Mill, JAMES, was the son of a shoemaker, and was born in Logie-Pert parish, near Montrose, Scotland, 6th April 1773. He studied, with a view to the church, at the university of Edinburgh, where he distinguished himself in Greek and in Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy. He was licensed to preach in 1798; but instead of following out the ministry, he went to London in 1802, where he settled as a literary man. He became editor of the Literary Journal, which after a time was discontinued; and wrote for various periodicals, including the Eclectic and the Edinburgh Review. In 1806 he commenced his History of British India, which he carried on along with other literary work, and published in the winter of 1817-18. The impression produced by this masterly history on the Indian authorities was such, that, in 1819, the Court of Directors of the Company appointed him to the high post of Assistant-examiner of Indian Correspondence, notwithstanding the then unpopularity of his well-known radical opinions. The business assigned to his care was the revenue department, which he continued to superintend till four years before his death, when he was appointed head of the examiner's office, where he had the control of all the departments of Indian administration—political, judicial, and financial—managed by the Secret Committee of the Court of Directors. Shortly after his appointment to the India House, he contributed the articles on Government, Education, Jurisprudence, Law of Nations, Liberty of the Press, Colonies, and Prison Discipline to the Encyclopædia Britannica. These essays were reprinted in a separate form, and became widely known. The powers of analysis, of clear statement, and of the thorough-going application of principles, exhibited in these articles, had probably never before been brought to bear on that class of subjects. In 1821-22 he published his Elements of Political Economy, a work prepared primarily with a view to the education of his eldest son, John Stuart Mill. In 1829 his Analysis of the Human Mind appeared. His last published book was the Fragment on Mackintosh, brought out in 1835. He was also a contributor to the Westminster Review and to the London Review, which merged in the London and Westminster.
Not long after he settled in London, he made the acquaintance of Jeremy Bentham, and for a number of years lived during the summer in Bentham's country-house. Although he must have derived much benefit from his intercourse with the great law-reformer, he was not a mere disciple of Bentham, but a man of profound and original thought, as well as of great reading, in all the departments of moral, mental, and political philosophy. His conversation was impressive to a remarkable degree, and he gave a powerful intellectual stimulus to a number of young men, some of whom (including his own son, and Grote, the historian of Greece) have since risen to eminence. He took a leading part in the founding of University College, London. He died at Kensington, 23d June 1836.
See the Autobiography of J. S. Mill; and Professor Bain's James Mill (1882).