John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

APPENDIX.
J. E, Cairnes on MilFs Political Lconomy.
As I have been able to say very little on Mill as a Political Economist,
I am happy in being able to quote the estimate formed of him in this capa
city by his friend, Cairnes. It was one of a series of notices of Mill s labours
published in the Examiner after his death.
The task of fairly estimating the value of Mr. Mill s achievements in
Political Economy and, indeed, the same remark applies to what he has
done in every department of philosophy is rendered particularly difficult by
a circumstance which constitutes their principal merit. The character of his
intellectual, no less than of his moral nature, led him to strive to connect
his thoughts, whatever was the branch of knowledge at which he laboured,
with the previously existing body of speculation, to fit them into the same
framework, and exhibit them as parts of the same scheme ; so that it might
be truly said of him that he was at more pains to conceal the originality
and independent value of his contributions to the stock of knowledge than
most writers are to set forth those qualities
in their compositions. As a
consequence of this, hasty readers of his works, while recognizing the com
prehensiveness of his mind, have sometimes denied its originality ; and in
political economy in particular he has been frequently represen;ed as little
more than an expositor and populariser
of Ricardo. It cannot be denied
that there is a show of truth in this representation ;
about as much as there
would be in asserting that Laplace and Herschell were the expositors and
popularizers of Newton, or that Faraday performed a like office for Sir
Humphrey Davy. In truth, this is an incident of all progressive
science.
The cultivators in each age may, in a sense, be said to be the interpreters
and popularizers of those who have preceded them ; and it is in this sense,
and in this sense only, that this part can be attributed to Mill. In this
respect he is to be strongly contrasted with the great majority of writers on
political economy, who, on the strength, perhaps, of a verbal correction,
or an unimportant qualification,
of a received doctrine, if not on the score
of a pure fallacy, would fain persuade us that they have achieved a revolu
tion in economic doctrine, and that the entire science must be rebuilt from