 The third factor underlying the currency of the new liberalism was probably the most fundamental: a growing conviction that, so far from being ‘the guardian of every other right’ (Ely, 1992: 26), property rights foster an unjust inequality of power. They entrench a merely formal equality that in actual practice systematically fails to secure the kind of equal positive liberty that matters on the ground for the working class. This theme is central to what is now called ‘liberalism’ in American politics, combining a strong endorsement of civil and personal liberties with indifference or even hostility to private ownership. The seeds of this newer liberalism can be found in Mill’s On Liberty. Although Mill insisted that the ‘so-called doctrine of Free Trade’ rested on ‘equally solid’ grounds as did the ‘principle of individual liberty’ (1963, vol. 18: 293), he nevertheless insisted that the justifications of personal and economic liberty were distinct. And in his Principles of Political Economy, Mill consistently emphasized that it is an open question whether personal liberty can flourish without private property (1963, vol. 2; 203–210), a view that Rawls was to reassert over a century later (2001: Part IV).