s _Analysis_, 287

III. James Mill's Ethics, 312

CHAPTER VIII

RELIGION

I. Philip Beauchamp, 338

II. Contemporary Thought, 361

CHAPTER I

JAMES MILL

I. EARLY LIFE

Bentham's mantle fell upon James Mill.[1] Mill expounded in the
tersest form the doctrines which in Bentham's hands spread into
endless ramifications and lost themselves in minute details. Mill
became the leader of Bentham's bodyguard; or, rather, the mediator
between the prophet in his 'hermitage' and the missionaries who were
actively engaged on the hustings and in committee-rooms. The special
characteristics of English Utilitarianism in the period of its
greatest activity were thus more affected by Mill than by any other
leader of opinion.

James Mill was one of the countless Scots who, having been trained at
home in strict frugality and stern Puritanic principles, have fought
their way to success in England. He was born 6th April 1773 in the
parish of Logie Pert, Forfarshire. His father, also named James Mill,
was a village shoemaker, employing two or three journeymen when at
the height of his prosperity. His mother, Isabel Fenton, daughter of a
farmer, had been a servant in Edinburgh. Her family had some claims to
superior gentility; she was fastidious, delicate in frame, and accused
of pride by her neighbours. She resolved to bring up James, her eldest
son, to be a gentleman, which practically meant to be a minister. He
probably showed early promise of intellectual superiority. He received
the usual training at the parish school, and was then sent to the
Montrose Academy, where he was the school-fellow and friend of a
younger lad, Joseph Hume (1777-1855), afterwards his political ally.
He boarded with a Montrose shopkeeper for 2s. 6d. a week, and remained
at the Academy till he was seventeen. He was never put to work in his
father's shop, and devoted himself entirely to study. The usual age
for beginning to attend a Scottish university was thirteen or
fourteen; and it would have been the normal course for a lad in Mill's
position to be sent at that age to Aberdeen. Mill's education was
prolonged by a connection which was of great service to him. Sir John
Stuart (previously Belches), of Fettercairn House, in Mill's
neighbourhood, had married Lady Jane Leslie, and was by her father of
an only child, Wilhelmina. Lady Jane was given to charity, and had set
up a fund to educat