Legislator of the world?: A rereading of Bentham on colonies

Political Theory

Volumn 31, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 200-234

  Pitts, Jennifer ^a  

^a YALE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Bentham; Colonialism; Empire; Imperialism; J. S. Mill; Liberalism; Utilitarianism

Indexed keywords

EID: 0037245666     PISSN: 00905917     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0090591702251009     Document Type: Article

References (123)

1. Scholars that have portrayed utilitarianism as an inherently imperialist doctrine and attributed to Bentham the views on colonial rule expressed by his self-declared disciples include Elie Halévy, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, trans. Mary Morris (Boston: Beacon, [1928] 1955); Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959); Raghavan Iyer, Utilitarianism and All That (London: Concord Grove, [1960] 1983); William Thomas, The Philosophic Radicals: Nine Studies in Theory and Practice 1817-1841 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979); Uday S. Mehta. Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
2. Scholars that have portrayed utilitarianism as an inherently imperialist doctrine and attributed to Bentham the views on colonial rule expressed by his self-declared disciples include Elie Halévy, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, trans. Mary Morris (Boston: Beacon, [1928] 1955); Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959); Raghavan Iyer, Utilitarianism and All That (London: Concord Grove, [1960] 1983); William Thomas, The Philosophic Radicals: Nine Studies in Theory and Practice 1817-1841 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979); Uday S. Mehta. Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
3. Scholars that have portrayed utilitarianism as an inherently imperialist doctrine and attributed to Bentham the views on colonial rule expressed by his self-declared disciples include Elie Halévy, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, trans. Mary Morris (Boston: Beacon, [1928] 1955); Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959); Raghavan Iyer, Utilitarianism and All That (London: Concord Grove, [1960] 1983); William Thomas, The Philosophic Radicals: Nine Studies in Theory and Practice 1817-1841 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979); Uday S. Mehta. Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
4. Scholars that have portrayed utilitarianism as an inherently imperialist doctrine and attributed to Bentham the views on colonial rule expressed by his self-declared disciples include Elie Halévy, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, trans. Mary Morris (Boston: Beacon, [1928] 1955); Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959); Raghavan Iyer, Utilitarianism and All That (London: Concord Grove, [1960] 1983); William Thomas, The Philosophic Radicals: Nine Studies in Theory and Practice 1817-1841 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979); Uday S. Mehta. Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
5. Scholars that have portrayed utilitarianism as an inherently imperialist doctrine and attributed to Bentham the views on colonial rule expressed by his self-declared disciples include Elie Halévy, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, trans. Mary Morris (Boston: Beacon, [1928] 1955); Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959); Raghavan Iyer, Utilitarianism and All That (London: Concord Grove, [1960] 1983); William Thomas, The Philosophic Radicals: Nine Studies in Theory and Practice 1817-1841 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979); Uday S. Mehta. Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
6. Stokes, The English Utilitarians, 51; from The Works of Jeremy Bentham, ed. John Bowring (London: W. Tait, 1843), x.577. Hereafter cited in the text by volume and page number.
7. Stokes, The English Utilitarians, 51; from The Works of Jeremy Bentham, ed. John Bowring (London: W. Tait, 1843), x.577. Hereafter cited in the text by volume and page number.
8. The influence of utilitarian reformers in the transformation of Victorian England has been much debated: while scholarship of the 1950s and 1960s tended to downplay utilitarian influence, more recent scholarship suggests that utilitarian ideas affected reform both directly, through Bentham's followers in administration, and indirectly, through reformers who were quite unaware of the Benthamite origins of the reforms they sought; see Stephen Conway, "Bentham and the Nineteenth-Century Revolution in Government," in Victorian Liberalism, ed. Richard Bellamy (New York: Routledge, 1990).
9. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, ed. Stefan Collini (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [1859] 1989), 13.
10. Bowring, iv.416. The moon was Bentham's usual analogy for distant dependencies. In a passage typical of Bentham's quirky and biting wit on the subject of colonies, he wrote of the Spanish imperialists: Spain is one! such will be their arithmetic. It has its Peninsular part and its Ultramarian part! such will be their geography. As well might it be said - Spain and the Moon are one!, it has its earthly part: it has its lunar part. Such, it is but too true, is the language of your Constitutional Code. But, a body of human law, how well so ever arranged in other respects, does not suffice for converting impossibilities into facts. (P. 52)
11. See Frederick Rosen, "Elie Halévy and Bentham's Authoritarian Liberalism," in Jeremy Bentham and Representative Democracy, by Frederick Rosen (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983). In Bentham, Byron, and Greece (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), Rosen argues that Bentham's notion of constitutional liberty was "derived largely from Montesquieu, and that this notion of liberty (as security) is at the heart of his constitutional theory" (p. 4). This argument departs not only from the views of Halévy but also of Douglas Long, who in Bentham on Liberty (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977) examines what he calls Bentham's "illiberal defense of liberty" and characterizes Bentham's understanding of liberty as security as hostile to the idea of political or "constitutional" liberty. (Long also states, however, that although Bentham was hostile to the enthusiasm for liberty - most importantly political liberty - among many of his contemporaries, what Bentham described as happiness in fact included many of the elements of freedom as understood by others, including "self-fulfilment, individuality, the realization of one's capacity for experience" [p. 10]).
12. See Frederick Rosen, "Elie Halévy and Bentham's Authoritarian Liberalism," in Jeremy Bentham and Representative Democracy, by Frederick Rosen (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983). In Bentham, Byron, and Greece (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), Rosen argues that Bentham's notion of constitutional liberty was "derived largely from Montesquieu, and that this notion of liberty (as security) is at the heart of his constitutional theory" (p. 4). This argument departs not only from the views of Halévy but also of Douglas Long, who in Bentham on Liberty (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977) examines what he calls Bentham's "illiberal defense of liberty" and characterizes Bentham's understanding of liberty as security as hostile to the idea of political or "constitutional" liberty. (Long also states, however, that although Bentham was hostile to the enthusiasm for liberty - most importantly political liberty - among many of his contemporaries, what Bentham described as happiness in fact included many of the elements of freedom as understood by others, including "self-fulfilment, individuality, the realization of one's capacity for experience" [p. 10]).
13. See Frederick Rosen, "Elie Halévy and Bentham's Authoritarian Liberalism," in Jeremy Bentham and Representative Democracy, by Frederick Rosen (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983). In Bentham, Byron, and Greece (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), Rosen argues that Bentham's notion of constitutional liberty was "derived largely from Montesquieu, and that this notion of liberty (as security) is at the heart of his constitutional theory" (p. 4). This argument departs not only from the views of Halévy but also of Douglas Long, who in Bentham on Liberty (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977) examines what he calls Bentham's "illiberal defense of liberty" and characterizes Bentham's understanding of liberty as security as hostile to the idea of political or "constitutional" liberty. (Long also states, however, that although Bentham was hostile to the enthusiasm for liberty - most importantly political liberty - among many of his contemporaries, what Bentham described as happiness in fact included many of the elements of freedom as understood by others, including "self-fulfilment, individuality, the realization of one's capacity for experience" [p. 10]).
14. Donald Winch, Classical Political Economy and Colonies (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1965), is one of the few scholars to emphasize Bentham's ambivalence about colonies. Winch wrote the book at a time when Bentham was regarded simply as an anti-imperialist, on the basis of Emancipate! alone, and his account, intended as a revision of that view, is meant to demonstrate that "Bentham spent most of his life in the process of revising and occasionally contradicting positions he had reached earlier" (p. 25). Lea Campos-Boralevi also explores Bentham's equivocations on both colonies and slavery, Bentham and the Oppressed (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1984), 120-64.
15. Donald Winch, Classical Political Economy and Colonies (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1965), is one of the few scholars to emphasize Bentham's ambivalence about colonies. Winch wrote the book at a time when Bentham was regarded simply as an anti-imperialist, on the basis of Emancipate! alone, and his account, intended as a revision of that view, is meant to demonstrate that "Bentham spent most of his life in the process of revising and occasionally contradicting positions he had reached earlier" (p. 25). Lea Campos-Boralevi also explores Bentham's equivocations on both colonies and slavery, Bentham and the Oppressed (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1984), 120-64.
16. Recent work has been done on Bentham's pacifism by Steven Conway, "Bentham on Peace and War," Utilitas 1 (1989): 82-201; and "Bentham, the Benthamites, and the Nineteenth-Century British Peace Movement," Utilitas 2 (1990): 221-43. Some of Bentham's economic objections to settler colonies were overcome at the very end of his life, when he was persuaded by the arguments of Edward Gibbon Wakefield for "systematic colonization" of Australia; see Bernard Semmel, "The Philosophic Radicals and Colonialism," Journal of Economic History xxi (1961): 513-25, especially 518-19. But Semmel, by discussing the "Benthamite Radicals" as a group, too readily assimilates Bentham's views and doubts about colonialism to the more consistently enthusiastic views of his followers. It is also important to note the great extent to which Bentham left the writing of his later works to his disciples; see J. M. Robson, "John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham," in Essays in English Literature from the Renaissance to the Victorian Age, ed. Millar MacLure and F. W. Watt (Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 1964), 245-68 at 257.
17. Recent work has been done on Bentham's pacifism by Steven Conway, "Bentham on Peace and War," Utilitas 1 (1989): 82-201; and "Bentham, the Benthamites, and the Nineteenth-Century British Peace Movement," Utilitas 2 (1990): 221-43. Some of Bentham's economic objections to settler colonies were overcome at the very end of his life, when he was persuaded by the arguments of Edward Gibbon Wakefield for "systematic colonization" of Australia; see Bernard Semmel, "The Philosophic Radicals and Colonialism," Journal of Economic History xxi (1961): 513-25, especially 518-19. But Semmel, by discussing the "Benthamite Radicals" as a group, too readily assimilates Bentham's views and doubts about colonialism to the more consistently enthusiastic views of his followers. It is also important to note the great extent to which Bentham left the writing of his later works to his disciples; see J. M. Robson, "John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham," in Essays in English Literature from the Renaissance to the Victorian Age, ed. Millar MacLure and F. W. Watt (Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 1964), 245-68 at 257.
18. Recent work has been done on Bentham's pacifism by Steven Conway, "Bentham on Peace and War," Utilitas 1 (1989): 82-201; and "Bentham, the Benthamites, and the Nineteenth-Century British Peace Movement," Utilitas 2 (1990): 221-43. Some of Bentham's economic objections to settler colonies were overcome at the very end of his life, when he was persuaded by the arguments of Edward Gibbon Wakefield for "systematic colonization" of Australia; see Bernard Semmel, "The Philosophic Radicals and Colonialism," Journal of Economic History xxi (1961): 513-25, especially 518-19. But Semmel, by discussing the "Benthamite Radicals" as a group, too readily assimilates Bentham's views and doubts about colonialism to the more consistently enthusiastic views of his followers. It is also important to note the great extent to which Bentham left the writing of his later works to his disciples; see J. M. Robson, "John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham," in Essays in English Literature from the Renaissance to the Victorian Age, ed. Millar MacLure and F. W. Watt (Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 1964), 245-68 at 257.
19. Recent work has been done on Bentham's pacifism by Steven Conway, "Bentham on Peace and War," Utilitas 1 (1989): 82-201; and "Bentham, the Benthamites, and the Nineteenth-Century British Peace Movement," Utilitas 2 (1990): 221-43. Some of Bentham's economic objections to settler colonies were overcome at the very end of his life, when he was persuaded by the arguments of Edward Gibbon Wakefield for "systematic colonization" of Australia; see Bernard Semmel, "The Philosophic Radicals and Colonialism," Journal of Economic History xxi (1961): 513-25, especially 518-19. But Semmel, by discussing the "Benthamite Radicals" as a group, too readily assimilates Bentham's views and doubts about colonialism to the more consistently enthusiastic views of his followers. It is also important to note the great extent to which Bentham left the writing of his later works to his disciples; see J. M. Robson, "John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham," in Essays in English Literature from the Renaissance to the Victorian Age, ed. Millar MacLure and F. W. Watt (Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 1964), 245-68 at 257.
20. Commentators often speak of a utilitarian "logic" (Halévy, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, 510), or of the "utilitarian mind" (Winch, Classical Political Economy, 167) on the subject of colonies.
21. Commentators often speak of a utilitarian "logic" (Halévy, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, 510), or of the "utilitarian mind" (Winch, Classical Political Economy, 167) on the subject of colonies.
22. These anti-imperialist arguments are presented most thoroughly in "Colony," written in the late 1810s as a supplement to the fifth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1823), the views on India most succinctly in James Mill, "Affairs of India," Edinburgh Review xvi (April 1810), but also, of course, in the History of British India.
23. Mill, "Affairs of India," 156. Even Alexander Bain, whose biography of James Mill is on the whole deaf to criticism of his subject, wrote of the History that being written while the public was prepossessed by an excessive admiration for Hindoo institutions and literature, due to Sir W. Jones and others, the review [in particular, Mill's "analysis of the Hindoo institutions"] was too disparaging - the bow bent too far in the opposite direction. See Bain, James Mill: A Biography (London: Longman, Green, and Co., 1882), 176-77. For Mill's argument for arbitrary government, see "Affairs of India."
24. Mill, "Affairs of India," 156. Even Alexander Bain, whose biography of James Mill is on the whole deaf to criticism of his subject, wrote of the History that being written while the public was prepossessed by an excessive admiration for Hindoo institutions and literature, due to Sir W. Jones and others, the review [in particular, Mill's "analysis of the Hindoo institutions"] was too disparaging - the bow bent too far in the opposite direction. See Bain, James Mill: A Biography (London: Longman, Green, and Co., 1882), 176-77. For Mill's argument for arbitrary government, see "Affairs of India."
25. "The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte" (1865), in Collected Works, by J. S. Mill (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1974). X:320 (hereafter cited as CW and by volume and page number). For comments in the Autobiography, see CW, i.27-29.
26. Stokes's English Utilitarians was one of the few works to deal in any depth with the question of Mill's views on empire until the 1990s. Some of the best recent works include Lynn Zastoupil, John Stuart Mill and India (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994); Moir, Peers, and Zastoupil, eds., J. S. Mill's Encounter with India (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999); Mehta, Liberalism and Empire; and Trevor Lloyd, "John Stuart Mill and the East India Company," in A Cultivated Mind, ed. Michael Laine (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991). Volume xxx of CW, "Writings on India," was published in 1990; Mill's many despatches for the East India Company, which are housed in the British Library's Oriental and India Office Collection, are unlikely to be published; see Robson, "Civilization and Culture as Moral Concepts." in Cambridge Companion to Mill, ed. John Skorupski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 369, n. 27. Only Fred Rosen's brief but suggestive article "Eric Stokes, British Utilitarianism, and India," in Moir, Peers, and Zastoupil, J. S. Mill's Encounter with India, begins to address these connections.
27. Stokes's English Utilitarians was one of the few works to deal in any depth with the question of Mill's views on empire until the 1990s. Some of the best recent works include Lynn Zastoupil, John Stuart Mill and India (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994); Moir, Peers, and Zastoupil, eds., J. S. Mill's Encounter with India (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999); Mehta, Liberalism and Empire; and Trevor Lloyd, "John Stuart Mill and the East India Company," in A Cultivated Mind, ed. Michael Laine (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991). Volume xxx of CW, "Writings on India," was published in 1990; Mill's many despatches for the East India Company, which are housed in the British Library's Oriental and India Office Collection, are unlikely to be published; see Robson, "Civilization and Culture as Moral Concepts." in Cambridge Companion to Mill, ed. John Skorupski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 369, n. 27. Only Fred Rosen's brief but suggestive article "Eric Stokes, British Utilitarianism, and India," in Moir, Peers, and Zastoupil, J. S. Mill's Encounter with India, begins to address these connections.
28. Stokes's English Utilitarians was one of the few works to deal in any depth with the question of Mill's views on empire until the 1990s. Some of the best recent works include Lynn Zastoupil, John Stuart Mill and India (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994); Moir, Peers, and Zastoupil, eds., J. S. Mill's Encounter with India (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999); Mehta, Liberalism and Empire; and Trevor Lloyd, "John Stuart Mill and the East India Company," in A Cultivated Mind, ed. Michael Laine (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991). Volume xxx of CW, "Writings on India," was published in 1990; Mill's many despatches for the East India Company, which are housed in the British Library's Oriental and India Office Collection, are unlikely to be published; see Robson, "Civilization and Culture as Moral Concepts." in Cambridge Companion to Mill, ed. John Skorupski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 369, n. 27. Only Fred Rosen's brief but suggestive article "Eric Stokes, British Utilitarianism, and India," in Moir, Peers, and Zastoupil, J. S. Mill's Encounter with India, begins to address these connections.
29. Stokes's English Utilitarians was one of the few works to deal in any depth with the question of Mill's views on empire until the 1990s. Some of the best recent works include Lynn Zastoupil, John Stuart Mill and India (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994); Moir, Peers, and Zastoupil, eds., J. S. Mill's Encounter with India (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999); Mehta, Liberalism and Empire; and Trevor Lloyd, "John Stuart Mill and the East India Company," in A Cultivated Mind, ed. Michael Laine (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991). Volume xxx of CW, "Writings on India," was published in 1990; Mill's many despatches for the East India Company, which are housed in the British Library's Oriental and India Office Collection, are unlikely to be published; see Robson, "Civilization and Culture as Moral Concepts." in Cambridge Companion to Mill, ed. John Skorupski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 369, n. 27. Only Fred Rosen's brief but suggestive article "Eric Stokes, British Utilitarianism, and India," in Moir, Peers, and Zastoupil, J. S. Mill's Encounter with India, begins to address these connections.
30. Stokes's English Utilitarians was one of the few works to deal in any depth with the question of Mill's views on empire until the 1990s. Some of the best recent works include Lynn Zastoupil, John Stuart Mill and India (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994); Moir, Peers, and Zastoupil, eds., J. S. Mill's Encounter with India (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999); Mehta, Liberalism and Empire; and Trevor Lloyd, "John Stuart Mill and the East India Company," in A Cultivated Mind, ed. Michael Laine (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991). Volume xxx of CW, "Writings on India," was published in 1990; Mill's many despatches for the East India Company, which are housed in the British Library's Oriental and India Office Collection, are unlikely to be published; see Robson, "Civilization and Culture as Moral Concepts." in Cambridge Companion to Mill, ed. John Skorupski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 369, n. 27. Only Fred Rosen's brief but suggestive article "Eric Stokes, British Utilitarianism, and India," in Moir, Peers, and Zastoupil, J. S. Mill's Encounter with India, begins to address these connections.
31. Stokes's English Utilitarians was one of the few works to deal in any depth with the question of Mill's views on empire until the 1990s. Some of the best recent works include Lynn Zastoupil, John Stuart Mill and India (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994); Moir, Peers, and Zastoupil, eds., J. S. Mill's Encounter with India (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999); Mehta, Liberalism and Empire; and Trevor Lloyd, "John Stuart Mill and the East India Company," in A Cultivated Mind, ed. Michael Laine (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991). Volume xxx of CW, "Writings on India," was published in 1990; Mill's many despatches for the East India Company, which are housed in the British Library's Oriental and India Office Collection, are unlikely to be published; see Robson, "Civilization and Culture as Moral Concepts." in Cambridge Companion to Mill, ed. John Skorupski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 369, n. 27. Only Fred Rosen's brief but suggestive article "Eric Stokes, British Utilitarianism, and India," in Moir, Peers, and Zastoupil, J. S. Mill's Encounter with India, begins to address these connections.
32. Stokes's English Utilitarians was one of the few works to deal in any depth with the question of Mill's views on empire until the 1990s. Some of the best recent works include Lynn Zastoupil, John Stuart Mill and India (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994); Moir, Peers, and Zastoupil, eds., J. S. Mill's Encounter with India (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999); Mehta, Liberalism and Empire; and Trevor Lloyd, "John Stuart Mill and the East India Company," in A Cultivated Mind, ed. Michael Laine (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991). Volume xxx of CW, "Writings on India," was published in 1990; Mill's many despatches for the East India Company, which are housed in the British Library's Oriental and India Office Collection, are unlikely to be published; see Robson, "Civilization and Culture as Moral Concepts." in Cambridge Companion to Mill, ed. John Skorupski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 369, n. 27. Only Fred Rosen's brief but suggestive article "Eric Stokes, British Utilitarianism, and India," in Moir, Peers, and Zastoupil, J. S. Mill's Encounter with India, begins to address these connections.
33. J. S. Mill often criticized Bentham as an unhistorical thinker: see CW, x.325 (where he refers to "philosophers who, like Bentham, theorize on politics without any historical basis at all") and his (incorrect) argument in "Bentham" that Bentham believed the same legislation was appropriate for every society: He places before himself man in society without a government, and, considering what sort of government it would be advisable to construct, finds that the most expedient would be a representative democracy. Whatever may be the value of this conclusion, the mode in which it is arrived at appears to me to be fallacious; for it assumes that mankind are alike in all times and all places, that they have the same wants and are exposed to the same evils, and that if the same institutions do not suit them, it is only because in the more backward stages of improvement they have not wisdom to see what institutions are most for their good. (P. 443)
34. On the influence of Bentham and Comte, and J. S. Mill's efforts to distinguish himself from them in his work on character, see Janice Carlisle, John Stuart Mill and the Writing of Character (Athens: University of Georgia, 1991), 129-30.
35. An exception is Eileen Sullivan, who draws a contrast between J. S. Mill's justification of empire and "a liberal tradition which was primarily anti-imperialist," including Smith, Bentham, and James Mill; see Sullivan, "Liberalism and Imperialism: J. S. Mill's Defense of the British Empire," Journal of the History of Ideas 44, no. 4 (1983): 599-617 at 599. Although Sullivan notes that James Mill argued for "arbitrary government" by Britain over India, she concludes rallier abruptly that he, like Bentham. was fundamentally an anti-imperialist.
36. Elie Halévy's Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, which itself heavily influenced Stokes's reading of the utilitarian tradition, is also partly to blame for conflating Bentham's thought with the far cruder thinking and writing of James Mill. Fred Rosen discusses this problem in "Elie Halévy and Bentham's Authoritarian Liberalism," claiming that Halévy uses their association to suggest that they created a sect isolated from both the Whig tradition and from other more libertarian, radical movements. This conflation of the two fails to appreciate the fact that Bentham, if not Mill, addressed a wide and varied audience on a number of different levels... [and] tends to minimize the creative side of Bentham's thought[,] which is not as strong in Mill. In Jeremy Bentham: Critical Assessments, ed. Bhikhu Parekh (London: Routledge, 1993), 923.
37. Elie Halévy's Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, which itself heavily influenced Stokes's reading of the utilitarian tradition, is also partly to blame for conflating Bentham's thought with the far cruder thinking and writing of James Mill. Fred Rosen discusses this problem in "Elie Halévy and Bentham's Authoritarian Liberalism," claiming that Halévy uses their association to suggest that they created a sect isolated from both the Whig tradition and from other more libertarian, radical movements. This conflation of the two fails to appreciate the fact that Bentham, if not Mill, addressed a wide and varied audience on a number of different levels... [and] tends to minimize the creative side of Bentham's thought[,] which is not as strong in Mill. In Jeremy Bentham: Critical Assessments, ed. Bhikhu Parekh (London: Routledge, 1993), 923.
38. We should note that it was the notoriously unreliable Bowring who attributed these words to Bentham (Bowring, x.450; Stokes and others cite the wrong page). For some examples of the use of the passage, see Stokes, The English Utilitarians, 68; Mehta, Liberalism and Empire, 6 (citing Stokes); Winch, Classical Political Economy, 160. For Stokes, who insists on the authoritarian nature of Bentham's early thought, the quotation suggests that he never abandoned his early hopes in enlightened despotism; Stokes describes the statement as "the grandiose boast he made at the end of his life when he pictured himself as the uncrowned philosopher-king of India's millions." Winch, in a more recent article, again insists on Bentham's "dream of being 'the dead legislative hand of British India,'" and he continues to regard the "imperialism ... of Bentham and his colonial reforming followers" as a continuous movement: see Winch, "Bentham on Colonies and Empire," Utilitas 9.1 (March 1997): 153-54.
39. We should note that it was the notoriously unreliable Bowring who attributed these words to Bentham (Bowring, x.450; Stokes and others cite the wrong page). For some examples of the use of the passage, see Stokes, The English Utilitarians, 68; Mehta, Liberalism and Empire, 6 (citing Stokes); Winch, Classical Political Economy, 160. For Stokes, who insists on the authoritarian nature of Bentham's early thought, the quotation suggests that he never abandoned his early hopes in enlightened despotism; Stokes describes the statement as "the grandiose boast he made at the end of his life when he pictured himself as the uncrowned philosopher-king of India's millions." Winch, in a more recent article, again insists on Bentham's "dream of being 'the dead legislative hand of British India,'" and he continues to regard the "imperialism ... of Bentham and his colonial reforming followers" as a continuous movement: see Winch, "Bentham on Colonies and Empire," Utilitas 9.1 (March 1997): 153-54.
40. We should note that it was the notoriously unreliable Bowring who attributed these words to Bentham (Bowring, x.450; Stokes and others cite the wrong page). For some examples of the use of the passage, see Stokes, The English Utilitarians, 68; Mehta, Liberalism and Empire, 6 (citing Stokes); Winch, Classical Political Economy, 160. For Stokes, who insists on the authoritarian nature of Bentham's early thought, the quotation suggests that he never abandoned his early hopes in enlightened despotism; Stokes describes the statement as "the grandiose boast he made at the end of his life when he pictured himself as the uncrowned philosopher-king of India's millions." Winch, in a more recent article, again insists on Bentham's "dream of being 'the dead legislative hand of British India,'" and he continues to regard the "imperialism ... of Bentham and his colonial reforming followers" as a continuous movement: see Winch, "Bentham on Colonies and Empire," Utilitas 9.1 (March 1997): 153-54.
41. We should note that it was the notoriously unreliable Bowring who attributed these words to Bentham (Bowring, x.450; Stokes and others cite the wrong page). For some examples of the use of the passage, see Stokes, The English Utilitarians, 68; Mehta, Liberalism and Empire, 6 (citing Stokes); Winch, Classical Political Economy, 160. For Stokes, who insists on the authoritarian nature of Bentham's early thought, the quotation suggests that he never abandoned his early hopes in enlightened despotism; Stokes describes the statement as "the grandiose boast he made at the end of his life when he pictured himself as the uncrowned philosopher-king of India's millions." Winch, in a more recent article, again insists on Bentham's "dream of being 'the dead legislative hand of British India,'" and he continues to regard the "imperialism ... of Bentham and his colonial reforming followers" as a continuous movement: see Winch, "Bentham on Colonies and Empire," Utilitas 9.1 (March 1997): 153-54.
42. The image Bentham describes here strikingly resembles the Auto-Icon, Bentham's preserved body that still sits at the University College London, as well as the instructions Bentham gave in an addendum to his will for the construction of the Auto-Icon. I am grateful to Richard Tuck for making the connection with the Auto-Icon and to Fred Rosen for confirming Dapple's identity.
43. Bowring, x.450. The last sentence is suggestive, though Bentham unfortunately says no more on the subject. Some of Bentham's other treatments of the beliefs of Indians of various religions suggest a more respectful attitude than Mill's, as I discuss below. It should, perhaps, be noted that John Stuart Mill was so outraged by Bowring's inclusion of these remarks in his "Memoirs of Bentham" that he wrote a long letter to the Edinburgh Review, which had quoted these words in a review of the "Memoirs." Mill called the passage "idle word[s spoken]... under some passing impression or momentary irritation" (CW, i.536).
44. In his "Introduction to the Study of Bentham's Works," Bowring wrote, From observations here and there scattered through [Bentham's] works, his opinions on the subject might be gathered; but it was almost solely in the great article by Mr Mill on the "Law of Nations" in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, that the public could find a distinct account of the utilitarian theory of International law. (i.75)
45. In the Essay on Government, James Mill wrote that women justly may be denied suffrage, as "the interest of almost all of [them] is involved either in that of their fathers or in that of their husbands"; J. S. Mill later wrote that this paragraph was "the worst... he ever wrote." See James Mill, Political Writings, ed. Terence Ball (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), xxii and 27.
46. In the Essay on Government, James Mill wrote that women justly may be denied suffrage, as "the interest of almost all of [them] is involved either in that of their fathers or in that of their husbands"; J. S. Mill later wrote that this paragraph was "the worst... he ever wrote." See James Mill, Political Writings, ed. Terence Ball (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), xxii and 27.
47. J. S. Mill's misleading remark that Bentham found "pushpin and poetry" equally valuable continues to influence perceptions of Bentham. As Ross Harrison has explained, Bentham was discussing political and legal structures rather than personal ethics. Bentham's point was that if the people of a state value something, their pleasure in it should be taken into account by the governing authorities. Harrison notes that while this claim is still a matter of debate, "it is nothing like as contentious as the suggestion that it is an appropriate system of personal values"; Ross Harrison, Bentham (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1983), 5. Bentham did not mean, or believe, that intellectual or artistic cultivation is nonsensical or pointless, and he took seriously people's actual desires and opinions in a way Mill, who believed many such desires unworthy, did not.
48. Uday Mehta echoes Mill's view that Bentham's utilitarianism was more "mechanical and authoritarian" than Mill's own (Liberalism and Empire, 101); this misrepresents, I think, their views about non-Europeans and possibly their views on European society, as Fred Rosen has argued in Jeremy Bentham and Representative Democracy, chap. 10.
49. Uday Mehta echoes Mill's view that Bentham's utilitarianism was more "mechanical and authoritarian" than Mill's own (Liberalism and Empire, 101); this misrepresents, I think, their views about non-Europeans and possibly their views on European society, as Fred Rosen has argued in Jeremy Bentham and Representative Democracy, chap. 10.
50. Halévy, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, 510.
51. In Securities against Misrule and Other Constitutional Writings for Tripoli and Greece, ed. Philip Schofield (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), 195.
52. See, for instance, Mary Peter Mack, Jeremy Bentham: An Odyssey of Ideas 1748-1792 (London: Heinemann, 1963), 412-13; and Harrison, Bentham, 8-9.
53. See, for instance, Mary Peter Mack, Jeremy Bentham: An Odyssey of Ideas 1748-1792 (London: Heinemann, 1963), 412-13; and Harrison, Bentham, 8-9.
54. On the letters to Mirabeau, see Mack. Jeremy Bentham, 417-19; for the pamphlet, see iv.408-418.
55. Bentham, Colonies, Commerce, and Constitutional Law, ed. Philip Schofield (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 92 (hereinafter referred to as Ultramaria), "Rid Yourselves of Ultramaria," Bentham's "most sustained piece" on the emancipation of Spanish America, remained in manuscript, although Bentham published a number of other essays on Spanish affairs in the 1820s. after the restoration of the liberal constitution and the reinstatement of the Cortes. Bentham did most of the writing of "Rid Yourselves" in 1821. See Philip Schofield's "Introduction," xv and xliv.
56. Bentham, Colonies, Commerce, and Constitutional Law, ed. Philip Schofield (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 92 (hereinafter referred to as Ultramaria), "Rid Yourselves of Ultramaria," Bentham's "most sustained piece" on the emancipation of Spanish America, remained in manuscript, although Bentham published a number of other essays on Spanish affairs in the 1820s. after the restoration of the liberal constitution and the reinstatement of the Cortes. Bentham did most of the writing of "Rid Yourselves" in 1821. See Philip Schofield's "Introduction," xv and xliv.
57. Sullivan, "Liberalism and Imperialism," makes a good case for the similarities between Smith's and Bentham's arguments. Other late-eighteenth-century thinkers critical of European colonial conquest and rule, for diverse but overlapping reasons, included Burke, Diderot, and Kant.
58. In "Constitutional Code," book I, chap. 6 ("Financial Law"), ix.33.
59. The writings on empire are some of Bentham's rhetorically most powerful works. Terence Ball, who notes that James Mill's writing was "dry and devoid of decoration," also claims that he was a "better writer and abler propagandist" than Bentham; see Terence Ball, "Introduction" to James Mill, Political Writings, ed. T. Ball (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), xvii and xv; but neither James nor John Stuart Mill (undoubtedly a far greater writer than his father) could match Bentham's sardonic humor, which appears in abundance in works such as "Emancipate Your Colonies!" Bentham himself did not think well of James Mill's style; toward the end of his life, he wrote to the Indian reformer Rammohun Roy that Mill's History contained some useful practical information, "though as to style, I wish I could, with truth and sincerity, pronounce it equal to yours'' (x.590).
60. The security, political, and economic interests of the metropole all militated against empire. Bentham envisioned the National Assembly responding to his arguments, "Oh, but they are a great part of our power." He responded, "Say rather, the whole of your weakness. In your own natural body, you are impregnable; in those unnatural excrescences, you are vulnerable" (iv.414).
61. For Smith's argument, see Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, [1776] 1981), 616: "To propose that Great Britain should voluntarily give up all authority over her colonies... would be to propose such a measure as never was, and never will be adopted, by any nation in the world."
62. Ultramaria, 52. Winch (Classical Political Economy, 37) also cites this passage, from the manuscript original. In a similar vein, Bentham had written in his early "Plan for an Universal and Perpetual Peace," "Of this visionary project, the most visionary part is without question that for the emancipation of distant dependencies" (ii.552).
63. Ultramaria, 52. Winch (Classical Political Economy, 37) also cites this passage, from the manuscript original. In a similar vein, Bentham had written in his early "Plan for an Universal and Perpetual Peace," "Of this visionary project, the most visionary part is without question that for the emancipation of distant dependencies" (ii.552).
64. Hazlitt quipped that Bentham's influence increased in proportion to the distance from his house in Westminster; see William Hazlitt, The Spirit of the Age (London: Henry Colbum, 1825), 3-4.
65. From "Emancipation Spanish. From Philo-Hispanus to the People of Spain," in Ultramaria, 153.
66. "Rid Yourselves of Ultramaria," in Ultramaria, 137.
67. Lea Campos Boralevi argues in Bentham and the Oppressed (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1984), 127, that Bentham held different views about existing colonies, which he saw as a complex problem involving the oppression of colonial inhabitants, and about the prospect of future colonization, which he regarded as primarily an economic problem, and favored as a way to release excess of capital or labor to the benefit of the colonizing nation. While Campos Boralevi is right to point to Bentham's sporadic enthusiasm for colonization as a release of labor and capital, she fails to note the many reasons he offers against new plans of colonization, as in the passage just quoted.
68. This piece was "Essay IV" of his Principles of International Law, and it demonstrates how wrong Bowring was to suggest that James Mill's writings on international law offered a fair approximation of Bentham's own views (see i.75).
69. See ii.546. "The following, then, are the final measures which ought to be pursued: - 1. Give up all the colonies. 2. Found no new colonies" (ii.548).
70. See X, 590. Bentham and James Mill were, of course, united in their contempt for the British system of common law, which Bentham began to attack early in his career in his Comment on the Commentaries (his castigation of Sir William Blackstone), and for which they sought to substitute clear, codified statute law. In this regard, Mill's proposed reforms constituted for Bentham a marked improvement over the existing system.
71. These passages all appear in a section of the essay entitled "Non-agenda: Non-faciendum the Fourth: Encreasing the Quantity of Land, viz. by Colonization," which presents a series of arguments against colonization, as detrimental to the interests of the colonizing country, followed by several paragraphs arguing that colonial settlers would do best to remain under the rule of Britain because of its sound moral conduct, its system of education, and its security.
72. Winch, Classical Political Economy, 34.
73. In "Rid Yourselves of Ultramaria" Bentham identified twenty-nine classes of people with sinister, particular interests in colonial dominion (Ultramaria, 38-39).
74. Here I disagree with the argument made by Campos Boralevi that Bentham regarded India and Egypt as "particularly backward" or that he thought of them as "people in different stages of social development." While her treatment of this topic is one of the most sensitive in the literature, Campos Boralevi's efforts to resolve the "ambivalence" Winch rightly identified in Bentham by claiming that Bentham placed India in a separate category of a backward country deserving of the enlightened despotism of the civilized in the end, I believe, rest too heavily on the application of later thinkers' views to Bentham. Her reading draws on the "dead legislative" passage and the views of James Mill and Charles Trevelyan in addition to the passage cited about Egypt; she does not note the similarities between Bentham's claims about Egypt and America in those contiguous paragraphs (see Campos Boralevi, Bentham and the Oppressed, 132-33). His writings undoubtedly include scattered doubts about the readiness of Indians for democracy (such as the passage quoted here), and yet Bentham's posture of respect for such colonized non-Europeans, such as his insistence on Indian participation in juries, and his failure or refusal to develop a theory of progress justifying colonization mark him as crucially different from his followers.
75. "Had wisdom prevailed over passion" in Britain's conflict with the American colonies, he wrote, the Americans would have said to the British what the ancient Britons said to the withdrawing Romans: "Keep us and save us" and the British would have replied as the Romans did: "It belongs not to us to keep you - save yourselves" (Economic Writings, III.357).
76. "Emancipate Your Colonies!" iv.417.
77. A postscript was attached to this essay in 1829; it reads, As a citizen of Great Britain and Ireland, he is thereby confirmed in the same opinions, and accordingly in the same wishes. But, as a citizen of the British Empire, including the sixty millions already under its government in British India, and the forty millions likely to be under its government in the vicinity of British India...his opinions and consequent wishes are the reverse, (iv.418)
78. The term "legislator of the world," or "legislador del mundo," was bestowed on Bentham by the Guatemalan politician, José del Valle, who asked for Bentham's help in creating a Civil Code for Guatemala. See Legislator of the World (The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham), ed. Philip Schofieid and Jonathan Harris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), xi and xxxiv; and John Dinwiddy, Bentham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 17.
79. The term "legislator of the world," or "legislador del mundo," was bestowed on Bentham by the Guatemalan politician, José del Valle, who asked for Bentham's help in creating a Civil Code for Guatemala. See Legislator of the World (The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham), ed. Philip Schofieid and Jonathan Harris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), xi and xxxiv; and John Dinwiddy, Bentham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 17.
80. Stokes, The English Utilitarians, 51.
81. Bentham to Henry Dundas, May 20, 1793, in Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, ed. Timothy L. S. Sprigge (London: Athlone Press, 1968-2000), iv.430. Dundas was president of the Board of Control, the chief governing body in the East India Company, at this time (editor's note).
82. Uday Mehta writes that Bentham, like other British liberals, wrote "copious[ly]" on the British empire in India (Liberalism and Empire, 4); this essay, however, is a rare example (perhaps the only one) of an extended discussion of India by Bentham. Occasional examples from Indian law come up in the course of Bentham's work and many of these are discussed here.
83. First published, along with the rest of the Theory of Legislation, in Traités de Législation civile et pénale, edited by Etienne Dumont (1802), the essay appears in Bowring. i. 169-94.
84. Whereas later, less theoretically minded utilitarians often simply assumed the excellence of British laws and legal structure, Bentham himself was generally careful to distinguish the ideal legal codes that he composed from scratch from what he knew to be the very imperfect British system, marred as it was by its uncritical dependence on custom and precedence.
85. See i. 186. Bentham condemned English laws as much for the absurdities apparent in their refined form as for those left over from a barbarous age. After describing the interminable, labyrinthine process involved in an English lawsuit, he concluded, And who would think it? This mass of absurdity is the work of modern refinement, not of ancient barbarism.... Why, then, were these simple and pure forms abandoned? why were they not re-established, when new tribunals were instituted in another country, instead of transferring this system of possible equity and certain misery to Bengal? (i.188)
86. Laurence J. Lafleur, "Jeremy Bentham and the Principles" in Bentham, an Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. Laurence J. Lafleur (New York: Macmillan, 1948), vii.
87. For the contrast with James Mill, see "Affairs of India," in which James Mill rejects outright any form of Indians' participation in their government: A simple form of arbitrary government, tempered by European honour and European intelligence, is the only form which is now fit for Hindustan. But that government must 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. 155-56) For J. S. Mill, see his 1852 testimony on the East India Company's charter, CW, XXX.49.
88. "Jury-Trial," in Principles of Judicial Procedure, ii.137-38.
89. In Securities against Misrule, 263. He added, The character in which they stand subjected to the exclusion is that of enemies: natural and, for a time, unhappily irreconcileable enemies. In their case so long as the danger from admission continues, so long must the exclusion be continued. So long must it be, but not a moment longer ought to be.
90. See "Time and Place," i.190-91.
91. Stokes, English Utilitarians, 48. James Mill entered the company as assistant examiner of correspondence and in 1830 was promoted to the position of chief examiner, a post John Stuart Mill took up in 1856.
92. See, for some thorough accounts, Javed Majeed, Ungoverned Imaginings: James Mill's the History of British India and Orientalism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992); Saree Makdisi, Romantic Imperialism: Universal Empire and the Culture of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); and Thomas, Philosophic Radicals, esp. 106-19. Uday Mehta has aptly noted that "Mill's views regarding India, its past and its present" were "pathetically foolish in their lack of nuance" (Liberalism and Empire, 90). J. H. Burns, in "The Light of Reason: Philosophical History in the Two Mills," offers a concise and often searing critique of James Mill's method and judgments (he concludes that "the almost blood-curdling arrogance of Mill's cultural chauvinism" is not redeemed by either felicity of language or "any clearly articulated method"); in James and John Stuart Mill: Papers of the Centenary Conference (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976), 3-20.
93. See, for some thorough accounts, Javed Majeed, Ungoverned Imaginings: James Mill's the History of British India and Orientalism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992); Saree Makdisi, Romantic Imperialism: Universal Empire and the Culture of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); and Thomas, Philosophic Radicals, esp. 106-19. Uday Mehta has aptly noted that "Mill's views regarding India, its past and its present" were "pathetically foolish in their lack of nuance" (Liberalism and Empire, 90). J. H. Burns, in "The Light of Reason: Philosophical History in the Two Mills," offers a concise and often searing critique of James Mill's method and judgments (he concludes that "the almost blood-curdling arrogance of Mill's cultural chauvinism" is not redeemed by either felicity of language or "any clearly articulated method"); in James and John Stuart Mill: Papers of the Centenary Conference (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976), 3-20.
94. See, for some thorough accounts, Javed Majeed, Ungoverned Imaginings: James Mill's the History of British India and Orientalism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992); Saree Makdisi, Romantic Imperialism: Universal Empire and the Culture of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); and Thomas, Philosophic Radicals, esp. 106-19. Uday Mehta has aptly noted that "Mill's views regarding India, its past and its present" were "pathetically foolish in their lack of nuance" (Liberalism and Empire, 90). J. H. Burns, in "The Light of Reason: Philosophical History in the Two Mills," offers a concise and often searing critique of James Mill's method and judgments (he concludes that "the almost blood-curdling arrogance of Mill's cultural chauvinism" is not redeemed by either felicity of language or "any clearly articulated method"); in James and John Stuart Mill: Papers of the Centenary Conference (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976), 3-20.
95. See, for some thorough accounts, Javed Majeed, Ungoverned Imaginings: James Mill's the History of British India and Orientalism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992); Saree Makdisi, Romantic Imperialism: Universal Empire and the Culture of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); and Thomas, Philosophic Radicals, esp. 106-19. Uday Mehta has aptly noted that "Mill's views regarding India, its past and its present" were "pathetically foolish in their lack of nuance" (Liberalism and Empire, 90). J. H. Burns, in "The Light of Reason: Philosophical History in the Two Mills," offers a concise and often searing critique of James Mill's method and judgments (he concludes that "the almost blood-curdling arrogance of Mill's cultural chauvinism" is not redeemed by either felicity of language or "any clearly articulated method"); in James and John Stuart Mill: Papers of the Centenary Conference (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976), 3-20.
96. See, for some thorough accounts, Javed Majeed, Ungoverned Imaginings: James Mill's the History of British India and Orientalism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992); Saree Makdisi, Romantic Imperialism: Universal Empire and the Culture of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); and Thomas, Philosophic Radicals, esp. 106-19. Uday Mehta has aptly noted that "Mill's views regarding India, its past and its present" were "pathetically foolish in their lack of nuance" (Liberalism and Empire, 90). J. H. Burns, in "The Light of Reason: Philosophical History in the Two Mills," offers a concise and often searing critique of James Mill's method and judgments (he concludes that "the almost blood-curdling arrogance of Mill's cultural chauvinism" is not redeemed by either felicity of language or "any clearly articulated method"); in James and John Stuart Mill: Papers of the Centenary Conference (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976), 3-20.
97. See the article "Colony," published in 1823 as a supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
98. "Review of Voyage aux Indes Orientales" James Mill, by le P. Paulin de S. Barthélemy, missionary, Edinburgh Review XV (January 1810): 371.
99. History, 1820, ii.134.
100. History, 1858, i.155. James Mill saw the History of British India as a work in the tradition of (and as an improvement over) the histories of Ferguson, Smith, and especially his mentor John Millar, author of Observations Concerning the Distinction of Ranks in Society (1773). Scholars too often assimilate his work into that tradition without considering the quite radical departure he made from their relatively nonjudgmental and multidimensional accounts of social development; see Duncan Forbes, "James Mill and India," Cambridge Journal V (October 1951): 19-33; and citing Forbes, Winch, Classical Political Economy, 162. For a corrective to this view, see Knud Haakonssen, "James Mill and Scottish Moral Philosophy," Political Studies 33 (1985): 628-36.
101. History, 1858, i.155. James Mill saw the History of British India as a work in the tradition of (and as an improvement over) the histories of Ferguson, Smith, and especially his mentor John Millar, author of Observations Concerning the Distinction of Ranks in Society (1773). Scholars too often assimilate his work into that tradition without considering the quite radical departure he made from their relatively nonjudgmental and multidimensional accounts of social development; see Duncan Forbes, "James Mill and India," Cambridge Journal V (October 1951): 19-33; and citing Forbes, Winch, Classical Political Economy, 162. For a corrective to this view, see Knud Haakonssen, "James Mill and Scottish Moral Philosophy," Political Studies 33 (1985): 628-36.
102. History, 1858, i.155. James Mill saw the History of British India as a work in the tradition of (and as an improvement over) the histories of Ferguson, Smith, and especially his mentor John Millar, author of Observations Concerning the Distinction of Ranks in Society (1773). Scholars too often assimilate his work into that tradition without considering the quite radical departure he made from their relatively nonjudgmental and multidimensional accounts of social development; see Duncan Forbes, "James Mill and India," Cambridge Journal V (October 1951): 19-33; and citing Forbes, Winch, Classical Political Economy, 162. For a corrective to this view, see Knud Haakonssen, "James Mill and Scottish Moral Philosophy," Political Studies 33 (1985): 628-36.
103. History, 1858, i.155. James Mill saw the History of British India as a work in the tradition of (and as an improvement over) the histories of Ferguson, Smith, and especially his mentor John Millar, author of Observations Concerning the Distinction of Ranks in Society (1773). Scholars too often assimilate his work into that tradition without considering the quite radical departure he made from their relatively nonjudgmental and multidimensional accounts of social development; see Duncan Forbes, "James Mill and India," Cambridge Journal V (October 1951): 19-33; and citing Forbes, Winch, Classical Political Economy, 162. For a corrective to this view, see Knud Haakonssen, "James Mill and Scottish Moral Philosophy," Political Studies 33 (1985): 628-36.
104. History, 1858, i.155. James Mill saw the History of British India as a work in the tradition of (and as an improvement over) the histories of Ferguson, Smith, and especially his mentor John Millar, author of Observations Concerning the Distinction of Ranks in Society (1773). Scholars too often assimilate his work into that tradition without considering the quite radical departure he made from their relatively nonjudgmental and multidimensional accounts of social development; see Duncan Forbes, "James Mill and India," Cambridge Journal V (October 1951): 19-33; and citing Forbes, Winch, Classical Political Economy, 162. For a corrective to this view, see Knud Haakonssen, "James Mill and Scottish Moral Philosophy," Political Studies 33 (1985): 628-36.
105. CW, xxi.118. Compare James Mill's argument in "Affairs of India": On a barbarous, or semicivilized government, its view of its true interests is so feeble and indistinct, and its caprices and passions are so numerous and violent, that you can never count for a day. From its hatred of all restraint, and its love of depredation, it is naturally and essentially at war with all around it. The government of India, therefore, is not to be preserved with less than a perpetual war expenditure. (Pp. 147-48)
106. Mill's discussion of Bentham in the Autobiography is considerably more generous than either of the early essays; there, Mill claimed that while he still agreed with his earlier judgments, he worried that they had helped to discredit Bentham's philosophy before it had "done its work" and therefore that these articles had hindered rather than contributed to "improvement" (CW, i.227). He probably began writing the Autobiography in the early 1850s; it was first published in 1873, shortly after his death (i.xxii ff. and 3).
107. "Bentham,"CW, x.91.
108. "Remarks," x.163-70 at 167.
109. Book VI, chap. V: "Of Ethology, or the Science of the Formation of Character," CW, viii.860-74. Here Mill calls ethology "the science which corresponds to the art of education; in the widest sense of the term, including the formation of national or collective character as well as individual" (CW, viii.869).
110. The best treatment of Mill's ethology is Janice Carlisle's John Stuart Mill and the Writing of Character. See also Stephan Collini, Donald Winch, and John Burrow, That Noble Science of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 150; and John M. Robson, "Civilization and Culture as Moral Concepts," in "The Formation of Character: Mill's Ethology Reconsidered," Polity, Fall 2002, makes the compelling case that although Mill did not produce his promised treatise on ethology, some of his most influential works can be read as ethological case studies.
111. The best treatment of Mill's ethology is Janice Carlisle's John Stuart Mill and the Writing of Character. See also Stephan Collini, Donald Winch, and John Burrow, That Noble Science of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 150; and John M. Robson, "Civilization and Culture as Moral Concepts," in "The Formation of Character: Mill's Ethology Reconsidered," Polity, Fall 2002, makes the compelling case that although Mill did not produce his promised treatise on ethology, some of his most influential works can be read as ethological case studies.
112. The best treatment of Mill's ethology is Janice Carlisle's John Stuart Mill and the Writing of Character. See also Stephan Collini, Donald Winch, and John Burrow, That Noble Science of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 150; and John M. Robson, "Civilization and Culture as Moral Concepts," in "The Formation of Character: Mill's Ethology Reconsidered," Polity, Fall 2002, makes the compelling case that although Mill did not produce his promised treatise on ethology, some of his most influential works can be read as ethological case studies.
113. For a thoughtful analysis of this point, and Mill's ambiguities on the subject of race, see Georgios Varouxakis, "John Stuart Mill on Race," Utilitas 10.1 (March 1998): 17-32. Varouxakis cites many of the key passages on national character, including a passage on Oriental fatalism from Considerations on Representative Government (CW, xix.406) and comparisons of the pleasure-loving Irish with the industrious English from Principles of Political Economy (CW, ii.319) and Mill's essay on Michelet (CW, xx.235).
114. L. S. Feuer discusses Mill's theoretical approach to the study of character in "John Stuart Mill as a Sociologist: The Unwritten Ethology," in James and John Stuart Mill: Papers of the Centenary Conference, ed. John M. Robson and Michael Laine (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1976), 86-110. Feuer cites James Mill's History of British India "as a model [for J. S. Mill] of what a science of ethology could do" and presents the elder Mill's methods and judgments quite uncritically. He concludes rather too optimistically that J. S. Mill "is the only sociologist of the nineteenth century whose pages are not discoloured with the acid of bias" (p. 110).
115. L. S. Feuer discusses Mill's theoretical approach to the study of character in "John Stuart Mill as a Sociologist: The Unwritten Ethology," in James and John Stuart Mill: Papers of the Centenary Conference, ed. John M. Robson and Michael Laine (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1976), 86-110. Feuer cites James Mill's History of British India "as a model [for J. S. Mill] of what a science of ethology could do" and presents the elder Mill's methods and judgments quite uncritically. He concludes rather too optimistically that J. S. Mill "is the only sociologist of the nineteenth century whose pages are not discoloured with the acid of bias" (p. 110).
116. J. H. Burns sums up the faults of Mill's ethology nicely: The price of gaining the whole world of sociological laws may be too high if it costs the historian his saving grasp of the concrete and the specific. The question must in the end be bluntly asked, whether the kind of history to which these concepts lead is either possible or useful. ("The Light of Reason," 20)
117. See Autobiography, CW, i.77, where, after claiming that he had "ceased to consider representative democracy as an absolute principle, and regarded it as a question of time, place, and circumstance," Mill went on to say that he now sought to understand "what great improvement in life and culture stands next in order for the people concerned, as the condition of their further progress."
118. It should be noted, however, that some of Bentham's writings on empire show that he was more interested in the effects of policy on the character of a nation's inhabitants than Mill admitted. Bentham argued, for instance, that imperial rule was contrary to the interests of the ruling country not simply for economic or military reasons but because it was corrupting.
119. "Bentham," CW, x.113.
120. See James Mill's "Review of M. de Guignes," Edinburgh Review, July 1809, 424-25.
121. See Rosen, Jeremy Bentham and Representative Democracy, for the best discussion of this difference in Bentham and Mill's views of popular participation; see especially chap. 10.
122. In the imperious tone characteristic of these essays, Mill wrote, "Do we then consider Bentham's political speculations useless? Far from it. We consider them only one-sided" (CW, x.109).
123. See Pratap Mehta, "Liberalism, Nation and Empire: The Case of J. S. Mill" (paper presented at the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, 1996), 3-4, for a subtle treatment of this idea.