Democracy for Barbarians

An excerpt from John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty concerning, essentially, the equality of all animals.
  February 19, 2003

I’ve been re-reading John Stuart Mill recently, and have come across a passage that sounds like anathema at this time and in this place, but rings true to me nonetheless.  I come from a land that could use an enlightened benevolent dictator and should not be allowed to have democracy until a massive edification of its people occurs.  Here’s what the man said:

The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion.  That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection.  That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.  His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. […]

It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say that this doctrine is meant to apply only to human beings in the maturity of their faculties.  We are not speaking of children, or of young persons below the age which the law may fix as that of manhood or womanhood.  Those who are still in a state to require being taken care of by others, must be protected against their own actions as well as against external injury.  For the same reason, we may leave out of consideration those backward states of society in which the race itself may be considered as in its nonage.  The early difficulties in the way of spontaneous progress are so great, that there is seldom any choice of means for overcoming them; and a ruler full of the spirit of improvement is warranted in the use of any expedients that will attain an end, perhaps otherwise unattainable.  Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end.  Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion.  Until then, there is nothing for them but implicit obedience to an Akbar or a Charlemagne, if they are so fortunate as to find one.  But as soon as mankind have attained the capacity of being guided to their own improvement by conviction or persuasion (a period long since reached in all nations with whom we need here concern ourselves), compulsion, either in the direct form or in that of pains and penalties for non-compliance, is no longer admissible as a means to their own good, and justifiable only for the security of others.

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