Jones G.S., Claeys G. The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Political Thought

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Frederick Rosen

Nevertheless, the nature of the relationship between Bentham and James

Mill has never been clearly or fully deﬁned. Mill worked on a number of

Bentham’s projects, as well as his own History of India, and considered him-

self a devoted disciple. But when Bain compared Bentham’s Chrestomathia

with James Mill’s essay on education (see James Mill 1992b, pp. 137–94),

written for the Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1819), he com-

mented: ‘ . . . it is very curious to remark how few signs of action and

reaction between the two minds their respective products bring to light;

there is hardly any appearance in either treatise to show that the subject had

undergone discussion between the two authors’ (Bain 1882a, pp. 142–3).

Bain continued:

In fact, Mill could have been little more than an approving listener, in all those numerous

conversations: with his admirable tact, saying nothing, when he found that he could

make no impression. We have to look to his own article on Education to see that he

pursued a distinct track; agreeing with Bentham always in spirit, but not dwelling on

the same topics. (Bain 1882a, p. 144, see also Ripoli 1998,pp.111ff.)

Mill, himself, discounted their discussions in a revealing passage in his A

Fragment on Mackintosh:

It may be safely afﬁrmed, that no man ever derived his opinions from the lips of Mr.

Bentham. It is well known, to all who are acquainted with the habits of that great man,

that conversation with him was relaxation purely. It was when he had his pen in his

hand, that his mind was ever raised to the tone of disquisition; and he hated at any other

time to be called upon for the labour of thinking. Except in the way of allusion, or the

mention of some casual circumstance, the doctrines he taught were rarely, if ever, the

subject of conversation in his presence. (James Mill 1835,p.123)

Mill’s comment might provide an explanation for Bain’s perplexity at Mill

and Bentham sharing the same room for work at Ford Abbey, when they

might easily have occupied separate rooms in the grand house (see Bain

1882a, p. 135). Despite their separateness their physical proximity might be

a symbol of a close philosophical relationship.

By all accounts the two men had become very close. Two years earlier,

in a letter to Mill, written half in jest, Bentham proposed that if James Mill

met an untimely death, Bentham might be appointed the guardian to the

young Mill who was then six years old. Among his duties would be to

teach him ‘to make all proper distinctions between the Devil and the Holy

Ghost, and how to make Codes and Encyclopaedias . . . ’ (Bentham 1988b,

p. 253). Mill replied that he was not about to die, but he would seriously

accept the offer so that the young Mill would become ‘a successor wor thy

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of both of us’ (Bentham 1988b, p. 255). In September 1814,however,

when both were at Ford Abbey, Mill wrote to Bentham an extraordinary

letter designed to diminish the closeness of their friendship for the sake

of the future of their philosophy. At ﬁrst glance the letter might be seen

solely as a protest against Bentham’s possessiveness (increased perhaps with

his brother’s departure) and pettiness (with his objections to Mill riding

with Joseph Hume (1777–1855) to see the countryside rather than taking

his customary walk with Bentham) (see Bain 1882a, p. 141). According

to Mill:

The number of those is not small who wait for our halting. The inﬁrmities in the

temper of philosophers have always been a handle to deny their principles; and the

inﬁrmities in ours will be represented as by no means small, if in the relation in which

we stand, we do not avoid shewing to the world that we cannot agree. (Bentham 1988b,

p. 417)

Mill seems to be proposing here that to avoid the scandal of a public breach

the two should remain together for the sake of their offspring, in this case,

philosophy.

The concern here was with a philosophical legacy. It is somewhat ironic

that although James Mill was twenty-ﬁve years younger than Bentham, and

on the grounds of age might feel that he would be Bentham’s successor, he

in fact lived only four years longer. At any rate, Mill believed that Bentham

was the author of a ‘system of important truths’ and that Mill was ‘a most

faithful and fervent disciple, hitherto I have fancied, the master’s favourite

disciple’. He then gave three reasons for believing that ‘no body at all [would

be] so likely to be your real successor as myself’. First, he did not know

of any other person who had ‘so compleatly taken up the pr inciples, and

is so thoroughly of the same way of thinking as yourself’. Second, there

were few others who had acquired the philosophical discipline to obtain

a knowledge of the system. Finally, Mill was willing to devote his life ‘to

the propagation of the system’ (Bentham 1988b, p. 417). He concluded this

estimation of his qualities as a disciple by congratulating Bentham for his

good fortune in having encountered himself: ‘I have often reﬂected upon it

as a very fortunate coincidence that any man with views and propensities of

such rare occurrence as mine, should happen to come in toward the close

of your career to carry on the work without any intermission’ (Bentham

1988b, pp. 417–18). Despite Bentham’s advanced age, it would be highly

misleading to believe that he was at the close rather than at the height of

his career. Nor does it make sense to regard Mill as Bentham’s only disciple

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at this time. One might refer simply to Romilly and Dumont among many

others.

We do not know Bentham’s response to Mill’s letter, but Mill’s plan

to leave Queen’s Square for Scotland and then France was not realised,

and despite some conﬂict between James Mill and Bentham, the philo-

sophical breach never took place. But James Mill seems to have assumed

that Bentham’s philosophical legacy would ﬁrst be inherited by himself,

with his son to receive his inheritance from him rather than directly from

Bentham (cf. Robson 1964,pp.253ff .).

5 Philosophic radicalism

There is considerable confusion surrounding the terms ‘philosophic radical’

and ‘philosophic radicalism’. One view links them with the thought of

Bentham and its development by James and J. S. Mill. Elie Hal

evy writes

simply that ‘in Jeremy Bentham, Philosophical Radicalism had its great man’

(Hal

evy 1928, p. xviii; see also Dinwiddy 1992b, pp. 286ff.; Finer 1972,

pp. 11ff.; Schoﬁeld 2004,p.401). Others confuse utilitarianism generally

with philosophic radicalism, and can write of three generations of the

doctrine (led by Bentham, James Mill and J. S. Mill) beginning in the early

nineteenth century (see Pringle-Pattison 1907,pp.3–6, 23ff.).

A second conception takes a more limited view of the philosophic radicals

and their doctrine. They were supposedly a small group of mainly radical

parliamentarians formed after 1832 and led unsuccessfully from outside par-

liament by J. S. Mill as editor of the London and Westminster Review during

the 1830s (see Stephen 1900, iii,pp.29ff.). It has been doubted that the

philosophic radicals formed either a coherent group or were even disciples

of Bentham and James Mill (see Thomas 1974,pp.53ff., 1979,p.11, 1985,

p. 50). This view, largely correct, has several variations. Hamburger, for

instance, uses the example of the philosophic radicals to challenge Bagehot’s

view of English politics as existing without dogmatism. On the contrary, he

ﬁnds that the small group of radicals took some of Bentham’s ideas and ‘fash-

ioned a rationale and a guide for reshaping a particular regime – what we

would call an ideology’ (Hamburger 1965,p.1; see Thomas 1974,p.53n).

To show that this group possessed ideological coherence, Hamburger then

uses James Mill’s 1814 letter to Bentham, discussed above, to show how Mill

sacriﬁced his feelings for the sake of the ideological movement (Hamburger

1965,p.3). If little of this approach seems correct nowadays, at least

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Hamburger does not simply combine philosophic radicalism and Ben-

thamite utilitarianism as a single doctrine.

J. S. Mill seems to have coined the terms in 1834 in essays published in

the Monthly Repository (cf. Thomas 1979,p.2). At this time he clearly had

in mind a fairly restricted group, as when he referred to ‘the little band of

enlightened and philosophic Radicals’ or to ‘the little knot of philosophic

radicals’ (Mill 1982, CWM, vi,pp.191, 212). He used the terms to identify

a particular group of radicals in Parliament after the passage of the Reform

Bill, who did not always succeed in carrying on the process of radical reform.

Mill decided to take up the burden of leadership by becoming editor (and

later proprietor) of the London and Westminster Review.Hewantedthe

journal ‘to awaken the slumbering energy of the radical leaders, and to

force the Whigs to take a decided part’, i.e. to support radical causes (Mill

1963, CWM, xii,p.316). The philosophic radicals were men like George

Grote (1794–1871) and John Arthur Roebuck (1801–79) and latterly Charles

Buller (1806–48) and Sir William Moleswor th (1810–55). J. S. Mill became

the chief exponent in the press, writing mainly for the Examiner and, as

we have seen, the Monthly Respository.InApril1835 Molesworth started

the London Review to rival the Westminster Review,andin1836 he bought

the Westminster Review and merged the two journals to form the London

and Westminster Review. Mill began as editor and in 1837 became proprietor

which lasted until 1840 (see Stephen 1900, iii,pp.30–1). According to

Bain, Mill published seven or eight of eighteen numbers of the review at

an estimated per sonal cost to him of £1,500 to £2,000 (see Bain 1882b,

p. 58).

In the autumn of 1834 when

Molesworth was planning the London

Review, he and his friends were delighted with the involvement of J. S.

Mill. Molesworth reported to Harriet Grote that ‘John is in such spirits that

he says he would make it succeed single-handed’, to which he added that

‘Old Mill will write, consequently we shall be respectable’(Grote1866 p. 8).

Harriet Grote acknowledged that Molesworth had a promising editor: ‘a

young man whose talents were then dawning upon the world of intellect –

Mr. John Stuart Mill’ (Grote 1866,p.9). James Mill contributed to the ﬁrst

number and to subsequent numbers up to April 1836, a few months prior

to his death (see Mill 1981, CWM, i,p.209n).

Within three years Mrs Grote would doubt that the Review could be

‘the engine of propagating sound and sane doctrines on Ethics and Politics

under J.M....Ionlywonder howthepeoplecontrivetokeepimproving,

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under the purveyance of the stuff and nonsense they are subjected to’ (Bain

1882b, pp. 56n–7n). The problem and change of heart were concerned

with the nature of radicalism, and, to an extent, with the use of the phrase,

‘philosophic radical’.

The article in which Mill ﬁrst developed the phrase, ‘philosophic radical’,

was a review of Albany Fonblanque’s England Under Seven Administrations

(1837) and was published in the London and Westminster Review in 1837 (Mill

1982, CWM, vi,pp.349–80). Here he declared simply that ‘Fonblanque’s

opinions, it need scarcely be said, are those of the philosophic radicals’ (Mill

1982, CWM, vi,p.353; see also Fonblanque 1874,p.6). Mill began his

discussion by distinguishing the philosophic radicals from four other kinds.

He called the ﬁrst the ‘historical radicals, who demand popular institutions

as the inheritance of Englishmen, transmitted to us from the Saxons or

the barons of Runnymede’. The second were termed ‘metaphysical radi-

cals’ who believed in principles of democracy der ived from ‘some unreal

abstraction’ such as natural liberty or natural rights. A third group consisted

of ‘radicals of occasion and circumstance’ who opposed the government

over particular issues at particular times. The fourth were ‘radicals of posi-

tion’ who were radicals simply because they were not lords. The philosophic

radicals, different from these other kinds:

are those who in politics observe the common practice of philosophers – that is, who,

when they are discussing means, begin by considering the end, and when they desire

to produce effects, think of causes. (Mill 1982, CWM, vi,p.353)

Mill went on to say that people with this philosophical disposition became

radicals when they perceived the need to oppose the aristocratic principle in

government and society. He referred to this group as a ‘party’ and seemed to

suggest that Fonblanque was its bravest war rior, if not its leader (Mill 1982,

CWM, vi,p.353). Fonblanque did not base his radicalism on deductions

from a priori principles but rather on seeing things as they are – ‘for taking a

just view of the existing inﬂuences in society, as they actually operate’ (Mill

1982, CWM, vi,p.355). Nevertheless, in a subsequent altercation with

Fonblanque it was clear that ‘philosophic radical’ was a highly contentious

phrase even among the ‘little knot’ that constituted the group. Then editor

of the Examiner, Fonblanque wrote on 28 January 1838, under the heading,

‘Mr. E. Bulwer and Mr. Grote’:

The name of ‘philosophical Radicals’ was bestowed [on] themselves by the gentle-

men whose opinions are represented by the London Review ...To us it appeared

better . . . that the world should ﬁnd out that they were philosophical, than that they

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should proclaim it of themselves. But this is a matter of taste, and they are fond of calling

themselves by good names, and like ladies, seem glad to change them; so they have

been ‘philosophical Reformers,’ and ‘thorough Reformers,’ and ‘earnest Reformers’,

and better still, ‘entire Refor mers’. (Mill 1963, CWM, xiii,pp.369n–70n)

Mill was stung by this attack on him and on the journal. He protested that

the phrase, ‘philosophic radical’, was never bestowed by the journal on its

‘own writers or upon the people whom Bulwer called so in his speech’.

According to Mill, ‘philosophic radical’ was a name given ‘to the thinking

radicals generally’. He wanted to distinguish them from other radicals: ‘from

the demagogic radicals, such as Wakely, and from the historical radicals of

the Cartwright school, and from the division of property radicals if there

be any’. Mill had thought that the London and Westminster Review would be

the review representing ‘this large body’ and that the Examiner would be its

newspaper. But he particularly objected to his being classed with reformers

like Grote and Roebuck and pointed out that his radicalism was ‘of a school

the most remote from theirs, at all points, which exists’ (Mill 1963, CWM,

xiii,pp.369–70; see also Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates 1838, 3rd Series,

xl,pp.398–9; Thomas 1979,p.202).

Although Bentham would not have objected to Mill’s account of philo-

sophic radicalism in terms of ‘the common practice of philosophers’, Mill

had adopted a very different agenda from that found in Bentham and his

followers (see Kinzer 1991,pp.185ff.). Indeed, he wrote in the Autobiography

that he was pursuing two objects in the journal:

One was to free philosophic radicalism from the reproach of sectarian Benthamism. I

desired, while retaining the precision of expression, the deﬁniteness of meaning, the

contempt of declamatory phrases and vague generalities, which were so honourably

characteristic both of Bentham and my father, to give a wider basis and a more free and

genial character to Radical speculations; to shew that there was a Radical philosophy,

better and more complete than Bentham’s, while recognizing and incorporating all of

Bentham’s which is permanently valuable. In this ﬁr st object, I, to a certain extent,

succeeded. (Mill 1981, CWM, i, 221)

The second object was the attempt to reinvigorate radical politics, which

he admitted was for the most part a failure (Mill 1981, CWM, i,pp.221–3).

Mill’s belief in the practical success of his work in the London and West-

minster Review in freeing radicalism from the narrower conﬁnes of Ben-

thamism must be interpreted in conjunction with the essays on Bentham

and Coleridge which he published at the end of his involvement in the

review. But in the Autobiography Mill also distinguished between Bentham

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and James Mill and credited the latter with a greater inﬂuence on the devel-

opment of philosophic radicalism than the former. Mill wrote concerning

his father:

This supposed school, then had no other existence than what was constituted by the

fact, that my father’s writings and conversation drew round him a certain number of

young men who had already imbibed, or who imbibed from him, a greater or smaller

portion of his ver y decided political and philosophical opinions. (Mill 1981, CWM, i,

p. 103)

Mill dismissed the view that Bentham was surrounded by a body of active

disciples; Bentham’s inﬂuence, Mill maintained, was through his writings,

and, presumably, those who surrounded him were mainly engaged in assist-

ing him with his writings. Mill recognised that Bentham was ‘a greater

name in history’, but believed that his father was the greater ﬁgure in con-

versation, and through the force of his character, he exerted great inﬂuence

on a number of younger individuals whom Mill associated with philosophic

radicalism (Mill 1981, CWM, i,pp.103–5).

Mill referred to his father’s essay, ‘Government,’ as ‘a masterpiece of

political wisdom’, which had a considerable inﬂuence on this youthful

group, even though many disag reed with a number of its doctrines, such as

the exclusion of women and those under the age of forty from suffrage (Mill

1981, CWM, i,p.107; see also Bentham 1973,pp.311–12). As Mill stated

in the materials he supplied regarding his father for Appendix C of Edward

Bulwer Lytton’s England and the English (1833), ‘the Essay on Government,

in particular, has been almost a text-book to many of those who may be

termed the Philosophic Radicals’ (Mill 1981, CWM, i,p.594). Mill did not

refer here to the ﬁr st volume of Bentham’s Constitutional Code, published in

1830, which was far more comprehensive and philosophical, if less widely

read than his father’s brief essay (see Bentham 1983b).

Mill’s elevation of his father over Bentham, in the context of his account

of radicalism, does not make much sense, because, by his own admission,

both Bentham and his father subscribed to what in his terms was this

narrower radicalism. Although Mill never publicly criticised his father, a

clear personal tension in their relationship became evident in the 1830s.

Even earlier, during his close friendship with Roebuck and George John

Graham, Mill stood up to his father, when the latter disapproved of his

new friends. Roebuck (1897,p.29) wrote that while James Mill was ‘a

severe democrat’, he ‘bowed down to wealth and position’, and dismissed

those young men, like Roebuck and Graham, who at that time possessed

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neither (‘he was rude and curt, gave us no advice, but seemed pleased to

hurt and offend us’). This led to a falling out between father and son, with

his mother fearing that J. S. Mill would leave the house (see Bain 1882b,

pp. 39–40). The father then ‘succumbed’, but the friends no longer met at

his house, and gathered instead at the home of Harriet Grote (Bain 1882b,

p. 40; Roebuck 1897,p.29; see Green 1989,pp.263–5).

In spite of this declaration of independence, Mill remained essentially

loyal to his father. As we have seen, he even sought to elevate James Mill’s

importance in the 1830s, even though his own brand of radicalism attempted

to break away from that of the earlier generation. Roebuck observed with

considerable insight:

But John Mill took especial care to conﬁne his criticism to Bentham, and always avoided

calling in question the views of his father. This led him, in my mind, to much wavering

and uncertainty; and he wanted one main quality for an original thinker, and that was

courage.(Roebuck1897,p.37)

If Mill’s mental crisis occurred in 1826, when he was editing Bentham’s

Rationale of Judicial Evidence, he also became seriously ill in the 1830sat

the time of the death of his father in 1836. According to Bain, ‘he was

seized with an obstinate derangement of the brain’ – with symptoms of

‘involuntary nervous twitchings in the face’. This condition, continued

Bain, was due to the fact that ‘he had ceased to give his father his conﬁdence

both in bodily and mental matters’ (Bain 1882b, pp. 42–3). It is believed

that he was ill for a considerable period, and Bain noted that ‘he retained

to the end of his life an almost ceaseless spasmodic twitching over one eye’

(Bain 1882b, p. 44).

The simple contrast between Benthamite utilitarianism and philosophic

radicalism does not make much sense. As we have seen, if Mill’s conception

of philosophic radicalism was based on the ‘common practice of philosophers’,

‘who when they are discussing means, begin by considering the end, and

when they desire to produce effects, think of causes’, it would easily apply

to Bentham. Furthermore, to favour his father’s philosophical radicalism

over Bentham’s also does not make much sense, as James Mill became and

continued to be a faithful disciple. Mill clearly desired to break out in a new

direction, but he also sought to take the legacies of his father and Bentham

with him (cf. Semmel 1998,p.51). Nevertheless, if Mill failed to lead a

radical party in the 1830s, he produced some important essays on how he

deﬁned the philosophical portion of his radicalism. Three of these essays

will now be brieﬂy considered.

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6 ‘Remarks on Bentham’s Philosophy’

Mill’s ﬁrst substantial essay on Bentham (it was preceded by the brief 1832

obituary published in the Examiner (Mill 1969, CWM, x,pp.495–8))

appeared as an appendix to Bulwer’s England and the English (1833), which

also contained the appendix on James Mill for which J. S. Mill had sup-

plied the notes. In the Autobiography Mill referred to this essay as his ﬁrst

attempt in print to state both a favourable and an unfavourable estimation of

Bentham’s doctrines ‘considered as a complete philosophy’ (Mill 1981,

CWM, i,p.207).

As for the favourable side Mill linked Bentham’s project in legislation to

that of Bacon. ‘What Bacon did for physical knowledge’, Mill wrote, ‘Mr.

Bentham has done for philosophical legislation’ (Mill 1969, CWM, x,p.9).

Yet, Bentham had gone further than Bacon – he ‘did not merely prophesy

a science; he made large strides towards the creation of one’. Mill praised

Bentham for being the ﬁrst person to attempt ‘to declare all the secondary

and intermediate principles of law, by direct and systematic inference from

the one great axiom or principle of general utility’. In addition, Bentham

was praised (‘the ﬁrst, and perhaps the grandest achievement’) for his work

in discrediting the technical systems in law. Law ceased to be a mystery and

became a matter of ‘practical business, wherein means were to be adapted

to ends, as in any of the other arts of life’. ‘To have accomplished this’, Mill

continued, ‘supposing him to have done nothing else, is to have equalled

the glory of the greatest scientiﬁc benefactors of the human race’ (Mill

1969, CWM, x,p.10).

Mill particularly focused on Bentham’s achievements in three spheres,

that of civil law, penal law and judicial procedure. In civil law (conﬁning his

remarks apparently to the Tr a it

es), Bentham ‘proceeded not much beyond

establishing on the proper basis some of its most general principles, and

cursorily discussing some of the most interesting of its details’ (see Kelly

1990). In penal law ‘he is the author of the best attempt yet made towards a

philosophical classiﬁcation of offences. The theory of punishment ...heleft

nearly complete’ (see Draper 1997; Rosen 2003,pp.152–65, 209–19). In

the realm of evidence and judicial procedure (on which Mill had worked for

the Rationale of Judicial Evidence), he wrote that Bentham ‘ . . . found [it] in a

moreutterlybarbarousstate...andheleftitincomparablythemostperfect.

There is scarcely a question of practical importance in this most important

department, which he has not settled. He has left next to nothing for his

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successors’ (see Twining 1985). Mill also noted that Bentham suggested how

to cut ‘nine-tenths of the expense and ninety-nine hundredths of the delay

of legal proceedings’ (Mill 1969, CWM, x,p.11).

Despite this praise of Bentham’s achievements, Mill omitted at least four

important spheres of Bentham’s thought, about which he would have known

and on which he might have commented. The ﬁrst was constitutional law

on which Bentham had been busily working for the last decade of his life.

Mill would have known of the publication of the ﬁrst volume of Constitu-

tional Code (1983b[1830]), and did mention it critically in the later essay on

‘Bentham’ (see Mill 1969, CWM, x, 106). His omission here, however, pos-

sibly reﬂected his view of the importance of his father’s essay, ‘Government’,

as well as a general disapproval of Bentham’s apparently limited approach

to government. The second omission concerned Bentham’s logical writ-

ings, which are crucial to an understanding of Bentham’s own philosophic

radicalism. Although Mill, as we have seen, could write enthusiastically of

Bentham’s classiﬁcation of offences, based on this method, he provided no

analysis of the logical method itself. He had certainly read Chrestomathia and

would have been familiar with the various tables based on logical division

and the essays on classiﬁcation and related topics (see Mill 1981, CWM, i,

p. 572; Bentham 1983a). Nor did he mention the theory of language and

the empirical connection between language and the world, developed in

the theory of ﬁctions (see Bentham 1932).

The third omission concerns Bentham’s writing on codiﬁcation itself, its

objects and methods, which was an important achievement in its own right,

apart from its use in particular ﬁelds of law (see Bentham 1998). The project

of a complete code of laws might easily be regarded as the culmination of

his philosophical project. A ﬁnal omission was to neglect Bentham as a

theorist of liberty not only in Defence of Usury (Bentham 1952–4 [1787], i,

pp. 123–207), which had been widely debated in the 1820s (see Rosen 2003,

pp. 114–30), but also in numerous works, where, for example, Bentham

distinguished between spheres of private ethics and public legislation or

emphasised individual security in relation to law and politics (see Bentham

1996,pp.281ff.; Rosen 1992,pp.25–76, 2003,pp.245–55). These omissions

are mentioned here less to criticise Mill but more to attempt to understand

his criticisms of Bentham. Mill had his own agenda, which was to prise

radicalism away from Benthamism and link its theoretical basis with his

father and philosophic radicalism generally with himself. The reference to

the work of David Hartley (Hartley 1749), for example, was used almost

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