Arneson, Richard J. “Democracy and Liberty in Mill's Theory of Government.” In Journal of the History of Philosophy, 20 (1982): 43-64.

Excerpt:

John Stuart Mill’s theory of government is of a piece with the rest of his philosophy: intelligent, eclectic, carefully modulated, somewhat recalcitrant to systematization. Seizing on this last feature, critics of Mill allege that his philosophical views are riddled with inconsistency. Perhaps the most notable and frequent charge is that the central doctrines of Utilitarianism conflict with those asserted in On Liberty. In this paper I claim to discern an incompatibility of another sort. Most simply put, the position to be argued is that Mill’s qualified intolerance of straight majority rule in Considerations on Representative Government, asserted on paternalistic grounds, is inconsistent with the antipaternalism of On Liberty. To expose this tension in Mill’s theory is to throw fresh light on its character; whereas Mill’s social philosophy is often accused of being too individualistic, I shall suggest that Mill failed to follow through the implications of his own best individualistic insights.

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