Item 254 - William Whewell to Richard Jones

Trinity Lodge - RJ will of course soon look at Mill's book on Political Economy: 'It is full of interesting discussions of all the great social and economical questions of the day, and there are arguments and views extremely well put throughout. Nor have I found anything which I quarrel with...except the injustice towards you of which I think he is guilty'. WW thinks Mill has down-played RJ's work and failed to recognise that the peculiar and distinctive character of RJ's book ['An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth and on the Sources of Taxation', 1831]: 'I do not see how Mill can be either ignorant of the novelty or the value of your classification of cultivation for he makes it the basis of his own speculations', although he 'spoils the classification' by lumping together Cottiers and Ryots. Mill 'must have known that the idea of making such a classification, and, what is a great deal more, the making it the basis of principles which regulate the distribution of wealth and the progress of society, is entirely yours'. WW thinks Mill has RJ in mind 'where he holds that the international produce of land marginally decreases with the expansion of agriculture'. WW wants to know how we can say 'that the produce of land increases universally in a diminishing ratio, when we have to allow that there is a principle which we call the progress of civilisation'.