hands, on the discharge of
which the highest interests of his country depend. Moral obligation is without a meaning, if
the faithful discharge of this is not among the highest of all moral acts; the faithless discharge
one of the basest of all immoral ones. To render this high obligation more binding still, the
sanction of an oath is added. The voter solemnly swears, that he will not betray, but will
faithfully execute, his trust. What happens? The unfortunate voter is in the power of some
opulent man; the opulent man informs him how he must vote. Conscience, virtue, moral
obligation, religion, all cry to him, that he ought to consult his own judgment, and faithfully
follow its dictates. The consequences of pleasing, or offending, the opulent man, stare him in
the face; the oath is violated, the moral obligation is disregarded, a faithless, a prostitute, a
pernicious vote is given. Who is the author of this perjury, this prostitution, this treachery?
There are two odious criminals; but assuredly the voter is the least criminal, and the least
odious of the two.153

By taking away the certainty of a pernicious vote, the ballot would in effect
allow, at least, for an honest one. Despite claims to the contrary by
antagonists, Mill tried to show that the argument for the ballot was not a
priori—the particular circumstances of the British mattered greatly as to the
effectiveness of open voting.154 The openness of the voting, Mill argued,
corrupts the British government and the morals of the British people.
Mill went so far as to accept that there was no need for any other reform:
“Allow every thing else to remain as it is. Keep to the same voters exactly,
and distribute them after the same manner. Do not even alter the duration of
parliaments. Not that these things are as they should be”.155 Although this
was an important concession, there was an even more important one: “Our
opinion, therefore, is, that the business of government is properly the
business of the rich”. There was indeed room for the “legitimate influence
of property”; but it had to be secured via the ballot. Mill’s authority was
Plato. In the article, Mill paraphrased the well-known maxim, found in
Plato’s Republic, “δεῖ[ν], ὃταν τῳ ἢδη βίος ᾖ, ἀρετὴ ἀσκεῖν”, as “[a] man
has peculiar advantages for attaining the highest excellence of his nature,
when he is above the necessity of labouring for the means of
subsistence”.156 With this piece of ancient advice, Mill argued for the need
that “government should be placed in the hands of the Αριστοι”; not only
those who were truly excellent, the best (the Greek sense of Βέλτιστοι) but
those who could also afford the time needed to focus solely on their duties
to govern, i.e., “the Αριστοι and Βελτιστοι”.157 Only they, he maintained,
had the opportunity to cultivate these excellences, and create the conditions
to diffuse them to all:
 We think, that putting the elective suffrage on a proper footing would afford that motive to the
men of property in England. Men of property love distinction; but the distinction of property,
where it is not connected with political power, or strongly associated with the idea of it, is
insignificant. The great desire of men of property, therefore, always will be for the distinction
connected with public services. But, if they had an adequate motive for the acquisition, in a
superior degree, of the high mental qualities, which fit men for the discharge of public duties,
it cannot be doubted that they have great, and peculiar advantages, for the accomplishment of
their purpose. Other men, even those who are not confined to mechanical drudgery, are under
the necessity of employing the greater part of their lives, in earning the means either of
subsistence or independence. The men who are born to a property which places them above
such necessity, can employ the whole of their lives in acquiring the knowledge, the talents,
and the virtues, which would entitle them to the confidence of their fellow citizens. With
equal motive, and superior advantages, they would, of course, in general, have superior
success. They would be the foremost men in the country, and so they would be esteemed.158

Not being able to count on success via illegitimate means, the Rich would
acquire a motive for gaining legitimate influence through their virtue—but
for that virtue to be recognized, similar dispositions would have to be
cultivated in the people. Confident that his audience would acknowledge
that he had reached this conclusion from the established principles of
human nature, Mill tried to draw an attractive, to his opponents, picture of
how such a society would be:
But, if the men of power and influence in the country, along with sufficient motives to take
the utmost pains with their own intellects and morals, had the like motives to take pains with
the intellects and morals of the people; to do whatever could be done for rendering their early
education perfect; to take the utmost care of their morals through life, by a correct use of their
approbation and disapprobation, as well as their power of giving and withholding good; to
watch over the instruction given to them; to take them out of the hands of those who have an
interest in giving them wrong opinions, to use the press with skill and activity, for the
producing all sorts of salutary impressions, and obviating every impression of a different
kind; what delightful consequences would ensue? We should then have a community, through
which wisdom and virtue would be universally diffused; and of which the different classes
would be knit together by the ties of mutual benefaction. In those circumstances, the order
and harmony of society would be perfect. The business of government would be carried on
with the utmost simplicity, because purely for the good of all. Every individual would exert
himself in his sphere to provide for his own wants, and have wherewithal to benefit others;
and few men would be destitute of that prudence and energy which would place, and keep
him, in that situation.159

In light of Mill’s so-called “hatred of the few”,160 the above picture he tried
to sketch was a major concession. In the essay on government, as well as in
earlier essays,161 Mill had confined the role of a “countervailing force” to
the “aggrandizement of aristocracy” to the “middling ranks”. In the first
four years of Benthamite reviewing in the Westminster Review, Nesbitt
argued, a primary objective was the “weakening of the power of the two
major parties and the proportionate strengthening of the middle class”.162
However, by 1830, Mill had identified what those who would vote on the
Reform Act primarily desired: to be considered the Aristoi and the Beltistoi.
He thus tried to ease their fears that they might lose their sources of esteem
and admiration with reform—but no longer could they use their privileges
to gain such esteem, they would have to work for it by promoting social
happiness.

V Conclusion
According to Hugh Blair, “[c]onviction affects the understanding only;
persuasion, the will and the practice. It is the business of the philosopher to
convince me of truth; it is the business of the orator to persuade me to act
agreeably to it, by engaging my affections on its side”.163 A man, according
to Blair, is “moved by many different springs”; the orator “must act upon
them all”, “[h]e must address himself to the passions; he must paint to the
fancy, and touch the heart”. “[S]olid argument and clear method” are
essential, but insufficient in moving the reader or the audience. Likewise,
persuasion without conviction is unlikely to be stable.164 Clear, solid
argument was thus indispensable to the orator, but not the one and only
component of a persuasive speech. If one adheres rigidly to the distinction,
Mill was simply better at conviction than persuasion, but he was not alone
in thinking that Demosthenes, not Cicero, would be better adapted to a
British audience.
In 1823, Samuel Bailey selected extracts from Mill’s contributions to the
Bell–Lancaster debate for being “remarkable for the graces of their style,
the energy of their sentiments, or the acuteness and ingenuity of their
reasoning”.165 I have tried to show evidence in support of Bailey’s view. At
the same time, a broadened review of Mill’s works allows for a better
appreciation of his contributions to the debates themselves—there was a
right time for antagonism and opposition. In the debate on education, that
time was when Lancaster’s critics challenged his supporters to meet
Marsh’s “able reasoning”. But even when Mill wrote with a sting—his
contributions to The Philanthropist exhibit the most evidence to what
Urbinati called adversarial rhetoric—he was as much eager to expose
fallacious arguments as to engage the social feelings of his audience.
Progressively, however, rather than jeopardize the true ends of the
education of the poor, Mill’s argument became more radical, dropping
religious education altogether. In contrast, in the debate on parliamentary
reform, he gradually tried to incorporate the worries of his opponents in
order to convince the critics of reform that they had nothing to fear, not
even when adopting the ballot. Keeping his sights on the bigger picture,
Mill’s proposals on reform became more moderate, even when clothed in
polemical language. Mill’s final call to the opponents of reform was for co-
operation for “mutual benefaction”. Not only had he just exhibited a
willingness to co-operate with those who could be thought his “enemies”,
by supporting a cleric for the headmaster’s position at the preparatory
school of that “infidel College in Gower street”, but also, he recommended
Thomas Babington Macaulay for a government post in India which, as
Winch noted, Mill thought fit for “a man capable of taking a philosophic
view of politics”.166
The language used by an author, Mill noted in 1806, can exhibit both
philosophical and rhetorical virtues: accuracy and precision as well as
smoothness and neatness.167 Mistaking his method of persuasion for his
method of philosophical analysis, Mill’s critics have charged him with
intellectualism, repetitiveness, and disputatiousness. Both in the education
of the poor and parliamentary reform, he “fe[lt] the whole force of the
difficulty which the true view of the subject ha[d] to encounter and dispose
of”.168 In the attempt to do just that, “accustomed to wield the authority of a
school master”,169 he put the “didactic art” to work. Not only did Mill’s
method of argumentation bear all the marks of rational persuasion; he
wittingly chose to dress his argument in a logical guise—there were
occasions when he “broke character”. According to Mill, “the philosopher
loves the truth for its own sake” and employs a “philosophical method” to
find it; it mattered little where “truth” was to be found—whether it was
condemned or celebrated, “defended by a famous author” or “hidden in the
work of an obscure” one.170
 The love of virtue, Mill argued in 1806, is a “calm and holy affection it
expresses itself with earnestness and warmth, but not with heat and
violence”; no passionate tone of mind is then consistent with any speaker
who is trying to inculcate the love of virtue and excite the service of it.171 In
each and every piece of writing, Mill addressed those who would “candidly
weigh our arguments, and joyfully receive conviction, if we are enabled to
impart it”.172 The means, argumentative proof—correctly defining and
distinguishing ideas, drawing implications to particulars from principles of
human nature—were admittedly but half of persuasion; the rest was
provided by drawing on experience, consequences and effects in real-life
situations. Mill pointed to the examples of Ireland, Scotland, Holland, and
Switzerland to support the various arguments he developed throughout the
debate on the education of the poor.173 In contrast, in the tracts on
parliamentary reform, the consistency of Mill’s argument hinged on a
conception of virtue which he only spelled out between 1826 and 1829,
expecting it to be familiar enough. Given the criticism his work received,
particularly after 1825, he shouldn’t have had such an expectation. Perhaps
his mistake was ignoring his own advice: “A partisan”, he noted, “can never
see the least good in the party he opposes; he would wish it to be believed it
has none”.174
In 1811, commenting on a manuscript on economics by Mill, Ricardo
noted that Mill’s piece “assails our adversaries in most of their strongholds
and contains the most close reasoning of any thing that has appeared on our
side of the question”. However, Ricardo criticised Mill for being too swift
in his definitions, often conceding too much to his adversaries175—
Ricardo’s estimate could have held true about his essays on parliamentary
reform as well. But that would suit Mill fine:
It appears to me that the population in this country with regard to some important
improvement in their government may be compared to a vessel of water exposed to a
temperature at 32o. Leave it perfectly still, and the water will remain uncongealed; shake it a
little, and it shoots into ice immediately. All great changes in society, are easily effected,
when the time is come.176

Writing in 1835, Mill was convinced that he was right; reform did not
depend on particular individuals: “The fulness of time was come. The
harvest was ripe for the sickle, and there would not have been wanting men
to put it in”.177 It seems that Mill just wanted to get his foot in the door; and
he did.
In both Chapters 4 and 5, I have tried to show that the dominant
interpretation of Mill’s method of argumentation exaggerates some features
and oversimplifies others. Exaggeration and oversimplification owe as
much to a flawed understanding of Mill’s philosophical and rhetorical
methods, as to a partial reading of texts situated within a public debate. This
brings us to the final piece of the puzzle of Mill’s utilitarian logic and
politics: the infamous essay on government.

Notes
1 Stephen, 1900: II.288.
2 McCabe, 2014: 38.
3 ibid., 52–7.
4 Rosen 2003a and 2007.
5 Urbinati, 2013: 57–8.
6 For the distinction, see O’Keefe, 2012: 24.
7 Urbinati, 2013: 53.
8 ibid., 54.
9 ibid., 57
10 See Varouxakis, 2013.
11 McCabe, 2014: 39–42.
12 ibid., 42–52.
13 Mack, 1963: 19.
14 Mill, 1818: 260.
15 Mill, 1835a: 27.
16 ibid., 32.
17 ibid., 125–6. See Loizides, 2019b for a discussion of the two Mills’ appropriation of Socratic
dialectic.
18 CPB: 102v (on Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, III.9.7).
19 CPB: II.22r(d); cf. Aristotle, R 1355b2–7 and with Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 10. See also, Mill,
1809a: 101–2.
20 Mill, 1835c: 214, 216.
21 See Mill on “Belief” and “Evidence” (which “is either the same thing with Belief, or it is the
antecedent, of which Belief is the consequent”) in Mill, 1829: I.254–308 and I.313–20.
22 J. Mill to D. Ricardo, 3 Jan. 1816, Ricardo: VII.5.
23 J.A. Blair, 2012: 24 citing O’Keefe, 2002: 5.
24 Johnson, 2002: 150.
25 J.A. Blair, 2012: 73–5.
26 ibid., 79–80.
27 Johnson, 2002: 150.
28 Eemeren, Grootendorst and Henkemans, 2002: xii.
29 J.A Blair, 2012: 72.
30 Mill, 1826a: 6 citing Wardlaw, 1825: 5.
31 Mill, 1825a: 194.
32 Mill, 1814b: 326–7, 326n.
33 Fenn, 1987: ch 1.
34 Mill, 1815c: 181.
35 Voltaire to Helvetius, 2 Jul. 1763, in Voltaire, 1819–1825: LII.149–51.
36 Mill, 1824a: 208–9.
37 Mill, 1813d: 345.
38 Minutes, 30 Apr. 1821, in Political Economy Club, 1882: 39.
39 On Mill’s various educational projects, see Burston, 1973: ch. 3.
40 See Bain, 1882: 83ff.
41 E. Wakefield to F. Place, 7 Dec. 1813, cited in Wallas, 1898: 99; Bain, 1882: 86.
42 Mill continued to defend Lancasterian institutions even when he and others lost patience with
Lancaster’s extravagant behavior; see Mill, 1814a.
43 Anon., 1811: 265.
44 Lancaster, 1803: viii.
45 Trimmer, 1805: 16.
46 Marsh, 1811a: 13–14, 18.
47 ibid., 38–40.
48 ibid., 30–2.
49 Anon., 1811: 289.
50 Anon., 1809: 423.
51 ibid., 426.
52 Bell, 1808: 292. See also, Lancaster’s letter to the Morning Post (“To the Editor/To the British
Public”, 4 Sep. 1811: 3); Marsh, 1811b: 13–14.
53 Mill, 1812c: 652. Mill was being more than generous, since views such as that of the Anti-
Jacobin Review were standard. As Fenn put it in reference to a similar comment in 1819 (Mill,
1819b: 29), Mill’s comment was “advocacy disguised as empirical comment” (Fenn, 1987:
83n113).
54 Mill, 1812e: 91.
55 Published also as a pamphlet: Mill, 1812a.
56 Mill, 1812f: 58–60.
57 ibid., 57–8.
58 ibid., 59–63.
59 ibid., 64–68.
60 ibid., 68–72.
61 ibid., 72–77.
62 ibid., 75–80, 83–4. Mill went on to reply to specific points made by Marsh (ibid., 84–100) and
the Quarterly Review (ibid., 100–5).
63 Mill, 1813d: 156.
64 Mill, 1812d: 787.
65 ibid., 790. Mill did not accept all aspects of Lancaster’s methods uncritically, even when he
thought there were no better alternatives (e.g., on punishment, ibid., 788–90).
66 ibid., 790.
67 ibid., 796. Mill, 1813e: 214.
68 Mill, 1812d: 791. He repeated this argument in Mill, 1813e: 213–14.
69 Mill, 1812d: 792–3.
70 ibid., 798.
71 This was a recurrent argument in Mill’s essays; see e.g. Mill, 1812d: 797–8 and 1813e: 210–
11.
72 Mill, 1812e: 90–94.
73 Mill, 1813e: 210–12. Mill argued that the second danger would be held in check by a free
press. By 1815, Mill could point to the example of France as regards state-assisted education
(see Mill, 1815c).
74 Mill, 1813e: 211, 216–17, 219.
75 Mill, 1816c: 264, 240.
76 ibid., 277–8.
77 ibid., 264–7.
78 Mill, 1812f: 104–6. Mill discussed this point in more detail in another reply to the Quarterly
Review in Mill, 1813c.
79 Burston, 1973: 69.
80 Mill, 1814b: 325.
81 In this section, I draw on Mill, 1813d: 344–52.
82 Mill, 1813e: 209.
83 Mill, 1814b: 323.
84 Mill, 1813b.
85 “Address of the Committee for promoting the Royal Lancasterian System for the Education of
the Poor”, Committee for Promoting the Royal Lancasterian System, 1811: 277–8; Bain, 1882:
86.
86 Committee for Promoting the Royal Lancasterian System, 1811: 277.
87 J. Mill to W. Allen, 17 Jan. 1811, in Fenn, 1987: 54–55. As the “statement” made it to the
“Address”, Mill did convince Allen. Fenn could not identify the article in which this statement
appeared because it appeared in the Address of the Committee, published in the third number
of the Philanthropist, not in one of Mill’s individual articles.
88 Malthus, 1798: bk. 4, chs 8–9.
89 Mill, 1812i: 338; see also Mill, 1812c: 652.
90 Mill, 1813e: 208–9.
91 Mill, 1811a: 400.
92 Mill, 1813d: 345.
93 Mill, 1815d: 12–13, 15.
94 Mill, 1814b: 327.
95 Mill, 1811a: 400–1.
96 Mill, 1809a: 101–3. Note the similarity with J.S. Mill, “Inaugural Address”, CW: XXI. 254.
97 Thomas, 1979: 96–7 citing J.S. Mill, Autobiography, CW: I.105.
98 Thomas, 1979: 135 citing J.S. Mill, Autobiography, CW: I.111.
99 See Appendix I in Fenn, 1987.
100 J.S. Mill, Autobiography, CW: I.95.
101 Mill, 1824a: 210.
102 ibid., 211.
103 ibid., 218.
104 ibid., 219–21.
105 Mill, 1824b: 463–4.
106 ibid., 468.
107 Mill, 1825a: 219.
108 Mill, 1824b: 466–8.
109 ibid., 469–71.
110 J.S. Mill, Autobiography, CW: I.110.
111 ibid., 121.
112 Clive, 1957: 121.
113 Mill, 1825a: 194.
114 J. Mill to J.R McCulloch, 18 Aug. 1825, in Bain, 1882: 292–3.
115 Mill, 1825a: 198ff.
116 ibid., 196.
117 ibid., 210.
118 ibid., 206.
119 ibid., 220ff. See, for details, infra Chapter 6.
120 Mill, 1828: 338–9.
121 Mill, 1826b: 265.
122 Mill, 1825a: 218. See, for details, infra Chapter 6.
123 Mill, 1827: 773.
124 Mill, 1829: II.228–9.
125 Mill, 1824a: 216–17.
126 Mill, 1829: I.306, II.240.
127 Mill, 1829: II.251.
128 Mill, 1814b: 327.
129 Mill, 1829: II.172ff.
130 Villers, 1805: 35n.
131 History: II.433–4.
132 Mill, 1825b: 191–2. Mill paints the contrast between a corrupted and a morally exalted
government as regards the character of the people in bold colors.
133 Plato, Republic: 462a–b. Translation is Grube and Reeve’s (Plato, 1997).
134 CPB: I.166r. See also CPB: V.24r–25v.
135 Mill, 1835a: 287–88; and 1835d: 292.
136 Translation is Miller’s (Cicero, 1913).
137 Mill, 1826a: 255–6. See also Mill, 1828: 369. As proof of philosophers being “well-aware” of
this “important fact” Mill referred his readers to Claude Adrien Helvétius’s De l’Esprit (1758).
On this, Mill could also cite Plato’s Republic I (e.g., 344c), as he took a note of this section in
CPB: I.165r. He eventually did cite it (see Mill, 1835b: 247).
138 Mill, 1829: II.167.
139 Mill, 1820: 496.
140 Mill, 1826a: 11ff and 1821b: 21, 28–9.
141 Mill, 1826a: 10–11. See, CPB: I.15 (on Plato, Gorgias: 480b–d; 521d–22a).
142 Mill, 1816h: 312.
143 CPB: III.101v.
144 CPB: I.20r.
145 Mill, 1821b: 29–30; 1813h: 212. As we saw in Chapter 2, Mill extensively cited Plato’s
Apology with regard to uncensored discussion. See, e.g., CPB: I.8r, 14r, 97v; III.142v, 210v.
For more details about Mill’s argument on the liberty of the press, see Grint, 2017.
146 Mill, 1829: II.230.
147 Mill, 1828: 342. See also Mill, 1827: 789.
148 Mill, 1828: 363.
149 ibid.
150 Mill, 1830: 3.
151 ibid., 6.
152 ibid., 28–9.
153 ibid., 11.
154 ibid., 15, 22–26.
155 ibid., 16–17.
156 ibid., 37; Plato, Republic: 407a.
157 Mill, 1830: 38.
158 ibid., 37.
159 ibid., 38–9.
160 The phrase is Bentham’s, see Bentham: X.450.
161 See, e.g., Mill, 1811b: 417.
162 Nesbitt, 1934: 45.
163 H. Blair, 1789: II.157–8.
164 ibid., 158.
165 Bailey, 1823: viii.118–19.
166 Burston, 1973: 75; Winch, 1966: 21.
167 Mill, 1806l: 127.
168 J.S. Mill, On Liberty, CW: XVIII.245.
169 J. Mill to D. Ricardo, 9 Nov. 1815, in Ricardo: VI.321.
170 CPB: III.105v.
171 Mill, 1806d: 265.
172 Mill, 1813d: 348.
173 Mill, 1813c: 176–9. For historical examples, see Mill, 1813d: 352 and 1814b: 329ff.
174 Mill, 1812d: 785. See also, ibid. 793.
175 D. Ricardo to J. Mill, 26 Sep. 1811, Ricardo: VI.53.
176 J. Mill to D. Ricardo, 17 Oct. 1817, Ricardo: VII.198.
177 Mill, 1835a: 153.
6 Good government1

Elie Halévy famously stated that Mill took from Bentham “a doctrine” and
gave back “a school”. The reasons were simple: Mill’s “genius for logical
deduction and exposition” of other’s ideas, his “energetic temperament and
despotic character”, made him the “ideal disciple for Bentham”.2 Mill’s
essay “Government” is thus awarded a special place in Benthamite
Radicalism history. As we also saw, according to Alexander Bain; the essay
provided a unique opportunity for Mill to develop “the whole theory of
Government in a compact shape”.3 Mill attempted to ground his argument,
for extending the right to vote, on principles of human nature: it was a vital
condition for the promotion of the community’s interests and the protection
of those interests from abuse of power.
In this chapter, instead of trying to understand Mill’s project by studying
what followed the publication of the essay—the rise of Philosophical
Radicalism—I focus on what preceded it. First, I argue that “Government”
formed a part of his political theory, not the “whole”. Mill’s earlier essays,
reviews, and The History of British India (1817) stressed a number of
conditions of good government: extensive representation, frequent
elections, the ballot, education, publicity, and freedom of thought and
discussion formed equally important conditions of good government—
though under specific historical conditions. In contrast, Mill’s
“Government” focused exclusively on the identification of interests through
representation. As we saw, focusing on one specific condition, taking one
step at a time with an audience reluctant to give its assent, constituted a
typical argumentative strategy for Mill.
If not all of Mill’s ideas on good government made it into “Government”
what was the rationale behind those which did? So, second, to account for
Mill’s emphasis, I examine “Government” as part of the debate on reform
which followed the publication of Jeremy Bentham’s Plan of Parliamentary
Reform (1817). I turn first to Bentham’s Plan and its critics and then revisit
Mill’s essay. Even though I agree with readings which view the essay as a
“thinly-veiled Benthamite critique of contemporary approaches to reform”,4
distinguishing between the Whig and the Tory views on reform has a direct
bearing on Mill’s argument. I suggest that Mill sharpened his focus,
concentrating on one specific condition of good government, in response
not to the Whig “moderate reform” argument, but rather to a prominent
Tory anti-reform argument—that is, in response to the “anti-reformers”
rather than the “half-and-half reformers”.5
Interpretation and methods of interpretation have been intimately
connected in discussions of Mill’s essay. Almost a decade after the original
publication of “Government”, John Stuart Mill and Thomas Babington
Macaulay disagreed on whether the essay was a tract embedded in the
debate on parliamentary reform or a scientific treatise on the definition,
purpose and appropriate forms of government.6 Correspondingly, on one
hand, the debate on parliamentary reform has led to a number of takes in the
last fifty years as regards Mill’s objectives.7 On the other hand, abstracted
from debates of the time, Mill’s essay has also been interpreted as
developing a “classical economic model of democracy”: politics “exists in
order to harmonize the activities of rational egoists”.8
Beginning from the last, Mill’s objectives with regard to representation
were unclear, even for those who consider Mill’s method a suitable
scientific foundation. Richard Krouse argues that in Mill’s essay “[p]olitical
activity is implicitly portrayed as an analogue to economic activity—as an
instrumental cost in time and effort, a disutility, incurred solely for the sake
of the extrinsic benefits it produces”.9 By laying emphasis on maximising
“policy output (i.e., happiness) at the expense of minimum political input
(i.e., participatory time and effort)”, Krouse argues, Mill conceded that, in
the interest of competence as well as economy, “the claims of mass
participation must, wherever possible, be subordinated to those of elite
rule”,10 conflicting thus with the aims of Benthamite Radicalism.
Krouse’s estimate seems to take Bentham’s view that Mill was “under the
influence of selfish and dissocial affection” and that Mill’s “creed of
politics results less from love for the many, than from hatred of the few” at
face value.11 A review of Mill’s essays puts Krouse’s conclusion into
question. For Mill, power had to reside in the whole community; education,
publicity, and public scrutiny were vital to such power. Writing for the
Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1816, Mill stressed that
“nothing would be more calamitous”, “if it were possible for the superior to
do everything for the inferior people, and to leave them nothing to care
about for themselves”.12 Mill’s interest in the well-being of the many was
not solely political; writing to Ricardo in 1816, worried about the weather
conditions—just rain and cold, i.e., the “want of sun to ripen” the corn—
Mill expected the bad crops, the high prices and the scarcity of work to
“produce a degree of misery, the thought of which makes the flesh creep on
ones bones”.13
Looking at it as a piece enmeshed in debates on reform, commentators
would not hesitate to argue that Mill’s “Government”, somewhat confused,
put forward both an argument for radical reform and an argument for
moderate reform.14 Others saw it as more of a radical piece, but noted that
“Mill argued from unstated premises, developed arguments but avoided the
drawing of conclusions, and used vague words when specific terms in
common usage could have clearly revealed his position in contemporary
controversies”.15 Similarly, the most recent discussion of Mill’s
“Government”, by Kristopher Grint, has taken up Robert Fenn’s view that
Mill’s essay was a skillful exercise in dissimulation.16 As I have tried to
show, this is an incomplete picture. Even though the elder Mill revealed as
many of his ideas as was to the purpose each time, much like his son,17 a
survey of his published essays, reveals him as quite a radical thinker: he
was not shy on what he considered the conditions of good government. The
fact that his parliamentary-reform tracts, as we saw, progressively became
more moderate, speaks to his attempts at persuasion.
It is usually assumed that Mill took the opportunity of writing
“Government” to indirectly respond to James Mackintosh’s review of
Bentham’s Plan. The aforementioned interpretations thus situate Mill’s
essay in the debate on the principles and methods of politics between
Radicals and Whigs in the late 1820s.18 Stefan Collini, Donald Winch, and
John Burrow have already argued that the rivalry between Whigs and
Benthamites “was not the only, or even the most significant, dimension” of
their relationship.19 Still, Macaulay’s success in exposing the errors of
Mill’s logic has set the terms of the examination of “Government”,
especially as regards the suitability of Mill’s a priori method, even for
scholars who do not “read their Mill in Macaulay’s critique rather than the
original”.20 Here, I try to show that the Whigs did not seem to be Mill’s
intended audience in 1820; this, in turn, seems to account for Mill’s
arguments in “Government”.
As Terence Ball suggests, scientifically analyzing government down to
its basic elements could have provided Mill with the best opportunity to
synthesize something new.21 Indeed, tracing the intellectual steps which led
to “Government”, I attempt in this chapter to show how Mill seized on the
opportunity to develop an argument against anti-reformers, based on
principles of “political science” established in earlier works. The missing
link between Mill’s earlier essays and “Government” is provided by a
neglected Tory review of Bentham’s Plan, calling the “theorists” of reform
to base their arguments on a “proper” foundation: man as he really is.

I Mill on government
As we have already noted, Mill’s “Government” was published in the
Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica in September 1820. For David
Ricardo, Mill’s piece, “written in the true philosophic temper”, was “well
calculated to serve the good cause”—i.e., good government. By “not
entering into the consideration of the securities for a good election”,
Ricardo noted, Mill had managed to avoid “the appearance of an essay on
Reform of Parliament”.22 Even if Mill acknowledged that not a lot could be
done in an encyclopaedia article,23 the advertisement in the essay’s May
1821 standalone edition noted that many “were impressed with the value of
this concise and clear exposition of the Elements of Political Knowledge”.24
By 1825, to Mill’s satisfaction, “Government” and some other contributions
to the Supplement had become “the text-books of the young men of the
Union at Cambridge”. Still, such “success” hid the fact that Mill was less
pleased with it than with his other essays.25 Discussing “Government” in
private, Mill admitted that it was rather an outline, a “skeleton map” which
boldly, though succinctly, presented “the principles of human nature” and
their implications for good government.26 However, significantly, before
“Government”, Mill had many opportunities to go into more detail.

Before “Government”: Mill on good government

According to Mill, political science was the “most important of all
sciences”, the “master-science” itself. As we saw, he considered the grasp
of its principles a requisite to his task as a historian of India.27 For Mill,
having “a clear comprehension of the practical play of the machinery of
government” did not merely call for familiarity with the laws of human
nature, but also for the ability to estimate “the counteraction which the more
general laws of human nature may receive from individual or specific
varieties”: “[n]o scheme of government”, Mill argued, as we saw, “can
happily conduce to the ends of government, unless it is adapted to the state
of the people for whose use it is intended”.28
Mill entertained no doubt that “a real representation of the people would
satisfy the population of this country, and secure the interests of the many
without violating the rights of the few”.29 The British people had reached
an advanced social state, so government ought to be “controlled by the
public voice”.30 However, Mill thought that the way in which parliament
was constituted ensured the intrusion of “improper motives”.31 Mill told
Ricardo:
—Give any other men, with the same bad education, the same powers to prey upon their
country; the same motives to betray the principles of good government;—money, and praise,
for upholding bad government; no money, no power, no praise, but discountenance and
blame, if they advocate the principles of good government, and they will act in the same way
as the members of the noble and honorable houses.32

The reason why was simple: “C’est une expérience éternelle, que tout
homme, qui a du pouvoir, est porté à en abuser: il va jusqu’à ce qu’il trouve
des limites”.33 The universal tendency of those in power to neglect their
duties and cave in to self-interest34 had to be counteracted to achieve good
government; personal interests needed to be reshaped to serve the public
good, not thwart it. But that was not all.
As editor and reviewer, Mill expressed and critically engaged with a
number of political ideas. Especially, in the Literary Review, Mill often
found occasion to talk about the requisites of good government. In 1806,
Mill was confident that “[w]hat is the general tone of our thoughts
respecting them [i.e., political views] must be sufficiently known to our
readers”. Readers would know that the editor of the Literary Journal
thought it was better to be “bold and severe”, even if it was “very possible
to go beyond the bounds of right”, than “to walk in the paths of adulation
and timidity”.35 Since Mill’s “Government” is considered a Benthamite
tract, it is quite interesting to find in “Government” views formed prior to
his meeting with Bentham.
In a series of short editorials in 1803, sketching a history of progress of
Europe, Mill concluded that by the early nineteenth century it was evident
that great changes lay ahead; statesmen thus needed to be
men of enlarged, and comprehensive, and liberal minds, men trained to profound, and
philosophic reflection on human nature, and human affairs; capable of anticipating the results
which the violent ferment of a highly civilized, a highly commercial, a most wealthy, most
luxurious, and most restless state of society will bring forth; and capable of adapting with
skill, and rapidity, new means to the production of new ends.36

In these changing times, it was thus incumbent to “explain, and reduce, to a

consistent arrangement the real fundamental principles of the British
constitution”; the benefits to the people and government would be
“incalculable”.37 Mill of course provided some detail of what he meant:
better regulations for the intercourse and exigencies of social and political life, regulations by
when the natural liberty and happiness of individuals are promoted, by which national savings
are made, and the great machine of society is rendered more simple and beautiful in its
structure, and more harmonious and easy in its operations, are the most glorious exploits of
patriotism, and the greatest benefits to the species to which a man belongs.38

In 1805, Mill argued that there are two classes of circumstances in the
course of human affairs: the first, to determine the general tendency of
things—whether the society will be progressive or backward; the second, to
determine whether that progress—forward or backward—will be either
accelerated or retarded.39 The first step to an accelerated forward movement
is making sure that the “produce […] of every man’s labour” was “rendered
his own”.40
Power may not be abused—one may even trust that it will not be abused
—but, Mill argued, it is “the glorious maxim of the British constitution not
to entrust any man with power that can be abused”.41 Without efficient
control, Mill had argued in 1806, “there are no institutions which may not
be infringed, no law which may not be trampled upon by those who possess
the power of the state”. He was certain that “[w]ere the freedom of a nation
to depend […] upon the moderation and virtuous forbearance of men in
power, it would never outlive its century”. Mill then added:
A bold, independent, active press, that freely circulates the actions and intentions of men in
power, and the animadversions to which they give rise, is the only efficient instrument by
which public opinion can defend those rights and that liberty with which it is entrusted.42

Additionally, Mill went on to delineate in detail the means for proper

representation of the people. First, the body of electors should consist of the
“best informed” and “least dependent”, that is, the “least liable to have their
voices misled by improper influence”. This effectively meant, for Mill, all
income tax payers—in 1806, their number had doubled since William Pitt’s
introduction of income tax in 1799. Second, the elective body should
choose “from themselves the person whom they account best qualified,
from his knowledge and abilities, to legislate for this country”; one who is
able to “ascertain the real merits of every question and give a wise
decision” because of experience, access to information, and perfect record
of attendance to House debates. Third, should the elections be annual, Mill
argued, “[t]he morals of the people would be less debauched by the cabals
of candidates, their voices less swayed by improper motives, their
representatives more discreetly chosen, more upright, and more active”.43
Hence, the “original lines” of Mill’s radical views, had not “been laid down
by Bentham”.44
Activity or spiritedness on the part of the people, Mill further noted,
depends on some kind of synchronicity or compatibility between the form
of government and the “progress of ideas, and the change of manners and
circumstances” among the people: “[t]he absurd adherence to ancient
privileges, and forms, has prevented the changes in government from
keeping pace with the irresistible changes in the circumstances of
society”.45 “Every idea of change”, Mill had argued in 1805, makes people
“think of the French revolution”; they thus foolishly avoid discussions
about change. Unwillingness to change, Mill added, does not “prevent
revolutions”, but “render[s] them unavoidable”. Innovation, according to
Mill, “is not in our power to prevent, since the greatest of innovators is
Time, whose operations defy our resistance”. No one can keep things as
they are:
In a state of the world active in so extraordinary a degree above what has before been
exhibited, the changes which time introduces must be numerous and great, and if
corresponding changes are not made by Reason, conflicts of the most violent sort must be
often experienced. That the French revolution itself was a conflict of this nature, will not be
doubted by any person who takes a just view of the circumstances of the case.46

Reason finds the most appropriate course of action for the accomplishment
of the end: social happiness. As things are in “perpetual movement”, good
government depends on the ability of statesmen and legislators to adapt to
the demands of the times; otherwise, social happiness is left to chance.
Resistance to change might be the result of a fear that the changes will be
detrimental to the general welfare, but also that changes may be “favourable
to the general welfare, but dangerous” to personal welfare.47
Mill was operating with a distinctive view of what virtue consists of:
“[a]ll will unite in ascribing to that man the highest merit, who regulates his
actions most effectually to lessen the quantity of misery, and to increase the
quantity of happiness in the society in which he belongs”.48 The problem
was, as we saw in Chapter 5, that people may belong in different groups,
i.e., “cabals”, within society; when the general welfare endangered the
welfare of the party, the virtuous thing to do, that is what would acquire
most praise from the party, would be to sacrifice general welfare for the
welfare of the party.49
According to Mill, government thus made all the difference between “the
highest and the lowest degrees of misery in human society”.50 Reviewing a
recent edition of William Penn’s memoirs in 1814, Mill stated his
disagreement with Penn that any form of government may result in good
government, so long as “the laws rule and the people are a party to those
laws”51:
The clear deduction of reason is, that for the laws to rule, the rulers must be under check and
control; they must be obliged to act, not as they themselves choose, but as some other men
choose; viz. the controlling and checking body. That the controlling body may be able to
oblige the rulers to act according to the laws, and to prevent them from acting not according
to the laws, it is necessary that the power of the controlling body should be superior to the
power of the rulers[.]52
Penn drew on biblical authority to claim that “[m]en side with their
passions against their reason; and their sinister interests have so strong a
bias upon their minds, that they lean to them against the good of the things
they know”.53 For Bentham, as well as for Mill, sinister interests involved
the sacrifice of universal interests (interests which all members in a
community shared) for particular interests, i.e., interests of only one
individual or a group of individuals (and which run counter to the universal
interest).54 In his review, Mill added that the only checking body without
sinister interests is the community itself.55 Mill then continued:
the people for their own security must possess such a share of legislative power as will, in the
first place, enable them to prevent the other share-holders in that power from making any law
contrary to the interests of the people; and in the second place, such a share […] as will
enable them to effect the repeal of any law, however old, however dear to the other share-
holders, which is really hurtful to the interests of the people.56

These ideas were not recently acquired; William Dawson’s Thoughts on

Public Trusts (1805) had already provided evidence to Mill to argue that “it
is not natural for men to agree in the adjustments” of the executive and the
legislative powers, as it would not be long before “[s]chemes of mutual
encroachment, and consequent jealousies and contentions must arise, till
one of the parties submits to the other”.57
Good laws, Mill argued, had to make it in the interest of individuals not
to injure one another.58 But, even if power is balanced between those who
hold it, Mill quoted Dawson, the “same passions which tempt the parts of
the government to encroach upon one another, must operate and tempt the
whole to connive to extend their joint power over their subjects”.59 Mill
would thus ask: “Is it according to the experience of human nature, that
men with the powers of government in their hands are angels and have
never any propensity to oppress?”60 He had already stated the answer:
It is not according to the laws of human nature, that the interest of any order of men will,
through a series of years be protected, where they have not in their hands the power of
protecting them. Wherever the joint affairs of a community are not managed by the joint
influence, fairly compounded of all the orders of which it consists,—wherever the small
number acquire the whole, or the greater part of the direction of the common interests, they
are sure to draw towards themselves the advantages, and thrust upon the multitude the
burdens of the social union, to the utmost of their power.61
In 1809, he reaffirmed the above insight, and added that, what was worse,
“if the joint interest is so wide and unwieldy a concern as that of a nation,
so far is this inequality [in the distribution of social burdens] sure to
proceed, as to ruin the interest itself, and destroy all national prosperity”.62
These general principles, Mill argued, were founded upon experience,
“systemized and digested by political philosophy”.63
Writing in 1816, Mill pointed out that “a great national benefit can never
rest with safety on any thing so precarious, as the chance of extraordinary
virtue in particular men”.64 Not long before the essay on government, Mill
was thus clear that unless the people have full share in legislative power,
their interests, that is “the welfare of the community, is sure to be
sacrificed” to the sinister interests of any one part of the community—the
king, the aristocracy or a part of the people themselves.65 However, for Mill
the first two were much more likely to abuse power, since “in the history of
mankind” there was “perhaps no instance of a government”—not even in
Athens—
in which the power of the aristocracy did not exceed the proper limits, in which it was not
more than a match for the power of the people, and enabled the rich and leading men to shift
the burdens of the state from themselves upon the inferior orders.66

Good government depended on counteracting, with equal steadiness and

regularity, the natural tendency towards “the aggrandizement of
aristocracy”.67 It meant enabling the people to “enjoy the fruits of their
industry”.68
Mill believed that “all constitutions, however democratically formed,
have a tendency to become oligarchical in practice”. The cause for this was
complex: “The apathy and inattention of the people, on the one hand and
the interested activity of the rulers on the other, are two powers, the action
of which may always be counted upon”. As regards the people, first, “[t]o
watch, to scrutinize, to inquire, is labour, and labour is pain. To confide, to
take for granted that all is well, is easy, is exempt from labour, and to the
great mass of mankind, comparatively delightful”. Thus, most people tend
to allow rulers “abundant scope to manage the common concerns”, even if
the latter do so “in a way conformable to their own liking and advantage”.
Second, “the objects of ambition are beheld at so great a distance, and the
competition for them is shared with so great a number, that in general they
make but a feeble impression upon their minds”. This is not so with the
small number entrusted with management: they “feel so immediately the
advantages, and their affections are so powerfully engaged by the presence,
of their object, that they easily concentrate their views, and point their
energies with perfect constancy in the selfish direction”.69 What is more, for
the rulers, labour would mean “[promoting] the interests of the community
at large” against their particular interests—it was much easier to distribute
social burdens to the mass of the people.70 Mill was not optimistic:
regardless of the advances of political science, there had been no example
of “certain means by which the unhappy effects of that action may be
prevented”.71
By 1814, Mill had sketched the main idea: to take advantage “of the
abilities and virtues of your most valuable men” while “depriving them of
the power of serving themselves”, they must be made “perpetually re-
eligible, but re-eligible at short periods”.72 But Mill came to a halt while in
search for the “grand principle which ought to guide” deliberations
regarding representation. The dangers associated both with making suffrage
too wide and too narrow presented a problem: “In rendering it too wide,
you incur the inconveniences of the ignorant and precipitate passions of the
vulgar. In rendering it too narrow, you incur, what is still worse, the
mischiefs of bribery and corruption”.73 However, this suggested that an
advanced, cultivated society, i.e., a society of which the majority is virtuous
and wise, should not expect many problems as a result of wide
participation.
A related problem was whether voting should be open or secret.
According to Mill, the ballot enables voters to pursue their personal
interests. Voters, however, could use the ballot to pursue particular interests,
their own or of others (i.e., the interests of individuals on whom the
majority of voters are dependent, e.g. members of the aristocracy),74 against
the interests of the community, i.e. the universal interest. The particular
historical and social circumstances once again mattered: if the influence of
the aristocracy is great and likely to be against the common interest then
voting ought to be secret; if the majority of voters enjoys a certain degree of
independence, but are likely to pursue their own personal interests against
universal interests, then voting ought to be open.75 However, given the
natural tendencies of society and the natural timidity of individuals Mill did
not admit a real danger of going too far in the direction of political change:
Till, indeed, governments attain that high pitch of excellence, at which they really perform in
the best manner, and at the cheapest rate, the services of government to the people, all
changes are, in general, for the good of the people. It is the stability of governments, which,
before this state of excellence, human nature has to dread.76

The particular historical circumstances in Britain, however, favored

extended participation without much danger in going too far.
Interestingly, Mill referred to Dawson’s Public Trusts, in contemplating
such problems,77 especially as regards representation and frequency of
elections. Dawson had argued that the suffrage, as well as the holding of
public offices, ought to be put “into the hands of men, who from having
cooler passions, and more experience, are best qualified for such important
trusts”.78 Aiming to unite the interest of all classes as well as the interests of
the governors with that of society,79 the electors would be men, forty years
of age, voting annually—while reserving the right of repealing any law
during that time—and secretly, at least at local elections.80 Of the three
proposed solutions, the first made it explicitly, and the second implicitly
into Mill’s “Government”; the third did not make it at all.81
Furthermore, good management of state affairs, Mill noted, “is almost
always proportional to the degree of knowledge respecting it diffused in”
the community itself.82 Putting the complaints of the people under strict
examination, duly estimating whatever foundation they have, may just be
the “grand source of all good, and the grand preventing of all bad
government”. As long as that examination “is not silenced by terror, but
only soothed by just explanation or guarded against unwarrantable
excess”.83 Thus, for Mill, no true representative government could exist
without “the benefit of a truly free press”.84 As Mill argued: “the grand
remedy for the defects of government is, to let in upon them publicity and
censure. The grand remedy for the misconduct of the members of
government is, to let in upon it publicity and censure”.85 “Information”,
Mill argued, “is the main spring of good government”; the liberty of the
press—limited as it was—had played a major part in whatever good had
been put to effect by the British government.86 However, as we saw in
Chapter 5, public opinion had limited effect on those who subscribed to the
“logic of power”.
For Mill, two things were thus needed for the people to be the cause of
good government: “the first is that they should render themselves well
acquainted with the subject; the second, that they should urge their
conclusions upon the managers of the public concerns in every way in
which the declaration of the public will [or] can receive its greatest possible
effect”.87 According to Mill, “[t]he instruments of every government are
interested in giving false conceptions of its practical effects, and in making
them appear to be better than they really are”.88 Hence, liberty of the press
and the development of proper habits of examining the evidence of opinions
were quite necessary to counteract the self-legitimation of government
through social and political education.89
Being able to evaluate state decisions was of as much importance as
being informed about them. This was where informed writers, such as Mill
himself, came in. According to Mill, the ability to trace the consequences of
the existing institutions and of the prevalent ideas and practices in one’s
own country and then compare them with the consequences of the
institutions, ideas and practices of other social states, allowed one to draw
conclusions as regards beneficial, indifferent or harmful consequences of
state affairs.90 Comparisons between different social states offered valuable
insights; for example, in the case of Britain, it would reveal that whatever
advantages the British people enjoyed “have been owing to certain
accidental and extraordinary circumstances, not the habitual tendency of
affairs”. For Mill, the advancement of the “science of government” would
have allowed the creation of “one favourable institution […] after another”
until the ends of government were achieved. The fear of losing whatever
benefits have been achieved in the present, should not side-track the end in
view: “The only comparison is, between the present government and the
proposed modifications”, not with past events under different
circumstances.91 For Mill, authority acquires legitimacy through the “clear
utility of […] office to the nation”. When those who hold power make
themselves indispensable in the pursuit of the good of the whole
community, little do the people think of removing them.92 Yet, the people
think and do remove them—through revolution if need be—when they have
no other way of making themselves heard—as we saw, the public voice
must have control over the government in advanced societies.93 The
principle of utility, Mill argued, was the overarching principle in matters of
political change.94

Bentham and his critics on reform

In the previous section, I tried to illustrate that Mill’s theory of government
was much broader than “Government” seemed to suggest. Here, I try to
account for Mill’s focus in “Government” by situating it within the debate
on reform; for this reason, I briefly turn to Bentham’s Plan of
Parliamentary Reform and its main reviews.
Bentham’s Plan could not have been clearer on the urgency of reform:
“The country […] is already at the very brink: reform or convulsion, such is
the alternative”.95 Britain was on track “to national ruin” because the
“partial”, “separate” and “sinister” interests—the interests of the few—
kept the “universal”, democratic interest “under [their] conjunct yoke”.96 To
undermine the coalition between monarchy and aristocracy, Bentham
proposed one simple remedy: democratic ascendancy.97 For Bentham, such
ascendancy could only come about with radical reform.98 What was at stake
was maximising the dependence of the representatives on the electors and
minimising the exposure of both the electors and the representatives to the
influence of “C[orrupte]r General and Co”.99
As far as electors were concerned, to assure the ascendancy of universal
interest, Bentham proposed “virtual universality”, “practical equality” and
“freedom”, by means of “secrecy” of suffrage.100 First, essentially no adult
male was to be excluded from the suffrage.101 Second, all individuals ought
to have enjoyed equality with regard to their “quantum of influence”, i.e.,
“the effect of the right of suffrage”, exerted through voting.102 Third,
making sure that the vote expressed one’s own will rather than, “under the
guise and disguise of the expression of the will of the voter, […] the will—
not of the voter, but of some other person”, the ballot was vital—if not for
guaranteeing the “genuineness” of votes, at least for making it impossible to
confirm their “spuriousness”.103
As far as the representatives were concerned, Bentham had to address
two issues. The first was securing due dependence towards constituents
(and complete independence towards everyone else). To this effect,
elections had to be annual,104 and “placemen”, i.e., individuals who were
appointed by the king, should be deprived of the right to vote or be elected
(though they would maintain some role in the House of Commons, i.e.,
address the House or introduce motions).105 The second was making sure
that representatives were fit to do their job, by being able a. to withstand the
temptation to sacrifice the public interest for the sake of private interests
(“appropriate probity”), b. to examine as well as promote (or counter the
promotion of) various proposals brought to parliament (“intellectual
aptitude”), and c. to carry out the actual tasks associated with the position—
draft, promote, argue against, and amend proposals or reports—(“active
talent”). These called for both publicity of what took place in parliament as
well as “[c]onstancy, punctuality, and universality, of attendance” by
representatives.106 According to Elie Halévy, Bentham’s Plan “became the
classical work of the Radical party”; Bentham himself, James Crimmins
notes, “became widely recognised as the pre-eminent theorist of political
radicalism”.107
The Quarterly Review conceded such a status to Bentham, though not
without a hint of irony: indeed he was “one to whom the moderate
reformers have decreed the palm of superior acuteness and
comprehension”. However, the reviewer consciously blurred the line
between Whigs and Radicals, by drawing attention to a particular note in
Bentham’s Plan: “[i]t is a singular fact that this Mr. Bentham, now
decisively a radical, was himself only a moderate reformer till the year
1809”.108 Still, whether moderate or radical, in reality, according to the
author, Bentham professed reforms both in Parliament and in the English
language—the first by precept, the second by example. Bentham’s happiest
invention, in the reviewer’s closing words, was “adopting the language of
Babel as the proper vehicle for the doctrines of political confusion”.109
Although no reviewer had let Bentham’s mode of exposition slide without a
biting comment or two,110 the most important criticisms revolved around a
different axis: according to the author, Bentham ought to expect “that the
Tories are not likely to be confounded with his flock, and to run away with
any of the merit of his [‘whiggological’] theories”.111 Bentham, according
to another reviewer, declared himself, at least in theory, “to be the advocate
of perfect unadulterated republicanism”.112 Being famous as the theorist of
radicalism was no compliment. In his reply to Francis Burdett’s motion for
parliamentary reform on 2 June 1818, Henry Brougham remarked that
Bentham’s “plan […] had shown that he had dealt more with books than
with men”.113
In January 1818, a letter in the Black Dwarf challenged the Edinburgh
Review to respond to Bentham’s Plan.114 Indeed, following a short critical
notice of the book,115 James Mackintosh took up the mantle of discrediting
Bentham. For Mackintosh, the radicals had in their midst “ingenious and
enlightened men, though none indeed, who have had political
experience”.116 Mackintosh stressed that he was waiving “all advantage,
which may be supposed to be possessed by those who defend established
principles against untried projects”. “Experience” would provide the test.117
According to Mackintosh, experience taught that virtual universality of
the vote was not the best way for making good laws and protecting the
people from oppression. Since “most men imbibe prejudice with their
knowledge”, the parliamentary assembly should be constituted of “the
largest body of well-educated men, of leisure, large property, temperate
character, and who are impartial on more subjects than any other class of
men”. Not democratic ascendancy but an ascendancy of “landed
proprieters” would confer good laws. Mackintosh was convinced that
“some sameness of interest, and some fellow-feeling” protect those who are
not directly represented, and in the case of the lower and the lowest classes
where such sameness could not exist there were always some energetic
individuals who were “quick in suspecting oppression; bold in resisting it;
not thinking favourably of the powerful; listening […] to the complaints of
the humble and the feeble; and impelled by ambition, where they are not
prompted by generosity, to be the champions of the defenceless”. Thus, in
contrast to Bentham, Mackintosh believed that to maintain social order and
avoid abuse a parliamentary assembly must combine talent and skill “with
popularity, with fame, with property, with liberal education and
condition”.118 Vesting influence in the “middling classes”, their “sense and
virtue” as well as their “numerous connexions of interest with the other
parts of society”, would offer sufficient security.119
Mackintosh agreed with Bentham on one important aspect of the issue:
we must look to “the state of interests” in deciding for a scheme of
representation.120 The guiding principle was to protect particular interests:
“[dividing] the people into classes, and [examining] the variety of local and
professional interests of which the general interest is composed”.121 All
other schemes of parliamentary composition “would fluctuate between
country gentlemen and demagogues” and “between landholders and
courtiers”, and thus either “expose the quiet of society to continual hazard”
or “impair the spirit of liberty”.122 In addition, not only would the ballot not
work in practice,123 it would compromise the excitement and diffusion of
“public spirit”.124 Although the ballot was out of the question, extending
the suffrage, increasing the assembly size, and providing transparency
through publicity were not. Mackintosh accepted that “the greatest number
of independent judgments” needed to “influence the measures of
Government”; but he believed that “democratical elements are […] to be
tempered and restrained by such contrivances as may be necessary to
maintain the order and independence of deliberation”.125
In the British Review, Tory in its politics,126 a notice of Bentham
appeared in May 1818—just like the Quarterly Review’s, this notice was
not as respectful as that of Mackintosh. As we saw, Bentham and
Mackintosh claimed that their argument pertaining to reform was an
argument from utility. For Mackintosh the happiness of the community was
promoted through liberty, which necessitated taking the particular
circumstances of “the people of Great Britain” under consideration in any
discussion on representation. The object of government was security against
wrong, either “against wrong from each other [i.e., the subjects] or from the
government itself”.127 The British Review critic agreed: “[t]he end of good
government is to make the people happy, and wealthy, and powerful, and
susceptible of expansion and improvement. The system is good from which
good is derived, and under which happiness breeds and propagates, till life
teems with beneficence and virtue”.128
 The agreement with Bentham ended there. According to the critic,
Bentham tried to “reform our constitution by foreign rules, rules derived à
priori, rules of general theory, and where the means have an argumentative
and philosophical fitness to their ends” and thus proceeded “in an order
reverse of that by which […] learning and science have been promoted”.
However, “no theory”, the critic argued, “is worth a thought which does not
flow from the facts themselves”. Such schemes needed to be “extracted”
from long experience. The subject should not be “treated as a question of
principle rather than expedience, and as a problem involving a mere
abstract truth, rather than as one in which the solution is found in the
passions, the wants, and the weaknesses of ordinary humanity”.129
Bentham’s proposals were “insane” and “nauseating stuff”, “dismal cant”
and “delirious nonsense”.130
For the critic, real representation would be guaranteed by “a sufficiently
broad specimen of the prevalent feeling, character and mind, of the country;
or, in other terms, in the terms of the preamble to the Bill of Rights, are ‘all
the estates (i.e. orders, classes, and degrees) of the people of the realm’
represented?” Representation could only be “virtual”: bringing “the mind
and intelligence of the whole country into operation”, as well as “all its
various interests, habits, talents, ranks, stations, and functions under
contribution to its moral and intellectual fund”. A “numerical
representation”, the critic added, “is absolute nonsense; all that can be done
is to take off an impression of that which alone has unity, body, and
consistency, the leading opinions of men of thought”.131 Anticipating
Mackintosh, the critic argued that the radical proposals on the question of
reform were self-defeating.132
Anticipating Mackintosh once again, the critic argued that “experience”
was the guide to political change. Reverting to a rather Burkean argument,
however, the critic noted that he was for reform, but “reform that engrafts
upon experience, and that principle of improvement which unites with the
principle of conservation”.133 He was satisfied that the “constitution, in its
present form and practical state, works well, and that, however
irreconcileable [sic] it may be to the à priori reasonings of the grave men
now engaged in proving the necessity of change, it has done its business
effectually”. What was most important, the critic argued, was not that the
British “system of practical polity” failed to produce a “well-adjusted
balance of power”, in which each part corrects the other “by their opposite
tendencies, without intermixture or confusion”, but that it had achieved “all
advantages at which society aims”, carrying society “in a course of
unparalleled progression and enlargement”.134 It was the author’s view that
“we have as good a House of Commons as any system of parliamentary
representation could give us”, and “it seems very foolish to stir, and undo
and discompose what has been established, has been tried and has been
found to answer”.135

Mill’s “Government” on the conditions of good government

Commentators are confident that Mill’s “Government”, as Halévy put it,
“should be taken as the answer of the Benthamites to the objections of
Mackintosh”; Mill had provided a “covert attack on Mackintosh’s scheme
of virtual representation”.136 William Thomas has argued that the Radicals
needed to respond to Mackintosh’s critique of Bentham, because
Mackintosh had delivered “a more severe blow” to Benthamite aspirations
than anything taking place, election-wise, at Westminster in 1818 and
1819.137 Even if we accept that they make the weaker claim that
Mackintosh may have been a catalyst in Mill’s decision to write the essay,
beyond Mill’s treatment of “variegated representation”, they offer no other
textual support that Mill had Mackintosh, or like-minded individuals (i.e.
advocates of moderate reform), in mind.138 Here, I argue that Mill’s essay
targeted a larger audience, i.e., individuals who held ideas similar to the
British Review critic.
As we saw, James Mill and Macvey Napier met sometime in May 1814
to discuss how Mill could be of assistance to Napier. By 1816, the two men
were in communication specifically about “Government”.139 At the time,
Bentham was already working on setting out the utilitarian take on radical
reform, while Mill and Mackintosh were working with Francis Place and
William Allen to establish a “chrestomathic” school upon Benthamite
principles.140
His essay nearing completion, Mill tried to reassure Napier that it would
contain “nothing capable of alarming even a Whig”.141 In 1819, there was
good reason for such reassurance. Not only had Mill, in June 1818, shown
himself to be quite the “radical reformer”, by supporting Francis Burdett’s
“extravagant propositions” for parliamentary reform,142 while being a
known associate of Bentham. But pressure was also exerted on George
Canning to reject Mill’s candidacy in late 1817/early 1818 at the East India
Company, due to Mill’s radicalism.143 Indeed by 1824, John McCulloch
would complain to Napier that Mill was too “incorrigible a Radical”.144
Scholars have picked up on these cues, pointing out that Mill’s essay
“alarmed almost everyone: whigs, tories, even his fellow utilitarians”.145
This eventually became true, as we saw in Chapter 1, but only because of
the status the essay seemed to receive in the Benthamite movement for
reform. When the essay was first published, Napier knew probably what to
expect from Mill. And Mill delivered what was expected.146 There are
other, more important, clues as to whether Mackintosh’s review of Bentham
or the moderate reform argument more generally was a catalyst for the
particular focus of Mill’s arguments in “Government”.
First, Mill did indeed draw on his “Government” to criticise Mackintosh
and the Edinburgh Review in 1825.147 But in 1824, when the two Mills took
notice of the “see-saw” politics of the Edinburgh Review, the period
between 1818 and 1820 was marked as one which contained “an unusual
proportion of democratic sentiments” on the part of Whigs.148 Second, Mill
did reject “variegated representation” in “Government” as an inadequate
means of identifying the interests of the community with those of its
representatives. However, as Joseph Hamburger has pointed out, this was an
old scheme of representation, to which many Whigs and Tories subscribed.
As we had occasion to mention, Mill traced the scheme as far back as
Robert Jenkinson’s (by 1820, Lord Liverpool) speech in 1793.149 The
British Review critic had also referred to the scheme—actually tracing it
even further back to 1688. Third, Mill—while writing “Government”—
harshly rebutted critics attempting to discredit Bentham’s Plan who: a. did
their best to ridicule Bentham’s language as a means to ridicule his
proposals; b. claimed that rational men had already settled on this issue, and
hence there was no need to further consider it; and c. claimed that reformers
are of “wicked character and intentions”.150 Finally, in November 1820,
Mackintosh challenged the Radicals to offer a refutation of the argument
developed in his review of Bentham’s Plan.151 Which means that
Mackintosh himself did not seem to consider Mill’s essay as a reply to his
own review; in 1822, Mackintosh would tell Napier that the essays on
“Education” and “Government” in the Supplement were “very ably
written”, notwithstanding problems with the author’s method.152
In contrast, the British Review critic gave one argument against reform
and pointed out two requirements concerning discussions on reform. In the
first case, the critic argued that notwithstanding its faults—since the three
parts of the constitution may not “[correct] each other by their opposite
tendencies, without intermixture or confusion”—the constitution worked
well in practice.153 As Lord Liverpool had argued in his speech against
reform in 1793, “if plausible theories ought never to be an objection to
reform, when practical grievances are felt, so defective theories ought not to
be a ground for reform, when not only no practical grievance, but every
practical advantage, is felt”.154 In the second case, the two requirements
were that the subject of good government should not be “treated as a
question of principle rather than expedience, and as a problem involving a
mere abstract truth, rather than as one in which the solution is found in the
passions, the wants, and the weaknesses of ordinary humanity”.155
Likewise, Lord Liverpool argued that the question of reform should be
“placed upon its proper ground”. As evidently “a question of expediency”,
Lord Liverpool added, “we ought to examine this question on the same
principle on which all questions of the sort must be examined, viz. by
inquiring what was the end that was to be produced; and then considering
what were the means likely to produce that end”.156 And he concluded:
human institutions must be adapted not only to the virtues, but to the weakness and passions
of mankind. […] That there were theoretic defects in the composition of the House of
Commons, was not what he pretended to deny; it was incumbent, however, on those who
proposed a reform, to prove that those defects affected the practice of the constitution.157

The arguments of the British Review critic paralleled those of Lord

Liverpool.
Furthermore, on 10 September 1819 Mill proclaimed to Napier his
confidence that he could make a Tory “a convert to the principles of good
government” sooner than any Whig (including Mackintosh), who is “more
terrified at the principles of good government than the worst of Tories”—
renewing this confidence in a letter to Ricardo on 11 September.158
According to Mill, the Tories considered government to be “a bad machine,
which works well”; the Whigs, however, argued that the British system “is
a good machine which works ill”.159 As we saw, the British Review critic
reiterated that “most popular [objection] to Reform”, i.e., that “bad as our
parliament was in theory it worked well, and therefore it would be unwise
to meddle with it”.160 What complicates matters, however, is that
Mackintosh had himself attempted to rebut the Tory view, in 1792.161 In
1819, Ricardo had brought Mackintosh’s rebuttal to Mill’s attention.
Ricardo told Mill that he had used Mackintosh’s 1792 pamphlet to make a
“convert of [an] old Whig Lady”.162 Engaged with “Government”, Mill
asked to see the pamphlet and eventually “make some use of a few things of
Mackintosh”.163
Taken together, these considerations seem to suggest that Mill’s
“Government” may have been an attempt to respond explicitly to the
popular anti-reform argument rather than implicitly to Mackintosh’s
argument. The latter claim seems to bear scrutiny only to the extent that
Tories and Whigs used the same arguments against reform. If we assume
that Mill directed his intellectual weapons against anti-reformers of Lord
Liverpool’s stamp, we would be better able to account for a number of
moves Mill made in his essay.
Mill began by placing the question of government exactly on Lord
Liverpool’s footing: “[t]he question with respect to Government is a
question about the adaptation of means to an end”.164 He proceeded to
agree with Lord Liverpool that “the surface of history […] affords no
certain principle of decision” on which is the best form of government—
similar forms of government have extraordinarily different results in
different countries. According to Lord Liverpool, whether the mode of
government was appropriate or not “was not on the effects of our system
only that it was necessary to rest”. He added: “the effects of government on
the people do not so much depend on general principles and general
theories, as on little accidental circumstances which are frequently not even
perceptible”. As we saw, Mill had already argued that any benefit enjoyed
by the people was accidental.165 So trying to meet Lord Liverpool’s criteria,
Mill did not have to try hard to show that the “good effects” of the
constitution were insufficient to prove its inherent goodness. For Lord
Liverpool, as well as for the British Review critic, the balance of power
minimized the bad and maximized the good of the three elements of the
constitution, notwithstanding its “theoretical” faults.166 But at this point,
Mill saw his opening: since experience seemed divided on the issue of good
government, “we must go beyond the surface, and penetrate to the springs
within”.167 This resonated well with Lord Liverpool’s requirement to treat
individuals as they really are. Mill was going to use his adversary’s own
admissions to undermine his anti-reform argument.
Bentham’s Plan and its reviewers agreed on the end to be sought for: the
happiness of the community; and so did Mill. But Mill added that to
understand in what that happiness consists, “we must understand what is
included in the happiness of the individuals of whom it is composed”.168
Analysing the end, “happiness”, the elder Mill could not go through the
“whole of human nature”. Still, his move from social happiness to
individual happiness and back allowed him to define the end of government
in a fairly precise way:
the end to be obtained, through Government as the means, would be, to make that distribution
of the scanty materials of happiness which would insure the greatest sum of it in the members
of the community taken together; and to prevent any individual, or combination of
individuals, from interfering with that distribution, or making any man to have less than his
share.

Government ought not to render individuals slightly better off than they
would be without it: it ought instead “to increase to the utmost the
pleasures, and to diminish to the utmost the pains, which men derive from
one another”.169 So as long as government ensures “to every man the
greatest possible quantity of the produce of his labour”, the end of
government is achieved.170
Mill’s emphasis was on establishing that the dangers which exist out of
the social state are not effaced within it: some individuals, or a combination
of individuals, may interfere with the enjoyment of the fruits of one’s own
labor. That would result in some individuals being burdened
disproportionately with the costs of social co-existence. Once again the
warrant of this move is better accounted for in the writings of the son: “Men
are not, when brought together, converted into another kind of substance,
with different properties […]. Human beings in society have no properties
but those which are derived from, and may be resolved into, the laws of the
nature of individual man”.171 Just as those with superior physical or
intellectual power are in a position to threaten individual property in the
state of nature, those who are entrusted to guard property against possible
encroachments are themselves in such a position:172 “Quis custodiet ipsos
Custodes?”173
In “Government” Mill focused primarily on one condition of good
government: the identification of interests between rulers and ruled through
representation. Unlike in earlier and later works, Mill did not press the
importance of public opinion as security against the abuse of power in
“Government”. Lord Liverpool had argued that the House of Commons, as
a deliberative assembly, ought not to be affected by public opinion on every
issue discussed: “the members of it would have nothing to do but to go to
their constituents, and desire to be directed by them”.174 Mill focused on
making the whole community’s voice heard in parliament. That was the
main security to contend with. And Lord Liverpool’s speech allowed him to
do so. Thus, not only did it suit Mill to build his argument on the
assumption that those who hold the power will abuse it—if left unchecked
from within—as a solid foundation for a theory of government; but also,
laying that foundation tallied with the Tory requirement that human
institutions must be adapted to the weaknesses and passions of mankind.
Mill quickly accepted Lord Liverpool’s claim that the securities for good
government were to be found in none of the simple constitutional forms.175
However, Mill pointed out that democracy’s defects were of a different kind
than those of other simple modes. Direct democracy offered a good security
against abuse of power, since the common affairs were managed by the
whole community itself. However, on the negative side, not only was
efficient deliberation in large bodies of men impossible, such management
would consume too much of the time of the community, hindering
individuals from acquiring “the scanty materials” of happiness. Aristocracy
and monarchy moved past these problems, only to stumble on one that was
insurmountable: they afforded no security against the abuse of power. The
move from that to discrediting the view that “the ends of Government can
be attained in perfection only, as under the British Constitution, by an union
of all the three”, was not hard to make: no evidence was provided for the
existence of sufficient checks preventing those who have sinister interests
from combining to subdue the universal interest.176 For Mill, it was better
for the community to manage its own interests despite the risk to err in
doing so, rather than surrender that control to any group of individuals.177
From that argument, no additional move was needed to rebut “variegated
representation”. As for the scheme, the elective body would consist of
several fraternities (that is, several groups of individuals with more or less
identical interests); their interests would be directly represented—the
remaining interests of the community, however, would be indirectly
represented, given the connections these fraternities have with the rest of
the community.178 The proponents of this scheme argued that there was one
“class of men” which was impartial (e.g., the professional classes for Lord
Liverpool; the landed proprietors for Mackintosh; the leisured classes for
the British Review critic). The members of these classes had no esprit de
corps. Such impartiality was necessary in order to maintain that all “the
estates (i.e. orders, classes, and degrees) of the people of the realm” were
represented either directly or indirectly. Mill retorted that one cannot
presume these “orders” or “fraternities” would pursue the interest of the
excluded community. This was not a new argument; as we saw, in 1808,
writing in the Edinburgh Review, Mill argued that the joint interest of the
community had to be managed by the joint influence “fairly compounded of
all the orders of which it consists”.179 Would that be asking too radical a
reform twelve years later? Mill seemed satisfied to grant to the exalted
“Middle Rank” the task of representing the interests of the
unrepresented.180
The burden of proof was thus on those “patrons of this system of
Representation”, who seemed to suppose that individuals, when brought
together, are converted into another kind of substance with different
properties, i.e., that “these fraternities will be sure to take that course which
is contrary to their interest”. Just as lightning finds the path of least
resistance to dissipate its energy, so will monarchy and aristocracy, and any
combination of groups of persons in the community, find the shortest path
to pursue their own sinister interest: “The real effect of this motley
Representation, therefore, would only be to create a motley Aristocracy”.181
 Still, Mill noted that in “the system of representation, the solution of all
the difficulties, both speculative and practical, will perhaps be found”. But,
not only do representatives need to have “a degree of power sufficient for
the business of checking”, but also develop “an identity of interest with the
community”. As we saw, however, one cannot suppose interests will
coincide naturally—it is, of course, possible that they might, otherwise co-
operation would be impossible. Steps must be taken to make sure that
representatives will not join in the plundering. Mill considered two such
steps: duration of tenure and choice of representatives. He quickly went
through the first one, merely noting that appointment should not be
permanent but rather short, yet as long as necessary for the business of
government—once again reacting to echoes of the anti-reform argument182
—and moved on to consider the second one. To this effect, the utmost
possible limit in the numbers of the choosing body, which would best
approximate achieving identity of interests, according to Mill, would be
universal male suffrage, to which forty years of age and a property
qualification which gave the vote to the majority of men were the least
unacceptable limitations.183
Although one can never suppose a natural identity of interests in
choosing representatives, Mill seemed to argue, if limits need be set on who
will constitute the choosing body, then one may strike off “without
inconvenience” those social relationships where identity of interests could
be presumed to exist most naturally: children/parents, sisters/brothers,
wives/husbands. In light of what we have seen in Chapter 3 on the
correlation of the condition of women and societal development,
Hamburger seems right to argue that Mill’s limitations as regards universal
suffrage served to “take away any surface impression of extremism that
might otherwise have been present”.184 Effacing his extremism would not
only enable Mill not to alarm “even a Whig”, but also to make a Tory
convert “to the principles of good government”.

The method of synthesis and “Government”

Mill admitted that “the whole science of human nature must be explored to
lay a foundation for the science of government”. Not being able to
undertake such an endeavor in that confined venue,185 Mill focused on
presenting the key elements of government in a didactic way. However, in
the correspondence between Mill and David Ricardo, it was obvious that
Mill was trying to instruct as well as to serve “the good cause”, i.e. that of
good government.186 If it was to serve both ends, the essay needed to
communicate the principles of a science, while it was trying to change the
minds of those who had already settled on the issue of reform. The Method
of Synthesis was suited to this double task.
As we saw, in early 1822, James Mackintosh told Macvey Napier, the
editor of the Supplement, that Mill’s “Government” was “very ably
written”. Still, from Mackintosh’s point of view, Mill had employed
Hobbes’s erroneous philosophical method.187 This meant that Mill had
failed to consider, first, that causes (i.e., general laws) may counteract each
other and second, that general laws connect to particulars through “a scale
of intermediate and secondary laws”, i.e. axiomata media. A few years
later, Macaulay noted that the method of Induction had to do with observing
the present and studying the past, sifting, comparing and contrasting
evidence of facts to ascertain authenticity, “generalizing with judgment and
diffidence”, and always testing theory against new facts to make corrections
(if necessary).188 However, Macaulay did not describe something different
from Mill’s ideas about how the philosopher incorporates experience in a
theory. And with Stewart’s and Grote’s discussion of Bacon’s method in
mind, Mill’s principles of human action (e.g. self-interest as a power that
may counteract the motive to serve the public good) seem to satisfy
Mackintosh’s demand for axiomata media between the highest
generalizations of human nature (e.g. laws of association of ideas) and the
actions of particular individuals (e.g. those in power).189 As we saw,
according to Mill, the Tories considered government to be “a bad machine,
which works well”.190 So breaking the “machine” down to its constitutive
elements and showing “clear[ly] and distinct[ly]” the “powers, one by one,
of which the agency of this machine consisted”, and of all “the various
combinations, in which they were calculated to act”, would allow Mill to
show that “certain powers […] counteracted the rest; and that if these were
taken away, and others put in their place”, the good effects of the machinery
of government would be greatly increased.191 Mill’s metaphor implied that
“[p]owers must be put in action for the attainment of any end which is not
spontaneous”;192 likewise, Mill’s constant references to the manners and
circumstances of people in earlier essays on the subject meant that Mill’s
argument in “Government” was not about just any society or any
distribution of political power.
As we saw, Mill believed that he had demonstrated his conclusion from
the stated assumptions: “It is proved, therefore, by the closest deduction
from the acknowledged laws of human nature, and by direct and decisive
experiments, that the ruling One, or the ruling Few, would, if checks did not
operate in the way of prevention, reduce the great mass of the people
subject to their power, at least to the condition of negroes in the West
Indies”.193 From a few inductively derived principles, principles which
were accepted by his adversaries, Mill moved to demonstrate his
conclusions. The talk of demonstration was meant to be “imposing”, but it
could be mistaken for what it was not.
In 1806, Mill noted that in ordinary language reasoning—unlike in
algebraic reasoning—“the mind perpetually recurs to the thing signified by
the general term”: “in reasoning about men”, the mind recurs to “individual
men”.194 So what individuals did the general term “ruler” denote? For Mill,
that was clear: as we saw, writing in 1813, he wondered whether or not it is
“according to the experience of human nature that men with the powers of
government in their hands are angels and have never any propensity to
oppress”.195 The premises Mill used corresponded to ordinary conceptions,
endoxa, ones that recur to our experience about individual human beings—
with all their faults and virtues—not self-evident truths. At the same time,
since Mill was aware that even “ample Induction” only established
possibilities, not absolute certainties,196 the premises he used could only be
universals which held true for the most part, i.e., eikota, probabilistic
premises. In 1812, writing on the education of the poor, Mill had pointed
out his “chains of proof” were only as “close, unbroken and infallible […]
as any that contingent affairs admit of”.197 Only in discourse, Mill noted in
1815, can one speak either of tendencies as “a general, established fact, in
human nature” or with sharp classifications, admitting no degrees.198
Hence, one may be “tempted to write after each of his paragraphs [in the
essay on government], Q.E.D.”, as Bruce Mazlish put it, but only for
rhetorical effect.199
In the opening paragraphs of “Government” specifically, adopting the
vocabulary of the method of Analysis (e.g., composing, resolving,
dissecting),200 Mill noted that neither the means nor the ends of government
had been analysed, notwithstanding the amount of discussion spent on the
subject: “it is only a general and undistinguishing conception of them,
which is found in the minds of the greatest number of men”. In his
Commonplace Books, Mill noted “Theory is essentially something more
perfect than practice. Words can be made more accurate than things”,201 but
when an argument “merely turns upon words […] it is a mere bit of
logomachy”. Still, when words “are calculated to mislead and deceive; and
to produce, in consequence, mischievous courses of action”, they must be
exposed.202
However, by stating the “Nature of the Inquiry” in “Government” as an
issue of imprecise definitions in the minds of the public, Mill’s
“desideratum” was not to discover “new facts”, but rather to provide “a
more comprehensive survey of known facts in their various bearings”.
Demonstration would “force” upon the audience all the implications of
assuming a number of principles of human nature for the actual function of
the British Constitution. As we saw, Mill’s conclusion could only hold if
two other, unstated, premises were accepted as well: that “[t]he laws of the
phenomena of society are, and can be, nothing but the laws of the actions
and passions of human beings united together in the social state”; and that
“Men are not, when brought together, converted into another kind of
substance, with different properties […]. Human beings in society have no
properties but those which are derived from, and may be resolved into, the
laws of the nature of individual man”.203 Since Mill was arguing from the
Tory requirement that the issue of reform should be treated as one “in which
the solution is found in the passions, the wants, and the weaknesses of
ordinary humanity”,204 these two warrants of his conclusions did not need
to be stated. Mill was confident that his conclusions were “so conformable
to ordinary conceptions”, that he could even avoid stating them.205
Conformable with enthymematic rhetoric, Mill thus did not explicitly state
his radical conclusions in “Government”. Still Mill was sincere on what he
considered the best security against abuse of power to be; for him “[t]he
right side of a question [is] the most persuasive”.206

II Conclusion
As we saw in Chapter 5, the difference between a coherent and an
incoherent writer, according to Mill, is the ability to organize ideas in an
argument according to the end in view. Writers who understand a subject
keep “the real question steadily in view” and do their utmost to remove “the
principal ground of prejudice against it”.207 The main argument against
reform was that the constitution worked well in practice, despite the
“theoretic” weaknesses. This seems to explain why Mill focused on
demonstrating that arguing from the “man-as-he-really-is” premise to the
conclusion that the constitution worked well involved fallacious
reasoning.208 A review of James Mill’s earlier works suggests that he did
not consider the identity of interests through representation the sole
condition of good government. Even though he referred to other conditions
—education, publicity, the “fear of resistance”—the foundation of his
argument in “Government” was the state of interests. It was a foundation
however that met the opponents of reform in their stronghold: that “[e]very
constitution […] that is adapted to the circumstances of man, must have a
portion of evil in its composition” and “must suit with man’s condition, his
character, his passions, and his self-love”.209 In “Government”, Mill could
not have stated explicitly his intended audience—the pretence of writing to
an encyclopaedia needed to be maintained.
Rather than dealing with arguments advocating moderate rather than
radical reform, I have argued that Mill’s “Government” tried to meet anti-
reformers on their own ground. Importantly, even if Mill was trying to
avoid “the appearance of an essay on Reform of Parliament”, by catering to
some anti-reform prejudices, “[a]n actual expansion of the elective
franchise on James Mill’s scheme would […] have been seven times greater
than that eventually secured under the 1832 Reform Bill”.210

Notes
 1 A shorter version of this chapter appeared in History of Political Thought (Loizides, 2017).
2 Halévy, 1904: 251. See further Thomas, 1969.
3 Bain, 1882: 215–17.
4 Grint, 2013: 48.
5 Mill, 1835b: 11.
6 J.S. Mill, Autobiography, CW: I.165; A System of Logic, CW: VIII.893.
7 See, e.g., Thomas, 1979: ch. 3.
8 Ryan, 1972: 82, 88.
9 Krouse, 1982: 516. Compare with Woodcock, 1980.
10 Krouse, 1982: 520.
11 Bentham: X.450.
12 Mill, 1816g: 266.
13 J. Mill to D. Ricardo, 25 Oct. 1816 and 14 Aug. 1816, Ricardo: VII.87 and 61–2. Mill
communicated a similar anxiety to Francis Place: “scarcity will produce an amount of misery
which the heart aches to think of—how many a lonely child and meritorious man & woman
will perish in all the miseries of want. A curse & tenfold curse upon the villains by whom such
scenes are prepared”. J. Mill to F. Place, 26 Aug. 1816, cited in Fenn, 1987: 66.
14 Thomas, 1969: 264.
15 Hamburger, 1962: 171.
16 Grint, 2013: 51; Fenn, 1987: ch. 4.
17 J.S. Mill, Autobiography, CW: I.46.
18 According to James Crimmins (2011: 25), this debate “reached its crescendo in six articles in
the Edinburgh Review and Westminster Review in 1829–30”.
19 Collini, Winch and Barrow, 1983: 93.
20 Thomas, 1969: 250.
21 Ball, 1992: xxv. See also Hamburger, 1962: 169; Lively and Rees, 1978: 5–7.
22 D. Ricardo to J. Mill, 27 July 1820, Ricardo: VIII.211. See also, D. Ricardo to J. Mill, 30 Aug.
1823, ibid., IX.375; J. Mill to D. Ricardo, 13 Nov. 1820, ibid., VIII.291.
23 J. Mill to D. Ricardo, 11 Sept. 1819, ibid., VIII.67.
24 Mill, 1821c: 1. Mill received more than the usual payment rate for it. See J. Mill to D. Ricardo,
16 Sept. 1820, in Ricardo: VIII.240.
25 J. Mill to J.R McCulloch, 18 Aug. 1825, in Bain, 1882: 292; J. Mill to D. Ricardo, 13 Nov.
1820, Ricardo: VIII.291.
26 J. Mill to M. Napier, 11 May 1820, BL Add. MSS 34612, f. 354; J. Mill to Dumont, 8 June
1821, MSS Dumont, Geneva, MS 76, f. 21.
27 Mill, 1805g: 1311; 1816a: 25; History: I.xviii.
28 History: I.xviii; II.135–6.
29 J. Mill to D. Ricardo, 14 Aug. 1819, Ricardo: VIII.52–3.
30 Mill, 1815b: 319.
31 J. Mill to D. Ricardo, 23 Aug. 1815, Ricardo: VI.252–4; Mill, 1815b: 319.
32 J. Mill to D. Ricardo, 10 Oct. 1815, Ricardo: VI.306–8.
33 J. Mill to D. Ricardo, 10 Oct. 1815, Ricardo: VI.306–8 (Montesquieu, De l’Esprit des Lois, bk.
XI, ch. 4). Mill cited this passage from Montesquieu also in “Government” (Mill, 1820: 496n).
34 History: III.368.
35 Mill, 1806a: 15.
36 Mill, 1803b: 60.
37 Mill, 1806j: 516.
38 Mill, 1805e: 590.
39 Villers, 1805: 294n. For a similar view, see also, Mill, 1835b: 1.
40 Mill, 1803b: 56.
41 Mill, 1805f: 1149.
42 Mill, 1806j: 510.
43 ibid., 512–16.
44 ContraMazlish, 1975: 78.
45 Mill 1806h: 290. Even though Mill did not cite Dugald Stewart on these thoughts, the first
volume of Stewart’s Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind (1792–1827) had made
similar claims. See, e.g., Stewart: II.228–9.
46 Mill, 1805e: 589–90.
47 Mill, 1806f: 450.
48 Mill, 1806i: 453.
49 In 1805, Mill had referred to Montesquieu that “honour is the principle of monarchy”; but,
honor, in Montesquieu’s vocabulary Mill noted, was “the prejudice of every person and rank”.
See Mill, 1805f: 1145.
50 Mill, 1806i: 469.
51 Mill, 1814c: 205.
52 ibid., 206.
53 ibid., 205. See Paul’s first epistle to Timothy (8–11).
54 For a thorough discussion on Bentham’s conception of interests, see Postema, 2006. For Mill’s
private thoughts on the matter, see the Section “Interest: its influence on what men think and
say” in CPB: III.220r–223r.
55 Mill, 1814c: 207.
56 ibid., 210.
57 Mill, 1805g: 1302. Experience thus contradicted the doctrine of “mutual checks” by the
holders of power (History: II.167, III.6n. See also Mill, 1806h: 292 and 1819a:721–2).
58 Mill, 1813a: 462.
59 Mill, 1805g: 1307 quoting Dawson, 1805: 122–4.
60 Mill, 1813a: 464.
61 Mill, 1808: 196.
62 Mill, 1809c: 305.
63 Mill, 1805c: 383; Mill, 1816a: 167. For examples of such practice, see Mill, 1816b and 1817b.
64 Mill, 1816f: 248.
65 Mill, 1814c: 209–10.
66 Mill, 1808: 196.
67 ibid., 197. Bad government, Mill noted, was “universally the cause of the poverty of the great
body of the people”.
68 Mill, 1815b: 333. The same point was repeated in the essay on government (Mill, 1820: 492),
without however the addendum that the people were “stimulated by unnatural institutions to
excessive multiplication”. See also, Mill, 1815b: 323; Mill, 1816a: 24; Mill, 1816b: 418.
69 History: III.5–6. See also Mill, 1808: 197.
70 Mill, 1810: 700–1.
71 History: III.5–6.
72 Mill, 1814c: 216. For Mill’s later discussion on the ballot, see infra, Chapter 5.
73 Mill, 1809c: 303, 308.
74 History: III.451–2.
75 Both George Grote and John Stuart Mill referred to this passage to advocate secret and open
voting respectively (Grote, 1821: 102n–103n; J.S. Mill, “Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform”
 (1859), CW: XIX.331n–2n).
76 History: VI.53. See also, Mill, 1809c: 303.
77 CPB: I.33v; Mill, 1809c: 308–9.
78 Dawson, 1805: 160.
79 ibid., 203.
80 ibid., 160, 163, 169–170, 175.
81 Mill, 1820: 500ff.
82 History: I.viii. See also Mill, 1812b: 555; 1816a: 29.
83 Mill, 1810: 701.
84 J. Mill to D. Ricardo, 14 Aug. 1819, Ricardo: VIII.52–53.
85 History: V.251. Ricardo had criticised Mill for not taking seriously public opinion on many
occasions (not excepting Mill’s “Government”). See, D. Ricardo to J. Mill, 30 Aug. 1815,
Ricardo: VI.263–4; 25 Oct. 1815, ibid., VI.310–11; 30 Dec. 1817, ibid., VII.236–7; 27 July
1820, ibid., VIII.211.
86 Mill, 1813a: 464; 1816a: 168.
87 Mill, 1815b: 319.
88 Mill, 1816a: 23.
89 See Mill, 1819b; 1821b; 1812g; 1812h; 1826a.
90 Mill, 1817d: 557.
91 Mill, 1808: 198. 1813a: 461.
92 Villers, 1805: 161n; Mill, 1812g: 116. Cf. Mill, 1820: 503ff.
93 History: II.433; Mill, 1815b: 319. See also Hamburger, 1963: 20–33.
94 Mill, 1813a: 461; also, History: II.134. Unlike the principle of utility, “common sense” could
never be a guide for change (Mill, 1812b: 559–60).
95 Bentham, 1817: ii.
96 ibid., x–xi, xviii–xix.
97 ibid., xxiii–xxvi.
98 ibid., lvi.
99 ibid., xxii–xxiii. For the term, “corrupter-general”, see J.S. Mill, Autobiography, CW: I.109.
100 Bentham, 1817: lxv.
101 ibid., lviii, lxxx–cxxxv.
102 ibid., lix–lxi, cclxxiv, cclxxvi–cclxxvii, cclxxxvii, cccxx–cccxxii.
103 ibid., xlviii, lx–lxv, cxxxv–clxxxii.
104 ibid., lxix–lxxii, cclvi–cclxvi, cclxxxv–ccxcix.
105 ibid., lxxii–lxxiii, clxxxii–cxcix, cccxv–xviii (also, ibid., 5, 12, 40–2).
106 ibid., 2–5. See also, ibid., lxvi–lxxvi, cxccix–ccxxiv. Compare with Mill, 1806j. For an
excellent analysis of Bentham’s ideas on parliamentary reform, see Schofield, 2009: chs. 5–6.
107 Halévy, 1904: 417; Crimmins, 2011: 26.
108 Anon., 1817a: 128, 130 (on Bentham, 1817: cvi [note]). According to Mary P. Mack (1963:
17), everyone—Bain, Halevy, Russell, Brinton, Sabine, Plamenatz—repeats the fiction “that
James Mill converted Bentham to democracy in 1809”. Given the effort put into trying to
revise the “stock tradition of the history of ideas” with regard to Bentham’s “conversion to
democracy by James Mill” (Mack, 1963: 438, 441), it is surprising that Bentham’s note that he
was “goaded to the task” by those around him “of late” and most importantly, his confession
that “the object a dark, and thence a hideous phantom, until, elicited by severe and external
pressure [italics added], the light of reason—or, if this word be too assuming, the light of
ratiocination—was brought to bear upon it”, which the Quarterly Review author took to
describe Bentham’s transition from “moderate” to “radical” reform, and which has not
 attracted much attention. Bentham’s vocabulary seems to point to James Mill’s method of
persuasion—as we saw, Mill had as early as 1806 publically stated his radical views on
parliamentary reform. For a restatement of the “stock tradition”, see Dinwiddy, 1975: 683–700.
The most recent attempts to revise it are Crimmins, 1994 and Schofield, 2009 (ch. 6, sect. I).
109 Anon., 1817a: 135.
110 Anon., 1817a: 128–30; Anon., 1817b: 551, 556–7, 560; Anon., 1818a: 319, 323; J.
Mackintosh, 1818: 173–4.
111 Anon., 1817a: 135.
112 Although, the Critical Review critic argued, in practice Bentham made “some concession […]
as applied to the British constitution” (Anon., 1817b: 555). Even though the reviewer did not
seem to reject reform altogether, s/he made a special point of noting that s/he did not endorse
the opinions expressed (ibid., 551).
113 See Hansard, 1818: 1164.
114 Cato, 1818: 62–4. Mill brought Cato’s letter to Bentham’s attention; see J. Bentham to J.H.
Koe, 1 Feb. 1818, in Conway, 1989: 155.
115 Brougham, 1818: 199ff.
116 Mackintosh, 1818: 173.
117 ibid., 174. See also, Mackintosh, 1820: 466.
118 Mackintosh, 1818: 176–7 and 1820: 483.
119 Mackintosh, 1818: 191–2.
120 Bentham, 1817: cclxx.
121 Mackintosh, 1818: 175. See also ibid., 184–5.
122 ibid., 181–2. In 1820, Mackintosh tried to show how the history of Britain provides guidance
to “quiet improvement” (Mackintosh, 1820: 466, 479–80, 492–3).
123 For Mackintosh’s arguments see, Mackintosh, 1818: 194–6.
124 ibid., 198–9.
125 ibid., 197–8, 175–6.
126 Norgate, 1896: 395; A. Roberts, 1850: 40.
127 Bentham, 1817: lxxx–lxxxii, lxxxiii–lxxxix; Mackintosh, 1818: 174 and 1820: 488–9.
128 Anon., 1818a: 314.
129 ibid., 314–15.
130 ibid., 317, 323.
131 ibid., 309–10; also, ibid., 304. This scheme of representation appeared also in an earlier issue
of the British Review. See Anon., 1812: 101.
132 Anon., 1818a: 313. For the author’s argument against the ballot, see ibid., 319–21.
133 ibid., 286–7, 306–7.
134 ibid., 304, 307–8.
135 ibid., 314, 307–8.
136 Halévy, 1904: 419. Collini, Winch and Barrow, 1983: 98; Barker, 1937: xiv.
137 Thomas, 1979: 125. On the 1819 by-elections of Westminster, see ibid., ch. 2.
138 For the term “variegated representation”, see CPB: I.162r and 170r.
139 Bain, 1882: 128–9. J. Mill to M. Napier, 2 July 1816, in Napier, 1879: 16.
140 Bain, 1882: 86–8. The project was eventually abandoned in 1820.
141 J. Mill to M. Napier, 10 Sept. 1819 and 11 May 1820, in Napier, 1879: 23–4.
142 Bain, 1882: 170–2; H. Trower to D. Ricardo, 7 June 1818, Ricardo: VII.266.
143 Temperley, 1905: 262; Bell, 1846: 272–3. Mill’s radicalism had proved a problem since 1809;
see F. Jeffrey to H. Brougham 19 Oct. 1809 and 25 Nov. 1809, (Brougham MSS 10512 and
22852, UCL), cited in Fenn, 1987: 55n6.
144 J.R McCulloch to M. Napier, 2 May 1824, in Napier, 1879: 39.
145 Ball, 2004.
146 J. Mill to M. Napier, 3 Jan. and 10 July 1821, in Napier, 1879: 26–7. In 1818, writing to a
friend upon considering a Greek professorship at Glasgow, Mill wondered whether the Whigs
and Tories at the university “can bear with the opinions of a man, whose politics will give them
no disturbance”. He thought their co-operation to keep him out a probable scenario. See J. Mill
to T. Thomson, 22 Feb. 1818, in Bain, 1882: 167.
147 Mill, 1825a: 194.
148 See Mill, 1824a; J.S. Mill, “Periodical Literature: Edinburgh Review”, CW: I.300–1.
149 Hamburger, 1962: 174. Mill, 1820: 501. The petition, to which Jenkinson had replied, was
included in Bentham’s Plan.
150 CPB: I.27v. Fenn’s editorial note of this passage claims that Mill was referring clearly to
Mackintosh’s article. However, points (a) and (c) do not hold with reference to Mackintosh
(who was quite respectful of Bentham); even though (b) does hold, it does only to a lesser
extent since Mackintosh had acknowledged that some reform did need to take place. Mill’s
remarks held true for both the British Review and the Quarterly Review notices of Bentham’s
Plan (Anon., 1818a and Anon., 1817a, respectively).
151 Mackintosh, 1820: 499.
152 J. Mackintosh to M. Napier, 8 Jan. 1822, in Napier, 1879: 34. As we will see later on,
Mackintosh did object to Mill’s method, however.
153 Anon., 1818a: 304, 307–8.
154 Cobbett, 1817: 10.
155 Anon., 1818a: 314–15.
156 Cobbett, 1817: 810.
157 ibid., 820.
158 J. Mill to M. Napier, 10 Sept. 1819, in Napier, 1879: 24; J. Mill to D. Ricardo, 11 Sept. 1819,
Ricardo: VIII.68.
159 CPB: I.178v; see also J. Mill to D. Ricardo, 28 Dec. 1820, Ricardo: VIII.328.
160 D. Ricardo to J. Mill, 9 Sept. 1819, Ricardo: VIII.63. See Anon., 1818a: 304, 307–8.
161 Mackintosh, 1792: 9–10.
162 See, D. Ricardo to J. Mill, 9 Sept. 1819, Ricardo: VIII.63.
163 See D. Ricardo to J. Mill, 9 Sept. 1819, ibid., VIII.63; J. Mill to D. Ricardo, 11 Sept. 1819,
ibid., VIII.67 and 28 Sept. 1819, ibid., VIII.84.
164 Mill, 1820: 491.
165 Cobbett, 1817: 810; Mill, 1808: 198.
166 Mill, 1820: 493–4; Cobbett, 1817: 820.
167 Mill, 1820: 494.
168 ibid., 491.
169 Mill, 1820: 491.
170 ibid., 492.
171 J.S. Mill, A System of Logic, CW: VII.879.
172 Mill, 1820: 493.
173 Mill, 1835b: 15. See also, George Grote, “Short abstract of the article—Government”. Senate
House Library, MS429/3 ff. 229–36 at f. 232. For a transcription, see Loizides, 2014.
174 Cobbett, 1817: 816.
175 ibid., 818–20.
176 Mill, 1820: 496–7.
177 ibid., 504.
178 ibid., 501.
179 Mill, 1808: 196 (italics added).
180 See further Hamburger, 1962. Mill frequently extoled the role of the middle ranks of society in
progress and improvement. See, e.g., Mill, 1821a:63–4 and 1811b: 417–8.
181 Mill, 1820: 499–502.
182 ibid., 497–9. See Burke, 1780 quoted in CPB: I.32v.
183 Mill, 1820: 500–1.
184 Hamburger, 1962: 176.
185 Mill, 1820: 491.
186 D. Ricardo to J. Mill, 27 July 1820, in Ricardo: VIII.211. See also, D. Ricardo to J. Mill, 30
Aug. 1823, ibid., IX.375; J. Mill to D. Ricardo, 13 Nov. 1820, ibid., VIII.291.
187 J. Mackintosh to M. Napier, 8 Jan. 1822, in Napier, 1879: 34.
188 Mackintosh, 1821: 241–2. Macaulay, 1829: 188–9.
189 As we saw, Mill did acknowledge that particular varieties may counteract more general laws
(History: I.xviii).
190 CPB: I.178v. See also, J. Mill to D. Ricardo, 28 Dec. 1820, in Ricardo: VIII.328.
191 CPB: ΙII.111v.
192 Mill, 1835e: 1.
193 Mill, 1820: 496. See also, ibid., 493, 495, 497.
194 Mill, 1806g: 572. Cf. Mill, 1829: I.206–7.
195 Mill, 1813a: 464.
196 Mill, 1829: II.277.
197 Mill, 1812f: 74.
198 Mill, 1815c: 186 and 1821: 224–5.
199 Mazlish, 1975: 80.
200 Mill, 1820: 491.
201 CPB: I.113v.
202 Mill, 1812f: 90–1.
203 In his own discussion of the method of politics, John Stuart Mill explicitly stated all of these
premises (J.S. Mill, Logic, CW: VII.879. See also, ibid., VII.371).
204 Anon., 1818a: 314–15.
205 Mill, 1820: 496.
206 CPB: III.105r-v, II.7v(b4) on Aristotle, R 1355a38.
207 Mill, 1829: II.300 and 1825a: 194.
208 James Mill’s conclusion could only be warranted by postulating that “the universal law of
social phenomena was the composition of causes”—the joint effect of several causes was
identical with the sum of their separate effects. See J.S. Mill, A System of Logic, CW: VIII.879;
VII.371.
209 Anon., 1812: 35.
210 Stimson and Milgate, 1993: 906.
Conclusion

ὅταν δὲ ἅπαξ γραφῇ, κυλινδεῖται μὲν πανταχοῦ πᾶς λόγος ὁμοίως παρὰ τοῖς ἐπαΐουσιν, ὡς
δ᾽ αὕτως παρ᾽ οἷς οὐδὲν προσήκει, καὶ οὐκ ἐπίσταται λέγειν οἷς δεῖ γε καὶ μή.
πλημμελούμενος δὲ καὶ οὐκ ἐν δίκῃ λοιδορηθεὶς τοῦ πατρὸς ἀεὶ δεῖται βοηθοῦ: αὐτὸς γὰρ
οὔτ᾽ ἀμύνασθαι οὔτε βοηθῆσαι δυνατὸς αὑτῷ.

When it has once been written down, every discourse roams about everywhere, reaching
indiscriminately those with understanding no less than those who have no business with it,
and it doesn’t know to whom it should speak and to whom it should not. And when it is
faulted and attacked unfairly, it always needs its father’s support; alone, it can neither defend
itself nor come to its own support.1

In an early unpublished piece of writing, James Mill suggested a rule of

thumb “for fixing the gradation of pleasures, in point of respectability”.
Nobler pleasures deserved more esteem: “May we not reckon that the most
important pleasure, by the want of which man would suffer the most?”2
According to Mill, since human beings would suffer most without society,
those actions which secure the well-being of society are the noblest and
those which endanger it the most vicious. Hence, the “business of a good
education”, according to Mill, “is to make the associations [of pleasure and
pain] and the values [of the act] correspond”—to expand the associations of
narrow interests to include social interests, that is, to make people care
enough to sacrifice “part of the self which the good of our species
requires”:3
When the grand sources of felicity are formed into the leading and governing Ideas, each in
its due and relative strength, Education has then performed its most perfect work; and thus the
individual becomes, to the greatest degree, the source of utility to others, and of happiness to
himself.4

Mill saw himself as an educator, one who combated prejudices and tried to
gain converts in the cause of social happiness. And if he was right about the
ends of education, being an educator was one of the highest callings.
 On June 26, 1836, three days after James Mill’s death, Albany
Fonblanque (1793–1872) wrote a heartfelt obituary, acknowledging the
deceased man’s pedagogical calling:
With profound grief we have to record the death of one of the first men of our time; the loss
of one of our master-minds, of one that has given the most powerful impulse, and the most
correct direction to thought. Wherever talent and good purpose were found conjoined—the
power and the will to serve the cause of truth,—the ability and the disposition to be useful to
society, to weed out error, and advance improvement,—wherever these qualities were united,
the possessor found a friend, a supporter to fortify, cheer, and encourage him in his course, in
James Mill. He fanned every flame of public virtue, he strengthened every good purpose that
came within the range of his influence. His conversation was full of instruction, and his mind
was rich in suggestion, to a degree that we have never known equalled. His writings with all
their solid value, would convey but an imperfect notion of the character and the powers of his
mind. His conversation was so energetic and complete in thought, so succinct, and exact ad
unguem in expression, that if reported as uttered, his colloquial observations or arguments
would have been perfect compositions. His thoughts conveyed to paper, lost some of the
excellences we have mentioned. Yet his works will be stores of valuable doctrine, to which
we shall often repair for instruction. It was hardly possible for an intelligent man to know
James Mill without feeling an obligation for the profit derived from his mind. That mind is
now lost to us, but, quidquid amavimus, quidquid mirati sumus, manet, mansurumque est in
animis […].5

The James Mill painted in this picture—unlike Tacitus’s Agricola—has not

escaped oblivion; the reason is simple: verba volant, scripta manent.
Perhaps the only defence for Mill’s works, whether or not they are “faulted
and attacked unfairly”, to draw on the quote from Plato’s Phaedrus, is to
understand why he wrote the way that he did. And this I have tried to do.
In this book, I took issue with the fact that commentators argue from the
premise that the essay on government presented an “outline waiting to be
filled”, advancing the “whole” utilitarian political theory “in compact
shape”. This would mean that Mill thought the identification of interests the
sole condition for good government. He did not. Many things were needed
for good government—education, liberty of the press, and activity, to name
a few. So why did Mill focus on that condition in “Government”? He did so
because he was responding to the Tory, rather than to the Whig, position on
parliamentary reform. He expected his readers to detect Tory and “Old
Whig” positions and objections. This may explain why Mill dismissed
criticisms of his choice of focus as “an example of the saying of Hobbes,
that when reason is against a man, a man will be against reason”.6
 No one can deny that, in his essays, Mill comes off as a repetitive,
adversarial, and intellectualist advocate of radical reform.7 But that’s a
superficial reading of his method of persuasion. He was bent on changing
the educational, social and political institutions of his time. And his
contemporaries or near contemporaries did credit him with such changes.
Far from his argument being a priori or dogmatic, when new data came to
his attention, Mill changed it. In the case of the education of the poor, he
proposed abandoning denominational teaching, making his argument more
radical, and thus closer to his “real” views. In the case of parliamentary
reform, he conceded the points on parliamentary composition and the
duration of tenure in exchange for the ballot, making his argument more
moderate, and nothing close to his “real” views. But there was nothing
insincere in such a compromise.
The method of Analysis and Synthesis served as the foundation for the
sort of revision I proposed in our understanding of Mill’s philosophical and
rhetorical method. Traditionally, this method served scientific investigation
and the communication of the results of that investigation. Commentators
seem to be too preoccupied with the demonstrative argumentation of Mill’s
shorter essays. The Method of Synthesis was considered to be the method
of teaching—especially teaching to the novice. In the tradition of “New
Rhetoric”, Synthesis was also a method of persuasion. As we saw, such a
frame of reference allows us to make better sense of both his choice of
focus and the use of rational persuasion.
Dealing with Mill’s method of philosophy and of rhetoric, I drew from a
number of works and manuscripts, from the beginning to the end of his
career. In contrast, dealing with his History, trying to widen the context in
which it has been read, I followed up on some clues offered by the book
itself. Rarely do contemporary discussions of the History escape the
constraints of the popular perception of Mill as a militant Benthamite, even
when they acknowledge the relevance of Scottish theoretical or conjectural
histories to that work. Once again, no one can deny these intellectual debts.
However, he drew from a richer array of sources—rhetorical,
historiographical, and philosophical. Bound by a particular interpretation of
Mill’s outlook as a priori, theoretical, and narrow—an interpretation which
gained wide appeal since the late 1820s—later commentators missed some
obvious sources for his most famous—and infamous—claims. Even though
it was certainly not “the greatest historical work which has appeared in our
language since that of Gibbon”, as per Macaulay’s embellished claim,
Mill’s History had indeed undertaken “the greatest historical labour” since
Gibbon.8
Engaging with Mill’s corpus, I took seriously Ball, Burston, and
Cumming’s idea that his classical education had a great effect on him, one
which set him apart from Bentham. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero
played an important role in his texts and philosophical outlook. By focusing
on classical education in Scotland, and the most apparent traces of its
impact on Mill, I tried to present the evidence for the manifestation of
classical influences in his works. Not only did Mill live up to the idea of the
philosopher in action; his attack on the Neo-Platonic appropriation of Plato
and his emphasis on Plato’s dialectics resurfaced in his treatment of Hindu
literature and in his elenchus of popular misconceptions in public debates,
respectively. At the same time, he followed established practice in choosing
Demosthenes over Cicero, trying to live up to the Socratic ideal of τοῦ
διδόναι και δέχεισθαι λόγον in writing as well in speaking.
It is easy to miss all those links. The existing caricature of the elder Mill
has been around for a long time. It was largely the result of two of his
works: the History and the essay on government. Their reception presented
us with a paradox, however. When they first appeared audiences were
impressed—the History went into a second edition in less than two years.
Mill was praised because he showed that a history of British India could be
written from the “closet”. And “Government” impressed many “with the
value of this concise and clear exposition of the Elements of Political
Knowledge”.9 He was praised because his exposition was simple, clear, and
demonstrative. In less than a decade, these two works were derided on
roughly the same grounds. In both cases, criticisms were voiced from early
on—Walker and Mackintosh, respectively—yet Mill held his ground. But
from 1825 onwards, when critics specifically attacked his political
argument in “Government”, that is the need for reform of the way political
rights were distributed by the British Constitution, and his method of
argumentation, similar charges on his History did not take long to follow.
After that, the caricature of Mill was well-defined. It was set in stone by his
son’s Autobiography.
In conclusion, this book has, to some extent, been “an exercise in
intellectual rescue”.10 I have tried to challenge the common portrayal of
James Mill as the authoritarian exponent of a dogmatic, narrow, and a
priori political creed. First, I laid particular emphasis on the range of Mill’s
intellectual debts, highlighting influences outside the Benthamite tradition
and ideas developed prior to his meeting Bentham. Second, relatedly, I
suggested that the Analytic and Synthetic method is an intellectual
apparatus suitable for the solution of an old problem: Mill’s use of
deduction. Finally, I tried to show that other works—early and late—
manuscripts, and letters, put the History and “Government” under a
different light. A fundamental assumption in this “exercise” has been that
these are sufficient to cast a new light on Mill’s utilitarian logic and politics.

Notes
1 Plato, Phaedrus 275e. Translation is Nehamas and Woodruff’s (Plato, 1997).
2 Mill, CPB: II.4. Robert Fenn suggested 1806 as a possible date of composition.
3 Mill, 1829: II.212–13; 1813a: 111.
4 ibid., II.303.
5 A. Fonblanque, “The Death of Mill”, Examiner 26 June 1836 (1482): 403.
6 See J.S. Mill, Autobiography, CW: I.165, 167. See also, Mill, 1835b: 19.
7 Urbinati, 2013: 57, 70n23.
8 T.B. Macaulay, Speech on East India Company Charter, 10 Jul 1833, cited in Forbes,
1951/1952: 23; Anon., 1821: 337.
9 History: I.xii; Mill, 1821c: 1.
10 I thank Duncan Kelly for this phrase.
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Index

abuse of power 17, 28, 106, 109, 159, 197

Academics 54–56
Allan, David 88
Allen, William 70, 158, 193
American Civil War debate 146
analysis 1, 4, 40–41, 46, 79–80, 86, 121–23, 127–32, 135–36, 144–47, 166–67, 173, 200, 204, 210;
enlightened 123; method of 129–30, 135, 200; political 121–22; psychological 18; self-critical
146; and synthesis 4, 122–23, 127–31, 136, 210
Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind 1, 131
ancient 3, 14, 20, 45, 47–48, 50, 73, 84, 89–90, 99, 136; authors 51–52; Greece 43, 45, 47–48, 117,
130, 133; languages 43; lawgivers 97; Neoplatonists 67; privileges 184; rhetoricians 52;
sources 44, 50; world 93, 101
Anglo-Indian politicians 22
anti-clericalism 59
Anti-Jacobin Review 152
anti-reform arguments 195–96, 198
anti-reformers 180–81, 195, 202
antiquity 46, 48, 101
aristocracy 41, 161–63, 165, 168, 186–87, 189, 197–98; aggrandizement of 172, 186; English 161;
landed 165
Aristotle 3–4, 36–38, 51–53, 96, 101, 116–17, 123, 126, 130, 133–34, 137, 139–40, 142–43, 207,
210; casting of poetry as more philosophical than history 96; and Metaphysics 126; rhetorical
works 138; syllogistic reasoning of 143
The Asiatic Journal 13, 22, 26, 111
Athenaeum Club 43
Athens 4, 43, 47–48, 62, 85, 130, 186
authority 9, 13, 15, 18, 21–22, 27, 38–39, 85–87, 97–100, 106, 115, 153, 163, 173, 189; Biblical 185;
critical 127; established 39; general 27; legitimate 16

Bacon, Francis 4, 20, 49, 85, 99, 125, 127, 129–31, 133, 141–42; and Novum Organum 127; and
scala ascensoria 129; and scala descensoria 129
Bagehot, Walter 69
Bailey, Samuel 173
Bain, Alexander 8, 42, 47–48, 67, 70, 79, 121, 150, 158, 179
Ball, Terence 2, 6, 104, 181, 210
ballot 164–65, 170–71, 173, 179, 187, 190, 192, 204–5, 210
Bayle, Pierre 94, 101
Bell, Andrew 1, 150–52, 154, 173
benevolence 29, 100
Bentham, Jeremy 1–2, 6–8, 22–24, 31–32, 34, 36–37, 39, 81–82, 98–101, 105, 113–14, 117–18, 178–
80, 189–94, 204–6; argument for reform 36; credentials 36; discredited by James Macintosh
191; and the philosophy of law 79; and the Plan of Parliamentary Reform 17, 30, 35, 105,
165, 179, 181, 189–91, 194, 196, 206; and radicalism 68, 146, 179; and Traités de Legislation
7; and utilitarianism 23–24, 30, 79–80, 91, 113
Benthamite 17, 24, 98, 114, 146, 160, 164, 172, 180–81, 193; aspirations 193; faith 80; history 6;
movement for reform 2, 194; origins 101; philosophical outlook 19; principles 81, 193;
propaganda 35, 80; radicalism 68, 146, 179; tract 183; tradition 211; utilitarianism 2, 107;
vocabulary 79
Bentley, Richard 55–56
Bissett, Andrew 64
“Black Hole” (Calcutta) 111
Blair, Anthony 148–49
Blair, Hugh 42, 46, 52–53, 62, 71, 90, 92, 97, 172
Britain 15, 17, 21, 44–45, 48, 65, 72, 81, 90, 98, 188–89, 205; eighteenth-century 3, 96, 117; and
India 1, 6–8, 12–17, 19–24, 26, 36, 81–82, 84, 86–87, 90–91, 93, 98, 100, 105–6, 109–11;
nineteenth-century 50, 130; the people of 192
British 3, 6–8, 12–19, 23–25, 36–39, 81, 86, 90–91, 93, 155–56, 170–71, 182–83, 188–89, 192–98,
205–6; Government 18, 148, 171, 188; history 8; people 15–16, 171, 182, 189; politics 81;
statesmanship 25, 90
British and Foreign Schools Society 156
British Constitution 48, 68, 152, 155, 165, 183, 197, 201, 205, 211
The British Critic 15, 17
British India 1, 3, 6–7, 10, 13, 19, 23–24, 27, 73, 79, 81, 86, 126, 170, 179; affairs 13, 86; in the
periodical press 12–18; policies of 6
British Parliament, see Parliament
The British Review 14–17, 39, 192–96, 198
Brougham, Henry 68, 191
Brucker, Johann Jakob 56, 59–60, 66–67, 95, 97–98
Bulwer, Edward Lytton 32, 40, 43
Burdett, Francis 191, 193–94
Burke, Edmund 70, 126
Burns, James 80, 84
Burnyeat, Myles 64–66, 134
Burrow, John W. 81, 181
Burston, William 2, 42, 210
Byron, Lord 24

cabals 184–85
Campbell, George 75, 133, 135, 141, 143
Canning, George 36, 194
Carlyle, Thomas 34, 41
Catana, Leo 66–67
catechism 151, 154
Cato (the Elder), Marcus 54, 60, 205
Chaldeans 97–98
Chen, Jeng Guo 7, 83
Christianity 17, 54, 58, 151, 153
Christians 54, 151–52
Church of England 151–55, 158; affiliations 15; members 151, 156
Church of Scotland 44–45
Cicero 42–43, 45–46, 50–65, 72, 74–76, 93–94, 101, 103–4, 113, 115–16, 118, 168, 173, 177, 210–
11; Academic Questions 66; adoption of Stoic principles in On Duties 56; appropriation of 55,
76; Collins’s portrait of 56; De Lege Agraria 93; Diderot’s admiration of 57; fame of 53, 57,
72; fame reaches an astonishing peak in the Enlightenment 53; Illustratus 55–56, 75; Letters to
Atticus 103; Opera Omnia 168; philosophy of 54, 58–59; reception in the 43; reception in the
eighteenth century 43, 54; rhetorical theory 51–52; Tusculanae Disputationes 55, 89
civilization 7, 10, 12–14, 20, 26, 81, 83, 91, 98–100, 104, 106, 112, 119; advanced 15; Hindu 13–14,
20–22, 83, 91, 108; Indian 21; scale of 12, 21, 90–91; state of 16, 38, 99, 106–7, 167
Clarke, M. L. 44, 47
classical education 2–3, 10–11, 17, 42–78, 94, 101, 210; focus on prosody 64–65; in Scotland 3, 43,
210
classics 3, 42–48, 50, 52, 54, 66, 72, 84, 94, 101, 116, 142; Greek 34; Latin 34; teaching of 42, 45
Cockburn, Lord 47
Collini, Stefan 181
Collins, Anthony 55–56
commerce 83, 90
Conway, Eustace 35
Copleston, Edward 133
Corcoran, John 137
Coulson, Walter 14–17, 25, 37–38
Crawfurd, John 23
Crimmins, James 205
critics 2, 13–15, 19, 22, 35–36, 38, 86, 146, 148, 160, 179, 189, 192–94, 211; acrimonious 8, 111;
ancient 51, 63; anonymous 14; Lancaster’s 153–54, 156–57, 173; Mill’s 39, 144, 173; modern
6; outspoken 83; rebutted 194; unconvinced 19, 23
Cumming, Ian 42, 44, 73, 210

Dalzel, Andrew 42, 46–49, 52, 62

Dawson’s Public Trusts 188, 203–4
De Lege Agraria 93
Demosthenes 3, 42–43, 51–52, 54, 60–64, 70, 72, 76, 149, 173, 211; brand of oratory 60; and Cicero
63; eloquence of 62–63, 70; orations of 46, 63; practiced “rational persuasion” 72
despotism 100, 110, 119
Dickens: influenced by Thomas Carlyle 34
Dodsley, Robert 135
Dodwell, Henry 54, 58–59
dogmatism 30, 140, 147
Dumont, Étienne 7, 98, 202
Duncan, William 135

East India College 64

East India Company 8, 12, 19, 21–22, 26, 36, 64, 194
The Eclectic Review 15, 17, 38–39, 151, 154
economics 80, 174
Edinburgh 3, 7, 42, 44–49, 52, 62, 72, 82, 89, 127, 136; heritage of James Mill 130; late-eighteenth-
century 46; and the teaching of classics 44; see also University of Edinburgh
education 1, 3–4, 33–34, 41–44, 68, 70, 72, 88, 115–16, 133, 150–60, 173–74, 179–80, 200–201,
208–10; bad 166, 182; early 151, 172; entrusting to government 155; expanding 156; general
153–54, 158; liberal 48, 191; non-denominational 153, 155; parochial 158; political 104, 118,
169, 189; religious 153, 156, 173; secondary 44–45; segregating 155; state-assisted 176;
university 42, 44–45, 133; see also instruction
elections 28, 165, 179, 184, 188, 190
electors 165, 184, 188, 190
Elements of Philosophy 128
Elements of Political Economy 1, 18, 131
Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind 96
Ellis, Francis Whyte 22
Emerson, Roger L. 84–85
emotions 14, 61, 70, 146, 150
“Empiric” (political analysis) 122, 127–28, 141
empiricism 80, 107, 124–25, 130
Encyclopaedia Britannica 1, 3, 7, 18, 27, 64, 94, 116, 126, 136, 164, 180–81; Supplement 1, 7, 18,
27–28, 134, 136, 164, 180–82, 194, 199
Encyclopédie 92, 95
Enfield, William 56, 59
England 4, 6, 17, 34, 44, 47–48, 51, 69, 81, 105, 110–11, 148, 151–55, 158, 170–71; and the
aristocracy 161; and the attitude to Hindu women 104; educated people of 85; institutions of
13, 15, 81, 110; practices 12, 18, 110–11
Enlightenment 80, 82, 51, 53, 72, 75, 123, 132
Epicureans 54, 60
Epicurus 103
equality 100, 104, 152, 190; human 112; practical 190; social 156
equity 60, 154
Erasmus 45
errors 14, 20, 25–27, 29–30, 32, 79, 95, 111, 125, 131, 136, 146–47, 157, 181, 209; common 9;
popular 56, 127; prevalent 161; serious methodological 121
Essay on the History of Civil Society 96
essays 1–3, 5, 28, 30, 121–23, 146, 151, 154, 158, 161, 179–82, 193–95, 199, 202, 210; Education
194; Essay on Population 158; Essay on the History of Civil Society 96; Essay on the
Influence of Time and Place in Matters of Legislation 7; Essays on Government,
Jurisprudence, Liberty of the Press, Education, and Prisons and Prison Discipline 6, 28, 122–
23, 131, 182; Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion 96; Of the Origin and
Progress of Language 96; Origin of Ranks 96; The Rise of Philosophical Radicalism 179;
Wealth of Nations 96
Essays on Government, Jurisprudence, Liberty of the Press, Education, and Prisons and Prison
Discipline 6, 28, 122–23, 131, 182
estates 192, 198
ethics 27, 49, 103, 108
Euclid 30, 139
Euripides 51, 133
Europe 21, 91, 110, 183; and civilization 39; modern 82; resisting the progress of improvement 20
Evans, Frank 66
evil 23–24, 30, 106, 111, 147, 152, 158, 167–68, 201; imagined 152; qualities 158
excellence 18, 46–47, 63, 97, 99, 110, 113, 156, 171, 188, 209; highest 171; individual 72; mental 65
experiments 8, 85, 89, 123, 129, 133–34; artificial 8; decisive 200; natural 8; real 89

fables 79, 95
Farrell, Thomas 138
Fénelon, François 61–62, 76
Fenn, Robert A. 2, 5
Ferguson, Adam 46, 48, 50, 54, 59, 82, 86, 94, 96; Essay on the History of Civil Society 96
Fielding, K. F. 33, 41
Finlayson, James 52, 66–67, 127, 130, 138–39
Fonblanque, Albany 209
Forbes, Duncan 80–81
Fox, Matthew 49, 53, 55, 57
Fragment on Mackintosh 1, 40
France 4, 134, 176
Francklin, Thomas 54–55
Free Church 44; see also Church of Scotland
French Revolution 48, 184

Gawlick, Günter 53, 55, 58

Gay, Peter 57
Gendre, Gilbert-Charles 62
General Assembly (Church of Scotland) 45, 76
geometricians 2, 19, 147
geometry 77, 80, 121–22, 139, 149
Gibbon, Edward 18, 94–96, 210
Glasgow 42, 48, 206; and the teaching of classics 44
Glasgow Literary Society 96
God 58, 67
Gooch, George Peabody 80
government 5–7, 11–13, 18–21, 26–28, 30, 48–49, 100–101, 103–4, 121–23, 139–40, 179–86, 188–
89, 192–97, 199–204, 211; bad 164, 182, 188, 203; business of 171–72, 198; essay on 2–3, 6,
19, 35, 73, 107, 114, 164–65, 170, 172, 174, 200, 204, 209, 211; machinery of 10, 127, 131,
182, 200; old-fashioned 163; powers of 28, 161, 163, 186, 200; scheme of 12, 90, 182; science
of 189, 199; theory of 121, 179, 197
Gradgrind 6, 33–34, 40
grammar schools 44–46
Greek 42–48, 58–59, 62, 64, 72, 74, 97, 171; ancient 42, 47–48, 50, 79; authors 45; and Latin
tongues 51; philosophers 59; professors 42, 45, 206; and Roman rhetorical traditions 51; and
Roman studies 133; scholars 47, 65; teachers 44–45; writers 48
Greenfield, William 52, 136
Grint, Kris 2, 5, 73, 123, 140–41, 178, 181, 202
Grote, George 5–6, 18, 43, 65, 68–70, 129–31, 148, 160, 207
Grote, Harriet 5, 69, 131
Guicciardini, Francesco 108
Guthrie, William 54–55, 59, 66

Habibi, Don 33
Halévy, Elie 2, 7–8, 80, 179, 190, 193
Hamburger, Joseph 194, 199
Hamilton, William 44, 46, 146
happiness 21, 25–26, 28–30, 49, 58, 63, 98–103, 110, 117, 166–67, 169, 180, 185, 192, 196–97;
comparative 101; human 71, 111; of individuals 20, 183, 196; positive 32; public 13; pursuit of
28, 98; social 144, 167, 172, 184, 196, 208
Hartlean psychology 146
Hartley, David 166
Hastings, Warren 126
Hazlitt, William 12, 19, 23–26, 31, 80; attacks Benthamite utilitarianism 23; criticises Mill’s History
of India 19
Hellenism 60
Helvetius 149
Hermotimus 9, 37
Herodotus 42, 46, 51
Hill, John 96
Hindu 13–14, 17, 21–22, 27, 82–84, 90–91, 93, 96, 99, 104–5, 109–10, 113, 116; agriculture 22;
chronology 85; civilization 22; culture 14; institutions 79; law 22; literature 96, 211;
mythology 92, 97; poetry 96–97; records 108; society 3, 38–39, 91, 93, 115; texts of science
lexicography and religion 97; women 104
Historia Critica Philosophiae 56, 95
historians 3, 7–15, 17–22, 26, 29, 42, 57, 70, 79–80, 85–90, 92–96, 99, 108, 113, 144; “model” 18,
113; modern 9, 11, 14, 90; philosophical 11, 15, 94, 108, 113; on the state of Indian society 15;
style of 13
historical composition 90, 96, 108
historical conditions 179
Historical Law-Tracts 84
historical records 11, 109
historical works 19, 88, 210
historiography of philosophy 4, 84
history 3–4, 6–15, 18–20, 22–23, 34–38, 49–51, 58–59, 73, 79–120, 126–27, 141, 154, 169–70, 202–
5, 210–11; ancient Greek 69; church 58; classical 85; father’s 84, 119; fictitious 160; modern
12, 27, 49; philosophy of 10, 12, 15; political 67, 121; study of 37, 94, 108; theoretical 84, 89,
113
History of Athens 62
History of British India 1, 3, 6–8, 10, 12–14, 17–19, 25–27, 35, 79–81, 83–84, 86–87, 97–101, 104,
107, 210–11
History of Indian Archipelago 23
History of Rome 11
History of Scotland 88
History of the Reign of Emperor Charles the Fifth 88, 91
Hoadly, Benjamin 56
Hobbes, Thomas 4, 128, 209; and Elements of Philosophy 128; erroneous philosophical methods
199; Leviathan 103; regarded by James Mill as an important political thinker 128
Horace 45–46, 51, 65, 133
House of Commons 162, 164–65, 170, 190, 193, 195
House of Lords 78, 163, 165, 196–97
Howell, Wilbur 51, 60–61, 64, 139
human mind 1, 24, 31, 40, 90, 96, 98, 100, 102, 125, 131–32, 139–40, 142, 144, 159
human nature 9–11, 23, 28, 31, 89, 128, 168, 171, 183, 188, 199–200; curious law of 126; experience
of 186, 200; laws of 10, 32, 84, 121, 125–26, 130, 182, 186; principles of 10, 114, 174, 179,
182, 201; science of 11, 86, 199; whole of 196
humanity 5, 20, 59, 192, 195, 201
Humanity Classes (University of Edinburgh) 44
Hume, David 7, 9, 42, 57–59, 62–64, 89, 93, 101; argues there are two different ways of conducting
moral philosophy 57; historical works 19; and Natural History of Religion 84; theory of
religion of 24
Hume, Joseph 68
Hutcheson, Francis 50, 59, 107, 113

ideas 1–2, 4–5, 7, 10, 54, 66–68, 72–73, 95–96, 100–101, 127–30, 179, 181–82, 184–85, 199, 204–5
identity of interests 31–32, 165, 198–99, 201
ignorance 16, 20, 23, 29–30, 65, 102, 154, 157–58
imagination 12, 15, 23–24, 31, 39–40, 71–72, 80, 92, 97, 101, 106, 109
impressions 19, 24, 32, 34, 60, 64, 78, 172, 192; best 60; false 66, 83, 130; feeble 187; salutary 172;
sincere 21; violent 61; worst 65
improvement 13, 20, 46, 68, 87, 99–100, 115, 133, 136, 153, 169, 174, 192–93, 207, 209; gradual 91;
great 90, 106; highest 49; literary 47; rapid 110; social 69, 72
income tax 184
independence 99, 104, 160, 171, 187, 192; intellectual 32; towards everyone else 190
India 1, 6–8, 12–17, 19–24, 26, 36, 81–82, 84, 86–87, 90–91, 93, 98, 100, 105–6, 109–11;
“gentlemen” 86–87, 93; government of 7, 12–13, 15; historian of 7–41, 182; history of 7, 86–
87, 90; institutions 13, 17, 26; knowledge of 8, 87; people of 13, 16, 20, 22, 87, 100, 110;
politics of 17
Indians 8, 12, 15, 17, 21–22, 38–39, 112, 116; society 8, 15, 25–26, 83, 104; soldiers 21; untutored
88
induction 31, 91, 122–23, 125–27, 129–30, 133–34, 138, 140; comprehensive 85; and deduction
121–43; empirical 122–23, 127, 131, 133; function 134; logic of 129; method of 4, 121, 134,
199; rhetorical 4, 134; scientific 122; unscientific 125
inequality 39, 100, 186
infanticide 20, 22, 38–39; abolition of 20; female 20, 22, 39
injustices 21, 82, 91, 100; social 106; unlimited 100
inquiry 45–46, 73, 80, 83–84, 87, 137, 139; art of 143; independent 49; nature of the 201; unbiased
131
institutions 10, 12, 17–18, 20, 26, 40, 46, 48, 93, 102, 111, 155, 163, 183, 189; bad 25; human 195,
197; political 81, 99, 156, 210; positive 16; religious 93; secondary 44; social 85; unnatural
204
instruction 4, 8, 14, 20, 38, 60–61, 72, 98, 122, 132, 135–37, 139, 150, 159, 209; moral 49, 59; non-
denominational 151–52; preparatory 52; public 136; university 44
intellectuals 14, 60, 84, 190, 192
intelligence 21, 69, 99, 158, 192
interests 7, 17, 28, 30–31, 103–4, 112, 156, 158, 162, 165–69, 179–80, 185–89, 191–92, 197–99,
203; classical 102; common 17, 102, 168, 186–87; community’s 179; general 170, 191; hostile
165; human 31, 51; identification of 5, 28, 31–32, 104, 165, 179, 197–99, 201, 209; of
individuals 186–87; joint 186, 198; particular 86, 170, 185, 187, 191; personal 182, 187;
private 57–58, 150, 155, 190; professional 191; public 11–12, 190; sinister 165, 185–86, 189,
197–98; universal 185, 187, 190, 197; of women 28–29, 31, 104
Ireland 154, 174
Isocrates 42

Jaucourt, Louis 92
Jeffrey, Francis 24
Jenkinson, Robert 194
Jesuits 111
Johnson, Ralph H. 148
Jones, Edward 51
Jones, William 87, 92
judgements 10, 27, 71, 87, 95, 127, 139, 143, 170, 199; eighteenth-century 66; independent 192;
suspending 89
judicial procedures 98
judicial provisions 110
jurisprudence 10, 49, 89
justice 3, 16, 23, 33, 49, 59, 61–62, 72, 78, 100, 102–4, 110, 119–20, 166; administrating 100; linked
with social utility 103; social 104
Juvenal 45

Kennedy, George A. 60, 132

Kerr, John 44
knowledge 7–9, 45, 47, 58–59, 79–80, 96–98, 100–102, 123, 126, 128, 130, 135–36, 153, 157, 159–
60; empirical 97; general 108; human 85; imperfect 19; increasing 13, 16; perfect 87; rational
169; scientific 130; superior 29; suppositional 108
Knowles, Adam 82, 98
Krouse, Richard 180

Lancaster, Joseph 1, 68, 150–54, 173, 175; enthusiasm for educating the poor 152; and the monitorial
system of education 151; and neutrality regarding religious instruction 151–52, 154; and non-
denominational schools 154
Lancasterian schools 151–56, 159–60, 175
land-owners 165
language 11, 13, 19, 27, 45–47, 51, 61, 84, 91, 96, 102, 110, 115, 173, 190; dominant 44; polemical
173; qualified 87; strong 119; symbolic 98; vernacular 120
Latin 37, 42, 44–47, 55, 76; authors 46–47; classes 52; proverbs 38; scholars 34; studying of 45; texts
79, 93; tongues 51
laws 7–8, 10–12, 26–29, 79–80, 83, 89–90, 100, 103, 118, 121, 183, 185, 197, 199, 201; civil 60;
established 89, 103; good 186, 191; moral 97; secondary 199; stringent 103
Lawson, John 51–52, 139, 143
lawyers 18, 38, 59, 88, 139, 165
lectures 22, 39, 48–49, 51–52, 62–63, 71, 75–77, 90, 130, 141–43; of Dalzel 48
Lee, John 130
legal reform 98
legislation 7–8, 24, 99, 105, 118, 125–26, 169
legislators 170, 184
lessons 3, 13, 46, 74, 109, 112, 138; for the guidance of the future 10; moral 111; from “natural
experiments” found in history 8
letters 13, 78, 104, 114, 191, 195, 211; of Alexander Walker 21–22, 91; of Cicero 103; of Francis
Hutcheson 59; of Henry Bolingbroke 108; of James Mill 49, 149; of Thomas Carlyle 34
Leviathan 103, 175
liberal arts 53
liberty 2–3, 19, 62–63, 71, 100, 104, 112, 119, 160, 164, 169, 178, 184, 188–89, 192; natural 183;
private 169; public 62
Literary Journal 1, 8, 39, 183
Literary Review 182
literary societies 22
literature 8, 12, 26–27, 47, 49, 59, 65, 85, 88, 90, 96
Liturgy of the National Church 151
Liverpool, Lord 194–98
Livy 11, 42, 45–46, 51
Locke, John 24, 49, 99
logic 2–3, 34, 46, 74–75, 77, 80, 122, 126–27, 130–32, 135, 138–43, 146, 164, 202, 206–7;
Aristotle’s 133; aristocratical 150, 163, 165, 170; circular 82; classical 136; deductive 139;
inductive 121; new 133; and rhetoric classes 46, 52
London Debating Club 164
London Lancasterian Association 111
Longo, Mario 95
Lucian 9, 37, 42
Lucinus 9, 37
Lucretius 101–3, 117–18
Luther, Martin 99, 154
Lyttelton, Lord 57, 59, 72, 76

Macaulay, Thomas B. 5, 30–32, 121, 168, 199, 210–11

Mack, Mary P. 205
Mackintosh, James 1, 17, 24, 40, 49–50, 165, 168, 191–95, 198–99, 211; critique of Bentham 193–
94; and his rebuttal of the Tory view of Parliament 195; scheme of virtual representation 193
magistrates 58–59, 100
Majeed, Javed 81, 114, 120
management 17, 187, 197; better 13, 16–17; good 13, 188; perpetual 30
mankind 69, 71, 88–91, 97, 99, 101, 103, 110, 112, 153, 157–59, 167, 169–70, 195, 197
Marsh, Herbert 151–52, 173
Mazlish, Bruce 200
Maurice, Frederick Denison 19, 24–26, 30–31, 35, 80, 82–83, 113
McCabe, Helen 144–47, 149, 175
McCulloch, John Ramsey 164
McInerney, David 83, 87, 91
memory 32, 34, 143, 160
mental crisis 2, 145
metaphysics 1, 123, 131
Middleton, Conyers 57
Mill, James 1–49, 52, 64–70, 72–74, 76–83, 85–134, 136, 138, 140–90, 193–211; and the Analysis of
the Phenomena of the Human Mind 131; argues that belief is an instance of inseparable
association 148; argues that “dogmatism in a writer never was a cause of fame” 147; argues
that rational persuasion involves the use of arguments 148; argument 5, 28, 31, 72, 83–84, 107,
150, 152, 161, 164, 173–74, 178–79, 181, 194, 200; argument on legal reform in India 98;
argumentation method 139; argumentation practice 70, 144–45, 149; and associational
psychology 93; claims regarding politics at home 35; considers induction to be an essential
part of any theory 122; criticised by Ricardo 174, 204; and David Ricardo 24, 34–35, 49, 68,
129, 136, 148, 174, 180–82, 195, 199, 207; death of 1, 20, 64, 77–78, 209; described as “the
rationalist, the maker of syllogisms, the geometrician” 2, 19, 81, 91, 147; described by Thomas
Babington Macaulay as the “Aristotelian of the fifteenth century, born out of due season” 2;
Edinburgh heritage of 130; educating the poor 150–60; as an educator 208; and empiricism
125; encourages the use of an adversarial rhetoric 180; essays and articles 28–30, 35, 137, 139,
164, 176, 179–81, 193–94; essays of 1–3, 5, 28, 30, 121–23, 146, 151, 154, 158, 161, 179–82,
193–95, 199, 202, 210; and his view on the state of civilization in India 16; and the History of
British India 79; and the “inaccuracies both of fact and opinion in the History” exposed by
Horace Hayman Wilson 19; influence of 68; and innovation 184; method of argumentation
 144, 161, 173–74; method of persuasion 144–47, 205; and Montrose Grammar School 42, 44–
45, 47; and the political gospel of 3; radicalism 2, 194, 206; reforming parliament 160–72;
reputation of 2–3, 12–13, 18, 87; treatment of Hindu agriculture 22, 26–27, 79, 107, 193; and
the University of Edinburgh 73–75, 77, 141; views on the conditions of good government 5
Mill, James Bentham (James Mill’s second son) 64, 77
Mill, John Stuart 1–2, 5–6, 32–34, 43, 64–65, 67–68, 83–84, 86, 105–6, 117–19, 121–22, 130–32,
139–40, 145–46, 160–61; Autobiography 32; considers his father free from the sectarian spirit
of the younger radicals 33; and his father’s legacy 33; and his friendship with Francis Place 5,
8, 12, 36, 193, 202
Millar, John 9, 81, 84–86, 88–90, 105–6, 108, 113–14; Origin of Ranks 96
Milton, John 126
minds 9, 25–26, 29–30, 61, 65–66, 68–69, 99–100, 106–7, 126–28, 136–40, 149–50, 166–67, 192–
93, 199–201, 209; acute 62; elevating their 157; formation of the 152; juvenile 65; liberal 183;
uncultivated 109; untrained 16; virtuous 53; younger 70
Montesquieu 50, 57, 84, 86, 93, 203
The Monthly Review 15, 18, 151, 154–55
Montrose Grammar School 42, 44–45, 47
Moore, James 96
moral philosophy 3, 40, 43, 46, 49–50, 52–53, 57, 59, 77, 89, 141, 146
morality 10, 12, 22, 25, 34, 74, 89, 96, 100, 168–69
morals 21, 42, 46, 49–50, 57, 99, 104–5, 110, 118, 171–72, 184
Morley, John 12
Morning Chronicle 13, 37, 64
motives 20, 31, 70, 131, 155, 157, 166, 170–72, 182, 199; extraneous 159; improper 182, 184;
sufficient 172
MPs (elected) 165
Muslims 110

Nadel, George 101, 108

Napier, Macvey 7, 27, 193–95, 199, 207
national character 40, 90, 93, 103, 116
national church 151; see also Church of England
Natural History of Religion 84
Neo-Platonism 65–67, 97, 117
Nesbitt, George 12, 172
Novum Organum 127

O’Brien, Karen 95
Of the Origin and Progress of Language 96
opinions 20, 22, 55–56, 66, 68–69, 89, 91, 99, 110, 112–13, 139, 145–50, 161, 168–69, 205–6;
common 91, 99; public 17, 145, 184, 188, 197, 204
orators 8, 42, 53–56, 59–63, 96, 133, 139, 172–73
oratory 51, 60, 149
ordinances 103
Origin of Ranks 96

Paley, William 42, 153

Parliament 16, 35, 170, 182, 190, 195, 197; duration of 171; and reform 3–4, 17, 30, 35, 140, 144,
149–50, 160, 163–65, 173–74, 180, 191, 194, 204–5, 209–10
parliamentary processes 16
parliamentary representation 193
Penn, William 185
Phalereus, Demetrius 51
The Philanthropist 151–52, 154, 156, 173, 177
philosophers 3, 8, 24–26, 29, 32, 53–61, 72, 95, 97, 101, 122, 124, 127–28, 131, 172–73; inductive
133
philosophical 1–2, 4, 9–11, 46–47, 49–50, 54, 56–57, 66–67, 78–82, 95–97, 105–9, 127–28, 130–33,
173–74, 210; analysis 67, 131, 173; inquiries 105–6; radicalism 2–3, 7, 160, 179, 190;
reformers 164; systems 95, 144
philosophy 7, 9–10, 23–24, 43, 45–46, 48, 50, 54, 56–59, 65–67, 69, 79–120, 128, 132–33, 144–45;
ancient 58, 95, 97; barbarian 98, 116–17; history of 4, 98; method of 2, 123, 129, 132; moral 3,
40, 43, 46, 49–50, 52–53, 57, 59, 77, 89, 141, 146; political 72, 128, 186; system of 24, 54
Philosophy of Human Mind 96
Pitts, Jenifer 82
Place, Francis 5, 8, 12, 37, 193, 202
Plan of Parliamentary Reform 17, 30, 35, 105, 165, 179, 181, 189–91, 194, 196, 206
Plassart, Anna 2, 5
Plato 3–4, 42–43, 46, 59–60, 62, 64–67, 95, 97, 101–3, 117–18, 130–31, 142, 144, 177–78, 210–11;
dialectic method 43, 67, 69, 130, 210; and Protagoras 102; and The Republic 85, 97, 104, 116,
171; works of 43, 64–65, 127
Platonic studies 130
Platonists 97, 131
Playfair, John 115
policies 7, 10–11, 134, 161; civil 59; modern 8–9; system of 156
political 1–3, 5–6, 9–11, 27–28, 34–36, 48–50, 66–68, 93, 121–23, 127–32, 142–46, 161–64, 179–
83, 186–91, 209–11; arguments 36, 121, 162, 211; communities 102, 109; debates 130;
despotism 91; economy 1, 18, 24, 34, 49, 131, 134, 142–43, 146, 150; movements 9;
phenomena 122, 132; regimes 93; theorists 125; thinkers 6, 128; tracts 170
Political Economy Club 35, 78, 150, 175
politicians 12, 58–59, 113, 162; Anglo-Indian 22; democratically 29; elected 145; liberal 48
politics 17, 84–86, 180–88, 191–96; British 81; Indian 17; local 81; logic of 2, 121; school of 109,
113; science of 121; utilitarian 35, 139
population 29, 93, 158, 161, 174, 182
portraits 6; colorful 69; nineteenth-century 19; Plato’s philosophical 66
power 10, 28–29, 67–69, 109–10, 125–26, 128, 131, 147, 161–64, 169–70, 172, 180, 182–87, 197–
200, 209; abuse of 28, 179, 186, 197, 201; analytical 50, 80; balance of 30, 165, 196; despotic
29, 48; executive 100; of generating opinions 110, 169; intellectual 25, 45, 197; joint 186;
legislative 30, 185–86; logic of 150, 163, 165, 188; political 16, 100, 104, 161, 171, 200;
ruling 101; sovereign 17, 109
Priestley, Joseph 52, 139
principles 10–11, 23–24, 29, 31, 50–51, 104–5, 107–8, 126–30, 135, 138–39, 150–51, 153–54, 181–
82, 192–93, 195–96; established 171, 191; general 16, 80, 85, 95, 108, 125–26, 132, 134, 138,
186, 196; guiding 145, 191; universal 80, 89; utilitarian 104, 113
Protagoras 101–3, 117–18
psychology 133, 145–46, 150
quarterlies 12, 163, 176; Anti-Jacobin Review 152; The Asiatic Journal 13, 22, 26, 111; The British
Critic 15, 17; The British Review 14–17, 39, 192–96, 198; The Eclectic Review 15, 17, 38–39,
151, 154; The Edinburgh Review 12, 14, 17, 24, 28, 30, 83, 114, 117, 133, 151, 154–56, 161–
65, 191, 194; Literary Journal 1, 8, 39, 183; Literary Review 182; The Monthly Review 15, 18,
151, 154–55; The Philanthropist 151–52, 154, 156, 173, 177; The Quarterly Review 151–52,
161, 163, 190, 192, 205–6; St. James’s Chronicle 1, 8; Supplement 1, 7, 18, 27–28, 134, 136,
164, 180–82, 194, 199; Westminster Review 24, 28, 35–36, 68, 149, 160–61, 164, 172, 202
The Quarterly Review 151–52, 161, 163, 190, 192, 205–6
Quintilian 42, 51–52, 60, 76, 175

radicalism 5, 36, 68, 161, 180, 191; “old-style” 146; philosophic 2–3, 7, 160, 179, 190; utilitarian 5,
30, 40, 82
Radicals 131, 191, 194; and debates with the Whigs 6, 181, 190; respond to Mackintosh’s critique of
Bentham 193; sectarian spirit of the younger 33; younger 33
Ramist reforms 53
Raphael, D. D. 50, 74, 143
Rapin, R. 60–62, 76
rational persuasion 3–4, 72, 144–78, 210
rationalists 2, 19, 39, 81, 91, 147
reasoning 4, 29, 57, 61, 71, 129, 137–39, 146, 157, 173, 193; demonstrative 138; moral 138; political
127, 129
reform 2, 36, 39, 161, 164–65, 167–68, 171–74, 179, 181, 189, 192–95, 198, 201–2, 206, 211;
debates on 179–80, 189; issue of 199, 201; political 72; radical 180, 189, 193, 202, 205, 210
Reform Act 1867 161, 172
Reform Bill 1832 202
reformers 65, 164, 169, 180–81, 190, 194–95, 202; benevolent 25; radical 193
Regan, John 96–97
Reid, Thomas 48
religion 12, 17, 19, 24–26, 53, 84, 86, 90, 93, 97, 100, 102, 109, 154, 163
religious instruction 151–52, 155–56
Remarks on the Astronomy of Brahmins 115
Rendall, Jane 81–82
representation 28, 97, 162, 165, 179–80, 184, 187–88, 192, 197, 201; of government 29, 31, 188;
“motley” 198; numerical 192; system of 5, 191, 194, 198, 205; “variegated” 169, 193–94, 198,
205; virtual 193
reviewers 7, 12–19, 25, 35–37, 87, 163–64, 182, 190–91, 196, 205
rhetoric 3, 15, 43, 46, 50–53, 61–63, 86, 88, 90, 122, 132–36, 138–39, 143, 149, 210; adversarial
145, 173; domain of 132, 145; enthymematic 201; method of 2, 132; new 51, 53, 61, 64, 72,
75, 133, 210; old 51, 133
Ricardo, David 24, 34–35, 49, 68, 129, 136, 148, 174, 180–82, 195, 199, 207
Richter, Melvin 93
Roberston, William 83
Roberts, William 14, 17
Robertson, William 7, 83, 85, 87–90, 92
Roebuck, John Arthur 68
Rollin, Charles 62
Royal Commission of Inquiry into the State of Universities of Scotland 45–46
Royal Lancasterian Association 156
Royal Lancasterian System 78, 158, 176
rules 21, 23, 45, 55, 89, 95, 98, 108, 110, 123, 125–26, 130, 140, 185, 192; Ciceronian 94; despotic
109; foreign 192; general 23, 107–8, 125–26; inflexible 60; of life and conduct 108;
mechanical 24; simple 168
Ryan, Alan 40

Sadik 22, 26, 39

schools 23, 33, 43–44, 113, 116, 152, 155–56
science 4, 12, 21, 27, 31, 97–98, 121–22, 127, 129–30, 132, 134–35, 137–40, 143, 192, 199
Scotland 3–4, 43–47, 59, 72–74, 76, 79, 81, 84, 88, 90, 122, 154, 158, 174, 210; classical education
in 3, 43, 210; conjectural histories 3, 79, 81, 84, 107; eighteenth-century 44, 85, 88; historians
of 88, 90; historiography of 4, 79, 83; universities of 45–46, 73
Scott, Walter 24
Scottish Enlightenment 80, 82, 123, 132
Second Treatise of Government 103
sexual pleasures 106–7
Sharpe, M. 57, 75–76
Shattock, Joanne 12
Sidgwick, Henry 121
slavery 112, 157, 159
slaves 99, 103, 112
Smith, Adam 42, 48, 50, 52, 60, 62–63, 75, 135, 166; Wealth of Nations 96
Smith, Leveson 19, 29
Smith, Robin 137
social intercourse 17
society 8, 21, 26–27, 79–83, 85, 96–97, 100–102, 105–6, 158–59, 171–72, 183–85, 187–88, 191,
200–201, 207–9; barbarous 10, 106; human 10, 14, 91, 126, 185
Socrates 67, 78, 97, 101–2, 115, 168, 210
soul 53
St. James’s Chronicle 1, 8
Stephen, Leslie 2, 7, 80, 144
Sterling, John 34
Stewart, Dugald 4, 42, 46, 48–50, 52, 59, 74, 78, 84, 125, 127–29, 135–36, 140–43, 199, 203; classes
attended by James Mills 47; distinguishes between philosophical criticism and experimental
criticism 127; Elements of the Philosophy of Human Mind 96, 125–26, 129, 203; groups the
Scots and the French marching to perfection 90–91, 136; and the two sets of political
reasoners, the “Philosopher” and the “Empiric” 127
Stillinger, Jack 32
Stoic philosophy 24, 50, 54, 59, 74
Stoicism 54
Stoics 39, 50, 54–55, 59, 168
Stokes, Eric 80–81, 98
suffrage 31, 165, 188, 190, 192; low property qualification for 31; universal 30–32, 199
syllogism 129, 134, 138–39; apodictic 122; demonstrative 137; dialectical 137; primary 138;
rhetorical 122, 134, 137–38
synthesis 122–23, 127–31, 135–37, 141, 149, 210; and analysis 4, 122–23, 127–31, 136, 210; method
of 130–31, 135, 137, 199, 210

Tarr, Rodger 34
taxes 156
Taylor, Thomas 47, 65–66, 77, 127
teaching 12, 43, 47, 53, 74, 98, 130, 135–37, 153, 155, 210
tensions 66, 160–61
theory 4, 24, 31, 33, 51–52, 60, 80, 86, 108, 122–25, 127–28, 140, 191, 195, 199–200; abstract 26,
80, 107; political 5, 127, 179, 209
thinkers 6, 23, 53, 76, 82; free 55; historical 81, 91; modern political 6
Thomas, William 2, 33, 134, 160, 193
Thompson, William 19, 28–31
Thomson, Thomas 8
The Times 13
Toland, John 55, 58–59; Ciceronianism 55; considers Cicero had surpassed all Greeks and all
Romans 58; misunderstands Cicero’s academic credentials 59; treatment of Cicero 55
toleration 154–55, 169
Tory party 1, 163, 179, 191–92, 194–95, 199, 206, 209; anti-reform arguments 180; critique of
utilitarian radicalism 5; eighteenth-century practices 165; requirement that human institutions
must be adapted to the weaknesses and passions of mankind 197, 201; review of Bentham’s
Plan 181
Toulmin, Stephen 123
traditions 4, 44, 79, 81–82, 88, 90–91, 98, 114, 143, 149, 210; civic republican 72; classical 50, 138;
epicurean 117; historiographical 79, 86, 113; scholastic 92; stock 205; utilitarian 4, 79
Traités de Legislation 7
Trimmer, Sarah 151
truth 1, 3, 8–9, 20–21, 23–26, 49–50, 53–54, 57, 59–61, 97–98, 132, 136–39, 144–46, 149, 172–73;
known 136; moral 24–25; pursuit of 53, 72
Turner, Frank M. 47
tutors 47, 51
Tytler, Alexander Fraser 89, 109

universal suffrage 30–32, 199

universities 42, 44–45, 133, 142
university education 42, 44–45, 133
University of Edinburgh 3, 42, 44–48, 52, 73–75, 77, 89, 127, 136, 141; Humanity Classes 44; and
James Mill 73–75, 77, 141; maintains close ties with industrialists 44
University of Glasgow 42
Urbinati, Nadia 144–47, 173
utilitarian 5, 30, 40, 82; arguments 29; attitudes 80; politics 35, 139; radicalism 5; theory 1, 107;
thinking 1, 83, 110; traditions 4, 79
utilitarianism 4, 24, 33, 40, 80, 82, 98, 118, 146; and propaganda 160; satirized 33; “steam intellect”
32; Victorian 33
utilitarians 6, 25, 30–31, 39, 80–82, 129, 193–94, 209
utility 4, 27, 33, 59, 79, 82, 99, 102, 109, 152, 192, 208; general 153; of history 107, 119; principle of
16, 80–81, 98, 101, 107, 153, 189, 204; public 59; social 103, 152
Varouxakis, Georgios 146
Villers, C. 10, 37, 204
Vivenza, Gloria 50
Voltaire 57, 93, 149, 175
voters 170–71, 187, 190
voting 28, 104, 165, 170–72, 179, 187–88, 190–91, 198

Wakefield, Edward 150

Walker, Alexander 19–22, 26, 34, 82–83, 87, 91, 105, 211
Ward, John 51
Wealth of Nations 96
welfare 16, 57–58, 185–86
West London Lancasterian Association 156
Whately, Richard 133
Whewell, William 40, 146
Whigs 5–6, 162–63, 179–81, 190, 193–95, 206, 209
Wilson, Horace Hayman 19
Winch, Donald 32, 80–81, 90–91, 173, 181
Wordsworth, William 24

Yavat-Tavat 22, 26, 39

Young, William 62