IV. James Mill's Politics: The ‘Essay on Government’ and the Movement for Reform

Abstract

The Benthamites or Utilitarians are often held to have been at least partly responsible for the Reform Act of 1832. To historians who make this attribution, Bentham's own writings have not been a help. They are generally too abstract and difficult to have been popular; and where (as in the Parliamentary Reform Catechism) they have an avowed practical purpose, they are at once too detailed and too extreme to be easily related to practical legislation. James Mill, on the other hand, claimed to be disciple of Bentham, held administrative office, and wrote short tracts which are known to have circulated among a whole generation of young liberals in the 1820s.2