In 1848Mill published his Principles of Political Economy,with some of their Applications to Social Philosophy .This title,though,as we shall see,open to criticism,indicated on the part of the author a less narrow and formal conception of thefield of the science than had been common amongst his predecessors.He aimed,in fact,at producing a work which mightreplace in ordinary use the Wealth of Nations ,which in his opinion was "in many parts obsolete and in all imperfect."AdamSmith had invariably associated the general principles of the subject with their applications,and in treating those applicationshad often appealed to other and far larger considerations than pure political economy affords,And in the same spirit Milldesired,whilst incorporating all the results arrived at in the special science by Smith's successors,to exhibit purely economicphenomena in relation to the most advanced conceptions of his own time on the general philosophy of society,as Smith haddone in reference to the philosophy of the eighteenth century.(54)This design he certainly failed to realise.His book is very far indeed from being a "modern Adam Smith."It is an admirablylucid and even elegant exposition of the Ricardian economics,the Malthusian theory being of course incorporated withthese,but,notwithstanding the introduction of many minor novelties,it is,in its scientific substance,little or nothing more.
When Cliffe Leslie says that Mill so qualified and amended the doctrines of Ricardo that the latter could scarcely haverecognized them,he certainly goes a great deal too far,.Senior really did more in that direction.Mill's effort is usually tovindicate his master where others have censured him,and to palliate his admitted laxities of expression.Already his profoundesteem for Ricardo's services to economics had been manifest in his Essays ,where he says of him,with some injustice toSmith,that,"having a science to create,"he could not "occupy himself with more than the leading principles,.'and adds that"no one who has thoroughly entered into his discoveries "will find any difficulty in working out "even the minutiae of thescience."James Mill,too,had been essentially an expounder of Ricardo;and the son,whilst greatly superior to his father inthe attractiveness of his expository style,is,in regard to his economic doctrine,substantially at the same point of view.It isin their general philosophical conceptions and their views of social aims and ideals that the elder and younger Mill occupyquite different positions in the line of progress.The latter could not,for example,in his adult period have put forward as atheory of government the shallow sophistries which the plain good sense of Macaulay sufficed to expose in the writings ofthe former;and he had a nobleness of feeling which,in relation to the higher social questions,raised him far above theordinary coarse utilitarianism of the Benthamites.
The larger and more philosophic spirit in which Mill dealt with social subjects was undoubtedly in great measure due to theinfluence of Comte,to whom,as Bain justly says,he was under greater obligations than he himself was disposed to admit.
Had he more completely undergone that influence we are sometimes tempted to think he might have wrought the reform ineconomics which still remains to be achieved,emancipating the science from the a priori ;system,and founding a genuinetheory of industrial life on observation in the broadest sense.But probably the time was not ripe for such a construction,andit is possible that Mill's native intellectual defects might have made him unfit for the task,for,as Roscher has said,"einhistorischer Kopf war er nicht."However this might have been,the effects of his early training,in which positive werelargely alloyed with metaphysical elements,sufficed in fact to prevent his attaining a perfectly normal mental attitude.Henever altogether overcame the vicious direction which he had received from the teaching of his father,and the influence ofthe Benthamite group in which he was brought up.Hence it was that,according to the striking expression of Roscher,hiswhole view of life was "zu wenig aus Einem Gusse."The incongruous mixture of the narrow dogmas of his youthful periodwith the larger ideas of a later stage gave a wavering and undeterminate character to his entire philosophy.He is,on everyside,eminently "un-final;"he represents tendencies to new forms of opinion,and opens new vistas in various directions,butfounds scarcely anything,and remains indeed,so far as his own position is concerned,not merely incomplete butincoherent.(55)It is,however,precisely this dubious position which seems to us to give a special interest to his career,byfitting him in a peculiar degree to prepare and facilitate transitions.
