ABSTRACT
The title of this little brochure hardly indicates its main subject or interest. In a sense the topic is even narrower than the title suggests, since 'early' is used entirely with reference to John Stuart Mill's essay On Liberty. Apparently what happened is that a paper submitted to Mill for criticism in 1862 by a Mr. E. R. Edger and commented upon by Mill in his published correspondence was found among Mill's papers at Avignon by Mrs. Mill's granddaughter, Mary Taylor. It is not known who was responsible for its original publication in the Oxford and Cambridge Review. Rees has had an opportunity to examine the original manuscript, and it proves not to be in the hand of either Mill or his stepdaughter Helen Taylor. Rees gives enough information about the contents of unpublished leaves to exclude, every possibility that they could have been written by Mill.
