Mill’s work was crucial to the development of liberalism, because it straddled the divide between classical and modern theories. Analyze.

Mill is the hinge of the liberal tradition because he holds classical premises while conceding conclusions that classical liberalism cannot contain.

The classical Mill. On Liberty (1859) states the harm principle in its purest form: the only purpose for which power can rightfully be exercised over any member of a civilised community against his will is to prevent harm to others. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. Liberty of thought and discussion is defended absolutely, on the ground that a silenced opinion may be true, or partly true, and that even a false one keeps truth from decaying into dead dogma.

The four departures.

• Utilitarianism rewritten. By distinguishing higher from lower pleasures — better Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied — Mill abandons Bentham's purely quantitative calculus and smuggles a theory of human development into utility.
• Liberty as self-development. Liberty is defended not as a natural right but as the condition of individuality; the end of man is the highest development of his powers. This is Green's positive liberty in embryo.
• Political economy softened. In later editions of Principles of Political Economy and in his Chapters on Socialism, Mill separates laws of production from laws of distribution, defends cooperatives, taxation of unearned increment and inheritance limits.
• Democracy extended, and feared. Considerations on Representative Government (1861) supports votes for women, but also plural voting for the educated and proportional representation, because his real anxiety is the tyranny of the majority over opinion.

Assessment. The straddle is real, not a muddle. The harm principle protects the private sphere against the state; the developmental argument authorises the state to build the conditions of self-development. Modern liberalism took the second and kept the first as a limit.