Mill's view is that it is the business of the state to secure and promote goods such as happiness, truth, rational belief, self-perfection, self-direction, moral character, and culture; and that it may interfere with liberty in special cases to promote these goods, even when the behaviour of those interfered with is not harmful to others. Mill does not regard it as part of the function of the state to promote moral conduct for its own sake; but he does argue that the state may legitimately take steps which in effect make much private immorality impossible. He suggests that it may possibly be legitimate to suppress, indirectly, those private immoralities which can usually or only be practised if organized in some way by others for their own gain. And this would make impossible or less easy to engage in, such immoralities as gambling, the private enjoyment of pornography, the practice of birth-control, and fornication. Again, all immorality which results in harm to others (where harm is construed in a very elastic way, sometimes narrowly, sometimes widely to cover offences against good manners, and harm to unborn generations) may be punished—if this results in less harm occurring. Again, any immoralities which involve failure to fulfil "assignable duties" may be suppressed; and the state (or society) is to be judge both of what is an assignable duty, and of what is an evil practice from which gainful employment may not lawfully be made.
There are still very significant differences between Mill's view and those of the Thomists and of Devlin; but Mill's liberal theory is not the simple theory Hart suggests that it is, nor is it the simple multiple criteria theory he suggests that it could readily be modified into becoming. It is a very complex theory and such that if it were consulted today, it would probably result in substantially more moral legislation than prevails in Great Britain and vastly more than most liberals would regard as permissible or desirable.
(H. J. McCloskey, "Mill's Liberalism," The Philosophical Quarterly 13 [April 1963]: 143-56, at 155-6)
Note from KBJ: Mill was a utilitarian first and a liberal second. Put differently, his liberalism was in the service of his utilitarianism. Mill was far from a libertarian.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 