Selected economic writings/by James Mill;edited by Donalad Winch
- Edinburgh Oliver & Boyd Pub. 1966
- 452 p.
James Mill was the consummate utilitarian propagandist and theorist: his numerous in tellectual interests and practical pursuits shatter the neat boundaries of modern specialist scholarship."-Thus the editor of this volume sums up James Mill.
Mill's many sided genius was primarily a product of the age in which he lived. The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw a remarkable flowering of intellectual genius in Scotland in all the arts and sciences, which gave the country a leading place in the broad European movement known as the Enlightenment, Mill being in fact only one of the many brilliant men Scotland produced at this time.
This book is concerned with only one aspect of his life and thought-his economic writings. The texts reprinted here cover his development as an economist and are an attempt to assess his contribution to classical political economy. Particular attention is paid to the formative but less well-known pre Benthamite period of his life. The extracts are divided into four groups as follows: Early Economic Writings: James Mill and David Ricardo: James Mill on Scope and Method: and James Mill and India. The book includes a biographical sketch and a full intro duction to each of the works reprinted.