This original Beacon Press 1959 publication traces the sources of John Stuart Mill's seminal essay, On Liberty (1859), in his earlier writings and in his lifelong concern with civil liberties. Opening with his first published work, a letter to the editor of The Morning Chronicle, written when Mill was seventeen, and concluding with the full text of On Liberty, the collection reveals at once the towering intellect and the moral passion of this champion of liberalism. The nineteen articles and letters in this volume include not only two of Mill's most famous essays, On Liberty and Civilization: Signs of the Times, but also a number of important shorter writings which had long been inaccessible to the general reader. Each selection is presented in its original text.