One of the early English admirers of Alexis de Tocqueville was John Stuart Mill who immediately recognized the first volume of Democracy in America as ‘‘an excellent book, uniting considerable graphic power with the capacity of gen- eralizing on the history of society.’’1 After the publication of Tocqueville’s second volume, Mill thought rather differently that the work was ‘‘really abstruse, by being so abstract and not sufficiently illustrating his propositions,’’ thus making it difficult to review.2Nevertheless, Mill, in two, long admiring reviews, complimented Tocqueville on a great achievement that, he wrote, changed the face of political philosophy and the discussion on the tendencies of modern society.3Like his French friend, John Stuart Mill was another public intellectual, forwarding ideas to influence politics and culture. In his discussion of Tocqueville, Mill concluded that the Frenchman’s definition of democracy was not a particular form of government but equality of conditions, the absence of all aristocracy, whether constituted by political privilege or by superiority in individual importance and social power.4More pointedly, in his May11, 1840, letter, Mill praised one of Tocqueville’s ‘‘great, general conclusions,’’ that the real danger in democracy, the real evil to be struggled against, was not anarchy or love of change but ‘‘Chinese stagnation’’ and immobility.
John Stuart Mill in a number of his writings was to draw a similar con- clusion on the issue of stagnation. He also took a similar position to that of Tocqueville about the possible tyranny of public opinion or collective medi- ocrity in democratic societies. However, in correspondence with Tocqueville between1840 and 1842, Mill disagreed with him on a major issue, expressing his distaste for the Frenchman’s emphasis on ‘‘orgeuil national’’ (national pride) and his concern that ‘‘the only appeal which really goes to the heart of France is one of defiance of foreigners.’’5Instead, Mill stated, Tocqueville and
other French noble spirits should teach their countrymen ‘‘better ideas of what constitutes national glory and national importance’’: industry, instruction, morality, and good government. Later, in defending British policy, John Stuart Mill was to write that not only did Britain desire no benefit to itself at the expense of others, but also that it desired none in which all others did not freely participate.
Mill’s critical remark about Tocqueville’s nationalism virtually ended the correspondence between the two, apart from a final exchange of letters in1856 and1859. The ultimate irony in this first friendly and then uneasy relationship between the two thinkers was that John Stuart Mill’s praise of the British role in India, if equivocal at times, was not too dissimilar from Tocqueville’s appro- val of France’s civilizing mission in Algeria, despite Mill’s disagreement with Tocqueville’s argument for colonization.
John Stuart Mill’s father, James Mill, in an article of1813, had anticipated his son’s critique of Tocqueville.6He warned against the use of concepts such as national pride, glory, honor, and power. They were useful only for those whose interest was to keep nations involved in the expense of war. Glory, the most frequently used term, signified the exhibition or exercise of power over others, actions that were harmful to the mass of people in the nation. Instead of terms such as glory and honor, James Mill suggested utility and justice. On the question of conflict he suggested applying to it what he considered the principle of utility, ‘‘consider whether the evil which you have suffered is likely to be compensated by war.’’ The calculus of relative ills or gains would be the rule to apply in determining whether or not to institute hostilities when a nation has suffered, or believed it has suffered, injury.
Just as Tocqueville’s views on Algeria are much less familiar in general than his works on America and France, the writings of John Stuart Mill on Indian affairs have been given scant attention, even by his biographers, compared to the large output of commentary on his political, philosophical, and economic works, now collected in thirty-three volumes. Yet both John Stuart Mill and his father James spent a considerable part of their life dealing with India, and both were employees of the Company for long periods.
James Mill spent the last seventeen years of his life, and J. S. Mill the whole of his official working life, as officials of the Company. As described inChapter 5, the Company was chartered in1600 by Queen Elizabeth I. It started as a trading company that made calls at Indian ports, buying Indian cotton textiles. Then increasingly, it established coastal settlements. By the latter part of the eighteenth century it had gained various forms of control over large parts of India becoming the paramount power, though not the direct ruler because the rulers of the Native States, with whom the Company made alliances, had
varying degrees of autonomy. An unusual dual arrangement for governing the country developed with the Company, a private company, administering territory and exercising political power. It conducted affairs in India on behalf of the British government, which exercised supervision through a Board of Control.
Because the Company needed protection in India it was given some power of government and was able to raise a military force. With the decline of Mughal power in the mid-eighteenth century, the Company increasingly intervened to establish stability. The Board of Control was created by Pitt’s India Act of1784 to regulate the activities of the Company.7Essentially, the directors sent pro- posals to the president of the Board of Control, usually a member of the British cabinet, who could reject or rewrite them, and sometimes lay down policy. The British government appointed the governor-general, based in Calcutta, and the governors of Bombay and Madras. The directors made other appointments. John Stuart Mill referred to the Company as the branch of government of India under the Crown.8
This unusual arrangement of a private company exercising political power had become increasingly important after the Company took over most of the administration in Bengal with Robert Clive’s conquest of the area for it in 1757. The Nawab of Bengal remained, for a time, the nominal ruler, with the Company being the tutelary ruler, its officials and military force adminis- tering justice and supervising collection of taxes. In 1765 the nawab was deposed and the Company took over direct administration. Following that, the Company entered into treaties of subsidiary alliance with some of the Indian rulers and in the1790s annexed other territories.