e glance of scorn and pity.

In a self-governed country like England, the resistance which society, if
it likes, can oppose to the individual in the assertion of his rights, is
far more compact and powerful than in Russia, or even in Germany. Even
where it does not employ the arm of the law, society knows how to use that
quieter, but more crushing pressure, that calm, Gorgon-like look which
only the bravest and stoutest hearts know how to resist.

It is against that indirect repression which a well-organized society
exercises, both through its male and female representatives, that Mill's
demand for liberty seems directed. He does not stand up for unlimited
individualism; on the contrary, he would have been the most strenuous
defender of that balance of power between the weak and the strong on which
all social life depends. But he resents those smaller penalties which
society will always inflict on those who disturb its dignified peace and
comfort:--avoidance, exclusion, a cold look, a stinging remark. Had Mill
any right to complain of these social penalties? Would it not rather
amount to an interference with individual liberty to deprive any
individual or any number of individuals of those weapons of self-defence?
Those who themselves think and speak freely, have hardly a right to
complain, if others claim the same privilege. Mill himself called the
Conservative party the stupid party _par excellence_, and he took great
pains to explain that it was so not by accident, but by necessity. Need he
wonder if those whom he whipped and scourged used their own whips and
scourges against so merciless a critic?

Freethinkers--and I use that name as a title of honor for all who, like
Mill, claim for every individual the fullest freedom in thought, word, or
deed, compatible with the freedom of others--are apt to make one mistake.
Conscious of their own honest intentions, they cannot bear to be misjudged
or slighted. They expect society to submit to their often very painful
operations as a patient submits to the knife of the surgeon. This is not
in human nature. The enemy of abuses is always abused by his enemies.
Society will never yield one inch without resistance, and few reformers
live long enough to receive the thanks of those whom they have reformed.
Mill's unsolicited election to Parliament was a triumph not often shared
by social reformers; it was as exceptional as Bright's admission to a seat
in the Cabinet, or Stanley's a