Painting by Amedo Modigalini

John Stuart Mill provided a revised, scientific and reformed version of bourgeois ideology. He was born on 20 May 1806, and was the son of the well-known historian, economist, philosopher-thinker James Mill. He was sent to France to study logic, politics and economics. After his return from France, in 1856, he wrote a letter to British Parliament, which created a furor. Mill married Taylor in 1851. In time, she influenced his thoughts to a great extent. Mill was a member of the British Parliament during the years 1865-68. During his tenure, he fiercely, advocated the cause of franchise for women, welfare of the labour class and individual liberty.

In 1822 he entered the East India Company where he remained until retiring in 1858. In his Autobiography (1873), he described his mental agony he passed through-he found his father’s bleakly intellectual “Utilitarianism” emotionally unsatisfying and abandoned it for a more human philosophy-influenced by the Great thinker Coleridge.

In his view the state should make efforts to increase the quantum of an individual’s happiness. Capital is his most well known work. His other important books are: Utilitarianism, Principles of Political Economy. Representative Government, Subjection of Women, A System of Logic and On Liberty. He wrote many essays on women’s right to vote and other social and economic subjects.

Mill was an exponent of competition and freedom. He opined that the poor and unemployed should be legally barred from producing children to control increase in population