Who was John Stuart Mill?
John Stuart Mill was born in London in 1806. His father, James Mill, taught him at home from a very young age within the circle of the reformer Jeremy Bentham. For many years Mill worked at the East India Company, rising to chief examiner, the post his father had held. Alongside that job he produced his major books, among them A System of Logic, Principles of Political Economy, On Liberty, Utilitarianism and The Subjection of Women. He said his wife, Harriet Taylor Mill, shaped much of his thinking. Voters sent him to Parliament as a Liberal MP for Westminster, where he served between 1865 and 1868. He died in 1873.
Political views
- Held that the only good reason to use power against someone's will is to stop them harming others.Source: gutenberg.org
- Defended free thought, speech and ways of living, and warned that the opinion of the majority can become a tyranny of its own.Source: plato.stanford.edu
- Spoke for votes for women in the Commons, and in The Subjection of Women argued the sexes should be equal under the law.Source: iep.utm.edu
- Accepted private property and markets but turned down pure laissez-faire, arguing that government has duties that serve the common good.Source: plato.stanford.edu
- Suggested that worker-owned co-operatives could make the workplace a school of fellow feeling.Source: plato.stanford.edu
- Wanted a limit on how much one person could receive through gifts or inheritance, and higher taxes on big inheritances.Source: gutenberg.org
- Favoured proportional representation, and extra votes for the better educated.Source: plato.stanford.edu
Legacy
Many call Mill the most influential English-language thinker of the 19th century, and On Liberty is still a core text in arguments over free speech and personal choice. Liberals, libertarians and social democrats each claim a share of him, from the harm principle to his interest in co-operatives. Critics on the right say his individualism wears away shared moral traditions. Others point to his defence of British rule in India, and to his plan for extra votes for the educated, as limits on his belief in equality. Feminist scholars credit Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill as early champions of women's rights.
In their own words
“The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.”