 Mill claims that the reasons for allowing paternalism in “this extreme case” are “evidently of far wider application” (V 11). That raises the question of what other forms of paternalism might be justified as principled exceptions to the usual prohibition on paternalism. Unfortunately, Mill does not directly address this question. However, in a nearby passage Mill does refer to the “almost despotic power of husbands over wives” (V 12). We might see Mill likening a wife’s consent to marriage, in which she must surrender various rights of control over herself and her children, to someone contracting herself into slavery. This, of course, is a theme that he develops in The Subjection of Women (discussed below).