Mr JS Mill and the Twitterati

Corn dealers were the bankers of the early 19^th century.  In the popular imagination, they were monsters who threatened the poor with starvation by inflating their prices to satiate their greed.

The abused gentlemen, naturally, hated the opprobrium, while the authorities wondered whether agitators would spark food riots or revolution.  When he considered what limits the state should place on free speech John Stuart Mill reached for these objects of popular hatred

 An opinion that corn-dealers are starvers of the poor, or that private property is robbery, ought to be unmolested when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur punishment when delivered orally to an excited mob assembled before the house of a corn-dealer, or when handed about among the same mob in the form of a placard. Acts of whatever kind, which, without justifiable cause, do harm to others, may be, and in the more important cases absolutely require to be, controlled by the unfavorable sentiments, and, when needful, by the active interference of mankind.