Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-12T21:09:51.601Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

John Stuart Mill on the Uses of Diversity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

Graham Finlay
Graham Finlay
Affiliation:
Trinity College Dublin, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

John Stuart Mill has not been considered, for the most part, a useful contributor to debates about either the ‘situation’ of individuals in social groups or to the resolution of conflicts between diverse social groups. But Mill's attempt to combine the role of the ‘practical reformer’ with the theory of social science requires him to situate the social scientific inquirer in a contingent, historical, and cultural social group and to consider both the prospects and difficulties the diversity of cultural groups presents. By examining the role of ‘circumstances’ and ‘custom’ in Mill's thought, Mill's position on the just treatment of diverse groups emerges. Because of the threat posed to liberty and critical rationality by any dominant group, Mill attempts to develop institutional arrangements that prevent any group becoming dominant and that embody critical rationality. A concrete example of such an institutional arrangement is found, somewhat surprisingly, in Mill's India policy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , July 2002 , pp. 189 - 218
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Mill, John Stuart, Autobiography, in Autobiography and Literary Essays, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1981Google Scholar, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, i. 233.

2 Ibid., p. 255.

3 Ibid., p. 253.

4 Ibid., pp. 269 f.

5 Stephen, Leslie, The English Utilitarians, vol. 3, John Stuart Mill, New York, 1950, p. 151Google Scholar. For the same point from a friendlier direction, see Bain, Alexander, John Stuart Mill: A Criticism: with Personal Recollections, London, 1882, p. 79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 There are, of course, many notable exceptions, some of which include: Robson, John M., The Improvement of Mankind: The Social and Political Thought of John Stuart Mill, Toronto, 1968Google Scholar, Feuer, L. S, ‘John Stuart Mill as Sociologist: The Unwritten Ethology’, James and John Stuart Mill, Papers of the Centenary Conference, ed. Robson, J. M and Laine, Michael, Toronto, 1976Google Scholar, Morales, Maria, Perfect Equality, Lanham, Maryland, 1996Google Scholarand Ashcraft, Richard, ‘Class Conflict and Constitutionalism in J. S. Mill's Thought’, Liberalism and the Moral Life, ed. Rosenblum, Nancy, Cambridge, Mass., 1989Google Scholar. Wilson, Fred, in his contribution on ‘Mill on Psychology and the Moral Sciences’ to The Cambridge Companion to Mill, ed. Skorupski, John, Cambridge, 1998Google Scholar, and, more thoroughly, in his Psychological Analysis and the Philosophy of John Stuart Mill, Toronto, 1990Google Scholar, provides an excellent discussion of how Mill's concern with the social and socialization relates to his understanding of psychological and economic analysis and of the ways in which Mill differs from his associationist and Ricardian forebears. He, like my discussion below, also stresses the importance of Mill's Indian experience and of his changing views about the laws of distribution. Similarly, Fred Berger, in Happiness, Justice and Freedom, Berkeley, 1984Google Scholar, has excellent discussions of Mill's commitment to the social and argues against the claim that Mill was an ‘atomist’. See pp. 44, 181 f. Historians of nineteenth-century political thought have been much more ready to discuss this aspect of Mill's work, especially Collini, Stefan, Winch, Donald, and Burrow, J. W., That Noble Science of Politics, Cambridge, 1983CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Collini, Stefan, Public Moralists, Oxford, 1991Google Scholar, and Burrow, J. W., Whigs and Liberals, Oxford, 1988Google Scholar.

7 Much has been made of Mill's attempt to combine the ‘half-truths’ of the two sides of early nineteenth-century thought, especially in his companion pieces ‘Bentham’ and ‘Coleridge’. Too often, however, the two component parts receive more attention than the combination, the middle way between them. So Mill's relation to the Coleridgeans, for example, is understood in terms of his ‘adoption’ of some of their claims about e.g. the ‘organic’ nature of society rather than the difficulties of integrating these disparate positions into a coherent whole. This problem turns up even in exemplary works, like Fred Wilson's contribution on ‘Psychology and the Moral Sciences’ to The Cambridge Companion to Mill, noted above, and Lynn Zastoupil's discussion of Mill's relation to the Orientalists of the East India Company in John Stuart Mill and India, Stanford, 1994Google Scholar.

8 Letter to Auguste Comte, 8 November 1841, The Earlier Letters of John Stuart Mill, ed. Mineka, Francis E., 2 vols., Toronto, 1963, CW, xiii. 489Google Scholar. The translation is from The Correspondence of John Stuart Mill and Auguste Comte, ed. Haac, Oscar, New Brunswick, 1995, p. 35Google Scholar. The letter reads, in part, ‘…soit surtout par son opposition systématique à toute tentative d'explication de phénomènes quelconques…’ so that ‘systematic opposition’ might be better, as a translation, for present purposes.

9 Auguste Comte and Positivism, Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1969, CW, X. 291Google Scholar.

10 Among other things, Mill criticizes Comte for ignoring and disparaging psychology as a science and as a useful endeavour in the constructing of a positive social science. Iris Mueller provides a good discussion of this in John Stuart Mill and French Thought, Urbana, Illinois, 1956, pp. 107–14Google Scholar, as does Lewisohn, D., in his tremendously helpful ‘Mill and Comte on the Methods of Social Science’, Journal of the History of Ideas, xxxiii (1972)Google Scholar, repr. John Stuart Mill: Critical Assessments, ed. John Cunningham Wood, 4 vols., London, 1991, iv. 271. Mill also has greater confidence than Comte in the usefulness of political economy, although not a particularly different view of its relation to the social science. See Mueller again, p. 118. Nevertheless, Mill is quite explicitly Comtean in his views about the connectedness of all aspects of social life and the primacy of social influences on individuals, even if those influences are exercised through each individual's associations. Mueller points out that Mill's confidence in psychology and aversion to Comte's preference for phrenology, is an expression of Mill's greater faith in the modifiability of human character compared with Comte's insistence on the biological distinctions between man and man and man and woman. She credits Harriet Taylor with keeping the importance of their disagreement with Comte on this subject uppermost in Mill's mind and pointing out its implications for the lot of women and workers. See Mueller, pp. 123 f., where she cites Harriet Taylor's letter of c. 1844. See Hayek, F. A., John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor: Their Friendship and Subsequent Marriage, London, 1969, pp. 114 fGoogle Scholar.

11 Auguste Comte and Positivism, CW, x. 306–8. Mill also adopts this position in A System of Logic, ed. Robson, John M., 2 vols., Toronto, 1973, CW, viii. 924Google Scholar.

12 Auguste Comte and Positivism, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, X. 306.

13 Ibid., pp. 306 f. This Comtean claim that we are the products of all past history remains, through various editions, in the System of Logic; see CW, viii. 911–15.

14 Auguste Comte and Positivism, CW, X. 323. Both Mueller and Gertrud Lenzer, in her excellent introduction to her edition of Comte's writings, note that this emphasis both on the scope of what the social science investigates and the amount which can be done to modify social institutions are strongly related to Mill's concerns for individual liberty in On Liberty and Auguste Comte and Positivism. See , Mueller, p. 119Google Scholar and Auguste Comte and Positivism: The Essential Writings, ed. Lenzer, Gertrud, Chicago, 1975, pp. xxviii–xxxiGoogle Scholar.

15 For Mill's specific construal of the language that is our inheritance as ‘ordinary language’, see A System of Logic, CW, vii. 22 f.

16 Ibid., p. 685. Mill is, in this case, citing Coleridge's claims about language with approval.

17 Ibid., p. 663.

18 Ibid., p. 685. Of course, Coleridge, like Mill, is using ‘culture’ in the sense of ‘cultivation’ or ‘civilization’. Indeed, Raymond Williams is right to see Mill's appropriation of Coleridge as an important moment in the creation of a notion of ‘culture’ in its modern sense in English thought. See Williams, Raymond, Culture and Society, 1780–1950, New York, 1958, p. 49Google Scholar.

19 A System of Logic, CW, vii. 153. Mill is citing his own review of George Comewall Lewis's Remarks on the Use and Abuse of some Political Terms.

20 Ibid., p. 685.

21 Ibid., p. 855n. Another example of the importance Mill attached to philology is his appending of philological notes by Andrew Findlater, editor of Chambers' Cyclopedia, to his father's Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, 2 vols., London, 1869Google Scholar. See, e.g., i. 135.

22 Chapters on Socialism, Essays on Economics and Society, ed Robson, John M., 2 vols., Toronto, 1967, CW, v. 753Google Scholar.

23 A System of Logic, CW, vii. 22.

24 Ibid., p. 795.

25 Ibid., p. 238.

26 Ibid., p. 238. Paul Feyerabend has drawn attention to , Mill's insistence on the importance of knowledge of the entire history of science for scientific investigation in ‘Introduction: Proliferation and Realism as Methodological Principles’, Realism, Rationalism and Scientific Method: Philosophical Papers, 2 vols., Cambridge, 1981, i. 140–3Google Scholar and Against Method, London, 1978, pp. 47 fGoogle Scholar. I am grateful to Brad Wray for drawing my attention to these pages. Needless to say, some of the rest of Feyerabend's interpretation of On Liberty betrays a very hasty reading of the text: given Mill's remarks about the restrictions that can be placed on actions and the kinds of contracts that can be enforced, it is difficult to imagine him defending the liberties of Feyerabend's ‘sub-society’ of people who enjoy hunting and being hunted to the death. See , Feyerabend'sPhilosophical Papers, ii. pp. 68Google Scholarn. E. W. Strong is right in noting that there is considerable irony in Mill's citing this wider knowledge of the history of science against one of his intuitionist opponents, William Whewell, from whose History of the Inductive Sciences he learned much of his history of scientific discovery. Much of Mill's appeal to the importance of historical investigation is using an appeal to the facts of history against his intuitionist and Coleridgean, opponents, rather than merely adopting their views. See Strong's ‘William Whewell and John Stuart Mill: Their Controversy about Scientific Knowledge’, repr. Wood (ed.), i. 182 f.

27 A System of Logic, CW, viii. 753 f.

28 Ibid., pp. 564 f.

29 Ibid., pp. 238 f., 565. Mill sees this same discipline as essential to the precise use of language, see p. 669.

30 Ibid., p. 238.

31 Ibid., p. 643.

32 Ibid., p. 777.

33 Ibid., p. 738.

34 Ibid., p. 790.

35 Ibid., pp. 790 f.

38 Ibid., p. 791.

37 Ibid., p. 777.

38 ‘Inaugural Address at St. Andrews’, Essays on Equality, Law and Education, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1984, CW, xxi. 227Google Scholar.

39 A System of Logic, CW, viii. 910.

40 See, especially, Kymlicka, Will, Multicultural Citizenship, Oxford, 1995, pp. 52 fGoogle Scholar. Perhaps the most significant and seriously considered rejection of Mill's usefulness for problems of social conflict is John Rawls's rejection of Mill's ‘comprehensive liberalism’ in favour of a ‘political liberalism’ in his Political Liberalism, New York, 1993Google Scholar.

41 See Williams, Bernard, ‘A Critique of Utilitarianism’, Smart, J. J. C. and Williams, Bernard, Utilitarianism: For and Against, Cambridge, 1973, pp. 135–40Google Scholar, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, Cambridge, Mass., 1985, pp. 108–10Google Scholar, and ‘The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and the Ambitions of Ethics’, Making Sense of Humanity, Cambridge, 1995, p. 166Google Scholar.

42 Considerations on Representative Government, Essays on Politics and Society, ed Robson, John M., 2 vols., Toronto, 1976, CW, xix. 546Google Scholar.

43 Ibid., pp. 376–9, 394–8, 415–20.

44 On Liberty, CW, xviii. 224.

45 For Mill on Lord Durham and Canada, see the relevant writings in Writings on England, Ireland and the Empire, CW, vol. vi, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1982Google Scholar, and Thomas, William, The Philosophical Radicals, Oxford, 1979, ch. 8Google Scholar.

46 Considerations on Representative Government, CW, xix. 549.

47 See, for example, Berger, Fred R., Happiness, Justice and Freedom, Berkeley, 1984, p. 227Google Scholar.

48 On this, see Thomas, ch. 3 and Zastoupil.

49 Much has been made of the sources of Mill's historical theory: the sense of the importance of tradition and the truth and worth contained in old institutions from Coleridge (classically, by Raymond Williams, Culture and Society 1780–1950), the importance of public opinion and loyalty to political reform, drawn from the Whig tradition (on this see, especially, J. W. Burrow, Whigs and Liberals), and by his India Office experience and the tutelage of Whig orientalists in that office, well-documented by Zastoupil in John Stuart Mill and India.

50 Locke, John, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Nidditch, Peter H., Oxford, 1979, book 2, ch. 33, ‘Of the Association of Ideas’, pp. 394–401Google Scholar.

51 See the Encyclopédie: ‘COUTUME, HABITUDE’.

52 See, especially, Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Selby-Bigge, L. A., Oxford, 1888Google Scholar, book 2, part 3, sect. 5, ‘Of the effects of Custom’, pp. 422–4. Not surprisingly, perhaps, critics of empiricism, like Hamilton and Reid, also stress the exclusively mechanical nature of ‘habit’ but deny that it has any connection with judgement or will. It also comes as no surprise to find Reid arguing that habit, as much as instinct, is an original part of our nature, expressing the mysterious will of the creator, and that Reid also connects custom with superstition, in this case, Roman Catholicism. On this see The Works of Thomas Reid, ed. Hamilton, Sir William, Bristol, 1994, pp. 550Google Scholar f. and p. 175, where ‘custom’ appears as the mere accumulation of experiences.

53 See, e.g., Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, book 3, part 2, sect. 10, ‘Of the Objects of Allegiance’, pp. 555–7. It is, no doubt, Hume's approval of custom's ability to make political institutions appear legitimate to the public and keep them pacified, that contributes to Mill's suspicion of both Hume's political and historical works. Regarding Hume on this aspect of custom, see Burrow, J. W., Whigs and Liberals and Hume, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, Indianapolis, 1987Google Scholar, ‘The Sceptic’, p. 177: ‘Custom deadens the sense both of the good and the ill, and levels every thing’; and ‘Of the Original Contract’, pp. 474 f.

54 I am indebted for this insight to Schneewind, J. B, Sidgwick's Ethics and Victorian Moral Philosophy, Oxford, 1977, p. 124Google Scholar. See William Paley, The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, book 1, ch. 5, cited by Schneewind.

55 See, for example, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, vol. i, ed. Burns, J. H., Hart, H. L. A and Rosen, F., Oxford, 1996Google Scholar (The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham), pp. 58–60 and, regarding religious profession, p. 69.

56 A notable exception is Thompson, William, An Appeal…, ed. Dooley, Dolores, Cork, 1997Google Scholar, where it serves a point that gladdened the Mill, younger: ‘The restraints on adult daughters it is true are not, like those of the mothers, imposed by law, but simply those of education, custom and public opinion, engendering such a moral and physical persecution in case of disobedience as renders the vain permission of law a dead letter,’ p. 87Google Scholar. Although Dooley, Dolores (in Equality and Community, Cork, 1996)Google Scholar shows that Mill knew and respected Thompson's work and that many of Mill's views are anticipated or suggested by Thompson, no reference is made to Thompson in On the Subjection of Women.

57 Mill, James, Analysis, i. 380 fGoogle Scholar.

58 Ibid., i. p. 368.

59 Ibid., John Stuart Mill's editorial comments, i. 407.

60 Ibid., pp. 412 f.

61 Ibid., John Stuart Mill's editorial comments, i. 117–20.

62 Ibid. This ‘problem of attention’ also appears in Mill's economic writings. See ‘On the Definition of Political Economy’, CW, iv. 332.

63 James Mill, Analysis, [John Stuart Mill's] ‘Preface to the Present Edition’, i. xix f.

64 See Mill, James, ‘An Essay on Government’, in Utilitarian Logic and Politics, ed. Lively, J, Rees, J, Oxford, 1978, pp. 93 fGoogle Scholar. and the chapter on ‘Hinduism’ in The History of British India.

66 A System of Logic, CW, viii. 891.

66 Williams, Raymond notes this historical contribution in Culture and Society, pp. 58Google Scholar f. Mill, of course, means by ‘culture’ something closer to our notion of ‘cultivation’, for example, ‘self-culture’. That Mill is engaged in a specifically ‘cultural’ investigation of social life is indicated by what he includes in the object of social investigation: ‘Thus the character of a nation is shown in its acts as a nation; not so much in the acts of its government, for those are much influenced by other causes; but in the current popular maxims, and other marks of the direction of public opinion; in the character of the persons or writings that are held in permanent esteem or admiration; in laws and institutions, so far as they are the work of the nation itself, or are acknowledged and supported by it; and so forth.’ A System of Logic, CW, viii. 867n.

67 See e.g. The Principles of Political Economy, ed. Robson, John M., 2 vols., Toronto, 1974, CW, ii. 200, 239 fGoogle Scholar. and 319–21, where Mill uses the example of British advancement of the zemindars in India as a warning against interventions uninformed by knowledge of local custom. On this, see Jonathan Riley's contribution to Skorupski (ed.).

68 A System of Logic, CW, vii. 85. For ordinary language, see p. 687: ‘The tide of custom first drifts the word on the shore of a particular meaning, then retires and leaves it there.’

69 On Liberty, CW, xviii. 220. For the view that the ‘tyranny of opinion’ is on the increase and possesses its own historical dynamic, see ibid., pp. 227, 269. Mill gives this notion of ‘habit’ and custom an economic interpretation in the Principles of Political Economy, CW, iii. 795: ‘It is the common error of Socialists to overlook the natural indolence of mankind; their tendency to be passive, to be the slaves of habit, to persist indefinitely in a course once chosen. Let them once attain any state of existence which they consider tolerable, and the danger to be apprehended is that they will thenceforth stagnate; will not exert themselves to improve, and by letting their faculties rust, will lose even the energy required to preserve them from deterioration. Competition may not be the best conceivable stimulus, but it is at present a necessary one, and no one can foresee the time when it will not be indispensable to progress.’

70 On Liberty, CW, xviii. 226.

71 The rhetorical strategy of suggesting that terms and claims that seem natural and obvious are actually losing their meaning and being forgotten recurs frequently in Mill's work: see e.g. the opening passages of The Subjection of Women, where ‘liberty’ is again the issue in question and ‘On the Definition of Political Economy’, CW, iv. 337, where Mill claims that economic generalizations are properly understood as mere ‘tendencies’ and again stresses that the economist needs to see cases from others' perspectives if she is to avoid assigning too much confidence to her generalizations.

72 ‘The Negro Question’, CW, xxi. p. 93. There is an important parallel with the oppression of women; see On the Subjection of Women, CW, xxi. 267–70.

73 On Liberty, CW, xviii. 241.

74 ‘They ask themselves, what is suitable to my position? what is usually done by persons of my station and pecuniary circumstances? or (worse still) what is usually done by persons of a station and circumstances superior to mine?’ Ibid., p. 264.

75 Ibid., pp. 284 f., 290.

76 Ibid., pp. 256 f.

77 Ibid., pp. 222, 226.

78 For the former see Considerations on Representative Government, CW, xix. 476, 506 and Principles of Political Economy, CW, iii. 760 and for the description of the actions of ‘a legislature of employers’ as exhibiting the ‘infernal spirit of the slave master’, ibid., p. 929. For the latter see, e.g., On Liberty, CW, xviii. 269.

79 ‘All that has been said of the importance of individuality of character, and diversity in opinions and modes of conduct, involves, as of the same unspeakable importance, diversity of education,’ ibid., pp. 302 f. See also the Principles of Political Economy, CW, iii. 950: ‘It is not endurable that a government should, either de jure or de facto, have a complete control over the education of the people. To possess such a control, and actually exert it, so to be despotic. A government which can mould the opinions and sentiments of the people from their youth upwards, can do with them whatever it pleases.’

80 This recommendation has obvious parallels with Mill's suggestion that competing socialist co-operatives may be the solution to the problems of class power, where ‘class’ is construed in a narrow economic sense. See ‘Chapters on Socialism’, CW, v. 739–48.

81 Considerations on Representative Government, CW, xix. 546 f.

82 Ibid., pp. 549 f.

83 Although I have adopted this term from Richard Rorty's response to Clifford Geertz's criticisms of his pragmatic liberalism, I do not endorse his ‘postmodernist bourgeois liberal’ understanding of it. Indeed, I think that my account of Mill shows the centrality of anthropology of the kind Geertz advocates to Mill's social and political thought. See Clifford Geertz, ‘The Uses of Diversity’, Michigan Quarterly Review, xxv (1986)Google Scholar, and Rorty, Richard, ‘On Ethnocentrism’, Objectivity, Relativism and Truth, Cambridge, 1991, p. 206Google Scholar.

84 Utilitarianism, CW, x. 215 f. claims, Similar appear in ‘On Genius’, CW, i. 333Google Scholar: ‘I have sometimes thought that the conceptive genius is, in certain cases, even a higher faculty than creative. From the data afforded by a person's conversation and life, to frame a connected outline of the inward structure of that person's mind, so as to know and feel what the man is, and how life and world paint themselves to his conceptions; still more to decipher in that same manner the mind of an age or nation, and gain from history or travelling a vivid conception of the mind of a Greek or Roman, a Spanish peasant, an American, or a Hindu, is an effort of genius, superior, I must needs believe, to any which was ever shown in the creation of a fictitious character, inasmuch as the imagination is limited by a particular set of conditions, instead of ranging at pleasure within the bounds of human nature.’

85 Smith, G. W, ‘Social Liberty and Free Agency’, J. S. Mill on Liberty in Focus, ed. Gray, John and Smith, G. W., London, 1991, pp. 254 fGoogle Scholar. See also, Smith, G. W, ‘J. S. Mill on Edger and Réville: An Episode in the Development of Mill's Conception of Freedom’, Journal of the History of Ideas, xli (1980)Google Scholar, repr. Wood (ed.), i.

86 ‘[I]t is a personal injustice to withhold from anyone, unless for the prevention of greater evils, the ordinary privilege of having his voice reckoned in the disposal of affairs in which he has the same interest as other people… There ought to be no pariahs in a full-grown and civilized nation; no persons disqualified, except through their own default.’ Considerations on Representative Government, CW, xix. 469 f.

87 Zastoupil, pp. 42–6.

88 On Liberty, CW, xviii. 240 fh.

89 ‘The East India Company's Charter’, Writings on India, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1990, CW, xxx. 49Google Scholar.

90 Considerations on Representative Government, CW, xix. 568 f.

91 Ibid., pp. 569–71. For bureaucracies (Mill says ‘services’), see p. 576.

92 Ibid., p. 571. ‘Minute on the Black Act’, CW, xxx. 14 f.

93 Considerations on Representative Government, CW, xix. 570.

94 ‘For in the subject community also there are oppressors and oppressed; powerful individuals or classes, and slaves prostrate before them; and it is the former, not the latter, who have the means of access to the English public.’ Ibid., p. 572.

95 Considerations on Representative Government, CW, xix. 447.

96 A System of Logic, CW, viii. 949.

97 Said, Edward W., Culture and Imperialism, New York, 1993, p. 163Google Scholar.

98 Ibid., p. 102.

99 Ibid., pp. 59, 90, 102. The passage runs: ‘These [outlying possessions of ours] are hardly to be looked upon as countries, carrying on an exchange of commodities with other countries, but more properly as outlying agricultural or manufacturing estates belonging to a larger community. Our West Indian colonies, for example, cannot be regarded as countries with a productive capital of their own. If Manchester, instead of being where it is, were on a rock in the North Sea, (its present industry nevertheless continuing,) it would still be but a town in England; it would be merely, as now, a place where England finds it convenient to carry on her cotton manufacture. The West Indies, in like manner, are the place where England finds it convenient to carry on the production of sugar, coffee, and a few other tropical commodities. All the capital employed is English capital; almost all the industry is carried on for English uses; there is little production of anything except for staple commodities, and these are sent to England, not to be exchanged for things exported to the colony and consumed by its inhabitants, but to be sold in England for the benefit of the proprietors there. The trade with the West Indies is hardly to be considered an external trade, but more resembles the traffic between town and country, and is amenable to the principles of the home trade. The rate of profit in the colonies will be regulated by English profits…’. Principles of Political Economy, CW, iii. 693. Said notes that he found this passage quoted in Mintz, Sidney W., Sweetness and Power, New York, 1985, p. 42Google Scholar. I have added the passage on Manchester and the last sentence and a half on ‘home trade’ that Mintz and, as a result, Said omit.

100 Principles of Political Economy, CW, iii. 963.

101 I do not think this claim conflicts with Mintz's correction of , Mill's account in Sweetness and Power, p. 43Google Scholar, where he notes that ‘nearly everything consumed in the West Indian colonies came from England. There were no direct exchanges between the motherland and the colonies, but the patterns of exchange worked to the long term benefit of imperial enterprise’.

102 To choose only one: ‘For nearly two centuries had negroes, many thousands annually, been seized by force or treachery and carried off to the West Indies to be worked to death, literally to death; for it was the received maxim, the acknowledged dictate of good economy, to wear them out quickly and import more. In this fact every other possible cruelty, tyranny, and wanton oppression was by implication included. And the motive on the part of the slave-owners was the love of gold; or, to speak more truly, of vulgar and puerile ostentation. I have yet to learn that anything more detestable than this has been done by human beings towards human beings in any part of the earth.’ ‘The Negro Question’, CW, xxi. 88. Mill compares a strike by black West Indians, which enraged Carlyle, with ‘such as he may read of any day in Manchester’. Ibid., p. 89.

103 See Babha, Homi K., ‘Sly Civility’, The Location of Culture, London, 1994, pp. 93–7Google Scholar.

104 See the very interesting texts Babha provides, in which missionaries describe the Indians' ability to modify or deflect their Christian message by using the resources of their own religious language to frustrate the missionaries' aims. Ibid., pp. 33, 98 f., 101.

105 Then again, perhaps not: ‘Hybridity has no such perspective of depth or truth to provide: it is not a third term that resolves the tension between two cultures, or the two scenes of the book, in a dialectical play of “recognition”.’ ‘Signs Taken For Wonders’, ibid., pp. 113 f.

106 See ibid., pp. 32–5.

107 Wendy Donner has also noted that Mill's theory is not neutral. See The Liberal Self, Ithaca, 1991, pp. 125–31Google Scholar.