impoverishment of the community as a whole, the loss of all the elements
in the common stock which the free play of the woman's mind would
contribute.

Similar principles underlie Mill's treatment of representative
government. If the adult citizen, male or female, has a right to vote,
it is not so much as a means to the enforcement of his claims upon
society, but rather as a means of enforcing his personal responsibility
for the actions of the community. The problem of character is the
determining issue in the question of government. If men could be
spoon-fed with happiness, a benevolent despotism would be the ideal
system. If they are to take a part in working out their own salvation,
they must be summoned to their share in the task of directing the common
life. Carrying this principle further, Mill turned the edge of the
common objection to the extension of the suffrage based on the ignorance
and the irresponsibility of the voters. To learn anything men must
practise. They must be trusted with more responsibility if they are to
acquire the sense of responsibility. There were dangers in the process,
but there were greater dangers and there were fewer elements of hope as
long as the mass of the population was left outside the circle of civic
rights and duties. The greatest danger that Mill saw in democracy was
that of the tyranny of the majority. He emphasized, perhaps more than
any Liberal teacher before him, the difference between the desire of the
majority and the good of the community. He recognized that the different
rights for which the Liberal was wont to plead might turn out in
practice hard to reconcile with one another, that if personal liberty
were fundamental it might only be imperilled by a so-called political
liberty which would give to the majority unlimited powers of coercion.
He was, therefore, for many years anxiously concerned with the means of
securing a fair hearing and fair representation to minorities, and as a
pioneer of the movement for Proportional Representation he sought to
make Parliament the reflection not of a portion of the people, however
preponderant numerically, but of the whole.

On the economic side of social life Mill recognized in principle the
necessity of controlling contract where the parties were not on equal
terms, but his insistence on personal responsibility made him chary in
extending the principle to grown-up persons, and his especial attachment
to the cause of feminine e