Studies in Literature and History
faith in the substantial soundness of their economic doctrines. He
thought, therefore, that a clear and full exposition of their views
might be of the highest use in the coming struggle.... The
_Political Economy_ speedily acquired an authority unapproached by
any work published since the _Wealth of Nations_.'
We cannot follow Mr. Stephen through his elaborate and effective
review of this celebrated book. Its appearance marked an epoch in the
history of Utilitarianism, for it took a much wider survey of social
and political considerations, and the author undertook to expand the
orthodox economic theories so that they might embrace and be
reconciled with some daring projects of comprehensive reform. But Mill
had to put some strain on the principles to which he adhered, and to
accommodate certain inconsistencies in order to keep pace with moving
ideas. He held on with some effort to the cardinal tenets of the older
Utilitarians, to a dislike of interference by governments, to
reliance on individual effort, to protest against the deadening
influence of paternal administration, to his own trust in the gradual
effect of educational agencies, and in the slow emancipation of the
popular mind from unreasoning prejudices. On the other hand, he
advocated a radical reform of the land laws, peasant proprietorship,
the acquisition by the State of railways and canals, the limitation of
the right of bequest; and he went even so far as to speak with
approval of laws in restraint of improvident marriages. All these
proposals could only be carried out by arbitrary and drastic
legislation. As he put it, the State must interfere for the purpose of
making the people independent of further interference; and he
overlooked or set aside the question whether the eventual result of
thus calling in the State's agency would not be contrary to the
principles and professed intentions of the Utilitarian school, whether
the provisional _regime_ would not become permanent, as, in fact, it
has been rapidly becoming ever since.
We can see, moreover, that while J. S. Mill's sympathy with the
popular cause and with the most ardent reformers was sincere, he was
at issue with them in regard to the means, though not in regard to the
ends; he wished to better the intelligence of the people as the first
step toward bettering their condition. But when he had convinced
himself, as he said, that no great improvements in the lot of mankind
are possible until a great change takes place in the fundamental
constitution of their modes of thought, he had still to persuade men
who were stirring and pressing for immediate action that gradual
methods were the best. Most of them may have preferred to try whether,
if the lot of mankind were improved materially, the moral changes and
mental habits would not follow; for indeed Mill's proposition might
stand examination and hold good either way. It may be argued that an
elevation or widening of intellectual views is the consequence, as
often as it is the cause, of increasing comfort and leisure. He
thought that all reading and writing which does not tend to promote a
renovation of the world's belief is of very little value beyond the
moment, which is, of course, true in a general sense; though
literature can act much more directly than by dealing with first
principles. He welcomes Free Trade as one triumph of Utilitarian
doctrines, yet he sadly observes that the English public are quite as
raw and undiscerning on subjects of political economy since the nation
was converted to Free Trade as before. The nation, in fact, went
straight at the immediate point, got what it wanted at the moment, and
was satisfied.
Mr. Stephen's criticism of Mill's later writings exhibits further his
difficulties in adjusting the essential Utilitarian principles to
closer contact with the urgent questions of the day. Mill still held
to competition, to the full liberty of individuals, to the inevitable
mechanical working of economic laws; he still doubted the expediency
of factory legislation, and condemned any laws in restraint of usury.
He was opposed, broadly, to all authoritative intrusion upon human
existence wherever its necessity could not be proved conclusively to
be in the interest of a self-reliant community. Yet he was forced to
make concessions and exceptions in the face of actual needs and
grievances; and especially he found himself more and more impelled to
tolerate and even advocate interference by the State as the only
effective instrument for demolishing obstacles to the moral and
material betterment of the people. Since unjust social inequalities
could be traced to an origin in force or fraud, the legislature might
be logically called in to remove them; and as this is manifestly the
revolutionary argument (as embodied, for example, in the writings of
Thomas Paine), it enabled him to join hands with Radicalism in
proposing some very thorough-going measures. 'Landed property in
Europe derives its origin from force;' so the legislature is entitled
to interpose for the reclamation of rights unjustly usurped from the
community; while, as economical science shows that the value of land
rises from natural causes, the conclusion is that the State may
confiscate the unearned increment. But it was not so easy to convince
the hungry mechanic, by rather fine-drawn distinctions, that the
capitalist had a better right to monopolise profits than the landlord;
for the rise of value in manufactured commodities has very complex
causes, some of them superficially natural. So here, again, is a
plausible case of social injustice. Again, it may be affirmed that all
powerful associations, private as well as public, operate in
restriction of individual liberty. You may argue that great industrial
companies are voluntary; the question is whether they are innocuous to
the common weal, and we may add that this point is coming seriously to
the front at the present time. The distinction, as Mr. Stephen
remarks, drawn by the old individualism between State institutions and
those created by private combination is losing its significance; and,
what is more, public bodies are now continually encouraged to absorb
private enterprise in all matters that directly concern the people.
In short, we are on the high road to State Socialism, though Mill
helps us to console ourselves with having taken that road on strictly
scientific principles. It is the not unusual result of stating large
benevolent theories for popular application; the principle is accepted
and its limitations are disregarded. Nevertheless Mill contends
gallantly in his later works for intellectual liberty, complete
freedom of discussion, and the utility of tolerating the most
eccentric opinions. Into what practical difficulties and questionable
logical distinctions he was drawn by the necessity of fencing round
his propositions and making his reservations is well known; and Mr.
Stephen hits the weak points with keen critical acumen. We all agree
that persecution has done frightful mischief, at times, by suppressing
the free utterance of unorthodox opinions. But Mill argues that
contradiction, even of truth, is desirable in itself, because a
doctrine, true or false, becomes a dead belief without the
invigorating conflict of opposite reasonings. Resistance to authority
in matters of opinion is a sacred privilege essential to the formation
of belief; wherefore originality, even when it implies stupidity, is
to be carefully protected as a factor of human progress. We need not
follow Mr. Stephen in his victorious analysis of the arguments
wherewith Mill seeks to uphold this uncompromising individualism, and
to guard human perversity against the baneful influence of authority.
It is clear enough that society cannot waste its time in perpetual
wrangling over issues upon which an authoritative verdict has been
delivered; and for most of us a reasonable probability, founded on the
judgment of experts, is sufficient in moral or physical questions as
well as in litigation. The religious arena still remains open, where
experts differ and decisions are always disputable. Yet Mr. Arthur
Balfour devotes a chapter in his _Foundations of Belief_ to the
contention that our convictions on all the deeper subjects of thought
are determined not by reason but by authority; whereby he provides us
with an escape from the scepticism that menaces a philosopher who has
proved all experience to be at bottom illusory. Mill, on the other
hand, would make short work with authority wherever it checks or
discourages the unlimited exercise of free individual inquiry; and in
politics he would entrust the sovereign power to a representation of
the entire aggregate of the community, with the most ample
encouragement of incessant discussion. This is, indeed, the system
actually in force, and in England it has answered very well; but Mill
hardly foresaw that its tendency would be to make the State, as the
embodiment of popular will, not less but more authoritative, with a
tendency to encroach steadily upon the sphere of individual effort and
private enterprise.
It may be said that the abstract Utilitarian doctrine reached its
high-water mark in Mill's book on the Subjection of Women, to which
Mr. Stephen allots one section of a chapter. The book is a particular
enlargement upon Mill's general view that it is a pestilent error to
regard such marked distinctions of human character as sex or race as
innate and in the main indelible. What is called the nature of women
he treats as an artificial thing, an isolated fact which need not at
any rate be recognised by law; the proper test was, he argued, to
leave free competition to determine whether the distinction is radical
or merely the result of external circumstance. But, as Mr. Stephen
answers, such a plain physiological difference is at least not
negligible; and competition between the sexes may favour the despotism
of the stronger, while complete independence on both sides implies
freedom to separate at will; and Mill had only glanced evasively at
the question of divorce. Here, again, is a theory which the pressure
of social conditions, much more than abstract reasoning, is bringing
more and more into prominence with our own generation. On the wider
and more complicated question of race distinctions Mill never worked
out his argument against their indelibility into a regular treatise;
nor could he foresee the increasing influence upon contemporary
politics that is now exercised by racial feelings and their claims to
recognition. In the eighteenth century the French Encyclopedistes, who
were the direct philosophic ancestors of the Utilitarians, regarded
frontiers, classes, and races as so many barriers against the spread
of universal fraternity; and the revolutionary government took up the
idea as a war-cry. The armies of the French Republic proclaimed the
rights of the people in all countries, until Napoleon turned the
democratic doctrine into the form of Imperialism. M. Eugene de Voguee
has told us recently that this armed propaganda produced a reaction in
Europe toward that strong sentiment of nationality which has been
vigorously manifested during the second half of the nineteenth
century. The assertion of separate nationalities, by the demand for
political autonomy and by the attempt to revive the public teaching of
obscure languages, is the form taken in western and central Europe by
the problem of race. No movement could be more contrary to the views
or anticipations of the Utilitarians, for whom it would have been
merely a recrudescence of one of those inveterate and unreasoning
prejudices which still retard human progress, a fiction accepted by
indolent thinkers to avoid the trouble of investigating the true