Essays on Government, Jurisprudence, Liberty of the Press, and Law of Nations.

by James Mill

James Mill (1773–1836) was a Scottish political philosopher, economist and proponent of Utilitarianism. He was the father of John Stuart Mill. Originally published in 1937, this book presents the complete text of Mill's An Essay on Government. An editorial introduction and textual notes are also included. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the writings of Mill and political history.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

180 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1819

About the author

James Mill (born James Milne) was a Scottish historian, economist, political theorist, and philosopher. He is counted among the founders of the Ricardian school of economics. His son, John Stuart Mill, was also a noted philosopher of liberalism, utilitarianism and the civilizing mission of the British Empire.

Although he never set foot in India at any time in his life, James Mill took upon himself the task of writing the monumental History of British India, a classic of colonial self-congratulation which contains a complete denunciation and rejection of Indian culture and civilisation and which both exhorts and extolls the civilizing mission of the British in the subcontinent. He was the first writer to divide Indian history into three parts: Hindu, Muslim and British, a classification which has proved surpassingly influential in the field of Indian historical studies, but which is seen in recent decades as being deeply problematic.

Reviews

[Isaac Chan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bruh, where do I even start to make sense of this boring, extended ramble …

This essay put me to sleep on 3 separate sittings. So I suppose I should buy some of James Mill’s tomes and keep them around my house to combat my insomniac nights. ‘The history of British India’ should do it. Wtf was this shit, man?

Ig some interesting things managed to emerge from this essay, to which I have tried to think about:

Firstly, being an entry for the ‘Encyclopedia Brittanica’, not a full book, Mill states his assumptions without substantiating them. And that is fine and understandable, not to mention that his key assumptions look OK to me. Namely, Mill assumes that 1) a society presumably cannot work against their own interests, 2) a society wants to maximize happiness for the highest number of people, so 3) the end of government is to achieve 2). These premises can be debated, but for the most part, they seem relatively uncontroversial. Many modern liberals, to my limited understanding, seem to think that utilitarianism is morally bankrupt, but I don’t know why that is the case. And of course, you have the famous case of ‘Crime and Punishment’ (which came decades after Mill’s ‘Government’, so I presume, after utilitarianism had already become a mature, established philosophy), a supreme aesthetic masterpiece passionately warning against, and convincing me of, the perils of utilitarianism and moral calculus. So I suppose I find some cognitive dissonance within me.

Secondly, which form of government is best able to achieve 2)? Mill considers 3 forms – democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy. I couldn’t follow his boring and archaic argument at all, but I take note that he concludes, with a reasonable amount of nuance and fairness, that democracy is the way to go.

The third point is what interests me the most. Mill now compares the idealism of democracy against the possible efficacy of aristocracy and monarchy. I first note that I can find some similarities between Mill’s politics and that of Hume’s – both philosophers thought that the key to government is the idea of satiating those to which we entrust power. Hume never directly uses the word ‘satiate’, but Mill does here.

And here is a concept entirely new to me. Apparently, Hobbes and the ‘French economists’ thought that a ‘concentrated government’ (my own words), i.e. concentrating power into the hands of fewer people, was more efficient because it’s obviously easier to satiate fewer people than more. And this is why Hobbes obviously supported the monarchy.

This idea is pretty enticing. According to this idea’s tenets, aristocracy and monarchy is easier to implement than democracy.

Furthermore, Mill doesn’t construct any economic model here (even informally), so I will take the initiative to draw links to Hume’s key model of the optimal size of government – namely, government as a commitment device. The IR and IC constraints of government is to 1) satiate the sovereign and thus, 2) make it so that serving the social interest is the contiguous motive and his private interest the remote motive.

Aristocracy and monarchy are now looking dangerously attractive. I can think of even more dangerous reasons – it’s now just easier to satiate fewer people, but also easier to satiate more SOPHISTICATED people, or philosopher-kings! This was Plato’s key insight: philosophers (or, at the least, the intellectual elite) are easy to keep happy – just give them enough free time and resources to investigate mathematics or their other intellectual interests. We hardly need Lamborghinis to be happy, like the average vulgar man. Philosopher-kings also, in general, have more well-ordered and stable preferences (which makes us easier to delineate the boundary between the social interest and the sovereign’s private interest), unlike the vulgar, who hardly know what they themselves want. The vulgar don’t understand themselves, while philosophers have achieved enlightenment, or at least make it their goal to do so – philosophers have escaped the cave.

But enough with this Platonic and Humean speculation. The point is that Mill seems to have recognized this troubling objection, and goes to great lengths to argue why, despite the efficacies of concentrated government, democracy is the way to go. So it’s a shame that his prose managed to make even me lose interest in this intriguing strand of thought. However, 1 strand of argument that I did manage to ascertain is what I've concluded independently before, in response to Hume - that human desire, however concentrated, is never satiable.

Nonetheless I still learned something new about Hobbes’s thought, assuming Mill wasn’t capping or pulling shit outta his ass. Haven’t read Leviathan yet. And, who knows, maybe it’s because ‘concentrated government’ is economically pragmatic, that monarchy was THE natural state of government for many countries for millennia, before modern institutions established human rights.

Fourthly, Mill spends a lot of mental effort on the problem of the abuse of power, to which the solution is checks and balances. And Mill proposes many modern checks – e.g., hard limits to politician terms, and what I sense is some demarcation of branches of government. All good.

Fifthly, Mill later goes into a somewhat interesting digression into why timocracy is bad. To which the justification is obvious – the propertied are already the privileged, so we cannot expect them to be able to serve the utilitarian motive.

Some final, auxiliary thoughts that Mill blathers about include the inefficiencies of democracy, e.g. changing parties every few years which contributes to the time-inconsistency problem, etc. Interesting talking points, but I suppose modern empirical methods are better suited to inquire into this question.


P.S. I notice that James Mill had a full head of hair (at least, in the 1 surviving portrait of him on the internet) whereas John Stuart was bald. Unfortunate L to John, but thankfully he made up for it by becoming a way more prominent philosopher than his old man. God is fair.

P.P.S. James Mill casually makes some very sexist remarks in this essay (namely, that women’s interests should be controlled by men), so I suppose he wouldn’t approve of Harriet Taylor’s intellect. Hahaha, hehe. James sounds like a prick ngl.