Liberalism Ludwig von Mises Appendix 1. In order to keep this book from becoming overlong, I have had to be brief. I considered myself all the more justified in being so since I have already treated thoroughly all the basic problems of liberalism in a series of comprehensive books and essays. For the reader who wishes to acquire a more exhaustive understanding of these matters, I append the following compilation of the most important literature.
Liberal ideas are already to be found in the works of many of the earlier writers.
The great English and Scotch thinkers of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century were the first to formulate these ideas into a system. All his writings, with the exception of the Deontology , were published in the complete edition edited by Bowring between 1838 and 1843. John Stuart Mill is an epigone of classical liberalism and, especially in his later years, under the influence of his wife, full of feeble compromises. He slips slowly into socialism and is the originator of the thoughtless confounding of liberal and socialist ideas that led to the decline of English liberalism and to the undermining of the living standards of the English people. Without a thorough study of Mill it is impossible to understand the events of the last two generations.