C.L. TEN
Mill is well in advance of his times when he argues passionately for equality between men and women, maintaining that there is nothing in the inherent nature of men or women that justifies the domination of women by men and the confinement of women’s functions to the home. Similarly, he believes that there is no natural superiority of whites over blacks that would support slavery. Major differences between races are not innate. Rather, they are the results of different circumstances. Mill often compares the marriage institution with despotism and slavery, with husbands having near absolute power over their wives. But there the parallel seems to end. Mill is quite clear and emphatic about what is needed to remedy the subjection of women: “perfect equality” in social and political life. On the other hand, Mill believes that despotism is an appropriate form of government for “backward states” like India. Mill supports British imperial rule in India. This chapter examines the complex details of his views on gender and race.
Mill likens marriage in Britain in his time to slavery for the woman, “the wife is the actual bondservant of her husband: no less so, as far as legal obligation goes than slaves commonly so called” (Subjection, XXI: 284). The husband has complete access to the wife’s property and he can use or take it away without her consent. Rape in marriage is not a criminal offence. The husband also has sole legal rights over the children. Indeed, in some respects Mill thinks that the wife’s position is worse than that of the slave. According to the laws of many countries, such as Roman law, the slave’s property is to a certain extent guaranteed for his personal use. Again, most slaves have fixed tasks that, when done, give them some free time of their own on which their masters rarely intrude. In Christian countries, a female slave has “an admitted right, and is considered under a moral obligation, to refuse her master the last familiarity” (XXI: 285). On the other hand, a brutal husband can claim from his wife “and enforce the lowest degradation of a human being, that of being made the instrument of an animal function contrary to her inclinations” (XXI: 285). No matter how badly she is treated by her husband, she is not free to divorce him and remarry, so long as he has not committed adultery. Women are denied opportunities to education and entry to various professions. They are indoctrinated to believe that their sole functions are to look after the household and the welfare of their husbands and children.
Mill believes that there should be perfect equality between men and women: the legal subordination of one sex to another is:
wrong in itself, and one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, or the other.
(XXI: 261)
Without such equality, women’s freedom would be severely limited and they will lack the opportunities to develop their interests, improve their lives, and shape them in accordance with their own values.
To begin with, Mill believes that women should be given the suffrage on the same basis as men. Mill was elected a Member of Parliament in 1865. He devoted much attention to trying to extend the suffrage to women, and he modestly commented on his parliamentary activities in this area that this was “perhaps the only really important public service I performed in the capacity of a Member of Parliament” (Autobiography, I: 285). In 1867 Mill made an amendment to the Reform Bill, substituting the word “person” for the word “man.” This would have given the vote to all women, who had the same qualifications as male voters. Mill’s motion was defeated, but it attracted more votes than expected.
For Mill, extending the suffrage to women is a matter of elementary justice, but there was strong opposition to it. Even Mill’s father, James Mill, had earlier rejected it in his essay On Government, and it is important to see how father and son differ on this important issue. James Mill regards government as merely a means to the utilitarian end of promoting the greatest happiness of the greatest number. The means is most effective when a large community delegates power to a small group to protect the interests of all. But checks must be placed to restrain the small group from abusing governmental power in order to promote their own “sinister interests,” rather than the common good. In monarchies and aristocracies, government power is in the hands of people who are not checked by the community and are therefore free to promote sinister interests. It is only in representative government that there can be an identity of interests between the legislators or rulers and the community at large (the ruled) who are empowered to elect them. Further checks are provided by limiting the duration of government to fairly short terms (J. Mill 1967: 20–1).
The interests of the whole community and those of the electors must also be the same. But this does not mean that every member of the community must be an elector and have the vote: “all those individuals whose interests are indisputably included in those of other individuals may be struck off without inconvenience” (J. Mill 1967: 21). James Mill believes that children up to a certain age, whose interests are included in those of their parents, and women, whose interests are involved either in those of their fathers or husbands, need not be part of the choosing body, the voters.
But this swift denial of the vote to women is specious. Even if fathers and husbands have the same interests as daughters and wives, this counts as much in favor of giving women the franchise and denying it to their fathers and husbands as it does for excluding women from the vote. Of course James Mill would have other reasons for favoring men to women. Presumably he would argue that women lacked the necessary knowledge about political affairs since their focus is on the household. This relies on a static notion of women’s interests and knowledge. Perhaps there is also a condescending paternalism in James Mill’s exclusion of woman from the vote. He might think of the vote, not as a cherished right, but as a rather tiresome burden, which had to be exercised for the sake of self‐protection. Women may be spared from this burden if there are sufficient men to look after their interests.
Unlike his father, John Stuart Mill rejects the view that our interests can be left to others to protect. “It is,” he writes,
an inherent condition of human affairs, that no intention, however sincere, of protecting the interests of others, can make it safe or salutary to tie up their own hands. Still more obviously true is that by their own hands only can any positive and durable improvement of their circumstances in life be worked out.
(Considerations XIX: 405–6)
Women’s interests would not be adequately protected by their fathers and husbands who would see those interests differently from the women themselves. This is particularly the case when women also lack the freedom and opportunities to express themselves and to discover and pursue their true interests. Many of them may even share men’s socially accepted and enforced view that women’s interests are best confined to the home. Such agreement does not show that, even in narrowly utilitarian terms, women would be most happy in confining themselves to household chores, rather than in developing their dormant faculties and potentialities. At best, loving fathers and husbands know their wives’ current preferences and views, as shaped by the society in which they live. Women’s preferences and views might be radically different when they enjoy the “perfect freedom” Mill wants them to have. Mill does not believe that it is in the interests of husbands to represent accurately the interests of their wives. Men have the strongest desire to exercise power over those nearest to them:
for everyone who desires power, desires it most over those who are nearest to him, with whom his life is passed, with whom he has most concerns in common, and in whom any independence of his authority, is often most likely to interfere with his individual preference.
(Subjection, XXI: 268)
On the basis of the existing unequal relations between men and women, Mill believes that we cannot know the true nature of the sexes. What is considered the nature of women, such as the view that their natural vocations are those of being a wife and mother, is “an eminently artificial thing – the result of forced repression in some directions, unnatural stimulation in others” (Subjection, XXI: 276). Women’s characters have been distorted by their subservient relations to men. They have not been allowed to develop freely. Human nature is subject to external circumstances to an extraordinary degree. What is regarded as their most universal and uniform nature is in fact extremely variable. Women are currently “universally taught that they are born and created for self‐sacrifice” (XXI: 293). This is an artificial ideal of feminine character. Under circumstances different from the present, men would be much more unselfish and self‐sacrificing. Moral education for men and women would be provided by a law that confers equality on men and women. Such a law would be conducive to the happiness of both parties. A justly constituted family, based on equality and love, and free of the domination of one party and the obedience of the other, will be a school for developing and exercising the virtues required for all other associations. It will provide training for children.
Mill rejects the view that the domination of women by men is natural and he compares it with similar unjust practices of domination of one group by another. He notes that slavery was at one time regarded as natural by the most cultivated minds, including Aristotle. Slave owners in the Southern United States claimed that “the black race is by nature incapable of freedom, and marked out for slavery” (XXI: 269). Mill points out that what is uncustomary is treated as unnatural. Thus English men do not regard it as unnatural to be ruled by a queen, but others elsewhere, unfamiliar with such rule, do so. On the other hand, the English regard it as unnatural for women to be soldiers or Members of Parliament, but at other times and in other places, women’s participation in war and politics were treated as natural (XXI: 270).
Mill rejects the suggestion that women are consenting parties to their domination by men. He notes that an increasing number of women have explicitly expressed their opposition to their inferior treatment by demanding the suffrage, equal access to education, and admission to the professions and occupations from which they are currently excluded (XXI: 270). Of course, wives, subject to the oppressive power of their husbands, are reluctant to complain for fear that this might provoke husbands to repeat or increase their abuses. Most men prefer their wives to be willing rather than forced slaves. Men have therefore resorted to the force of education to achieve their aim. From their earliest years, women are brought up to believe that they should be “submissive and yielding to the control of others,” and that “it is their nature to live for others; to make complete abnegation of themselves, and to have no life but in their affections” (XXI: 272). Women are also aware that they are in reality totally dependent on their husbands for “every privilege or pleasure” (XXI: 272). But Mill thinks that modern social institutions are changing in the direction that leaves women’s social subordination as the only case in which the higher social functions are closed to a group of people simply because of “a fatality of birth which no exertions, and no change of circumstances, can overcome” (XXI: 275).
But in spite of his frequent claims that no one knows the true nature of women, when they are dominated in slave‐like conditions in marital relationships, Mill himself believes that,
When the support of the family depends, not on property, but on earnings, the common arrangement, by which the man earns the income and the wife superintends the domestic expenditure seems to me the most suitable division of labor between the two persons.
(XXI: 297)
Although this remark has attracted some criticisms, it is in fact a mild and somewhat qualified opinion about what most couples would find as a suitable arrangement (Shanley 1998: 403–4, 414–7). It is not meant to be prescriptive, or to replace whatever voluntary arrangements they would prefer. It reflects Mill’s view about a fair arrangement in the circumstances. The wife has already gone through the “physical suffering of bearing children, and the whole responsibility of their care and education in the early years” (Subjection, XXI: 297). She would be taking a larger share of “bodily and mental exertions” if, in addition, she has to supervise the use of the husband’s earnings. He believes that customary arrangements, which emerged from a closed environment based on inequality, and which are enforced, are undesirable. However, some customary arrangements may suit the parties involved, and be freely chosen. Nonetheless Mill’s remark seems to overlook the fact that under conditions of freedom and equality, there is likely to be great variety in the choices made by men and women. Some women might prefer to spend most of their time working outside the home, while some men might prefer to look after the children at home.
Once women can freely choose their occupations on equal terms with men, the stereotypes of what they would prefer, developed under different conditions of inequality, will change, sometimes quite radically. Mill is surely right in claiming that the true nature of women can only be known under conditions of freedom and equality. We now know that even with the franchise, it has taken a long time for women to be accepted in spheres dominated by men, and regarded as areas more suited to men than to women. Recently it was reported that hedge funds run by women performed better than those run by men. This is an industry historically dominated by men. A director of a firm, which tracks the industry, refers to a study on the performance of women, and states his view that, “There have been studies which show that testosterone can make men less sensitive to risk‐reward signals, and that comes through in this study” (The Business Times (Singapore), Jan 16, 2014).
Mill sees the liberating force of giving women the suffrage. It enables them to develop new interests beyond those related to the home. Most people would not develop their intellectual capacities unless these can be put to some practical use. He claims that, “The only sufficient incitement to mental exertion, in any but a few minds in a generation, is the prospect of some practical use to be made of the results” (Considerations, XIX: 400). So those whose interests are confined to the home will only develop a small part of their intellectual powers. Their moral capacities are also similarly stunted if their sphere of action is artificially restricted.
Let a person have nothing to do for his country, and he will not care for it. It has been said of old, that in a despotism there is at most but one patriot, the despot himself; and the saying rests on a just appreciation of the effects of absolute subjection, even to a good and wise master.
(Considerations, XIX: 401)
Mill is here referring to the general effects of active political participation. When women have the vote and participate in political activities, they are not only able to protect their own interests as they see them, but they also develop broader interests, which they share with others. Some of Mill’s remarks about women’s interests and perspectives also apply to the effects of the subjection of women by their husbands in an unequal marriage, and the stunting of women’s moral and intellectual capacities when their activities are narrowly confined to the management of the household. When women are granted the same opportunities and freedom as men, they will engage in public affairs, now regarded as men’s business, and thereby enlarge the pool of talented people who can make contributions to society. Women will have a “softening influence” on the conduct of public affairs. Being the main victims of violence, they would seek to limit the sphere of violence and mitigate its excesses. Women are not taught to fight, and they would seek to settle differences without fighting. Men who desire to be admired by women would cultivate and sustain the virtue of chivalry (Subjection, XXI: 328–9).
There would be a great gain for society in women’s participation in the broader areas of social life. There will be a huge increase in the available pool of talent for the performance of various functions. Women will find entry to occupations from which they were previously excluded. But for Mill, the emancipation of woman is basically a matter of simple justice to individual women, just as the abolition of slavery is a requirement of justice to individual slaves. The promotion of justice is also a source of great happiness to women, who can now find worthy outlets for their active faculties. The free direction and use of their own faculties give women a sense of personal dignity and happiness, just as their restriction and confinement is a source of unhappiness. “There is nothing after disease, indigence, and guilt, so fatal to the pleasurable enjoyment of life as the want of a worthy outlet for the active faculties” (Subjection, XXI: 338). Women who care for the family have this outlet, but an increasing number of women do not have the outlet. Women who have brought up a family, while still active, no longer have an occupation. They need to acquire new interests and challenges, just like some men who, on retirement, find the change to a life of relative inactivity causes “ennui, melancholy, and premature death” (XXI: 338).
Mill believes that when women’s interests are confined to the home and family, they would not be engaged with public issues, or the cultivation of virtues which do not promote advantages for the family. Women, who have no experience of managing public charitable schemes, tend to have misplaced notions of benevolence. By simply giving to the poor, and thereby removing from them the bad consequences of their own acts, women tend to undermine the sense of self‐dependence and self‐respect in the poor. Women, whose well‐being depends on their husbands, would not be able to appreciate the value of self‐dependence. On the other hand, women, who are socially and politically emancipated, will act in a more socially beneficial manner (Subjection, XXI: 329–31).
They would also exercise a more valuable influence on their husbands. Men, married to those inferior to themselves, will be dragged down, even if they have aspirations to rise above public expectations of them. If they make sacrifices for the social benefit, these would be at the expense of their wives and children. The wife is expected to devote her whole life to self‐sacrifice for the benefit of the family, and public opinion would also not generally endorse acts of the husband which go against the wife’s interests, or the interests of the family. The husband is expected to compensate his wife for her total self‐sacrifice. Husbands are thereby kept down at the level of the “mediocrity of respectability” that is a feature of the times (XXI: 333).
Without emancipation, the minds of women are reduced to such an inferior level compared with those of men that there can be no real identity of interests between men and women. The vast differences between them in education and character are not conducive to a happy and intimate marriage relationship. A “union of thought and inclinations” is crucial to a happy marriage (XXI: 333). Where the difference in mental capacities is great, and there is no attempt on the part of the inferior to rise to the higher level, the likely result is a deterioration in the abilities of the superior. The ideal marriage is one among equals, where each can have the pleasure of sometimes leading, and at other times being led by, the other.
But for Mill more is at stake in the emancipation of women than the achievement of happy and inspiring marriages. The “moral regeneration of mankind” depends on it:
The moral regeneration of mankind will really commence, when the most fundamental of the social relations is placed under the rule of equal justice, and when human beings learn to cultivate their strongest sympathy with an equal in rights and cultivation.
(XXI: 336)
Mill’s case for women’s emancipation is clear and compelling. It rests on equality between men and women, on the value of free social and political participation for protecting one’s interests, and for the cultivation and development of one’s capacities. It condemns the despotic marriage arrangement in which men completely dominated over women. Given this background, it might seem strange for Mill to support British imperial rule over India, which is a system of despotism and inequality in the relations between the British and the Indians. But Mill sees no inconsistency in his views. In On Liberty, he maintains:
Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end. Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion.
(Liberty, XVIII: 224)
Nor is this an isolated passage, for Mill repeats its substance elsewhere, and it seems to represent his considered view on the subject (Chiu and Taylor 2011: 1239–50; Ten 2012: 184–97). So what is the basis for his claim that such despotism is justified? Was Mill a racist, believing in the inherent superiority of whites over black people?
In “The Negro Question,” a long letter to Fraser’s Magazine published in 1850, Mill replies to Carlyle’s earlier article of 1849. For a long time, negroes have been captured and brought to the West Indies to work as lifelong slaves. They were subjected to cruelty, tyranny, and wanton oppression. Carlyle had complained about emancipated negro slaves doing very little work producing pumpkins, and having a comfortable existence. He believed that they should remain the servants of the whites, who were born wiser and superior to the blacks. Mill rejects Carlyle’s claim that all differences between human beings can be traced to “an original difference of nature”. Mill points out that differences between two trees can partly be attributed to differences in the soil, climate, and exposure, rather than simply to the original seedlings.
Human beings are subject to an infinitely greater variety of accidents and external influences than trees and have infinitely more operation impairing the growth of one another; so those who begin by being strong have almost always hitherto used their strength to keep the others weak.
(The Negro Question, XXI: 93)
It is very rare for individuals or groups to improve spontaneously, without the help of others. If negroes are not in this rare group, it is not because they lack the capacity for improvement. There is evidence that the early Egyptians, and so the earliest known civilization, was a negro civilization. But even if by birth whites are superior in intelligence to blacks, this does not justify them in subordinating blacks by force and making them do all the hard work for the benefit of whites. Mill welcomes the abolition of negro slavery.
Mill, however, rejects the view, widely held in his day by Carlyle and others considered to be intellectual leaders, that there are inherent differences between different races and some are from birth superior to others. As in the case of the differences between men and women, Mill attributes differences to the different circumstances in which they are brought up. It is quite compatible with Mill’s view that if a nation has different races, but they are brought up in similar circumstances and treated equally, they would share a distinctive national character. This could apply to blacks and whites living together. However, if the historical, social, and political circumstances of people living in the same society are very different, then one would expect radical differences in their characters, interests, capacities, and achievements. Under certain conditions, people’s capacities would be confined or distorted, and they would be unable to improve themselves. This is true of women confined to the home and it is equally true of negro slaves, or poor natives deprived of resources, or incentives to work.
Mill chaired the Jamaica Committee that campaigned for the prosecution of Governor Eyre of Jamaica for murder (Ten 2012: 191–2). Governor Eyre used excessive force in suppressing a black uprising in Morant Bay in 1865. About 400 black rioters killed a magistrate and several other persons. Governor Eyre declared martial law that lasted a month, even though the uprising had been suppressed in a week. In his reaction to the uprising, several hundred blacks were killed or flogged and buildings were burnt. Among those killed was an outspoken black member of the legislature, George William Gordon, who Eyre accused of starting the riots. Gordon was convicted of high treason and hanged.
Mill was then a Member of Parliament and his sustained campaign against Governor Eyre provoked a reaction among Eyre’s supporters, who included Carlyle, and they formed the Eyre Defense and Aid Fund Committee in 1866. The Jamaica Committee was unsuccessful in prosecuting Eyre and was dissolved in 1868. Mill plays down his campaign against Eyre as a defense of negroes. In a letter to Urquhart of October 6, 1866, he writes,
you see I am not on this occasion standing up for the negroes, or for liberty, deeply as both are interested in the subject – but for the necessity of human society, law.
(Letter to David Urquhart, Oct 4, 1866, XVI: 1205)
Nonetheless, it is clear that the ill‐treatment of blacks in Jamaica under British rule was a matter of grave concern to him. In a “Statement of the Jamaica Committee,” which Mill signed, one of the aims specified was, “to arouse public morality against oppression of subject and dependent races” (Kinzer, Robson, and Robson 1992: 211–2; Ten 2012: 191–2). It is clear that Mill was greatly concerned about the treatment of blacks under colonial rule. They should be subject to the rule of law and not left to the arbitrary despotic treatment under martial law.
Mill was aware of the unpopularity of his cause. He received abusive letters and even threats of assassination. Certainly, no one of his day saw him as a racist. In fact, one magazine said that he was “such nuts upon niggers” (Reeves 2007: 381). He lost his parliamentary seat when he stood for re‐election in 1868, after completing a three‐year term. In his Autobiography, he includes among the reasons for his defeat the offence many people felt at what they regarded as his persecution of Eyre, and the donations he gave to nearly all working class candidates (Autobiography, I: 281).
Mill was appalled by the racism of his countrymen during the Indian Munity of 1857. The Indian Army had been provided with new rifles, which the sepoys refused to use because they believed that the cartridges were greased with beef or pork animal fat, which were religiously forbidden diet for Hindus and Muslims, respectively (Wilson 2003: 201–2; Ten 2012: 192–3). The cartridges had to be bitten off before being loaded into the rifles. The revolt spread from northern India to other parts of the country and lasted for over a year. Some British officers and soldiers showed violent racism and prejudice towards the Indians. Mill was also disturbed by the racist feelings at home that supported the actions of the soldiers in India:
my eyes were first opened to the moral condition of the English nation (I except in these matters the working classes) by the atrocities perpetrated in the Indian Mutiny and the feelings which supported them at home.
(Letter to David Urquhart, Oct 4, 1866, XVI: 1205–6)
Mill does not believe that the missionary activities of more advanced nations to make barbarian nations civilized are justified. In discussing the Mormon institution of polygamy, Mill expresses deep disapprobation of it, but he points out that, while the institution established a very unequal relation between men and women, the relation was voluntarily accepted by the women involved. Many women prefer “being one of several wives, to not being a wife at all” (Liberty, XVIII: 290). The Mormons have left the countries in which their views were unacceptable and established themselves in a remote area. So long as they do not commit aggression against other nations, and allow their own members the perfect freedom to leave the group if dissatisfied, it would be tyrannical to prevent them from living as they choose. Directly addressing the issue of a civilizing mission, Mill comments:
A recent writer, in some respects of considerable merit, proposes (to use his own words) not a crusade, but a civilizade, against this polygamous community, to put an end to what seems to him a retrograde step in civilization. It also appears so to me, but I am not aware that any community has the right to force another to be civilized.
(XVIII: 291)
In Representative Government, Mill maintains that a politically active people, like the English, are sometimes likely to interfere, “almost always in the wrong place,” with natives in India (Considerations, XIX: 569). The interference is most likely to be made through proselytism, or by conduct that is intentionally or unintentionally offensive to the religious feelings of the natives. Mill opposes the forcing of “English ideas down the throats of the natives,” and he was against the teaching of Christianity in government schools in India, even at the option of the pupils or their parents (XIX: 570). According to him, Hindu parents would not be persuaded that the government was not using improper means to convert Hindu children to Christianity.
In 1858, the East India Company was abolished, and India was ruled directly from Westminster. Mill had spent many years working for the Company. In “The Petition of the East India Company” presented to Parliament, Mill defends the Company, and argues for its continued rule of India. He points out that the Company had not interfered with “the religious practices of the people of India, except such as are abhorrent to humanity” (Petition of the East‐India Company, XXX: 81; Ten 2012: 193–4). He notes that the success of this policy was shown by the fact that, although the Indian Mutiny was believed to be caused by threats to the local religions, many parts of the Indian population remained faithful to the British government.
The only kind of interference with native customs and ways of life that Mill supports are those that clearly harmed non‐consenting persons. In his “Memorandum of the Improvements in the Administration of India during the Last Thirty Years,” he lists among the Company’s achievements, the actions it has taken against certain “barbarous” practices of the natives, such as female infanticide, human sacrifices, and slavery (Ten 2012: 194). Of course Mill is judgmental about aspects of native customs and practices that he regards as inferior to those of his own countrymen. These judgments and comparisons are unavoidable unless one adopts an extreme form of cultural relativism. Where there is harm to others against their will, adverse judgments and recommendations for change would have to be made. Other things being equal, Mill believes that it is always an improvement in social life to be rid of slavery, female infanticide, and the total domination of men over women. There are other aspects of social life, such as differences in religious and customary practices that do not harm others, where differences need not reflect superiority or inferiority, or even if they do, they may best be met by toleration rather than the imposition of one practice on all. Mill justifies despotic colonial rule of “backward states” only when it is the most effective means of improving the capacity of the natives to rule themselves (Tunick 2006: 586–611; Chiu and Taylor 2011: 1239–50; Ten 2012: 184–97).
Mill’s notions of “backward states” and “barbarians” involve a comparison of children and backward states, rather than the children of the developed countries and individuals (adults) in these backward states. So he is not claiming that British colonial rule over India is justified because all Indians are like children who cannot look after themselves. It is the race itself which “may be considered in its nonage.” “Barbarians” refer to members of such backward states, however different they might be to one another in terms of personal capacities (Ten 2012: 184). They all live in societies under conditions in which representative government cannot be successfully applied and only some form of despotism is applicable. In Representative Government, he again maintains that colonial rule is legitimate “if it is the one which in the existing state of civilization of the subject people most facilitates their transition to a higher stage of improvement” (Considerations, XIX: 567). He goes on to point out that there are “conditions of society” that justify the “vigorous despotism” that trains the people in what is needed “to render them capable of a higher civilization” (XIX: 567). It is the condition of society that defines its state of civilization and limits the capacities of its members. This is in line with Mill’s view that attributes differences in the capacities of different racial and ethnic groups to different, but alterable, social circumstances.
Mill believes that not all races are at the same level of development. However, these differences are not the result of intrinsic differences in intellectual and moral capacities. Rather, they are the product of circumstances that could have been different. These circumstances can change and can also sometimes be changed. He believes in the science of Ethology, which is concerned not only with the formation of individual character, but also with national and collective character (Logic, VIII: 869). He does not develop his account of Ethology, as he had hoped. But it is clear that he thinks that social and political progress are the result of favorable circumstances and, that in appropriate conditions, all racial groups are capable of such progress.
Mill discusses in more detail the social conditions in which representative government is inapplicable. He points out that a people’s ability to adapt to representative government depends more on their having certain “special requisites” than on “the place they occupy in the general scale of humanity” (Considerations, XIX: 413). People must value representative institutions and be prepared to fight for them if they are endangered. They must have the will and capacity to perform the duties and functions required of them by the representative constitution. This involves using the suffrage not just to serve their private interests, but also in taking an interest in the general affairs of the state to the extent that a public opinion is formed, which checks the exercise of governmental power.
People are unsuited for representative government if they are either extremely passive or unable to show obedience to legitimate authority. Mill believes that such obedience is “the first lesson of civilization” (Considerations, XIX: 415). Representative government would also be unsuitable for a people who have what Mill calls “an inveterate spirit of locality” (XIX: 417). Such people have the capacity to exercise their faculties in matters of local interest at the village or town level, but no capacity to deal with wider issues affecting many communities. It is only through deferring to a central authority, common to all, that “these political atoms or corpuscles have coalesced into a body, and learnt to feel themselves one people” (XIX: 417). An absolute monarchy is better than representative government in developing “common feelings of cohesion” among a group of small regional units (XIX: 418).
But given that a period of despotic rule is needed to prepare people for representative government, this still leaves open the issue of why local despotism is inadequate. Of course, living under despotism is part of the social conditions that retard the capacities for the successful application of representative government. In his discussion of nationality, Mill argues that the working of representative government requires a united public opinion. For this reason, he thinks that, “Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities” (XIX: 547). However, he notes that the feeling of nationality can be generated by various causes, including identity of race, descent, community of language or religion, and the possession of a common history (XIX: 546). But none of these, he acknowledges, in itself is indispensable or sufficient. It is also unclear how despotism can bring different groups of people together, and how a united public opinion will be allowed to develop under despotism. Freedom of discussion and association seem more likely to generate the discovery of common interests around which a united public opinion can be formed. But despotism would suppress such freedom. Mill himself is acutely aware that foreign despotism faces special problems. He notes, “Foreigners do not feel with the people” (XIX: 568). They also do not have detailed knowledge of the people over whom they rule and they have to depend on acquiring such knowledge from the natives, without at the same time knowing whom to trust. Foreign despots are prone to despise the natives.
Mill maintains that only a “good despot” can improve barbarians, but that a good native despot is “a rare and transitory accident” (XIX: 567). On the other hand, a despot from a more advanced nation ought to be able to provide what is needed constantly. However, this may only be true with respect to the technical expertise needed for good government. Technical knowledge would not be sufficient to generate the social conditions that Mill regards as necessary for people to successfully apply representative government and live happily under free institutions. In the absence of the franchise, what is the reliable mechanism for letting the “good despot” know about the interests and needs of the ordinary natives? What would motivate the despot, who does not feel with the people, to protect their interests and prepare them to replace him as ruler?
Mill may be right in arguing that the delegation of government in India to the East India Company is better than direct rule by the British Parliament, responsible to British public opinion. But why does he think that the East India Company, which is a commercial enterprise, would rule India in the interests of the Indians and prepare them to rule themselves without the Company? A major sacrifice of the Company’s commercial interests would be required if it is to meet Mill’s condition for justified colonial rule.
Commenting on the power of the East India Company in India during his time, also in the nineteenth century, Macaulay wrote:
Enormous fortunes were thus rapidly accumulated in Calcutta, while thirty millions of human beings were reduced to the extremity of wretchedness. … Under their old masters they had at least one resource; when the evil became insupportable, the people rose and pulled down the government. But the English government were not to be shaken off. That government, oppressive as the most oppressive form of barbarian despotism, was strong with the strength of civilization.
(Macaulay 1963: 528)
Unlike Mill, Macaulay had lived and worked in India. His comments cannot be totally dismissed. They are in sharp contrast with James Mill’s view, “Even the utmost abuse of European power, is better, we are persuaded, than the most temperate exercise of Oriental despotism” (Pitts 2005: 125). James Mill never visited India, although his The History of India was accepted by many in Britain as authoritative at the time.
John Stuart Mill maintains that before British rule in India, there was “disorder and confusion” in most Indian states. The British made native states safe from invading “hordes of undisciplined adventurers.” Certain hill tribes, who were robbers and had been treated like “wild beasts” by native governments, were converted by the British to peaceful cultivators by the provision of land, tools, and money (Memorandum of Improvements in Indian Administration, XXX: 151–3; Ten 2012: 194–5).
But was lawlessness, disorder, and uncontrolled robbery a typical condition of most Indian states, and was British rule generally as benign and helpful to peace, security, and stability as Mill’s example suggests? India is a vast country with different prevailing social conditions and problems. Mill himself believes that in the Rajput states there was a sense of nationality and shared historical traditions and feelings that gave them a sense of unity and they therefore required different treatment from other states that were not national polities (Zastoupil 1994: 153). There were Indian states with relative stability. In his instructive discussion of Mill’s singling out of the Rajputs as truly national polities, Lynn Zastoupil points out that they were not the only national dynasties and that Mill’s view was based on a “shallow and biased reading of Indian political history” (1994: 155). Mill distinguishes the national polities of the Rajputs from other Indian states where the ruling classes were conquerors, “almost as much foreigners to the mass of the people” as the British (Zastoupil 1994: 154). But even so, he acknowledges that they could provide stable government.
Mill genuinely believes that the high‐minded and very demanding standards that he set for colonial rule could be, and to a certain extent were, met by the British in India. He believes in the power of ideas. “One person with a belief, is a social power equal to ninety‐nine who have only interests” (Considerations, XIX: 381). He does not anticipate how his belief about the proper aims of colonial rule could be easily defeated by the sheer power of the material interests of the rulers and their supporters. Although his working life was spent in the service of the East India Company, Mill never visited India. This was to be expected, given his fragile health. But it meant a narrowing of his experience, knowledge, and perspective of Indian communities. He could not entirely break out of the imprisonment by the views of his father’s book on India. The book was an important part of his early education. As he noted in his Autobiography, his father took about ten years to write the book and, throughout that period, he spent almost every day instructing his children, including Mill himself (Autobiography, I: 7). No doubt his father’s tuition would have included some of the materials in the book. His father also gave him the manuscript of part of the book to read. This made a deep impression on the young Mill. As he put it, “Almost as soon as I could hold a pen I must needs write a history of India too” (Early Draft, I: 16). He abandoned this project, but throughout his boyhood he was “much addicted” to writing about what he called “histories; of course in imitation of my father” (I: 16). James Mill’s book was published in 1818 and while it was going through the press the previous year, Mill would read the manuscript to his father while the father corrected the proof. Mill acknowledges that the book
contributed very much to my education: The number of new ideas that I received from this remarkable book, and the impulse and stimulus as well as guidance given to my thoughts by its criticisms and disquisitions on society and civilization in the Hindoo part, on institutions and the acts of governments in the English part – made my familiarity with this book eminently useful to my subsequent progress.
(Early Draft, I: 26–8)
Mill remains true to his deepest liberal convictions, but he was not well‐placed to form accurate assessments of the detailed social and political conditions in different parts of India, and the capacities and achievements of Indians. He is too willing to believe that his own countrymen and women could be motivated to work for the benefit of the ordinary natives, even at the expense of their own and their country’s interests. He is a dedicated champion of the vulnerable and the oppressed, whether they be the working class, women, negroes in Jamaica, or Indians. But he is not always a successful champion.