John Stuart Mill’s Road to Leviathan II: The Principles of Political Economy

Following the success of the Logic (Mill 1973 [1843]), Mill turned again to political economy. In 1844, he took advantage of the Logic’s success to arrange the publication of his Essays on Some Unsettled Questions in Political Economy (which had been written in 1829 and 1830) (Mill 1967 [1844]). Shortly thereafter, he began work on a project he had earlier conceived, while at work on the Logic, of writing “a special treatise on political economy, analogous to that of Adam Smith” (quoted in Ashley 1929, xvii; see Note 2, Chap. 8, for explanation of subsequent citations of the Principle). This would become the famous Principles, to be published in 1848. In combination with the Logic, the Principles cemented Mill’s reputation as, arguably, the pre-eminent nineteenth-century thinker who wrote in the English language. As Mitchell puts it, the “Logic and the Principles of Political Economy together gave Mill a position in English life and thought such as no economist had enjoyed before him and such as no economist has enjoyed since his day in any country” (Mitchell 1967, 559) – a verdict that, with the possible exception of John Maynard Keynes, stands today.