eir
protection against the overpowering weight of the social combination,
all those safeguards against possible tyranny, which can only be
afforded by the general acceptance of the liberal principle just quoted.
The social authority must be educated and restrained by its own willing
recognition of individual rights. As the power most likely to be abused
for purposes of oppression is that of opinion and custom, too often
operating silently and insidiously, the corrective is only to be applied
by the establishment of a counteracting spiritual authority, in the
bosom of society itself, at all times ready to utter its mandate and to
proclaim the inviolable sanctity of individual liberty, within the
limits fixed by enlightened reason and conscience. In the earlier stages
of civilization, or in societies of more simple and primitive character,
individual development has not reached the point which either requires
such principles or admits of their application. The merely physical life
of such people can hardly give rise to these questions: political power
and actual force necessarily occupy the place of those subtle and
all-pervading moral and social influences which prevail in the
subsequent stages of progress. As men become more enlightened, they
become also more capable of self-control, and are consequently entitled
to greater liberty of action. Sooner or later, the necessity for
conceding it to the utmost limit of the principle stated, will be fully
acknowledged.

But it is notable that the author does not attempt to maintain his dogma
on the ground of right or morality, but solely on that of a wise and
broad utility. He foregoes all the advantage he might obtain in the
argument by resorting to the moral considerations which sustain it. It
is better for the real interests of society that individual members
should enjoy the largest measure of liberty; and if this be not
equivalent to the assertion that it is also their right, upon the
plainest moral grounds, it is at least certain that the two principles
are coincident in this case, as they will be found to be in all others,
where the real interests of mankind are concerned. So true is it, that
what ever, in a large sense, is best for the permanent advantage of any
society is, at the same time, always right and consistent with sound
moral principles.

In a matter of such vital importance as that of human liberty, which, in
the language of another eminent writer, 'is the