John Stuart Mill: Government and Economy

Abstract

134 1 Mill, born in London on May 20, 1806, was the eldest son of James Mill, the author of the History of British India. He died at Avignon, France, May 8, 1873, and was buried beside his wife, Harriet Taylor Mill. story of his life and his remarkable education at the hand of his father is told in his Autobiography. See Autobiography of John Stuart Mill, with a Preface by John Jacob Coss, ed. Roger Howson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1924). Another edition with an appendix of unpublished speeches under the editorship of Harold Laski was published in the World's Classics, No. 262 (London: Oxford University Press, 1924). For the influence of Harriet Taylor Mill on the writing of the see Jack Stillinger (ed.), Early Draft of John Stuart Mill's Autobiography (Urbana, 111.: University of Illinois Press, 1961). best critical analysis of the subject is Albert William Levi, The Writing of Mill's Autobiography, Ethics, LXI (July, 1951), 284-96. On the question of Mill's relations with Harriet Taylor see F. A. Hayek, John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor (London: Routledge S Kegan Paul, 1951); H. 0. Pappe, John Stuart Mill and the Harriet Taylor Myth (Australian National University Social Science Monograph, No. 19 [Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, I960]); and Michael St. John Packe, Life of John Stuart Mill (London: Seeker & Warburg, 1954). In my work on Mill, particularly on his career in the Examiner's Office of the East India Company (1823-58), I have been aided by grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, Social Science Research Council, American Philosophical Society, and, at the University of Chicago, the Dean of the College and the Committee on Research in the Division of Social Sciences and in the Division of Humanities. years after On Liberty, is hardly read at all, except perhaps in university courses in which the purpose, more than likely, is to show how obsolete Mill's political theory has been made by recent studies focused upon the permeation of the processes of democratic government by bureaucratic formations, the party machine, organized interest groups, and lobbyists. While Representative Government cannot be said to afford exact policy prescriptions for present-day political affairs, its significance in the development of the Western liberal theory of government is certainly not less than that of Locke's Civil Government or Tocqueville's Democracy in America, which Mill reviewed and which is now experiencing a revival of interest. Mill's explanation of why representative government is ideally the best form of polity, his conception of the conditions necessary for its successful operation and continuance, and his comprehension of the difficulties confronting the representative system reveal a profound grasp, I think, of some of the fundamental issues connected with government in a free society. Mill is no oracle to whom we may go for solutions to concrete problems of contemporary government and economic system. At times he was inconsistent and confused, if not falla-