LIBERALISM, OLD AND NEW?

I noted below that some people object to calling John Stuart Mill a lberal in the modern sense of the word and I provided some evidence that they are wrong. I also wrote about George Herbert Spencer and his harsh social policies but that's only a small part of Spencer's story. In Social Statics¹ 1850), he favored many liberal proposals, such as allowing everyone to the vote:

OF the several conclusions deducible from the law of equal freedom there are few more manifest or more generally agreed to than this, that all members of a community have like claims to political power. If every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man, then each is free to exercise the same authority in legislation as his fellows ; and no individual or class can exercise greater authority than the rest without violating the law.

Evidently, therefore, a purely democratic government is the only one which is morally admissible — is the only one that is not intrinsically criminal. (Page 217)

If, therefore, class-legislation is the inevitable consequence of class-power, there is no escape from the conclusion that the interest of the whole society can be secured, only by giving power into the hands of the whole people. (Page 220)

¹Social statics; or, The conditions essential to human happiness specified, and the first of them developed.
Author: Herbert Spencer
Publisher: New York, A.M. Kelley, 1969.
Notes: Reprint of the 1851 ed.
Description: viii, 476 p. 22 cm.