When John Stuart Mill Cited William Stanley Jevons in the House of Commons

William Stanley Jevons, while he was a professor at University College London.

Introduction

In an April 17, 1866 speech to the House of Commons, Member of Parliament John Stuart Mill argued that Britain’s diminishing reserves of coal meant that the then governing generation, and perhaps the next one or two, would be better positioned to pay off the national debt than subsequent generations.
In making his case, Mill would cite William Stanley Jevons’ 1865 The Coal Question.
The book, and the widespread attention it received, made Jevons famous several years before he published his magum opus, The Theory of Political Economy (1871), which would set off the marginalist revolution and launch the transformation of economics into a mathematized discipline.

John Stuart Mill’s Speech

Mill begins by addressing the idea that continued economic progress means future generations will be better positioned to pay off the national debt than the present ones.

Not long ago it might not altogether unreasonably be supposed that the unrivalled growth of this country in every kind of wealth—the limits of which it seemed impossible to define—was an excuse to us, and even a justification, for leaving our pecuniary obligations, without any serious attempt to reduce them, to weigh upon posterity, whom we might reasonably expect to be better able to support them than we ourselves are.

Mill claims this argument is flawed: every generation has its difficulties, and emergencies unforeseen today may render future generations unable to deal with the debt. This conclusion is met with cries of “hear, hear” amongst supporters of Mill’s position in the Commons.

This, however, was at no time a conclusive argument or a sound excuse, because future generations will have their own exigencies too; and we have had an example of it in the fact that not many years ago two years of war sufficed to re-add to our National Debt nearly as much as had been subtracted from it by the savings of fifty years. (Hear, hear.)

But on top of this, we now know that the nation’s coal supplies are dwindling. And, as a trade dependent country, the exhaustion of Britain’s coal supplies portends economic trouble.

But, more recently, facts have been brought to our notice, which have been too much overlooked; showing that the excuse we made to ourselves is not admissible in the case of a nation whose population greatly exceeds that which with the existing resources of science can be supported from its own soil; who are therefore dependent for subsistence on the power of disposing of their goods in foreign markets; and whose command over those markets depends upon the continued possession of an exhaustible material.

Until recently, the depletion of the coal stock, though inevitable, seemed distant.

The termination of our coal supplies, though always certain, has always until lately appeared so distant, that it seemed quite unnecessary for the present generation to occupy itself with the question.

This is where Mill cites William Stanley Jevons’ The Coal Question (1865), arguing that the day when Britain’s coal reserves will be depleted is less distant than once thought: the stock of coal whose extraction is economically viable would run out within the next three generations.

The reason was that all our calculations were grounded upon the existing rate of consumption; but the fact now is that our consumption of coals increases with such extraordinary rapidity from year to year, that the probable exhaustion of our supplies is no longer a question of centuries, but of generations. (Hear.) I hope there are many honourable Members in this House who are acquainted with a small volume written by Mr. Stanley Jevons, entitled The Coal Question. It appears to me, so far as one not practically conversant with the subject can presume to judge, that Mr. Jevons’ treatment of the subject is almost exhaustive. He seems to have anticipated everything which can possibly be said against the conclusion at which he has arrived, and to have answered it; and that conclusion is, that if the consumption of coal continues to increase at the present rate, three generations at the most, very possibly a considerably shorter period, will leave no workable coal nearer to the surface than 4,000 feet in depth; and that the expense of raising it from that depth will entirely put it out of the power of the country to compete in manufactures with the richer coal-fields of other countries. …. I have myself read various attempts to answer Mr. Jevons, but I must say that every one of them, admitting the truth of everything said, has only made out that our supplies will continue a few years longer than the term which Mr. Jevons has assigned.

The impending depletion of the coal supply is so detrimental that it is likely that the current and next few generations are better positioned to pay off the national debt than subsequent ones.

In fact, it has now come to this, that instead of being at liberty to suppose that future generations will be more capable than we are ourselves of paying off the National Debt, it is probable that the present generation and the one or two which will follow, are the only ones which will have the smallest chance of ever being able to pay it off.

This, Mill argues, compels parliament to act on the issue of the national debt.

Now, what is the duty which facts of this sort impose upon this country? Are we going to bequeath our pecuniary obligations undiminished to descendants, to whom we cannot bequeath our assets? Suppose the property of a private individual had come to him deeply mortgaged, and that the bulk of it consisted of a mine, rich indeed, but certain to be exhausted in his lifetime, would he think it honourable to waste the whole proceeds of the mine in riotous living, and leave to his children the payment of the debt out of the residue of the estate? Then what would be vicious and dishonourable in a private individual is not less dishonourable in a nation. We ought to think of these things while it is still time. This country is at present richer and more prosperous than any country we ever knew or read of, and it can without any material inconvenience or privation set aside several millions a year for the discharge of this important duty to our descendants. …. I beg permission to press upon the House the duty of taking these things into serious consideration, in the name of that dutiful concern for posterity, which has been strong in every nation which ever did any thing great, and which has never left the mind of any such nation until, as in the case of the Romans under the Empire, it was already falling into decrepitude, and ceasing to be a nation. There are many persons in the world, and there may possibly be some in this House, though I should be sorry to think so, who are not unwilling to ask themselves, in the words of the old jest, “Why should we sacrifice anything for posterity; what has posterity done for us?” They think that posterity has done nothing for them: but that is a great mistake. Whatever has been done for mankind by the idea of posterity; whatever has been done for mankind by philanthropic concern for posterity, by a conscientious sense of duty to posterity, even by the less pure but still noble ambition of being remembered and honoured by posterity; all this we owe to posterity, and all this it is our duty to the best of our limited ability to repay. (Hear, hear.) All the great deeds of the founders of nations, and of those second founders of nations, their great reformers—all that has been done for us by the authors of those laws and institutions to which free countries are indebted for their freedom, and well governed countries for their good government; all the heroic lives which have been led, and all the heroic deaths which have been died, in defence of liberty and law against despotism and tyranny, from Marathon and Salamis down to Leipsic and Waterloo; all those traditions of wisdom and of virtue which are enshrined in the history and literature of the past—all the schools and Universities by which the culture of former times has been brought down to us, and all that culture itself—all that we owe to the great masters of human thought and to the great masters of human emotion—all this is ours because those who preceded us have cared, and have taken thought, for posterity. (Hear, hear.) Not owe anything to posterity, Sir! We owe to it Bacon, and Newton, and Locke, and Bentham; aye, and Shakespeare, and Milton, and Wordsworth. …. What are we, Sir—we of this generation, or of any other generation, that we should usurp, and expend upon our particular and exclusive uses, what was meant for mankind? It is lent to us, Sir, not given: and it is our duty to pass it on, not merely undiminished, but with interest, to those who are in the same relation to us as we are to those who preceded us. So shall we too deserve, and may in our turn hope to receive, a share of the same gratitude. (Hear, hear.)

William Stanley Jevons’ Reaction

On being referenced favorably by John Stuart Mill in parliamentary debate, Jevons would write in an April 20, 1866 entry in his journal:

What is this poor mind of mine, with all its wavering hopes and fears, that its thoughts should be quoted and approved by a great philosopher in the Parliament of so great a nation? Do not grant me intellectual power, O God, unless it be joined to awe of Thee and Thy works, and to an ever-present love of others!

Written By: Aiden Singh Published: January 24, 2021

Sources

Letters & Journals of William Stanley Jevons. Edited by Harriet Jevons. Macmillan and Co. 1886.

Margaret Schabas. The “Worldly Philosophy” of William Stanley Jevons. Victorian Studies. Autumn 1984, Vol. 28, No. 1. pg. 129-147.

The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXVIII – Public and Parliamentary Speeches Part I November 1850 – November 1868. Edited by John M. Robson & Bruce L. Kinzer. University of Toronto Press: Routledge. 1988.