In the Victorian era, said philosopher John Stuart Mill, opinion formers no longer enforced conformity through the law as much as in past generations, but they did enforce it through social pressure. This allowed them to acquit themselves of active oppression, while nonetheless ensuring that the intellectual fashions which they approved were not open to serious challenge.

Mill regarded the casual censorship practised by the Establishment as dangerous. Mistaken beliefs would never be held up to proper scrutiny, the kind of clever people who hitherto have led the way in the arts and sciences would now keep silent, and a generation would grow up unwilling or unable to help society to move forward.

113 words