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restraint? whether it is a mere negation, or something positive, 
and what ? This is a question which must he at any time, I think, 
interesting to a Society like ours, and at the present time it has, I 
think, peculiar interest and importance. 
What then is the nature of intellectual freedom ? It is obvious 
at once that, even assuming it to consist in the absence of restraint, 
the restraint which is placed upon the mind or removed from it 
must be restraint of a very different kind from that which affects 
the body. For the mind, at any rate, 
" Stone walls do not a prison make, 
Or iron bars a cage." 
Yet it is equally obvious, I think, that the action of the mind may 
be hampered or impeded by external power. It is quite possible 
that the enactment of legal penalties may thwart or even stop 
altogether the activity of the mind in certain directions. Persecu- 
tion may seldom, if ever, be successful in wholly stamping out an 
opinion, as we say ; but it has certainly been successful again and 
again iu hindering its spread, and every such case has been one in 
which external power has impeded or restrained the action of the 
mind. Law therefore may be opposed to intellectual liberty, may 
hamper and restrict it. But is this opposition essential, or is it only 
accidental? Can there be no liberty where there is law? The 
mere statement of the question is enough. So far from its being 
the case that there can be no liberty where there is law, it is 
nearer the truth to say that there cannot be liberty without law. 
It appears to me to be one of the great faults of Mr. Mill's Essay, 
that it fails clearly to recognise this mutual relation of liberty and 
law, that it seems to assume a perpetual and necessary antagonism 
between the two. Mr. Stephen, on the other hand, arguing that 
the whole fabric of society is based upon compulsion, arrives at the 
conclusion that " liberty, from the very nature of things, is depen- 
dent upon power ; and that it is only under the protection of a 
powerful, well -organized, and intelligent government that any 
liberty can exist at all." (p. 169.) On such a question, if there is 
need of appeal, let me appeal to the great authority of Burke. 
" The extreme of liberty," he says, "(which is its abstract per- 
fection, but its real fault) obtains nowhere, nor ought to obtain 
anywhere. Because extremes, as we all know, in every point 
which relates either to our duties or satisfactions in life, are 
destructive both to virtue and enjoyment. Liberty too must be 
