James Mill

James Mill, born James Milne on 6 April 1773 in Angus, Scotland, was a historian, economist, and political theorist who helped establish the Ricardian school of economics. His most famous work, *The History of British India* (1817), organized Indian history into three eras: Hindu, Muslim, and British. He was also the father of John Stuart Mill, a key liberal philosopher.

Mill was the son of a shoemaker and small farmer. His mother, determined he receive an excellent education, sent him to parish school and then Montrose Academy, where he stayed until age seventeen and a half. He then attended the University of Edinburgh, excelling as a Greek scholar. In October 1789, he was ordained a minister in the Church of Scotland, but found little success in that role. According to his son’s autobiography, Mill rejected both revealed religion and natural religion through his own studies. From 1790 to 1802, he supported himself with tutoring while pursuing historical and philosophical work. With few prospects in Scotland, he moved to London in 1802 with Sir John Stuart, a member of Parliament, and focused on writing. He edited the *Literary Journal* from 1803 to 1806, and also the *St James’s Chronicle*. In 1804, he wrote a pamphlet against a grain-export tariff. The following year, he translated and annotated Charles de Villers’s essay on the Reformation, attacking the papal system. Around the end of 1805, he began *The History of British India*, which took twelve years instead of the planned three or four.

That same year, he married Harriet Burrow, whose mother ran a lunatic asylum in Hoxton. They settled in Pentonville, where their eldest son, John Stuart Mill, was born in 1806. In 1808, Mill met Jeremy Bentham, twenty-five years his senior, and became his close ally, fully adopting Bentham’s utilitarian principles. Between 1806 and 1818, he wrote for several reviews, including the *Anti-Jacobin Review*, the *British Review*, and the *Eclectic Review*, though his contributions are untraceable. From 1808 to 1813, he wrote steadily for the *Edinburgh Review*, starting with an article on “Money and Exchange,” and also covered topics like Spanish America, China, Francisco de Miranda, the East India Company, and press freedom. In 1811, he co-founded the *Philanthropist* with chemist William Allen, contributing on education, press freedom, and prison discipline (including Bentham’s Panopticon). He attacked the Church in the Bell and Lancaster controversy and helped found the University of London in 1825. In 1814, he wrote articles for the *Encyclopædia Britannica* supplement, including expositions of utilitarianism on jurisprudence, prisons, government, and the law of nations.

*The History of British India* was published in 1818 to immediate and lasting success. The next year, Mill was appointed an official in the India House’s Examiner of Indian Correspondence department. He rose steadily, becoming head of the office in 1830 with a salary of £1,900, raised to £2,000 in 1836. His economics work, *Elements of Political Economy*, appeared in 1821, with a third revised edition in 1825. From 1824 to 1826, he wrote for the *Westminster Review*, the Radical party’s journal, attacking the *Edinburgh* and *Quarterly Reviews* and the church. In 1829, he published *Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind*. From 1831 to 1833, he defended the East India Company during its charter renewal, serving as the Court of Directors’ spokesman. For the *London Review* in 1834, he wrote “The Church and its Reform,” which was too skeptical for its time and damaged the *Westminster Review*. Mill was an atheist. His final book, *Fragment on Mackintosh*, came out in 1835. He died on 23 June 1836.