Following in the utilitarian tradition of Jeremy Bentham, for whom natural rights were 'nonsense upon stilts', Mill argued that rights are simply claims that a society should protect in the interests of general utility. In the colonies, there was little utility in granting rights to those who lacked the pre-requisite for liberty: the capacity to improve themselves through reasoned discussion. Rather, he believed it was in the interest of all humanity that the Empire guide the colonised to civilisation, just as a parent guides a child into adulthood. He therefore demarcated those who were ready for rights from those who required a 'vigorous despotism' to lead them to a higher level of civilisation.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 245