John Stuart Mill's On Liberty

In the political work On Liberty, John Stuart Mill forms an argument in support of the freedom of speech and explains in detail why silencing an opinion is wrong. He does this by exploring the ways that silencing an individual’s opinion in a variety of situations harms society, whether the opinion silenced is true or false. In The Second Treatise of Government, John Locke explains his views on political philosophy but never explicitly states a clear view on free speech, it does allude to an attitude against the liberty Mill is a proponent of. In this essay I will examine how Locke’s principles concerning how politics should be would lead him to agree or disagree with Mill’s strong defense of free speech.
In Chapter 2 of On Liberty, Mill argues
that silencing any opinion is wrong because it harms mankind. The harm is done whether the opinion silenced is true or false. First, Mill looks at the harm done by silencing an opinion that may well be true (Mill, p.14). This harm is that people are denied the opportunity to learn new truths and social progress is undermined. The people that try to silence the opinions don’t believe that they are doing anything wrong because they feel certain that the opinion they are silencing is false. Mill says that “to refuse hearing an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty” (Mill, p.15). They cannot be certain of this because humans are fallible, meaning that humans can be wrong (Mill, p.14). Mill considers an objection to this argument, that someone might say that this is not claiming to be infallible, but instead acting upon their conscientious conviction (Mill, p.15). If they never act on their opinions because they may be wrong, they will never act on anything. Mill’s response to this is that “There is the greatest difference between presuming an opinion to be true, because with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation” (Mill, p.16). Here Mill is saying that the only way a person can be confident that they are right is if people are free to contradict it and they find no errors through this contradiction. Next, Mill looks at the harm done by silencing an opinion, even if it is false.
Here Mill says “The meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience” (Mill, p.36). Here, Mill is saying that if we don’t ever have to defend an opinion from dissent, then the opinion loses its meaning. He says that if the truth is just known and never debated or explained, the people will not be able to refute objections to it. If a person cannot refute objections to their argument, then he can’t truly understand his own
opinion. John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government is primarily about protecting liberty. He believes that a commonwealth should protect our natural rights such as life and liberty. Therefore, a common misconception could be that because the liberty of thought and expression is a liberty Locke would support protecting free speech, or opinion. However, once you begin to look deeper into Locke’s political philosophy you can see that he would not necessarily be as supportive as Mill on the issue of free speech.
Even if it was thought that Locke was in favor of free speech, when you look at Locke’s political philosophy it appears that he would put the majority over the individual rights. Locke says, “But still it must be with his own consent, i.e. the consent of the majority, giving it either by themselves, or their representatives chosen by them”. Here, Locke considers the consent of the majority to be equivalent to the individual’s consent (Locke, Sec. 140). If the majority can consent to laws that encroach on your estate, then the majority is also able to consent to laws that encroach on liberty. Since Locke himself lumped the right to life, liberty, and estate all together as basic property rights (Locke, Sec. 6). Locke seems to care more about the majority’s rights than the individuals’ rights. It could be argued that even if the majority could consent to laws on liberty, it would not be harmful to individual rights since the majority consent would likely be fair because each person that votes also has to follow these laws.
However, to this I respond that even though the lawmakers are required to follow these same laws, they often have the power and resources to undermine these laws. Also, just because it may not affect the majority negatively does not mean that it won’t infringe on some people’s rights. The opposing side could then say that when Locke says, “It is a power, that hath no other end but preservation, and therefore can never have a right to destroy, enslave, or designedly to impoverish the subjects”. He is saying that the only power the government has is to protect our rights; therefore, they would not have the power to use that against us. However, I would argue that it also says this means they never have the power to destroy, enslave, or impoverish the subjects; so he is only using the extreme cases of our “rights”. He never mentions any liberties other than the ones that affect our life/ our ability to live. In Chapter 11, Locke talks about what right the government doesn’t have and he never mentions free speech; if he felt as strongly as Mill on this issue he would have mentioned it as something that the government cannot do, as he does with our literal
freedom.