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Utility, Reason and Rhetoric: James Mill's Metaphor of the Historian as Judge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2019

Antis Loizides Open the ORCID record for Antis Loizides [Opens in a new window]
Antis Loizides*
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University of Cyprus
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Abstract

James Mill's History of British India (1817) made a rather strange claim: first-hand experience of India was not vital in writing a history – potentially, it led to false ideas about its subject-matter: eyewitnesses are susceptible to bias. The historian was thus to perform his task as a judge: sifting through various testimonies to obtain a ‘more perfect’ conception of the whole than those who witnessed its various parts. Although strange, Mill's claim does not bewilder his readers: after all, Mill was a ‘militant’ exponent of theorizing utilitarianism. I argue that such a reading of Mill's method is injudiciously restrictive. Not only did Mill draw on well-known methodological concerns in contemporary historiographical practice, not necessarily linked with Jeremy Bentham or the Scottish theoretical historiography, but he also seemed to adopt the vocabulary of forensic rhetoric, making his claim that his was a ‘judging’ history more literal than it has been supposed.

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Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , December 2019 , pp. 431 - 449
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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References

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2 J. Mill to D. Ricardo, 19 Oct. 1817, in Ricardo, D., Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, ed. Sraffa, P., 11 vols. (Indianapolis, 2004 [or. edn. 1951–77]), vol. 7, pp. 195–6Google Scholar.

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57 HBI 2.72.

58 HBI 2.144.

59 HBI 2.72.

60 Contra Knowles, ‘Conjecturing Rudeness’, p. 38.

61 See further, Barrell, History and Historiography, ch. 2.

62 CPB 2.96v. In his manuscript notes on speculation and practice, fallacies and popular errors, Mill drew specifically from Bacon's idols of the theatre (CPB 1.106v and 3.96r; see also, CPB 1.48r, 2.58vb9). See e.g. Bacon, F., New Organon, ed. Jardine, L. and Silverthorne, M. (Cambridge, 2000), p. 49 (aphor. 61)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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64 Bacon, New Organon, p. 41 (aphor. 41).

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70 HBI 1.vi.

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79 CPB 2.80v. In a late eighteenth-century translation, Horace's Ars Poetica 179–82 reads (in italics the part that corresponds to Mill's note): ‘The Business of the Drama must appear | In Action or Description. What we hear, | With weaker Passion will affect the Heart | Than when the faithful Eye beholds the Part’. Francis, P., The Epistles and Art of Poetry of Horace: Volume IV, 9th edn. (London, 1791), p. 235Google Scholar.

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87 CPB 5.102r–3r.

88 Quintilian, Institutionis Oratoriae (Inst. Or.), book VI 1, 11 (CPB 5.102r).

89 CPB 5.103r. The orator ought to attempt to capture the attention of the judge (attentum), to render the judge's will ready to accept instruction (docilem), and to win the judge's favour (benevolum). The second Latin text is preceded by Mill's translation.

90 Quintilian, Inst. Or. VI 1, 11 (CPB 5.102r).

91 Quintilian, Institutes of Eloquence, Or, The Art of Speaking in Public, 2 vols., trans. W. Guthrie (London, 1805), vol. 2, p. 107.

92 Inst. Or. IV 2, 63–4. Translation is Guthrie's (vol. 1, p. 234). See further, Scholz, B. F., ‘Ekphrasis and Enargeia in Quintilian's Institutionis Oratoriae libri XII’, Rhetorica Movet: Studies in Historical and Modern Rhetoric in Honour of Heinrich Franz Plett, edited by Oesterreich, P. L. and Sloane, T. O. (Leiden, 1999), pp. 3–24Google Scholar; O'Connell, P. A., ‘Enargeia, Persuasion, and the Vividness Effect in Athenian Forensic Oratory’, Advances in the History of Rhetoric 20.3 (2017), pp. 225–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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94 CPB 3.110r. See also, CPB 1.15r and 5.4r–6r.

95 See Loizides, James Mill, ch. 2.

96 CPB 1.4r–4v.

97 Kjeldsen, J. E., ‘Talking to the Eye: Visuality in Ancient Rhetoric’, Word & Image 19.3 (2003), pp. 133–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 133.

98 HBI 2.138.

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101 See Loizides, James Mill, ch. 1.

102 I would like to thank Callum Barrell and the anonymous reviewers of Utilitas for their insightful comments on an earlier draft of this article.