ABSTRACT
Our concern is John Stuart Mill’s methodological pronouncements, his actual practice and the relationship between them. We believe there to be strong evidence to refute a widespread and tenacious characterisation of Mill as championing and practising excessively a priori procedures. Our starting point is the celebrated declaration regarding verification in the essay ‘On the definition of political economy; and on the method of investigation proper to it’ (1836; hereafter Essay):
By the method à priori we mean…reasoning from an assumed hypothesis; which…is the essence of all science which admits of general reasoning at all. To verify the hypothesis itself à posteriori, that is, to examine whether the facts of any actual case are in accordance with it, is no part of the business of science at all, but of the application of science.
