The division between self-regarding acts and others then, rests on observation of their actual consequences.  And why was Mr. Mill so anxious to erect self-regarding acts into a distinct and important class, so important as to be carefully and diligently secured by a special principle of liberty?  Because observation of the recorded experience of mankind teaches us, that the recognition of this independent provision is essential to the richest expansion of human faculty.  To narrow or to repudiate such a province, and to insist exclusively on the social bearing of each part of conduct, is to limit the play of motives, and to thwart the doctrine that ’mankind obtain a greater sum of happiness when each pursues his own, under the rules and conditions required by the rest, than when each makes the good of the rest his only object.’  To narrow or to repudiate such a province is to tighten the power of the majority over the minority, and to augment the authority of whatever sacerdotal or legislative body may represent the majority.  Whether the lawmakers be laymen in parliament, or priests of humanity exercising the spiritual power, it matters not.

We may best estimate the worth and the significance of the doctrine of Liberty by considering the line of thought and observation which led to it.  To begin with, it is in Mr. Mill’s hands something quite different from the same doctrine as preached by the French revolutionary school; indeed one might even call it reactionary, in respect of the French theory of a hundred years back.  It reposes on no principle of abstract right, but, like the rest of its author’s opinions, on principles of utility and experience.  Dr. Arnold used to divide reformers into two classes, popular and liberal.  The first he defined as seekers of liberty, the second as seekers of improvement; the first were the goats, and the second were the sheep.  Mr. Mill’s doctrine denied the mutual exclusiveness of the two parts of this classification, for it made improvement the end and the test, while it proclaimed liberty to be the means.  Every thinker now perceives that the strongest and most durable influences in every western society lead in the direction of democracy, and tend with more or less rapidity to throw the control of social organisation into the hands of numerical majorities.  There are many people who believe that if you only make the ruling body big enough, it is sure to be either very wise itself, or very eager to choose wise leaders.  Mr. Mill, as any one who is familiar with his writings is well aware, did not hold this opinion.  He had no more partiality for mob rule than De Maistre or Goethe or Mr. Carlyle.  He saw its evils more clearly than any of these eminent men, because he had a more scientific eye, and because he had had the invaluable training of a political administrator on a large scale, and in a very responsible post.  But he did not content himself with seeing these evils, and he wasted no energy in passionate denunciation