It may be argued that if a man gets drunk every night in the privacy of his home, this should not concern anyone else. Devlin has obviously misunderstood Mill. It is not essential to Mill's position that there should be an area of conduct which must always remain completely free from intervention. There are certain reasons for intervention in the conduct of individuals which must always be ruled out as irrelevant. Let us suppose that there are no actions which only affect others because they are disliked, or regarded as immoral or offensive.
All actions also affect non-consenting persons in other ways.
Mill's case for freedom is still not undermined. Mill's point is that the case for intervention must rest on reasons other than, for example, the mere dislike or disapproval of the conduct. Consider, for example, the case of pornography. Mill's liberty principle rules out the argument that the sale of pornography should be prohibited simply because the majority regard the sale and reading of pornography as immoral. But this does not settle the issue of whether pornography should be prohibited, because other reasons have been given for the prohibition.