attainment by women of political rights. The very complaint of suffragists is that these rights are still denied to English women. The source of the progress which most of us recognize lies in the extension of civil or private rights. It has been caused by the increase of personal freedom. It is due to the practical acceptance in Great Britain of Mill's own law of liberty—namely, that 'the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection; that the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community against his will is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.'[1]
This fundamental canon of individualism—that, in the words of Mill, 'over himself, his
- ↑ 'Liberty,' pp. 21, 22, ed. 1859. Compare this with the principle which underlies Mill's whole argument in his 'Subjection of Women.' The treatise 'On Liberty' is a demand for personal freedom; the 'Subjection of Women' is a demand for political equality. Each claim may or may not be valid, but there does not exist between them any necessary logical connection.
