ABSTRACT
Attitudes to freedom have changed substantially since the mid-nineteenth century, when Mill wrote his famous essay. Mill was concerned mainly with the minimisation of coercion, though he was also keen to emphasise the positive value of originality and spontaneity. Mill exercised a categorical form of judgment on moral and social issues, and saw those who failed to meet their obligations–for instance to members of their families–as fit objects for punishment. But his interpretation of social duties went a good deal further than this, and he included acts of omission as well as commission in his list of offences a man might do against others requiring intervention and correction. Like most Victorians, Mill believed unquestioningly in the efficacy of free trade and the market economy as the only means of increasing prosperity for all, and thus justified consequent inequalities in living standards and the distribution of power and resources.
