James Mill (1773–1836) has been described as “a Scots-born political philosopher, historian, psychologist, educational theorist, economist, and legal, political and penal reformer.” Having noted that, he is likely to be most remembered for being the father of the more famous philosopher, John Stuart Mill. Discussing James Mill in 1989, Murray Rothbard commented:
James Mill paved the way for [a] organised campaign of disinformation by writing in justification of lying for a worthy end. While truth was important, Mill conceded, there are special circumstances “in which another man is not entitled to the truth.” Men, he wrote, should not be told the truth “when they would make a bad use of it.” Ever the utilitarian! Of course, as usual, it was the Utilitarian who was to decide on the goodness or badness of the other man’s expected use of the knowledge.
Applying his doctrine to politics, Mill escalated his defence of lying. In politics, he asserted that deliberately disseminating “wrong information” is “not a breach of morality, but on the contrary a meritorious act … when it is conducive to the prevention of misrule. In no instance is any man less entitled to right information, than when he would employ it for the perpetuation of misrule.”
The particular campaign of misinformation that Rothbard referred to was that designed to get the Reform Bill through parliament. He notes that James Mill and “Philosophic Radicals” who gathered around him wanted to ensure that the Bill was driven through. Rothbard comments:
[Mill’s] strategy was to play on the fears of the timorous and centrist Whig government, by spreading the myth that the masses were ready to erupt in violent revolution if the bill were not passed…. Mill and the Radicals knew full well that no such revolution was in the offing; but Mill, through friends and allies placed strategically in the press, was able to orchestrate a deliberate campaign of deception that fooled and panicked the Whigs into passing the bill.
I have gone down the dusty vaults, brushed away the cobwebs, and located an article from The Spectator that Mill might have influenced. It is from that article from which I extract below:
Facts and Inferences
The Spectator, October 15, 1831, pp.1,001-1,002.A week has elapsed since the Reform Bill was thrown out and yet Parliament is not prorogued….
Meanwhile, patience, good people – PATIENCE is the word. How old is patience? How long is it necessary to wait in order to be called patient. Waiting for Reform began during the American War – when will it end? Our fathers were patient – we have been patient – are our children also to be patient and long suffering? When is Impatience to begin?
This journal circulates only among persons of property and education, the friends of peace, order, and good government. They will understand that by “impatience” we mean not any overt act, and much less such acts of violence as have been committed during the last week by a rabble of thieves at Derby and Nottingham as well as in London. We mean impatience strictly according to law…. remonstrate against the pursuit of a course which promises to involve the whole country in confusion and misery….
[If] stagnation continue[s] much longer, does anyone doubt that great numbers of the working-classes will be without employment and without bread?…. What is likely to happen in case large masses of the manufacturing work people should be thrown out of employment, we laid before the Lords, by way of warning, a fortnight ago. In common with many who have the best means of ascertaining the feelings of the agricultural labourers, we believe, and have often before expressed the belief, that the Swing fires were stopped by the Reform Bill. Those very worst acts of outrage were renewed when, in consequence of the slow progress of the Bill in the Commons’ Committee, people began to doubt whether it would ever be passed at all: and yet it is proposed to postpone the whole question of Reform until the nights of 1831 shall have passed away!
Against a course of proceeding so pregnant with danger and troubles, the middle classes will, we trust, protest, if there be yet time….
Assuming Rothbard is accurate in his comments about James Mill, my question is do readers of this blog believe that there are times when it is correct for politicians to lie, or do they tend to agree with Immanuel Kant that lying is always wrong?
