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John Stuart Mill: On Liberty (1859) http://public.wsu.edu/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/mill.html John Stuart Mill, one of the foremost
nineteenth-century spokesmen for liberalism, advocated Utilitarianism in
ethics, i.e., the view that we should each act so as to promote the greatest
happiness for the greatest number of people. Yet he was a champion of
individual's rights, calling, among other things, for more power and freedom
for women. In his treatise
On Liberty he argues that in the past the danger had been that monarchs
held power at the expense of the common people and the struggle was one of
gaining liberty by limiting such governmental power. But now that power has
largely passed into the hands of the people at large through democratic forms
of government, the danger is that the majority denies liberty to individuals,
whether explicitly through laws, which he calls "acts of public
authority," or more subtly through morals and social pressure, which he
calls "collective opinion." What does Mill mean by "the
tyranny of the majority"? The aim, therefore, of patriots
was to set limits to the power which the ruler should be
suffered (1) to exercise over the community; and this limitation was what
they meant by liberty. It was attempted in two ways. First, by obtaining a
recognition of certain immunities, called political liberties or rights,
which it was to be regarded as a breach of duty in the ruler to infringe; and
which if he did infringe, specific resistance, or general rebellion, was held
to be justifiable. A second, and generally a later expedient, was the
establishment of constitutional checks, by which the consent of the
community, or of a body of some sort, supposed to represent its interests,
was made a necessary condition to some of the more important acts of the governing
power. To the first of these modes of limitation, the ruling power, in most
European countries, was compelled, more or less, to submit. It was not so
with the second; and, to attain this, or when already in some degree
possessed, to attain it more completely, became everywhere the principal
object of the lovers of liberty. And so long as mankind were content to
combat one enemy by another, and to be ruled by a master, on condition of
being guaranteed more or less efficaciously against his tyranny, they did not
carry their aspirations beyond this point. A time, however, came, in the
progress of human affairs, when men ceased to think it a necessity of nature
that their governors should be an independent power, opposed in interest to themselves. It appeared to them much better that the
various magistrates of the State should be their tenants or delegates,
revocable at their pleasure. In that way alone, it seemed, could they have
complete security that the powers of government would never be abused to their
disadvantage. By degrees this new demand for elective and temporary rulers
became the prominent object of the exertions of the popular party, wherever
any such party existed; and superseded, to a considerable extent, the
previous efforts to limit the power of rulers. As the struggle proceeded for
making the ruling power emanate from the periodical choice of the ruled, some
persons began to think that too much importance had been attached to the
limitation of the power itself. That (it might seem) was a resource against
rulers whose interests were habitually opposed to those of the people. What
was now wanted was, that the rulers should be
identified with the people; that their interest and will should be the
interest and will of the nation. The nation did not need to be protected
against its own will. There was no fear of its tyrannizing over itself. Let
the rulers be effectually responsible to it, promptly removable by it, and it
could afford to trust them with power of which it could itself dictate the use
to be made. Their power was but the nation's own power, concentrated, and in
a form convenient for exercise. This mode of thought, or rather perhaps of
feeling, was common among the last generation of European liberalism, in the
Continental section of which it
still apparently predominates. . . . (2) In time, however, a democratic
republic came to occupy a large portion of the earth's surface, and made itself
felt as one of the most powerful members of the community of nations; and
elective and responsible government became subject to the observations and
criticisms which wait upon a great existing fact. It was now perceived that
such phrases as "self-government," and "the power of the
people over themselves," do not express the true state of the case. The
"people" who exercise the power are not always the same people with
those over whom it is exercised; and the "self-government" spoken
of is not the government of each by himself, but of
each by all the rest. The will of the people, moreover, practically means the
will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people; the
majority, or those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority;
the people, consequently may desire to oppress a part of their number; and
precautions are as much needed against this as against any other abuse of
power. The limitation, therefore, of the power of government over individuals
loses none of its importance when the holders of power are regularly
accountable to the community, that is, to the strongest party therein. This
view of things, recommending itself equally to the intelligence of thinkers
and to the inclination of those important classes in European society to
whose real or supposed interests democracy is adverse, has had no difficulty
in establishing itself; and in political speculations "the tyranny of
the majority" is now generally included among the evils against which
society requires to be on its guard. Like other tyrannies, the tyranny
of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly
as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting
(3) persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant--society
collectively over the separate individuals who compose it--its means of tyrannizing
are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political
functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it
issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with
which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable
than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by
such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much
more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.
Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough;
there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and
feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil
penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who
dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the
formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all
characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit
to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual
independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment,
is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection
against political despotism. (1) Allowed. (2) Mill was writing in 1859. (3) Thoughtful. |