Professor Hayek'S book is a massive contribution to the persistent question of the limits of state action. It runs counter to prevailing notions about the role of government in economic and social matters to such an extent that a common reaction to its publication has been to simply shrug it off as eccentric or antediluvian. But the rarity of any fundamental discussion of our political ideals and the assumptions of our social policy ought of itself to ensure a wide welcome for a work that constitutes a formidable challenge to accepted standards in this realm. Unfortunately, opinions about its value are likely to continue along established lines.

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

UNTIL rccently the common reaction to Mill‘s own estimate of Hamet Taylor’s influence on his thought could fairly be summarized in Bain’s remark that ‘he outraged all reasonable credibility in describing her matchless genius, without being able to supply any corroborating testimony’. Since Hayek published the correspondence between Harriet and Mill in 1951 opinion has swung the other way, so much so that Michael Packe felt able to say in his biography that Mill’s assessment was no mwe than the truth, that ‘in so far as Mill’s influence, theoretic or applied, has been of advantage to the progress of the western world, or indeed of humanity at large, the credit should rest upon his wife at least as much as on himself‘. It was suggested in this journal a few years ago that, at least in respect of his claims for Harriet’s share in developing the ideas which go to make up the essay On Liberty, Mr. Packe had exaggerated her influence. Now Mr. H. 0. Pappe attacks these claims on a wider front in a monograph which deliberately sets out to dispel the myth spread abroad by Hayek and Packe, and others following them. From a detailed investigation of Harriet’s role in the production of Mill’s writings on liberty, the enfranchisement of women, the ballot, and socialism, he concludes that the Hayek-Packe view cannot be substantiated and that ‘Mill without Harriet would still have been Mill’. With Pappe’s case I am largely in agreement and all the more for this reason do I wish that some of his subsidiary arguments had been more soundly constructed. To a few of these, all connected with Harriet’s role in shaping Mill’s ideas on liberty, I should now like to turn. Pappe maintains, quite rightly, that Hamet’s influence can properly be assessed only by examining her part in each of the particular works to which she is supposed to have made an important contribution. He begins with her paper on toleration, first published in Hayek’s volume, and considers Packe’s assertion that in this early essay of Harriet’s we have the source of those opinions whose full expression is to be found in the essay On Liberry. In the third chapter of his essay, it will be recalled, Mill looks with alarm on what he regards as a growing social pressure on the individual to conform to standards laid down by the collective mediocrity. This is, of course, one of the themes for which the essay is famous, and also the principal reason for its composition. In her early paper, written in 1832, Hamet is concerned with just this phenomenon. She attacks the spirit of conformity, which she sees as the root of all intolerance; and deplores its prevalence in her day. This spirit, she argues, restricts the development of individual character; the standards it upholds are those of the indolent-minded mass. The attempt to resist is visited with punishment, for society dislikes any manifestation of individual character or mental independence. To counteract the danger, she urges everyone to think and act for themselves and looks on eccentricity with favour, regarding it as a sign that some people, at any rate, are prepared to act in accordance with their own, self-formed, opinions.. Leaving aside the origin of these ideas and the question whether MU first encountered them here in Harriet’s essay, it cannot be denied that they have much in common with what Mill was to say both in this period and later in his essay. True enough, Hamet goes on to

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

POLITICS as an academic discipline is generally pnderstood to compfise not only the study of governments at work but also the business of juStirying state power. We have the f a rn ib distinction between politid science and political theory, and the lam, to use Lord Lindsay’s Words. ‘is always concerned not just with what the state does but with what it ought to be’? And when we define the purposes of the state we are at the same time saying why men should obey their rulers. The two inquiriesihe state at its best, and the ground of political obligation--are intertwined. Or rather there is the one general, and fundamental, question, ‘What is the purpose of the state?’ If we can say what the purpose is we are provided with a standard