nst the Church. They did not indeed put forward their claim quite
so nakedly; they made it general, as sounding less invidious; but nobody
ever heard an Evangelical admit a High Churchman's right to be a High
Churchman, or a Catholic's right to be a Catholic.

But secondly, society has a most absolute right to prevent all manner of
evil--drunkenness, and the rest of it, if it can--only in doing so,
society must not use means which would create a greater evil than it
would remedy. As a man can by no possibility be doing anything but most
foul wrong to himself in getting drunk, society does him no wrong, but
rather does him the greatest benefit, if it can possibly keep him sober;
and in the same way, since a false belief in serious matters is among
the greatest of misfortunes, so to drive it out of man, by the whip, if
it cannot be managed by persuasion, is an act of brotherly love and
affection, provided the belief really and truly is false, and you have a
better to give him in the place of it. The question is not what to do,
but merely 'how to do it;' although Mr. Mill in his love of 'liberty,'
thinks otherwise. Mr. Mill demands for every man a right to say out his
convictions in plain language, whatever they may be; and so far as he
means that there should be no Act of Parliament to prevent him, he is
perfectly just in what he says. But when Mr. Mill goes from Parliament
to public opinion--when he lays down as a general principle that the
free play of thought is unwholesomely interfered with by society, he
would take away the sole protection which we possess from the inroads of
any kind of folly. His dread of tyranny is so great, that he thinks a
man better off with a false opinion of his own than with a right opinion
inflicted upon him from without; while, for our own part, we should be
grateful for tyranny or for anything else which would perform so useful
an office for us.

Public opinion may be unjust at particular times and on particular
subjects; we believe it to be both unjust and unwise on the matter of
which we are at present speaking: but, on the whole, it is like the
ventilation of a house, which keeps the air pure. Much in this world has
to be taken for granted, and we cannot be for ever arguing over our
first principles. If a man persists in talking of what he does not
understand, he is put down; if he sports loose views on morals at a
decent dinner party, the better sort of people fight shy of him, and he