MICHAEL LEVIN MILL, JOHN STUART (1806–73)

MICHAEL LEVIN MILL, JOHN STUART (1806–73)

In the fields of philosophy, political economy and political thought, Mill is usually recognized as the most influential writer of the mid-Victorian period, some of whose texts, notably On Liberty (1859), continued to be important in twentieth-century LIBERALISM. The son of an émigré Scot, the historian of British India, JAMES MILL, J.S.Mill was born in London on 20 May 1806. Subjected to a famously intensive, overly intellectual education by his father, the foremost disciple of JEREMY BENTHAM, Mill fils in adolescence also embraced the latter’s principles wholeheartedly, claiming they gave ‘unity to my conception of things. I now had opinions; a creed, a doctrine, a philosophy: in one among the best senses of the word, a religion’. In 1823 he joined the East India Office serving as a clerk under his father, and he founded a Utilitarian Society to debate Benthamite principles. But in 1826 came a ‘mental crisis’, as he described it in his Autobiography, provoked in part by asking himself the question, if ‘all your objects in

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life were realised…would this be a great joy and happiness to you’, and answering ‘no’. The crisis passed, but Mill concluded from it that the Benthamite system was deeply, though not essentially, flawed, and that ‘the only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life’. The clearest early statement of Mill’s distancing himself from Benthamism is evident in essays on Bentham (1838) and COLERIDGE (1840). MACAULAY’S attack on his father forced Mill to rethink certain other issues, such as the vote for women, for which he would become a leading advocate thereafter. During the 1830s he came under the influence also of Saint-Simonism (see SAINT-SIMON, HENRI DE), and, through personal acquaintance, THOMAS CARLYLE, the leading critic of Benthamism. Though his reputation stemmed chiefly from his writings, Mill did enter Parliament in 1865, where he introduced the first motion to extend the franchise to women. He was defeated in 1868.

Some of Mill’s early writings, notably the essay ‘On Genius’ (1832), with its plea for intellectual originality and anxiety over conformity, foreshadow the main themes of his mature liberalism. These themes were reinforced in particular by his reading of ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE’S Democracy in America (2 vols, 1835, 1840), which stressed the tendency of modern democracy towards ‘tyranny of the majority’. Mill’s initial reputation, however, was established first by the System of Logic (1843), and the Principles of Political Economy (1848). Amongst its other achievements, the Logic raised the question as to whether a comparative analysis of national character, which Mill termed ‘ethology’, could be meaningfully attempted. The Principles were intended as an exposition of orthodox Ricardianism, but successive editions became increasingly radical. In the wake of the revolutions of 1848, Mill became increasingly sympathetic to the notion that certain forms of voluntary, nonviolent socialist experimentation (notably those of CHARLES FOURIER’S followers) might point the way to a higher form of ‘character’ than the soulless, money-grubbing ideal of which he became increasingly contemptuous. When he termed himself a ‘socialist’ in his Autobiography, it was his enthusiasm for such experiments that was principally being described. But Mill nonetheless continued to praise the assertive, go-ahead entrepreneurial ideal (associated with England and the USA in particular) as most likely to assure national progress in the foreseeable future. The Principles also asserted, moreover, that a period might be reached, which Mill called the ‘stationary State’, when population, production and consumption would have reached their natural limits, but moreover when society might concentrate its efforts upon intellectual and moral progress. In the latter decades of his life Mill came increasingly to argue against both the right of inheritance and against the right of private property in land, and in favour of industrial co-partnership, or cooperation, rather than competition between capitalists and workers. These ideals, again, modify his ‘liberalism’ substantially.

The chief writings of Mill’s maturity are On Liberty (1859), Considerations on Representative Government (1861), Utilitarianism (1863) and The Subjection of Women (1869), the latter in particular being co-authored by his wife, Harriet Taylor Mill. His Autobiography was published in 1873, and an incomplete study entitled Chapters on Socialism was published after his death at Avignon in 1873. Though The Subjection of Women aroused the greatest antagonism from contemporary readers, Mill’s later reputation is much more indebted to On Liberty, now often described as the classic modern treatment of the topic.

On Liberty’s starting-point is ‘the nature and limits of the power which can legitimately be exercised by society over the individual’. Liberty has been historically threatened by tyrants or oligarchies. It now faces the pressure of majoritarian demands for conformity of opinion, which must be resisted by an intellectual elite that, for Mill, is alone capable of leading society progressively forward through innovation, the generation of new ideas and the challenge of customary mores that threaten perpetually to retard social development and eventually halt it entirely. On Liberty aims chiefly to defend what Mill famously terms one ‘very simple’ principle—it is anything but—‘that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection’, or the prevention of harm to others. In a ‘civilised community’, Mill asserts, individuals have an absolute right of their own independence, and no paternal interference to improve or correct their morals or behaviour is justified. In ‘uncivilised’ or ‘backward’ communities, however,—such as India, from the governance of which Mill derived his livelihood—‘despotism’ was a ‘legitimate mode of rule…provided the end be their improvement and the means justified by actually effecting that end’. Most modern readers condemn this as overtly self- justificatory: ‘liberty’ as such is not the primary or first principle being defended here, but is trumped by ‘progress’. Moreover, Mill also claims that utility remains ‘the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions’, though defines this as ‘utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being’. Thus there are several competing first principles here: liberty, utility, progress and, we will see, individuality as well, whose ranking is unclear.

Chapter Two of On Liberty defends freedom of speech and thought, chiefly on the grounds that we cannot presume infallibility of opinion, and that, empirically and sociologically, most people’s opinions are derived from their immediate environment, rather than well-reasoned thought or acute penetration. Thus if we live in London, we will tend to be Anglicans, and in Peking, Confucians. The religious example is important: religious intolerance is a key target throughout the text. Persecution hinders mental growth, and the displacement of false by true opinions. In Chapter Three, ‘Of Individuality, as One of the Elements of Well-Being’, Mill defines individuality as the self-creation of character, and describes this as commonly involving asserting oneself against ‘the traditions or customs of other people’, this being indeed both ‘the chief ingredient of individual and social progress’ as well as ‘one of the principal ingredients of human happiness’, though the latter assertion blithely disregards what Mill elsewhere recognizes as a powerful tendency, based in natural sociability, towards conformity of opinion. Here, however, it is diversity, originality, genius, creativity and the forging of one’s own desires and impulses that combine to define ‘character’, whose antithesis is both a ‘mean, slavish’ character constantly engendered by the focus on money-getting endemic in commercial society, and a world-denying passivity that Mill associates with Christianity, and contrasts to ‘pagan self-assertion’. Mill is here again insistent that his concern is with both individual and national character: like individuals, nations—indeed ‘the whole East’—may fall under the despotism of custom, and thus cease to be progressive.

Mill’s central discussion of the ‘harm’ principle with respect to freedom of action comes in Chapter Four of On Liberty, in which he attempts a closer conceptualization of the distinction between ‘other-regarding’ and ‘self-regarding’ actions, or those which

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harm others and those which do not. The former may, Mill contends, include the encroachment on the rights of others, or inflicting loss or damage upon them. But while setting a bad example to others through drunkenness, incontinence or gambling may ‘seriously affect’ others, it is only when a ‘distinct and assignable obligation’ is violated that an action becomes other-regarding. Thus, asserts Mill, drunkenness that results in inability to support one’s family or pay one’s debts is culpable and other-regarding, while drunkenness as such is not. We now see how crucial economic context is to Mill’s key conceptual distinction. Any debilitating act, such as drug addiction, which affects our capacity to support ourselves and our family, is other-regarding, but the rich may indulge to their heart’s content, in the knowledge that they can still meet their obligations, while far greater stringency and restraint is called for on the part of the poor. In Chapter Five, ‘Applications’, Mill introduces a number of examples to test the distinction, but some appear self-interested (the sale of opium to China is condoned; the East India Company derived considerable revenue therefrom), while others—the enforcement of compulsory labour on those unwilling to support their own children through work—seem quaintly illiberal today. Indeed, Mill even suggests that proof of one’s ability to support children might be supplied before any licence to produce them might be issued. Despite such difficulties, however, most modern readers concede that some such distinction as the harm principle indicates is basic to any rational approach to jurisprudence and legislation.

Like On Liberty, Considerations on Representative Government centrally defends the role played by the intellectual elite in social progress, the chief dangers of modern democracy being ignorance and incapacity in the governing body, and a propensity to succumb to influences other than those dedicated to the general welfare of the community. Mill’s solution is to propose a system of proportional representation, previously described by Thomas Hare, in which parliamentary candidates gaining a certain percentage of the vote but less than a majority could have such votes credited to a national list of candidates, with the net effect being that elected representatives would much more nearly reflect the actual division of opinion in the nation. Beyond this, Mill also proposes literacy and numeracy tests for voters, giving more votes to educated voters, and disfranchising those in receipt of poor relief, or public welfare funds. Such proposals, again, seem preposterously illiberal by later standards, as does Mill’s continued defence of despotic rule over ‘less advanced’ nations, though these are partly offset by Mill’s insistence on the extension of the franchise to women. There are also notable discussions in the text about the relationship between nationality, or a sense of common identity shared by a people, and the right of self-rule; and of the importance of local government in fostering a sense of commitment to the democratic process, and resisting the persistence trends towards both centralization and what Tocqueville had described as a negative form of ‘individualism’, the propensity in democracies for people to withdraw into their private circles of family and friends, and to abandon the duties of citizenship, resulting in greater concentration of power at the centre.

The brief essay Utilitarianism, too, while notionally a restatement of the Benthamite inheritance, centrally defends the intellectual elite from a more philosophical viewpoint. Here Mill’s chief contention is that the ‘higher’ pleasures of the intellect, feeling and imagination are more valuable than the ‘lower’ or bodily pleasures, such that utilitarianism as such does not command or sanction a shallow hedonism, as Carlyle and others insisted. Instead, not only did those with experience of both prefer the higher; a

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‘sense of dignity’ also inhibited indulgence in the lower. It is, Mill famously insists, ‘better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied’, though Socrates’ fate is not one most willingly embrace. More importantly, Mill insists that utilitarianism can only gain its ends by ‘the general cultivation of nobleness of character’, which entails the recognition that a readiness to sacrifice our own happiness to that of others ‘is the highest virtue that can be found in man’. This resolves the central utilitarian dilemma or conflict between a presumed psychological egoism, or propensity to pursue happiness and avoid pain, and the moral command to promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number, though Mill concedes that ‘the present wretched education and wretched social arrangements’ will make such Stoic sacrifices less common than would be ideal. Promoting such a sense of duty is however based in part on natural sentiment, ‘the social feelings of mankind, the desire to be in unity with our fellow creatures’, which is given greater prominence than in On Liberty, and which Mill concedes tends to conflict with the propensity of commercial society to promote a sense of conflict and competition with others. Citizenship and morality, evidently, are underpinned by principles at variance with the promotion of economic man.

Finally, Mill’s The Subjection of Women (1869), written with his wife, is the foremost feminist tract of its epoch. Besides offering a lengthy description of the legal subordination of women, and the general advantages to social progress that the incorporation of their abilities into public life would entail, Mill/Taylor combat a number of key prejudices against such developments, notably based on a theory of innate female inferiority. The existing system of marriage is condemned as depriving women of property rights, rights of inheritance, rights over their children, the right of separation and the right to resist an oppressive husband. The existing exclusion of women from most branches of employment is contrasted to the advantages that would result from a system of free competition, where women had adequate training and education to unfold their capabilities. The advantages to society of greater equality between the sexes, then, would

be threefold: social relations would be governed by a stronger principle of justice, the family forming a partnership rather than being governed by the despotic rule of the husband and father, with obvious advantages for the more democratic education of children; the mass of mental faculties available to society would be doubled, with women likely to exert a softening influence on public opinion (whether through primary or secondary nature is not stated); and, most important of all, women would themselves gain immeasurably in happiness.