Another result of the tendency of the large planters to buy out the small, and the competition of negro slave labor with free white labor, is the arrival on the scene of "poor whites," "white trash." Another evil is that there is only one political party. "That variety of interests which springs from the individual impulses of a free population does not here exist."" Furthermore, slavery, as an economic institution, does not pay. It is so inefficient that wherever it is confined within a given territory, it works its own ruin. It can "be profitable for the slave holder only when there is virgin land to cultivate, virgin timber to cut down, or when he can breed slaves to sell to slaveholders in new territories." "The slave system seemed to Mill not only brutal and inhuman, but it afforded him an excellent example of the stagnation which is bound to result where the stimulus of competition is wanting.

From these considerations it may be seen that Mill thought that the value of competition for self-culture is twofold. It provides an incentive for the individual to overcome his own inertia, and it makes possible that variety and diversity without which a full and interesting and worthwhile life is not possible. It is only from the mutual opposition and the interplay of different ways of doing things, different social customs, different points of view on practical matters of every-day life, on economic questions, on government, on philosophy, or on religion, that the best life for the individual and for society can be achieved. But for this sort of competition between different points of view the individual must be free within large limits to conduct his business in his own way, to manage his own property, to express his own opinions, and to live his own life. This brings us to the question of the "Limits of the Province of Govern

“Dissertations and Discussions, Vol. III. p. 275, quoted from Cairnes.

ment" which Mill discusses in the last book of the Political Economy, and opens up the whole matter of the individual and the liberty of the individual in relation to the political state, which is the subject of the next chapter.

Chapter VI.

Individuality and Government.

I.

Macvey Napier, editor of the supplement to the sixth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, for the writer of the articles on Government, Jurisprudence, Liberty of the Press, and some other subjects, selected one "James Mill, Esq., author of the History of British India." In 1828 these articles were reprinted and published in book form. They are written in James Mill's most logical, lucid and condensed style, and give expression to the characteristic theories of the followers of Bentham. Coming from the camp of the enemy, they constituted a challenge that the Edinburgh Review could not resist, and in March, 1829, there appeared in that magazine a criticism of Mill's essay on Government by Thomas Babington Macaulay.

Macaulay directs his attack upon Mill's method:

"It is one of the principal tenets of the Utilitarians that sentiment and eloquence serve only to impede the pursuit of truth. They therefore affect a quakerly plainness, or rather a cynical negligence and impurity, of style. The strongest arguments, when clothed in brilliant language, seem to them so much wordy nonsense. In the mean time they surrender their understandings, with a facility found in no other party, to the meanest and most abject sophism, provided those sophisms come before them disguised with the externals of demonstration. They do not seem to know that logic has its illusions as well as rhetoric,—that a fallacy may lurk in a syllogism as well as in a metaphor.""

In keeping with this tradition, Macaulay says, Mill adopts the a priori method of reasoning. "He is an Aristotelian of the fifteenth century-born out of due season." His assumptions are two. The first is the greatest happiness principlethat the purpose of government is "to increase to the utmost the pleasures, and diminish to the utmost the pains, which men derive from each other." With this Macaulay substantially agrees. The second assumption is the self-interest of every individual. Despotism or monarchy are necessarily bad; despots being men, and men being selfish, despots will necessarily exploit the people. The only good government is a democracy, where the source of authority lies in the people themselves. This, Macaulay points out, simply isn't true. There have been many good despots and many good kings. And there have been many bad democracies.

There are some incidental points of interest which Macaulay makes with regard to James Mill's political theory. He calls attention to the fact that under James Mill's plan not the whole people, but the majority would govern; and if men were actuated by the selfish motives that Mill assumed, there would be nothing to prevent the majority from plundering the minority. This question came to be an important consideration in later years. Again, Macaulay says that to be consistent, Mill should allow not only all the men, but all the women to have votes. He quotes Mill:

"One thing is pretty clear, that all those individuals whose interests are involved in those of other individuals, may be struck off without inconvenience. . . . In this light women may be regarded, the interest of almost all of whom is involved either in that of their fathers, or in that of their husbands.”

What has happened to Mill's self-interest principle?

"Without adducing one fact, without taking the trouble to perplex the question by one sophism, he placidly dogmatizes away the interest of one-half the human race." a

* Macaulay, Works, Vol. L. p. 407.

In view of the younger Mill's later interest in the enfranchisement of women, this has a truly prophetic ring.

A particular point upon which he takes Mill up is his faulty analysis of human nature. Mill says men always act from "self interest." Macaulay points out that this either means “that men, if they can, will do as they choose," which is a truism and doesn't get anywhere, or it means that men act from selfish motives, which is false. "The proposition ceases to be identical; but at the same time, it ceases to be true." The whole argument of Mill's essay is based on a shifting back and forth between these two meanings. It "consists of one simple trick of legerdemain."* Elsewhere Mill admits that men do sometimes act for the good of others, owing to the "pains derived from the unfavorable sentiments of mankind." On this premise, Macaulay works out a very pretty theorem "in the mathematical form in which Mr. Mill delights" proving that no rulers will do anything that will hurt the people, and proclaims his “cupŋka” in Mill's own words: "The chain of inference, in this case, is close and strong to a most unusual degree." Macaulay's conclusion is that "It is utterly impossible to deduce the science of government from the principles of human nature." We cannot say whether the love of approbation is a stronger motive than the love of wealth even in our best friends. The only way progress can be made in the theory of government is to study the effect of particular motives on particular individuals, and adapt the government to the particular situation.

Macaulay, Works, Vol. I. pp. 415-416. 'Macaulay, Werks, Vol. I. p. 397.

* An answer to Macaulay's criticism appeared in an early number of the Westminster Review. Macaulay answered this in the Edinburgh Review of June, 1829. This was followed by another answer in the Westminster and a rejoinder by Macaulay in the October Edinburgh, but the arguments in the later stages of the controversy add little to what