John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

VIEWS ON PROPERTY : MALTHUSIANISM. 89
may have been as useful in Political Economy as in Politics.
He spoke of it to me at the time as a great improvement.
But what I remember most vividly of his talk pending the
publication of the work, was his anticipating a tremendous
outcry about his doctrines on Property. He frequently spoke of
his proposals as to Inheritance and Bequest, which, if carried
out, would pull down all large fortunes in two generations.
To his surprise, however, this part of the book made no sensa
tion at all. I cannot now undertake to assign the reason.
Probably the people thought
it the dream of a future too dis
tant to affect the living ; or else that the views were too wild
and revolutionary to be entertained. One thing strikes me in
the chapter on Property. In 3, he appears
to intimate that
the children even of the wealthy should be thrown upon their
own exertions for the difference between a bare individual
maintenance and what would be requisite to support a family ;
while, in the next section, he contemplates
"
a great multiplica
tion of families in easy circumstances, with the advantage of
leisure, and all the real enjoyments which wealth can give,
first case would be met by from
except those of The ". vanity
two to five hundred a year ; the second supposes from one to
two thousand. The whole speculation seems to me inade
quately worked out. The question of the existence of large
fortunes is necessarily a very complex one ; and I should like
that he had examined it fully, which 1 do not think he ever did.
His views of the elevation of the Working Classes on Malthusian
principles have been much more widely canvassed. But
there is still a veil of ambiguity over his meaning. Malthus
himself, and some of his followers, such as Thomas Chalmers,
regarded late marriages as the proper means of restricting
numbers ; an extension to the lower classes of the same pru
dence that maintains the position of the upper and middle
classes. Mill prescribes a further pitch of self-denial, the con
tinence of married couples. At least, such is the more obvious
interpretation to be put upon his language.
It was the opinion