¹ On Liberty and Considerations on Representative Government, ed. McCallum, R. B. (Oxford, 1946), p. 14 fn.Google Scholar

² That is approximately how Mill himself puts it: the words preceding what I have quoted are, “If the arguments of the present chapter are of any validity, …” The chapter is entitled “Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion.”

³ Cf. ibid., p. 9: “… we may leave out of consideration those backward states of society in which the race itself may be considered as in its nonage.” The distinction seems to turn variously (ibid.) on whether “mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion” and whether they “have attained the capacity of being guided to their own improvement by conviction or persuasion.” On the latter point he adds, perhaps a little optimistically: “… a period long since reached in all nations with whom we need here concern ourselves.” Cf. ibid. p. 59, where he refers, astonishingly, to “the present low state of the human mind,” that being the point he needs to establish the thesis there in question.

⁴ Who should be permitted, in the fashionable jargon of the “communications” literature, “to say what, and to whom.”

⁵ Those who regard “absolute” as too strong a term to be deemed a synonym of “fullest” may wish to be reminded of the following passage (ibid., p. 11): “… the appropriate region of human liberty … comprises … liberty of conscience in the most comprehensive sense: liberty of thought and feeling; absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects, practical or speculative, scientific, moral, or theological. [And the] liberty of expressing and publishing opinions … is practically inseparable from [liberty of thought] …” (italics added). And cf. ibid.: “No society … is completely free in which [these liberties] … do not exist absolute and unqualified” (italics added).

⁶ Cf. ibid., p. 14: “… I deny the right of the people to exercise such coercion, either by themselves or their government. The power itself is il legitimate. The best government has no more title to it than the worst.” The statement could hardly be more sweeping.

⁷ Not to speak of “mankind.” Cf. ibid., pp. 14–15: “… the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; … those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it.”

⁸ Popper, K. R., The Open Society and Its Enemies (London, 1945), 2 vols.Google Scholar The term “open society” is of course much older (Bergson uses a distinction between “open” and “closed” society in Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion, though for a quite different purpose). Popper wedded the term “open society” to Mill's ideas, and the term “closed society” to those of his bêtes noires, Plato especially.

⁹ The exception is necessary, because the American arguments are often based on the meaning of the Constitution of the United States, the First Amendment especially.

¹⁰ Cf. op. cit., p. 73: “Whenever, in short, there is a definite damage, or a definite risk of [definite?] damage, either to an individual or to the public, the case is taken out of the province of liberty, and placed in that of morality and law.”

¹¹ Cf. ibid., p. 72: “… protection against themselves is confessedly due to children and persons under age. …”

¹² Cf. ibid., p. 49: “… even opinions lose their immunity when the circumstances in which they are expressed are such as to constitute their expression a positive instigation to some mischievous act.” To this writer's mind a curious concession, which Mill ought not to have made. Once it is made, a society wishing to silence this or that form of persuasive utterance has only to declare the behavior it is calculated to produce a crime, and it may silence—with Mill's blessing.

¹³ Cf. ibid., p. 14 fn.

¹⁴ Cf. ibid., p. 49.

¹⁵ E.g., the doctrine that enemies of liberty must not be permitted to take advantage of “civil liberties” in order to undermine and destroy them; or the doctrine that free society is entitled to interfere with free expression in order to perpetuate its own existence. Mill would certainly not have countenanced either doctrine.

¹⁶ Cf. ibid., p. 14: “If all mankind were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing all mankind.”

¹⁷ Who, after all, is to say which is right?

¹⁸ As witness the sermons addressed by the New York press to the Trujillo regime.

¹⁹ Except, we must remind ourselves, the public truth that there is no public truth.

²⁰ Ibid., passim.

²¹ Ibid., p. 9.

²² We must distinguish here between a “natural” or “ethical” “right” to freedom of expression and a mere constitutional right. The case for the latter could of course be rested upon Mill's grounds, insofar as they are valid.

²³ Again, we must except the merely constitutional right.

²⁴ Plato, of course, contemplates a freedom of speech situation in Book IX of the Republic; but merely to show that it can result only in disaster.

²⁵ Cf. Strauss, Leo, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Glencoe, 1958), ch. 4Google Scholar, passim.

²⁶ Cf. ibid., p. 9.

²⁷ Cf. ibid., ch. 2, passim.

²⁸ Cf. op. cit., pp. 42–46.

²⁹ That he had broken sharply with his father and with Bentham is, I take it, a commonplace.

³⁰ I.e., as a problem for “empirical” political theory.

³¹ Cf. Jouvenel, Bertrand de, On Sovereignty (Chicago: 1957), p. 288 Google Scholar: “One of the strangest intellectual illusions of the nineteenth century was the idea that toleration could be ensured by moral relativism. … The relativist tells us that the man professing opinion A ought to respect opinion B, because his own opinion A has no more intrinsic value than B. But in that case B has no more than A. Attempts to impose either would be attempts to impose what had no intrinsic value; but also suppression of either would be suppression of what had no intrinsic value. And in that case there is no crime … in the suppression of contrary opinions.” On equality of opinions in Mill, see note 16 supra. On the progress in Mill from “equally valuable” to “equally and infinitely valuable,” cf. op. cit., p. 46: “… truth has no chance but in proportion as every side of it, every opinion which embodies any fraction of the truth, not only finds advocates, but is so advocated as to be listened to.” And the presumption, he insists, is that every opinion does contain some fraction of the truth: “… it is always probable that dissentients have something worth hearing … and that truth would lose something by their silence” (p. 42).

³² See Social Contract, IV, i., as also The Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, passim, and Rousseau's famous letter of 1767 to the Marquis of Mirabeau. Cf. de Jouvenel, op. cit., p. 286: “The whole of [Rousseau's] … large stock of political wisdom consists in contrasting the dispersion of feelings in a people morally disintegrated by the progress of the ‘sciences and arts,’ with the natural unity of a people in which dissociation has not occurred.” As de Jouvenel notes (p. 287), Rousseau, though himself a Protestant, deplored the introduction of Protestantism into France, and on these grounds.

³³ A similar point might be developed over the difference between Mill's freedom of speech and the free discussion of the traditional American town-meeting.