ABSTRACT
This slight sketch of Mill's mental history will be of service when we try to trace the effect of his philosophy on his political economy and of the latter on the former. His aim in writing the Pol£t£cal Economy was (as he tells us in his Preface) to produce a work after the model of the Wealth of Natz"ons. The distinctive feature of Adam Smith's work was (he thinks) that it invariably considered principles in close conjunction with their applications.2 Now for practical purposes political economy is "inseparably intertwined with many other branches of social philosophy," and there are perhaps no economical questions which can be decided on purely economical premises. Adam Smith himself never forgot this, but since his time no attempt (Mill says) has been made to write on economical matters as he wrote on them, and to apply the wider knowledge of social philosophy that has been· gained since his time. There has been no attempt, in short, " to exhibit the economical phenomena of society in the relation in which they stand to the best social ideas of the present time, as he did, with such admirable success, in reference to the philosophy of his century " (Preface to rst edition of Polz"tz"cal Economy, r848).
