JOHN STUART MILL. 



ing but enemies in powerful quar- 

 ters, and especially in the East India 

 Company, " to whose commercial 

 privileges he was unqualifiedly hos- 

 tile, and on the acts of whose 

 government he had made so many 

 severe comments," but bearing testi- 

 mony to (what could not be denied) 

 its " good intentions towards its sub- 

 jects," his father yet made a rush 

 to the Company, on hearing that it 

 wanted clerks, with an offer of his 

 services, which were accepted. He 

 became one of its most devoted 

 servants, and, in his hard struggle 

 for existence, had bread provided, 

 and a nest feathered, for himself, 

 and his son after him. The Com- 

 pany had evidently sense enough to 

 receive the smart adventurer as a 

 satellite, rather than allow him to 

 become a thorn in its side, by at- 

 tacking it through the press of the 

 country. Both father and son were 

 the strongest defenders, as well as 

 the servants and advisers, of a cor- 

 poration of merchants which exer- 

 cised a rule the most absolute that 

 perhaps ever existed, over a vast 

 territory and population that had no 

 voice in its government, in the face 

 of the published writings of both on 

 the rights of man, and of their indi- 

 viduality in the choice of legislators. 

 Well might a writer in the Edin- 

 burgh Review, for January, say : 



" Had Mill not been a servant of the 

 East India Company it is impossible to 

 doubt that he would have denounced it 

 as one of the most odious of monopo- 

 lies and close corporations, which held 

 in subjection and bondage tens of mil- 

 lions of the human race." 



And what Blackwood 1 s Magazine, 

 for the same month, says, is equally 

 to the point : 



" Mill never, during his whole thirty- 

 five years [service with the Company], 

 opened his mouth against it, [but main- 

 tained to the last] that any change from 

 such a system ' would necessarily be a 

 change for the worse.' " 



And Mill says of himself: 



" I was the chief manager of the re- 



sistance which the Company made to 

 their own political extinction ; and to 

 the letters and petitions I wrote for 

 them, and the concluding chapter of 

 my treatise on Representative Govern- 

 ment [everywhere but in India], I must 

 refer for my opinions on the folly and 

 mischief of this ill-considered change " 

 (p. 249). 



A man like James Mill was sure 

 to impress on his son the same ret- 

 icence in regard to religion that he 

 exercised himself, and with the fol- 

 lowing result : 



"This point in my early education 

 had, however, incidentally one bad con- 

 sequence deserving- notice. In giving 

 me an opinion contrary to that of the 

 world, my father thought it necessary 

 to give it as one which could not pru- 

 dently be avowed to the world. This 

 lesson of keeping my thoughts to my- 

 self, at that early age, was attended 

 with some moral disadvantages ; though 

 my limited intercourse with strangers, 

 especially such as were likely to speak 

 to me on religion, prevented me from 

 being placed in the alternative of avowal 

 or hypocrisy. I remember two occa- 

 sions in my boyhood on which I felt 

 myself in this alternative, and in both 

 cases I avowed my disbelief and de- 

 fended it. My opponents were boys, 

 considerably older than myself: one of 

 them I certainly staggered at the time, 

 but the subject was never renewed be- 

 tween us : the other, who was surprised 

 and somewhat shocked, did his best to 

 convince me for some time, without 

 effect" (p. 44). 



He seems to have been proud of 

 his atheism, as if it had been that 

 of an aristocratic distinction, for 

 thus he writes : 



" I am thus one of the very few ex- 

 amples in this country of one who has 

 not thrown off religious belief, but 

 never had it : I grew up in a negative 

 state with regard to it. I looked upon the 

 modern exactly as I did upon the an- 

 cient religion, as something which in no 

 way concerned me. It did not seem to 

 me more strange that English people 

 should believe what I did not, than that 

 the men I read of in Herodotus should 

 have done so " (p 43). 



He had already said, as we have 



