MILL, JAMES (1773–1836)

James Mill, philosopher and social reformer, was born in Scotland in 1773, the son of a shoemaker. His ability was such that he was recommended to Lady Jane Stuart for financial support to study Divinity at the University of Edinburgh. He was licensed as a preacher in 1798 but failed to find a position and so left for London in 1802. There he made a living out of journalism until he decided that more substantial writing was required to make his name. He allowed himself three years to complete a History of British India though it actually took twelve. Its six volumes were published in 1818. It was largely on the strength of them that in 1819 James Mill was appointed an Assistant Examiner for the British East India Company. He remained with the company until his death in 1836, having become Head Examiner in 1830, a virtual Under-Secretary of State for India, with the then substantial salary of £1,900 per year.

Entries A-Z 459 Mill never went to India and never thought it necessary to do so. Distance, he

imagined, gave his work the quality of objectivity. In fact it bore the marks less of objectivity than of the European Enlightenment. For Mill all societies were to be placed on a developmental continuum that led from original barbarism to advanced civilization. On this scale India occupied a lowly place. For James Mill it was essential that superstition gave way as civilization advances. In India this had not happened. The society was characterized by a more extreme and superstitious theocracy than any yet known. Despotism and priestcraft had produced the ‘most enslaved portion of the human race’. Thus whatever its other attributes in terms of industry, art and culture, India bore the prime hallmark of a barbarous people. It was because of their low level of civilization that the establishment of any legislative assembly was inadvisable. The only political form fit for the Indian people was arbitrary government ‘tempered by European honour and European intelligence’. This account very much suited the East India Company and Mill’s History soon became a basic work for its officials.

However, it was not only India that required reform. Great Britain itself seemed in considerable need of improvement, having carried into modern times too many traces of its medieval past. Its social structure, political forms, legal system and public administration appeared all too little changed from previous centuries. Mill had met JEREMY BENTHAM in 1808 and soon became his friend, neighbour and main publicist and popularizer of his Utilitarian philosophy.

Utilitarianism was largely a middle-class creed and one aspect of Mill’s position was opposition to the aristocracy. He recommended reducing the power of the House of Lords, believing that aristocratic privilege gave power to a narrow class to treat the rest of society as they please. Mill took it as a postulate of human nature that both individuals and groups seek to augment their own happiness and advantage irrespective of the cost to others. This position obviously denies any notion of benevolent monarchy or aristocracy for no advantaged minority could be relied upon to act in the interests of all. In his best- known essay, on ‘Government’ (1820), Mill argued that good government has to be representative and that the representative body must have an identity of interest with the whole society. Otherwise it would misuse its power. The logic of this position clearly points in a democratic direction yet in considering the extent of the franchise Mill argued for the exclusion not only of children but also of women, whose interests he considered already sufficiently covered by their fathers or husbands. Mill decided that the male population, of an age to be determined by the law, could be regarded as the natural representatives of the whole society. On this basis it remains unclear whether Mill was recommending universal male suffrage, which would have been a highly radical position still twelve years prior to Britain’s first Reform Act. At the end of the essay he described ‘the middle rank’ as the source of all that is best in human nature and believed that their guidance and advice would be overwhelmingly accepted by those beneath them.

The right to vote was one thing; the free use of it quite another. Before 1872 voting was a public act and James Mill was one of the main campaigners against this situation. He noted that votes were effectively bought—what he called ‘prostitute votes’—for the tenant was bound to vote the way his landlord advised rather than risk being turned out of his property. In this way the immoral influence of property took its effect and this corruption in voting served to undermine morals in the wider society.

Encyclopedia of nineteenth-century thought 460 Among the other topics Mill studied were economics, psychology, jurisprudence,

liberty of the press, prisons and education. His last major piece was an extraordinary article on the Church of England, in which his suggested reforms would have transformed it from a religious into an educational institution. Mill, then, was a significant advocate of thorough but peaceful reform for various social institutions, yet now he remains less famous for his own writings than for the people with whom he was associated. As well as being the main popularizer of Bentham’s ideas he also became friendly with DAVID RICARDO and did much to stimulate the latter’s Principles of Political Economy (1817). The next association is less complimentary for Mill’s article on ‘Government’ was famously savaged by LORD MACAULAY who replaced Mill’s focus on an acquisitive human nature with emphasis on the particular social and cultural characteristics of separate societies. But perhaps Mill is now best known for the rigorous education he imposed on his eldest son, the philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill. If J.S.Mill’s achievements relatively diminished those of his father they at least simultaneously vindicated his father’s educational methods.

MILL, JAMES (1773–1836)