Readers are invited to a book by an outstanding English philosopher, psychologist, sociologist and economist John Stuart Mill, which explores the problem of civil liberty of the individual. According to the author himself, the subject of the work is not the so-called free will, namely civil, or social, freedom, that is, the properties and limits of that power, by the power of which society fully manages individual individuals. In various chapters of the book, Mill discusses the freedom of thought and speech, about individuality as one of the conditions for human well-being, and also about the existing limits of the power of society over an individual.