It is under these headings and in this order that they will be discussed in this Introduction.relating to non-monetary general economic theory begin with a set of three which may be regarded as exposition on the part of the youthful John Stuart of an outlook which he inherited from his father and Ricardo. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of liberalism, he contributed widely to social theory, political theory, and political economy.
And to those who have read the thorough trouncing from Torrens, evoked by an earlier effort to sustain his father’s preposterous view that differences in the period of investment might all be reduced to labour, the attempt to minimize the differences between this view and Ricardo’s must have interest as almost the one instance in the whole corpus of his writings where Mill was not entirely ingenuous.
For any who are interested in the finer shades of the disputes between Malthus and the Ricardians, this article is required reading.
The other four have hitherto remained in manuscript, because, during the temporary suspension of public interest in the species of discussion to which they belong, there was no inducement to their publication.
They are now published (with a few merely verbal alterations) under the impression, that the controversies excited by Colonel Torrens' Budget have again called the attention of political economists to the discussions of the abstract science: and from the additional consideration, that the first paper relates expressly to the point upon which the question at issue between Colonel Torrens and his antagonists has principally turned.
Indeed, in the first edition of James Mill’s the exposition actually involved a double counting of the gain, only corrected in the third edition after representations by his son and his son’s friend, George Graham.
It was doubtless in the course of attempts to fill this gap that there took place those conversations which, as Mill relates in his eventually resulted in the writing of the essay, “Of the Laws of Interchange Between Nations; and the Distribution of the Gains of Commerce among the Countries of the Commercial World.” This essay is surely one of the most powerful contributions ever made to the evolution of economic analysis. Thus putting a stone on the matter, and burying supply-and-demand theory for another quarter-century. It foreshadows his Political Economy which was the standard Anglo-American Economics textbook of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.ESSAYS ON SOME UNSETTLED QUESTIONS OF POLITICAL ECONOMYby JOHN STUART MILL 1844 PREFACE.Of these Essays, which were written in 18, the fifth alone has been previously printed. Collected Works contains a number of Mill’s essays on economic topics, including the collection Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy. No part of this material may be reproduced in any form or medium without the permission of The University of Toronto Press.Unless otherwise stated in the Copyright Information section above, this material may be used freely for educational and academic purposes. The Collected Edition of the works of John Stuart Mill has been planned and is being directed by an editorial committee appointed from the Faculty of Arts and Science of the University of Toronto, and from the University of Toronto Press.Mill’s economic theory moved from free market capitalism, to government intervention within the precepts of Utilitarianism, and finally to Socialism.which was the standard Anglo-American Economics textbook of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.The primary aim of the edition is to present fully collated texts of those works which exist in a number of versions, both printed and manuscript, and to provide accurate texts of works previously unpublished or which have become relatively inaccessible. They provide important insights into the evolution of the views of their author on economic and social problems; and, since they come from one of the world’s outstanding economists and social philosophers, they still possess great intrinsic interest.John Stuart Mill’s is one of the great synthetic works of classical economics; anything which throws light on its propositions and their development is therefore of considerable historical importance.