John Mill (1806- 1873), born in London, England, is a British philosopher, economist and famous liberal jurist. He was educated in England and France under the strict discipline of his father. After years of writing for Traveler, Chronicle Morning Post, Westminster Review and The Jurist, he applied for the post of editor-in-chief of London Review. The writings of this period were later included in the collection of essays (1859). Mill's main works are Logical Method (1843), Principles of Political Economy (1848), Women's Yield (1869), On Freedom (1859) and Representative Government. Among them, Representative Government is the first monograph on representative system in the west, and it is an important work of Mill's political thought, especially the theory of state. John Mill's representative theory mainly includes the form, function, democracy, voting right, parliament, local representative organs and nationalities of representative government.

Mill was a famous British philosopher, logician and economist in the19th century. To some extent, he is also a political theorist and even a political activist. He worked for the East India Company for a long time and later served as a member of the British Parliament. Mill was born in a good educational environment, and his father was a famous positivist philosopher james mill. Mill's thought was influenced by his father and other British and French empiricists and positivists such as Bekele, Hume, Bentham and Comte. Mill's works are very rich, including about freedom, logical system, principles of political economy, representative government, utilitarianism and criticism of william hamilton's philosophy. Mill is one of the most important representatives of classical liberalism. Almost all the principles of liberalism are discussed in Mill's works. On Freedom is Mill's most important work to express his liberal human rights thought. It, together with Locke's Theory of Government (II) and Rawls' Theory of Justice, is called the three classic works of liberalism. When discussing the history of liberalism, J.G. Melchior called Mill a "saint of liberalism". Some people regarded the publication of On Freedom as a symbol of the final completion of the theoretical system of liberalism, which shows Mill's important position in the history of liberalism.

On Freedom was published in 1859. At that time, the capitalist system had already been established in Britain, and the bourgeoisie basically realized freedom in economy. Many theorists have fully demonstrated economic freedom. In this context, the essence of Mill's book is to demonstrate individual freedom of thought, speech and action. In a word, this book is not about economic freedom, but about political freedom (that is, citizens as Mill himself said). This book was translated by Yan Fu at 1903 and named "On the Boundary of Group Rights". This translation brilliantly sums up the main topic of this book, that is, the division of boundaries between individual freedom and others' freedom and social interests, that is, individual freedom and its limitations, and correspondingly, the limits of social and state interference with individual freedom.