Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 37.djvu/406

 Upon returning to England Mill again, became tutor of the younger children. He began to study for the bar, and read Roman law during the winter with John Austin (1790–1859) [q. v.] He gave up any thoughts of the profession upon being appointed (21 May 1823) to a junior clerkship in the examiner's office of the India House under his father. He had 30l. a year for the first three years, and afterwards 100l. In 1828 he was promoted over the other clerks and made an assistant, with 600l. a year. He rose to be third in the office, upon his father's death in 1836, with 1,200l. a year. In 1854 an addition of 200l. was made to his salary, and on the retirement of his seniors in 1856 he became chief of the office, with 2,000l. a year. His position enabled him to devote much time to study and to the composition of laborious works, and he found few drawbacks, except the exclusion from parliament and the confinement to London. He spent his month's holiday at his father's house in the country, and afterwards in excursions, the earlier of which were made on foot.

While reading with Austin, Mill for the first time studied Bentham's doctrines in Dumont's redaction. Reading the ‘Traité de Législation,’ he says, was a turning-point in his mental history. He afterwards, under the direction of his father, then employed upon his ‘Analysis,’ studied Condillac, Helvetius, Hartley, and the chief English psychologists. He became known to his father's disciples, especially Grote and Charles Austin [q. v.] In the winter of 1822–3 he formed a society, to which he gave the name ‘Utilitarian.’ He says (Autobiography, p. 79) that he found the name in Galt's ‘Annals of the Parish.’ The word had been used by Bentham many years before (, Works, x. 92, 390), but the name came into popular use as designating the party now gathering round the Mills. The society, which read essays and discussed questions, lasted till 1826, and Mill was active in enlisting recruits, although the number of members never reached ten. Charles Austin had introduced some of his college friends to the Mills, and John, during a brief visit to Cambridge in 1822, had made a great impression by his abilities. His father was vainly urged in 1823 to enter him at the university. Mill soon began to write in the papers, his first publication being a letter to the ‘Traveller,’ belonging to Colonel Torrens, in defence of one of his father's economical theories. He contributed soon afterwards a series of letters, signed ‘Wickliffe,’ to the ‘Morning Chronicle,’ denouncing the prosecution of Richard Carlile [q. v.] When the ‘Westminster Review’ was started in April 1824, Mill helped his father in assailing the old Quarterlies, and afterwards wrote frequently until 1828. The most remarkable of these writings was a review of Whately's ‘Logic’ in January 1828, which shows some interesting anticipations of his later theories. During 1825 Mill's chief employment was editing Bentham's ‘Treatise upon Evidence.’ Besides reducing to unity three masses of manuscripts written independently, Mill had to correct the style, fill up gaps, insert some replies to critics of Dumont's earlier abstract of the treatise, and add dissertations upon speculative questions. The labour, he says, took up his leisure for a year, and he had afterwards to see the five large volumes through the press. The book occupies two volumes in Bentham's collected ‘Works,’ and it is not only one of the richest in matter of Bentham's books, but one of the best edited. It would be difficult to mention a youth of twenty who ever completed such a task in the intervals of official work. Mill thinks that his editorial labour had a marked effect in improving his own style. During the next three years he contributed to the ‘Parliamentary History and Review,’ writing articles upon some of the chief political and economical questions of the day. Meanwhile he learnt German, though he never seems to have become a thorough German scholar. He collected ‘about a dozen’ friends, who met at Grote's house in Threadneedle Street on two mornings in the week from half-past eight till ten. They went steadily through various treatises, including Ricardo, Du Trieu's ‘Manuductio ad Logicam,’ Hartley, and Mill's ‘Analysis,’ thoroughly discussing every difficulty raised until each disputant had finally made up his mind. These discussions, which lasted ‘some years,’ made Mill (as he thought) an independent thinker, and were an admirable exercise in thorough analysis of difficulties. Mill's ‘Essays upon Unsettled Questions of Political Economy’ were one result. He wrote them about 1830, but could not obtain a publisher till after the success of his ‘Logic.’ They contain his most original work upon abstract political economy. Among the young men who then cultivated and propagated utilitarian principles, and became afterwards known as the ‘philosophical radicals,’ were Charles Austin, (Lord) Romilly, William Eyton Tooke (son of the economist), William Ellis (1800–1881) [q. v.], George John Graham (afterwards official assignee of the bankruptcy court, who helped Mill in working out his economical doctrines), J. A. Roebuck [q. v.], and Charles Buller [q. v.] Although sympa-