What he himself thought to be "the chief merit of his treatise "was the marked distinction drawn between the theory ofproduction and that of distribution,the laws of the former being based on unalterable natural facts,whilst the course ofdistribution is modified from time to time by the changing ordinances of society.This distinction,we may remark,must notbe too absolutely stated,for the organization of production changes with social growth,and,as Lauderdale long agoshowed,the nature of the distribution in a community reacts on production.But there is a substantial truth in the distinction,and the recognition of it tends to concentrate attention on the question-How can we improve the existing distribution ofwealth?The study of this problem led Mill,as he advanced in years,further and further in the direction of socialism;and,whilst to the end of his life his book,however otherwise altered,continued to deduce the Ricardian doctrines from theprinciple of enlightened selfishness,he was looking forward to an order of things in which synergy should be founded onsympathy.
The gradual modification of his views in relation to the economic constitution of society is set forth in his Autobiography .Inhis earlier days,he tells us,he "had seen little further than the old school "(note this significant title)"of political economyinto the possibilities of fundamental improvement in social arrangements.Private property,as now understood,andinheritance appeared the dernier mot of legislation."The notion of proceeding to any radical redress of the injustice "involved in the fact that some are born to riches and the vast majority to poverty "he had then reckoned chimerical.Butnow his views were such as would "class him decidedly under the general designation of socialist;"he had been led tobelieve that the whole contemporary framework of economic life was merely temporary and provisional,and that a timewould come when "the division of the produce of labour,instead of depending,as in so great a degree it now does,on theaccident of birth,would be made by concert on an acknowledged principle of justice.""The social problem of the future "heconsidered to be "how to unite the greatest individual liberty of action,"which was often compromised in socialisticschemes,"with a common ownership in the raw material of the globe,and an equal participation in all the benefits ofcombined labour."These ideas,he says,were scarcely indicated in the first edition of the Political Economy ,rather moreclearly and fully in the second,and quite unequivocally in the third,the French Revolution of 1848having made the publicmore open to the reception of novelties in opinion.
Whilst thus looking forward to a new economic order,he yet thinks its advent very remote,and believes that theinducements of private interest will in the meantime be indispensable.(56)On the spiritual side he maintains a similar attitudeof expectancy.He anticipates the ultimate disappearance of theism,and the substitution of a purely human religion,butbelieves that the existing doctrine will long be necessary as a stimulus and a control.He thus saps existing foundationswithout providing anything to take their place,and maintains the necessity of conserving for indefinite periods what he hasradically discredited.Nay,even whilst sowing the seeds of change in the direction of a socialistic organisation of society,hefavours present or proximate arrangements which would urge the industrial,world towards other issues.The system ofpeasant proprietorship of land is distinctly individualistic in its whole tendency,.yet he extravagantly praises it in the earlierpart of his book,only receding from that laudation when he comes to the chapter on the future of the labouring classes.Andthe system of so-called co-operation in production which he so warmly commended in the later editions of his work,and ledsome of his followers to preach as the one thing needful,would inevitably strengthen the principle of personal property,and,whilst professing at most to substitute the competition of associations for that of individuals,would by no means exclude thelatter.
The elevation of the working classes he bound up too exclusively with the Malthusian ethics,on which he laid quite anextravagant stress,though,as Bain has observed,it is not easy to make out his exact views,any more than his father's,onthis subject.We have no reason to think that he ever changed his opinion as to the necessity of a restriction on population;yet that element seems foreign to the socialistic idea to which he increasingly leaned.It ij at least difficult to see how,apartfrom individual responsibility for the support of a family,what Malthus called moral restraint could be adequately enforced.
This difficulty is indeed the fatal flaw which,in Malthus's own opinion,vitiated the scheme of Godwin.
Mill's openness to new ideas and his enthusiasm for improvement cannot be too much admired.But there appears to havebeen combined with these fine traits in his mental constitution a certain want of practical sense,a failure to recognize andacquiesce in the necessary conditions of human life,and a craving for "better bread than can be made of wheat."Heentertained strangely exaggerated,or rather perverted,notions of the "subjection",the capacities,and the rights of women.
