G. Exceptions to Individual Freedom (From On Liberty and Principles of Political Economy)
While we may ordinarily presume that individuals are their own best judges of their best interests, this presumption does not hold for children, the mentally ill, and the mentally deficient. There can be some societies so backward and barbarous as to be incapable of benefiting from individual freedom in which case despotism is suitable for them at least until they achieve a higher level of development. A more advanced society, in its relations with these backward ones, has an obligation to foster those conditions allowing for eventually assumption of individual freedoms by the persons in these “backward” societies.
Another exception to the granting of individual freedom occurs when a person uses this freedom to become a slave for “the principle of freedom cannot require that he should be free not to be free.”
An exception may be made where someone enters freely into an irrevocable contract at a time when it may not be possible to foresee the consequences in the distant future clearly. In Principles of Political Economy, he says:
The practical maxim of leaving contracts free, is not applicable without great limitations in case of engagements in perpetuity; and the law should be extremely jealous of such engagements; should refuse its sanction to them when the obligations they impose are such as the contracting party cannot be a competent judge of, if it ever does sanction them, it should take possible security for their being contracted with foresight and deliberation; and in compensation for not permitting the parties themselves to revoke their engagement, should grant them a release from it, on a sufficient case being made out before an impartial authority. These considerations are eminently applicable to marriage, the most import of all cases of engagement for life.”
