A University of Sussex DPhil thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details James Mill’s Common Place Books and their Intellectual Context, 1773–1836 Kristopher Grint PhD University of Sussex April 2013 Summary University of Sussex Kristopher Grint James Mill’s Common Place Books and their Intellectual Context, 1773–1836 This thesis is an intellectual history of James Mill’s political thought, which focuses on four specific topics: his ideas on parliamentary reform; on libel law, or the freedom of the press; education, or man’s ability to utilise his reason; and on established religion, primarily in the form of Mill’s attitude towards the Church of England. At face-value, the thesis’ main aim is to contextualize in detail Mill’s published writings on these four subjects (which comprise its four chapters) by virtue of comparing them with unpublished manuscript material present in his common place books, which were transcribed as part of this PhD project. Although the chapters are developed in such a way that they can be seen as independent studies of Mill’s thought, there are of course more general themes which run through the thesis as a whole, as well as specific links between particular topics. One notable example is the notion that Mill employed ‘dissimulation’ in his published writings, that is to say that he did not necessarily express in public the full extent of his ideas, because of a fear that their radical extent would attract intrigue or prosecution from the reactionary governmental or religious authorities in Britain. It is also prudent to note how Mill’s well-documented intellectual influences are incorporated into the thesis. By this we are referring to the importance of the Scottish Enlightenment background to Mill’s own education and upbringing near Aberdeen and in Edinburgh, and also the doctrine of Utilitarianism he adopted from Jeremy Bentham once in London. The particular nature of the material found in the common place books warrants a full re-evaluation of these influences, as well as an exploration of the possibility that additional influences beyond these two contexts have thus far been understated in studies of Mill. This suggests the value of the study to current Mill scholarship. Contents Acknowledgements v Note on sources vi Prologue: ‘Keys of Knowledge’ 1 Introduction 4 1. ‘Quarries, not Ancient Temples’: A comparative study of James Mill’s 14 published and unpublished writings on the liberty of the press 2. ‘A Cry for Philosophy’: James Mill’s politics of reform and the essay 46 Government 3. ‘Democratical Sentiment and Indigent Orders’: James Mill and the essay 117 Education 4. ‘A Monopoly of Spiritual Domination’: Secularism and the role of 149 ecclesiastical establishments in James Mill’s religious thought Conclusion 202 Epilogue: ‘Unbounded Confidence’ 212 Bibliography 213 v Acknowledgements This thesis relies extensively on a transcription of James Mill’s common place books made by the late Robert A. Fenn (1935–1993). I am very grateful to Mrs. Julia Fenn for permission to use the transcription for the basis of my research, and to Larry Johnston for his assistance in recovering it. My research has been funded by the AHRC, as a collaborative doctoral award project between the University of Sussex and the London Library. I am grateful to the Librarian and staff at the London Library, where the first four volumes of Mill’s common place books are held, for their help during the first three years of my studies, and for the use of their extensive collections. I have also made much use of the collections at the British Library, the University of Sussex Library, the Library of Somerville College, Oxford, and the British Library of Political and Economic Science at LSE, the latter of which holds the fifth volume of Mill’s common place books. My greatest expression of thanks, however, must go to my supervisors and colleagues at the University of Sussex, and more specifically at the Centre for Intellectual History, for their invaluable and seemingly limitless support given to me during the researching and writing of this thesis. I would like to thank in particular my supervisors, Richard Whatmore and Donald Winch. vi Note on sources The unpublished sources consulted in this thesis comprise a range of manuscript material in the five volumes of James Mill’s common place books held in the archives of the London Library (volumes I–IV) and the British Library of Political and Economic Science (volume V). The transcription of the manuscripts consulted is an unpublished typescript by Robert A. Fenn, which was finalised in about 1993 and substantially checked upon its recovery in 2009. In 2010, as part of the research objectives for this PhD project, Mill’s first four common place books, along with editorial and bibliographical material by Fenn, were published online under the auspices of the Sussex Centre for Intellectual History.1 Citations of material in the common place books in this thesis refer to the physical manuscripts. They follow the form of the volume of the ledger followed by a reference to the folio and scrap from which the extract was taken (e.g. CPB II 2ra1 relates to the first scrap (1) in the first column (a) on the recto (r) of page 2 in common place book volume II). 1 James Mill's Common Place Books, ed. Robert A. Fenn; University of Sussex, 2010; online edn [http://intellectualhistory.net/mill/] 1 Prologue: ‘Keys of Knowledge’ And with regard to the danger of training the people generally to habits of servility and toleration of arbitrary power, if their education be entrusted to Government, or persons patronised by the Government, – we can only say, that although we are far from considering the danger either as small or chimerical, it is still so very great and good to have the whole facility of reading and writing diffused through the whole body of the people, that we should be willing to run considerable risks for its acquirement, or even greatly to accelerate that acquirement. There is something in the possession of those keys of knowledge and of thought, so truly admirable, that, when joined to another inestimable blessing, it is scarcely possible for any government to convert them into instruments of evil. That security is – the Liberty of the Press. Let the people only be taught to read, though by instruments ever so little friendly to their general interests, and the very intelligence of the age will provide them with books which will prove an antidote to the poison of their pedagogues… But grant, a reading people and a free press, – and the prejudices on which misrule supports itself will gradually and silently disappear. The impressions, indeed, which it is possible to make at the early age at which reading and writing are taught, and during the very short time that teaching lasts, are so very slight and transitory, that they must be easily effaced whenever there is anything to counteract them. James Mill, ‘Education of the Poor’2 In 1813 the Scottish philosopher, historian and journalist James Mill (1773–1836) contributed the article ‘Education of the Poor’ to the February edition of the Edinburgh Review. The piece was in one sense a restatement of the arguments Mill had advanced in the pamphlet Schools for All, published a year earlier, which had been both a robust defence of the Quaker Joseph Lancaster’s scheme for establishing monitorial schools in order to provide cheap education for the poor, and an equally strong rejection of a competing education system devised by the Church of England. The British and Foreign School Society, the organisation associated with Lancaster’s ideas, had advocated a method of instruction which was secular in nature, whereby reading of the Bible would 2 James Mill, “Education of the Poor,” Edinburgh Review XXI, no. 41 (February 1813): 211–2. 2 take place, but nothing was taught about the doctrines of specific Christian creeds. This was the basis of the scheme’s ecumenical structure, since the children of dissenters could attend alongside those from Anglican families. For the Church of England, however, such an arrangement was untenable. It feared that its authority would be undermined if children were educated without also being instructed in its catechism, and sought instead to promote schools for the poor which would remedy such an omission, thereby excluding those from dissenting faiths. What is more important than the historical context to ‘Education of the Poor’ at this early juncture, however, is the fact that it contained a passage which effectively represents the four crucial aspects of Mill’s political thought that this thesis is expressly concerned with investigating. Mill surmised in the article that the population at large could avoid corrupt and arbitrary government by virtue of possessing two ‘keys of knowledge’. These keys were basic literacy, and the ‘inestimable blessing’ of a free press. Within the passage Mill also made mention of his attitude towards institutions such as the established Church of England, which can be read in his remarks about the ‘poison’ of certain pedagogues, and how education is entrusted to ‘persons patronised by the Government’.