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Free radical Samuel Brittan Financial Times 13/05/06 The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person of a 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 mankind. From On Liberty These sentiments of the political philosopher John Stuart Mill, born 200 years ago next Saturday, were published in 1859 but they ring with all too much contemporary relevance. They are a stinging rebuke, for instance, to New Labour's attempts to make "religious hatred" or "glorification of terrorism" into crimes and hold up to ridicule its attempts to force people to combat obesity or show more "respect" in public places. Mill himself feared that the teachings of On Liberty would retain their value for a long time. Mill's period of greatest posthumous influence came in the 1960s when Roy Jenkins was home secretary, and when non-interference in the act of consenting adults became the law of the land and divorce and abortion laws were liberalised. Since then we have mainly seen regression. The bicentenary of Mill's birth on May 20 provides a welcome opportunity to reaffirm his teachings but also to survey his other writings and ask what manner of man he was. He has strong claims to being the most prominent public intellectual in British history. As a political philosopher he may have been outclassed by Thomas Hobbes, the 17th-century advocate of a strong authoritarian government to guarantee individual security. But as a thinker who commented on public affairs to a wider public, Mill was in a class of his own. A comparison might be made with the role of his godson Bertrand Russell. But there is one difference. Although Russell frequently complained of the lack of rationality with which public affairs were conducted, he hardly ever attempted to link his public utterances with his technical work in logic and philosophy. By contrast, Mill's pronouncements came from the same vein of thinking as his scholarly studies. Despite his neglect by recent governments, the flow of academic books on this 19th-century thinker has threatened to become a torrent. The best antidote is to read Mill himself. John Skorupski's recent Why Read Mill Today? (Routledge) is a good short introduction but is no substitute for doing what the title suggests. Of course, only the most dedicated specialist will look at all the 33 volumes of Mill's Collected Works, also published by Routledge. Others will find that the best selective guide is Mill's own famous Autobiography. Mill was born into a circle of "philosophical radicals" who constituted the nearest thing to an intelligentsia that Britain had until the arrival of the Fabians at the end of the 19th century. Their founding father was Jeremy Bentham who espoused the doctrine of utility - or maximising the balance of pleasure over pain - as a guide to public morality. John Stuart Mill's father, James, was one of Bentham's closest friends and disciples. The high-pressure education he inflicted on his son, who learnt Greek at the age of three, is fairly well known (shades of Mozart?). Also well known is the mental crisis he suffered at the age of 20 when he asked himself: "Suppose that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?" An "irrepressible self consciousness" answered "no!" He recovered his equanimity by immersing himself in the work of Romantic writers such as Wordsworth and Coleridge, which he eventually sought to combine with his earlier beliefs. Not long after, he developed a passion for Harriet Taylor, whom he married two decades later, and to whom he gave excessive credit for inspiring his work. Mill's first public activity as a very young man was the distribution of pamphlets in favour of birth control, which led to his arrest. His day job for most of his life was with the East India Company, which left him plenty of time for writing. His service in that company may have contributed to his unfortunate phraseology about "backward states of society" not yet suitable for freedom. In the 1840s he published two thick treatises on logic and political economy, which were faithfully ploughed through by the select few manual workers who constituted the labour aristocracy of the second half of the 19th century. While no one would read these books as an introduction to the subjects today, they are nevertheless a mine of fascinating insights. After the East India Company was dissolved in 1858, Mill had more time for public activity and became a Liberal MP for Westminster from 1865 until his defeat in 1868. His campaign was notable for his refusal to put forward the special interests of his constituency or engage in any of the usual election tricks. Mill himself regarded as his main achievement in parliament his attempts to add female franchise to the electoral reform bills then appearing. In addition he played a lead role in the campaign for the prosecution of Governor Eyre of Jamaica who had put down a revolt with great and unnecessary brutality involving the flogging of women as well as men. For all his virtues, life with Mill could hardly have been a laugh a minute. He had an unattractive priggishness, expressed for instance in his distinction between higher and lower pleasures, which merely muddled his utilitarianism. His tortuous and reluctant condemnation of the monopolistic and coercive activities of trade unions set an unfortunate precedent for later intellectuals anxious to maintain their progressive credentials. He showed no such restraint in calling the Tories "the stupid party". As these examples show it is easy for modern commentators to claim that he was "a man of the left". But it is not at all clear that he really was, in a modern sense. The famous changes of mind on socialism do not really decide the matter. What he meant by socialism was voluntary worker co-operatives and not state ownership or control. Many of Mill's pronouncements would indeed irritate a modern social democrat. He supported unilateral free trade and competition at home and he condemned any idea of state provision - as succinct from state finance - of education with a vigour that would embarrass most British Conservatives or American Republicans. The most sophisticated socialist commentators like to point to Mill's insistence that the argument for free trade and competitive markets was a utilitarian one not based on his freedom principle. Yet there are connections. For Mill also cautions against the expansion of central government power and remarks that state control of the great industries would so enhance the power of the state that society would be free only in name. If I wanted to make a case for his being a man of the left I would move away from economics and hark back to the letters that appeared regularly in the press in the 1950s and 1960s from Bertrand Russell, A.J. Ayer and a varying cast list of co-signatories protesting against some harsh act of foreign policy or violation of civil liberties. Mill would have undoubtedly topped the list of signatories had he lived in that period. Much the most interesting new book on Mill is Reforming Liberalism by Robert Devigne, published by Yale. Devigne complains that modern political theorists dwell too much on On Liberty and Utilitarianism and neglect Mill's other works, such as his essays on Plato. Devigne's book is a highly civilised work and enjoyable in its own right. Mill's espousal of "many sidedness" makes him fascinating to study, but he nowhere expected governments to legislate for the good life. In the 20th century Keynes made an important distinction between the agenda of governments, which governments could be expected to tackle, and the non-agenda, which however desirable on its own should best be left to voluntary effort. If he had emphasised this distinction Devigne might not have been so severe on other writers who concentrate on the teachings of On Liberty. If we are concerned with Mill's relevance to current problems, as distinct from the study of his life or mid-Victorian society, we inevitably come back to On Liberty. How then is the principle of non-interference arrived at? Mill insists that he does not value freedom for its own sake but for its contribution to the general public happiness, a doctrine explained in Utilitarianism. Nevertheless it is highly questionable whether the doctrine of non-intervention can be derived from some other ultimate value. If political theorists were occasionally to dip into an economics book, they would find that the Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen has shown there can be a conflict between happiness and freedom. He illustrates this by a very simple fable based on two people, Lewd and Prude, contemplating Lady Chatterley's Lover. Prude is so disgusted at the enjoyment that Lewd derives from the book that he would do almost anything rather than allow a free choice. Such a conflict will mainly worry those who believe that public morality can be derived from a single principle. It is sufficient for most purposes that there is a large overlap, especially if utility is defined in terms of maximising personal choice rather than some dubious questionnaire studies of people's satisfaction. Bentham would probably have embraced these studies. Mill on the other hand wrote: "Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so." I now think that too much ink can be spilt on scholastic disputes about the exact meaning of non-interference, harm to others, coercion and related concepts. For practical purposes it is more important to defend the various practices that have grown up in law and custom to protect personal liberty. Mill himself provided a splendid example by devoting his second speech in the House of Commons to opposing the suspension of habeas corpus in Ireland during the height of the Fenian agitation against the advice of friends urging caution. Would that more present day MPs would follow in his footsteps.
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