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V. James Mill's Politics Reconsidered: Parliamentary Reform and the Triumph of Truth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Wendell Robert Carr
Wendell Robert Carr
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

All persons concerned with the Benthamites are indebted to William Thomas's ‘James Mill's Politics’ for reopening a crucial, complex and much-debated question and for offering a number of thought-provoking opinions on die subject. Despite the ingenuity of his essay, however, many of Thomas's conclusions merit further consideration. Most of the questionable points in his argument centre on three basic issues: the meaning of the Essay on Government; the import of James Mill's distinctive theory of propaganda; and the general perspective from which James Mill's politics should be studied. Thomas's position on these issues casts doubt on his entire approach to James Mill's political theory.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , September 1971 , pp. 553 - 580
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971

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References

1 Thomas, William, ‘James Mill's Politics: The “Essay on Government” and the Movement for Reform’, The Historical Journal, XII (06 1969), 249–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Thomas, , op. cit. p. 249.Google Scholar

3 Ibid. pp. 250, 251.

4 Ibid.

5 Mill, James, Essay on Government, in Essays on Government, Jurisprudence, Liberty of the Press, and the Law of Nations (London, n.d.), p. 32.Google Scholar All quotations from Mill's Encyclopaedia Britannica articles, except where otherwise noted, are cited from this edition.

6 Ibid.

7 Thomas, , op. cit. p. 253.Google Scholar

8 Mill, James, Essay on Government, pp. 3, 21.Google Scholar Thomas's reference to ‘direct democracy” aptly illustrates his tendency to obscure issues. In the Essay on Government Mill did indeed state that direct democracy (meaning the entire community assembled to transact business) was not a viable form of government (p. 6). But when Mill discussed the franchise, he was speaking of the way in which a representative government (as opposed to a direct democracy in his understanding of the term) should be organized; hence his criticisms of direct democracy had nothing to do with his views on the extent of the franchise. For Mill, in other words, a representative government was the solution for the evils of direct democracy. The extent of the franchise within a representative government was in Mill's view another question entirely.

9 Mill, John Stuart, Autobiography (New York, 1924), p. 73.Google Scholar

10 Thomas, , op. cit. p. 253.Google Scholar In fact, Thomas even misinterprets one of the passages he calls obscure. James Mill had written that a low qualification would do little harm because ‘it would not be easy for the people who have very little property, to separate their interests from those of the people who have none. It is not the interest of those who have little property to give undue advantages to the possession of property, which those who have the great portions of it would turn against themselves’. This passage does not mean, as Thomas contends, ‘that the poor have the same interests as the not-so-poor, and that the not-so-poor have the same interests as the rich’. What Mill said is that men of little property would be unlikely to give undue advantage to the rich, for fear that the rich would turn those advantages against small property holders. It should also be noted that contrary to Thomas's assertion, this passage does not mark the ‘first time’ Mill ‘comes near the principle of universal suffrage’; for as we have seen, Mill's whole discussion of the franchise is predicated on the assumption that ‘an interest identical with the whole community is to be found in the aggregate males of an age to be regarded as sui juris’.

11 These conclusions summarized from Mill, James, Essay on Government, pp. 21–3.Google Scholar

12 Thomas, , op. cit. p. 254.Google Scholar

13 Ibid. p. 255.

14 Ibid. p. 257.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid.

17 Ricardo to Trower, 22 Mar. 1818, in Sraffa, Piero (ed.), The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, VII, 261Google Scholar. Thomas wrongly cites vol. VIII instead of VII.

18 Ricardo to Trower, 27 June 1818, ibid. p. 273. Neither do the other two passages which Thomas cites strengthen his argument.

19 Ricardo to Mill, 27 July 1820, ibid. VIII, 211. Thomas adds that ‘by “the good cause” which the Essay would serve, it seems not too extravagant to suppose that both men meant simply “good government” ‘. Even if Thomas were correct, the fact would have little bearing on whether the Essay was propaganda; for how else, in James Mill's frame of reference, could a document serve the cause of good government but by promoting reform? But Thomas is not correct, for as proof of his theory that ‘good cause’ means only ‘good government’, Thomas cites a letter in which James Mill told Ricardo that ‘there will be no great character, hereafter, for any thing else than great service to the cause of causes, the cause of good government’ and counselled him to write discourses on the subject ‘without delay’. But Thomas does not tell us that the titles of two of these discourses which Ricardo wrote on ‘good government’ are Observations on Parliamentary Reform and Defence of the Plan of Voting by Ballot. Mill to Ricardo, 23 Sept. 1818, Sraffa, , op. cit. VII, 301–2.Google Scholar

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22 Mill, James, Liberty of the Press, p. 22.Google Scholar Mill supported this conviction with extensive quotations from illustrious thinkers of the past such as Johnson, Montesquieu, Locke and Campbell.

23 Thomas, , op. cit. p. 257.Google Scholar

24 Mill, James, Essay on Government, pp. 21, 19, 27Google Scholar; Thomas, , op. cit. p. 273.Google Scholar

25 Thomas, , op. cit. p. 258.Google Scholar Though Mill has not hitherto been identified as the author of this article, Thomas attributes it to him on two grounds which seem convincing: that its style is ‘unmistakably’ that of James Mill; and that many of its quotations appear also in vol. 1 of James Mill's Commonplace Book (Thomas, , op. cit. p. 259)Google Scholar. The discovery of another article possibly by James Mill is perhaps the most significant contribution of Thomas's essay.

26 Thomas, , op. cit. p. 258.Google Scholar

27 Ibid. p. 259.

28 Ibid. p. 258.

29 Ibid. p. 259. Quotation from Mill in ‘Edinburgh Review on Parliamentary Reform’, Westminster Review, IV (07 1825), 220.Google Scholar

30 James Mill, ibid.

31 Ibid. p. 233.

32 Thomas, , op. cit. p. 259.Google Scholar

33 Ibid.

34 Ibid. p. 261.

35 Ricardo to Mill, 27 July 1820, Sraffa, , op. cit. VIII, 211Google Scholar; Mill to Ricardo, 13 Nov. 1820, ibid. p. 291.

36 Mill, James, History of British India, III (London, 1820), 451–2Google Scholar; Roebuck, John Arthur, Pamphlets for the People, ‘On the Means of Conveying Information to the People’, p. 15Google Scholar; Bain, Alexander (ed.), The Minor Works of George Grote (London, 1873), p. [9]Google Scholar; Grote, Harriet, The Personal Life of George Grote (London, 1873), pp. 66–7.Google Scholar

37 Mill, J. S., Autobiography, pp. 73–6Google Scholar; Bain, Alexander, James Mill: A Biography (London, 1882), passim.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Thomas, , op. cit. p. 249.Google Scholar

39 The works of Joseph Hamburger are the chief modern analyses of James Mill's politics; and though Hamburger has written an article primarily concerned with the Essay on Government, his general interpretation of James Mill draws from a vast array of sources. See ’James Mill on Universal Suffrage and the Middle Class’, The Journal of Politics, xxiv (02. 1962), 167–90Google Scholar; Intellectuals in Politics (New Haven, 1965)Google Scholar; and James Mill and the Art of Revolution (New Haven, 1963).Google Scholar

40 Halévy, Elie, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, trans. Morris, Mary (London, 1952), pp. 419, 425–4Google Scholar; Hamburger, , Intellectuals, p. 58.Google Scholar

41 Thomas, , op. cit. pp. 262, 277–8.Google Scholar

42 Trevelyan, George Otto, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, I (New York, 1876), 133.Google Scholar

43 Thomas, , op. cit. p. 272.Google Scholar

44 Ibid. pp. 280, 284.

45 Ibid. p. 263.

46 Ibid. p. 264. Passages from Grote quoted by Thomas from B.M. Add. MSS 29, 529, fos. 35–6.

47 Grote, George, Essentials of Parliamentary Reform, p. 12Google Scholar, in Bain (ed.), Minor Worlds.

48 Thomas, , op. cit. p. 264.Google Scholar

49 Mill, J. S., Autobiography, pp. 124–5.Google Scholar

50 Thomas, , op. cit. p. 265.Google Scholar

51 ‘Advertisement’ (no pagination), Parliamentary History and Review (1826).

52 ‘Prefatory Treatise on Political Fallacies’, ibid. pp. 1, 4.

53 Thomas, , op. cit. p. 272Google Scholar; Mill, James, Essay on Government, pp. 19–20Google Scholar. Thomas's argument for this point is typical of the way in which he blurs issues, piles up irrelevancies, and draws false inferences: ‘Certainly Mill's circle, and the young liberal lawyers of the Parliamentary History and Review, with their belief in a scientific standard of legislation, were in no position to deny the need for experts in either House. They only hesitated, as we have seen, over whether such expertise was more useful in a member or a minister; their social prejudice inclined them to favour the latter, while the contempt in which they held the House of Commons made it less and less important to insist upon its regeneration at frequent elections. Hence a diminished enthusiasm and even a note of despair over the notion of frequent elections in the Parliamentary History and Review.’ Thomas is also wrong to argue (p. 251) that Mill ‘weakens his own objections to granting representatives a long tenure of power by admitting the need to re-elect those who have done their duty well’.

54 Thomas, , op. cit. pp. 272–3Google Scholar. Quotations from James Mill in ‘Constitutional Legislation’, Parliamentary Review (1828), p. 344Google Scholar. Significantly, Thomas does not quote the beginning of the passage: ‘What is next to be considered is, that, by a seven years’ duration of parliament …’

55 Thomas, , op. cit. p. 273.Google Scholar

56 Ibid. p. 274. Quotation from Mill, J. S. in P.H.R., I, 620.Google Scholar

57 Thomas, , op. cit. p. 275.Google Scholar

58 Of the four pieces of evidence Thomas cites to show the energies of John Mill and his friends ‘overflowing’ into the Examiner, the first compares the utilitarians to the Whigs, pointing out the faults and virtues of both. Thomas describes this as ‘qualified support’ for the Benthamites—though the Whigs are also given ‘qualified support’ (Examiner, 19 Nov. 1826, p. 739). The second praises the Parliamentary History and Review, but that fact is hardly evidence that Fonblanque spoke for the utilitarians on Ireland (Examiner, 22 Apr. 1827, p. 245). The third expresses admiration of Bentham's principles on the sale of offices and says nothing about Ireland (Examiner, 6 Jan. 1828, p. 1), and the fourth is merely an extended quotation from a review of Sir Walter Scott's Tales of A Grandfather in the Westminster Review (Examiner, 5 Apr. 1829, p. 210).

59 Mill, J. S., Autobiography, p. 72.Google Scholar

60 Thomas, , op. cit. p. 276.Google Scholar

61 Examiner, 12 Apr. 1829, p. 225; 5 Apr. 1829, p. 209. Fonblanque's exact words were these: ‘If the ballot were in use, we should advocate the continuance of this franchise; but as things are ordered we see no public policy in making a multitude of helpless creatures either passive echoes of a master's voice, or rebels to his will while subject to his power; no Catholic Association now existing to negative the last condition.’

62 Thomas, , op. cit. p. 277.Google Scholar

63 Mill, James, ‘Affairs of India’, Edinburgh Review, XVI (04 1810), 155Google Scholar. James Mill added, of course, that the government should be one ‘the interests of which are identified with the interests of the country; and, arbitrary as it must be, such checks and influences might easily be applied, as would render it mild and paternal in its exercise’ (pp. 155–6).

64 Mill, James, History, II, 135.Google Scholar

65 See, for example, Examiner, 19 Apr. 1829, p. 241.

66 Thomas, , op. cit. pp. 284, 280.Google Scholar

67 Ibid. pp. 281, 283.

68 Mill, James, ‘The Ballot’, Westminster Review, XIII (07 1830), 16–17.Google Scholar

69 Ibid. p. 1.

70 Thomas, , op. cit. p. 283.Google Scholar

71 Examiner, 3 Oct. 1830, p. 627.

72 Ibid. 19 Sept. 1830, p. 594.

73 Ibid.

74 Ibid.

75 Quoted by Thomas (p. 283) from Examiner, 25 July 1830, p. 465. Thomas slightly misquotes Hobhouse, who actually said: ‘Without it, they could do nothing - with it they could accomplish almost anything; and he would even consent to let the right of voting remain as it was, if he could get election by ballot, rather than have the right of voting extended, but be refused the ballot.’ Thomas wrongly cites Examiner for 18 July 1830, pp. 449–50.

76 Mill, James, History, III, 451–2Google Scholar; ‘Edinburgh Review on Parliamentary Reform’, p. 228; ‘Constitutional Legislation’, pp. 363, 361.

77 Grote, George, Statement of the Question of Parliamentary Reform (London, 1821), p. 18.Google Scholar

78 Mill, J. S., Autobiography, p. 74Google Scholar. For an explicit statement of the Benthamite attitude toward the Ballot in the early 1830s, Thomas could have referred to Grate's Essentials of Parliamentary Reform, in which Grote made clear that though he was willing for the sake of the ballot to accept a smaller extension of the franchise than he ideally wished, he would by no means forsake parliamentary reform entirely: ‘To gain the Ballot, it would be amply worth while to make concessions as to the number of voters, if we were compelled to take our choice between the two. Though I could not place full confidence in an aggregate of voters much smaller than a million, I should greatly prefer 500,000 voters, qualified by superiority of income, along with the Ballot, to 2,000,000 of voters without it. If the House of Commons were reduced in number to 300, an aggregate of 500,000 voters would allow of 1660 voters for each electoral division. A suffrage, narrowed even to this nearly oligarchical limit, but accompanied by the Ballot and by triennial parliaments, would afford a great and salutary opening to superior minds and to men of public reputation, and a comfortable foretaste of better things to come’ (p. 55).

79 Thomas, , op. cit. p. 284.Google Scholar

80 Grote, George, Essentials, p. 53.Google Scholar

81 Mill, James, ‘Education of the Poor’, Edinburgh Review, XXI (02. 1813), 212.Google Scholar

82 Mill, James, Liberty of the Press, p. 19.Google Scholar

83 Ibid. pp. 20–1

84 Ibid. pp. 21–2.

85 Mill, James, ‘Edinburgh Review on Parliamentary Reform’, pp. 227–8Google Scholar; Mill, James, ‘The Ballot’, pp. 38–9.Google Scholar

86 Mill, J. S., Autobiography, p. 74.Google Scholar

87 Mill's advice to Fonblanque quoted by Hamburger, James Mill and the Art of Revolution, p. 61, from a letter from Mill to Fonblanque, 25 Oct. 1831, in the Mill-Taylor Collection, British Library of Political and Economic Science, 49A, 1; Bain, , James Mill, pp. 362, 363.Google Scholar

88 Leader, R. E. (ed.), Life and Letters of John Arthur Roebuck (London, 1897), p. 88.Google Scholar Roebuck counted himself ‘very active in the many proceedings which attended the passing of that measure’.

89 Mill, J. S., in Examiner, 6 Mar. 1831, p. 147.Google Scholar

90 Wrong, E. M., Charles Buller and Responsible Government (Oxford, 1926), p. 8Google Scholar; Hansard, , Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, III, 805Google Scholar. Buller was called to the bar in June 1831, and consequently did not sit in Parliament during 1832 (D.N.B., ‘Charles Buller').

91 Grote, Harriet, Life of George Grote, pp. 70, 71.Google Scholar

92 James Mill to Place, 25 Oct. 1831, quoted in Wallas, Graham, The Life of Francis Place (New York, 1919), p. 274.Google Scholar

93 Wrong, , Buller, p. 7.Google Scholar

94 Grote, , Essentials, pp. 53–4.Google Scholar

95 Examiner, 19 Sept. 1830, p. 594.

96 Roebuck, John Arthur, ‘Of What Use is the House of Lords’, Pamphlets for the People, I (6 08. 1835), 4–5.Google Scholar

97 An exhaustive account of James Mill's thought, as well as more detailed evidence for the conclusions stated here, may be found in my forthcoming book on the early thought of John Stuart Mill.