Virtually everything that James Mill ever wrote had a pedagogical purpose. He was a relentlessly didactic writer whose most important essays—Government and Education, in particular—take the form of clipped, concise, deductive arguments (De Marchi 1983). It is a style which his contemporaries either admired or detested, as can be seen for instance in F. D. Maurice’s novel Eustace Conway. When the Benthamite Morton discovers Eustace reading Mill’s Essay on Government, he asks his opinion of Mill. Eustace replies: