Liberty and Equality

About this Collection

John Stuart Mill has a controversial place in the classical liberal tradition. He shocked many conservatives with his support for womens suffrage in The Subjection of Women (1869) and seemed to justify considerable state intervention in the economy in his Principles of Political Economy (1848). One of his most influential books, On Liberty (1859), prompted a critique by Stephens who argued that Mills idea of liberty and equality undermined the older liberal notions of “ordered liberty” and “equality under law”.