resolved that he should receive a first-rate education, and after the parish school they sent him on to the Montrose Academy, where he remained until the unusual age of seventeen and a half.

According to John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, his father, though "educated in the creed of Scotch Presbyterianism, had, by his own studies and reflections, been early led to reject not only the belief in Revelation, but the foundations of what is commonly called Natural Religion.

With little prospect of a career in Scotland, in 1802, he went to London in company with Sir John Stuart of Fettercairn, then member of parliament for Kincardineshire, and devoted himself to his literary work.

From 1803 to 1806, he was editor of an ambitious periodical called the Literary Journal, which tried to give a summary view of all the leading departments of human knowledge.

He contributed largely to every issue – his principal topics being Education, Freedom of the Press, and Prison Discipline (under which he expounded Bentham's Panopticon).

He made powerful onslaughts on the Church in connection with the Bell and Lancaster controversy, and took a part in the discussions that led to the foundation of the University of London in 1825.

In 1814, he wrote a number of articles, containing an exposition of utilitarianism, for the supplement to the fifth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, the most important being those on "Jurisprudence", "Prisons", "Government"[2] and "Law of Nations".

[8] It brought about a matching change in the author's fortunes, and in the year following, he was appointed an official in India House in the important department of the Examiner of Indian Correspondence.

From 1831 to 1833, Mill was largely occupied in the defence of the East India Company, during the controversy attending the renewal of its charter, he being in virtue of his office the spokesman of its Court of Directors.

[11] He also brings political theory to bear on the delineation of the Hindu civilization, and subjects the conduct of the actors in the successive stages of the conquest and administration of India to severe criticism.

The work itself, and the author's official connection with India for the last seventeen years of his life, effected a complete change in the whole system of governance in the country.

This fact has led to severe criticism of Mill's History of India by notable economist Amartya Sen.[13] According to Thomas Trautmann, "James Mill's highly influential History of British India (1817) – most particularly the long essay "Of the Hindus" comprising ten chapters – is the single most important source of British Indophobia and hostility to Orientalism".

[15] According to Mill, "the same insincerity, mendacity, and perfidy; the same indifference to the feelings of others; the same prostitution and venality" were the conspicuous characteristics of both the Hindoos and the Muslims.

Mill also played a great part in British politics, and was a dominant figure in the establishment of what was called "philosophic radicalism".

[2] Among the more important of its theses are:[2] By his Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind and his Fragment on Mackintosh Mill acquired a position in the history of psychology and ethics.