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DRAFT: DO NOT CITE
J.
S.
M
ILL ON
S
LAVERY AND
E
MANCIPATION
Dale E. Miller
Introduction
With the exception of the famous passage in On Liberty that deals with people voluntarily
selling themselves into servitude, Mill’s views on the institution of slavery have garnered little
attention. This is a little surprising, given that he engages with slavery in a number of his works,
both early and late. The topic is worthy of discussion, for at least two reasons. First, Mill’s
treatments of slavery contain some surprises of their own. These include his claim that the
enslavement of a people could be morally justified, under some circumstances, as well as his
insistence that when a state abolishes slavery the former slave-owners must be compensated.
Second, Mill’s analysis of slavery is a valuable illustration of the interplay of several distinctive
themes in his utilitarian social-political philosophy. One is the idea that nothing makes more of a
difference to a society’s prospects for happiness than the characters of its members, so that the
moral standing of social and political institutions and practices depends primarily upon how they
influence the characters of the people who live in and with them. Another is his “utopianism,” by
which I mean his belief that in a properly constituted society, there should be no social group
whose members are excluded from leading genuinely happy human lives. The third is his belief
that we must be able to feel secure that other individuals or the state will follow through when
they have encouraged us to form expectations about their future actions, and to base our plans on
those expectations.
Convention