a sum of L160,000 was raised, and the
university started in Gower Street in 1828. Among the first body of
professors were John Austin and M'Culloch, both of them sound
Utilitarians. The old difficulty, however, made itself felt. In order
to secure the unsectarian character of the university, religious
teaching was omitted. The college was accused of infidelity. King's
College was started in opposition; and violent antipathies were
aroused. A special controversy raged within the council itself. Two
philosophical chairs were to be founded; and philosophy cannot be kept
clear of religion. After long discussions, one chair was filled by the
appointment of the Reverend John Hoppus, an independent minister.
Grote, declaring that no man, pledged by his position to the support
of any tenets, should be appointed, resigned his place on the
council.[28] The university in 1836 became a college combined with its
rival King's College under the newly formed examining body called the
University of London. It has, I suppose, been of service to education,
and may be regarded as the one practical achievement of the
Utilitarians in that direction, so far as its foundation was due to
them. It must, however, be admitted that the actual body still falls
very far short of the ideal present to the minds of its founders.

From 1822 James Mill spent his vacations at Dorking, and afterwards at
Mickleham. He had devoted them to a task which was necessary to fill a
gap in the Utilitarian scheme. Hitherto the school had assumed, rather
than attempted to establish, a philosophical basis of its teaching.
Bentham's fragmentary writings about the Chrestomathic school supplied
all that could by courtesy be called a philosophy. Mill, however, had
been from the first interested in philosophical questions. His reading
was not wide; he knew something of the doctrines taught by Stewart and
Stewart's successor, Brown. He had been especially impressed by
Hobbes, to some degree by Locke and Hume, but above all by Hartley. He
knew something, too, of Condillac and the French Ideologists. Of
recent German speculation he was probably quite ignorant. I find
indeed that Place had called his attention to the account of Kant,
published by Wirgman in the _Encyclopaedia Londinensis_ 1817. Mill
about the same time tells Place that he has begun to read _The Critic
of Pure Reason_. 'I see clearly enough,' he says, 'what poor Kant
would be about, but it would require some tim