JOHN STUART MILL (1806-73)
Few economists or political philosophers can ever have had a more thorough preparation for intellectual pursuits than John Stuart Mill. From a tender age he was tutored by his father, James Mill, a political economist of note in his own day, but now remembered more for his close association with Ricardo and Bentham.
By the age of eight, the younger Mill was reading Greek classics in the original and at thirteen was set to work on Smith and Ricardo. Later in life John Stuart Mill was to observe that his remarkable education - which covered most branches of knowledge - gave him twenty-five years' head start on most of his contemporaries.In 1823, after abandoning earlier plans to take up the study of law, Mill entered the employ of the East India Company. He began as an assistant to his father in the examiner's office, the division of the company charged with the conduct of its affairs with the native states. The younger Mill spent the next thirty-five years of his life as an official of the company, ultimately rising to the highest post in the examiner's department, a position held earlier by his father. This connexion was severed only when Parliament relieved the company of its political and administrative responsibilities in 1858.
His involvement in Indian affairs, despite its duration, had little influence on the development of his thought. He did not share his father's zeal for translating Ricardian and utilitarian doctrine into a massive programme of reform in India. For that matter, he never visited India and there is no evidence that he ever expressed a desire to do so. His attitude toward his official duties appears to have had something in common with that held by a few university professors nowadays towards their teaching responsibilities: the latter, however, seldom express themselves so candidly in print. As Mill observed:
I do not know any one of the occupations by which a subsistence can now be gained, more suitable than such as this to any one who, not being in independent circumstances, desires to devote a part of the twenty-four hours to private intellectual pursuits.1
More potent as an influence on the development of his thought was Mill's companionship with Mrs Harriet Taylor, whom he married after the death of her husband.
Mill described her as the 'inspirer of my best thoughts'.2 Though she shaped the details of his teaching on only one issue - the 'subjugation' of women - he regarded her influence as crucial to his re-assessment of classical postulates and to his attempts to reformulate political economy along lines that offered less cramped prospects for the bulk of mankind. His appraisal of her influence was, perhaps understandably, exaggerated.Late in life, Mill served briefly as a member of Parliament. During his term, he championed the extension of the franchise to the working classes and to women and called for land tenure reform in Ireland. His attempt to win re-election was unsuccessful.
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