John Stuart Mill

Classical liberals support the freedom to conduct ‘experiments in living,’ as they support entrepreneurship in business. Innovation is necessary to progress but error-prone; only some social and commercial experiments will prove themselves to be better than the status quo. So classical liberals take a more benign view than Mill of custom and established social practices, which offer template ‘plans of life.’ People’s lives are not second-rate just because they are derivative rather than original. Nor should civil society be attacked by the state for not supporting individuality, as modern left-liberals do in using anti-discrimination law to enforce Millian ideals of personal autonomy on conservative religious institutions. --Andrew Norton, On Liberty at 150, Policy, Winter 2009, review of On Liberty, by John Stuart Mill (via Arts & Letters Daily)


John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand, by Richard Reeves, review by Richard Norman, The Philosopher's Magazine, Issue 41

Liberal Education, Then and Now, by Peter Berkowitz, Policy Review, December 2006 & January 2007
(via Arts & Letters Daily)

The Authoritarian Secularism of John Stuart Mill, by George W. Carey, Humanitas 2002 No. 1 [13 pp. pdf]

Mill's Religion of Humanity: Consequences and Implications, by Linda C. Raeder, Humanitas 2001 No. 2 [31 pp. pdf]

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (1873) by James Fitzjames Stephen

Review by W. Bagehot of Principles of Political Economy, Prospective Review, vol. IV, 16, 1848