because it tends to remove the grounds of theological belief beyond the province of argument.  No one talks of “a right of private judgment.” in anything but religion; no one but a fool insists on his “right to his own opinion” with his lawyer or his doctor.  Able men who have given their time to special subjects, are authorities upon it to be listened to with deference, and the ultimate authority at any given time is the collective general sense.  Of the wisest men living in the department to which they belong.  The utmost “right of private judgment” which anybody claims in such cases, is the choice of the physician to whom he will trust his body, or of counsel to whom he will commit the conduct of his cause.  The expression, as it is commonly used, implies a belief that in matters of religion, the criteria of truth are different in kind from what prevail elsewhere, and the efforts which have been made to bring the notion into harmony with common sense and common subjects, have not been very successful.  The High Church party used to say, as a point against the Evangelicals, that either “the right of private judgment” meant nothing, or it meant that a man had a right to be in the wrong.  “No,” said a writer in the Edinburgh Review “it means only that if a man chooses to be in the wrong, no one else has a right to interfere with him.  A man has no right to get drunk in his own house, but the policeman may not force a way into his house and prevent him.”  The illustration fails of its purpose.  In the first place, the Evangelicals never contemplated a wrong use of the thing; they meant merely that they had a right to their own opinions as against the Church.  They did not indeed put forward their claim quite so nakedly; they made it general, as sounding less invidious; but nobody ever heard an Evangelical admit a High Churchman or a Catholic’s right to be a Catholic.

But, secondly, society has a most absolute right to prevent all manner of evil—­drunkenness, and the rest of it, if it can—­only in doing so, society must not use means which would create a greater evil than it would remedy.  As a man can by no possibility be doing anything but most foul wrong to himself in getting drunk, society does him no wrong, but rather does him the greatest benefit if it can possibly keep him sober; and in the same way, as a false belief in serious matters is among the greatest of misfortunes, so to drive it out of a man, by the whip, if it cannot be managed by persuasion, is an act of brotherly love and affection, provided the belief really and truly is false, and you have a better to give him in the place of it.  The question is not what to do, but merely “how to do it;” although Mr. Mill, in his love of “liberty,” thinks otherwise.  Mr. Mill demands for every man a right to say out his convictions in plain language, whatever they may be; and so far as he means that there should be no Act of Parliament to prevent him, he is perfectly just in what he says.  But when