Mrs. Taylor's assistance in the _Political Economy_ is confined to
certain definite points. The purely scientific part was, we are assured,
not learnt from her. "But it was chiefly her influence which gave to the
book that general tone by which it is distinguished from all previous
expositions of political economy that had any pretensions to be
scientific, and which has made it so useful in conciliating minds which
those previous expositions had repelled. This tone consisted chiefly in
making the proper distinction between the laws of the production of
wealth, which are real laws of Nature, dependent on the properties of
objects, and the modes of its distribution, which, subject to certain
conditions, depend on human will.... _I had indeed partially learnt this
view of things from the thoughts awakened in me by the speculations of
St. Simonians_; but it was made a living principle, pervading and
animating the book, by my wife's promptings."[4] The part which is
italicised is noticeable. Here, as elsewhere, Mill thinks out the matter
by himself; the concrete form of the thoughts is suggested or prompted
by the wife. Apart from this "general tone," Mill tells us that there
was a specific contribution. "The chapter which has had a greater
influence on opinion than all the rest, that on the Probable Future of
the Labouring Classes, is entirely due to her. In the first draft of the
book that chapter did not exist. She pointed out the need of such a
chapter, and the extreme imperfection of the book without it; she was
the cause of my writing it." From this it would appear that she gave
Mill that tendency to Socialism which, while it lends a progressive
spirit to his speculations on politics, at the same time does not
manifestly accord with his earlier advocacy of peasant proprietorships.
Nor, again, is it, on the face of it, consistent with those doctrines of
individual liberty which, aided by the intellectual companionship of his
wife, he propounded in a later work. The ideal of individual freedom is
not the ideal of Socialism, just as that invocation of governmental aid
to which the Socialist resorts is not consistent with the theory of
_laisser-faire_. Yet _Liberty_ was planned by Mill and his wife in
concert. Perhaps a slight visionariness of speculation was no less the
attribute of Mrs. Mill than an absence of rigid logical principles. Be
this as it may, she undoubtedly checked the half-recognised leanings of
her husband in the direction of Coleridge and Carlyle. Whether this was
an instance of her steadying influence,[5] or whether it added one more
unassimilated element to Mill's diverse intellectual sustenance, may be
wisely left an open question. We cannot, however, be wrong in
attributing to her the parentage of one book of Mill, _The Subjection of
Women_. It is true that Mill had before learnt that men and women ought
to be equal in legal, political, social, and domestic relations. This