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THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS IN JAMES MILL'S POLITICAL THOUGHT*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 September 2016

KRIS GRINT
KRIS GRINT*
Affiliation:
University of St Andrews
*
School of History, University of St Andrews, St Katharine's Lodge, The Scores, St Andrews, ky16 9bakcg4@st-andrews.ac.uk
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Abstract

This article examines the Scottish philosopher and historian James Mill's views on the freedom of the press, predominantly as they are expounded in his unpublished commonplace books, and argues that not only were these ideas very radical, they were critical to Mill's wider political thought and, by extension, to that of the early Philosophic Radicals. By virtue of the use of manuscript material, this article also presents evidence for various intellectual influences upon Mill, and argues that whilst Jeremy Bentham is of central importance to Mill's ideas, he takes inspiration from a wide range of other authors, both modern and ancient, in part as a way of normalizing his views in the context of the reactionary and conservative political climate that he was writing about them in: early nineteenth-century Britain.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 60 , Issue 2 , June 2017 , pp. 363 - 383
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

*

A preliminary version of this article was given as a paper at the 13th Conference of the International Society for Utilitarian Studies (ISUS) at Yokohama National University, Japan, in August 2014. I am grateful to the organizers of that conference for their invitation, and to the participants for their comments, which have greatly improved this article. I am also indebted to this journal's anonymous reviewers who have provided invaluable guidance. Finally, I would like to thank Professor Richard Whatmore for his unfailing encouragement.

References

1 Edmund Burke, Speech respecting the Penal Laws against the Dissenters, 18 Feb. 1773, quoted in James Mill, Commonplace books (CPB) (5 vols., i–iv at London Library, v at British Library of Political and Economic Science, n.d.), ii, fo. 8v.

2 Mill, CPB, i, fo. 105r.

3 See Mill, John Stuart, The collected works of John Stuart Mill, ed. Robson, John M. (33 vols., Toronto, 1963–91)Google Scholar, i.

4 Six of these essays have been collected in Mill, James, Political writings, ed. Ball, Terence (Cambridge, 1992)Google Scholar.

5 Johnston, Kenneth R., Unusual suspects: Pitt's Reign of Alarm and the lost generation of the 1790s (Oxford, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Ibid.; Wickwar, William H., The struggle for the freedom of the press, 1819–1832 (London, 1928)Google Scholar, pp. 20ff.

7 Mill, James, ‘Liberty of the press’, Edinburgh Review, 18 (1811), pp. 98–123 Google Scholar, at pp. 100–1. Mill is referring in this quotation to the prosecution for libel of William Cobbett in 1804.

8 Ibid., p. 100.

9 The history of the law of libel prior to the introduction of Holt's framework can be traced to the legal traditions of the Roman and Byzantine Empires. See Wickwar, The struggle for the freedom of the press, p. 22.

10 Hellmuth, Eckhart, ‘The “palladium of all other English liberties”: reflections on the liberty of the press in England during the 1760s and 1770s’, in idem, The transformation of political culture: England and Germany in the late eighteenth century (Oxford, 1990), p. 485 Google Scholar.

11 Barrell, John, The spirit of despotism: invasions of privacy in the 1790s (Oxford, 2006), p. 2 Google Scholar.

12 Collini, Stefan, Winch, Donald, and Burrow, John, That noble science of politics: a study in nineteenth-century intellectual history (Cambridge, 1983), p. 32 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Mill's admiration for Stewart is apparent in a letter he sent to Macvey Napier cited in Bain, Alexander, James Mill: a biography (London, 1882), p. 16 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Harling, Philip, ‘The law of libel and the limits of repression, 1790–1832’, Historical Journal, 44 (2001), pp. 107–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 107; Barrell, The spirit of despotism, p. 59; Halévy, Élie, The growth of Philosophic Radicalism, trans. Morris, Mary (London, 1934), p. 245 Google Scholar.

14 Epstein, James, Radical expression: political language, ritual, and symbol in England, 1790–1850 (Oxford, 1994), p. 23 Google Scholar; Barrell, The spirit of despotism, pp. 3–4.

15 Harling, ‘The law of libel and the limits of repression, 1790–1832’, p. 108.

16 Mill, CPB, ii, fos. 81v, 83r; Bentham, Jeremy, The elements of the art of packing as applied to special juries: particularly in cases of libel law (London, 1821)Google Scholar.

17 Epstein, Radical expression, p. 40; Wickwar, The struggle for the freedom of the press, p. 20.

18 Lobban, Michael, ‘From seditious libel to unlawful assembly: Peterloo and the changing face of political crime c. 1770–1820’, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 10 (1990), pp. 307–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 327–8.

19 Ibid., p. 329.

20 Harling, ‘The law of libel and the limits of repression, 1790–1832’, pp. 108–9.

21 Mill, CPB, i, fo. 94r.

22 Ibid., fo. 92v.

23 Bentham, Elements of the art of packing, pp. 97–8, 113.

24 Letter to John Bowring from Sir Samuel Romilly quoted by Bain in James Mill, p. 102.

25 See the letter to Bentham from Mill in Conway, Stephen, ed., The correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, viii (Oxford, 1988), pp. 37–9Google Scholar. What appear to be notes for a review by Mill of Elements of the art of packing are found at CPB, ii, fo. 8v, although it is unclear if these form the basis of the piece Mill intended to publish in the Edinburgh Review.

26 Terence Ball, ‘Introduction’, in Mill, Political writings, p. xxxii.

27 Thomas, William, ‘Introduction’, in Mill, James, The history of British India (Chicago, IL, 1975), pp. xxxiv–xxxv Google Scholar.

28 Mill, Collected works, i, p. 46.

29 Bentham let Mill a house, No. 1 Queen Square, near to his own in Westminster at a reduced annual rate. He also invited the Mill family to his country residences at Barrow Green and, later, at Ford (now Forde) Abbey.

30 Epstein, Radical expression, p. 23.

31 This statement rather concords with the sentiment of John Black, editor of the Morning Chronicle, who, on the occasion of Mill's death in 1836, remarked on his eloquence, stating that if Mill's conversation had been ‘reported as uttered, his colloquial observations or arguments would have been perfect compositions’. For the full quotation see Ball, ‘Introduction’, p. xvii.

32 See Mill's comments about the ability of lawyers to freely libel witnesses at CPB, i, fo. 86r.

33 Ibid., II, fo. 4r.

34 Ibid.

35 Mill, CPB, i, fos. 81v, 98v.

36 Ibid., fo. 8v. These passages are found within Mill's review of Bentham's Elements of the art of packing.

37 See Bentham, Jeremy, A comment on the Commentaries and a fragment on government, ed. Burns, J. H. and Hart, H. L. A. (London, 1977)Google Scholar.

38 Mill, CPB, ii, fo. 8v.

39 Ibid., fo. 3r.

40 Ibid., fos. 4r, 8v.

41 Ibid., fo. 8v; Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, ed. Tuck, Richard (Cambridge, 1996), p. 210 Google Scholar.

42 Hobbes, Thomas, De cive, ed. Warrender, Howard (Oxford, 1983), p. 96 Google Scholar. Mill's quotation is in Latin, and cited at CPB, ii, fo. 11r.

43 Mill, CPB, i, fo. 100r.

44 Ibid., ii, fo. 1v.

45 Ibid., i, fo. 16v.

46 Ibid., fo. 98v. At ibid., ii, fo. 8v, Mill wryly noted that when the newspapers published the letters of two government ministers, Lord Castlereagh and George Canning, in which they accused one another of ‘incapacity and unprobity [sic]’, both men were by definition ‘guilty of libels’, as was ‘every one who read them aloud in any body's hearing – or who repeated any of their contents to any body’.

47 Ibid., i, fo. 86r.

48 Ibid., ii, fo. 5r.

49 Ibid., i, fo. 102r.

50 Ibid., fo. 88r. Comparing this quotation concerning the attorney general with the one Mill gives in his 1811 article for the SupEB highlights the difference in language and tone between the published and unpublished instances. In the article, Mill states (with tongue-in-cheek) that ‘Attorney-Generals…in the very act of arraigning some unfortunate man for a libel, never fail to declare themselves friends of the liberty of the press.’ See ‘Liberty of the press’ (1811), p. 109.

51 Mill, ‘Liberty of the press’ (1811), pp. 102ff; Mill, ‘Liberty of the press’, in Mill, Political writings, p. 131.

52 Mill, ‘Liberty of the press’ (1811), pp. 115, 106. In his manuscripts, Mill asks ‘If English legislation merits praise for defining treason – what does it merit for not defining libel?’ See CPB, ii, fo. 6r.

53 Epstein, Radical expression, p. 46.

54 Mill, CPB, ii, fo. 4r.

55 Mill, James, ‘Liberty of the Continental Press’, Edinburgh Review, 25 (1815), pp. 112–34Google Scholar, at fo. 131.

56 Mill, CPB, ii, fo. 9r.

57 Mill, ‘Liberty of the press’ (1811), p. 123.

58 Mill, ‘Liberty of the Continental Press’, p. 133.

59 Mill, ‘Liberty of the press’, in Mill, Political writings, p. 111. My emphasis.

60 Ibid., p. 130.

61 Bentham had referred to the Hogan case, which at one point saw twenty-six separate publishers under prosecution for slandering the British army, as the inspiration for his Elements of the art of packing, pp. 1–2.

62 Clarke, Mary Anne, A letter addressed to the Right Honourable William Fitzgerald (London, 1813)Google Scholar.

63 H. M. Stephens, ‘Fitzgerald, William Vesey-, second Baron Fitzgerald and Veysey, and Baron Fitzgerald (1783?–1843)’, rev. Peter Gray, Oxford dictionary of national biography.

64 Mill, CPB, ii, fo. 6v.

65 Ibid., see also fo. 8v.

66 See for example Bentham's assertion that ‘mis-conceptions and consequent mis-statements on the part of the plaintiff (unblameable as well as blameable) are apt very frequently to arise’, in Jeremy Bentham, Rationale of judicial evidence: specially applied to English practice, ed. John Stuart Mill (5 vols., London, 1827), iv, p. 262, and his comment that when ‘false facts are alledged, the act of him by whom such false allegations are made, not only ought to be regarded as pernicious, but, consistently, as with justice and utility, as punishable: punishable even when, through temerity, advanced without consciousness of the falsity, much more when accompanied with such dishonest consciousness’, in Jeremy Bentham, Book of fallacies, ed. Philip Schofield (Oxford, 2015), p. 105.

67 A. D. E. Lewis, ‘The background to Bentham on evidence’, Utilitas, 2 (1990), pp. 195–219.

68 Philip Schofield, ‘Editorial introduction’, in Bentham, Book of fallacies, p. xix.

69 Mill, CPB, i, fo. 98v.

70 Ibid.; Aristotle, , Art of rhetoric, Loeb Classical Library, trans. Freese, John Henry (Cambridge, MA, 1926), pp. 11–13 Google Scholar.

71 Mill, CPB, i, fo. 16v.

72 Ibid., fo. 6r–v.

73 Ibid., fo. 98v. Jeremy Taylor, A discourse of the liberty of prophesying: shewing the unreasonableness of prescribing to other men's faith; and the iniquity of persecuting differing opinions (London, 1647), p. 168.

74 Mill, CPB, i, fo. 18r.

75 Ibid., fo. 92r.

76 See for example Bentham, Jeremy, Securities against misrule and other constitutional writings for Tripoli and Greece, ed. Schofield, Philip (Oxford, 1990), p. 23 Google Scholar; and idem, Political tactics, ed. James, Michael, Blamires, Cyprian, and Pease-Watkin, Catherine (Oxford, 1999), p. 37 Google Scholar.

77 Mill, CPB, i, fo. 9v.

78 Ibid., fo. 99r.

79 Ibid., fo. 98v.

80 Ibid., ii, fo. 1r. For the report of Burke's speech, see The speeches of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke: in the House of Commons, and in Westminster-Hall (4 vols., London, 1816), iii, p. 503 Google Scholar.

81 Mill, CPB, ii, fo. 8v. Gerald Postema ascribes a similar view to Bentham in ‘The soul of justice: Bentham on publicity, law, and the rule of law’, in Zhai, Xiaobo and Quinn, Michael, eds., Bentham's theory of law and public opinion (Cambridge, 2014), p. 45 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

82 Mill, CPB, i, fo. 6v.

83 Mill, ‘Liberty of the Continental Press’, p. 121.

84 Mill, CPB, i, fo. 5r.

85 Ibid., fo. 101r; Plutarch, Lives, iii: Pericles and Fabius Maximus: Nicias and Crassus, Loeb Classical Library, trans. Perrin, Bernadotte (Cambridge MA, 1916), p. 13 Google Scholar.

86 Mill, CPB, i, fo. 5r.

87 Ibid., fos. 11v–12r; North, Roger, The life of the Right Honourable Francis North, baron of Guilford, lord keeper of the great seal (London, 1808)Google Scholar, pp. 299ff.

88 Mill, CPB, i, fo. 103r.

89 Ibid., fo. 88r.

90 Ibid., fo. 93r–v.

91 Ibid., fo. 102r.

92 Ibid., fo. 13v.

93 Ibid., i, fo. 14v.

94 Mill, ‘Liberty of the press’, in Mill, Political writings, fo. 98.

95 Mill, ‘Liberty of the press’ (1811), p. 117. Mill's words are strikingly similar in sentiment to those of Burke's in Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. Pocock, J. G. A. (Indianapolis, IN, 1987), p. 19 Google Scholar.

96 Mill, CPB, i, fo. 89r.

97 Ibid., fo. 45r.

98 Ibid., fo. 43r.

99 Ibid., ii, fos. 7–8.

100 Ibid., i, fo. 85v.

101 Ibid., ii, fo. 2v.

102 Mill, ‘Liberty of the press’ (1811), p. 119.

103 Mill, CPB, i, fo. 89r–v.

104 Mill, ‘Liberty of the press’ (1811), pp. 117–18.

105 Bentham, Jeremy, On the liberty of the press, and public discussion, and other writings for Spain and Portugal, ed. Schofield, Philip and Pease-Watkin, Catherine (Oxford, 2012), pp. 7–8 Google Scholar.

106 Postema, ‘The soul of justice: Bentham on publicity, law, and the rule of law’, p. 47.

107 See for example CPB, ii, fos. 2vb5, 3rb6, 4rb4, 4v1, 5rb3, 5rb4, 5rb5, 5vb1, 10r2.

108 Blackstone, William, Commentaries on the laws of England (4 vols., Oxford, 1765), iv, p. 153 Google Scholar.

109 Mill, CPB, i, fo. 100v.

110 Ibid., fo. 82r. Mill's emphasis.

111 Ibid., fo. 101v.