The author, a well-known English economist of the 19th century, attempted to give a detailed and systematic coverage of the main provisions of the classical school of bourgeois political economy in close connection with socio-political problems and ideas that were relevant for his time. Summing up the results of A. Smith and D. Ricardo, the book simultaneously demonstrated the impossibility of further scientific progress within the framework of the traditional approach. The influence of Mill's ideas, which formed the basis of the bourgeois and partly social reformist teachings of the 19th century, is still vividly felt in modern Western social science.