The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Associate Editors
• Editorial
• Bibliographical Essay: Economics and Ideology: Aspects of the Post-ricardian Literature
• I: Political Economy
• The Classical Model of Political Economy
• Modernization, Ideology, and Economic Freedom
• Individualism Vs. Collectivism?
• The Industrial Revolution and Literacy
• Parliamentary Enclosure and Uprooted Labor
• Smith's Critique of Monopoly
• Ricardo and the “dual Development”
• Ricardo On Money
• Inflation and Political Crisis: Germany
• Inflation and Unemployment
• Government and Inflation: the Mccracken Report
• II: Concepts of Liberty
• Liberty and Its Components
• Is the Right to Freedom Vacuuous?
• Liberty, Slavery, and Utilitarianism
• Individualism, Freedom, and Society
• Liberty and Habeas Corpus
• Should Britain Have a Bill of Rights?
• Locke, Women, and Freedom
• Locke, Women, Freedom, and Individualism
• Locke, Property, and Individualism
• Children, Freedom, and Individualism
• Liberty and Mental Illness
• Sismondi and Liberty
• Mill: On Liberty
• Mill, Freedom, and Happiness
• Freedom of Speech and Moral Development
• Freedom In Kant, Hegel, and Marx
• Marx, Freedom, and Property
• Neoconservatives, Liberty, and Equality
• Freedom: the Politics of Justice and Existence
• Liberty and the American Revolution
• American Libertarians
• III: Economics and Public Policy
• How Economics Influences Political Theory
• Why Democracies Choose Deficits
• Inflation and the Welfare State
• Monetarism and the Depression
• Asian Monetary History: Gold & Silver
• Specie Money Vs. Antibullionists
• Inflation Effects On Capital
• Consumption of Public Health Services
• Factory Regulation and Vested Interests
• Poverty Programs and Government
• The Costs of Regulating Market Information
• Rent Regulation
• Engels On Economics
• IV: Social Analysis
• The Depoliticization of Society
• Is Philosophy Politically Subversive?
• Plato's Republic As a Political Dystopia
• Cicero and Modern Political Philosophy
• The Roman Jurist Gaius and Social Thought
• The Myth of Social Hierarchy
• Contract and Political Thought
• Private Vs. Public: the Domain of Freedom
• Montaigne and the Value of Tolerance
• Commerce, Utility, Character, and Republicanism
• Quintin Skinner and Western Political Thought
• Public Choice
• Editorial Board
• Contents of Vol. 33 No. 2
• Contents of Vol. 33 No. 3

Mill: On Liberty

Michael Davis

• Illinois State University

“The Budget of Tolerance.” Ethics 89 (January 1979): 165–178.

One of the most influential approaches to freedom has been the principle of liberty advanced in John Stuart Mill's On Liberty (1859). Few professed libertarians, however, consistently follow Mill's principle. This fact suggests the need to reexamine Mill's doctrine of tolerance.

Mill distinguished between private acts, which do not harm anyone, and public acts, which do. His thesis is not the trivial proposition that private acts should be left unregulated by the government and by the positive morality of society. Since private acts harm no one, this claim would be universally accepted. Rather, Mill should be taken as arguing that most public acts should be tolerated. An act is defined as “tolerated” if a society's positive morality prohibits it but it is nevertheless protected by the government. The government may protect it either actively, by prohibiting interference with it, or passively, by not taking measures against it.

The wide ranging concept of tolerance Mill favored was supported by an emphasis on the positive value of diversity for society. Although diversity is indeed an important social value, it is argued that, in an unlimited form it can become an evil. Too much change may prove unsettling, both for individuals and societies. The extent to which a society can tolerate changes in its values is determined by its simplicity, stability, and integration.

Four types of libertarian positions may be distinguished according to the way in which liberty and social order are comparatively valued. (1) Extreme libertarians believe that liberty may be restricted only to prohibit direct harm to others. (2) Strong libertarians extend the scope to which liberty may be restricted to include the measures needed to secure a minimum of social order. (3) Classical liberals, including Mill himself, allow restrictions on liberty which aim to insure that a society can develop in which liberty is of value to the individuals composing it. (4) Finally, equalitarian liberals allow the principle of liberty to be limited, as their name suggests, by a principle of equality.

Both liberals and conservatives recognize the need to “budget” liberty. The extent to which liberty should be limited depends to a large degree on the findings of sociology about what is necessary for social order. As such studies are carried further, liberals and conservatives may be expected to find themselves less far apart than they imagined.