Mill fully acknowledged the merits of the scheme, but laid his finger
unerringly on its weakest part. His remarks show, that, if he had
followed up the subject with an adequate knowledge of any good system
of law, he would have rivalled or surpassed his achievements in other
departments of knowledge.

W. A. HUNTER.




VIII.

HIS WORK IN POLITICAL ECONOMY.


The task of fairly estimating the value of Mr. Mill's achievements in
political economy--and indeed the same remark applies to what he has
done in every department of philosophy--is rendered particularly
difficult by a circumstance which constitutes their principal merit.
The character of his intellectual, no less than of his moral nature,
led him to strive to connect his thoughts, whatever was the branch of
knowledge at which he labored, with the previously-existing body of
speculation, to fit them into the same framework, and exhibit them as
parts of the same scheme; so that it might be truly said of him, that
he was at more pains to conceal the originality and independent value
of his contributions to the stock of knowledge than most writers are
to set forth those qualities in their compositions. As a consequence
of this, hasty readers of his works, while recognizing the
comprehensiveness of his mind, have sometimes denied its originality;