Those who have done me the honor of reading my previous writings will
probably receive no strong impression of novelty from the present volume;
for the principles are those to which I have been working up during the
greater part of my life, and most of the practical suggestions have been
anticipated by others or by myself. There is novelty, however, in the fact
of bringing them together, and exhibiting them in their connection, and
also, I believe, in much that is brought forward in their support. Several
of the opinions at all events, if not new, are for the present as little
likely to meet with general acceptance as if they were.

It seems to me, however, from various indications, and from none more than
the recent debates on Reform of Parliament, that both Conservatives and
Liberals (if I may continue to call them what they still call themselves)
have lost confidence in the political creeds which they nominally profess,
while neither side appears to have made any progress in providing itself
with a better. Yet such a better doctrine must be possible; not a mere
compromise, by splitting the difference between the two, but something
wider than either, which, in virtue of its superior comprehensiveness,
might be adopted by either Liberal or Conservative without renouncing any
thing which he really feels to be valuable in his own creed. When so many
feel obscurely the want of such a doctrine, and so few even flatter
themselves that they have attained it, any one may without presumption,
offer what his own thoughts, and the best that he knows of those of
others, are able to contribute towards its formation.

Chapter I—To What Extent Forms of Government are a Matter of Choice.

All speculations concerning forms of government bear the impress, more or
less exclusive, of two conflicting theories respecting political
institutions; or, to speak more properly, conflicting conceptions of what
political institutions are.

By some minds, government is conceived as strictly a practical art, giving
rise to no questions but those of means and an end. Forms of government
are assimilated to any other expedients for the attainment of human
objects. They are regarded as wholly an affair of invention and
contrivance. Being made by man, it is assumed that man has the choice
either to make them or not, and how or on what pattern they shall be made.
Government, according to this conception, is a problem, to be worked like
any other question of business. The first step is to define the purposes
which governments are required to promote. The next, is to inquire what
form of government is best fitted to fulfill those purposes. Having
satisfied ourselves on these two points, and ascertained the form of
government which combines the greatest amount of good with the least of
evil, what further remains is to obtain the concurrence of our countrymen,
or those for whom the institutions are intended, in the opinion which we
have privately arrived at. To find the best form of government; to
persuade others that it is the best; and, having done so, to stir them up
to insist on having it, is the order of ideas in the minds of those who
adopt this view of political philosophy. They look upon a constitution in
the same light (difference of scale being allowed for) as they would upon
a steam plow, or a threshing machine.

To these stand opposed another kind of political reasoners, who are so far
from assimilating a form of government to a machine, that they regard it
as a sort of spontaneous product, and the science of government as a
branch (so to speak) of natural history. According to them, forms of
government are not a matter of choice. We must take them, in the main, as
we find them. Governments can not be constructed by premeditated design.
They “are not made, but grow.” Our business with them, as with the other
facts of the universe, is to acquaint ourselves with their natural
properties, and adapt ourselves to them. The fundamental political
institutions of a people are considered by this school as a sort of
organic growth from the nature and life of that people; a product of their
habits, instincts, and unconscious wants and desires, scarcely at all of
their deliberate purposes. Their will has had no part in the matter but
that of meeting the necessities of the moment by the contrivances of the
moment, which contrivances, if in sufficient conformity to the national
feelings and character, commonly last, and, by successive aggregation,
constitute a polity suited to the people who possess it, but which it
would be vain to attempt to superinduce upon any people whose nature and
circumstances had not spontaneously evolved it.

It is difficult to decide which of these doctrines would be the most
absurd, if we could suppose either of them held as an exclusive theory.
But the principles which men profess, on any controverted subject, are
usually a very incomplete exponent of the opinions they really hold. No
one believes that every people is capable of working every sort of
institution. Carry the analogy of mechanical contrivances as far as we
will, a man does not choose even an instrument of timber and iron on the
sole ground that it is in itself the best. He considers whether he
possesses the other requisites which must be combined with it to render
its employment advantageous, and, in particular whether those by whom it
will have to be worked possess the knowledge and skill necessary for its
management. On the other hand, neither are those who speak of institutions
as if they were a kind of living organisms really the political fatalists
they give themselves out to be. They do not pretend that mankind have
absolutely no range of choice as to the government they will live under,
or that a consideration of the consequences which flow from different
forms of polity is no element at all in deciding which of them should be
preferred. But, though each side greatly exaggerates its own theory, out
of opposition to the other, and no one holds without modification to
either, the two doctrines correspond to a deep-seated difference between
two modes of thought; and though it is evident that neither of these is
entirely in the right, yet it being equally evident that neither is wholly
in the wrong, we must endeavour to get down to what is at the root of
each, and avail ourselves of the amount of truth which exists in either.

Let us remember, then, in the first place, that political institutions
(however the proposition may be at times ignored) are the work of men—owe
their origin and their whole existence to human will. Men did not wake on
a summer morning and find them sprung up. Neither do they resemble trees,
which, once planted, “are aye growing” while men “are sleeping.” In every
stage of their existence they are made what they are by human voluntary
agency. Like all things, therefore, which are made by men, they may be
either well or ill made; judgment and skill may have been exercised in
their production, or the reverse of these. And again, if a people have
omitted, or from outward pressure have not had it in their power to give
themselves a constitution by the tentative process of applying a
corrective to each evil as it arose, or as the sufferers gained strength
to resist it, this retardation of political progress is no doubt a great
disadvantage to them, but it does not prove that what has been found good
for others would not have been good also for them, and will not be so
still when they think fit to adopt it.

On the other hand, it is also to be borne in mind that political machinery
does not act of itself. As it is first made, so it has to be worked, by
men, and even by ordinary men. It needs, not their simple acquiescence,
but their active participation; and must be adjusted to the capacities and
qualities of such men as are available. This implies three conditions. The
people for whom the form of government is intended must be willing to
accept it, or, at least not so unwilling as to oppose an insurmountable
obstacle to its establishment. They must be willing and able to do what is
necessary to keep it standing. And they must be willing and able to do
what it requires of them to enable it to fulfill its purposes. The word
“do” is to be understood as including forbearances as well as acts. They
must be capable of fulfilling the conditions of action and the conditions
of self-restraint, which are necessary either for keeping the established
polity in existence, or for enabling it to achieve the ends, its
conduciveness to which forms its recommendation.

The failure of any of these conditions renders a form of government,
whatever favorable promise it may otherwise hold out, unsuitable to the
particular case.

The first obstacle, the repugnance of the people to the particular form of
government, needs little illustration, because it never can in theory have
been overlooked. The case is of perpetual occurrence. Nothing but foreign
force would induce a tribe of North American Indians to submit to the
restraints of a regular and civilized government. The same might have been
said, though somewhat less absolutely, of the barbarians who overran the
Roman Empire. It required centuries of time, and an entire change of
circumstances, to discipline them into regular obedience even to their own
leaders, when not actually serving under their banner. There are nations
who will not voluntarily submit to any government but that of certain
families, which have from time immemorial had the privilege of supplying
them with chiefs. Some nations could not, except by foreign conquest, be
made to endure a monarchy; others are equally averse to a republic. The
hindrance often amounts, for the time being, to impracticability.

But there are also cases in which, though not averse to a form of
government—possibly even desiring it—a people may be unwilling
or unable to fulfill its conditions. They may be incapable of fulfilling
such of them as are necessary to keep the government even in nominal
existence. Thus a people may prefer a free government; but if, from
indolence, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they
are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it; if they will not
fight for it when it is directly attacked; if they can be deluded by the
artifices used to cheat them out of it; if, by momentary discouragement,
or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual, they can be
induced to lay their liberties at the feet even of a great man, or trust
him with powers which enable him to subvert their institutions—in
all these cases they are more or less unfit for liberty; and though it may
be for their good to have had it even for a short time, they are unlikely
long to enjoy it. Again, a people may be unwilling or unable to fulfill
the duties which a particular form of government requires of them. A rude
people, though in some degree alive to the benefits of civilized society,
may be unable to practice the forbearances which it demands; their
passions may be too violent, or their personal pride too exacting, to
forego private conflict, and leave to the laws the avenging of their real
or supposed wrongs. In such a case, a civilized government, to be really
advantageous to them, will require to be in a considerable degree
despotic; one over which they do not themselves exercise control, and
which imposes a great amount of forcible restraint upon their actions.
Again, a people must be considered unfit for more than a limited and
qualified freedom who will not co-operate actively with the law and the
public authorities in the repression of evil-doers. A people who are more
disposed to shelter a criminal than to apprehend him; who, like the
Hindoos, will perjure themselves to screen the man who has robbed them,
rather than take trouble or expose themselves to vindictiveness by giving
evidence against him; who, like some nations of Europe down to a recent
date, if a man poniards another in the public street, pass by on the other
side, because it is the business of the police to look to the matter, and
it is safer not to interfere in what does not concern them; a people who
are revolted by an execution, but not shocked at an assassination—require
that the public authorities should be armed with much sterner powers of
repression than elsewhere, since the first indispensable requisites of
civilized life have nothing else to rest on. These deplorable states of
feeling, in any people who have emerged from savage life, are, no doubt,
usually the consequence of previous bad government, which has taught them
to regard the law as made for other ends than their good, and its
administrators as worse enemies than those who openly violate it. But,
however little blame may be due to those in whom these mental habits have
grown up, and however the habits may be ultimately conquerable by better
government, yet, while they exist, a people so disposed can not be
governed with as little power exercised over them as a people whose
sympathies are on the side of the law, and who are willing to give active
assistance in its enforcement. Again, representative institutions are of
little value, and may be a mere instrument of tyranny or intrigue, when
the generality of electors are not sufficiently interested in their own
government to give their vote, or, if they vote at all, do not bestow
their suffrages on public grounds, but sell them for money, or vote at the
beck of some one who has control over them, or whom for private reasons
they desire to propitiate. Popular election thus practiced, instead of a
security against misgovernment, is but an additional wheel in its
machinery.

Besides these moral hindrances, mechanical difficulties are often an
insuperable impediment to forms of government. In the ancient world,
though there might be, and often was, great individual or local
independence, there could be nothing like a regulated popular government
beyond the bounds of a single city-community; because there did not exist
the physical conditions for the formation and propagation of a public
opinion, except among those who could be brought together to discuss
public matters in the same agora. This obstacle is generally thought to
have ceased by the adoption of the representative system. But to surmount
it completely, required the press, and even the newspaper press, the real
equivalent, though not in all respects an adequate one, of the Pnyx and
the Forum. There have been states of society in which even a monarchy of
any great territorial extent could not subsist, but unavoidably broke up
into petty principalities, either mutually independent, or held together
by a loose tie like the feudal: because the machinery of authority was not
perfect enough to carry orders into effect at a great distance from the
person of the ruler. He depended mainly upon voluntary fidelity for the
obedience even of his army, nor did there exist the means of making the
people pay an amount of taxes sufficient for keeping up the force
necessary to compel obedience throughout a large territory. In these and
all similar cases, it must be understood that the amount of the hindrance
may be either greater or less. It may be so great as to make the form of
government work very ill, without absolutely precluding its existence, or
hindering it from being practically preferable to any other which can be
had. This last question mainly depends upon a consideration which we have
not yet arrived at—the tendencies of different forms of government
to promote Progress.

We have now examined the three fundamental conditions of the adaptation of
forms of government to the people who are to be governed by them. If the
supporters of what may be termed the naturalistic theory of politics, mean
but to insist on the necessity of these three conditions; if they only
mean that no government can permanently exist which does not fulfill the
first and second conditions, and, in some considerable measure, the third;
their doctrine, thus limited, is incontestable. Whatever they mean more
than this appears to me untenable. All that we are told about the
necessity of an historical basis for institutions, of their being in
harmony with the national usages and character, and the like, means either
this, or nothing to the purpose. There is a great quantity of mere
sentimentality connected with these and similar phrases, over and above
the amount of rational meaning contained in them. But, considered
practically, these alleged requisites of political institutions are merely
so many facilities for realising the three conditions. When an
institution, or a set of institutions, has the way prepared for it by the
opinions, tastes, and habits of the people, they are not only more easily
induced to accept it, but will more easily learn, and will be, from the
beginning, better disposed, to do what is required of them both for the
preservation of the institutions, and for bringing them into such action
as enables them to produce their best results. It would be a great mistake
in any legislator not to shape his measures so as to take advantage of
such pre-existing habits and feelings when available. On the other hand,
it is an exaggeration to elevate these mere aids and facilities into
necessary conditions. People are more easily induced to do, and do more
easily, what they are already used to; but people also learn to do things
new to them. Familiarity is a great help; but much dwelling on an idea
will make it familiar, even when strange at first. There are abundant
instances in which a whole people have been eager for untried things. The
amount of capacity which a people possess for doing new things, and
adapting themselves to new circumstances; is itself one of the elements of
the question. It is a quality in which different nations, and different
stages of civilization, differ much from one another. The capability of
any given people for fulfilling the conditions of a given form of
government can not be pronounced on by any sweeping rule. Knowledge of the
particular people, and general practical judgment and sagacity, must be
the guides.

There is also another consideration not to be lost sight of. A people may
be unprepared for good institutions; but to kindle a desire for them is a
necessary part of the preparation. To recommend and advocate a particular
institution or form of government, and set its advantages in the strongest
light, is one of the modes, often the only mode within reach, of educating
the mind of the nation not only for accepting or claiming, but also for
working, the institution. What means had Italian patriots, during the last
and present generation, of preparing the Italian people for freedom in
unity, but by inciting them to demand it? Those, however, who undertake
such a task, need to be duly impressed, not solely with the benefits of
the institution or polity which they recommend, but also with the
capacities, moral, intellectual, and active, required for working it; that
they may avoid, if possible, stirring up a desire too much in advance of
the capacity.

The result of what has been said is, that, within the limits set by the
three conditions so often adverted to, institutions and forms of
government are a matter of choice. To inquire into the best form of
government in the abstract (as it is called) is not a chimerical, but a
highly practical employment of scientific intellect; and to introduce into
any country the best institutions which, in the existing state of that
country, are capable of, in any tolerable degree, fulfilling the
conditions, is one of the most rational objects to which practical effort
can address itself. Every thing which can be said by way of disparaging
the efficacy of human will and purpose in matters of government might be
said of it in every other of its applications. In all things there are
very strict limits to human power. It can only act by wielding some one or
more of the forces of nature. Forces, therefore, that can be applied to
the desired use must exist; and will only act according to their own laws.
We can not make the river run backwards; but we do not therefore say that
watermills “are not made, but grow.” In politics, as in mechanics, the
power which is to keep the engine going must be sought for outside
the machinery; and if it is not forthcoming, or is insufficient to
surmount the obstacles which may reasonably be expected, the contrivance
will fail. This is no peculiarity of the political art; and amounts only
to saying that it is subject to the same limitations and conditions as all
other arts.

At this point we are met by another objection, or the same objection in a
different form. The forces, it is contended, on which the greater
political phenomena depend, are not amenable to the direction of
politicians or philosophers. The government of a country, it is affirmed,
is, in all substantial respects, fixed and determined beforehand by the
state of the country in regard to the distribution of the elements of
social power. Whatever is the strongest power in society will obtain the
governing authority; and a change in the political constitution can not be
durable unless preceded or accompanied by an altered distribution of power
in society itself. A nation, therefore, can not choose its form of
government. The mere details, and practical organization, it may choose;
but the essence of the whole, the seat of the supreme power, is determined
for it by social circumstances.

That there is a portion of truth in this doctrine I at once admit; but to
make it of any use, it must be reduced to a distinct expression and proper
limits. When it is said that the strongest power in society will make
itself strongest in the government, what is meant by power? Not thews and
sinews; otherwise pure democracy would be the only form of polity that
could exist. To mere muscular strength, add two other elements, property
and intelligence, and we are nearer the truth, but far from having yet
reached it. Not only is a greater number often kept down by a less, but
the greater number may have a preponderance in property, and individually
in intelligence, and may yet be held in subjection, forcibly or otherwise,
by a minority in both respects inferior to it. To make these various
elements of power politically influential they must be organized; and the
advantage in organization is necessarily with those who are in possession
of the government. A much weaker party in all other elements of power may
greatly preponderate when the powers of government are thrown into the
scale; and may long retain its predominance through this alone: though, no
doubt, a government so situated is in the condition called in mechanics
unstable equilibrium, like a thing balanced on its smaller end, which, if
once disturbed, tends more and more to depart from, instead of reverting
to, its previous state.

But there are still stronger objections to this theory of government in
the terms in which it is usually stated. The power in society which has
any tendency to convert itself into political power is not power
quiescent, power merely passive, but active power; in other words, power
actually exerted; that is to say, a very small portion of all the power in
existence. Politically speaking, a great part of all power consists in
will. How is it possible, then, to compute the elements of political
power, while we omit from the computation any thing which acts on the
will? To think that, because those who wield the power in society wield in
the end that of government, therefore it is of no use to attempt to
influence the constitution of the government by acting on opinion, is to
forget that opinion is itself one of the greatest active social forces.
One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have
only interests. They who can succeed in creating a general persuasion that
a certain form of government, or social fact of any kind, deserves to be
preferred, have made nearly the most important step which can possibly be
taken toward ranging the powers of society on its side. On the day when
the protomartyr was stoned to death at Jerusalem, while he who was to be
the Apostle of the Gentiles stood by “consenting unto his death,” would
any one have supposed that the party of that stoned man were then and
there the strongest power in society? And has not the event proved that
they were so? Because theirs was the most powerful of then existing
beliefs. The same element made a monk of Wittenberg, at the meeting of the
Diet of Worms, a more powerful social force than the Emperor Charles the
Fifth, and all the princes there assembled. But these, it may be said, are
cases in which religion was concerned, and religious convictions are
something peculiar in their strength. Then let us take a case purely
political, where religion, if concerned at all, was chiefly on the losing
side. If any one requires to be convinced that speculative thought is one
of the chief elements of social power, let him bethink himself of the age
in which there was scarcely a throne in Europe which was not filled by a
liberal and reforming king, a liberal and reforming emperor, or, strangest
of all, a liberal and reforming pope; the age of Frederic the Great, of
Catherine the Second, of Joseph the Second, of Peter Leopold, of Benedict
XIV., of Ganganelli, of Pombal, of D’Aranda; when the very Bourbons of
Naples were liberals and reformers, and all the active minds among the
noblesse of France were filled with the ideas which were soon after to
cost them so dear. Surely a conclusive example how far mere physical and
economic power is from being the whole of social power. It was not by any
change in the distribution of material interests, but by the spread of
moral convictions, that negro slavery has been put an end to in the
British Empire and elsewhere. The serfs in Russia owe their emancipation,
if not to a sentiment of duty, at least to the growth of a more
enlightened opinion respecting the true interest of the state. It is what
men think that determines how they act; and though the persuasions and
convictions of average men are in a much greater degree determined by
their personal position than by reason, no little power is exercised over
them by the persuasions and convictions of those whose personal position
is different, and by the united authority of the instructed. When,
therefore, the instructed in general can be brought to recognize one
social arrangement, or political or other institution, as good, and
another as bad—one as desirable, another as condemnable, very much
has been done towards giving to the one, or withdrawing from the other,
that preponderance of social force which enables it to subsist. And the
maxim, that the government of a country is what the social forces in
existence compel it to be, is true only in the sense in which it favors,
instead of discouraging, the attempt to exercise, among all forms of
government practicable in the existing condition of society, a rational
choice.

Chapter II—The Criterion of a Good Form of Government.

The form of government for any given country being (within certain
definite conditions) amenable to choice, it is now to be considered by
what test the choice should be directed; what are the distinctive
characteristics of the form of government best fitted to promote the
interests of any given society.

Before entering into this inquiry, it may seem necessary to decide what
are the proper functions of government; for, government altogether being
only a means, the eligibility of the means must depend on their adaptation
to the end. But this mode of stating the problem gives less aid to its
investigation than might be supposed, and does not even bring the whole of
the question into view. For, in the first place, the proper functions of a
government are not a fixed thing, but different in different states of
society; much more extensive in a backward than in an advanced state. And,
secondly, the character of a government or set of political institutions
can not be sufficiently estimated while we confine our attention to the
legitimate sphere of governmental functions; for, though the goodness of a
government is necessarily circumscribed within that sphere, its badness
unhappily is not. Every kind and degree of evil of which mankind are
susceptible may be inflicted on them by their government, and none of the
good which social existence is capable of can be any further realized than
as the constitution of the government is compatible with, and allows scope
for, its attainment. Not to speak of indirect effects, the direct meddling
of the public authorities has no necessary limits but those of human life,
and the influence of government on the well-being of society can be
considered or estimated in reference to nothing less than the whole of the
interests of humanity.

Being thus obliged to place before ourselves, as the test of good and bad
government, so complex an object as the aggregate interests of society, we
would willingly attempt some kind of classification of those interests,
which, bringing them before the mind in definite groups, might give
indication of the qualities by which a form of government is fitted to
promote those various interests respectively. It would be a great facility
if we could say the good of society consists of such and such elements;
one of these elements requires such conditions, another such others; the
government, then, which unites in the greatest degree all these
conditions, must be the best. The theory of government would thus be built
up from the separate theorems of the elements which compose a good state
of society.

Unfortunately, to enumerate and classify the constituents of social
well-being, so as to admit of the formation of such theorems is no easy
task. Most of those who, in the last or present generation, have applied
themselves to the philosophy of politics in any comprehensive spirit, have
felt the importance of such a classification, but the attempts which have
been made toward it are as yet limited, so far as I am aware, to a single
step. The classification begins and ends with a partition of the
exigencies of society between the two heads of Order and Progress (in the
phraseology of French thinkers); Permanence and Progression, in the words
of Coleridge. This division is plausible and seductive, from the
apparently clean-cut opposition between its two members, and the
remarkable difference between the sentiments to which they appeal. But I
apprehend that (however admissible for purposes of popular discourse) the
distinction between Order, or Permanence and Progress, employed to define
the qualities necessary in a government, is unscientific and incorrect.

For, first, what are Order and Progress? Concerning Progress there is no
difficulty, or none which is apparent at first sight. When Progress is
spoken of as one of the wants of human society, it may be supposed to mean
Improvement. That is a tolerably distinct idea. But what is Order?
Sometimes it means more, sometimes less, but hardly ever the whole of what
human society needs except improvement.

In its narrowest acceptation, Order means Obedience. A government is said
to preserve order if it succeeds in getting itself obeyed. But there are
different degrees of obedience, and it is not every degree that is
commendable. Only an unmitigated despotism demands that the individual
citizen shall obey unconditionally every mandate of persons in authority.
We must at least limit the definition to such mandates as are general, and
issued in the deliberate form of laws. Order, thus understood, expresses,
doubtless, an indispensable attribute of government. Those who are unable
to make their ordinances obeyed, can not be said to govern. But, though a
necessary condition, this is not the object of government. That it should
make itself obeyed is requisite, in order that it may accomplish some
other purpose. We are still to seek what is this other purpose, which
government ought to fulfill abstractedly from the idea of improvement, and
which has to be fulfilled in every society, whether stationary or
progressive.

In a sense somewhat more enlarged, Order means the preservation of peace
by the cessation of private violence. Order is said to exist where the
people of the country have, as a general rule, ceased to prosecute their
quarrels by private force, and acquired the habit of referring the
decision of their disputes and the redress of their injuries to the public
authorities. But in this larger use of the term, as well as in the former
narrow one, Order expresses rather one of the conditions of government,
than either its purpose or the criterion of its excellence; for the habit
may be well established of submitting to the government, and referring all
disputed matters to its authority, and yet the manner in which the
government deals with those disputed matters, and with the other things
about which it concerns itself, may differ by the whole interval which
divides the best from the worst possible.

If we intend to comprise in the idea of Order all that society requires
from its government which is not included in the idea of Progress, we must
define Order as the preservation of all kinds and amounts of good which
already exist, and Progress as consisting in the increase of them. This
distinction does comprehend in one or the other section every thing which
a government can be required to promote. But, thus understood, it affords
no basis for a philosophy of government. We can not say that, in
constituting a polity, certain provisions ought to be made for Order and
certain others for Progress, since the conditions of Order, in the sense
now indicated, and those of Progress, are not opposite, but the same. The
agencies which tend to preserve the social good which already exists are
the very same which promote the increase of it, and vice versâ, the
sole difference being, that a greater degree of those agencies is required
for the latter purpose than for the former.

What, for example, are the qualities in the citizens individually which
conduce most to keep up the amount of good conduct, of good management, of
success and prosperity, which already exist in society? Every body will
agree that those qualities are industry, integrity, justice, and prudence.
But are not these, of all qualities, the most conducive to improvement?
and is not any growth of these virtues in the community in itself the
greatest of improvements? If so, whatever qualities in the government are
promotive of industry, integrity, justice, and prudence, conduce alike to
permanence and to progression, only there is needed more of those
qualities to make the society decidedly progressive than merely to keep it
permanent.

What, again, are the particular attributes in human beings which seem to
have a more especial reference to Progress, and do not so directly suggest
the ideas of Order and Preservation? They are chiefly the qualities of
mental activity, enterprise, and courage. But are not all these qualities
fully as much required for preserving the good we have as for adding to
it? If there is any thing certain in human affairs, it is that valuable
acquisitions are only to be retained by the continuation of the same
energies which gained them. Things left to take care of themselves
inevitably decay. Those whom success induces to relax their habits of care
and thoughtfulness, and their willingness to encounter disagreeables,
seldom long retain their good fortune at its height. The mental attribute
which seems exclusively dedicated to Progress, and is the culmination of
the tendencies to it, is Originality, or Invention. Yet this is no less
necessary for Permanence, since, in the inevitable changes of human
affairs, new inconveniences and dangers continually grow up, which must be
encountered by new resources and contrivances, in order to keep things
going on even only as well as they did before. Whatever qualities,
therefore, in a government, tend to encourage activity, energy, courage,
originality, are requisites of Permanence as well as of Progress, only a
somewhat less degree of them will, on the average, suffice for the former
purpose than for the latter.

To pass now from the mental to the outward and objective requisites of
society: it is impossible to point out any contrivance in politics, or
arrangement of social affairs, which conduces to Order only, or to
Progress only; whatever tends to either promotes both. Take, for instance,
the common institution of a police. Order is the object which seems most
immediately interested in the efficiency of this part of the social
organization. Yet, if it is effectual to promote Order, that is, if it
represses crime, and enables every one to feel his person and property
secure, can any state of things be more conducive to Progress? The greater
security of property is one of the main conditions and causes of greater
production, which is Progress in its most familiar and vulgarest aspect.
The better repression of crime represses the dispositions which tend to
crime, and this is Progress in a somewhat higher sense. The release of the
individual from the cares and anxieties of a state of imperfect protection
sets his faculties free to be employed in any new effort for improving his
own state and that of others, while the same cause, by attaching him to
social existence, and making him no longer see present or prospective
enemies in his fellow creatures, fosters all those feelings of kindness
and fellowship towards others, and interest in the general well-being of
the community, which are such important parts of social improvement.

Take, again, such a familiar case as that of a good system of taxation and
finance. This would generally be classed as belonging to the province of
Order. Yet what can be more conducive to Progress? A financial system
which promotes the one, conduces, by the very same excellences, to the
other. Economy, for example, equally preserves the existing stock of
national wealth, and favors the creation of more. A just distribution of
burdens, by holding up to every citizen an example of morality and good
conscience applied to difficult adjustments, and an evidence of the value
which the highest authorities attach to them, tends in an eminent degree
to educate the moral sentiments of the community, both in respect of
strength and of discrimination. Such a mode of levying the taxes as does
not impede the industry, or unnecessarily interfere with the liberty of
the citizen, promotes, not the preservation only, but the increase of the
national wealth, and encourages a more active use of the individual
faculties. And vice versâ, all errors in finance and taxation which
obstruct the improvement of the people in wealth and morals, tend also, if
of sufficiently serious amount, positively to impoverish and demoralize
them. It holds, in short, universally, that when Order and Permanence are
taken in their widest sense for the stability of existing advantages, the
requisites of Progress are but the requisites of Order in a greater
degree; those of Permanence merely those of Progress in a somewhat smaller
measure.

In support of the position that Order is intrinsically different from
Progress, and that preservation of existing and acquisition of additional
good are sufficiently distinct to afford the basis of a fundamental
classification, we shall perhaps be reminded that Progress may be at the
expense of Order; that while we are acquiring, or striving to acquire,
good of one kind, we may be losing ground in respect to others; thus there
may be progress in wealth, while there is deterioration in virtue.
Granting this, what it proves is, not that Progress is generically a
different thing from Permanence, but that wealth is a different thing from
virtue. Progress is permanence and something more; and it is no answer to
this to say that Progress in one thing does not imply Permanence in every
thing. No more does Progress in one thing imply Progress in every thing.
Progress of any kind includes Permanence in that same kind: whenever
Permanence is sacrificed to some particular kind of Progress, other
Progress is still more sacrificed to it; and if it be not worth the
sacrifice, not the interest of Permanence alone has been disregarded, but
the general interest of Progress has been mistaken.

If these improperly contrasted ideas are to be used at all in the attempt
to give a first commencement of scientific precision to the notion of good
government, it would be more philosophically correct to leave out of the
definition the word Order, and to say that the best government is that
which is most conducive to Progress. For Progress includes Order, but
Order does not include Progress. Progress is a greater degree of that of
which Order is a less. Order, in any other sense, stands only for a part
of the prerequisites of good government, not for its idea and essence.
Order would find a more suitable place among the conditions of Progress,
since, if we would increase our sum of good, nothing is more indispensable
than to take due care of what we already have. If we are endeavouring
after more riches, our very first rule should be, not to squander
uselessly our existing means. Order, thus considered, is not an additional
end to be reconciled with Progress, but a part and means of Progress
itself. If a gain in one respect is purchased by a more than equivalent
loss in the same or in any other, there is not Progress. Conduciveness to
Progress, thus understood, includes the whole excellence of a government.

But, though metaphysically defensible, this definition of the criterion of
good government is not appropriate, because, though it contains the whole
of the truth, it recalls only a part. What is suggested by the term
Progress is the idea of moving onward, whereas the meaning of it here is
quite as much the prevention of falling back. The very same social causes—the
same beliefs, feelings, institutions, and practices—are as much
required to prevent society from retrograding as to produce a further
advance. Were there no improvement to be hoped for, life would not be the
less an unceasing struggle against causes of deterioration, as it even now
is. Politics, as conceived by the ancients, consisted wholly in this. The
natural tendency of men and their works was to degenerate, which tendency,
however, by good institutions virtuously administered, it might be
possible for an indefinite length of time to counteract. Though we no
longer hold this opinion; though most men in the present age profess the
contrary creed, believing that the tendency of things, on the whole, is
toward improvement, we ought not to forget that there is an incessant and
ever-flowing current of human affairs toward the worse, consisting of all
the follies, all the vices, all the negligences, indolences, and
supinenesses of mankind, which is only controlled, and kept from sweeping
all before it, by the exertions which some persons constantly, and others
by fits, put forth in the direction of good and worthy objects. It gives a
very insufficient idea of the importance of the strivings which take place
to improve and elevate human nature and life to suppose that their chief
value consists in the amount of actual improvement realized by their
means, and that the consequence of their cessation would merely be that we
should remain as we are. A very small diminution of those exertions would
not only put a stop to improvement, but would turn the general tendency of
things toward deterioration, which, once begun, would proceed with
increasingly rapidity, and become more and more difficult to check, until
it reached a state often seen in history, and in which many large portions
of mankind even now grovel; when hardly any thing short of superhuman
power seems sufficient to turn the tide, and give a fresh commencement to
the upward movement.

These reasons make the word Progress as unapt as the terms Order and
Permanence to become the basis for a classification of the requisites of a
form of government. The fundamental antithesis which these words express
does not lie in the things themselves, so much as in the types of human
character which answer to them. There are, we know, some minds in which
caution, and others in which boldness, predominates; in some, the desire
to avoid imperilling what is already possessed is a stronger sentiment
than that which prompts to improve the old and acquire new advantages;
while there are others who lean the contrary way, and are more eager for
future than careful of present good. The road to the ends of both is the
same; but they are liable to wander from it in opposite directions. This
consideration is of importance in composing the personnel of any
political body: persons of both types ought to be included in it, that the
tendencies of each may be tempered, in so far as they are excessive, by a
due proportion of the other. There needs no express provision to insure
this object, provided care is taken to admit nothing inconsistent with it.
The natural and spontaneous admixture of the old and the young, of those
whose position and reputation are made and those who have them still to
make, will in general sufficiently answer the purpose, if only this
natural balance is not disturbed by artificial regulation.

Since the distinction most commonly adopted for the classification of
social exigencies does not possess the properties needful for that use, we
have to seek for some other leading distinction better adapted to the
purpose. Such a distinction would seem to be indicated by the
considerations to which I now proceed.

If we ask ourselves on what causes and conditions good government in all
its senses, from the humblest to the most exalted, depends, we find that
the principal of them, the one which transcends all others, is the
qualities of the human beings composing the society over which the
government is exercised.

We may take, as a first instance, the administration of justice; with the
more propriety, since there is no part of public business in which the
mere machinery, the rules and contrivances for conducting the details of
the operation, are of such vital consequence. Yet even these yield in
importance to the qualities of the human agents employed. Of what efficacy
are rules of procedure in securing the ends of justice if the moral
condition of the people is such that the witnesses generally lie, and the
judges and their subordinates take bribes? Again, how can institutions
provide a good municipal administration if there exists such indifference
to the subject that those who would administer honestly and capably can
not be induced to serve, and the duties are left to those who undertake
them because they have some private interest to be promoted? Of what avail
is the most broadly popular representative system if the electors do not
care to choose the best member of Parliament, but choose him who will
spend most money to be elected? How can a representative assembly work for
good if its members can be bought, or if their excitability of
temperament, uncorrected by public discipline or private self-control,
makes them incapable of calm deliberation, and they resort to manual
violence on the floor of the House, or shoot at one another with rifles?
How, again, can government, or any joint concern, be carried on in a
tolerable manner by people so envious that, if one among them seems likely
to succeed in any thing, those who ought to cooperate with him form a
tacit combination to make him fail? Whenever the general disposition of
the people is such that each individual regards those only of his
interests which are selfish, and does not dwell on, or concern himself
for, his share of the general interest, in such a state of things good
government is impossible. The influence of defects of intelligence in
obstructing all the elements of good government requires no illustration.
Government consists of acts done by human beings; and if the agents, or
those who choose the agents, or those to whom the agents are responsible,
or the lookers-on whose opinion ought to influence and check all these,
are mere masses of ignorance, stupidity, and baleful prejudice, every
operation of government will go wrong; while, in proportion as the men
rise above this standard, so will the government improve in quality up to
the point of excellence, attainable but nowhere attained, where the
officers of government, themselves persons of superior virtue and
intellect, are surrounded by the atmosphere of a virtuous and enlightened
public opinion.

The first element of good government, therefore, being the virtue and
intelligence of the human beings composing the community, the most
important point of excellence which any form of government can possess is
to promote the virtue and intelligence of the people themselves. The first
question in respect to any political institutions is how far they tend to
foster in the members of the community the various desirable qualities,
moral and intellectual, or rather (following Bentham’s more complete
classification) moral, intellectual, and active. The government which does
this the best has every likelihood of being the best in all other
respects, since it is on these qualities, so far as they exist in the
people, that all possibility of goodness in the practical operations of
the government depends.

We may consider, then, as one criterion of the goodness of a government,
the degree in which it tends to increase the sum of good qualities in the
governed, collectively and individually, since, besides that their
well-being is the sole object of government, their good qualities supply
the moving force which works the machinery. This leaves, as the other
constituent element of the merit of a government, the quality of the
machinery itself; that is, the degree in which it is adapted to take
advantage of the amount of good qualities which may at any time exist, and
make them instrumental to the right purposes. Let us again take the
subject of judicature as an example and illustration. The judicial system
being given, the goodness of the administration of justice is in the
compound ratio of the worth of the men composing the tribunals, and the
worth of the public opinion which influences or controls them. But all the
difference between a good and a bad system of judicature lies in the
contrivances adopted for bringing whatever moral and intellectual worth
exists in the community to bear upon the administration of justice, and
making it duly operative on the result. The arrangements for rendering the
choice of the judges such as to obtain the highest average of virtue and
intelligence; the salutary forms of procedure; the publicity which allows
observation and criticism of whatever is amiss; the liberty of discussion
and cinsure through the press; the mode of taking evidence, according as
it is well or ill adapted to elicit truth; the facilities, whatever be
their amount, for obtaining access to the tribunals; the arrangements for
detecting crimes and apprehending offenders-all these things are not the
power, but the machinery for bringing the power into contact with the
obstacle; and the machinery has no action of itself, but without it the
power, let it be ever so ample, would be wasted and of no effect. A
similar distinction exists in regard to the constitution of the executive
departments of administration. Their machinery is good, when the proper
tests are prescribed for the qualifications of officers, the proper rules
for their promotion; when the business is conveniently distributed among
those who are to transact it, a convenient and methodical order
established for its transaction, a correct and intelligible record kept of
it after being transacted; when each individual knows for what he is
responsible, and is known to others as responsible for it; when the
best-contrived checks are provided against negligence, favoritism, or
jobbery in any of the acts of the department. But political checks will no
more act of themselves than a bridle will direct a horse without a rider.
If the checking functionaries are as corrupt or as negligent as those whom
they ought to check, and if the public, the mainspring of the whole
checking machinery, are too ignorant, too passive, or too careless and
inattentive to do their part, little benefit will be derived from the best
administrative apparatus. Yet a good apparatus is always preferable to a
bad. It enables such insufficient moving or checking power as exists to
act at the greatest advantage; and without it, no amount of moving or
checking power would be sufficient. Publicity, for instance, is no
impediment to evil, nor stimulus to good, if the public will not look at
what is done; but without publicity, how could they either check or
encourage what they were not permitted to see? The ideally perfect
constitution of a public office is that in which the interest of the
functionary is entirely coincident with his duty. No mere system will make
it so, but still less can it be made so without a system, aptly devised
for the purpose.

What we have said of the arrangements for the detailed administration of
the government is still more evidently true of its general constitution.
All government which aims at being good is an organization of some part of
the good qualities existing in the individual members of the community for
the conduct of its collective affairs. A representative constitution is a
means of bringing the general standard of intelligence and honesty
existing in the community, and the individual intellect and virtue of its
wisest members, more directly to bear upon the government, and investing
them with greater influence in it than they would have under any other
mode of organization; though, under any, such influence as they do have is
the source of all good that there is in the government, and the hindrance
of every evil that there is not. The greater the amount of these good
qualities which the institutions of a country succeed in organizing, and
the better the mode of organization, the better will be the government.

We have now, therefore, obtained a foundation for a twofold division of
the merit which any set of political institutions can possess. It consists
partly of the degree in which they promote the general mental advancement
of the community, including under that phrase advancement in intellect, in
virtue, and in practical activity and efficiency, and partly of the degree
of perfection with which they organize the moral, intellectual, and active
worth already existing, so as to operate with the greatest effect on
public affairs. A government is to be judged by its action upon men and by
its action upon things; by what it makes of the citizens, and what it does
with them; its tendency to improve or deteriorate the people themselves,
and the goodness or badness of the work it performs for them, and by means
of them. Government is at once a great influence acting on the human mind,
and a set of organized arrangements for public business: in the first
capacity its beneficial action is chiefly indirect, but not therefore less
vital, while its mischievous action may be direct.

The difference between these two functions of a government is not, like
that between Order and Progress, a difference merely in degree, but in
kind. We must not, however, suppose that they have no intimate connection
with one another. The institutions which insure the best management of
public affairs practicable in the existing state of cultivation tend by
this alone to the further improvement of that state. A people which had
the most just laws, the purest and most efficient judicature, the most
enlightened administration, the most equitable and least onerous system of
finance, compatible with the stage it had attained in moral and
intellectual advancement, would be in a fair way to pass rapidly into a
higher stage. Nor is there any mode in which political institutions can
contribute more effectually to the improvement of the people than by doing
their more direct work well. And reversely, if their machinery is so badly
constructed that they do their own particular business ill, the effect is
felt in a thousand ways in lowering the morality and deadening the
intelligence and activity of the people. But the distinction is
nevertheless real, because this is only one of the means by which
political institutions improve or deteriorate the human mind, and the
causes and modes of that beneficial or injurious influence remain a
distinct and much wider subject of study.

Of the two modes of operation by which a form of government or set of
political institutions affects the welfare of the community—its
operation as an agency of national education, and its arrangements for
conducting the collective affairs of the community in the state of
education in which they already are, the last evidently varies much less,
from difference of country and state of civilization, than the first. It
has also much less to do with the fundamental constitution of the
government. The mode of conducting the practical business of government,
which is best under a free constitution, would generally be best also in
an absolute monarchy, only an absolute monarchy is not so likely to
practice it. The laws of property, for example; the principles of evidence
and judicial procedure; the system of taxation and of financial
administration, need not necessarily be different in different forms of
government. Each of these matters has principles and rules of its own,
which are a subject of separate study. General jurisprudence, civil and
penal legislation, financial and commercial policy, are sciences in
themselves, or, rather, separate members of the comprehensive science or
art of government; and the most enlightened doctrines on all these
subjects, though not equally likely to be understood and acted on under
all forms of government, yet, if understood and acted on, would in general
be equally beneficial under them all. It is true that these doctrines
could not be applied without some modifications to all states of society
and of the human mind; nevertheless, by far the greater number of them
would require modifications solely of detail to adapt them to any state of
society sufficiently advanced to possess rulers capable of understanding
them. A government to which they would be wholly unsuitable must be one so
bad in itself, or so opposed to public feeling, as to be unable to
maintain itself in existence by honest means.

It is otherwise with that portion of the interests of the community which
relate to the better or worse training of the people themselves.
Considered as instrumental to this, institutions need to be radically
different, according to the stage of advancement already reached. The
recognition of this truth, though for the most part empirically rather
than philosophically, may be regarded as the main point of superiority in
the political theories of the present above those of the last age, in
which it was customary to claim representative democracy for England or
France by arguments which would equally have proved it the only fit form
of government for Bedouins or Malays. The state of different communities,
in point of culture and development, ranges downwards to a condition very
little above the highest of the beasts. The upward range, too, is
considerable, and the future possible extension vastly greater. A
community can only be developed out of one of these states into a higher
by a concourse of influences, among the principal of which is the
government to which they are subject. In all states of human improvement
ever yet attained, the nature and degree of authority exercised over
individuals, the distribution of power, and the conditions of command and
obedience, are the most powerful of the influences, except their religious
belief, which make them what they are, and enable them to become what they
can be. They may be stopped short at any point in their progress by
defective adaptation of their government to that particular stage of
advancement. And the one indispensable merit of a government, in favor of
which it may be forgiven almost any amount of other demerit compatible
with progress, is that its operation on the people is favorable, or not
unfavorable, to the next step which it is necessary for them to take in
order to raise themselves to a higher level.

Thus (to repeat a former example), a people in a state of savage
independence, in which every one lives for himself, exempt, unless by
fits, from any external control, is practically incapable of making any
progress in civilization until it has learned to obey. The indispensable
virtue, therefore, in a government which establishes itself over a people
of this sort is that it make itself obeyed. To enable it to do this, the
constitution of the government must be nearly, or quite despotic. A
constitution in any degree popular, dependent on the voluntary surrender
by the different members of the community of their individual freedom of
action, would fail to enforce the first lesson which the pupils, in this
stage of their progress, require. Accordingly, the civilization of such
tribes, when not the result of juxtaposition with others already
civilized, is almost always the work of an absolute ruler, deriving his
power either from religion or military prowess—very often from
foreign arms.

Again, uncivilized races, and the bravest and most energetic still more
than the rest, are averse to continuous labor of an unexciting kind. Yet
all real civilization is at this price; without such labor, neither can
the mind be disciplined into the habits required by civilized society, nor
the material world prepared to receive it. There needs a rare concurrence
of circumstances, and for that reason often a vast length of time, to
reconcile such a people to industry, unless they are for a while compelled
to it. Hence even personal slavery, by giving a commencement to industrial
life, and enforcing it as the exclusive occupation of the most numerous
portion of the community, may accelerate the transition to a better
freedom than that of fighting and rapine. It is almost needless to say
that this excuse for slavery is only available in a very early state of
society. A civilized people have far other means of imparting civilization
to those under their influence; and slavery is, in all its details, so
repugnant to that government of law, which is the foundation of all modern
life, and so corrupting to the master-class when they have once come under
civilized influences, that its adoption under any circumstances whatever
in modern society is a relapse into worse than barbarism.

At some period, however, of their history, almost every people, now
civilized, have consisted, in majority, of slaves. A people in that
condition require to raise them out of it a very different polity from a
nation of savages. If they are energetic by nature, and especially if
there be associated with them in the same community an industrious class
who are neither slaves nor slave-owners (as was the case in Greece), they
need, probably, no more to insure their improvement than to make them
free: when freed, they may often be fit, like Roman freedmen, to be
admitted at once to the full rights of citizenship. This, however, is not
the normal condition of slavery, and is generally a sign that it is
becoming obsolete. A slave, properly so called, is a being who has not
learned to help himself. He is, no doubt, one step in advance of a savage.
He has not the first lesson of political society still to acquire. He has
learned to obey. But what he obeys is only a direct command. It is the
characteristic of born slaves to be incapable of conforming their
conduct to a rule or law. They can only do what they are ordered, and only
when they are ordered to do it. If a man whom they fear is standing over
them and threatening them with punishment, they obey; but when his back is
turned, the work remains undone. The motive determining them must appeal,
not to their interests, but to their instincts; immediate hope or
immediate terror. A despotism, which may tame the savage, will, in so far
as it is a despotism, only confirm the slaves in their incapacities. Yet a
government under their own control would be entirely unmanageable by them.
Their improvement can not come from themselves, but must be superinduced
from without. The step which they have to take, and their only path to
improvement, is to be raised from a government of will to one of law. They
have to be taught self-government, and this, in its initial stage, means
the capacity to act on general instructions. What they require is not a
government of force, but one of guidance. Being, however, in too low a
state to yield to the guidance of any but those to whom they look up as
the possessors of force, the sort of government fittest for them is one
which possesses force, but seldom uses it; a parental despotism or
aristocracy, resembling the St. Simonian form of Socialism; maintaining a
general superintendence over all the operations of society, so as to keep
before each the sense of a present force sufficient to compel his
obedience to the rule laid down, but which, owing to the impossibility of
descending to regulate all the minutiæ of industry and life, necessarily
leaves and induces individuals to do much of themselves. This, which may
be termed the government of leading-strings, seems to be the one required
to carry such a people the most rapidly through the next necessary step in
social progress. Such appears to have been the idea of the government of
the Incas of Peru, and such was that of the Jesuits of Paraguay. I need
scarcely remark that leading-strings are only admissible as a means of
gradually training the people to walk alone.

It would be out of place to carry the illustration further. To attempt to
investigate what kind of government is suited to every known state of
society would be to compose a treatise, not on representative government,
but on political science at large. For our more limited purpose we borrow
from political philosophy only its general principles. To determine the
form of government most suited to any particular people, we must be able,
among the defects and shortcomings which belong to that people, to
distinguish those that are the immediate impediment to progress—to
discover what it is which (as it were) stops the way. The best government
for them is the one which tends most to give them that for want of which
they can not advance, or advance only in a lame and lopsided manner. We
must not, however, forget the reservation necessary in all things which
have for their object improvement or Progress, namely, that in seeking the
good which is needed, no damage, or as little as possible, be done to that
already possessed. A people of savages should be taught obedience, but not
in such a manner as to convert them into a people of slaves. And (to give
the observation a higher generality) the form of government which is most
effectual for carrying a people through the next stage of progress will
still be very improper for them if it does this in such a manner as to
obstruct, or positively unfit them for, the step next beyond. Such cases
are frequent, and are among the most melancholy facts in history. The
Egyptian hierarchy, the paternal despotism of China, were very fit
instruments for carrying those nations up to the point of civilization
which they attained. But having reached that point, they were brought to a
permanent halt for want of mental liberty and individuality—requisites
of improvement which the institutions that had carried them thus far
entirely incapacitated them from acquiring—and as the institutions
did not break down and give place to others, further improvement stopped.
In contrast with these nations, let us consider the example of an opposite
character afforded by another and a comparatively insignificant Oriental
people—the Jews. They, too, had an absolute monarchy and a
hierarchy, and their organized institutions were as obviously of
sacerdotal origin as those of the Hindoos. These did for them what was
done for other Oriental races by their institutions—subdued them to
industry and order, and gave them a national life. But neither their kings
nor their priests ever obtained, as in those other countries, the
exclusive moulding of their character. Their religion, which enabled
persons of genius and a high religious tone to be regarded and to regard
themselves as inspired from heaven, gave existence to an inestimably
precious unorganized institution—the Order (if it may be so termed)
of Prophets. Under the protection, generally though not always effectual,
of their sacred character, the Prophets were a power in the nation, often
more than a match for kings and priests, and kept up, in that little
corner of the earth, the antagonism of influences which is the only real
security for continued progress. Religion, consequently, was not there
what it has been in so many other places—a consecration of all that
was once established, and a barrier against further improvement. The
remark of a distinguished Hebrew, M. Salvador, that the Prophets were, in
Church and State, the equivalent of the modern liberty of the press, gives
a just but not an adequate conception of the part fulfilled in national
and universal history by this great element of Jewish life; by means of
which, the canon of inspiration never being complete, the persons most
eminent in genius and moral feeling could not only denounce and reprobate,
with the direct authority of the Almighty, whatever appeared to them
deserving of such treatment, but could give forth better and higher
interpretations of the national religion, which thenceforth became part of
the religion. Accordingly, whoever can divest himself of the habit of
reading the Bible as if it was one book, which until lately was equally
inveterate in Christians and in unbelievers, sees with admiration the vast
interval between the morality and religion of the Pentateuch, or even of
the historical books (the unmistakable work of Hebrew Conservatives of the
sacerdotal order), and the morality and religion of the prophecies—a
distance as wide as between these last and the Gospels. Conditions more
favorable to Progress could not easily exist; accordingly, the Jews,
instead of being stationary like other Asiatics, were, next to the Greeks,
the most progressive people of antiquity, and, jointly with them, have
been the starting-point and main propelling agency of modern cultivation.

It is, then, impossible to understand the question of the adaptation of
forms of government to states of society, without taking into account not
only the next step, but all the steps which society has yet to make; both
those which can be foreseen, and the far wider indefinite range which is
at present out of sight. It follows, that to judge of the merits of forms
of government, an ideal must be constructed of the form of government most
eligible in itself, that is, which, if the necessary conditions existed
for giving effect to its beneficial tendencies, would, more than all
others, favor and promote, not some one improvement, but all forms and
degrees of it. This having been done, we must consider what are the mental
conditions of all sorts necessary to enable this government to realize its
tendencies, and what, therefore, are the various defects by which a people
is made incapable of reaping its benefits. It would then be possible to
construct a theorem of the circumstances in which that form of government
may wisely be introduced; and also to judge, in cases in which it had
better not be introduced, what inferior forms of polity will best carry
those communities through the intermediate stages which they must traverse
before they can become fit for the best form of government.

Of these inquiries, the last does not concern us here, but the first is an
essential part of our subject; for we may, without rashness, at once
enunciate a proposition, the proofs and illustrations of which will
present themselves in the ensuing pages, that this ideally best form of
government will be found in some one or other variety of the
Representative System.

Chapter III—That the ideally best Form of Government is
Representative Government.

It has long (perhaps throughout the entire duration of British freedom)
been a common form of speech, that if a good despot could be insured,
despotic monarchy would be the best form of government. I look upon this
as a radical and most pernicious misconception of what good government is,
which, until it can be got rid of, will fatally vitiate all our
speculations on government.

The supposition is, that absolute power, in the hands of an eminent
individual, would insure a virtuous and intelligent performance of all the
duties of government. Good laws would be established and enforced, bad
laws would be reformed; the best men would be placed in all situations of
trust; justice would be as well administered, the public burdens would be
as light and as judiciously imposed, every branch of administration would
be as purely and as intelligently conducted as the circumstances of the
country and its degree of intellectual and moral cultivation would admit.
I am willing, for the sake of the argument, to concede all this, but I
must point out how great the concession is, how much more is needed to
produce even an approximation to these results than is conveyed in the
simple expression, a good despot. Their realization would in fact imply,
not merely a good monarch, but an all-seeing one. He must be at all times
informed correctly, in considerable detail, of the conduct and working of
every branch of administration, in every district of the country, and must
be able, in the twenty-four hours per day, which are all that is granted
to a king as to the humblest laborer, to give an effective share of
attention and superintendence to all parts of this vast field; or he must
at least be capable of discerning and choosing out, from among the mass of
his subjects, not only a large abundance of honest and able men, fit to
conduct every branch of public administration under supervision and
control, but also the small number of men of eminent virtues and talents
who can be trusted not only to do without that supervision, but to
exercise it themselves over others. So extraordinary are the faculties and
energies required for performing this task in any supportable manner, that
the good despot whom we are supposing can hardly be imagined as consenting
to undertake it unless as a refuge from intolerable evils, and a
transitional preparation for something beyond. But the argument can do
without even this immense item in the account. Suppose the difficulty
vanquished. What should we then have? One man of superhuman mental
activity managing the entire affairs of a mentally passive people. Their
passivity is implied in the very idea of absolute power. The nation as a
whole, and every individual composing it, are without any potential voice
in their own destiny. They exercise no will in respect to their collective
interests. All is decided for them by a will not their own, which it is
legally a crime for them to disobey. What sort of human beings can be
formed under such a regimen? What development can either their thinking or
their active faculties attain under it? On matters of pure theory they
might perhaps be allowed to speculate, so long as their speculations
either did not approach politics, or had not the remotest connection with
its practice. On practical affairs they could at most be only suffered to
suggest; and even under the most moderate of despots, none but persons of
already admitted or reputed superiority could hope that their suggestions
would be known to, much less regarded by, those who had the management of
affairs. A person must have a very unusual taste for intellectual exercise
in and for itself who will put himself to the trouble of thought when it
is to have no outward effect, or qualify himself for functions which he
has no chance of being allowed to exercise. The only sufficient incitement
to mental exertion, in any but a few minds in a generation, is the
prospect of some practical use to be made of its results. It does not
follow that the nation will be wholly destitute of intellectual power. The
common business of life, which must necessarily be performed by each
individual or family for themselves, will call forth some amount of
intelligence and practical ability, within a certain narrow range of
ideas. There may be a select class of savants who cultivate science
with a view to its physical uses or for the pleasure of the pursuit. There
will be a bureaucracy, and persons in training for the bureaucracy, who
will be taught at least some empirical maxims of government and public
administration. There may be, and often has been, a systematic
organization of the best mental power in the country in some special
direction (commonly military) to promote the grandeur of the despot. But
the public at large remain without information and without interest on all
greater matters of practice; or, if they have any knowledge of them, it is
but a dilettante knowledge, like that which people have of the
mechanical arts who have never handled a tool. Nor is it only in their
intelligence that they suffer. Their moral capacities are equally stunted.
Wherever the sphere of action of human beings is artificially
circumscribed, their sentiments are narrowed and dwarfed in the same
proportion. The food of feeling is action; even domestic affection lives
upon voluntary good offices. Let a person have nothing to do for his
country, and he will not care for it. It has been said of old that in a
despotism there is at most but one patriot, the despot himself; and the
saying rests on a just appreciation of the effects of absolute subjection
even to a good and wise master. Religion remains; and here, at least, it
may be thought, is an agency that may be relied on for lifting men’s eyes
and minds above the dust at their feet. But religion, even supposing it to
escape perversion for the purposes of despotism, ceases in these
circumstances to be a social concern, and narrows into a personal affair
between an individual and his Maker, in which the issue at stake is but
his private salvation. Religion in this shape is quite consistent with the
most selfish and contracted egoism, and identifies the votary as little in
feeling with the rest of his kind as sensuality itself.

A good despotism means a government in which, so far as depends on the
despot, there is no positive oppression by officers of state, but in which
all the collective interests of the people are managed for them, all the
thinking that has relation to collective interests done for them, and in
which their minds are formed by, and consenting to, this abdication of
their own energies. Leaving things to the government, like leaving them to
Providence, is synonymous with caring nothing about them, and accepting
their results, when disagreeable, as visitations of Nature. With the
exception, therefore, of a few studious men who take an intellectual
interest in speculation for its own sake, the intelligence and sentiments
of the whole people are given up to the material interests, and when these
are provided for, to the amusement and ornamentation of private life. But
to say this is to say, if the whole testimony of history is worth any
thing, that the era of national decline has arrived; that is, if the
nation had ever attained any thing to decline from. If it has never risen
above the condition of an Oriental people, in that condition it continues
to stagnate; but if, like Greece or Rome, it had realized any thing
higher, through the energy, patriotism, and enlargement of mind, which, as
national qualities, are the fruits solely of freedom, it relapses in a few
generations into the Oriental state. And that state does not mean stupid
tranquillity, with security against change for the worse; it often means
being overrun, conquered, and reduced to domestic slavery either by a
stronger despot, or by the nearest barbarous people who retain along with
their savage rudeness the energies of freedom.

Such are not merely the natural tendencies, but the inherent necessities
of despotic government; from which there is no outlet, unless in so far as
the despotism consents not to be despotism; in so far as the supposed good
despot abstains from exercising his power, and, though holding it in
reserve, allows the general business of government to go on as if the
people really governed themselves. However little probable it may be, we
may imagine a despot observing many of the rules and restraints of
constitutional government. He might allow such freedom of the press and of
discussion as would enable a public opinion to form and express itself on
national affairs. He might suffer local interests to be managed, without
the interference of authority, by the people themselves. He might even
surround himself with a council or councils of government, freely chosen
by the whole or some portion of the nation, retaining in his own hands the
power of taxation, and the supreme legislative as well as executive
authority. Were he to act thus, and so far abdicate as a despot, he would
do away with a considerable part of the evils characteristic of despotism.
Political activity and capacity for public affairs would no longer be
prevented from growing up in the body of the nation, and a public opinion
would form itself, not the mere echo of the government. But such
improvement would be the beginning of new difficulties. This public
opinion, independent of the monarch’s dictation, must be either with him
or against him; if not the one, it will be the other. All governments must
displease many persons, and these having now regular organs, and being
able to express their sentiments, opinions adverse to the measures of
government would often be expressed. What is the monarch to do when these
unfavorable opinions happen to be in the majority? Is he to alter his
course? Is he to defer to the nation? If so, he is no longer a despot, but
a constitutional king; an organ or first minister of the people,
distinguished only by being irremovable. If not, he must either put down
opposition by his despotic power, or there will arise a permanent
antagonism between the people and one man, which can have but one possible
ending. Not even a religious principle of passive obedience and “right
divine” would long ward off the natural consequences of such a position.
The monarch would have to succumb, and conform to the conditions of
constitutional royalty, or give place to some one who would. The
despotism, being thus chiefly nominal, would possess few of the advantages
supposed to belong to absolute monarchy, while it would realize in a very
imperfect degree those of a free government, since, however great an
amount of liberty the citizens might practically enjoy, they could never
forget that they held it on sufferance, and by a concession which, under
the existing constitution of the state might at any moment be resumed;
that they were legally slaves, though of a prudent or indulgent master.

It is not much to be wondered at if impatient or disappointed reformers,
groaning under the impediments opposed to the most salutary public
improvements by the ignorance, the indifference, the untractableness, the
perverse obstinacy of a people, and the corrupt combinations of selfish
private interests, armed with the powerful weapons afforded by free
institutions, should at times sigh for a strong hand to bear down all
these obstacles, and compel a recalcitrant people to be better governed.
But (setting aside the fact that for one despot who now and then reforms
an abuse, there are ninety-nine who do nothing but create them) those who
look in any such direction for the realization of their hopes leave out of
the idea of good government its principal element, the improvement of the
people themselves. One of the benefits of freedom is that under it the
ruler can not pass by the people’s minds, and amend their affairs for them
without amending them. If it were possible for the people to be
well governed in spite of themselves, their good government would last no
longer than the freedom of a people usually lasts who have been liberated
by foreign arms without their own co-operation. It is true, a despot may
educate the people, and to do so really would be the best apology for his
despotism. But any education which aims at making human beings other than
machines, in the long run makes them claim to have the control of their
own actions. The leaders of French philosophy in the eighteenth century
had been educated by the Jesuits. Even Jesuit education, it seems, was
sufficiently real to call forth the appetite for freedom. Whatever
invigorates the faculties, in however small a measure, creates an
increased desire for their more unimpeded exercise; and a popular
education is a failure if it educates the people for any state but that
which it will certainly induce them to desire, and most probably to
demand.

I am far from condemning, in cases of extreme exigency, the assumption of
absolute power in the form of a temporary dictatorship. Free nations have,
in times of old, conferred such power by their own choice, as a necessary
medicine for diseases of the body politic which could not be got rid of by
less violent means. But its acceptance, even for a time strictly limited,
can only be excused, if, like Solon or Pittacus, the dictator employs the
whole power he assumes in removing the obstacles which debar the nation
from the enjoyment of freedom. A good despotism is an altogether false
ideal, which practically (except as a means to some temporary purpose)
becomes the most senseless and dangerous of chimeras. Evil for evil, a
good despotism, in a country at all advanced in civilization, is more
noxious than a bad one, for it is far more relaxing and enervating to the
thoughts, feelings, and energies of the people. The despotism of Augustus
prepared the Romans for Tiberius. If the whole tone of their character had
not first been prostrated by nearly two generations of that mild slavery,
they would probably have had spirit enough left to rebel against the more
odious one.

There is no difficulty in showing that the ideally best form of government
is that in which the sovereignty, or supreme controlling power in the last
resort, is vested in the entire aggregate of the community, every citizen
not only having a voice in the exercise of that ultimate sovereignty, but
being, at least occasionally, called on to take an actual part in the
government by the personal discharge of some public function, local or
general.

To test this proposition, it has to be examined in reference to the two
branches into which, as pointed out in the last chapter, the inquiry into
the goodness of a government conveniently divides itself, namely, how far
it promotes the good management of the affairs of society by means of the
existing faculties, moral, intellectual, and active, of its various
members, and what is its effect in improving or deteriorating those
faculties.

The ideally best form of government, it is scarcely necessary to say, does
not mean one which is practicable or eligible in all states of
civilization, but the one which, in the circumstances in which it is
practicable and eligible, is attended with the greatest amount of
beneficial consequences, immediate and prospective. A completely popular
government is the only polity which can make out any claim to this
character. It is pre-eminent in both the departments between which the
excellence of a political Constitution is divided. It is both more
favorable to present good government, and promotes a better and higher
form of national character than any other polity whatsoever.

Its superiority in reference to present well-being rests upon two
principles, of as universal truth and applicability as any general
propositions which can be laid down respecting human affairs. The first
is, that the rights and interests of every or any person are only secure
from being disregarded when the person interested is himself able, and
habitually disposed to stand up for them. The second is, that the general
prosperity attains a greater height, and is more widely diffused, in
proportion to the amount and variety of the personal energies enlisted in
promoting it.

Putting these two propositions into a shape more special to their present
application—human beings are only secure from evil at the hands of
others in proportion as they have the power of being, and are, self-protecting;
and they only achieve a high degree of success in their struggle with
Nature in proportion as they are self-dependent, relying on what
they themselves can do, either separately or in concert, rather than on
what others do for them.

The former proposition—that each is the only safe guardian of his
own rights and interests—is one of those elementary maxims of
prudence which every person capable of conducting his own affairs
implicitly acts upon wherever he himself is interested. Many, indeed, have
a great dislike to it as a political doctrine, and are fond of holding it
up to obloquy as a doctrine of universal selfishness. To which we may
answer, that whenever it ceases to be true that mankind, as a rule, prefer
themselves to others, and those nearest to them to those more remote, from
that moment Communism is not only practicable, but the only defensible
form of society, and will, when that time arrives, be assuredly carried
into effect. For my own part, not believing in universal selfishness, I
have no difficulty in admitting that Communism would even now be
practicable among the élite of mankind, and may become so among the
rest. But as this opinion is any thing but popular with those defenders of
existing institutions who find fault with the doctrine of the general
predominance of self-interest, I am inclined to think they do in reality
believe that most men consider themselves before other people. It is not,
however, necessary to affirm even thus much in order to support the claim
of all to participate in the sovereign power. We need not suppose that
when power resides in an exclusive class, that class will knowingly and
deliberately sacrifice the other classes to themselves: it suffices that,
in the absence of its natural defenders, the interest of the excluded is
always in danger of being overlooked; and, when looked at, is seen with
very different eyes from those of the persons whom it directly concerns.
In this country, for example, what are called the working-classes may be
considered as excluded from all direct participation in the government. I
do not believe that the classes who do participate in it have in general
any intention of sacrificing the working classes to themselves. They once
had that intention; witness the persevering attempts so long made to keep
down wages by law. But in the present day, their ordinary disposition is
the very opposite: they willingly make considerable sacrifices, especially
of their pecuniary interest, for the benefit of the working classes, and
err rather by too lavish and indiscriminating beneficence; nor do I
believe that any rulers in history have been actuated by a more sincere
desire to do their duty towards the poorer portion of their countrymen.
Yet does Parliament, or almost any of the members composing it, ever for
an instant look at any question with the eyes of a working man? When a
subject arises in which the laborers as such have an interest, is it
regarded from any point of view but that of the employers of labor? I do
not say that the working men’s view of these questions is in general
nearer to the truth than the other, but it is sometimes quite as near; and
in any case it ought to be respectfully listened to, instead of being, as
it is, not merely turned away from, but ignored. On the question of
strikes, for instance, it is doubtful if there is so much as one among the
leading members of either House who is not firmly convinced that the
reason of the matter is unqualifiedly on the side of the masters, and that
the men’s view of it is simply absurd. Those who have studied the question
know well how far this is from being the case, and in how different, and
how infinitely less superficial a manner the point would have to be
argued, if the classes who strike were able to make themselves heard in
Parliament.

It is an adherent condition of human affairs that no intention, however
sincere, of protecting the interests of others can make it safe or
salutary to tie up their own hands. Still more obviously true is it that
by their own hands only can any positive and durable improvement of their
circumstances in life be worked out. Through the joint influence of these
two principles, all free communities have both been more exempt from
social injustice and crime, and have attained more brilliant prosperity
than any others, or than they themselves after they lost their freedom.
Contrast the free states of the world, while their freedom lasted, with
the cotemporary subjects of monarchical or oligarchical despotism: the
Greek cities with the Persian satrapies; the Italian republics and the
free towns of Flanders and Germany, with the feudal monarchies of Europe;
Switzerland, Holland, and England, with Austria or ante-revolutionary
France. Their superior prosperity was too obvious ever to have been
gainsayed; while their superiority in good government and social relations
is proved by the prosperity, and is manifest besides in every page of
history. If we compare, not one age with another, but the different
governments which coexisted in the same age, no amount of disorder which
exaggeration itself can pretend to have existed amidst the publicity of
the free states can be compared for a moment with the contemptuous
trampling upon the mass of the people which pervaded the whole life of the
monarchical countries, or the disgusting individual tyranny which was of
more than daily occurrence under the systems of plunder which they called
fiscal arrangements, and in the secrecy of their frightful courts of
justice.

It must be acknowledged that the benefits of freedom, so far as they have
hitherto been enjoyed, were obtained by the extension of its privileges to
a part only of the community; and that a government in which they are
extended impartially to all is a desideratum still unrealized. But, though
every approach to this has an independent value, and in many cases more
than an approach could not, in the existing state of general improvement,
be made, the participation of all in these benefits is the ideally perfect
conception of free government. In proportion as any, no matter who, are
excluded from it, the interests of the excluded are left without the
guaranty accorded to the rest, and they themselves have less scope and
encouragement than they might otherwise have to that exertion of their
energies for the good of themselves and of the community, to which the
general prosperity is always proportioned.

Thus stands the case as regards present well-being—the good
management of the affairs of the existing generation. If we now pass to
the influence of the form of government upon character, we shall find the
superiority of popular government over every other to be, if possible,
still more decided and indisputable.

This question really depends upon a still more fundamental one, viz.,
which of two common types of character, for the general good of humanity,
it is most desirable should predominate—the active or the passive
type; that which struggles against evils, or that which endures them; that
which bends to circumstances, or that which endeavours to make
circumstances bend to itself.

The commonplaces of moralists and the general sympathies of mankind are in
favor of the passive type. Energetic characters may be admired, but the
acquiescent and submissive are those which most men personally prefer. The
passiveness of our neighbors increases our sense of security, and plays
into the hands of our wilfulness. Passive characters, if we do not happen
to need their activity, seem an obstruction the less in our own path. A
contented character is not a dangerous rival. Yet nothing is more certain
than that improvement in human affairs is wholly the work of the
uncontented characters; and, moreover, that it is much easier for an
active mind to acquire the virtues of patience, than for a passive one to
assume those of energy.

Of the three varieties of mental excellence, intellectual, practical, and
moral, there never could be any doubt in regard to the first two, which
side had the advantage. All intellectual superiority is the fruit of
active effort. Enterprise, the desire to keep moving, to be trying and
accomplishing new things for our own benefit or that of others, is the
parent even of speculative, and much more of practical, talent. The
intellectual culture compatible with the other type is of that feeble and
vague description which belongs to a mind that stops at amusement or at
simple contemplation. The test of real and vigorous thinking, the thinking
which ascertains truths instead of dreaming dreams, is successful
application to practice. Where that purpose does not exist, to give
definiteness, precision, and an intelligible meaning to thought, it
generates nothing better than the mystical metaphysics of the Pythagoreans
or the Veds. With respect to practical improvement, the case is still more
evident. The character which improves human life is that which struggles
with natural powers and tendencies, not that which gives way to them. The
self-benefiting qualities are all on the side of the active and energetic
character, and the habits and conduct which promote the advantage of each
individual member of the community must be at least a part of those which
conduce most in the end to the advancement of the community as a whole.

But on the point of moral preferability, there seems at first sight to be
room for doubt. I am not referring to the religious feeling which has so
generally existed in favor of the inactive character, as being more in
harmony with the submission due to the divine will. Christianity, as well
as other religions, has fostered this sentiment; but it is the prerogative
of Christianity, as regards this and many other perversions, that it is
able to throw them off. Abstractedly from religious considerations, a
passive character, which yields to obstacles instead of striving to
overcome them, may not indeed be very useful to others, no more than to
itself, but it might be expected to be at least inoffensive. Contentment
is always counted among the moral virtues. But it is a complete error to
suppose that contentment is necessarily or naturally attendant on
passivity of character; and useless it is, the moral consequences are
mischievous. Where there exists a desire for advantages not possessed, the
mind which does not potentially possess them by means of its own energies
is apt to look with hatred and malice on those who do. The person
bestirring himself with hopeful prospects to improve his circumstances is
the one who feels good-will towards others engaged in, or who have
succeeded in the same pursuit. And where the majority are so engaged,
those who do not attain the object have had the tone given to their
feelings by the general habit of the country, and ascribe their failure to
want of effort or opportunity, or to their personal ill luck. But those
who, while desiring what others possess, put no energy into striving for
it, are either incessantly grumbling that fortune does not do for them
what they do not attempt to do for themselves, or overflowing with envy
and ill-will towards those who possess what they would like to have.

In proportion as success in life is seen or believed to be the fruit of
fatality or accident and not of exertion in that same ratio does envy
develop itself as a point of national character. The most envious of all
mankind are the Orientals. In Oriental moralists, in Oriental tales, the
envious man is remarkably prominent. In real life, he is the terror of all
who possess any thing desirable, be it a palace, a handsome child, or even
good health and spirits: the supposed effect of his mere look constitutes
the all-pervading superstition of the evil eye. Next to Orientals in envy,
as in activity, are some of the Southern Europeans. The Spaniards pursued
all their great men with it, embittered their lives, and generally
succeeded in putting an early stop to their successes. [1] With
the French, who are essentially a Southern people, the double education of
despotism and Catholicism has, in spite of their impulsive temperament,
made submission and endurance the common character of the people, and
their most received notion of wisdom and excellence; and if envy of one
another, and of all superiority, is not more rife among them than it is,
the circumstance must be ascribed to the many valuable counteracting
elements in the French character, and most of all to the great individual
energy which, though less persistent and more intermittent than in the
self-helping and struggling Anglo-Saxons, has nevertheless manifested
itself among the French in nearly every direction in which the operation
of their institutions has been favorable to it.

There are, no doubt, in all countries, really contented characters, who
not merely do not seek, but do not desire, what they do not already
possess, and these naturally bear no ill-will towards such as have
apparently a more favored lot. But the great mass of seeming contentment
is real discontent, combined with indolence or self-indulgence, which,
while taking no legitimate means of raising itself, delights in bringing
others down to its own level. And if we look narrowly even at the cases of
innocent contentment, we perceive that they only win our admiration when
the indifference is solely to improvement in outward circumstances, and
there is a striving for perpetual advancement in spiritual worth, or at
least a disinterested zeal to benefit others. The contented man, or the
contented family, who have no ambition to make any one else happier, to
promote the good of their country or their neighborhood, or to improve
themselves in moral excellence, excite in us neither admiration nor
approval. We rightly ascribe this sort of contentment to mere unmanliness
and want of spirit. The content which we approve is an ability to do
cheerfully without what can not be had, a just appreciation of the
comparative value of different objects of desire, and a willing
renunciation of the less when incompatible with the greater. These,
however, are excellences more natural to the character, in proportion as
it is actively engaged in the attempt to improve its own or some other
lot. He who is continually measuring his energy against difficulties,
learns what are the difficulties insuperable to him, and what are those
which, though he might overcome, the success is not worth the cost. He
whose thoughts and activities are all needed for, and habitually employed
in, practicable and useful enterprises, is the person of all others least
likely to let his mind dwell with brooding discontent upon things either
not worth attaining, or which are not so to him. Thus the active,
self-helping character is not only intrinsically the best, but is the
likeliest to acquire all that is really excellent or desirable in the
opposite type.

The striving, go-ahead character of England and the United States is only
a fit subject of disapproving criticism on account of the very secondary
objects on which it commonly expends its strength. In itself it is the
foundation of the best hopes for the general improvement of mankind. It
has been acutely remarked that whenever any thing goes amiss, the habitual
impulse of French people is to say, “Il faut de la patience;” and of
English people, “What a shame!” The people who think it a shame when any
thing goes wrong—who rush to the conclusion that the evil could and
ought to have been prevented, are those who, in the long run, do most to
make the world better. If the desires are low placed, if they extend to
little beyond physical comfort, and the show of riches, the immediate
results of the energy will not be much more than the continual extension
of man’s power over material objects; but even this makes room, and
prepares the mechanical appliances for the greatest intellectual and
social achievements; and while the energy is there, some persons will
apply it, and it will be applied more and more, to the perfecting, not of
outward circumstances alone, but of man’s inward nature. Inactivity,
unaspiringness, absence of desire, are a more fatal hindrance to
improvement than any misdirection of energy, and is that through which
alone, when existing in the mass, any very formidable misdirection by an
energetic few becomes possible. It is this, mainly, which retains in a
savage or semi-savage state the great majority of the human race.

Now there can be no kind of doubt that the passive type of character is
favored by the government of one or a few, and the active self-helping
type by that of the many. Irresponsible rulers need the quiescence of the
ruled more than they need any activity but that which they can compel.
Submissiveness to the prescriptions of men as necessities of nature is the
lesson inculcated by all governments upon those who are wholly without
participation in them. The will of superiors, and the law as the will of
superiors, must be passively yielded to. But no men are mere instruments
or materials in the hands of their rulers who have will, or spirit, or a
spring of internal activity in the rest of their proceedings, and any
manifestation of these qualities, instead of receiving encouragement from
despots, has to get itself forgiven by them. Even when irresponsible
rulers are not sufficiently conscious of danger from the mental activity
of their subjects to be desirous of repressing it, the position itself is
a repression. Endeavour is even more effectually restrained by the
certainty of its impotence than by any positive discouragement. Between
subjection to the will of others and the virtues of self-help and
self-government there is a natural incompatibility. This is more or less
complete according as the bondage is strained or relaxed. Rulers differ
very much in the length to which they carry the control of the free agency
of their subjects, or the supersession of it by managing their business
for them. But the difference is in degree, not in principle; and the best
despots often go the greatest lengths in chaining up the free agency of
their subjects. A bad despot, when his own personal indulgences have been
provided for, may sometimes be willing to let the people alone; but a good
despot insists on doing them good by making them do their own business in
a better way than they themselves know of. The regulations which
restricted to fixed processes all the leading branches of French
manufactures were the work of the great Colbert.

Very different is the state of the human faculties where a human being
feels himself under no other external restraint than the necessities of
nature, or mandates of society which he has his share in imposing, and
which it is open to him, if he thinks them wrong, publicly to dissent
from, and exert himself actively to get altered. No doubt, under a
government partially popular, this freedom may be exercised even by those
who are not partakers in the full privileges of citizenship; but it is a
great additional stimulus to any one’s self-help and self-reliance when he
starts from even ground, and has not to feel that his success depends on
the impression he can make upon the sentiments and dispositions of a body
of whom he is not one. It is a great discouragement to an individual, and
a still greater one to a class, to be left out of the constitution; to be
reduced to plead from outside the door to the arbiters of their destiny,
not taken into consultation within. The maximum of the invigorating effect
of freedom upon the character is only obtained when the person acted on
either is, or is looking forward to becoming, a citizen as fully
privileged as any other. What is still more important than even this
matter of feeling is the practical discipline which the character obtains
from the occasional demand made upon the citizens to exercise, for a time
and in their turn, some social function. It is not sufficiently considered
how little there is in most men’s ordinary life to give any largeness
either to their conceptions or to their sentiments. Their work is a
routine; not a labor of love, but of self-interest in the most elementary
form, the satisfaction of daily wants; neither the thing done, nor the
process of doing it, introduces the mind to thoughts or feelings extending
beyond individuals; if instructive books are within their reach, there is
no stimulus to read them; and, in most cases, the individual has no access
to any person of cultivation much superior to his own. Giving him
something to do for the public supplies, in a measure, all these
deficiencies. If circumstances allow the amount of public duty assigned
him to be considerable, it makes him an educated man. Notwithstanding the
defects of the social system and moral ideas of antiquity, the practice of
the dicastery and the ecclesia raised the intellectual standard of an
average Athenian citizen far beyond any thing of which there is yet an
example in any other mass of men, ancient or modern. The proofs of this
are apparent in every page of our great historian of Greece; but we need
scarcely look further than to the high quality of the addresses which
their great orators deemed best calculated to act with effect on their
understanding and will. A benefit of the same kind, though far less in
degree, is produced on Englishmen of the lower middle class by their
liability to be placed on juries and to serve parish offices, which,
though it does not occur to so many, nor is so continuous, nor introduces
them to so great a variety of elevated considerations as to admit of
comparison with the public education which every citizen of Athens
obtained from her democratic institutions, makes them nevertheless very
different beings, in range of ideas and development of faculties, from
those who have done nothing in their lives but drive a quill, or sell
goods over a counter. Still more salutary is the moral part of the
instruction afforded by the participation of the private citizen, if even
rarely, in public functions. He is called upon, while so engaged, to weigh
interests not his own; to be guided, in case of conflicting claims, by
another rule than his private partialities; to apply, at every turn,
principles and maxims which have for their reason of existence the general
good; and he usually finds associated with him in the same work minds more
familiarized than his own with these ideas and operations, whose study it
will be to supply reasons to his understanding, and stimulation to his
feeling for the general interest. He is made to feel himself one of the
public, and whatever is their interest to be his interest. Where this
school of public spirit does not exist, scarcely any sense is entertained
that private persons, in no eminent social situation, owe any duties to
society except to obey the laws and submit to the government. There is no
unselfish sentiment of identification with the public. Every thought or
feeling, either of interest or of duty, is absorbed in the individual and
in the family. The man never thinks of any collective interest, of any
objects to be pursued jointly with others, but only in competition with
them, and in some measure at their expense. A neighbor, not being an ally
or an associate, since he is never engaged in any common undertaking for
joint benefit, is therefore only a rival. Thus even private morality
suffers, while public is actually extinct. Were this the universal and
only possible state of things, the utmost aspirations of the lawgiver or
the moralist could only stretch to make the bulk of the community a flock
of sheep innocently nibbling the grass side by side.

From these accumulated considerations, it is evident that the only
government which can fully satisfy all the exigencies of the social state
is one in which the whole people participate; that any participation, even
in the smallest public function, is useful; that the participation should
every where be as great as the general degree of improvement of the
community will allow; and that nothing less can be ultimately desirable
than the admission of all to a share in the sovereign power of the state.
But since all can not, in a community exceeding a single small town,
participate personally in any but some very minor portions of the public
business, it follows that the ideal type of a perfect government must be
representative.

Chapter IV—Under what Social Conditions Representative Government is
Inapplicable.

We have recognized in representative government the ideal type of the most
perfect polity for which, in consequence, any portion of mankind are
better adapted in proportion to their degree of general improvement. As
they range lower and lower in development, that form of government will
be, generally speaking, less suitable to them, though this is not true
universally; for the adaptation of a people to representative government
does not depend so much upon the place they occupy in the general scale of
humanity as upon the degree in which they possess certain special
requisites; requisites, however, so closely connected with their degree of
general advancement, that any variation between the two is rather the
exception than the rule. Let us examine at what point in the descending
series representative government ceases altogether to be admissible,
either through its own unfitness or the superior fitness of some other
regimen.

First, then, representative, like any other government, must be unsuitable
in any case in which it can not permanently subsist—i.e., in
which it does not fulfill the three fundamental conditions enumerated in
the first chapter. These were, 1. That the people should be willing to
receive it. 2. That they should be willing and able to do what is
necessary for its preservation. 3. That they should be willing and able to
fulfill the duties and discharge the functions which it imposes on them.

The willingness of the people to accept representative government only
becomes a practical question when an enlightened ruler, or a foreign
nation or nations who have gained power over the country, are disposed to
offer it the boon. To individual reformers the question is almost
irrelevant, since, if no other objection can be made to their enterprise
than that the opinion of the nation is not yet on their side, they have
the ready and proper answer, that to bring it over to their side is the
very end they aim at. When opinion is really adverse, its hostility is
usually to the fact of change rather than to representative government in
itself. The contrary case is not indeed unexampled; there has sometimes
been a religious repugnance to any limitation of the power of a particular
line of rulers; but, in general, the doctrine of passive obedience meant
only submission to the will of the powers that be, whether monarchical or
popular. In any case in which the attempt to introduce representative
government is at all likely to be made, indifference to it, and inability
to understand its processes and requirements, rather than positive
opposition, are the obstacles to be expected. These, however, are as
fatal, and may be as hard to be got rid of as actual aversion; it being
easier, in most cases, to change the direction of an active feeling than
to create one in a state previously passive. When a people have no
sufficient value for, and attachment to, a representative constitution,
they have next to no chance of retaining it. In every country, the
executive is the branch of the government which wields the immediate
power, and is in direct contact with the public; to it, principally, the
hopes and fears of individuals are directed, and by it both the benefits,
and the terrors, and prestige of government are mainly represented
to the public eye. Unless, therefore, the authorities whose office it is
to check the executive are backed by an effective opinion and feeling in
the country, the executive has always the means of setting them aside or
compelling them to subservience, and is sure to be well supported in doing
so. Representative institutions necessarily depend for permanence upon the
readiness of the people to fight for them in case of their being
endangered. If too little valued for this, they seldom obtain a footing at
all, and if they do, are almost sure to be overthrown as soon as the head
of the government, or any party leader who can muster force for a coup
de main, is willing to run some small risk for absolute power.

These considerations relate to the first two causes of failure in a
representative government. The third is when the people want either the
will or the capacity to fulfill the part which belongs to them in a
representative constitution. When nobody, or only some small fraction,
feels the degree of interest in the general affairs of the state necessary
to the formation of a public opinion, the electors will seldom make any
use of the right of suffrage but to serve their private interest, or the
interest of their locality, or of some one with whom they are connected as
adherents or dependents. The small class who, in this state of public
feeling, gain the command of the representative body, for the most part
use it solely as a means of seeking their fortune. If the executive is
weak, the country is distracted by mere struggles for place; if strong, it
makes itself despotic, at the cheap price of appeasing the
representatives, or such of them as are capable of giving trouble, by a
share of the spoil; and the only fruit produced by national representation
is, that in addition to those who really govern, there is an assembly
quartered on the public, and no abuse in which a portion of the assembly
are interested is at all likely to be removed. When, however, the evil
stops here, the price may be worth paying for the publicity and discussion
which, though not an invariable, are a natural accompaniment of any, even
nominal, representation. In the modern kingdom of Greece, for example, it
can hardly be doubted, that the place-hunters who chiefly compose the
representative assembly, though they contribute little or nothing directly
to good government, nor even much temper the arbitrary power of the
executive, yet keep up the idea of popular rights, and conduce greatly to
the real liberty of the press which exists in that country. This benefit,
however, is entirely dependent on the coexistence with the popular body of
an hereditary king. If, instead of struggling for the favors of the chief
ruler, these selfish and sordid factions struggled for the chief place
itself, they would certainly, as in Spanish America, keep the country in a
state of chronic revolution and civil war. A despotism, not even legal,
but of illegal violence, would be alternately exercised by a succession of
political adventurers, and the name and forms of representation would have
no effect but to prevent despotism from attaining the stability and
security by which alone its evils can be mitigated or its few advantages
realized.

The preceding are the cases in which representative government can not
permanently exist. There are others in which it possibly might exist, but
in which some other form of government would be preferable. These are
principally when the people, in order to advance in civilization, have
some lesson to learn, some habit not yet acquired, to the acquisition of
which representative government is likely to be an impediment.

The most obvious of these cases is the one already considered, in which
the people have still to learn the first lesson of civilization, that of
obedience. A race who have been trained in energy and courage by struggles
with Nature and their neighbors, but who have not yet settled down into
permanent obedience to any common superior, would be little likely to
acquire this habit under the collective government of their own body. A
representative assembly drawn from among themselves would simply reflect
their own turbulent insubordination. It would refuse its authority to all
proceedings which would impose, on their savage independence, any
improving restraint. The mode in which such tribes are usually brought to
submit to the primary conditions of civilized society is through the
necessities of warfare, and the despotic authority indispensable to
military command. A military leader is the only superior to whom they will
submit, except occasionally some prophet supposed to be inspired from
above, or conjurer regarded as possessing miraculous power. These may
exercise a temporary ascendancy, but as it is merely personal, it rarely
effects any change in the general habits of the people, unless the
prophet, like Mohammed, is also a military chief, and goes forth the armed
apostle of a new religion; or unless the military chiefs ally themselves
with his influence, and turn it into a prop for their own government.

A people are no less unfitted for representative government by the
contrary fault to that last specified—by extreme passiveness, and
ready submission to tyranny. If a people thus prostrated by character and
circumstances could obtain representative institutions, they would
inevitably choose their tyrants as their representatives, and the yoke
would be made heavier on them by the contrivance which primâ facie
might be expected to lighten it. On the contrary, many a people has
gradually emerged from this condition by the aid of a central authority,
whose position has made it the rival, and has ended by making it the
master, of the local despots, and which, above all, has been single.
French history, from Hugh Capet to Richelieu and Louis XIV., is a
continued example of this course of things. Even when the king was
scarcely so powerful as many of his chief feudatories, the great advantage
which he derived from being but one has been recognized by French
historians. To him the eyes of all the locally oppressed were
turned; he was the object of hope and reliance throughout the kingdom,
while each local potentate was only powerful within a more or less
confined space. At his hands, refuge and protection were sought from every
part of the country against first one, then another of the immediate
oppressors. His progress to ascendancy was slow; but it resulted from
successively taking advantage of opportunities which offered themselves
only to him. It was, therefore, sure; and, in proportion as it was
accomplished, it abated, in the oppressed portion of the community, the
habit of submitting to oppression. The king’s interest lay in encouraging
all partial attempts on the part of the serfs to emancipate themselves
from their masters, and place themselves in immediate subordination to
himself. Under his protection numerous communities were formed which knew
no one above them but the king. Obedience to a distant monarch is liberty
itself compared with the dominion of the lord of the neighboring castle;
and the monarch was long compelled by necessities of position to exert his
authority as the ally rather than the master of the classes whom he had
aided in affecting their liberation. In this manner a central power,
despotic in principle, though generally much restricted in practice, was
mainly instrumental in carrying the people through a necessary stage of
improvement, which representative government, if real, would most likely
have prevented them from entering upon. There are parts of Europe where
the same work is still to be done, and no prospect of its being done by
any other means. Nothing short of despotic rule or a general massacre
could effect the emancipation of the serfs in the Russian Empire.

The same passages of history forcibly illustrate another mode in which
unlimited monarchy overcomes obstacles to the progress of civilization
which representative government would have had a decided tendency to
aggravate. One of the strongest hindrances to improvement, up to a rather
advanced stage, is an inveterate spirit of locality. Portions of mankind,
in many other respects capable of, and prepared for freedom, may be
unqualified for amalgamating into even the smallest nation. Not only may
jealousies and antipathies repel them from one another, and bar all
possibility of voluntary union, but they may not yet have acquired any of
the feelings or habits which would make the union real, supposing it to be
nominally accomplished. They may, like the citizens of an ancient
community, or those of an Asiatic village, have had considerable practice
in exercising their faculties on village or town interests, and have even
realized a tolerably effective popular government on that restricted
scale, and may yet have but slender sympathies with any thing beyond, and
no habit or capacity of dealing with interests common to many such
communities. I am not aware that history furnishes any example in which a
number of these political atoms or corpuscles have coalesced into a body,
and learned to feel themselves one people, except through previous
subjection to a central authority common to all. [2] It is through the habit of
deferring to that authority, entering into its plans and subserving its
purposes, that a people such as we have supposed receive into their minds
the conception of large interests common to a considerable geographical
extent. Such interests, on the contrary, are necessarily the predominant
consideration in the mind of the central ruler; and through the relations,
more or less intimate, which he progressively establishes with the
localities, they become familiar to the general mind. The most favorable
concurrence of circumstances under which this step in improvement could be
made would be one which should raise up representative institutions
without representative government; a representative body or bodies, drawn
from the localities, making itself the auxiliary and instrument of the
central power, but seldom attempting to thwart or control it. The people
being thus taken, as it were, into council, though not sharing the supreme
power, the political education given by the central authority is carried
home, much more effectually than it could otherwise be, to the local
chiefs and to the population generally, while, at the same time, a
tradition is kept up of government by general consent, or at least, the
sanction of tradition is not given to government without it, which, when
consecrated by custom, has so often put a bad end to a good beginning, and
is one of the most frequent causes of the sad fatality which in most
countries has stopped improvement in so early a stage, because the work of
some one period has been so done as to bar the needful work of the ages
following. Meanwhile, it may be laid down as a political truth, that by
irresponsible monarchy rather than by representative government can a
multitude of insignificant political units be welded into a people, with
common feelings of cohesion, power enough to protect itself against
conquest or foreign aggression, and affairs sufficiently various and
considerable of its own to occupy worthily and expand to fit proportions
the social and political intelligence of the population.

For these several reasons, kingly government, free from the control
(though perhaps strengthened by the support) of representative
institutions, is the most suitable form of polity for the earliest stages
of any community, not excepting a city community like those of ancient
Greece; where, accordingly, the government of kings, under some real, but
no ostensible or constitutional control by public opinion, did
historically precede by an unknown and probably great duration all free
institutions, and gave place at last, during a considerable lapse of time,
to oligarchies of a few families.

A hundred other infirmities or shortcomings in a people might be pointed
out which pro tanto disqualify them from making the best use of
representative government; but in regard to these it is not equally
obvious that the government of One or a Few would have any tendency to
cure or alleviate the evil. Strong prejudices of any kind; obstinate
adherence to old habits; positive defects of national character, or mere
ignorance, and deficiency of mental cultivation, if prevalent in a people,
will be in general faithfully reflected in their representative
assemblies; and should it happen that the executive administration, the
direct management of public affairs, is in the hands of persons
comparatively free from these defects, more good would frequently be done
by them when not hampered by the necessity of carrying with them the
voluntary assent of such bodies. But the mere position of the rulers does
not in these, as it does in the other cases which we have examined, of
itself invest them with interests and tendencies operating in the
beneficial direction. From the general weaknesses of the people or of the
state of civilization, the One and his councillors, or the Few, are not
likely to be habitually exempt; except in the case of their being
foreigners, belonging to a superior people or a more advanced state of
society. Then, indeed, the rulers may be, to almost any extent, superior
in civilization to those over whom they rule; and subjection to a foreign
government of this description, notwithstanding its inevitable evils, is
often of the greatest advantage to a people, carrying them rapidly through
several stages of progress, and clearing away obstacles to improvement
which might have lasted indefinitely if the subject population had been
left unassisted to its native tendencies and chances. In a country not
under the dominion of foreigners, the only cause adequate to producing
similar benefits is the rare accident of a monarch of extraordinary
genius. There have been in history a few of these who, happily for
humanity, have reigned long enough to render some of their improvements
permanent, by leaving them under the guardianship of a generation which
had grown up under their influence. Charlemagne may be cited as one
instance; Peter the Great is another. Such examples however are so
unfrequent that they can only be classed with the happy accidents which
have so often decided at a critical moment whether some leading portion of
humanity should make a sudden start, or sink back towards barbarism—chances
like the existence of Themistocles at the time of the Persian invasion, or
of the first or third William of Orange. It would be absurd to construct
institutions for the mere purpose of taking advantage of such
possibilities, especially as men of this calibre, in any distinguished
position, do not require despotic power to enable them to exert great
influence, as is evidenced by the three last mentioned. The case most
requiring consideration in reference to institutions is the not very
uncommon one in which a small but leading portion of the population, from
difference of race, more civilized origin, or other peculiarities of
circumstance, are markedly superior in civilization and general character
to the remainder. Under those conditions, government by the
representatives of the mass would stand a chance of depriving them of much
of the benefit they might derive from the greater civilization of the
superior ranks, while government by the representatives of those ranks
would probably rivet the degradation of the multitude, and leave them no
hope of decent treatment except by ridding themselves of one of the most
valuable elements of future advancement. The best prospect of improvement
for a people thus composed lies in the existence of a constitutionally
unlimited, or at least a practically preponderant authority in the chief
ruler of the dominant class. He alone has by his position an interest in
raising and improving the mass, of whom he is not jealous, as a
counterpoise to his associates, of whom he is; and if fortunate
circumstances place beside him, not as controllers but as subordinates, a
body representative of the superior caste, which, by its objections and
questionings, and by its occasional outbreaks of spirit, keeps alive
habits of collective resistance, and may admit of being, in time and by
degrees, expanded into a really national representation (which is in
substance the history of the English Parliament), the nation has then the
most favorable prospects of improvement which can well occur to a
community thus circumstanced and constituted.

Among the tendencies which, without absolutely rendering a people unfit
for representative government, seriously incapacitate them from reaping
the full benefit of it, one deserves particular notice. There are two
states of the inclinations, intrinsically very different, but which have
something in common, by virtue of which they often coincide in the
direction they give to the efforts of individuals and of nations; one is,
the desire to exercise power over others; the other is disinclination to
have power exercised over themselves. The difference between different
portions of mankind in the relative strength of these two dispositions is
one of the most important elements in their history. There are nations in
whom the passion for governing others is so much stronger than the desire
of personal independence, that for the mere shadow of the one they are
found ready to sacrifice the whole of the other. Each one of their number
is willing, like the private soldier in an army, to abdicate his personal
freedom of action into the hands of his general, provided the army is
triumphant and victorious, and he is able to flatter himself that he is
one of a conquering host, though the notion that he has himself any share
in the domination exercised over the conquered is an illusion. A
government strictly limited in its powers and attributions, required to
hold its hands from overmeddling, and to let most things go on without its
assuming the part of guardian or director, is not to the taste of such a
people; in their eyes the possessors of authority can hardly take too much
upon themselves, provided the authority itself is open to general
competition. An average individual among them prefers the chance, however
distant or improbable, of wielding some share of power over his
fellow-citizens, above the certainty, to himself and others, of having no
unnecessary power exercised over them. These are the elements of a people
of place-hunters, in whom the course of politics is mainly determined by
place-hunting; where equality alone is cared for, but not liberty; where
the contests of political parties are but struggles to decide whether the
power of meddling in every thing shall belong to one class or another,
perhaps merely to one knot of public men or another; where the idea
entertained of democracy is merely that of opening offices to the
competition of all instead of a few; where, the more popular the
institutions, the more innumerable are the places created, and the more
monstrous the overgovernment exercised by all over each, and by the
executive over all. It would be as unjust as it would be ungenerous to
offer this, or any thing approaching to it, as an unexaggerated picture of
the French people; yet the degree in which they do participate in this
type of character has caused representative government by a limited class
to break down by excess of corruption, and the attempt at representative
government by the whole male population to end in giving one man the power
of consigning any number of the rest, without trial, to Lambessa or
Cayenne, provided he allows all of them to think themselves not excluded
from the possibility of sharing his favors. The point of character which,
beyond any other, fits the people of this country for representative
government, is that they have almost universally the contrary
characteristic. They are very jealous of any attempt to exercise power
over them not sanctioned by long usage and by their own opinion of right;
but they in general care very little for the exercise of power over
others. Not having the smallest sympathy with the passion for governing,
while they are but too well acquainted with the motives of private
interest from which that office is sought, they prefer that it should be
performed by those to whom it comes without seeking, as a consequence of
social position. If foreigners understood this, it would account to them
for some of the apparent contradictions in the political feelings of
Englishmen; their unhesitating readiness to let themselves be governed by
the higher classes, coupled with so little personal subservience to them,
that no people are so fond of resisting authority when it oversteps
certain prescribed limits, or so determined to make their rulers always
remember that they will only be governed in the way they themselves like
best. Place-hunting, accordingly, is a form of ambition to which the
English, considered nationally, are almost strangers. If we except the few
families or connections of whom official employment lies directly in the
way, Englishmen’s views of advancement in life take an altogether
different direction—that of success in business or in a profession.
They have the strongest distaste for any mere struggle for office by
political parties or individuals; and there are few things to which they
have a greater aversion than to the multiplication of public employments;
a thing, on the contrary, always popular with the bureaucracy-ridden
nations of the Continent, who would rather pay higher taxes than diminish,
by the smallest fraction, their individual chances of a place for
themselves or their relatives, and among whom a cry for retrenchment never
means abolition of offices, but the reduction of the salaries of those
which are too considerable for the ordinary citizen to have any chance of
being appointed to them.

Chapter V—Of the Proper Functions of Representative Bodies.

In treating of representative government, it is above all necessary to
keep in view the distinction between its idea or essence, and the
particular forms in which the idea has been clothed by accidental
historical developments, or by the notions current at some particular
period.

The meaning of representative government is, that the whole people, or
some numerous portion of them, exercise through deputies periodically
elected by themselves the ultimate controlling power, which, in every
constitution, must reside somewhere. This ultimate power they must possess
in all its completeness. They must be masters, whenever they please, of
all the operations of government. There is no need that the constitutional
law should itself give them this mastery. It does not in the British
Constitution. But what it does give practically amounts to this: the power
of final control is as essentially single, in a mixed and balanced
government, as in a pure monarchy or democracy. This is the portion of
truth in the opinion of the ancients, revived by great authorities in our
own time, that a balanced constitution is impossible. There is almost
always a balance, but the scales never hang exactly even. Which of them
preponderates is not always apparent on the face of the political
institutions. In the British Constitution, each of the three co-ordinate
members of the sovereignty is invested with powers which, if fully
exercised, would enable it to stop all the machinery of government.
Nominally, therefore, each is invested with equal power of thwarting and
obstructing the others; and if, by exerting that power, any of the three
could hope to better its position, the ordinary course of human affairs
forbids us to doubt that the power would be exercised. There can be no
question that the full powers of each would be employed defensively if it
found itself assailed by one or both of the others. What, then, prevents
the same powers from being exerted aggressively? The unwritten maxims of
the Constitution—in other words, the positive political morality of
the country; and this positive political morality is what we must look to
if we would know in whom the really supreme power in the Constitution
resides.

By constitutional law, the crown can refuse its assent to any act of
Parliament, and can appoint to office and maintain in it any minister, in
opposition to the remonstrances of Parliament. But the constitutional
morality of the country nullifies these powers, preventing them from being
ever used; and, by requiring that the head of the administration should
always be virtually appointed by the House of Commons, makes that body the
real sovereign of the state.

These unwritten rules, which limit the use of lawful powers, are, however,
only effectual, and maintain themselves in existence on condition of
harmonising with the actual distribution of real political strength. There
is in every constitution a strongest power—one which would gain the
victory if the compromises by which the Constitution habitually works were
suspended, and there came a trial of strength. Constitutional maxims are
adhered to, and are practically operative, so long as they give the
predominance in the Constitution to that one of the powers which has the
preponderance of active power out of doors. This, in England, is the
popular power. If, therefore, the legal provisions of the British
Constitution, together with the unwritten maxims by which the conduct of
the different political authorities is in fact regulated, did not give to
the popular element in the Constitution that substantial supremacy over
every department of the government which corresponds to its real power in
the country, the Constitution would not possess the stability which
characterizes it; either the laws or the unwritten maxims would soon have
to be changed. The British government is thus a representative government
in the correct sense of the term; and the powers which it leaves in hands
not directly accountable to the people can only be considered as
precautions which the ruling power is willing should be taken against its
own errors. Such precautions have existed in all well-constructed
democracies. The Athenian Constitution had many such provisions, and so
has that of the United States.

But while it is essential to representative government that the practical
supremacy in the state should reside in the representatives of the people,
it is an open question what actual functions, what precise part in the
machinery of government, shall be directly and personally discharged by
the representative body. Great varieties in this respect are compatible
with the essence of representative government, provided the functions are
such as secure to the representative body the control of every thing in
the last resort.

There is a radical distinction between controlling the business of
government and actually doing it. The same person or body may be able to
control every thing, but can not possibly do every thing; and in many
cases its control over every thing will be more perfect the less it
personally attempts to do. The commander of an army could not direct its
movements effectually if he himself fought in the ranks or led an assault.
It is the same with bodies of men. Some things can not be done except by
bodies; other things can not be well done by them. It is one question,
therefore, what a popular assembly should control, another what it should
itself do. It should, as we have already seen, control all the operations
of government. But, in order to determine through what channel this
general control may most expediently be exercised, and what portion of the
business of government the representative assembly should hold in its own
hands, it is necessary to consider what kinds of business a numerous body
is competent to perform properly. That alone which it can do well it ought
to take personally upon itself. With regard to the rest, its proper
province is not to do it, but to take means for having it well done by
others.

For example, the duty which is considered as belonging more peculiarly
than any other to an assembly representative of the people is that of
voting the taxes. Nevertheless, in no country does the representative body
undertake, by itself or its delegated officers, to prepare the estimates.
Though the supplies can only be voted by the House of Commons, and though
the sanction of the House is also required for the appropriation of the
revenues to the different items of the public expenditure, it is the maxim
and the uniform practice of the Constitution that money can be granted
only on the proposition of the crown. It has, no doubt, been felt that
moderation as to the amount, and care and judgment in the detail of its
application, can only be expected when the executive government, through
whose hands it is to pass, is made responsible for the plans and
calculations on which the disbursements are grounded. Parliament,
accordingly, is not expected, nor even permitted, to originate directly
either taxation or expenditure. All it is asked for is its consent, and
the sole power it possesses is that of refusal.

The principles which are involved and recognized in this constitutional
doctrine, if followed as far as they will go, are a guide to the
limitation and definition of the general functions of representative
assemblies. In the first place, it is admitted in all countries in which
the representative system is practically understood, that numerous
representative bodies ought not to administer. The maxim is grounded not
only on the most essential principles of good government, but on those of
the successful conduct of business of any description. No body of men,
unless organized and under command, is fit for action, in the proper
sense. Even a select board, composed of few members, and these specially
conversant with the business to be done, is always an inferior instrument
to some one individual who could be found among them, and would be
improved in character if that one person were made the chief, and all the
others reduced to subordinates. What can be done better by a body than by
any individual is deliberation. When it is necessary or important to
secure hearing and consideration to many conflicting opinions, a
deliberative body is indispensable. Those bodies, therefore, are
frequently useful, even for administrative business, but in general only
as advisers; such business being, as a rule, better conducted under the
responsibility of one. Even a joint-stock company has always in practice,
if not in theory, a managing director; its good or bad management depends
essentially on some one person’s qualifications, and the remaining
directors, when of any use, are so by their suggestions to him, or by the
power they possess of watching him, and restraining or removing him in
case of misconduct. That they are ostensibly equal shares with him in the
management is no advantage, but a considerable set-off against any good
which they are capable of doing: it weakens greatly the sense in his own
mind, and in those of other people, of that individual responsibility in
which he should stand forth personally and undividedly.

But a popular assembly is still less fitted to administer, or to dictate
in detail to those who have the charge of administration. Even when
honestly meant, the interference is almost always injurious. Every branch
of public administration is a skilled business, which has its own peculiar
principles and traditional rules, many of them not even known in any
effectual way, except to those who have at some time had a hand in
carrying on the business, and none of them likely to be duly appreciated
by persons not practically acquainted with the department. I do not mean
that the transaction of public business has esoteric mysteries, only to be
understood by the initiated. Its principles are all intelligible to any
person of good sense, who has in his mind a true picture of the
circumstances and conditions to be dealt with; but to have this he must
know those circumstances and conditions; and the knowledge does not come
by intuition. There are many rules of the greatest importance in every
branch of public business (as there are in every private occupation), of
which a person fresh to the subject neither knows the reason or even
suspects the existence, because they are intended to meet dangers or
provide against inconveniences which never entered into his thoughts. I
have known public men, ministers of more than ordinary natural capacity,
who, on their first introduction to a department of business new to them,
have excited the mirth of their inferiors by the air with which they
announced as a truth hitherto set at nought, and brought to light by
themselves, something which was probably the first thought of every body
who ever looked at the subject, given up as soon as he had got on to a
second. It is true that a great statesman is he who knows when to depart
from traditions, as well as when to adhere to them; but it is a great
mistake to suppose that he will do this better for being ignorant of the
traditions. No one who does not thoroughly know the modes of action which
common experience has sanctioned is capable of judging of the
circumstances which require a departure from those ordinary modes of
action. The interests dependent on the acts done by a public department,
the consequences liable to follow from any particular mode of conducting
it, require for weighing and estimating them a kind of knowledge, and of
specially exercised judgment, almost as rarely found in those not bred to
it, as the capacity to reform the law in those who have not professionally
studied it. All these difficulties are sure to be ignored by a
representative assembly which attempts to decide on special acts of
administration. At its best, it is inexperience sitting in judgment on
experience, ignorance on knowledge; ignorance which, never suspecting the
existence of what it does not know, is equally careless and supercilious,
making light of, if not resenting, all pretensions to have a judgment
better worth attending to than its own. Thus it is when no interested
motives intervene; but when they do, the result is jobbery more unblushing
and audacious than the worst corruption which can well take place in a
public office under a government of publicity. It is not necessary that
the interested bias should extend to the majority of the assembly. In any
particular case it is of ten enough that it affects two or three of their
number. Those two or three will have a greater interest in misleading the
body than any other of its members are likely to have in putting it right.
The bulk of the assembly may keep their hands clean, but they can not keep
their minds vigilant or their judgments discerning in matters they know
nothing about; and an indolent majority, like an indolent individual,
belongs to the person who takes most pains with it. The bad measures or
bad appointments of a minister may be checked by Parliament; and the
interest of ministers in defending, and of rival partisans in attacking,
secures a tolerably equal discussion; but quis custodiet custodes?
who shall check the Parliament? A minister, a head of an office, feels
himself under some responsibility. An assembly in such cases feels under
no responsibility at all; for when did any member of Parliament lose his
seat for the vote he gave on any detail of administration? To a minister,
or the head of an office, it is of more importance what will be thought of
his proceedings some time hence, than what is thought of them at the
instant; but an assembly, if the cry of the moment goes with it, however
hastily raised or artificially stirred up, thinks itself and is thought by
every body, to be completely exculpated, however disastrous may be the
consequences. Besides, an assembly never personally experiences the
inconveniences of its bad measures until they have reached the dimensions
of national evils. Ministers and administrators see them approaching, and
have to bear all the annoyance and trouble of attempting to ward them off.

The proper duty of a representative assembly in regard to matters of
administration is not to decide them by its own vote, but to take care
that the persons who have to decide them shall be the proper persons. Even
this they can not advantageously do by nominating the individuals. There
is no act which more imperatively requires to be performed under a strong
sense of individual responsibility than the nomination to employments. The
experience of every person conversant with public affairs bears out the
assertion that there is scarcely any act respecting which the conscience
of an average man is less sensitive; scarcely any case in which less
consideration is paid to qualifications, partly because men do not know,
and partly because they do not care for, the difference in qualifications
between one person and another. When a minister makes what is meant to be
an honest appointment, that is, when he does not actually job it for his
personal connections or his party, an ignorant person might suppose that
he would try to give it to the person best qualified. No such thing. An
ordinary minister thinks himself a miracle of virtue if he gives it to a
person of merit, or who has a claim on the public on any account, though
the claim or the merit may be of the most opposite description to that
required. Il fallait un calculateur, ce fut un danseur qui l’obtint,
is hardly more of a caricature than in the days of Figaro; and the
minister doubtless thinks himself not only blameless, but meritorious, if
the man dances well. Besides, the qualifications which fit special
individuals for special duties can only be recognized by those who know
the individuals, or who make it their business to examine and judge of
persons from what they have done, or from the evidence of those who are in
a position to judge. When these conscientious obligations are so little
regarded by great public officers who can be made responsible for their
appointments, how must it be with assemblies who can not? Even now, the
worst appointments are those which are made for the sake of gaining
support or disarming opposition in the representative body; what might we
expect if they were made by the body itself? Numerous bodies never regard
special qualifications at all. Unless a man is fit for the gallows, he is
thought to be about as fit as other people for almost any thing for which
he can offer himself as a candidate. When appointments made by a public
body are not decided, as they almost always are, by party connection or
private jobbing, a man is appointed either because he has a reputation,
often quite undeserved, for general ability, or oftener for no
better reason than that he is personally popular.

It has never been thought desirable that Parliament should itself nominate
even the members of a cabinet. It is enough that it virtually decides who
shall be prime minister, or who shall be the two or three individuals from
whom the prime minister shall be chosen. In doing this, it merely
recognizes the fact that a certain person is the candidate of the party
whose general policy commands its support. In reality, the only thing
which Parliament decides is, which of two, or at most three, parties or
bodies of men shall furnish the executive government: the opinion of the
party itself decides which of its members is fittest to be placed at the
head. According to the existing practice of the British Constitution,
these things seem to be on as good a footing as they can be. Parliament
does not nominate any minister, but the crown appoints the head of the
administration in conformity to the general wishes and inclinations
manifested by Parliament, and the other ministers on the recommendation of
the chief; while every minister has the undivided moral responsibility of
appointing fit persons to the other offices of administration which are
not permanent. In a republic, some other arrangement would be necessary;
but the nearer it approached in practice to that which has long existed in
England, the more likely it would be to work well. Either, as in the
American republic, the head of the executive must be elected by some
agency entirely independent of the representative body; or the body must
content itself with naming the prime minister, and making him responsible
for the choice of his associates and subordinates. In all these
considerations, at least theoretically, I fully anticipate a general
assent; though, practically, the tendency is strong in representative
bodies to interfere more and more in the details of administration, by
virtue of the general law, that whoever has the strongest power is more
and more tempted to make an excessive use of it; and this is one of the
practical dangers to which the futurity of representative governments will
be exposed.

But it is equally true, though only of late and slowly beginning to be
acknowledged, that a numerous assembly is as little fitted for the direct
business of legislation as for that of administration. There is hardly any
kind of intellectual work which so much needs to be done not only by
experienced and exercised minds, but by minds trained to the task through
long and laborious study, as the business of making laws. This is a
sufficient reason, were there no other, why they can never be well made
but by a committee of very few persons. A reason no less conclusive is,
that every provision of a law requires to be framed with the most accurate
and long-sighted perception of its effect on all the other provisions; and
the law when made should be capable of fitting into a consistent whole
with the previously existing laws. It is impossible that these conditions
should be in any degree fulfilled when laws are voted clause by clause in
a miscellaneous assembly. The incongruity of such a mode of legislating
would strike all minds, were it not that our laws are already, as to form
and construction, such a chaos, that the confusion and contradiction seem
incapable of being made greater by any addition to the mass. Yet even now,
the utter unfitness of our legislative machinery for its purpose is making
itself practically felt every year more and more. The mere time
necessarily occupied in getting through bills, renders Parliament more and
more incapable of passing any, except on detached and narrow points. If a
bill is prepared which even attempts to deal with the whole of any subject
(and it is impossible to legislate properly on any part without having the
whole present to the mind), it hangs over from session to session through
sheer impossibility of finding time to dispose of it. It matters not
though the bill may have been deliberately drawn up by the authority
deemed the best qualified, with all appliances and means to boot; or by a
select commission, chosen for their conversancy with the subject, and
having employed years in considering and digesting the particular measure:
it can not be passed, because the House of Commons will not forego the
precious privilege of tinkering it with their clumsy hands. The custom has
of late been to some extent introduced, when the principle of a bill has
been affirmed on the second reading, of referring it for consideration in
detail to a select committee; but it has not been found that this practice
causes much less time to be lost afterwards in carrying it through the
committee of the whole House: the opinions or private crotchets which have
been overruled by knowledge always insist on giving themselves a second
chance before the tribunal of ignorance. Indeed, the practice itself has
been adopted principally by the House of Lords, the members of which are
less busy and fond of meddling, and less jealous of the importance of
their individual voices, than those of the elective House. And when a bill
of many clauses does succeed in getting itself discussed in detail, what
can depict the state in which it comes out of committee! Clauses omitted
which are essential to the working of the rest; incongruous ones inserted
to conciliate some private interest, or some crotchety member who
threatens to delay the bill; articles foisted in on the motion of some
sciolist with a mere smattering of the subject, leading to consequences
which the member who introduced or those who supported the bill did not at
the moment foresee, and which need an amending act in the next session to
correct their mischiefs. It is one of the evils of the present mode of
managing these things, that the explaining and defending of a bill, and of
its various provisions, is scarcely ever performed by the person from
whose mind they emanated, who probably has not a seat in the House. Their
defense rests upon some minister or member of Parliament who did not frame
them, who is dependent on cramming for all his arguments but those which
are perfectly obvious, who does not know the full strength of his case,
nor the best reasons by which to support it, and is wholly incapable of
meeting unforeseen objections. This evil, as far as government bills are
concerned, admits of remedy, and has been remedied in some representative
constitutions, by allowing the government to be represented in either
House by persons in its confidence, having a right to speak, though not to
vote.

If that, as yet considerable, majority of the House of Commons who never
desire to move an amendment or make a speech would no longer leave the
whole regulation of business to those who do; if they would bethink
themselves that better qualifications for legislation exist, and may be
found if sought for, than a fluent tongue, and the faculty of getting
elected by a constituency, it would soon be recognized that, in
legislation as well as administration, the only task to which a
representative assembly can possibly be competent is not that of doing the
work, but of causing it to be done; of determining to whom or to what sort
of people it shall be confided, and giving or withholding the national
sanction to it when performed. Any government fit for a high state of
civilization would have as one of its fundamental elements a small body,
not exceeding in number the members of a cabinet, who should act as a
Commission of Legislation, having for its appointed office to make the
laws. If the laws of this country were, as surely they will soon be,
revised and put into a connected form, the Commission of Codification by
which this is effected should remain as a permanent institution, to watch
over the work, protect it from deterioration, and make further
improvements as often as required. No one would wish that this body should
of itself have any power of enacting laws; the Commission would
only embody the element of intelligence in their construction; Parliament
would represent that of will. No measure would become a law until
expressly sanctioned by Parliament; and Parliament, or either house, would
have the power not only of rejecting but of sending back a bill to the
commission for reconsideration or improvement. Either house might also
exercise its initiative by referring any subject to the commission, with
directions to prepare a law. The commission, of course, would have no
power of refusing its instrumentality to any legislation which the country
desired. Instructions, concurred in by both houses, to draw up a bill
which should effect a particular purpose, would be imperative on the
commissioners, unless they preferred to resign their office. Once framed,
however, Parliament should have no power to alter the measure, but solely
to pass or reject it; or, if partially disapproved of, remit it to the
commission for reconsideration. The commissioners should be appointed by
the crown, but should hold their offices for a time certain, say five
years, unless removed on an address from the two Houses of Parliament,
grounded either on personal misconduct (as in the case of judges), or on
refusal to draw up a bill in obedience to the demands of Parliament. At
the expiration of the five years a member should cease to hold office
unless reappointed, in order to provide a convenient mode of getting rid
of those who had not been found equal to their duties, and of infusing new
and younger blood into the body.

The necessity of some provision corresponding to this was felt even in the
Athenian Democracy, where, in the time of its most complete ascendancy,
the popular Ecclesia could pass psephisms (mostly decrees on single
matters of policy), but laws, so called, could only be made or altered by
a different and less numerous body, renewed annually, called the
Nomothetæ, whose duty it also was to revise the whole of the laws, and
keep them consistent with one another. In the English Constitution there
is great difficulty in introducing any arrangement which is new both in
form and in substance, but comparatively little repugnance is felt to the
attainment of new purposes by an adaptation of existing forms and
traditions. It appears to me that the means might be devised of enriching
the Constitution with this great improvement through the machinery of the
House of Lords. A commission for preparing bills would in itself be no
more an innovation on the Constitution than the Board for the
administration of the Poor Laws, or the Inclosure Commission. If, in
consideration of the great importance and dignity of the trust, it were
made a rule that every person appointed a member of the Legislative
Commission, unless removed from office on an address from Parliament,
should be a peer for life, it is probable that the same good sense and
taste which leave the judicial functions of the peerage practically to the
exclusive care of the law lords would leave the business of legislation,
except on questions involving political principles and interests, to the
professional legislators; that bills originating in the Upper House would
always be drawn up by them; that the government would devolve on them the
framing of all its bills; and that private members of the House of Commons
would gradually find it convenient, and likely to facilitate the passing
of their measures through the two houses, if, instead of bringing in a
bill and submitting it directly to the house, they obtained leave to
introduce it and have it referred to the Legislative Commission; for it
would, of course, be open to the House to refer for the consideration of
that body not a subject merely, but any specific proposal, or a Draft of a
Bill in extenso, when any member thought himself capable of
preparing one such as ought to pass; and the House would doubtless refer
every such draft to the commission, if only as materials, and for the
benefit of the suggestions it might contain, as they would, in like
manner, refer every amendment or objection which might be proposed in
writing by any member of the House after a measure had left the
commissioners’ hands. The alteration of bills by a committee of the whole
House would cease, not by formal abolition, but by desuetude; the right
not being abandoned, but laid up in the same armoury with the royal veto,
the right of withholding the supplies, and other ancient instruments of
political warfare, which no one desires to see used, but no one likes to
part with, lest they should any time be found to be still needed in an
extraordinary emergency. By such arrangements as these, legislation would
assume its proper place as a work of skilled labor and special study and
experience; while the most important liberty of the nation, that of being
governed only by laws assented to by its elected representatives, would be
fully preserved, and made more valuable by being detached from the
serious, but by no means unavoidable drawbacks which now accompany it in
the form of ignorant and ill-considered legislation.

Instead of the function of governing, for which it is radically unfit, the
proper office of a representative assembly is to watch and control the
government; to throw the light of publicity on its acts; to compel a full
exposition and justification of all of them which any one considers
questionable; to cinsure them if found condemnable, and, if the men who
compose the government abuse their trust, or fulfill it in a manner which
conflicts with the deliberate sense of the nation, to expel them from
office, and either expressly or virtually appoint their successors. This
is surely ample power, and security enough for the liberty of the nation.
In addition to this, the Parliament has an office not inferior even to
this in importance; to be at once the nation’s Committee of Grievances and
its Congress of Opinions; an arena in which not only the general opinion
of the nation, but that of every section of it, and, as far as possible,
of every eminent individual whom it contains, can produce itself in full
light and challenge discussion; where every person in the country may
count upon finding somebody who speaks his mind as well or better than he
could speak it himself—not to friends and partisans exclusively, but
in the face of opponents, to be tested by adverse controversy; where those
whose opinion is overruled, feel satisfied that it is heard, and set aside
not by a mere act of will, but for what are thought superior reasons, and
commend themselves as such to the representatives of the majority of the
nation; where every party or opinion in the country can muster its
strength, and be cured of any illusion concerning the number or power of
its adherents; where the opinion which prevails in the nation makes itself
manifest as prevailing, and marshals its hosts in the presence of the
government, which is thus enabled and compelled to give way to it on the
mere manifestation, without the actual employment of its strength; where
statesmen can assure themselves, far more certainly than by any other
signs, what elements of opinion and power are growing and what declining,
and are enabled to shape their measures with some regard not solely to
present exigencies, but to tendencies in progress. Representative
assemblies are often taunted by their enemies with being places of mere
talk and bavardage. There has seldom been more misplaced derision.
I know not how a representative assembly can more usefully employ itself
than in talk, when the subject of talk is the great public interests of
the country, and every sentence of it represents the opinion either of
some important body of persons in the nation, or of an individual in whom
some such body have reposed their confidence. A place where every interest
and shade of opinion in the country can have its cause even passionately
pleaded, in the face of the government and of all other interests and
opinions, can compel them to listen, and either comply, or state clearly
why they do not, is in itself, if it answered no other purpose, one of the
most important political institutions that can exist any where, and one of
the foremost benefits of free government. Such “talking” would never be
looked upon with disparagement if it were not allowed to stop “doing”;
which it never would, if assemblies knew and acknowledged that talking and
discussion are their proper business, while doing, as the result of
discussion, is the task not of a miscellaneous body, but of individuals
specially trained to it; that the fit office of an assembly is to see that
those individuals are honestly and intelligently chosen, and to interfere
no further with them, except by unlimited latitude of suggestion and
criticism, and by applying or withholding the final seal of national
assent. It is for want of this judicious reserve that popular assemblies
attempt to do what they can not do well—to govern and legislate—and
provide no machinery but their own for much of it, when of course every
hour spent in talk is an hour withdrawn from actual business. But the very
fact which most unfits such bodies for a council of legislation, qualifies
them the more for their other office—namely, that they are not a
selection of the greatest political minds in the country, from whose
opinions little could with certainty be inferred concerning those of the
nation, but are, when properly constituted, a fair sample of every grade
of intellect among the people which is at all entitled to a voice in
public affairs. Their part is to indicate wants, to be an organ for
popular demands, and a place of adverse discussion for all opinions
relating to public matters, both great and small; and, along with this, to
check by criticism, and eventually by withdrawing their support, those
high public officers who really conduct the public business, or who
appoint those by whom it is conducted. Nothing but the restriction of the
function of representative bodies within these rational limits will enable
the benefits of popular control to be enjoyed in conjunction with the no
less important requisites (growing ever more important as human affairs
increase in scale and in complexity) of skilled legislation and
administration. There are no means of combining these benefits except by
separating the functions which guaranty the one from those which
essentially require the other; by disjoining the office of control and
criticism from the actual conduct of affairs, and devolving the former on
the representatives of the Many, while securing for the latter, under
strict responsibility to the nation, the acquired knowledge and practiced
intelligence of a specially trained and experienced Few.

The preceding discussion of the functions which ought to devolve on the
sovereign representative assembly of the nation would require to be
followed by an inquiry into those properly vested in the minor
representative bodies, which ought to exist for purposes that regard only
localities. And such an inquiry forms an essential part of the present
treatise; but many reasons require its postponement, until we have
considered the most proper composition of the great representative body,
destined to control as sovereign the enactment of laws and the
administration of the general affairs of the nation.

Chapter VI—Of the Infirmities and Dangers to which Representative
Government is Liable.

The defects of any form of government may be either negative or positive.
It is negatively defective if it does not concentrate in the hands of the
authorities power sufficient to fulfill the necessary offices of a
government, or if it does not sufficiently develop by exercise the active
capacities and social feelings of the individual citizens. On neither of
these points is it necessary that much should be said at this stage of our
inquiry.

The want of an amount power in the government adequate to preserve order
and allow of progress in the people is incident rather to a wild and rude
state of society generally than to any particular form of political union.
When the people are too much attached to savage independence to be
tolerant of the amount of power to which it is for their good that they
should be subject, the state of society (as already observed) is not yet
ripe for representative government. When the time for that government has
arrived, sufficient power for all needful purposes is sure to reside in
the sovereign assembly; and if enough of it is not intrusted to the
executive, this can only arise from a jealous feeling on the part of the
assembly toward the administration, never likely to exist but where the
constitutional power of the assembly to turn them out of office has not
yet sufficiently established itself. Wherever that constitutional right is
admitted in principle and fully operative in practice, there is no fear
that the assembly will not be willing to trust its own ministers with any
amount of power really desirable; the danger is, on the contrary, lest
they should grant it too ungrudgingly, and too indefinite in extent, since
the power of the minister is the power of the body who make and who keep
him so. It is, however, very likely, and is one of the dangers of a
controlling assembly, that it may be lavish of powers, but afterwards
interfere with their exercise; may give power by wholesale, and take it
back in detail, by multiplied single acts of interference in the business
of administration. The evils arising from this assumption of the actual
function of governing, in lieu of that of criticising and checking those
who govern, have been sufficiently dwelt upon in the preceding chapter. No
safeguard can in the nature of things be provided against this improper
meddling, except a strong and general conviction of its injurious
character.

The other negative defect which may reside in a government, that of not
bringing into sufficient exercise the individual faculties, moral,
intellectual, and active, of the people, has been exhibited generally in
setting forth the distinctive mischiefs of despotism. As between one form
of popular government and another, the advantage in this respect lies with
that which most widely diffuses the exercise of public functions; on the
one hand, by excluding fewest from the suffrage; on the other, by opening
to all classes of private citizens, so far as is consistent with other
equally important objects, the widest participation in the details of
judicial and administrative business; as by jury-trial, admission to
municipal offices, and, above all, by the utmost possible publicity and
liberty of discussion, whereby not merely a few individuals in succession,
but the whole public, are made, to a certain extent, participants in the
government, and sharers in the instruction and mental exercise derived
from it. The further illustration of these benefits, as well as of the
limitations under which they must be aimed at, will be better deferred
until we come to speak of the details of administration.

The positive evils and dangers of the representative, as of every
other form of government, may be reduced to two heads: first, general
ignorance and incapacity, or, to speak more moderately, insufficient
mental qualifications, in the controlling body; secondly, the danger of
its being under the influence of interests not identical with the general
welfare of the community.

The former of these evils, deficiency in high mental qualifications, is
one to which it is generally supposed that popular government is liable in
a greater degree than any other. The energy of a monarch, the steadiness
and prudence of an aristocracy, are thought to contrast most favorably
with the vacillation and shortsightedness of even the most qualified
democracy. These propositions, however, are not by any means so well
founded as they at first sight appear.

Compared with simple monarchy, representative government is in these
respects at no disadvantage. Except in a rude age, hereditary monarchy,
when it is really such, and not aristocracy in disguise, far surpasses
democracy in all the forms of incapacity supposed to be characteristic of
the last. I say, except in a rude age, because in a really rude state of
society there is a considerable guaranty for the intellectual and active
capacities of the sovereign. His personal will is constantly encountering
obstacles from the willfulness of his subjects, and of powerful
individuals among their number. The circumstances of society do not afford
him much temptation to mere luxurious self-indulgence; mental and bodily
activity, especially political and military, are his principal
excitements; and among turbulent chiefs and lawless followers he has
little authority, and is seldom long secure even of his throne, unless he
possesses a considerable amount of personal daring, dexterity, and energy.
The reason why the average of talent is so high among the Henries and
Edwards of our history may be read in the tragical fate of the second
Edward and the second Richard, and the civil wars and disturbances of the
reigns of John and his incapable successor. The troubled period of the
Reformation also produced several eminent hereditary monarchs—Elizabeth,
Henri Quatre, Gustavus Adolphus; but they were mostly bred up in
adversity, succeeded to the throne by the unexpected failure of nearer
heirs, or had to contend with great difficulties in the commencement of
their reign. Since European life assumed a settled aspect, any thing above
mediocrity in an hereditary king has become extremely rare, while the
general average has been even below mediocrity, both in talent and in
vigor of character. A monarchy constitutionally absolute now only
maintains itself in existence (except temporarily in the hands of some
active-minded usurper) through the mental qualifications of a permanent
bureaucracy. The Russian and Austrian governments, and even the French
government in its normal condition, are oligarchies of officials, of whom
the head of the state does little more than select the chiefs. I am
speaking of the regular course of their administration; for the will of
the master of course determines many of their particular acts.

The governments which have been remarkable in history for sustained mental
ability and vigor in the conduct of affairs have generally been
aristocracies. But they have been, without any exception, aristocracies of
public functionaries. The ruling bodies have been so narrow, that each
member, or at least each influential member of the body, was able to make,
and did make, public business an active profession, and the principal
occupation of his life. The only aristocracies which have manifested high
governing capacities, and acted on steady maxims of policy through many
generations, are those of Rome and Venice. But, at Venice, though the
privileged order was numerous, the actual management of affairs was
rigidly concentrated in a small oligarchy within the oligarchy, whose
whole lives were devoted to the study and conduct of the affairs of the
state. The Roman government partook more of the character of an open
aristocracy like our own. But the really governing body, the Senate, was
in exclusively composed of persons who had exercised public functions, and
had either already filled, or were looking forward to fill the highest
offices of the state, at the peril of a severe responsibility in case of
incapacity and failure. When once members of the Senate, their lives were
pledged to the conduct of public affairs; they were not permitted even to
leave Italy except in the discharge of some public trust; and unless
turned out of the Senate by the censors for character or conduct deemed
disgraceful, they retained their powers and responsibilities to the end of
life. In an aristocracy thus constituted, every member felt his personal
importance entirely bound up with the dignity and estimation of the
commonwealth which he administered, and with the part he was able to play
in its councils. This dignity and estimation were quite different things
from the prosperity or happiness of the general body of the citizens, and
were often wholly incompatible with it. But they were closely linked with
the external success and aggrandisement of the state; and it was,
consequently, in the pursuit of that object almost exclusively, that
either the Roman or the Venetian aristocracies manifested the
systematically wise collective policy and the great individual capacities
for government for which history has deservedly given them credit.

It thus appears that the only governments, not representative, in which
high political skill and ability have been other than exceptional, whether
under monarchical or aristocratic forms, have been essentially
bureaucracies. The work of government has been in the hands of governors
by profession, which is the essence and meaning of bureaucracy. Whether
the work is done by them because they have been trained to it, or they are
trained to it because it is to be done by them, makes a great difference
in many respects, but none at all as to the essential character of the
rule. Aristocracies, on the other hand, like that of England, in which the
class who possessed the power derived it merely from their social
position, without being specially trained or devoting themselves
exclusively to it (and in which, therefore, the power was not exercised
directly, but through representative institutions oligarchically
constituted), have been, in respect to intellectual endowments, much on a
par with democracies; that is, they have manifested such qualities in any
considerable degree only during the temporary ascendancy which great and
popular talents, united with a distinguished position, have given to some
one man. Themistocles and Pericles, Washington and Jefferson, were not
more completely exceptions in their several democracies, and were
assuredly much more splendid exceptions, than the Chathams and Peels of
the representative aristocracy of Great Britain, or even the Sullys and
Colberts of the aristocratic monarchy of France. A great minister, in the
aristocratic governments of modern Europe, is almost as rare a phenomenon
as a great king.

The comparison, therefore, as to the intellectual attributes of a
government has to be made between a representative democracy and a
bureaucracy; all other governments may be left out of the account. And
here it must be acknowledged that a bureaucratic government has, in some
important respects, greatly the advantage. It accumulates experience,
acquires well-tried and well-considered traditional maxims, and makes
provision for appropriate practical knowledge in those who have the actual
conduct of affairs. But it is not equally favorable to individual energy
of mind. The disease which afflicts bureaucratic governments, and which
they usually die of, is routine. They perish by the immutability of their
maxims, and, still more, by the universal law that whatever becomes a
routine loses its vital principle, and, having no longer a mind acting
within it, goes on revolving mechanically, though the work it is intended
to do remains undone. A bureaucracy always tends to become a pedantocracy.
When the bureaucracy is the real government, the spirit of the corps (as
with the Jesuits) bears down the individuality of its more distinguished
members. In the profession of government, as in other professions, the
sole idea of the majority is to do what they have been taught; and it
requires a popular government to enable the conceptions of the man of
original genius among them to prevail over the obstructive spirit of
trained mediocrity. Only in a popular government (setting apart the
accident of a highly intelligent despot) could Sir Rowland Hill have been
victorious over the Post-office. A popular government installed him in
the Post-office, and made the body, in spite of itself, obey the impulse
given by the man who united special knowledge with individual vigor and
originality. That the Roman aristocracy escaped this characteristic
disease of a bureaucracy was evidently owing to its popular element. All
special offices, both those which gave a seat in the Senate and those
which were sought by senators, were conferred by popular election. The
Russian government is a characteristic exemplification of both the good
and bad side of bureaucracy: its fixed maxims, directed with Roman
perseverance to the same unflinchingly-pursued ends from age to age; the
remarkable skill with which those ends are generally pursued; the
frightful internal corruption, and the permanent organized hostility to
improvements from without, which even the autocratic power of a
vigorous-minded emperor is seldom or never sufficient to overcome; the
patient obstructiveness of the body being in the long run more than a
match for the fitful energy of one man. The Chinese government, a
bureaucracy of Mandarins, is, as far as known to us, another apparent
example of the same qualities and defects.

In all human affairs, conflicting influences are required to keep one
another alive and efficient even for their own proper uses; and the
exclusive pursuit of one good object, apart from some other which should
accompany it, ends not in excess of one and defect of the other, but in
the decay and loss even of that which has been exclusively cared for.
Government by trained officials can not do for a country the things which
can be done by a free government, but it might be supposed capable of
doing some things which free government of itself can not do. We find,
however, that an outside element of freedom is necessary to enable it to
do effectually or permanently even its own business. And so, also, freedom
can not produce its best effects, and often breaks down altogether, unless
means can be found of combining it with trained and skilled
administration. There could not be a moment’s hesitation between
representative government, among a people in any degree ripe for it, and
the most perfect imaginable bureaucracy. But it is, at the same time, one
of the most important ends of political institutions, to attain as many of
the qualities of the one as are consistent with the other; to secure, as
far as they can be made compatible, the great advantage of the conduct of
affairs by skilled persons, bred to it as an intellectual profession,
along with that of a general control vested in, and seriously exercised
by, bodies representative of the entire people. Much would be done towards
this end by recognizing the line of separation, discussed in the preceding
chapter, between the work of government properly so called, which can only
be well performed after special cultivation, and that of selecting,
watching, and, when needful, controlling the governors, which in this
case, as in all others, properly devolves, not on those who do the work,
but on those for whose benefit it ought to be done. No progress at all can
be made towards obtaining a skilled democracy, unless the democracy are
willing that the work which requires skill should be done by those who
possess it. A democracy has enough to do in providing itself with an
amount of mental competency sufficient for its own proper work, that of
superintendence and check.

How to obtain and secure this amount is one of the questions to taken into
consideration in judging of the proper constitution of a representative
body. In proportion as its composition fails to secure this amount, the
assembly will encroach, by special acts, on the province of the executive;
it will expel a good, or elevate and uphold a bad ministry; it will
connive at, or overlook in them, abuses of trust, will be deluded by their
false pretenses, or will withhold support from those who endeavour to
fulfill their trust conscientiously; it will countenance or impose a
selfish, a capricious and impulsive, a short-sighted, ignorant, and
prejudiced general policy, foreign and domestic; it will abrogate good
laws, or enact bad ones; let in new evils, or cling with perverse
obstinacy to old; it will even, perhaps, under misleading impulses,
momentary or permanent, emanating from itself or from its constituents,
tolerate or connive at proceedings which set law aside altogether, in
cases where equal justice would not be agreeable to popular feeling. Such
are among the dangers of representative government, arising from a
constitution of the representation which does not secure an adequate
amount of intelligence and knowledge in the representative assembly.

We next proceed to the evils arising from the prevalence of modes of
action in the representative body, dictated by sinister interests (to
employ the useful phrase introduced by Bentham), that is, interests
conflicting more or less with the general good of the community.

It is universally admitted that, of the evils incident to monarchical and
aristocratic governments, a large proportion arise from this cause. The
interest of the monarch, or the interest of the aristocracy, either
collective or that of its individual members, is promoted, or they
themselves think that it will be promoted, by conduct opposed to that
which the general interest of the community requires. The interest, for
example, of the government is to tax heavily; that of the community is to
be as little taxed as the necessary expenses of good government permit.
The interest of the king and of the governing aristocracy is to possess
and exercise unlimited power over the people; to enforce, on their part,
complete conformity to the will and preferences of the rulers. The
interest of the people is to have as little control exercised over them in
any respect as is consistent with attaining the legitimate ends of
government. The interest, or apparent and supposed interest of the king or
aristocracy, is to permit no censure of themselves, at least in any form
which they may consider either to threaten their power or seriously to
interfere with their free agency. The interest of the people is that there
should be full liberty of censure on every public officer, and on every
public act or measure. The interest of a ruling class, whether in an
aristocracy or an aristocratic monarchy, is to assume to themselves an
endless variety of unjust privileges, sometimes benefiting their pockets
at the expense of the people, sometimes merely tending to exalt them above
others, or, what is the same thing in different words, to degrade others
below themselves. If the people are disaffected, which under such a
government they are very likely to be, it is the interest of the king or
aristocracy to keep them at a low level of intelligence and education,
foment dissensions among them, and even prevent them from being too well
off, lest they should “wax fat, and kick,” agreeably to the maxim of
Cardinal Richelieu in his celebrated “Testament Politique.” All these
things are for the interest of a king or aristocracy, in a purely selfish
point of view, unless a sufficiently strong counter-interest is created by
the fear of provoking resistance. All these evils have been, and many of
them still are, produced by the sinister interests of kings and
aristocracies, where their power is sufficient to raise them above the
opinion of the rest of the community; nor is it rational to expect, as a
consequence of such a position, any other conduct.

These things are superabundantly evident in the case of a monarchy or an
aristocracy; but it is sometimes rather gratuitously assumed that the same
kind of injurious influences do not operate in a democracy. Looking at
democracy in the way in which it is commonly conceived, as the rule of the
numerical majority, it is surely possible that the ruling power may be
under the dominion of sectional or class interests, pointing to conduct
different from that which would be dictated by impartial regard for the
interest of all. Suppose the majority to be whites, the minority negroes,
or vice versâ: is it likely that the majority would allow equal
justice to the minority? Suppose the majority Catholics, the minority
Protestants, or the reverse; will there not be the same danger? Or let the
majority be English, the minority Irish, or the contrary: is there not a
great probability of similar evil? In all countries there is a majority of
poor, a minority who, in contradistinction, may be called rich. Between
these two classes, on many questions, there is complete opposition of
apparent interest. We will suppose the majority sufficiently intelligent
to be aware that it is not for their advantage to weaken the security of
property, and that it would be weakened by any act of arbitrary
spoliation. But is there not a considerable danger lest they should throw
upon the possessors of what is called realized property, and upon the
larger incomes, an unfair share, or even the whole, of the burden of
taxation, and having done so, add to the amount without scruple, expending
the proceeds in modes supposed to conduce to the profit and advantage of
the laboring class? Suppose, again, a minority of skilled laborers, a
majority of unskilled: the experience of many Trade Unions, unless they
are greatly calumniated, justifies the apprehension that equality of
earnings might be imposed as an obligation, and that piecework, and all
practices which enable superior industry or abilities to gain a superior
reward, might be put down. Legislative attempts to raise wages, limitation
of competition in the labor market, taxes or restrictions on machinery,
and on improvements of all kinds tending to dispense with any of the
existing labor—even, perhaps, protection of the home producer
against foreign industry—are very natural (I do not venture to say
whether probable) results of a feeling of class interest in a governing
majority of manual laborers.

It will be said that none of these things are for the real interest
of the most numerous class: to which I answer, that if the conduct of
human beings was determined by no other interested considerations than
those which constitute their “real” interest, neither monarchy nor
oligarchy would be such bad governments as they are; for assuredly very
strong arguments may be, and often have been, adduced to show that either
a king or a governing senate are in much the most enviable position when
ruling justly and vigilantly over an active, wealthy, enlightened, and
high-minded people. But a king only now and then, and an oligarchy in no
known instance, have taken this exalted view of their self-interest; and
why should we expect a loftier mode of thinking from the laboring classes?
It is not what their interest is, but what they suppose it to be, that is
the important consideration with respect to their conduct; and it is quite
conclusive against any theory of government that it assumes the numerical
majority to do habitually what is never done, nor expected to be done,
save in very exceptional cases, by any other depositaries of power—namely,
to direct their conduct by their real ultimate interest, in opposition to
their immediate and apparent interest. No one, surely, can doubt that many
of the pernicious measures above enumerated, and many others as bad, would
be for the immediate interest of the general body of unskilled laborers.
It is quite possible that they would be for the selfish interest of the
whole existing generation of the class. The relaxation of industry and
activity, and diminished encouragement to saving which would be their
ultimate consequence, might perhaps be little felt by the class of
unskilled laborers in the space of a single lifetime. Some of the most
fatal changes in human affairs have been, as to their more manifest
immediate effects, beneficial. The establishment of the despotism of the
Cæsars was a great benefit to the entire generation in which it took
place. It put a stop to civil war, abated a vast amount of malversation
and tyranny by prætors and proconsuls; it fostered many of the graces of
life, and intellectual cultivation in all departments not political; it
produced monuments of literary genius dazzling to the imaginations of
shallow readers of history, who do not reflect that the men to whom the
despotism of Augustus (as well as of Lorenzo de’ Medici and of Louis XIV.)
owes its brilliancy were all formed in the generation preceding. The
accumulated riches, and the mental energy and activity produced by
centuries of freedom, remained for the benefit of the first generation of
slaves. Yet this was the commencement of a régime by whose gradual
operation all the civilization which had been gained insensibly faded
away, until the empire, which had conquered and embraced the world in its
grasp so completely lost even its military efficiency that invaders whom
three or four legions had always sufficed to coerce were able to overrun
and occupy nearly the whole of its vast territory. The fresh impulse given
by Christianity came but just in time to save arts and letters from
perishing, and the human race from sinking back into perhaps endless
night.

When we talk of the interest of a body of men, or even of an individual
man, as a principle determining their actions, the question what would be
considered their interest by an unprejudiced observer is one of the least
important parts of the whole matter. As Coleridge observes, the man makes
the motive, not the motive the man. What it is the man’s interest to do or
refrain from depends less on any outward circumstances than upon what sort
of man he is. If you wish to know what is practically a man’s interest,
you must know the cast of his habitual feelings and thoughts. Every body
has two kinds of interests—interests which he cares for and
interests which he does not care for. Every body has selfish and unselfish
interests, and a selfish man has cultivated the habit of caring for the
former and not caring for the latter. Every one has present and distant
interests, and the improvident man is he who cares for the present
interests and does not care for the distant. It matters little that on any
correct calculation the latter may be the more considerable, if the habits
of his mind lead him to fix his thoughts and wishes solely on the former.
It would be vain to attempt to persuade a man who beats his wife and
ill-treats his children that he would be happier if he lived in love and
kindness with them. He would be happier if he were the kind of person who
could so live; but he is not, and it is probably too late for him
to become that kind of person. Being what he is, the gratification of his
love of domineering and the indulgence of his ferocious temper are to his
perceptions a greater good to himself than he would be capable of deriving
from the pleasure and affection of those dependent on him. He has no
pleasure in their pleasure, and does not care for their affection. His
neighbor, who does, is probably a happier man than he; but could he be
persuaded of this, the persuasion would, most likely, only still further
exasperate his malignity or his irritability. On the average, a person who
cares for other people, for his country, or for mankind, is a happier man
than one who does not; but of what use is it to preach this doctrine to a
man who cares for nothing but his own ease or his own pocket? He can not
care for other people if he would. It is like preaching to the worm who
crawls on the ground how much better it would be for him if he were an
eagle.

Now it is a universally observed fact that the two evil dispositions in
question, the disposition to prefer a man’s selfish interests to those
which he shares with other people, and his immediate and direct interests
to those which are indirect and remote, are characteristics most
especially called forth and fostered by the possession of power. The
moment a man, or a class of men, find themselves with power in their
hands, the man’s individual interest, or the class’s separate interest,
acquires an entirely new degree of importance in their eyes. Finding
themselves worshipped by others, they become worshippers of themselves,
and think themselves entitled to be counted at a hundred times the value
of other people, while the facility they acquire of doing as they like
without regard to consequences insensibly weakens the habits which make
men look forward even to such consequences as affect themselves. This is
the meaning of the universal tradition, grounded on universal experience,
of men’s being corrupted by power. Every one knows how absurd it would be
to infer from what a man is or does when in a private station, that he
will be and do exactly the like when a despot on a throne; where the bad
parts of his human nature, instead of being restrained and kept in
subordination by every circumstance of his life and by every person
surrounding him, are courted by all persons, and ministered to by all
circumstances. It would be quite as absurd to entertain a similar
expectation in regard to a class of men; the Demos, or any other. Let them
be ever so modest and amenable to reason while there is a power over them
stronger than they, we ought to expect a total change in this respect when
they themselves become the strongest power.

Governments must be made for human beings as they are, or as they are
capable of speedily becoming; and in any state of cultivation which
mankind, or any class among them, have yet attained, or are likely soon to
attain, the interests by which they will be led, when they are thinking
only of self-interest, will be almost exclusively those which are obvious
at first sight, and which operate on their present condition. It is only a
disinterested regard for others, and especially for what comes after them,
for the idea of posterity, of their country, or of mankind, whether
grounded on sympathy or on a conscientious feeling, which ever directs the
minds and purposes of classes or bodies of men towards distant or
unobvious interests; and it can not be maintained that any form of
government would be rational which required as a condition that these
exalted principles of action should be the guiding and master motives in
the conduct of average human beings. A certain amount of conscience and of
disinterested public spirit may fairly be calculated on in the citizens of
any community ripe for representative government. But it would be
ridiculous to expect such a degree of it, combined with such intellectual
discernment, as would be proof against any plausible fallacy tending to
make that which was for their class interest appear the dictate of justice
and of the general good. We all know what specious fallacies may be urged
in defense of every act of injustice yet proposed for the imaginary
benefit of the mass. We know how many, not otherwise fools or bad men,
have thought it justifiable to repudiate the national debt. We know how
many, not destitute of ability and of considerable popular influence,
think it fair to throw the whole burden of taxation upon savings, under
the name of realized property, allowing those whose progenitors and
themselves have always spent all they received, to remain, as a reward for
such exemplary conduct, wholly untaxed. We know what powerful arguments,
the more dangerous because there is a portion of truth in them, may be
brought against all inheritance, against the power of bequest, against
every advantage which one person seems to have over another. We know how
easily the uselessness of almost every branch of knowledge may be proved
to the complete satisfaction of those who do not possess it. How many, not
altogether stupid men, think the scientific study of languages useless,
think ancient literature useless, all erudition useless, logic and
metaphysics useless, poetry and the fine arts idle and frivolous,
political economy purely mischievous? Even history has been pronounced
useless and mischievous by able men. Nothing but that acquaintance with
external nature, empirically acquired, which serves directly for the
production of objects necessary to existence or agreeable to the senses,
would get its utility recognized if people had the least encouragement to
disbelieve it. Is it reasonable to think that even much more cultivated
minds than those of the numerical majority can be expected to be, will
have so delicate a conscience, and so just an appreciation of what is
against their own apparent interest, that they will reject these and the
innumerable other fallacies which will press in upon them from all
quarters as soon as they come into power, to induce them to follow their
own selfish inclinations and short-sighted notions of their own good, in
opposition to justice, at the expense of all other classes and of
posterity?

One of the greatest dangers, therefore, of democracy, as of all other
forms of government, lies in the sinister interest of the holders of
power: it is the danger of class legislation, of government intended for
(whether really effecting it or not) the immediate benefit of the dominant
class, to the lasting detriment of the whole. And one of the most
important questions demanding consideration in determining the best
constitution of a representative government is how to provide efficacious
securities against this evil.

If we consider as a class, politically speaking, any number of persons who
have the same sinister interest—that is, whose direct and apparent
interest points towards the same description of bad measures—the
desirable object would be that no class, and no combination of classes
likely to combine, shall be able to exercise a preponderant influence in
the government. A modern community, not divided within itself by strong
antipathies of race, language, or nationality, may be considered as in the
main divisible into two sections, which, in spite of partial variations,
correspond on the whole with two divergent directions of apparent
interest. Let us call them (in brief general terms) laborers on the one
hand, employers of labor on the other; including, however, along with
employers of labor not only retired capitalists and the possessors of
inherited wealth, but all that highly paid description of laborers (such
as the professions) whose education and way of life assimilate them with
the rich, and whose prospect and ambition it is to raise themselves into
that class. With the laborers, on the other hand, may be ranked those
smaller employers of labor who by interests, habits, and educational
impressions are assimilated in wishes, tastes, and objects to the laboring
classes, comprehending a large proportion of petty tradesmen. In a state
of society thus composed, if the representative system could be made
ideally perfect, and if it were possible to maintain it in that state, its
organization must be such that these two classes, manual laborers and
their affinities on one side, employers of labor and their affinities on
the other, should be, in the arrangement of the representative system,
equally balanced, each influencing about an equal number of votes in
Parliament; since, assuming that the majority of each class, in any
difference between them, would be mainly governed by their class
interests, there would be a minority of each in whom that consideration
would be subordinate to reason, justice, and the good of the whole; and
this minority of either, joining with the whole of the other, would turn
the scale against any demands of their own majority which were not such as
ought to prevail. The reason why, in any tolerable constituted society,
justice and the general interest mostly in the end carry their point, is
that the separate and selfish interests of mankind are almost always
divided; some are interested in what is wrong, but some, also, have their
private interest on the side of what is right; and those who are governed
by higher considerations, though too few and weak to prevail alone,
usually, after sufficient discussion and agitation, become strong enough
to turn the balance in favor of the body of private interests which is on
the same side with them. The representative system ought to be so
constituted as to maintain this state of things; it ought not to allow any
of the various sectional interests to be so powerful as to be capable of
prevailing against truth and justice, and the other sectional interests
combined. There ought always to be such a balance preserved among personal
interests as may render any one of them dependent for its successes on
carrying with it at least a large proportion of those who act on higher
motives, and more comprehensive and distant views.

Chapter VII—Of True and False Democracy; Representation of All, and
Representation of the Majority only.

It has been seen that the dangers incident to a representative democracy
are of two kinds: danger of a low grade of intelligence in the
representative body, and in the popular opinion which controls it; and
danger of class legislation on the part of the numerical majority, these
being all composed of the same class. We have next to consider how far it
is possible so to organize the democracy as, without interfering
materially with the characteristic benefits of democratic government, to
do away with these two great evils, or at least to abate them in the
utmost degree attainable by human contrivance.

The common mode of attempting this is by limiting the democratic character
of the representation through a more or less restricted suffrage. But
there is a previous consideration which, duly kept in view, considerably
modifies the circumstances which are supposed to render such a restriction
necessary. A completely equal democracy, in a nation in which a single
class composes the numerical majority, can not be divested of certain
evils; but those evils are greatly aggravated by the fact that the
democracies which at present exist are not equal, but systematically
unequal in favor of the predominant class. Two very different ideas are
usually confounded under the name democracy. The pure idea of democracy,
according to its definition, is the government of the whole people by the
whole people, equally represented. Democracy, as commonly conceived and
hitherto practiced, is the government of the whole people by a mere
majority of the people exclusively represented. The former is synonymous
with the equality of all citizens; the latter, strangely confounded with
it, is a government of privilege in favor of the numerical majority, who
alone possess practically any voice in the state. This is the inevitable
consequence of the manner in which the votes are now taken, to the
complete disfranchisement of minorities.

The confusion of ideas here is great, but it is so easily cleared up that
one would suppose the slightest indication would be sufficient to place
the matter in its true light before any mind of average intelligence. It
would be so but for the power of habit; owing to which, the simplest idea,
if unfamiliar, has as great difficulty in making its way to the mind as a
far more complicated one. That the minority must yield to the majority,
the smaller number to the greater, is a familiar idea; and accordingly,
men think there is no necessity for using their minds any further, and it
does not occur to them that there is any medium between allowing the
smaller number to be equally powerful with the greater, and blotting out
the smaller number altogether. In a representative body actually
deliberating, the minority must of course be overruled; and in an equal
democracy (since the opinions of the constituents, when they insist on
them, determine those of the representative body), the majority of the
people, through their representatives, will outvote and prevail over the
minority and their representatives. But does it follow that the minority
should have no representatives at all? Because the majority ought to
prevail over the minority, must the majority have all the votes, the
minority none? Is it necessary that the minority should not even be heard?
Nothing but habit and old association can reconcile any reasonable being
to the needless injustice. In a really equal democracy, every or any
section would be represented, not disproportionately, but proportionately.
A majority of the electors would always have a majority of the
representatives, but a minority of the electors would always have a
minority of the representatives. Man for man, they would be as fully
represented as the majority. Unless they are, there is not equal
government, but a government of inequality and privilege: one part of the
people rule over the rest: there is a part whose fair and equal share of
influence in the representation is withheld from them, contrary to all
just government, but, above all, contrary to the principle of democracy,
which professes equality as its very root and foundation.

The injustice and violation of principle are not less flagrant because
those who suffer by them are a minority, for there is not equal suffrage
where every single individual does not count for as much as any other
single individual in the community. But it is not only a minority who
suffer. Democracy, thus constituted, does not even attain its ostensible
object, that of giving the powers of government in all cases to the
numerical majority. It does something very different; it gives them to a
majority of the majority, who may be, and often are, but a minority of the
whole. All principles are most effectually tested by extreme cases.
Suppose, then, that, in a country governed by equal and universal
suffrage, there is a contested election in every constituency, and every
election is carried by a small majority. The Parliament thus brought
together represents little more than a bare majority of the people. This
Parliament proceeds to legislate, and adopts important measures by a bare
majority of itself. What guaranty is there that these measures accord with
the wishes of a majority of the people? Nearly half the electors, having
been outvoted at the hustings, have had no influence at all in the
decision; and the whole of these may be, a majority of them probably are,
hostile to the measures, having voted against those by whom they have been
carried. Of the remaining electors, nearly half have chosen
representatives who, by supposition, have voted against the measures. It
is possible, therefore, and even probable, that the opinion which has
prevailed was agreeable only to a minority of the nation, though a
majority of that portion of it whom the institutions of the country have
erected into a ruling class. If democracy means the certain ascendancy of
the majority, there are no means of insuring that, but by allowing every
individual figure to tell equally in the summing up. Any minority left
out, either purposely or by the play of the machinery, gives the power not
to the majority, but to a minority in some other part of the scale.

The only answer which can possibly be made to this reasoning is, that as
different opinions predominate in different localities, the opinion which
is in a minority in some places has a majority in others, and on the whole
every opinion which exists in the constituencies obtains its fair share of
voices in the representation. And this is roughly true in the present
state of the constituency; if it were not, the discordance of the House
with the general sentiment of the country would soon become evident. But
it would be no longer true if the present constituency were much enlarged,
still less if made co-extensive with the whole population; for in that
case the majority in every locality would consist of manual laborers; and
when there was any question pending on which these classes were at issue
with the rest of the community, no other class could succeed in getting
represented any where. Even now, is it not a great grievance that in every
Parliament a very numerous portion of the electors, willing and anxious to
be represented, have no member in the House for whom they have voted? Is
it just that every elector of Marylebone is obliged to be represented by
two nominees of the vestries, every elector of Finsbury or Lambeth by
those (as is generally believed) of the publicans? The constituencies to
which most of the highly educated and public spirited persons in the
country belong, those of the large towns, are now, in great part, either
unrepresented or misrepresented. The electors who are on a different side
in party politics from the local majority are unrepresented. Of those who
are on the same side, a large proportion are misrepresented; having been
obliged to accept the man who had the greatest number of supporters in
their political party, though his opinions may differ from theirs on every
other point. The state of things is, in some respects, even worse than if
the minority were not allowed to vote at all; for then, at least, the
majority might have a member who would represent their own best mind;
while now, the necessity of not dividing the party, for fear of letting in
its opponents, induces all to vote either for the first person who
presents himself wearing their colors, or for the one brought forward by
their local leaders; and these, if we pay them the compliment, which they
very seldom deserve, of supposing their choice to be unbiassed by their
personal interests, are compelled, that they may be sure of mustering
their whole strength, to bring forward a candidate whom none of the party
will strongly object to—that is, a man without any distinctive
peculiarity, any known opinions except the shibboleth of the party. This
is strikingly exemplified in the United States; where, at the election of
President, the strongest party never dares put forward any of its
strongest men, because every one of these, from the mere fact that he has
been long in the public eye, has made himself objectionable to some
portion or other of the party, and is therefore not so sure a card for
rallying all their votes as a person who has never been heard of by the
public at all until he is produced as the candidate. Thus, the man who is
chosen, even by the strongest party, represents perhaps the real wishes
only of the narrow margin by which that party outnumbers the other. Any
section whose support is necessary to success possesses a veto on the
candidate. Any section which holds out more obstinately than the rest can
compel all the others to adopt its nominee; and this superior pertinacity
is unhappily more likely to be found among those who are holding out for
their own interest than for that of the public. Speaking generally, the
choice of the majority is determined by that portion of the body who are
the most timid, the most narrow-minded and prejudiced, or who cling most
tenaciously to the exclusive class-interest; and the electoral rights of
the minority, while useless for the purposes for which votes are given,
serve only for compelling the majority to accept the candidate of the
weakest or worst portion of themselves.

That, while recognizing these evils, many should consider them as the
necessary price paid for a free government, is in no way surprising; it
was the opinion of all the friends of freedom up to a recent period. But
the habit of passing them over as irremediable has become so inveterate,
that many persons seem to have lost the capacity of looking at them as
things which they would be glad to remedy if they could. From despairing
of a cure, there is too often but one step to denying the disease; and
from this follows dislike to having a remedy proposed, as if the proposer
were creating a mischief instead of offering relief from one. People are
so inured to the evils that they feel as if it were unreasonable, if not
wrong, to complain of them. Yet, avoidable or not, he must be a purblind
lover of liberty on whose mind they do not weigh; who would not rejoice at
the discovery that they could be dispensed with. Now, nothing is more
certain than that the virtual blotting out of the minority is no necessary
or natural consequence of freedom; that, far from having any connection
with democracy, it is diametrically opposed to the first principle of
democracy, representation in proportion to numbers. It is an essential
part of democracy that minorities should be adequately represented. No
real democracy, nothing but a false show of democracy, is possible without
it.

Those who have seen and felt, in some degree, the force of these
considerations, have proposed various expedients by which the evil may be,
in a greater or less degree, mitigated. Lord John Russell, in one of his
Reform Bills, introduced a provision that certain constituencies should
return three members, and that in these each elector should be allowed to
vote only for two; and Mr. Disraeli, in the recent debates, revived the
memory of the fact by reproaching him for it, being of opinion,
apparently, that it befits a Conservative statesman to regard only means,
and to disown scornfully all fellow-feeling with any one who is betrayed,
even once, into thinking of ends. [3] Others have proposed that
each elector should be allowed to vote only for one. By either of these
plans, a minority equalling or exceeding a third of the local
constituency, would be able, if it attempted no more, to return one out of
three members. The same result might be attained in a still better way if,
as proposed in an able pamphlet by Mr. James Garth Marshall, the elector
retained his three votes, but was at liberty to bestow them all upon the
same candidate. These schemes, though infinitely better than none at all,
are yet but makeshifts, and attain the end in a very imperfect manner,
since all local minorities of less than a third, and all minorities,
however numerous, which are made up from several constituencies, would
remain unrepresented. It is much to be lamented, however, that none of
these plans have been carried into effect, as any of them would have
recognized the right principle, and prepared the way for its more complete
application. But real equality of representation is not obtained unless
any set of electors amounting to the average number of a constituency,
wherever in the country they happen to reside, have the power of combining
with one another to return a representative. This degree of perfection in
representation appeared impracticable until a man of great capacity,
fitted alike for large general views and for the contrivance of practical
details—Mr. Thomas Hare—had proved its possibility by drawing
up a scheme for its accomplishment, embodied in a Draft of an Act of
Parliament; a scheme which has the almost unparalleled merit of carrying
out a great principle of government in a manner approaching to ideal
perfection as regards the special object in view, while it attains
incidentally several other ends of scarcely inferior importance.

According to this plan, the unit of representation, the quota of electors
who would be entitled to have a member to themselves, would be ascertained
by the ordinary process of taking averages, the number of voters being
divided by the number of seats in the House; and every candidate who
obtained that quota would be returned, from however great a number of
local constituencies it might be gathered. The votes would, as at present,
be given locally; but any elector would be at liberty to vote for any
candidate, in whatever part of the country he might offer himself. Those
electors, therefore, who did not wish to be represented by any of the
local candidates, might aid by their vote in the return of the person they
liked best among all those throughout the country who had expressed a
willingness to be chosen. This would so far give reality to the electoral
rights of the otherwise virtually disfranchised minority. But it is
important that not those alone who refuse to vote for any of the local
candidates, but those also who vote for one of them and are defeated,
should be enabled to find elsewhere the representation which they have not
succeeded in obtaining in their own district. It is therefore provided
that an elector may deliver a voting paper containing other names in
addition to the one which stands foremost in his preference. His vote
would only be counted for one candidate; but if the object of his first
choice failed to be returned, from not having obtained the quota, his
second perhaps might be more fortunate. He may extend his list to a
greater number in the order of his preference, so that if the names which
stand near the top of the list either can not make up the quota, or are
able to make it up without his vote, the vote may still be used for some
one whom it may assist in returning. To obtain the full number of members
required to complete the House, as well as to prevent very popular
candidates from engrossing nearly all the suffrages, it is necessary,
however many votes a candidate may obtain, that no more of them than the
quota should be counted for his return; the remainder of those who voted
for him would have their votes counted for the next person on their
respective lists who needed them, and could by their aid complete the
quota. To determine which of a candidate’s votes should be used for his
return, and which set free for others, several methods are proposed, into
which we shall not here enter. He would, of course, retain the votes of
all those who would not otherwise be represented; and for the remainder,
drawing lots, in default of better, would be an unobjectionable expedient.
The voting papers would be conveyed to a central office, where the votes
would be counted, the number of first, second, third, and other votes
given for each candidate ascertained, and the quota would be allotted to
every one who could make it up, until the number of the House was
complete; first votes being preferred to second, second to third, and so
forth. The voting papers, and all the elements of the calculation, would
be placed in public repositories, accessible to all whom they concerned;
and if any one who had obtained the quota was not duly returned, it would
be in his power easily to prove it.

These are the main provisions of the scheme. For a more minute knowledge
of its very simple machinery, I must refer to Mr. Hare’s “Treatise on the
Election of Representatives” (a small volume Published in 1859), and to a
pamphlet by Mr. Henry Fawcett, published in 1860, and entitled “Mr. Hare’s
Reform Bill simplified and explained.” This last is a very clear and
concise exposition of the plan, reduced to its simplest elements by the
omission of some of Mr. Hare’s original provisions, which, though in
themselves beneficial, we’re thought to take more from the simplicity of
the scheme than they added to its practical advantages. The more these
works are studied, the stronger, I venture to predict, will be the
impression of the perfect feasibility of the scheme and its transcendant
advantages. Such and so numerous are these, that, in my conviction, they
place Mr. Hare’s plan among the very greatest improvements yet made in the
theory and practice of government.

In the first place, it secures a representation, in proportion to numbers,
of every division of the electoral body: not two great parties alone, with
perhaps a few large sectional minorities in particular places, but every
minority in the whole nation, consisting of a sufficiently large number to
be, on principles of equal justice, entitled to a representative.
Secondly, no elector would, as at present, be nominally represented by
some one whom he had not chosen. Every member of the House would be the
representative of a unanimous constituency. He would represent a thousand
electors, or two thousand, or five thousand, or ten thousand, as the quota
might be, every one of whom would have not only voted for him, but
selected him from the whole country; not merely from the assortment of two
or three perhaps rotten oranges, which may be the only choice offered to
him in his local market. Under this relation the tie between the elector
and the representative would be of a strength and a value of which at
present we have no experience. Every one of the electors would be
personally identified with his representative, and the representative with
his constituents. Every elector who voted for him would have done so
either because he is the person, in the whole list of candidates for
Parliament, who best expresses the voter’s own opinions, or because he is
one of those whose abilities and character the voter most respects, and
whom he most willingly trusts to think for him. The member would represent
persons, not the mere bricks and mortar of the town—the voters
themselves, not a few vestrymen or parish notabilities merely. All,
however, that is worth preserving in the representation of places would be
preserved. Though the Parliament of the nation ought to have as little as
possible to do with purely local affairs, yet, while it has to do with
them, there ought to be members specially commissioned to look after the
interests of every important locality; and these there would still be. In
every locality which contained many more voters than the quota (and there
probably ought to be no local consitituency which does not), the majority
would generally prefer to be represented by one of themselves; by a person
of local knowledge, and residing in the locality, if there is any such
person to be found among the candidates, who is otherwise eligible as
their representative. It would be the minorities chiefly, who, being
unable to return the local member, would look out elsewhere for a
candidate likely to obtain other votes in addition to their own.

Of all modes in which a national representation can possibly be
constituted, this one affords the best security for the intellectual
qualifications desirable in the representatives. At present, by universal
admission, it is becoming more and more difficult for any one who has only
talents and character to gain admission into the House of Commons. The
only persons who can get elected are those who possess local influence, or
make their way by lavish expenditure, or who, on the invitation of three
or four tradesmen or attorneys, are sent down by one of the two great
parties from their London clubs, as men whose votes the party can depend
on under all circumstances. On Mr. Hare’s system, those who did not like
the local candidates would fill up their voting papers by a selection from
all the persons of national reputation on the list of candidates with
whose general political principles they were in sympathy. Almost every
person, therefore, who had made himself in any way honorably
distinguished, though devoid of local influence, and having sworn
allegiance to no political party, would have a fair chance of making up
the quota, and with this encouragement such persons might be expected to
offer themselves in numbers hitherto undreamed of. Hundreds of able men of
independent thought, who would have no chance whatever of being chosen by
the majority of any existing constituency, have by their writings, or
their exertions in some field of public usefulness, made themselves known
and approved by a few persons in almost every district of the kingdom; and
if every vote that would be given for them in every place could be counted
for their election, they might be able to complete the number of the
quota. In no other way which it seems possible to suggest would Parliament
be so certain of containing the very élite of the country.

And it is not solely through the votes of minorities that this system of
election would raise the intellectual standard of the House of Commons.
Majorities would be compelled to look out for members of a much higher
calibre. When the individuals composing the majority would no longer be
reduced to Hobson’s choice, of either voting for the person brought
forward by their local leaders, or not voting at all; when the nominee of
the leaders would have to encounter the competition not solely of the
candidate of the minority, but of all the men of established reputation in
the country who were willing to serve, it would be impossible any longer
to foist upon the electors the first person who presents himself with the
catchwords of the party in his mouth, and three or four thousand pounds in
his pocket. The majority would insist on having a candidate worthy of
their choice, or they would carry their votes somewhere else, and the
minority would prevail. The slavery of the majority to the least estimable
portion of their numbers would be at an end; the very best and most
capable of the local notabilities would be put forward by preference; if
possible, such as were known in some advantageous way beyond the locality,
that their local strength might have a chance of being fortified by stray
votes from elsewhere. Constituencies would become competitors for the best
candidates, and would vie with one another in selecting from among the men
of local knowledge and connections those who were most distinguished in
every other respect.

The natural tendency of representative government, as of modern
civilization, is towards collective mediocrity: and this tendency is
increased by all reductions and extensions of the franchise, their effect
being to place the principal power in the hands of classes more and more
below the highest level of instruction in the community. But, though the
superior intellects and characters will necessarily be outnumbered, it
makes a great difference whether or not they are heard. In the false
democracy which, instead of giving representation to all, gives it only to
the local majorities, the voice of the instructed minority may have no
organs at all in the representative body. It is an admitted fact that in
the American democracy, which is constructed on this faulty model, the
highly-cultivated members of the community, except such of them as are
willing to sacrifice their own opinions and modes of judgment, and become
the servile mouthpieces of their inferiors in knowledge, do not even offer
themselves for Congress or the State Legislatures, so certain is it that
they would have no chance of being returned. Had a plan like Mr. Hare’s by
good fortune suggested itself to the enlightened and disinterested
founders of the American Republic, the federal and state assemblies would
have contained many of these distinguished men, and democracy would have
been spared its greatest reproach and one of its most formidable evils.
Against this evil the system of personal representation proposed by Mr.
Hare is almost a specific. The minority of instructed minds scattered
through the local constituencies would unite to return a number,
proportioned to their own numbers, of the very ablest men the country
contains. They would be under the strongest inducement to choose such men,
since in no other mode could they make their small numerical strength tell
for any thing considerable. The representatives of the majority, besides
that they would themselves be improved in quality by the operation of the
system, would no longer have the whole field to themselves. They would
indeed outnumber the others, as much as the one class of electors
outnumbers the other in the country: they could always outvote them, but
they would speak and vote in their presence, and subject to their
criticism. When any difference arose, they would have to meet the
arguments of the instructed few by reasons, at least apparently, as
cogent; and since they could not, as those do who are speaking to persons
already unanimous, simply assume that they are in the right, it would
occasionally happen to them to become convinced that they were in the
wrong. As they would in general be well-meaning (for thus much may
reasonably be expected from a fairly-chosen national representation),
their own minds would be insensibly raised by the influence of the minds
with which they were in contact, or even in conflict. The champions of
unpopular doctrines would not put forth their arguments merely in books
and periodicals, read only by their own side; the opposing ranks would
meet face to face and hand to hand, and there would be a fair comparison
of their intellectual strength in the presence of the country. It would
then be found out whether the opinion which prevailed by counting votes
would also prevail if the votes were weighed as well as counted. The
multitude have often a true instinct for distinguishing an able man when
he has the means of displaying his ability in a fair field before them. If
such a man fails to obtain any portion of his just weight, it is through
institutions or usages which keep him out of sight. In the old democracies
there were no means of keeping out of sight any able man: the bema was
open to him; he needed nobody’s consent to become a public adviser. It is
not so in a representative government; and the best friends of
representative democracy can hardly be without misgivings that the
Themistocles or Demosthenes whose councils would have saved the nation,
might be unable during his whole life ever to obtain a seat. But if the
presence in the representative assembly can be insured of even a few of
the first minds in the country, though the remainder consist only of
average minds, the influence of these leading spirits is sure to make
itself insensibly felt in the general deliberations, even though they be
known to be, in many respects, opposed to the tone of popular opinion and
feeling. I am unable to conceive any mode by which the presence of such
minds can be so positively insured as by that proposed by Mr. Hare.

This portion of the assembly would also be the appropriate organ of a
great social function, for which there is no provision in any existing
democracy, but which in no government can remain permanently unfulfilled
without condemning that government to infallible degeneracy and decay.
This may be called the function of Antagonism. In every government there
is some power stronger than all the rest; and the power which is strongest
tends perpetually to become the sole power. Partly by intention and partly
unconsciously, it is ever striving to make all other things bend to
itself, and is not content while there is any thing which makes permanent
head against it, any influence not in agreement with its spirit. Yet, if
it succeeds in suppressing all rival influences, and moulding every thing
after its own model, improvement, in that country, is at an end, and
decline commences. Human improvement is a product of many factors, and no
power ever yet constituted among mankind includes them all: even the most
beneficent power only contains in itself some of the requisites of good,
and the remainder, if progress is to continue, must be derived from some
other source. No community has ever long continued progressive but while a
conflict was going on between the strongest power in the community and
some rival power; between the spiritual and temporal authorities; the
military or territorial and the industrious classes; the king and the
people; the orthodox and religious reformers. When the victory on either
side was so complete as to put an end to the strife, and no other conflict
took its place, first stagnation followed, and then decay. The ascendancy
of the numerical majority is less unjust, and, on the whole, less
mischievous than many others, but it is attended with the very same kind
of dangers, and even more certainly; for when the government is in the
hands of One or a Few, the Many are always existent as a rival power,
which may not be strong enough ever to control the other, but whose
opinion and sentiment are a moral, and even a social support to all who,
either from conviction or contrariety of interest, are opposed to any of
the tendencies of the ruling authority. But when the democracy is supreme,
there is no One or Few strong enough for dissentient opinions and injured
or menaced interests to lean upon. The great difficulty of democratic
government has hitherto seemed to be, how to provide in a democratic
society—what circumstances have provided hitherto in all the
societies which have maintained themselves ahead of others—a social
support, a point d’appui, for individual resistance to the
tendencies of the ruling power; a protection, a rallying-point, for
opinions and interests which the ascendant public opinion views with
disfavor. For want of such a point d’appui, the older societies,
and all but a few modern ones, either fell into dissolution or became
stationary (which means slow deterioration) through the exclusive
predominance of a part only of the conditions of social and mental
well-being.

Now, this great want the system of Personal Representation is fitted to
supply in the most perfect manner which the circumstances of modern
society admit of. The only quarter in which to look for a supplement, or
completing corrective to the instincts of a democratic majority, is the
instructed minority; but, in the ordinary mode of constituting democracy,
this minority has no organ: Mr. Hare’s system provides one. The
representatives who would be returned to Parliament by the aggregate of
minorities would afford that organ in its greatest perfection. A separate
organization of the instructed classes, even if practicable, would be
invidious, and could only escape from being offensive by being totally
without influence. But if the élite of these classes formed part of
the Parliament, by the same title as any other of its members—by
representing the same number of citizens, the same numerical fraction of
the national will—their presence could give umbrage to nobody, while
they would be in the position of highest vantage, both for making their
opinions and councils heard on all important subjects, and for taking an
active part in public business. Their abilities would probably draw to
them more than their numerical share of the actual administration of
government; as the Athenians did not confide responsible public functions
to Cleon or Hyperbolus (the employment of Cleon at Pylos and Amphipolis
was purely exceptional), but Nicias, and Theramenes, and Alcibiades were
in constant employment both at home and abroad, though known to sympathize
more with oligarchy than with democracy. The instructed minority would, in
the actual voting, count only for their numbers, but as a moral power they
would count for much more, in virtue of their knowledge, and of the
influence it would give them over the rest. An arrangement better adapted
to keep popular opinion within reason and justice, and to guard it from
the various deteriorating influences which assail the weak side of
democracy, could scarcely by human ingenuity be devised. A democratic
people would in this way be provided with what in any other way it would
almost certainly miss—leaders of a higher grade of intellect and
character than itself. Modern democracy would have its occasional
Pericles, and its habitual group of superior and guiding minds.

With all this array of reasons, of the most fundamental character, on the
affirmative side of the question, what is there on the negative? Nothing
that will sustain examination, when people can once be induced to bestow
any real examination upon a new thing. Those indeed, if any such there be,
who, under pretense of equal justice, aim only at substituting the class
ascendancy of the poor for that of the rich, will of course be unfavorable
to a scheme which places both on a level. But I do not believe that any
such wish exists at present among the working classes of this country,
though I would not answer for the effect which opportunity and demagogic
artifices may hereafter have in exciting it. In the United States, where
the numerical majority have long been in full possession of collective
despotism, they would probably be as unwilling to part with it as a single
despot or an aristocracy. But I believe that the English democracy would
as yet be content with protection against the class legislation of others,
without claiming the power to exercise it in their turn.

Among the ostensible objectors to Mr. Hare’s scheme, some profess to think
the plan unworkable; but these, it will be found, are generally people who
have barely heard of it, or have given it a very slight and cursory
examination. Others are unable to reconcile themselves to the loss of what
they term the local character of the representation. A nation does not
seem to them to consist of persons, but of artificial units, the creation
of geography and statistics. Parliament must represent towns and counties,
not human beings. But no one seeks to annihilate towns and counties. Towns
and counties, it may be presumed, are represented when the human beings
who inhabit them are represented. Local feelings can not exist without
somebody who feels them, nor local interests without somebody interested
in them. If the human beings whose feelings and interests these are have
their proper share of representation, these feelings and interests are
represented in common with all other feelings and interests of those
persons. But I can not see why the feelings and interests which arrange
mankind according to localities should be the only one thought worthy of
being represented; or why people who have other feelings and interests,
which they value more than they do their geographical ones, should be
restricted to these as the sole principle of their political
classification. The notion that Yorkshire and Middlesex have rights apart
from those of their inhabitants, or that Liverpool and Exeter are the
proper objects of the legislator’s care, in contradistinction the
population of those places, is a curious specimen of delusion produced by
words.

In general, however, objectors cut the matter short by affirming that the
people of England will never consent to such a system. What the people of
England are likely to think of those who pass such a summary sentence on
their capacity of understanding and judgment, deeming it superfluous to
consider whether a thing is right or wrong before affirming that they are
certain to reject it, I will not undertake to say. For my own part, I do
not think that the people of England have deserved to be, without trial,
stigmatized as insurmountably prejudiced against any thing which can be
proved to be good either for themselves or for others. It also appears to
me that when prejudices persist obstinately, it is the fault of nobody so
much as of those who make a point of proclaiming them insuperable, as an
excuse to themselves for never joining in an attempt to remove them. Any
prejudice whatever will be insurmountable if those who do not share it
themselves truckle to it, and flatter it, and accept it as a law of
nature. I believe, however, that of prejudice, properly speaking, there is
in this case none except on the lips of those who talk about it, and that
there is in general, among those who have yet heard of the proposition, no
other hostility to it than the natural and healthy distrust attaching to
all novelties which have not been sufficiently canvassed to make generally
manifest all the pros and cons of the question. The only serious obstacle
is the unfamiliarity: this, indeed, is a formidable one, for the
imagination much more easily reconciles itself to a great alteration in
substance than to a very small one in names and forms. But unfamiliarity
is a disadvantage which, when there is any real value in an idea, it only
requires time to remove; and in these days of discussion and generally
awakened interest in improvement, what formerly was the work of centuries
often requires only years.

Chapter VIII—Of the Extension of the Suffrage.

Such a representative democracy as has now been sketched—representative
of all, and not solely of the majority—in which the interests, the
opinions, the grades of intellect which are outnumbered would nevertheless
be heard, and would have a chance of obtaining by weight of character and
strength of argument an influence which would not belong to their
numerical force—this democracy, which is alone equal, alone
impartial, alone the government of all by all, the only true type of
democracy, would be free from the greatest evils of the falsely-called
democracies which now prevail, and from which the current idea of
democracy is exclusively derived. But even in this democracy, absolute
power, if they chose to exercise it, would rest with the numerical
majority, and these would be composed exclusively of a single class, alike
in biases, prepossessions, and general modes of thinking, and a class, to
say no more, not the most highly cultivated. The constitution would
therefore still be liable to the characteristic evils of class government;
in a far less degree, assuredly, than that exclusive government by a class
which now usurps the name of democracy, but still under no effective
restraint except what might be found in the good sense, moderation, and
forbearance of the class itself. If checks of this description are
sufficient, the philosophy of constitutional government is but solemn
trifling. All trust in constitutions is grounded on the assurance they may
afford, not that the depositaries of power will not, but that they can not
misemploy it. Democracy is not the ideally best form of government unless
this weak side of it can be strengthened; unless it can be so organized
that no class, not even the most numerous, shall be able to reduce all but
itself to political insignificance, and direct the course of legislation
and administration by its exclusive class interest. The problem is to find
the means of preventing this abuse without sacrificing the characteristic
advantages of popular government.

These twofold requisites are not fulfilled by the expedient of a
limitation of the suffrage, involving the compulsory exclusion of any
portion of the citizens from a voice in the representation. Among the
foremost benefits of free government is that education of the intelligence
and of the sentiments which is carried down to the very lowest ranks of
the people when they are called to take a part in acts which directly
affect the great interests of their country. On this topic I have already
dwelt so emphatically that I only return to it because there are few who
seem to attach to this effect of popular institutions all the importance
to which it is entitled. People think it fanciful to expect so much from
what seems so slight a cause—to recognize a potent instrument of
mental improvement in the exercise of political franchises by manual
laborers. Yet, unless substantial mental cultivation in the mass of
mankind is to be a mere vision, this is the road by which it must come. If
any one supposes that this road will not bring it, I call to witness the
entire contents of M. de Tocqueville’s great work, and especially his
estimate of the Americans. Almost all travelers are struck by the fact
that every American is in some sense both a patriot and a person of
cultivated intelligence; and M. de Tocqueville has shown how close the
connection is between these qualities and their democratic institutions.
No such wide diffusion of the ideas, tastes, and sentiments of educated
minds has ever been seen elsewhere, or even conceived as attainable. Yet
this is nothing to what we might look for in a government equally
democratic in its unexclusiveness, but better organized in other important
points. For political life is indeed in America a most valuable school,
but it is a school from which the ablest teachers are excluded; the first
minds in the country being as effectually shut out from the national
representation, and from public functions generally, as if they were under
a formal disqualification. The Demos, too, being in America the one source
of power, all the selfish ambition of the country gravitates towards it,
as it does in despotic countries towards the monarch; the People, like the
despot, is pursued with adulation and sycophancy, and the corrupting
effects of power fully keep pace with its improving and ennobling
influences. If, even with this alloy, democratic institutions produce so
marked a superiority of mental development in the lowest class of
Americans, compared with the corresponding classes in England and
elsewhere, what would it be if the good portion of the influence could be
retained without the bad? And this, to a certain extent, may be done, but
not by excluding that portion of the people who have fewest intellectual
stimuli of other kinds from so inestimable an introduction to large,
distant, and complicated interests as is afforded by the attention they
may be induced to bestow on political affairs. It is by political
discussion that the manual laborer, whose employment is a routine, and
whose way of life brings him in contact with no variety of impressions,
circumstances, or ideas, is taught that remote causes, and events which
take place far off, have a most sensible effect even on his personal
interests; and it is from political discussion and collective political
action that one whose daily occupations concentrate his interests in a
small circle round himself, learns to feel for and with his
fellow-citizens, and becomes consciously a member of a great community.
But political discussions fly over the heads of those who have no votes,
and are not endeavouring to acquire them. Their position, in comparison
with the electors, is that of the audience in a court of justice compared
with the twelve men in the jury-box. It is not their suffrages that
are asked, it is not their opinion that is sought to be influenced; the
appeals are made, the arguments addressed, to others than them; nothing
depends on the decision they may arrive at, and there is no
necessity and very little inducement to them to come to any. Whoever, in
an otherwise popular government, has no vote, and no prospect of obtaining
it, will either be a permanent malcontent, or will feel as one whom the
general affairs of society do not concern; for whom they are to be managed
by others; who “has no business with the laws except to obey them,” nor
with public interests and concerns except as a looker-on. What he will
know or care about them from this position may partly be measured by what
an average woman of the middle class knows and cares about politics
compared with her husband or brothers.

Independently of all these considerations, it is a personal injustice to
withhold from any one, unless for the prevention of greater evils, the
ordinary privilege of having his voice reckoned in the disposal of affairs
in which he has the same interest as other people. If he is compelled to
pay, if he may be compelled to fight, if he is required implicitly to
obey, he should be legally entitled to be told what for; to have his
consent asked, and his opinion counted at its worth, though not at more
than its worth. There ought to be no pariahs in a full-grown and civilized
nation; no persons disqualified except through their own default. Every
one is degraded, whether aware of it or not, when other people, without
consulting him, take upon themselves unlimited power to regulate his
destiny. And even in a much more improved state than the human mind has
ever yet reached, it is not in nature that they who are thus disposed of
should meet with as fair play as those who have a voice. Rulers and ruling
classes are under a necessity of considering the interests and wishes of
those who have the suffrage; but of those who are excluded, it is in their
option whether they will do so or not; and, however honestly disposed,
they are, in general, too fully occupied with things which they must
attend to to have much room in their thoughts for any thing which they can
with impunity disregard. No arrangement of the suffrage, therefore, can be
permanently satisfactory in which any person or class is peremptorily
excluded—in which the electoral privilege is not open to all persons
of full age who desire to obtain it.

There are, however, certain exclusions, required by positive reasons,
which do not conflict with this principle, and which, though an evil in
themselves, are only to be got rid of by the cessation of the state of
things which requires them. I regard it as wholly inadmissible that any
person should participate in the suffrage without being able to read,
write, and, I will add, perform the common operations of arithmetic.
Justice demands, even when the suffrage does not depend on it, that the
means of attaining these elementary acquirements should be within the
reach of every person, either gratuitously, or at an expense not exceeding
what the poorest, who can earn their own living, can afford. If this were
really the case, people would no more think of giving the suffrage to a
man who could not read, than of giving it to a child who could not speak;
and it would not be society that would exclude him, but his own laziness.
When society has not performed its duty by rendering this amount of
instruction accessible to all, there is some hardship in the case, but it
is a hardship that ought to be borne. If society has neglected to
discharge two solemn obligations, the more important and more fundamental
of the two must be fulfilled first; universal teaching must precede
universal enfranchisement. No one but those in whom an à priori
theory has silenced common sense will maintain that power over others,
over the whole community, should be imparted to people who have not
acquired the commonest and most essential requisities for taking care of
themselves—for pursuing intelligently their own interests, and those
of the persons most nearly allied to them. This argument, doubtless, might
be pressed further, and made to prove much more. It would be eminently
desirable that other things besides reading, writing, and arithmetic could
be made necessary to the suffrage; that some knowledge of the conformation
of the earth, its natural and political divisions, the elements of general
history, and of the history and institutions of their own country, could
be required from all electors. But these kinds of knowledge, however
indispensable to an intelligent use of the suffrage, are not, in this
country, nor probably any where save in the Northern United States,
accessible to the whole people, nor does there exist any trustworthy
machinery for ascertaining whether they have been acquired or not. The
attempt, at present, would lead to partiality, chicanery, and every kind
of fraud. It is better that the suffrage should be conferred
indiscriminately, or even withheld indiscriminately, than that it should
be given to one and withheld from another at the discretion of a public
officer. In regard, however, to reading, writing, and calculating, there
need be no difficulty. It would be easy to require from every one who
presented himself for registry that he should, in the presence of the
registrar, copy a sentence from an English book, and perform a sum in the
rule of three; and to secure, by fixed rules and complete publicity, the
honest application of so very simple a test. This condition, therefore,
should in all cases accompany universal suffrage; and it would, after a
few years, exclude none but those who cared so little for the privilege,
that their vote, if given, would not in general be an indication of any
real political opinion.

It is also important, that the assembly which votes the taxes, either
general or local, should be elected exclusively by those who pay something
towards the taxes imposed. Those who pay no taxes, disposing by their
votes of other people’s money, have every motive to be lavish and none to
economize. As far as money matters are concerned, any power of voting
possessed by them is a violation of the fundamental principle of free
government, a severance of the power of control from the interest in its
beneficial exercise. It amounts to allowing them to put their hands into
other people’s pockets for any purpose which they think fit to call a
public one, which, in the great towns of the United States, is known to
have produced a scale of local taxation onerous beyond example, and wholly
borne by the wealthier classes. That representation should be coextensive
with taxation, not stopping short of it, but also not going beyond it, is
in accordance with the theory of British institutions. But to reconcile
this, as a condition annexed to the representation, with universality, it
is essential, as it is on many other accounts desirable, that taxation, in
a visible shape, should descend to the poorest class. In this country, and
in most others, there is probably no laboring family which does not
contribute to the indirect taxes, by the purchase of tea, coffee, sugar,
not to mention narcotics or stimulants. But this mode of defraying a share
of the public expenses is hardly felt: the payer, unless a person of
education and reflection, does not identify his interest with a low scale
of public expenditure as closely as when money for its support is demanded
directly from himself; and even supposing him to do so, he would doubtless
take care that, however lavish an expenditure he might, by his vote,
assist in imposing upon the government, it should not be defrayed by any
additional taxes on the articles which he himself consumes. It would be
better that a direct tax, in the simple form of a capitation, should be
levied on every grown person in the community; or that every such person
should be admitted an elector on allowing himself to be rated extra
ordinem to the assessed taxes; or that a small annual payment, rising
and falling with the gross expenditure of the country, should be required
from every registered elector, that so every one might feel that the money
which he assisted in voting was partly his own, and that he was interested
in keeping down its amount.

However this may be, I regard it as required by first principles that the
receipt of parish relief should be a peremptory disqualification for the
franchise. He who can not by his labor suffice for his own support, has no
claim to the privilege of helping himself to the money of others. By
becoming dependent on the remaining members of the community for actual
subsistence, he abdicates his claim to equal rights with them in other
respects. Those to whom he is indebted for the continuance of his very
existence may justly claim the exclusive management of those common
concerns to which he now brings nothing, or less than he takes away. As a
condition of the franchise, a term should be fixed, say five years
previous to the registry, during which the applicant’s name has not been
on the parish books as a recipient of relief. To be an uncertificated
bankrupt, or to have taken the benefit of the Insolvent Act, should
disqualify for the franchise until the person has paid his debts, or at
least proved that he is not now, and has not for some long period been,
dependent on eleemosynary support. Non-payment of taxes, when so long
persisted in that it can not have arisen from inadvertence, should
disqualify while it lasts. These exclusions are not in their nature
permanent. They exact such conditions only as all are able, or ought to be
able, to fulfill if they choose. They leave the suffrage accessible to all
who are in the normal condition of a human being; and if any one has to
forego it, he either does not care sufficiently for it to do for its sake
what he is already bound to do, or he is in a general condition of
depression and degradation in which this slight addition, necessary for
the security of others, would be unfelt, and on emerging from which this
mark of inferiority would disappear with the rest.

In the long run, therefore (supposing no restrictions to exist but those
of which we have now treated), we might expect that all, except that (it
is to be hoped) progressively diminishing class, the recipients of parish
relief, would be in possession of votes, so that the suffrage would be,
with that slight abatement, universal. That it should be thus widely
expanded is, as we have seen, absolutely necessary to an enlarged and
elevated conception of good government. Yet in this state of things, the
great majority of voters in most countries, and emphatically in this,
would be manual laborers, and the twofold danger, that of too low a
standard of political intelligence, and that of class legislation, would
still exist in a very perilous degree. It remains to be seen whether any
means exist by which these evils can be obviated.

They are capable of being obviated if men sincerely wish it; not by any
artificial contrivance, but by carrying out the natural order of human
life, which recommends itself to every one in things in which he has no
interest or traditional opinion running counter to it. In all human
affairs, every person directly interested, and not under positive
tutelage, has an admitted claim to a voice, and when his exercise of it is
not inconsistent with the safety of the whole, can not justly be excluded
from it. But (though every one ought to have a voice) that every one
should have an equal voice is a totally different proposition. When two
persons who have a joint interest in any business differ in opinion, does
justice require that both opinions should be held of exactly equal value?
If with equal virtue, one is superior to the other in knowledge and
intelligence—or if with equal intelligence, one excels the other in
virtue—the opinion, the judgment of the higher moral or intellectual
being is worth more than that of the inferior; and if the institutions of
the country virtually assert that they are of the same value, they assert
a thing which is not. One of the two, as the wiser or better man, has a
claim to superior weight: the difficulty is in ascertaining which of the
two it is; a thing impossible as between individuals, but, taking men in
bodies and in numbers, it can be done with a certain approach to accuracy.
There would be no pretense for applying this doctrine to any case which
can with reason be considered as one of individual and private right. In
an affair which concerns only one of two persons, that one is entitled to
follow his own opinion, however much wiser the other may be than himself.
But we are speaking of things which equally concern them both; where, if
the more ignorant does not yield his share of the matter to the guidance
of the wiser man, the wiser man must resign his to that of the more
ignorant. Which of these modes of getting over the difficulty is most for
the interest of both, and most conformable to the general fitness of
things? If it be deemed unjust that either should have to give way, which
injustice is greatest? that the better judgment should give way to the
worse, or the worse to the better?

Now national affairs are exactly such a joint concern, with the difference
that no one needs ever be called upon for a complete sacrifice of his own
opinion. It can always be taken into the calculation, and counted at a
certain figure, a higher figure being assigned to the suffrages of those
whose opinion is entitled to greater weight. There is not in this
arrangement any thing necessarily invidious to those to whom it assigns
the lower degrees of influence. Entire exclusion from a voice in the
common concerns is one thing: the concession to others of a more potential
voice, on the ground of greater capacity for the management of the joint
interests, is another. The two things are not merely different, they are
incommensurable. Every one has a right to feel insulted by being made a
nobody, and stamped as of no account at all. No one but a fool, and only a
fool of a peculiar description, feels offended by the acknowledgment that
there are others whose opinion, and even whose wish, is entitled to a
greater amount of consideration than his. To have no voice in what are
partly his own concerns is a thing which nobody willingly submits to; but
when what is partly his concern is also partly another’s, and he feels the
other to understand the subject better than himself, that the other’s
opinion should be counted for more than his own accords with his
expectations, and with the course of things which in all other affairs of
life he is accustomed to acquiese in. It is only necessary that this
superior influence should be assigned on grounds which he can comprehend,
and of which he is able to perceive the justice.

I hasten to say that I consider it entirely inadmissible, unless as a
temporary makeshift, that the superiority of influence should be conferred
in consideration of property. I do not deny that property is a kind of
test; education, in most countries, though any thing but proportional to
riches, is on the average better in the richer half of society than in the
poorer. But the criterion is so imperfect; accident has so much more to do
than merit with enabling men to rise in the world; and it is so impossible
for any one, by acquiring any amount of instruction, to make sure of the
corresponding rise in station, that this foundation of electoral privilege
is always, and will continue to be, supremely odious. To connect plurality
of votes with any pecuniary qualification would be not only objectionable
in itself, but a sure mode of compromising the principle, and making its
permanent maintenance impracticable. The democracy, at least of this
country, are not at present jealous of personal superiority, but they are
naturally and must justly so of that which is grounded on mere pecuniary
circumstances. The only thing which can justify reckoning one person’s
opinion as equivalent to more than one is individual mental superiority,
and what is wanted is some approximate means of ascertaining that. If
there existed such a thing as a really national education or a trustworthy
system of general examination, education might be tested directly. In the
absence of these, the nature of a person’s occupation is some test. An
employer of labor is on the average more intelligent than a laborer; for
he must labor with his head, and not solely with his hands. A foreman is
generally more intelligent than an ordinary laborer, and a laborer in the
skilled trades than in the unskilled. A banker, merchant, or manufacturer
is likely to be more intelligent than a tradesman, because he has larger
and more complicated interests to manage. In all these cases it is not the
having merely undertaken the superior function, but the successful
performance of it, that tests the qualifications; for which reason, as
well as to prevent persons from engaging nominally in an occupation for
the sake of the vote, it would be proper to require that the occupation
should have been persevered in for some length of time (say three years).
Subject to some such condition, two or more votes might be allowed to
every person who exercises any of these superior functions. The liberal
professions, when really and not nominally practiced, imply, of course, a
still higher degree of instruction; and wherever a sufficient examination,
or any serious conditions of education, are required before entering on a
profession, its members could be admitted at once to a plurality of votes.
The same rule might be applied to graduates of universities; and even to
those who bring satisfactory certificates of having passed through the
course of study required by any school at which the higher branches of
knowledge are taught, under proper securities that the teaching is real,
and not a mere pretense. The “local” or “middle class” examination for the
degree of associate, so laudably and public-spiritedly established by the
University of Oxford, and any similar ones which may be instituted by
other competent bodies (provided they are fairly open to all comers),
afford a ground on which plurality of votes might with great advantage be
accorded to those who have passed the test. All these suggestions are open
to much discussion in the detail, and to objections which it is of no use
to anticipate. The time is not come for giving to such plans a practical
shape, nor should I wish to be bound by the particular proposals which I
have made. But it is to me evident that in this direction lies the true
ideal of representative government; and that to work towards it by the
best practical contrivances which can be found is the path of real
political improvement.

If it be asked to what length the principle admits of being carried, or
how many votes might be accorded to an individual on the ground of
superior qualifications, I answer, that this is not in itself very
material, provided the distinctions and gradations are not made
arbitrarily, but are such as can be understood and accepted by the general
conscience and understanding. But it is an absolute condition not to
overpass the limit prescribed by the fundamental principle laid down in a
former chapter as the condition of excellence in the constitution of a
representative system. The plurality of votes must on no account be
carried so far that those who are privileged by it, or the class (if any)
to which they mainly belong, shall outweigh by means of it all the rest of
the community. The distinction in favor of education, right in itself, is
farther and strongly recommended by its preserving the educated from the
class legislation of the uneducated; but it must stop short of enabling
them to practice class legislation on their own account. Let me add, that
I consider it an absolutely necessary part of the plurality scheme that it
be open to the poorest individual in the community to claim its
privileges, if he can prove that, in spite of all difficulties and
obstacles, he is, in point of intelligence, entitled to them. There ought
to be voluntary examinations at which any person whatever might present
himself, might prove that he came up to the standard of knowledge and
ability laid down as sufficient, and be admitted, in consequence, to the
plurality of votes. A privilege which is not refused to any one who can
show that he has realized the conditions on which in theory and principle
it is dependent, would not necessarily be repugnant to any one’s sentiment
of justice; but it would certainly be so if, while conferred on general
presumptions not always infallible, it were denied to direct proof.

Plural voting, though practiced in vestry elections and those of poor-law
guardians, is so unfamiliar in elections to Parliament that it is not
likely to be soon or willingly adopted; but as the time will certainly
arrive when the only choice will be between this and equal universal
suffrage, whoever does not desire the last can not too soon begin to
reconcile himself to the former. In the mean time, though the suggestion,
for the present, may not be a practical one, it will serve to mark what is
best in principle, and enable us to judge of the eligibility of any
indirect means, either existing or capable of being adopted, which may
promote in a less perfect manner the same end. A person may have a double
vote by other means than that of tendering two votes at the same hustings;
he may have a vote in each of two different constituencies; and though
this exceptional privilege at present belongs rather to superiority of
means than of intelligence, I would not abolish it where it exists, since,
until a truer test of education is adopted, it would be unwise to dispense
with even so imperfect a one as is afforded by pecuniary circumstances.
Means might be found of giving a farther extension to the privilege, which
would connect it in a more direct manner with superior education. In any
future Reform Bill which lowers greatly the pecuniary conditions of the
suffrage, it might be a wise provision to allow all graduates of
universities, all persons who have passed creditably through the higher
schools, all members of the liberal professions, and perhaps some others,
to be registered specifically in those characters, and to give their votes
as such in any constituency in which they choose to register; retaining,
in addition, their votes as simple citizens in the localities in which
they reside.

Until there shall have been devised, and until opinion is willing to
accept, some mode of plural voting which may assign to education as such
the degree of superior influence due to it, and sufficient as a
counterpoise to the numerical weight of the least educated class, for so
long the benefits of completely universal suffrage can not be obtained
without bringing with them, as it appears to me, more than equivalent
evils. It is possible, indeed (and this is perhaps one of the transitions
through which we may have to pass in our progress to a really good
representative system), that the barriers which restrict the suffrage
might be entirely leveled in some particular constituencies, whose
members, consequently, would be returned principally by manual laborers;
the existing electoral qualification being maintained elsewhere, or any
alteration in it being accompanied by such a grouping of the
constituencies as to prevent the laboring class from becoming preponderant
in Parliament. By such a compromise, the anomalies in the representation
would not only be retained, but augmented; this, however, is not a
conclusive objection; for if the country does not choose to pursue the
right ends by a regular system directly leading to them, it must be
content with an irregular makeshift, as being greatly preferable to a
system free from irregularities, but regularly adapted to wrong ends, or
in which some ends equally necessary with the others have been left out.
It is a far graver objection, that this adjustment is incompatible with
the intercommunity of local constituencies which Mr. Hare’s plan requires;
that under it every voter would remain imprisoned within the one or more
constituencies in which his name is registered, and, unless willing to be
represented by one of the candidates for those localities, would not be
represented at all.

So much importance do I attach to the emancipation of those who already
have votes, but whose votes are useless, because always outnumbered—so
much should I hope from the natural influence of truth and reason, if only
secured a hearing and a competent advocacy, that I should not despair of
the operation even of equal and universal suffrage, if made real by the
proportional representation of all minorities, on Mr. Hare’s principle.
But if the best hopes which can be formed on this subject were
certainties, I should still contend for the principle of plural voting. I
do not propose the plurality as a thing in itself undesirable, which, like
the exclusion of part of the community from the suffrage, may be
temporarily tolerated while necessary to prevent greater evils. I do not
look upon equal voting as among the things which are good in themselves,
provided they can be guarded against inconveniences. I look upon it as
only relatively good; less objectionable than inequality of privilege
grounded on irrelevant or adventitious circumstances, but in principle
wrong, because recognizing a wrong standard, and exercising a bad
influence on the voter’s mind. It is not useful, but hurtful, that the
constitution of the country should declare ignorance to be entitled to as
much political power as knowledge. The national institutions should place
all things that they are concerned with before the mind of the citizen in
the light in which it is for his good that he should regard them; and as
it is for his good that he should think that every one is entitled to some
influence, but the better and wiser to more than others, it is important
that this conviction should be professed by the state, and embodied in the
national institutions. Such things constitute the spirit of the
institutions of a country; that portion of their influence which is least
regarded by common, and especially by English thinkers, though the
institutions of every country, not under great positive oppression,
produce more effect by their spirit than by any of their direct
provisions, since by it they shape the national character. The American
institutions have imprinted strongly on the American mind that any one man
(with a white skin) is as good as any other; and it is felt that this
false creed is nearly connected with some of the more unfavorable points
in American character. It is not small mischief that the constitution of
any country should sanction this creed; for the belief in it, whether
express or tacit, is almost as detrimental to moral and intellectual
excellence any effect which most forms of government can produce.

It may, perhaps, be said, that a constitution which gives equal influence,
man for man, to the most and to the least instructed, is nevertheless
conducive to progress, because the appeals constantly made to the less
instructed classes, the exercise given to their mental powers, and the
exertions which the more instructed are obliged to make for enlightening
their judgment and ridding them of errors and prejudices, are powerful
stimulants to their advance in intelligence. That this most desirable
effect really attends the admission of the less educated classes to some,
and even to a large share of power, I admit, and have already strenuously
maintained. But theory and experience alike prove that a counter current
sets in when they are made the possessors of all power. Those who are
supreme over every thing, whether they be One, or Few, or Many, have no
longer need of the arms of reason; they can make their mere will prevail;
and those who can not be resisted are usually far too well satisfied with
their own opinions to be willing to change them, or listen without
impatience to any one who tells them that they are in the wrong. The
position which gives the strongest stimulus to the growth of intelligence
is that of rising into power, not that of having achieved it; and of all
resting-points, temporary or permanent, in the way to ascendancy, the one
which develops the best and highest qualities is the position of those who
are strong enough to make reason prevail, but not strong enough to prevail
against reason. This is the position in which, according to the principles
we have laid down, the rich and the poor, the much and the little
educated, and all the other classes and denominations which divide society
between them, ought as far as practicable to be placed; and by combining
this principle with the otherwise just one of allowing superiority of
weight to superiority of mental qualities, a political constitution would
realize that kind of relative perfection which is alone compatible with
the complicated nature of human affairs.

In the preceding argument for universal but graduated suffrage, I have
taken no account of difference of sex. I consider it to be as entirely
irrelevant to political rights as difference in height or in the color of
the hair. All human beings have the same interest in good government; the
welfare of all is alike affected by it, and they have equal need of a
voice in it to secure their share of its benefits. If there be any
difference, women require it more than men, since, being physically
weaker, they are more dependent on law and society for protection. Mankind
have long since abandoned the only premises which will support the
conclusion that women ought not to have votes. No one now holds that women
should be in personal servitude; that they should have no thought, wish,
or occupation but to be the domestic drudges of husbands, fathers, or
brothers. It is allowed to unmarried, and wants but little of being
conceded to married women to hold property, and have pecuniary and
business interests in the same manner as men. It is considered suitable
and proper that women should think, and write, and be teachers. As soon as
these things are admitted, the political disqualification has no principle
to rest on. The whole mode of thought of the modern world is, with
increasing emphasis, pronouncing against the claim of society to decide
for individuals what they are and are not fit for, and what they shall and
shall not be allowed to attempt. If the principles of modern politics and
political economy are good for any thing, it is for proving that these
points can only be rightly judged of by the individuals themselves; and
that, under complete freedom of choice, wherever there are real
diversities of aptitude, the greater number will apply themselves to the
things for which they are on the average fittest, and the exceptional
course will only be taken by the exceptions. Either the whole tendency of
modern social improvements has been wrong, or it ought to be carried out
to the total abolition of all exclusions and disabilities which close any
honest employment to a human being.

But it is not even necessary to maintain so much in order to prove that
women should have the suffrage. Were it as right as it is wrong that they
should be a subordinate class, confined to domestic occupations and
subject to domestic authority, they would not the less require the
protection of the suffrage to secure them from the abuse of that
authority. Men, as well as women, do not need political rights in order
that they may govern, but in order that they may not be misgoverned. The
majority of the male sex are, and will be all their lives, nothing else
than laborers in corn-fields or manufactories; but this does not render
the suffrage less desirable for them, nor their claim to it less
irresistible, when not likely to make a bad use of it. Nobody pretends to
think that woman would make a bad use of the suffrage. The worst that is
said is that they would vote as mere dependents, the bidding of their male
relations. If it be so, so let it be. If they think for themselves, great
good will be done; and if they do not, no harm. It is a benefit to human
beings to take off their fetters, even if they do not desire to walk. It
would already be a great improvement in the moral position of women to be
no longer declared by law incapable of an opinion, and not entitled to a
preference, respecting the most important concerns of humanity. There
would be some benefit to them individually in having something to bestow
which their male relatives can not exact, and are yet desirous to have. It
would also be no small matter that the husband would necessarily discuss
the matter with his wife, and that the vote would not be his exclusive
affair, but a joint concern. People do not sufficiently consider how
markedly the fact that she is able to have some action on the outward
world independently of him, raises her dignity and value in a vulgar man’s
eyes, and makes her the object of a respect which no personal qualities
would ever obtain for one whose social existence he can entirely
appropriate. The vote itself, too, would be improved in quality. The man
would often be obliged to find honest reasons for his vote, such as might
induce a more upright and impartial character to serve with him under the
same banner. The wife’s influence would often keep him true to his own
sincere opinion. Often, indeed, it would be used, not on the side of
public principle, but of the personal interest or worldly vanity of the
family. But, wherever this would be the tendency of the wife’s influence,
it is exerted to the full already in that bad direction, and with the more
certainty, since under the present law and custom she is generally too
utter a stranger to politics in any sense in which they involve principle
to be able to realize to herself that there is a point of honor in them;
and most people have as little sympathy in the point of honor of others,
when their own is not placed in the same thing, as they have in the
religious feelings of those whose religion differs from theirs. Give the
woman a vote, and she comes under the operation of the political point of
honor. She learns to look on politics as a thing on which she is allowed
to have an opinion, and in which, if one has an opinion, it ought to be
acted upon; she acquires a sense of personal accountability in the matter,
and will no longer feel, as she does at present, that whatever amount of
bad influence she may exercise, if the man can but be persuaded, all is
right, and his responsibility covers all. It is only by being herself
encouraged to form an opinion, and obtain an intelligent comprehension of
the reasons which ought to prevail with the conscience against the
temptations of personal or family interest, that she can ever cease to act
as a disturbing force on the political conscience of the man. Her indirect
agency can only be prevented from being politically mischievous by being
exchanged for direct.

I have supposed the right of suffrage to depend, as in a good state of
things it would, on personal conditions. Where it depends, as in this and
most other countries, on conditions of property, the contradiction is even
more flagrant. There something more than ordinarily irrational in the fact
that when a woman can give all the guarantees required from a male
elector, independent circumstances, the position of a householder and head
of a family, payment of taxes, or whatever may be the conditions imposed,
the very principle and system of a representation based on property is set
aside, and an exceptionally personal disqualification is created for the
mere purpose of excluding her. When it is added that in the country where
this is done a woman now reigns, and that the most glorious ruler whom
that country ever had was a woman, the picture of unreason and scarcely
disguised injustice is complete. Let us hope that as the work proceeds of
pulling down, one after another, the remains of the mouldering fabric of
monopoly and tyranny, this one will not be the last to disappear; that the
opinion of Bentham, of Mr. Samuel Bailey, of Mr. Hare, and many other of
the most powerful political thinkers of this age and country (not to speak
of others), will make its way to all minds not rendered obdurate by
selfishness or inveterate prejudice; and that, before the lapse another
generation, the accident of sex, no more than the accident of skin, will
be deemed a sufficient justification for depriving its possessor of the
equal protection and just privileges of a citizen.

Chapter IX—Should there be Two Stages of Election?

In some representative constitutions, the plan has been adopted of
choosing the members of the representative body by a double process, the
primary electors only choosing other electors, and these electing the
member of Parliament. This contrivance was probably intended as a slight
impediment to the full sweep of popular feeling, giving the suffrage, and
with it the complete ultimate power, to the Many, but compelling them to
exercise it through the agency of a comparatively few, who, it was
supposed, would be less moved than the Demos by the gusts of popular
passion; and as the electors, being already a select body, might be
expected to exceed in intellect and character the common level of their
constituents, the choice made by them was thought likely to be more
careful and enlightened, and would, in any case, be made under a greater
feeling of responsibility than election by the masses themselves. This
plan of filtering, as it were, the popular suffrage through an
intermediate body admits of a very plausible defense; since it may be
said, with great appearance of reason, that less intellect and instruction
are required for judging who among our neighbors can be most safely
trusted to choose a member of Parliament than who is himself fittest to be
one.

In the first place, however, if the dangers incident to popular power may
be thought to be in some degree lessened by this indirect management, so
also are its benefits; and the latter effect is much more certain than the
former. To enable the system to work as desired, it must be carried into
effect in the spirit in which it is planned; the electors must use the
suffrage in the manner supposed by the theory, that is, each of them must
not ask himself who the member of Parliament should be, but only whom he
would best like to choose one for him. It is evident that the advantages
which indirect is supposed to have over direct election require this
disposition of mind in the voter, and will only be realized by his taking
the doctrine au serieux, that his sole business is to choose the
choosers, not the member himself. The supposition must be, that he will
not occupy his thoughts with political opinions and measures or political
men, but will be guided by his personal respect for some private
individual, to whom he will give a general power of attorney to act for
him. Now if the primary electors adopt this view of their position, one of
the principal uses of giving them a vote at all is defeated; the political
function to which they are called fails of developing public spirit and
political intelligence, of making public affairs an object of interest to
their feelings and of exercise to their faculties. The supposition,
moreover, involves inconsistent conditions; for if the voter feels no
interest in the final result, how or why can he be expected to feel any in
the process which leads to it? To wish to have a particular individual for
his representative in Parliament is possible to a person of a very
moderate degree of virtue and intelligence, and to wish to choose an
elector who will elect that individual is a natural consequence; but for a
person who does not care who is elected, or feels bound to put that
consideration in abeyance, to take any interest whatever in merely naming
the worthiest person to elect another according to his own judgment,
implies a zeal for what is right in the abstract, an habitual principle of
duty for the sake of duty, which is possible only to persons of a rather
high grade of cultivation, who, by the very possession of it, show that
they may be, and deserve to be, trusted with political power in a more
direct shape. Of all public functions which it is possible to confer on
the poorer members of the community, this surely is the least calculated
to kindle their feelings, and holds out least natural inducement to care
for it, other than a virtuous determination to discharge conscientiously
whatever duty one has to perform; and if the mass of electors cared enough
about political affairs to set any value on so limited a participation in
them, they would not be likely to be satisfied without one much more
extensive.

In the next place, admitting that a person who, from his narrow range of
cultivation, can not judge well of the qualifications of a candidate for
Parliament, may be a sufficient judge of the honesty and general capacity
of somebody whom he may depute to choose a member of Parliament for him, I
may remark, that if the voter acquiesces in this estimate of his
capabilities, and really wishes to have the choice made for him by a
person in whom he places reliance, there is no need of any constitutional
provision for the purpose; he has only to ask this confidential person
privately what candidate he had better vote for. In that case the two
modes of election coincide in their result, and every advantage of
indirect election is obtained under direct. The systems only diverge in
their operation if we suppose that the voter would prefer to use his own
judgment in the choice of a representative, and only lets another choose
for him because the law does not allow him a more direct mode of action.
But if this be his state of mind; if his will does not go along with the
limitation which the law imposes, and he desires to make a direct choice,
he can do so notwithstanding the law. He has only to choose as elector a
known partisan of the candidate he prefers, or some one who will pledge
himself to vote for that candidate. And this is so much the natural
working of election by two stages, that, except in a condition of complete
political indifference, it can scarcely be expected to act otherwise. It
is in this way that the election of the President of the United States
practically operates. Nominally, the election is indirect; the population
at large does not vote for the President; it votes for electors who choose
the President. But the electors are always chosen under an express
engagement to vote for a particular candidate; nor does a citizen ever
vote for an elector because of any preference for the man; he votes for
the Breckinridge ticket or the Lincoln ticket. It must be remembered that
the electors are not chosen in order that they may search the country and
find the fittest person in it to be President or to be a member of
Parliament. There would be something to be said for the practice if this
were so; but it is not so, nor ever will be, until mankind in general are
of opinion, with Plato, that the proper person to be intrusted with power
is the person most unwilling to accept it. The electors are to make choice
of one of those who have offered themselves as candidates, and those who
choose the electors already know who these are. If there is any political
activity in the country, all electors who care to vote at all have made up
their minds which of these candidates they would like to have, and will
make that the sole consideration in giving their vote. The partisans of
each candidate will have their list of electors ready, all pledged to vote
for that individual; and the only question practically asked of the
primary elector will be, which of these lists he will support.

The case in which election by two stages answers well in practice is when
the electors are not chosen solely as electors, but have other important
functions to discharge, which precludes their being selected solely as
delegates to give a particular vote. This combination of circumstances
exemplifies itself in another American institution, the Senate of the
United States. That assembly, the Upper House, as it were, of Congress, is
considered to represent not the people directly, but the States as such,
and to be the guardian of that portion of their sovereign rights which
they have not alienated. As the internal sovereignty of each state is, by
the nature of an equal federation, equally sacred whatever be the size or
importance of the state, each returns to the Senate the same number of
members (two), whether it be little Delaware or the “Empire State” of New
York. These members are not chosen by the population, but by the State
Legislatures, themselves elected by the people of each state; but as the
whole ordinary business of a legislative assembly, internal legislation
and the control of the executive, devolves upon these bodies, they are
elected with a view to those objects more than to the other; and in naming
two persons to represent the state in the federal Senate they for the most
part exercise their own judgment, with only that general reference to
public opinion necessary in all acts of the government of a democracy. The
elections thus made have proved eminently successful, and are
conspicuously the best of all the elections in the United States, the
Senate invariably consisting of the most distinguished men among those who
have made themselves sufficiently known in public life. After such an
example, it can not be said that indirect popular election is never
advantageous. Under certain conditions it is the very best system that can
be adopted. But those conditions are hardly to be obtained in practice
except in a federal government like that of the United States, where the
election can be intrusted to local bodies whose other functions extend to
the most important concerns of the nation. The only bodies in any
analogous position which exist, or are likely to exist, in this country,
are the municipalities, or any other boards which have been or may be
created for similar local purposes. Few persons, however, would think it
any improvement in our Parliamentary constitution if the members for the
City of London were chosen by the aldermen and Common Council, and those
for the borough of Marylebone avowedly, as they already are virtually, by
the vestries of the component parishes. Even if those bodies, considered
merely as local boards, were far less objectionable than they are, the
qualities that would fit them for the limited and peculiar duties of
municipal or parochial ædileship are no guaranty of any special fitness to
judge of the comparative qualifications of candidates for a seat in
Parliament. They probably would not fulfill this duty any better than it
is fulfilled by the inhabitants voting directly; while, on the other hand,
if fitness for electing members of Parliament had to be taken into
consideration in selecting persons for the office of vestrymen or town
councillors, many of those who are fittest for that more limited duty
would inevitably be excluded from it, if only by the necessity there would
be of choosing persons whose sentiments in general politics agreed with
those of the voters who elected them. The mere indirect political
influence of town-councils has already led to a considerable perversion of
municipal elections from their intended purpose, by making them a matter
of party politics. If it were part of the duty of a man’s book-keeper or
steward to choose his physician, he would not be likely to have a better
medical attendant than if he chose one for himself, while he would be
restricted in his choice of a steward or book-keeper to such as might,
without too great danger to his health, be intrusted with the other
office.

It appears, therefore, that every benefit of indirect election which is
attainable at all is attainable under direct; that such of the benefits
expected from it as would not be obtained under direct election will just
as much fail to be obtained under indirect; while the latter has
considerable disadvantages peculiar to itself. The mere fact that it is an
additional and superfluous wheel in the machinery is no trifling
objection. Its decided inferiority as a means of cultivating public spirit
and political intelligence has already been dwelt upon; and if it had any
effective operation at all—that is, if the primary electors did to
any extent leave to their nominees the selection of their Parliamentary
representative, the voter would be prevented from identifying himself with
his member of Parliament, and the member would feel a much less active
sense of responsibility to his constituents. In addition to all this, the
comparatively small number of persons in whose hands, at last, the
election of a member of Parliament would reside, could not but afford
great additional facilities to intrigue, and to every form of corruption
compatible with the station in life of the electors. The constituencies
would universally be reduced, in point of conveniences for bribery, to the
condition of the small boroughs at present. It would be sufficient to gain
over a small number of persons to be certain of being returned. If it be
said that the electors would be responsible to those who elected them, the
answer is obvious, that, holding no permanent office or position in the
public eye, they would risk nothing by a corrupt vote except what they
would care little for, not to be appointed electors again: and the main
reliance must still be on the penalties for bribery, the insufficiency of
which reliance, in small constituencies, experience has made notorious to
all the world. The evil would be exactly proportional to the amount of
discretion left to the chosen electors. The only case in which they would
probably be afraid to employ their vote for the promotion of their
personal interest would be when they were elected under an express pledge,
as mere delegates, to carry, as it were, the votes of their constituents
to the hustings. The moment the double stage of election began to have any
effect, it would begin to have a bad effect. And this we shall find true
of the principle of indirect election however applied, except in
circumstances similar to those of the election of senators in the United
States.

It is unnecessary, as far as England is concerned, to say more in
opposition to a scheme which has no foundation in any of the national
traditions. An apology may even be expected for saying so much against a
political expedient which perhaps could not, in this country, muster a
single adherent. But a conception so plausible at the first glance, and
for which there are so many precedents in history, might perhaps, in the
general chaos of political opinions, rise again to the surface, and be
brought forward on occasions when it might be seductive to some minds; and
it could not, therefore, even if English readers were alone to be
considered, be passed altogether in silence.

Chapter X—Of the Mode of Voting.

The question of greatest moment in regard to modes of voting is that of
secrecy or publicity, and to this we will at once address ourselves.

It would be a great mistake to make the discussion turn on
sentimentalities about skulking or cowardice. Secrecy is justifiable in
many cases, imperative in some, and it is not cowardice to seek protection
against evils which are honestly avoidable. Nor can it be reasonably
maintained that no cases are conceivable in which secret voting is
preferable to public; but I must contend that these cases, in affairs of a
political character, are the exception, not the rule.

The present is one of the many instances in which, as I have already had
occasion to remark, the spirit of an institution, the impression it
makes on the mind of the citizen, is one of the most important parts of
its operation. The spirit of vote by ballot—the interpretation
likely to be put on it in the mind of an elector, is that the suffrage is
given to him for himself—for his particular use and benefit, and not
as a trust for the public. For if it is indeed a trust, if the public are
entitled to his vote, are not they entitled to know his vote? This false
and pernicious impression may well be made on the generality, since it has
been made on most of those who of late years have been conspicuous
advocates of the ballot. The doctrine was not so understood by its earlier
promoters; but the effect of a doctrine on the mind is best shown, not in
those who form it, but in those who are formed by it. Mr. Bright and his
school of democrats think themselves greatly concerned in maintaining that
the franchise is what they term a right, not a trust. Now this one idea,
taking root in the general mind, does a moral mischief outweighing all the
good that the ballot could do, at the highest possible estimate of it. In
whatever way we define or understand the idea of a right, no person can
have a right (except in the purely legal sense) to power over others:
every such power, which he is allowed to possess is morally, in the
fullest force of the term, a trust. But the exercise of any political
function, either as an elector or as a representative, is power over
others. Those who say that the suffrage is not a trust, but a right, will
scarcely accept the conclusions to which their doctrine leads. If it is a
right, if it belongs to the voter for his own sake, on what ground can we
blame him for selling it, or using it to recommend himself to any one whom
it is his interest to please? A person is not expected to consult
exclusively the public benefit in the use he makes of his house, or his
three per cent. stock, or any thing else to which he really has a right.
The suffrage is indeed due to him, among other reasons, as a means to his
own protection, but only against treatment from which he is equally bound,
so far as depends on his vote, to protect every one of his
fellow-citizens. His vote is not a thing in which he has an option; it has
no more to do with his personal wishes than the verdict of a juryman. It
is strictly a matter of duty; he is bound to give it according to his best
and most conscientious opinion of the public good. Whoever has any other
idea of it is unfit to have the suffrage; its effect on him is to pervert,
not to elevate his mind. Instead of opening his heart to an exalted
patriotism and the obligation of public duty, it awakens and nourishes in
him the disposition to use a public function for his own interest,
pleasure, or caprice; the same feelings and purposes, on a humbler scale,
which actuate a despot and oppressor. Now an ordinary citizen in any
public position, or on whom there devolves any social function, is certain
to think and feel, respecting the obligations it imposes on him, exactly
what society appears to think and feel in conferring it. What seems to be
expected from him by society forms a standard which he may fall below, but
which he will seldom rise above. And the interpretation which he is almost
sure to put upon secret voting is that he is not bound to give his vote
with any reference to those who are not allowed to know how he gives it;
but may bestow it simply as he feels inclined.

This is the decisive reason why the argument does not hold, from the use
of the ballot in clubs and private societies to its adoption in
parliamentary elections. A member of a club is really, what the elector
falsely believes himself to be, under no obligation to consider the wishes
or interests of any one else. He declares nothing by his vote but that he
is or is not willing to associate, in a manner more or less close, with a
particular person. This is a matter on which, by universal admission, his
own pleasure or inclination is entitled to decide; and that he should be
able so to decide it without risking a quarrel is best for every body, the
rejected person included. An additional reason rendering the ballot
unobjectionable in these cases is that it does not necessarily or
naturally lead to lying. The persons concerned are of the same class or
rank, and it would be considered improper in one of them to press another
with questions as to how he had voted. It is far otherwise in
Parliamentary elections, and is likely to remain so as long as the social
relations exist which produce the demand for the ballot—as long as
one person is sufficiently the superior of another to think himself
entitled to dictate his vote. And while this is the case, silence or an
evasive answer is certain to be construed as proof that the vote given has
not been that which was desired.

In any political election, even by universal suffrage (and still more
obviously in the case of a restricted suffrage), the voter is under an
absolute moral obligation to consider the interest of the public, not his
private advantage, and give his vote, to the best of his judgment, exactly
as he would be bound to do if he were the sole voter, and the election
depended upon him alone. This being admitted, it is at least a primâ
facie consequence that the duty of voting, like any other public duty,
should be performed under the eye and criticism of the public; every one
of whom has not only an interest in its performance, but a good title to
consider himself wronged if it is performed otherwise than honestly and
carefully. Undoubtedly neither this nor any other maxim of political
morality is absolutely inviolable; it may be overruled by still more
cogent considerations. But its weight is such that the cases which admit
of a departure from it must be of a strikingly exceptional character.

It may unquestionably be the fact, that if we attempt, by publicity, to
make the voter responsible to the public for his vote, he will practically
be made responsible for it to some powerful individual, whose interest is
more opposed to the general interest of the community than that of the
voter himself would be, if, by the shield of secrecy, he were released
from responsibility altogether. When this is the condition, in a high
degree, of a large proportion of the voters, the ballot may be the smaller
evil. When the voters are slaves, any thing may be tolerated which enables
them to throw off the yoke. The strongest case for the ballot is when the
mischievous power of the Few over the Many is increasing. In the decline
of the Roman republic, the reasons for the ballot were irresistible. The
oligarchy was yearly becoming richer and more tyrannical, the people
poorer and more dependent, and it was necessary to erect stronger and
stronger barriers against such abuse of the franchise as rendered it but
an instrument the more in the hands of unprincipled persons of
consequence. As little can it be doubted that the ballot, so far as it
existed, had a beneficial operation in the Athenian constitution. Even in
the least unstable of the Grecian commonwealths, freedom might be for the
time destroyed by a single unfairly obtained popular vote; and though the
Athenian voter was not sufficiently dependent to be habitually coerced, he
might have been bribed or intimidated by the lawless outrages of some knot
of individuals, such as were not uncommon even at Athens among the youth
of rank and fortune. The ballot was in these cases a valuable instrument
of order, and conduced to the Eunomia by which Athens was distinguished
among the ancient commonwealths.

But in the more advanced states of modern Europe, and especially in this
country, the power of coercing voters has declined and is declining; and
bad voting is now less to be apprehended from the influences to which the
voter is subject at the hands of others, than from the sinister interests
and discreditable feelings which belong to himself, either individually or
as a member of a class. To secure him against the first, at the cost of
removing all restraint from the last, would be to exchange a smaller and a
diminishing evil for a greater and increasing one. On this topic, and on
the question generally as applicable to England at the present date, I
have, in a pamphlet on Parliamentary Reform, expressed myself in terms
which, as I do not feel that I can improve upon, I will venture here to
transcribe.

“Thirty years ago it was still true that in the election of members of
Parliament the main evil to be guarded against was that which the ballot
would exclude—coercion by landlords, employers, and customers. At
present, I conceive, a much greater source of evil is the selfishness, or
the selfish partialities of the voter himself. A base and mischievous vote
is now, I am convinced, much oftener given from the voter’s personal
interest, or class interest, or some mean feeling in his own mind, than
from any fear of consequences at the hands of others; and to these
influences the ballot would enable him to yield himself up, free from all
sense of shame or responsibility.

“In times not long gone by, the higher and richer classes were in complete
possession of the government. Their power was the master grievance of the
country. The habit of voting at the bidding of an employer or of a
landlord was so firmly established that hardly any thing was capable of
shaking it but a strong popular enthusiasm, seldom known to exist but in a
good cause. A vote given in opposition to those influences was therefore,
in general, an honest, a public-spirited vote; but in any case, and by
whatever motive dictated, it was almost sure to be a good vote, for it was
a vote against the monster evil, the overruling influence of oligarchy.
Could the voter at that time have been enabled, with safety to himself, to
exercise his privilege freely, even though neither honestly nor
intelligently, it would have been a great gain to reform, for it would
have broken the yoke of the then ruling power in the country—the
power which had created and which maintained all that was bad in the
institutions and the administration of the state—the power of
landlords and boroughmongers.

“The ballot was not adopted; but the progress of circumstances has done
and is doing more and more, in this respect, the work of the ballot. Both
the political and the social state of the country, as they affect this
question, have greatly changed, and are changing every day. The higher
classes are not now masters of the country. A person must be blind to all
the signs of the times who could think that the middle classes are as
subservient to the higher, or the working classes as dependent on the
higher and middle, as they were a quarter of a century ago. The events of
that quarter of a century have not only taught each class to know its own
collective strength, but have put the individuals of a lower class in a
condition to show a much bolder front to those of a higher. In a majority
of cases, the vote of the electors, whether in opposition to or in
accordance with the wishes of their superiors, is not now the effect of
coercion, which there are no longer the same means of applying, but the
expression of their own personal or political partialities. The very vices
of the present electoral system are a proof of this. The growth of
bribery, so loudly complained of, and the spread of the contagion to
places formerly free from it, are evidence that the local influences are
no longer paramount; that the electors now vote to please themselves, and
not other people. There is, no doubt, in counties and in the smaller
boroughs, a large amount of servile dependence still remaining; but the
temper of the times is adverse to it, and the force of events is
constantly tending to diminish it. A good tenant can now feel that he is
as valuable to his landlord as his landlord is to him; a prosperous
tradesman can afford to feel independent of any particular customer. At
every election the votes are more and more the voter’s own. It is their
minds, far more than their personal circumstances, that now require to be
emancipated. They are no longer passive instruments of other men’s will—mere
organs for putting power into the hands of a controlling oligarchy. The
electors themselves are becoming the oligarchy.

“Exactly in proportion as the vote of the elector is determined by his own
will, and not by that of somebody who is his master, his position is
similar to that of a member of Parliament, and publicity is indispensable.
So long as any portion of the community are unrepresented, the argument of
the Chartists against ballot in conjunction with a restricted suffrage is
unassailable. The present electors, and the bulk of those whom any
probable Reform Bill would add to the number, are the middle class, and
have as much a class interest, distinct from the working classes, as
landlords or great manufacturers. Were the suffrage extended to all
skilled laborers, even these would, or might, still have a class interest
distinct from the unskilled. Suppose it extended to all men—suppose
that what was formerly called by the misapplied name of universal
suffrage, and now by the silly title of manhood suffrage, became the law;
the voters would still have a class interest as distinguished from women.
Suppose that there were a question before the Legislature specially
affecting women—as whether women should be allowed to graduate at
universities; whether the mild penalties inflicted on ruffians who beat
their wives daily almost to death’s door should be exchanged for something
more effectual; or suppose that any one should propose in the British
Parliament what one state after another in America is enacting, not by a
mere law, but by a provision of their revised Constitutions; that married
women should have a right to their own property—are not a man’s wife
and daughters entitled to know whether he votes for or against a candidate
who will support these propositions?

“It will of course be objected that these arguments’ derive all their
weight from the supposition of an unjust state of the suffrage: that if
the opinion of the non-electors is likely to make the elector vote more
honestly or more beneficially than he would vote if left to himself, they
are more fit to be electors than he is, and ought to have the franchise;
that whoever is fit to influence electors is fit to be an elector; that
those to whom voters ought to be responsible should be themselves voters,
and, being such, should have the safeguard of the ballot, to shield them
from the undue influence of powerful individuals or classes to whom they
ought not to be responsible.

“This argument is specious, and I once thought it conclusive. It now
appears to me fallacious. All who are fit to influence electors are not,
for that reason, fit to be themselves electors. This last is a much
greater power than the former, and those may be ripe for the minor
political function who could not as yet be safely trusted with the
superior. The opinions and wishes of the poorest and rudest class of
laborers may be very useful as one influence among others on the minds of
the voters, as well as on those of the Legislature, and yet it might be
highly mischievous to give them the preponderant influence, by admitting
them, in their present state of morals and intelligence, to the full
exercise of the suffrage. It is precisely this indirect influence of those
who have not the suffrage over those who have, which, by its progressive
growth, softens the transition to every fresh extension of the franchise,
and is the means by which, when the time is ripe, the extension is
peacefully brought about. But there is another and a still deeper
consideration, which should never be left out of the account in political
speculations. The notion is itself unfounded that publicity, and the sense
of being answerable to the public, are of no use unless the public are
qualified to form a sound judgment. It is a very superficial view of the
utility of public opinion to suppose that it does good only when it
succeeds in enforcing a servile conformity to itself. To be under the eyes
of others—to have to defend oneself to others—is never more
important than to those who act in opposition to the opinion of others,
for it obliges them to have sure ground of their own. Nothing has so
steadying an influence as working against pressure. Unless when under the
temporary sway of passionate excitement, no one will do that which he
expects to be greatly blamed for, unless from a preconceived and fixed
purpose of his own, which is always evidence of a thoughtful and
deliberate character, and, except in radically bad men, generally proceeds
from sincere and strong personal convictions. Even the bare fact of having
to give an account of their conduct is a powerful inducement to adhere to
conduct of which at least some decent account can be given. If any one
thinks that the mere obligation of preserving decency is not a very
considerable check on the abuse of power, he has never had his attention
called to the conduct of those who do not feel under the necessity of
observing that restraint. Publicity is inappreciable, even when it does no
more than prevent that which can by no possibility be plausibly defended—than
compel deliberation, and force every one to determine, before he acts,
what he shall say if called to account for his actions.

“But, if not now (it may be said), at least hereafter, when all are fit to
have votes, and when all men and women are admitted to vote in virtue of
their fitness, then there can no longer be danger of class
legislation; then the electors, being the nation, can have no interest
apart from the general interest: even if individuals still vote according
to private or class inducements, the majority will have no such
inducement; and as there will then be no non-electors to whom they ought
to be responsible, the effect of the ballot, excluding none but the
sinister influences, will be wholly beneficial.

“Even in this I do not agree. I can not think that even if the people were
fit for, and had obtained universal suffrage, the ballot would be
desirable. First, because it could not, in such circumstances, be supposed
to be needful. Let us only conceive the state of things which the
hypothesis implies: a people universally educated, and every grown-up
human being possessed of a vote. If, even when only a small proportion are
electors, and the majority of the population almost uneducated, public
opinion is already, as every one now sees that it is, the ruling power in
the last resort, it is a chimera to suppose that over a community who all
read, and who all have votes, any power could be exercised by landlords
and rich people against their own inclination, which it would be at all
difficult for them to throw off. But, though the protection of secrecy
would then be needless, the control of publicity would be as needful as
ever. The universal observation of mankind has been very fallacious, if
the mere fact of being one of the community, and not being in a position
of pronounced contrariety of interest to the public at large, is enough to
insure the performance of a public duty, without either the stimulus or
the restraint derived from the opinion of our fellow-creatures. A man’s
own particular share of the public interest, even though he may have no
private interest drawing him in the opposite direction, is not, as a
general rule, found sufficient to make him do his duty to the public
without other external inducements. Neither can it be admitted that, even
if all had votes, they would give their votes as honestly in secret as in
public.

“The proposition that the electors, when they compose the whole of the
community, can not have an interest in voting against the interest of the
community, will be found, on examination, to have more sound than meaning
in it. Though the community, as a whole, can have (as the terms imply) no
other interest than its collective interest, any or every individual in it
may. A man’s interest consists of whatever he takes an interest in.
Every body has as many different interests as he has feelings; likings or
dislikings, either of a selfish or of a better kind. It can not be said
that any of these, taken by itself, constitutes ‘his interest:’ he is a
good man or a bad according as he prefers one class of his interests or
another. A man who is a tyrant at home will be apt to sympathize with
tyranny (when not exercised over himself); he will be almost certain not
to sympathize with resistance to tyranny. An envious man will vote against
Aristides because he is called the Just. A selfish man will prefer even a
trifling individual benefit to his share of the advantage which his
country would derive from a good law, because interests peculiar to
himself are those which the habits of his mind both dispose him to dwell
on and make him best able to estimate. A great number of the electors will
have two sets of preferences—those on private and those on public
grounds. The last are the only ones which the elector would like to avow.
The best side of their character is that which people are anxious to show,
even to those who are no better than themselves. People will give
dishonest or mean votes from lucre, from malice, from pique, from personal
rivalry, even from the interests or prejudices of class or sect, more
readily in secret than in public. And cases exist—they may come to
be more frequent—in which almost the only restraint upon a majority
of knaves consists in their involuntary respect for the opinion of an
honest minority. In such a case as that of the repudiating states of North
America, is there not some check to the unprincipled voter in the shame of
looking an honest man in the face? Since all this good would be sacrificed
by the ballot, even in the circumstances most favorable to it, a much
stronger case is requisite than can now be made out for its necessity (and
the case is continually becoming still weaker) to make its adoption
desirable.” [4]

On the other debateable points connected with the mode of voting, it is
not necessary to expend so many words. The system of personal
representation, as organized by Mr. Hare, renders necessary the employment
of voting papers. But it appears to me indispensable that the signature of
the elector should be affixed to the paper at a public polling-place, or
if there be no such place conveniently accessible, at some office open to
all the world, and in the presence of a responsible public officer. The
proposal which has been thrown out of allowing the voting papers to be
filled up at the voter’s own residence, and sent by the post, or called
for by a public officer, I should regard as fatal. The act would be done
in the absence of the salutary and the presence of all the pernicious
influences. The briber might, in the shelter of privacy, behold with his
own eyes his bargain fulfilled, and the intimidator could see the extorted
obedience rendered irrevocably on the spot; while the beneficent
counter-influence of the presence of those who knew the voter’s real
sentiments, and the inspiring effect of the sympathy of those of his own
party or opinion, would be shut out. [5]

The polling places should be so numerous as to be within easy reach of
every voter, and no expenses of conveyance, at the cost of the candidate,
should be tolerated under any pretext. The infirm, and they only on
medical certificate, should have the right of claiming suitable carriage
conveyance at the cost of the state or of the locality. Hustings, poll
clerks, and all the necessary machinery of elections, should be at the
public charge. Not only the candidate should not be required, he should
not be permitted to incur any but a limited and trifling expense for his
election. Mr. Hare thinks it desirable that a sum of £50 should be
required from every one who places his name on the list of candidates, to
prevent persons who have no chance of success, and no real intention of
attempting it, from becoming candidates in wantonness or from mere love of
notoriety, and perhaps carrying off a few votes which are needed for the
return of more serious aspirants. There is one expense which a candidate
or his supporters can not help incurring, and which it can hardly be
expected that the public should defray for every one who may choose to
demand it—that of making his claims known to the electors, by
advertisements, placards, and circulars. For all necessary expenses of
this kind the £50 proposed by Mr. Hare, if allowed to be drawn upon for
these purposes (it might be made £100 if requisite), ought to be
sufficient. If the friends of the candidate choose to go to expense for
committees and canvassing, there are no means of preventing them; but such
expenses out of the candidates’s own pocket, or any expenses whatever
beyond the deposit of £50 (or £100), should be illegal and punishable. If
there appeared any likelihood that opinion would refuse to connive at
falsehood, a declaration on oath or honor should be required from every
member, on taking his seat, that he had not expended, nor would expend,
money or money’s worth beyond the £50, directly or indirectly, for the
purposes of his election; and if the assertion were proved to be false or
the pledge to have been broken, he should be liable to the penalties of
perjury. It is probable that those penalties, by showing that the
Legislature was in earnest, would turn the course of opinion in the same
direction, and would hinder it from regarding, as has hitherto done, this
most serious crime against society as a venial peccadillo. When once this
effect has been produced, there need be no doubt that the declaration on
oath or honor would be considered binding. [6] “Opinion tolerates a false
disclaimer only when it already tolerates the thing disclaimed.” This is
notoriously the case with regard to electoral corruption. There has never
yet been, among political men, any real and serious attempt to prevent
bribery, because there has been no real desire that elections should not
be costly. Their costliness is an advantage to those who can afford the
expense by excluding a multitude of competitors; and any thing, however
noxious, is cherished as having a conservative tendency, if it limits the
access to Parliament to rich men. This is a rooted feeling among our
legislators of both political parties, and is almost the only point on
which I believe them to be really ill-intentioned. They care comparatively
little who votes, as long as they feel assured that none but persons of
their own class can be voted for. They know that they can rely on the
fellow-feeling of one of their class with another, while the subservience
of nouveaux enrichis who are knocking at the door of the class is a
still surer reliance; and that nothing very hostile to the class interests
or feelings of the rich need be apprehended under the most democratic
suffrage, as long as democratic persons can be prevented from being
elected to Parliament. But, even from their own point of view, this
balancing of evil by evil, instead of combining good with good, is a
wretched policy. The object should be to bring together the best members
of both classes, under such a tenure as shall induce them to lay aside
their class preferences, and pursue jointly the path traced by the common
interest, instead of allowing the class feelings of the Many to have full
swing in the constituencies, subject to the impediment of having to act
through persons imbued with the class feelings of the Few.

There is scarcely any mode in which political institutions are more
morally mischievous—work greater evil through their spirit—than
by representing political functions as a favor to be conferred, a thing
which the depositary is to ask for as desiring it for himself, and even
pay for as if it were designed for his pecuniary benefit. Men are not fond
of paying large sums for leave to perform a laborious duty. Plato had a
much juster view of the conditions of good government when he asserted
that the persons who should be sought out to be invested with political
power are those who are personally most averse to it, and that the only
motive which can be relied on for inducing the fittest men to take upon
themselves the toils of government is the fear of being governed by worse
men. What must an elector think when he sees three or four gentlemen, none
of them previously observed to be lavish of their money on projects of
disinterested beneficence, vying with one another in the sums they expend
to be enabled to write M.P. after their names? Is it likely he will
suppose that it is for his interest they incur all this cost? And
if he form an uncomplimentary opinion of their part in the affair, what
moral obligation is he likely to feel as to his own? Politicians are fond
of treating it as the dream of enthusiasts that the electoral body will
ever be uncorrupt: truly enough, until they are willing to become so
themselves; for the electors, assuredly, will take their moral tone from
the candidates. So long as the elected member, in any shape or manner,
pays for his seat, all endeavours will fail to make the business of
election any thing but a selfish bargain on all sides. “So long as the
candidate himself, and the customs of the world, seem to regard the
function of a member of Parliament less as a duty to be discharged than a
personal favor to be solicited, no effort will avail to implant in an
ordinary voter the feeling that the election of a member of Parliament is
also a matter of duty, and that he is not at liberty to bestow his vote on
any other consideration than that of personal fitness.”

The same principle which demands that no payment of money for election
purposes should be either required or tolerated on the part of the person
elected, dictates another conclusion, apparently of contrary tendency, but
really directed to the same object. It negatives what has often been
proposed as a means of rendering Parliament accessible to persons of all
ranks and circumstances—the payment of members of Parliament. If, as
in some of our colonies, there are scarcely any fit persons who can afford
to attend to an unpaid occupation, the payment should be an indemnity for
loss of time or money, not a salary. The greater latitude of choice which
a salary would give is an illusory advantage. No remuneration which any
one would think of attaching to the post would attract to it those who
were seriously engaged in other lucrative professions, with a prospect of
succeeding in them. The occupation of a member of Parliament would
therefore become an occupation in itself, carried on, like other
professions, with a view chiefly to its pecuniary returns, and under the
demoralizing influences of an occupation essentially precarious. It would
become an object of desire to adventurers of a low class; and 658 persons
in possession, with ten or twenty times as many in expectancy, would be
incessantly bidding to attract or retain the suffrages of the electors, by
promising all things, honest or dishonest, possible or impossible, and
rivaling each other in pandering to the meanest feelings and most ignorant
prejudices of the vulgarest part of the crowd. The auction between Cleon
and the sausage-seller in Aristophanes is a fair caricature of what would
be always going on. Such an institution would be a perpetual blister
applied to the most peccant parts of human nature. It amounts to offering
658 prizes for the most successful flatterer, the most adroit misleader of
a body of his fellow-countrymen. Under no despotism has there been such an
organized system of tillage for raising a rich crop of vicious
courtiership. [7]
When, by reason of pre-eminent qualifications (as may at any time happen
to be the case), it is desirable that a person entirely without
independent means, either derived from property or from a trade or
profession, should be brought into Parliament to render services which no
other person accessible can render as well, there is the resource of a
public subscription; he may be supported while in Parliament, like Andrew
Marvel, by the contributions of his constituents. This mode is
unobjectionable for such an honor will never be paid to mere subserviency:
bodies of men do not care so much for the difference between one sycophant
and another as to go to the expense of his maintenance in order to be
flattered by that particular individual. Such a support will only be given
in consideration of striking and impressive personal qualities, which,
though no absolute proof of fitness to be a national representative, are
some presumption of it, and, at all events, some guaranty for the
possession of an independent opinion and will.

Chapter XI—Of the Duration of Parliaments.

After how long a term should members of Parliament be subject to
re-election? The principles involved are here very obvious; the difficulty
lies in their application. On the one hand, the member ought not to have
so long a tenure of his seat as to make him forget his responsibility,
take his duties easily, conduct them with a view to his own personal
advantage, or neglect those free and public conferences with his
constituents which, whether he agrees or differs with them, are one of the
benefits of representative government. On the other hand, he should have
such a term of office to look forward to as will enable him to be judged,
not by a single act, but by his course of action. It is important that he
should have the greatest latitude of individual opinion and discretion
compatible with the popular control essential to free government; and for
this purpose it is necessary that the control should be exercised, as in
any case it is best exercised, after sufficient time has been given him to
show all the qualities he possesses, and to prove that there is some other
way than that of a mere obedient voter and advocate of their opinions, by
which he can render himself, in the eyes of his constituents, a desirable
and creditable representative. It is impossible to fix, by any universal
rule, the boundary between these principles. Where the democratic power in
the constitution is weak or over-passive, and requires stimulation; where
the representative, on leaving his constituents, enters at once into a
courtly or aristocratic atmosphere, whose influences all tend to deflect
his course into a different direction from the popular one, to tone down
any democratic feelings which he may have brought with him, and make him
forget the wishes and grow cool to the interests of those who chose him,
the obligation of a frequent return to them for a renewal of his
commission is indispensable to keeping his temper and character up to the
right mark. Even three years, in such circumstances, are almost too long a
period, and any longer term is absolutely inadmissible. Where, on the
contrary, democracy is the ascendant power, and still tends to increase,
requiring rather to be moderated in its exercise than encouraged to any
abnormal activity; where unbounded publicity, and an ever-present
newspaper press give the representative assurance that his every act will
be immediately known, discussed, and judged by his constituents, and that
he is always either gaining or losing ground in the estimation, while, by
the same means, the influence of their sentiments, and all other
democratic influences, are kept constantly alive and active in his own
mind, less than five years would hardly be a sufficient period to prevent
timid subserviency. The change which has taken place in English politics
as to all these features explains why annual Parliaments, which forty
years ago stood prominently in front of the creed of the more advanced
reformers, are so little cared for and so seldom heard of at present. It
deserves consideration that, whether the term is short or long, during the
last year of it the members are in position in which they would always be
if Parliaments were annual; so that, if the term were very brief, there
would virtually be annual Parliaments during a great proportion of all
time. As things now are, the period of seven years, though of unnecessary
length, is hardly worth altering for any benefit likely to be produced,
especially since the possibility, always impending, of an earlier
dissolution keeps the motives for standing well with constituents always
before the member’s eyes.

Whatever may be the term most eligible for the duration of the mandate, it
might seem natural that the individual member should vacate his seat at
the expiration of that term from the day of his election, and that there
should be no general renewal of the whole House. A great deal might be
said for this system if there were any practical object in recommending
it. But it is condemned by much stronger reasons than can be alleged in
its support. One is, that there would be no means of promptly getting rid
of a majority which had pursued a course offensive to the nation. The
certainty of a general election after a limited, which would often be a
nearly expired period, and the possibility of it at any time when the
minister either desires it for his own sake, or thinks that it would make
him popular with the country, tend to prevent that wide divergence between
the feelings of the assembly and those of the constituency, which might
subsist indefinitely if the majority of the House had always several years
of their term still to run—if it received new infusions drop by
drop, which would be more likely to assume than to modify the qualities of
the mass they were joined to. It is as essential that the general sense of
the House should accord in the main with that of the nation as is that
distinguished individuals should be able, without forfeiting their seats,
to give free utterance to the most unpopular sentiments. There is another
reason, of much weight, against the gradual and partial renewal of a
representative assembly. It is useful that there should be a periodical
general muster of opposing forces to gauge the state of the national mind,
and ascertain, beyond dispute, the relative strength of different parties
and opinions. This is not done conclusively by any partial renewal, even
where, as in some of the French constitutions, a large fraction—a
fifth or a third—go out at once.

The reasons for allowing to the executive the power of dissolution will be
considered in a subsequent chapter, relating to the constitution and
functions of the executive in a representative government.

Chapter XII—Ought Pledges to be Required from Members of Parliament?

Should a member of the legislature be bound by the instructions of his
constituents? Should he be the organ of their sentiments, or of his own?
their ambassador to a congress, or their professional agent, empowered not
only to act for them, but to judge for them what ought to be done? These
two theories of the duty of a legislator in a representative government
have each its supporters, and each is the recognized doctrine of some
representative governments. In the Dutch United Provinces, the members of
the States-General were mere delegates; and to such a length was the
doctrine carried, that when any important question arose which had not
been provided for in their instructions, they had to refer back to their
constituents, exactly as an ambassador does to the government from which
he is accredited. In this and most other countries which possess
representative constitutions, law and custom warrant a member of
Parliament in voting according to his opinion of right, however different
from that of his constituents; but there is a floating notion of the
opposite kind, which has considerable practical operation on many minds,
even of members of Parliament, and often makes them, independently of
desire for popularity or concern for their re-election, feel bound in
conscience to let their conduct on questions on which their constituents
have a decided opinion be the expression of that opinion rather than of
their own. Abstractedly from positive law, and from the historical
traditions of any particular people, which of these notions of the duty of
a representative is the true one?

Unlike the questions which we have hitherto treated, this is not a
question of constitutional legislation, but of what may more properly be
called constitutional morality—the ethics of representative
government. It does not so much concern institutions as the temper of mind
which the electors ought to bring to the discharge of their functions, the
ideas which should prevail as to the moral duties of an elector; for, let
the system of representation be what it may, it will be converted into one
of mere delegation if the electors so choose. As long as they are free not
to vote, and free to vote as they like, they can not be prevented from
making their vote depend on any condition they think fit to annex to it.
By refusing to elect any one who will not pledge himself to all their
opinions, and even, if they please, to consult with them before voting on
any important subject not foreseen, they can reduce their representative
to their mere mouthpiece, or compel him in honor, when no longer willing
to act in that capacity, to resign his seat. And since they have the power
of doing this, the theory of the Constitution ought to suppose that they
will wish to do it, since the very principle of constitutional government
requires it to be assumed that political power will be abused to promote
the particular purposes of the holder; not because it always is so, but
because such is the natural tendency of things, to guard against which is
the especial use of free institutions. However wrong, therefore, or
however foolish, we may think it in the electors to convert their
representative into a delegate, that stretch of the electoral privilege
being a natural and not improbable one, the same precautions ought to be
taken as if it were certain. We may hope that the electors will not act on
this notion of the use of the suffrage; but a representative government
needs to be so framed that even if they do, they shall not be able to
effect what ought not to be in the power of any body of persons—class
legislation for their own benefit.

When it is said that the question is only one of political morality, this
does not extenuate its importance. Questions of constitutional morality
are of no less practical moment than those relating to the constitution
itself. The very existence of some governments, and all that renders
others endurable, rests on the practical observance of doctrines of
constitutional morality; traditional notions in the minds of the several
constituted authorities, which modify the use that might otherwise be made
of their powers. In unbalanced governments—pure monarchy, pure
aristocracy, pure democracy—such maxims are the only barrier which
restrains the government from the utmost excesses in the direction of its
characteristic tendency. In imperfectly balanced governments, where some
attempt is made to set constitutional limits to the impulses of the
strongest power, but where that power is strong enough to overstep them
with at least temporary impunity, it is only by doctrines of
constitutional morality, recognized and sustained by opinion, that any
regard at all is preserved for the checks and limitations of the
constitution. In well-balanced governments, in which the supreme power is
divided, and each sharer is protected against the usurpations of the
others in the only manner possible, namely, by being armed for defense
with weapons as strong as the others can wield for attack, the government
can only be carried on by forbearance on all sides to exercise those
extreme powers, unless provoked by conduct equally extreme on the part of
some other sharer of power; and in this case we may truly say that only by
the regard paid to maxims of constitutional morality is the constitution
kept in existence. The question of pledges is not one of those which
vitally concern the existence of representative governments, but it is
very material to their beneficial operation. The laws can not prescribe to
the electors the principles by which they shall direct their choice, but
it makes a great practical difference by what principles they think they
ought to direct it; and the whole of that great question is involved in
the inquiry whether they should make it a condition that the
representative shall adhere to certain opinions laid down for him by his
constituents.

No reader of this treatise can doubt what conclusion, as to this matter,
results from the general principles which it professes. We have from the
first affirmed, and unvaryingly kept in view, the coequal importance of
two great requisites of government—responsibility to those for whose
benefit political power ought to be, and always professes to be, employed;
and jointly therewith, to obtain, in the greatest measure possible, for
the function of government, the benefits of superior intellect, trained by
long meditation and practical discipline to that special task. If this
second purpose is worth attaining, it is worth the necessary price.
Superior powers of mind and profound study are of no use, if they do not
sometimes lead a person to different conclusions from those which are
formed by ordinary powers of mind without study; and if it be an object to
possess representatives in any intellectual respect superior to average
electors, it must be counted upon that the representative will sometimes
differ in opinion from the majority of his constituents, and that when he
does, his opinion will be the oftenest right of the two. It follows that
the electors will not do wisely if they insist on absolute conformity to
their opinions as the condition of his retaining his seat.

The principle is thus far obvious; but there are real difficulties in its
application, and we will begin by stating them in their greatest force. If
it is important that the electors should choose a representative more
highly instructed than themselves, it is no less necessary that this wiser
man should be responsible to them; in other words, they are the judges of
the manner in which he fulfils his trust; and how are they to judge,
except by the standard of their own opinions? How are they even to select
him in the first instance but by the same standard? It will not do to
choose by mere brilliancy—by superiority of showy talent. The tests
by which an ordinary man can judge beforehand of mere ability are very
imperfect; such as they are, they have almost exclusive reference to the
arts of expression, and little or none to the worth of what is expressed.
The latter can not be inferred from the former; and if the electors are to
put their own opinions in abeyance, what criterion remains to them of the
ability to govern well? Neither, if they could ascertain, even infallibly,
the ablest man, ought they to allow him altogether to judge for them,
without any reference to their own opinions. The ablest candidate may be a
Tory, and the electors Liberals; or a Liberal, and they may be Tories. The
political questions of the day may be Church questions, and he may be a
High-Churchman or a Rationalist, while they may be Dissenters or
Evangelicals, and vice versâ. His abilities, in these cases, might
only enable him to go greater lengths, and act with greater effect, in
what they may conscientiously believe to be a wrong course; and they may
be bound, by their sincere convictions, to think it more important that
their representative should be kept, on these points, to what they deem
the dictate of duty, than that they should be represented by a person of
more than average abilities. They may also have to consider, not solely
how they can be most ably represented, but how their particular moral
position and mental point of view shall be represented at all. The
influence of every mode of thinking which is shared by numbers ought to be
felt in the Legislature; and the Constitution being supposed to have made
due provision that other and conflicting modes of thinking shall be
represented likewise, to secure the proper representation for their own
mode may be the most important matter which the electors on the particular
occasion have to attend to. In some cases, too, it may be necessary that
the representative should have his hands tied to keep him true to their
interest, or rather to the public interest as they conceive it. This would
not be needful under a political system which assured them an indefinite
choice of honest and unprejudiced candidates; but under the existing
system, in which the electors are almost always obliged, by the expenses
of election and the general circumstances of society, to select their
representative from persons of a station in life widely different from
theirs, and having a different class interest, who will affirm that they
ought to abandon themselves to his discretion? Can we blame an elector of
the poorer classes, who has only the choice among two or three rich men,
for requiring from the one he votes for a pledge to those measures which
he considers as a test of emancipation from the class interests of the
rich? It will, moreover, always happens to some members of the electoral
body to be obliged to accept the representative selected by a majority of
their own side. But, though a candidate of their own choosing would have
no chance, their votes may be necessary to the success of the one chosen
for them, and their only means of exerting their share of influence on his
subsequent conduct may be to make their support of him dependent on his
pledging himself to certain conditions.

These considerations and counter-considerations are so intimately
interwoven with one another; it is so important that the electors should
choose as their representatives wiser men than themselves, and should
consent to be governed according to that superior wisdom, while it is
impossible that conformity to their own opinions, when they have opinions,
should not enter largely into their judgment as to who possesses the
wisdom, and how far its presumed possessor has verified the presumption by
his conduct, that it seems quite impracticable to lay down for the elector
any positive rule of duty; and the result will depend less on any exact
prescription or authoritative doctrine of political morality than on the
general tone of mind of the electoral body in respect to the important
requisite of deference to mental superiority. Individuals and peoples who
are acutely sensible of the value of superior wisdom are likely to
recognize it, where it exists, by other signs than thinking exactly as
they do, and even in spite of considerable differences of opinion; and
when they have recognized it they will be far too desirous to secure it,
at any admissible cost, to be prone to impose their own opinion as a law
upon persons whom they look up to as wiser than themselves. On the other
hand, there is a character of mind which does not look up to any one;
which thinks no other person’s opinion much better than its own, or nearly
so good as that of a hundred or a thousand persons like itself. Where this
is the turn of mind of the electors, they will elect no one who is not, or
at least who does not profess to be, the image of their own sentiments,
and will continue him no longer than while he reflects those sentiments in
his conduct; and all aspirants to political honors will endeavour, as
Plato says in the Gorgias, to fashion themselves after the model of the
Demos, and make themselves as like to it as possible. It can not be denied
that a complete democracy has a strong tendency to cast the sentiments of
the electors in this mould. Democracy is not favorable to the reverential
spirit. That it destroys reverence for mere social position must be
counted among the good, not the bad part of its influences, though by
doing this it closes the principal school of reverence (as to
merely human relations) which exists in society. But also democracy, in
its very essence, insists so much more forcibly on the things in which all
are entitled to be considered equally than on those in which one person is
entitled to more consideration than another, that respect for even
personal superiority is likely to be below the mark. It is for this, among
other reasons, I hold it of so much importance that the institutions of
the country should stamp the opinions of persons of a more educated class
as entitled to greater weight than those of the less educated; and I
should still contend for assigning plurality of votes to authenticated
superiority of education were it only to give the tone to public feeling,
irrespective of any direct political consequences.

When there does exist in the electoral body an adequate sense of the
extraordinary difference in value between one person and another, they
will not lack signs by which to distinguish the persons whose worth for
their purposes is the greatest. Actual public services will naturally be
the foremost indication: to have filled posts of magnitude, and done
important things in them, of which the wisdom has been justified by the
results; to have been the author of measures which appear from their
effects to have been wisely planned; to have made predictions which have
been of verified by the event, seldom or never falsified by it; to have
given advice, which when taken has been followed by good consequences—when
neglected, by bad. There is doubtless a large portion of uncertainty in
these signs of wisdom; but we are seeking for such as can be applied by
persons of ordinary discernment. They will do well not to rely much on any
one indication, unless corroborated by the rest, and, in their estimation
of the success or merit of any practical effort, to lay great stress on
the general opinion of disinterested persons conversant with the subject
matter. The tests which I have spoken of are only applicable to tried men,
among whom must be reckoned those who, though untried practically, have
been tried speculatively; who, in public speech or in print, have
discussed public affairs in a manner which proves that they have given
serious study to them. Such persons may, in the mere character of
political thinkers, have exhibited a considerable amount of the same
titles to confidence as those who have been proved in the position of
practical statesmen. When it is necessary to choose persons wholly
untried, the best criteria are, reputation for ability among those who
personally know them, and the confidence placed and recommendations given
by persons already looked up to. By tests like these, constituencies who
sufficiently value mental ability, and eagerly seek for it, will generally
succeed in obtaining men beyond mediocrity, and often men whom they can
trust to carry on public affairs according to their unfettered judgment;
to whom it would be an affront to require that they should give up that
judgment at the behest of their inferiors in knowledge. If such persons,
honestly sought, are not to be found, then indeed the electors are
justified in taking other precautions, for they can not be expected to
postpone their particular opinions, unless in order that they may be
served by a person of superior knowledge to their own. They would do well,
indeed, even then, to remember that when once chosen, the representative,
if he devotes himself to his duty, has greater opportunities of correcting
an original false judgment than fall to the lot of most of his
constituents; a consideration which generally ought to prevent them
(unless compelled by necessity to choose some one whose impartiality they
do not fully trust) from exacting a pledge not to change his opinion, or,
if he does, to resign his seat. But when an unknown person, not certified
in unmistakable terms by some high authority, is elected for the first
time, the elector can not be expected not to make conformity to his own
sentiments the primary requisite. It is enough if he does not regard a
subsequent change of those sentiments, honestly avowed, with its grounds
undisguisedly stated, as a peremptory reason for withdrawing his
confidence.

Even supposing the most tried ability and acknowledged eminence of
character in the representative, the private opinions of the electors are
not to be placed entirely in abeyance. Deference to mental superiority is
not to go the length of self-annihilation—abnegation of any personal
opinion. But when the difference does not relate to the fundamentals of
politics, however decided the elector may be in his own sentiments, he
ought to consider that when an able man differs from him there is at least
a considerable chance of his being in the wrong, and that even if
otherwise, it is worth while to give up his opinion in things not
absolutely essential, for the sake of the inestimable advantage of having
an able man to act for him in the many matters in which he himself is not
qualified to form a judgment. In such cases he often endeavours to
reconcile both wishes by inducing the able man to sacrifice his own
opinion on the points of difference; but for the able man to lend himself
to this compromise is treason against his especial office—abdication
of the peculiar duties of mental supremacy, of which it is one of the most
sacred not to desert the cause which has the clamor against it, nor to
deprive of his services those of his opinions which need them the most. A
man of conscience and known ability should insist on full freedom to act
as he in his own judgment deems best, and should not consent to serve on
any other terms. But the electors are entitled to know how he means to
act; what opinions, on all things which concern his public duty, he
intends should guide his conduct. If some of these are unacceptable to
them, it is for him to satisfy them that he nevertheless deserves to be
their representative; and if they are wise, they will overlook, in favor
of his general value, many and great differences between his opinions and
their own. There are some differences, however, which they can not be
expected to overlook. Whoever feels the amount of interest in the
government of his country which befits a freeman, has some convictions on
national affairs which are like his life-blood; which the strength of his
belief in their truth, together with the importance he attaches to them,
forbid him to make a subject of compromise, or postpone to the judgment of
any person, however greatly his superior. Such convictions, when they
exist in a people, or in any appreciable portion of one, are entitled to
influence in virtue of their mere existence, and not solely in that of the
probability of their being grounded in truth. A people can not be well
governed in opposition to their primary notions of right, even though
these may be in some points erroneous. A correct estimate of the relation
which should subsist between governors and governed does not require the
electors to consent to be represented by one who intends to govern them in
opposition to their fundamental convictions. If they avail themselves of
his capacities of useful service in other respects at a time when the
points on which he is vitally at issue with them are not likely to be
mooted, they are justified in dismissing him at the first moment when a
question arises involving these, and on which there is not so assured a
majority for what they deem right as to make the dissenting voice of that
particular individual unimportant. Thus (I mention names to illustrate my
meaning, not for any personal application) the opinions supposed to be
entertained by Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright on resistance to foreign
aggression might be overlooked during the Crimean war, when there was an
overwhelming national feeling on the contrary side, and might yet very
properly lead to their rejection by the electors at the time of the
Chinese quarrel (though in itself a more doubtful question), because it
was then for some time a moot point whether their view of the case might
not prevail.

As the general result of what precedes, we may affirm that actual pledges
should not be required unless, from unfavorable social circumstances or
family institutions, the electors are so narrowed in their choice as to be
compelled to fix it on a person presumptively under the influence of
partialities hostile to their interest: That they are entitled to a full
knowledge of the political opinions and sentiments of the candidate; and
not only entitled, but often bound to reject one who differs from
themselves on the few articles which are the foundation of their political
belief: that, in proportion to the opinion they entertain of the mental
superiority of a candidate, they ought to put up with his expressing and
acting on opinions different from theirs on any number of things not
included in their fundamental articles of belief: that they ought to be
unremitting in their search for a representative of such calibre as to be
intrusted with full power of obeying the dictates of his own judgment:
that they should consider it a duty which they owe to their
fellow-countrymen, to do their utmost toward placing men of this quality
in the Legislature, and that it is of much greater importance to
themselves to be represented by such a man than by one who professes
agreement in a greater number of their opinions; for the benefits of his
ability are certain, while the hypothesis of his being wrong and their
being right on the points of difference is a very doubtful one.

I have discussed this question on the assumption that the electoral
system, in all that depends on positive institution, conforms to the
principles laid down in the preceding chapters. Even on this hypothesis,
the delegation theory of representation seems to me false, and its
practical operation hurtful, though the mischief would in that case be
confined within certain bounds. But if the securities by which I have
endeavoured to guard the representative principle are not recognized by
the Constitution; if provision is not made for the representation of
minorities, nor any difference admitted in the numerical value of votes,
according to some criterion of the amount of education possessed by the
voters—in that case, no words can exaggerate the importance in
principle of leaving an unfettered discretion to the representative; for
it would then be the only chance, under universal suffrage, for any other
opinions than those of the majority to be heard in Parliament. In that
falsely called democracy which is really the exclusive rule of the
operative classes, all others being unrepresented and unheard, the only
escape from class legislation in its narrowest, and political ignorance in
its most dangerous form, would lie in such disposition as the uneducated
might have to choose educated representatives, and to defer to their
opinions. Some willingness to do this might reasonably be expected, and
every thing would depend upon cultivating it to the highest point. But,
once invested with political omnipotence, if the operative classes
voluntarily concurred in imposing in this or any other manner any
considerable limitation upon their self-opinion and self-will, they would
prove themselves wiser than any class possessed of absolute power has
shown itself, or, we may venture to say, is ever likely to show itself
under that corrupting influence.

Chapter XIII—Of a Second Chamber.

Of all topics relating to the theory of representative government, none
have been the subject of more discussion, especially on the Continent,
than what is known as the question of the Two Chambers. It has occupied a
greater amount of the attention of thinkers than many questions of ten
times its importance, and has been regarded as a sort of touchstone which
distinguishes the partisans of limited from those of uncontrolled
democracy. For my own part, I set little value on any check which a Second
Chamber can apply to a democracy otherwise unchecked; and I am inclined to
think that if all other constitutional questions are rightly decided, it
is of comparatively little importance whether the Parliament consists of
two Chambers or only of one.

If there are two chambers, they may either be of similar or of dissimilar
composition. If of similar, both will obey the same influences, and
whatever has a majority in one of the houses will be likely to have it in
the other. It is true that the necessity of obtaining the consent of both
to the passing of any measure may at times be a material obstacle to
improvement, since, assuming both the houses to be representative and
equal in their numbers, a number slightly exceeding a fourth of the entire
representation may prevent the passing of a bill; while, if there is but
one house, a bill is secure of passing if it has a bare majority. But the
case supposed is rather abstractedly possible than likely to occur in
practice. It will not often happen that, of two houses similarly composed,
one will be almost unanimous, and the other nearly equally divided; if a
majority in one rejects a measure, there will generally have been a large
minority unfavorable to it in the other; any improvement, therefore, which
could be thus impeded, would in almost all cases be one which had not much
more than a simple majority in the entire body, and the worst consequence
that could ensue would be to delay for a short time the passing of the
measure, or give rise to a fresh appeal to the electors to ascertain if
the small majority in Parliament corresponded to an effective one in the
country. The inconvenience of delay, and the advantages of the appeal to
the nation, might be regarded in this case as about equally balanced.

I attach little weight to the argument oftenest urged for having two
Chambers—to prevent precipitancy, and compel a second deliberation;
for it must be a very ill-constituted representative assembly in which the
established forms of business do not require many more than two
deliberations. The consideration which tells most, in my judgment, in
favor of two Chambers (and this I do regard as of some moment), is the
evil effect produced upon the mind of any holder of power, whether an
individual or an assembly, by the consciousness of having only themselves
to consult. It is important that no set of persons should be able, even
temporarily, to make their sic volo prevail without asking any one
else for his consent. A majority in a single assembly, when it has assumed
a permanent character—when composed of the same persons habitually
acting together, and always assured of victory in their own House—easily
becomes despotic and overweening if released from the necessity of
considering whether its acts will be concurred in by another constituted
authority. The same reason which induced the Romans to have two consuls
makes it desirable there should be two Chambers—that neither of them
may be exposed to the corrupting influence of undivided power even for the
space of a single year. One of the most indispensable requisites in the
practical conduct of politics, especially in the management of free
institutions, is conciliation; a readiness to compromise; a willingness to
concede something to opponents, and to shape good measures so as to be as
little offensive as possible to persons of opposite views; and of this
salutary habit, the mutual give and take (as it has been called) between
two houses is a perpetual school—useful as such even now, and its
utility would probably be even more felt in a more democratic constitution
of the Legislature.

But the houses need not both be of the same composition; they may be
intended as a check on one another. One being supposed democratic, the
other will naturally be constituted with a view to its being some
restraint upon the democracy. But its efficacy in this respect wholly
depends on the social support which it can command outside the House. An
assembly which does not rest on the basis of some great power in the
country is ineffectual against one which does. An aristocratic House is
only powerful in an aristocratic state of society. The House of Lords was
once the strongest power in our Constitution, and the Commons only a
checking body; but this was when the barons were almost the only power out
of doors. I can not believe that, in a really democratic state of society,
the House of Lords would be of any practical value as a moderator of
democracy. When the force on one side is feeble in comparison with that on
the other, the way to give it effect is not to draw both out in line, and
muster their strength in open field over against one another. Such tactics
would insure the utter defeat of the less powerful. It can only act to
advantage by not holding itself apart, and compelling every one to declare
himself either with or against it, but taking a position among the crowd
rather than in opposition to it, and drawing to itself the elements most
capable of allying themselves with it on any given point; not appearing at
all as an antagonist body, to provoke a general rally against it, but
working as one of the elements in a mixed mass, infusing its leaven, and
often making what would be the weaker part the stronger, by the addition
of its influence. The really moderating power in a democratic constitution
must act in and through the democratic House.

That there should be, in every polity, a centre of resistance to the
predominant power in the Constitution—and in a democratic
constitution, therefore, a nucleus of resistance to the democracy—I
have already maintained; and I regard it as a fundamental maxim of
government. If any people who possess a democratic representation are,
from their historical antecedents, more willing to tolerate such a centre
of resistance in the form of a Second Chamber or House of Lords than in
any other shape, this constitutes a stronger reason for having it in that
shape. But it does not appear to me the best shape in itself, nor by any
means the most efficacious for its object. If there are two houses, one
considered to represent the people, the other to represent only a class,
or not to be representative at all, I can not think that, where democracy
is the ruling power in society, the second House would have any real
ability to resist even the aberrations of the first. It might be suffered
to exist in deference to habit and association, but not as an effective
check. If it exercised an independent will, it would be required to do so
in the same general spirit as the other House; to be equally democratic
with it, and to content itself with correcting the accidental oversights
of the more popular branch of the Legislature, or competing with it in
popular measures.

The practicability of any real check to the ascendancy of the majority
depends henceforth on the distribution of strength in the most popular
branch of the governing body; and I have indicated the mode in which, to
the best of my judgment, a balance of forces might most advantageously be
established there. I have also pointed out that, even if the numerical
majority were allowed to exercise complete predominance by means of a
corresponding majority in Parliament, yet if minorities also are permitted
to enjoy the equal right due to them on strictly democratic principles, of
being represented proportionally to their numbers, this provision will
insure the perpetual presence in the House, by the same popular title as
its other members, of so many of the first intellects in the country, that
without being in any way banded apart, or invested with any invidious
prerogative, this portion of the national representation will have a
personal weight much more than in proportion to its numerical strength,
and will afford, in a most effective form, the moral centre of resistance
which is needed. A second Chamber, therefore, is not required for this
purpose, and would not contribute to it, but might even, in some degree,
tend to compromise it. If, however, for the other reasons already
mentioned, the decision were taken that there should be such a Chamber, it
is desirable that it should be composed of elements which, without being
open to the imputation of class interests adverse to the majority, would
incline it to oppose itself to the class interests of the majority, and
qualify it to raise its voice with authority against their errors and
weaknesses. These conditions evidently are not found in a body constituted
in the manner of our House of Lords. So soon as conventional rank and
individual riches no longer overawe the democracy, a House of Lords
becomes insignificant.

Of all principles on which a wisely conservative body, destined to
moderate and regulate democratic ascendancy, could possibly be
constructed, the best seems to be that exemplified in the Roman Senate,
itself the most consistently prudent and sagacious body that ever
administered public affairs. The deficiencies of a democratic assembly,
which represents the general public, are the deficiencies of the public
itself, want of special training and knowledge. The appropriate corrective
is to associate with it a body of which special training and knowledge
should be the characteristics. If one House represents popular feeling,
the other should represent personal merit, tested and guaranteed by actual
public service, and fortified by practical experience. If one is the
People’s Chamber, the other should be the Chamber of Statesmen—a
council composed of all living public men who have passed through
important political office or employment. Such a Chamber would be fitted
for much more than to be a merely moderating body. It would not be
exclusively a check, but also an impelling force. In its hands, the power
of holding the people back would be vested in those most competent, and
who would then be most inclined to lead them forward in any right course.
The council to whom the task would be intrusted of rectifying the people’s
mistakes would not represent a class believed to be opposed to their
interest, but would consist of their own natural leaders in the path of
progress. No mode of composition could approach to this in giving weight
and efficacy to their function of moderators. It would be impossible to
cry down a body always foremost in promoting improvements as a mere
obstructive body, whatever amount of mischief it might obstruct.

Were the place vacant in England for such a Senate (I need scarcely say
that this is a mere hypothesis), it might be composed of some such
elements as the following: All who were or had been members of the
Legislative Commission described in a former chapter, and which I regard
as an indispensable ingredient in a well constituted popular government.
All who were or had been chief justices, or heads of any of the superior
courts of law or equity. All who had for five years filled the office of
puisne judge. All who had held for two years any cabinet office; but these
should also be eligible to the House of Commons, and, if elected members
of it, their peerage or senatorial office should be held in suspense. The
condition of time is needed to prevent persons from being named cabinet
ministers merely to give them a seat in the Senate; and the period of two
years is suggested, that the same term which qualifies them for a pension
might entitle them to a senatorship. All who had filled the office of
commander-in-chief; and all who, having commanded an army or a fleet, had
been thanked by Parliament for military or naval successes. All governors
general of India or British America, and all who had held for ten years
any colonial governorships. The permanent civil service should also be
represented; all should be senators who had filled, during ten years, the
important offices of under-secretary to the Treasury, permanent
under-secretary of State, or any others equally high and responsible. The
functions conferring the senatorial dignity should be limited to those of
a legal, political, or military or naval character. Scientific and
literary eminence are too indefinite and disputable: they imply a power of
selection, whereas the other qualifications speak for themselves; if the
writings by which reputation has been gained are unconnected with
politics, they are no evidence of the special qualities required, while,
if political, they would enable successive ministries to deluge the House
with party tools.

The historical antecedents of England render it all but certain that,
unless in the improbable case of a violent subversion of the existing
Constitution, any second Chamber which could possibly exist would have to
be built on the foundation of the House of Lords. It is out of the
question to think practically of abolishing that assembly, to replace it
by such a Senate as I have sketched or by any other; but there might not
be the same insuperable difficulty in aggregating the classes or
categories just spoken of to the existing body in the character of peers
for life. An ulterior, and perhaps, on this supposition, a necessary step,
might be, that the hereditary peerage should be present in the House by
their representatives instead of personally: a practice already
established in the case of the Scotch and Irish peers, and which the mere
multiplication of the order will probably at some time or other render
inevitable. An easy adaptation of Mr. Hare’s plan would prevent the
representative peers from representing exclusively the party which has the
majority in the peerage. If, for example, one representative were allowed
for every ten peers, any ten might be admitted to choose a representative,
and the peers might be free to group themselves for that purpose as they
pleased. The election might be thus conducted: All peers who were
candidates for the representation of their order should be required to
declare themselves such, and enter their names in a list. A day and place
should be appointed at which peers desirous of voting should be present,
either in person, or, in the usual Parliamentary manner, by their proxies.
The votes should be taken, each peer voting for only one. Every candidate
who had as many as ten votes should be declared elected. If any one had
more, all but ten should be allowed to withdraw their votes, or ten of the
number should be selected by lot. These ten would form his constituency,
and the remainder of his voters would be set free to give their votes over
again for some one else. This process should be repeated until (so far as
possible) every peer present either personally or by proxy was
represented. When a number less than ten remained over, if amounting to
five they might still be allowed to agree on a representative; if fewer
than five, their votes must be lost, or they might be permitted to record
them in favor of somebody already elected. With this inconsiderable
exception, every representative peer would represent ten members of the
peerage, all of whom had not only voted for him, but selected him as the
one, among all open to their choice, by whom they were most desirous to be
represented. As a compensation to the peers who were not chosen
representatives of their order, they should be eligible to the House of
Commons; a justice now refused to Scotch peers, and to Irish peers in
their own part of the kingdom, while the representation in the House of
Lords of any but the most numerous party in the peerage is denied equally
to both.

The mode of composing a Senate which has been here advocated not only
seems the best in itself, but is that for which historical precedent and
actual brilliant success can to the greatest extent be pleaded. It is not
however the only feasible plan that might be proposed. Another possible
mode of forming a Second Chamber would be to have it elected by the First;
subject to the restriction that they should not nominate any of their own
members. Such an assembly, emanating, like the American Senate, from
popular choice only once removed, would not be considered to clash with
democratic institutions, and would probably acquire considerable popular
influence. From the mode of its nomination, it would be peculiarly
unlikely to excite the jealousy of, or to come into hostile collision with
the popular House. It would, moreover (due provision being made for the
representation of the minority), be almost sure to be well composed, and
to comprise many of that class of highly capable men who, either from
accident or for want of showy qualities, had been unwilling to seek, or
unable to obtain, the suffrages of a popular constituency.

The best constitution of a Second Chamber is that which embodies the
greatest number of elements exempt from the class interests and prejudices
of the majority, but having in themselves nothing offensive to democratic
feeling. I repeat, however, that the main reliance for tempering the
ascendancy of the majority can be placed in a Second Chamber of any kind.
The character of a representative government is fixed by the constitution
of the popular House. Compared with this, all other questions relating to
the form of government are insignificant.

Chapter XIV—Of the Executive in a Representative Government.

It would be out of place in this treatise to discuss the question into
what departments or branches the executive business of government may most
conveniently be divided. In this respect the exigencies of different
governments are different; and there is little probability that any great
mistake will be made in the classification of the duties when men are
willing to begin at the beginning, and do not hold themselves bound by the
series of accidents which, in an old government like ours, has produced
the existing division of the public business. It may be sufficient to say
that the classification of functionaries should correspond to that of
subjects, and that there should not be several departments independent of
one another, to superintend different parts of the same natural whole, as
in our own military administration down to a recent period, and in a less
degree even at present. Where the object to be attained is single (such as
that of having an efficient army), the authority commissioned to attend to
it should be single likewise. The entire aggregate of means provided for
one end should be under one and the same control and responsibility. If
they are divided among independent authorities, the means with each of
those authorities become ends, and it is the business of nobody except the
head of the government, who has probably no departmental experience, to
take care of the real end. The different classes of means are not combined
and adapted to one another under the guidance of any leading idea; and
while every department pushes forward its own requirements, regardless of
those of the rest, the purpose of the work is perpetually sacrificed to
the work itself.

As a general rule, every executive function, whether superior or
subordinate, should be the appointed duty of some given individual. It
should be apparent to all the world who did every thing, and through whose
default any thing was left undone. Responsibility is null when nobody
knows who is responsible; nor, even when real, can it be divided without
being weakened. To maintain it at its highest, there must be one person
who receives the whole praise of what is well done, the whole blame of
what is ill. There are, however, two modes of sharing responsibility; by
one it is only enfeebled, by the other absolutely destroyed. It is
enfeebled when the concurrence of more than one functionary is required to
the same act. Each one among them has still a real responsibility; if a
wrong has been done, none of them can say he did not do it; he is as much
a participant as an accomplice is in an offense: if there has been legal
criminality, they may all be punished legally, and their punishment needs
not be less severe than if there had been only one person concerned. But
it is not so with the penalties any more than with the rewards of opinion;
these are always diminished by being shared. Where there has been no
definite legal offense, no corruption or malversation, only an error or an
imprudence, or what may pass for such, every participator has an excuse to
himself and to the world in the fact that other persons are jointly
involved with him. There is hardly any thing, even to pecuniary
dishonesty, for which men will not feel themselves almost absolved, if
those whose duty it was to resist and remonstrate have failed to do it,
still more if they have given a formal assent.

In this case, however, though responsibility is weakened, there still is
responsibility: every one of those implicated has in his individual
capacity assented to, and joined in the act. Things are much worse when
the act itself is only that of a majority—a board deliberating with
closed doors, nobody knowing, or, except in some extreme case, being ever
likely to know, whether an individual member voted for the act or against
it. Responsibility in this case is a mere name. “Boards,” it is happily
said by Bentham, “are screens.” What “the Board” does is the act of
nobody, and nobody can be made to answer for it. The Board suffers, even
in reputation, only in its collective character; and no individual member
feels this further than his disposition leads him to identify his own
estimation with that of the body—a feeling often very strong when
the body is a permanent one, and he is wedded to it for better for worse;
but the fluctuations of a modern official career give no time for the
formation of such an esprit de corps, which, if it exists at all,
exists only in the obscure ranks of the permanent subordinates. Boards,
therefore, are not a fit instrument for executive business, and are only
admissible in it when, for other reasons, to give full discretionary power
to a single minister would be worse.

On the other hand, it is also a maxim of experience that in the multitude
of councillors there is wisdom, and that a man seldom judges right, even
in his own concerns, still less in those of the public, when he makes
habitual use of no knowledge but his own, or that of some single adviser.
There is no necessary incompatibility between this principle and the
other. It is easy to give the effective power and the full responsibility
to one, providing him when necessary with advisers, each of whom is
responsible only for the opinion he gives.

In general, the head of a department of the executive government is a mere
politician. He may be a good politician, and a man of merit; and, unless
this is usually the case, the government is bad. But his general capacity,
and the knowledge he ought to possess of the general interests of the
country, will not, unless by occasional accident, be accompanied by
adequate, and what may be called professional knowledge of the department
over which he is called to preside. Professional advisers must therefore
be provided for him. Wherever mere experience and attainments are
sufficient—wherever the qualities required in a professional adviser
may possibly be united in a single well-selected individual (as in the
case, for example, of a law officer), one such person for general
purposes, and a staff of clerks to supply knowledge of details, meet the
demands of the case. But, more frequently, it is not sufficient that the
minister should consult some one competent person, and, when himself not
conversant with the subject, act implicitly on that person’s advice. It is
often necessary that he should, not only occasionally, but habitually,
listen to a variety of opinions, and inform his judgment by the
discussions among a body of advisers. This, for example, is emphatically
necessary in military and naval affairs. The military and naval ministers,
therefore, and probably several others, should be provided with a Council,
composed, at least in those two departments, of able and experienced
professional men. As a means of obtaining the best men for the purpose
under every change of administration, they ought to be permanent; by which
I mean that they ought not, like the Lords of the Admiralty, to be
expected to resign with the ministry by whom they were appointed; but it
is a good rule that all who hold high appointments to which they have
risen by selection, and not by the ordinary course of promotion, should
retain their office only for a fixed term, unless reappointed, as is now
the rule with staff appointments in the British army. This rule renders
appointments somewhat less likely to be jobbed, not being a provision for
life, and the same time affords a means, without affront to any one, of
getting rid of those who are least worth keeping, and bringing in highly
qualified persons of younger standing, for whom there might never be room
if death vacancies, or voluntary resignations were waited for.

The councils should be consultative merely, in this sense, that the
ultimate decision should rest undividedly with the minister himself; but
neither ought they to be looked upon, or to look upon themselves as
ciphers, or as capable of being reduced to such at his pleasure. The
advisers attached to a powerful and perhaps self-willed man ought to be
placed under conditions which make it impossible for them, without
discredit, not to express an opinion, and impossible for him not to listen
to and consider their recommendations, whether he adopts them or not. The
relation which ought to exist between a chief and this description of
advisers is very accurately hit by the constitution of the Council of the
Governor General and those of the different Presidencies in India. These
councils are composed of persons who have professional knowledge of Indian
affairs, which the governor general and governors usually lack, and which
it would not be desirable to require of them. As a rule, every member of
council is expected to give an opinion, which is of course very often a
simple acquiescence; but if there is a difference of sentiment, it is at
the option of every member, and is the invariable practice, to record the
reasons of his opinion, the governor general, or governor, doing the same.
In ordinary cases the decision is according to the sense of the majority;
the council, therefore, has a substantial part in the government; but if
the governor general, or governor, thinks fit, he may set aside even their
unanimous opinion, recording his reasons. The result is, that the chief is
individually and effectively responsible for every act of the government.
The members of council have only the responsibility of advisers; but it is
always known, from documents capable of being produced, and which, if
called for by Parliament or public opinion always are produced, what each
has advised, and what reasons he gave for his advice; while, from their
dignified position, and ostensible participation in all acts of
government, they have nearly as strong motives to apply themselves to the
public business, and to form and express a well-considered opinion on
every part of it, as if the whole responsibility rested with themselves.

This mode of conducting the highest class of administrative business is
one of the most successful instances of the adaptation of means to ends
which political history, not hitherto very prolific in works of skill and
contrivance, has yet to show. It is one of the acquisitions with which the
art of politics has been enriched by the experience of the East India
Company’s rule; and, like most of the other wise contrivances by which
India has been preserved to this country, and an amount of good government
produced which is truly wonderful considering the circumstances and the
materials, it is probably destined to perish in the general holocaust
which the traditions of Indian government seem fated to undergo since they
have been placed at the mercy of public ignorance and the presumptuous
vanity of political men. Already an outcry is raised for abolishing the
councils as a superfluous and expensive clog on the wheels of government;
while the clamor has long been urgent, and is daily obtaining more
countenance in the highest quarters, for the abrogation of the
professional civil service, which breeds the men that compose the
councils, and the existence of which is the sole guaranty for their being
of any value.

A most important principle of good government in a popular constitution is
that no executive functionaries should be appointed by popular election,
neither by the votes of the people themselves, nor by those of their
representatives. The entire business of government is skilled employment;
the qualifications for the discharge of it are of that special and
professional kind which can not be properly judged of except by persons
who have themselves some share of those qualifications, or some practical
experience of them. The business of finding the fittest persons to fill
public employments—not merely selecting the best who offer, but
looking out for the absolutely best, and taking note of all fit persons
who are met with, that they may be found when wanted—is very
laborious, and requires a delicate as well as highly conscientious
discernment; and as there is no public duty which is in general so badly
performed, so there is none for which it is of greater importance to
enforce the utmost practicable amount of personal responsibility, by
imposing it as a special obligation on high functionaries in the several
departments. All subordinate public officers who are not appointed by some
mode of public competition should be selected on the direct responsibility
of the minister under whom they serve. The ministers, all but the chief,
will naturally be selected by the chief; and the chief himself, though
really designated by Parliament, should be, in a regal government,
officially appointed by the crown. The functionary who appoints should be
the sole person empowered to remove any subordinate officer who is liable
to removal, which the far greater number ought not to be, except for
personal misconduct, since it would be vain to expect that the body of
persons by whom the whole detail of the public business is transacted, and
whose qualifications are generally of much more importance to the public
than those of the minister himself, will devote themselves to their
profession, and acquire the knowledge and skill on which the minister must
often place entire dependence, if they are liable at any moment to be
turned adrift for no fault, that the minister may gratify himself, or
promote his political interest, by appointing somebody else.

To the principle which condemns the appointment of executive officers by
popular suffrage, ought the chief of the executive, in a republican
government, to be an exception? Is it a good rule which, in the American
Constitution, provides for the election of the President once in every
four years by the entire people? The question is not free from difficulty.
There is unquestionably some advantage, in a country like America, where
no apprehension needs be entertained of a coup d’état, in making
the chief minister constitutionally independent of the legislative body,
and rendering the two great branches of the government, while equally
popular both in their origin and in their responsibility, an effective
check on one another. The plan is in accordance with that sedulous
avoidance of the concentration of great masses of power in the same hands,
which is a marked characteristic of the American federal Constitution. But
the advantage, in this instance, is purchased at a price above all
reasonable estimates of its value. It seems far better that the chief
magistrate in a republic should be appointed avowedly, as the chief
minister in a constitutional monarchy is virtually, by the representative
body. In the first place, he is certain, when thus appointed, to be a more
eminent man. The party which has the majority in Parliament would then, as
a rule, appoint its own leader, who is always one of the foremost, and
often the very foremost person in political life; while the President of
the United States, since the last survivor of the founders of the republic
disappeared from the scene, is almost always either an obscure man, or one
who has gained any reputation he may possess in some other field than
politics. And this, as I have before observed, is no accident, but the
natural effect of the situation. The eminent men of a party, in an
election extending to the whole country, are never its most available
candidates. All eminent men have made personal enemies, or, have done
something, or at the lowest, professed some opinion obnoxious to some
local or other considerable division of the community, and likely to tell
with fatal effect upon the number of votes; whereas a man without
antecedents, of whom nothing is known but that he professes the creed of
the party, is readily voted for by its entire strength. Another important
consideration is the great mischief of unintermitted electioneering. When
the highest dignity in the state is to be conferred by popular election
once in every few years, the whole intervening time is spent in what is
virtually a canvass. President, ministers, chiefs of parties, and their
followers, are all electioneerers: the whole community is kept intent on
the mere personalities of politics, and every public question is discussed
and decided with less reference to its merits than to its expected bearing
on the presidential election. If a system had been devised to make party
spirit the ruling principle of action in all public affairs, and create an
inducement not only to make every question a party question, but to raise
questions for the purpose of founding parties upon them, it would have
been difficult to contrive any means better adapted to the purpose.

I will not affirm that it would at all times and places be desirable that
the head of the executive should be so completely dependent upon the votes
of a representative assembly as the prime minister is in England, and is
without inconvenience. If it were thought best to avoid this, he might,
though appointed by Parliament, hold his office for a fixed period,
independent of a Parliamentary vote, which would be the American system
minus the popular election and its evils. There is another mode of giving
the head of the administration as much independence of the Legislature as
is at all compatible with the essentials of free government. He never could
be unduly dependent on a vote of Parliament if he had, as the British
prime minister practically has, the power to dissolve the House and appeal
to the people; if, instead of being turned out of office by a hostile
vote, he could only be reduced by it to the alternative of resignation or
dissolution. The power of dissolving Parliament is one which I think it
desirable he should possess, even under the system by which his own tenure
of office is secured to him for a fixed period. There ought not to be any
possibility of that deadlock in politics which would ensue on a quarrel
breaking out between a president and an assembly, neither of whom, during
an interval which might amount to years, would have any legal means of
ridding itself of the other. To get through such a period without a coup
d’état being attempted, on either side or on both, requires such a
combination of the love of liberty and the habit of self-restraint as very
few nations have yet shown themselves capable of; and though this
extremity were avoided, to expect that the two authorities would not
paralyze each other’s operations is to suppose that the political life of
the country will always be pervaded by a spirit of mutual forbearance and
compromise, imperturbable by the passions and excitements of the keenest
party struggles. Such a spirit may exist, but even where it does there is
imprudence in trying it too far.

Other reasons make it desirable that some power in the state (which can
only be the executive) should have the liberty of at any time, and at
discretion, calling a new Parliament. When there is a real doubt which of
two contending parties has the strongest following, it is important that
there should exist a constitutional means of immediately testing the point
and setting it at rest. No other political topic has a chance of being
properly attended to while this is undecided; and such an interval is
mostly an interregnum for purposes of legislative or administrative
improvement, neither party having sufficient confidence in its strength to
attempt things likely to provoke opposition in any quarter that has either
direct or indirect influence in the pending struggle.

I have not taken account of the case in which the vast power centralized
in the chief magistrate, and the insufficient attachment of the mass of
the people to free institutions, give him a chance of success in an
attempt to subvert the Constitution, and usurp sovereign power. Where such
peril exists, no first magistrate is admissible whom the Parliament can
not, by a single vote, reduce to a private station. In a state of things
holding out any encouragement to that most audacious and profligate of all
breaches of trust, even this entireness of constitutional dependence is
but a weak protection.

Of all officers of government, those in whose appointment any
participation of popular suffrage is the most objectionable are judicial
officers. While there are no functionaries whose special and professional
qualifications the popular judgment is less fitted to estimate, there are
none in whose case absolute impartiality, and freedom from connection with
politicians or sections of politicians, are of any thing like equal
importance. Some thinkers, among others Mr. Bentham, have been of opinion
that, although it is better that judges should not be appointed by popular
election, the people of their district ought to have the power, after
sufficient experience, of removing them from their trust. It can not be
denied that the irremovability of any public officer to whom great
interests are intrusted is in itself an evil. It is far from desirable
that there should be no means of getting rid of a bad or incompetent
judge, unless for such misconduct as he can be made to answer for in a
criminal court, and that a functionary on whom so much depends should have
the feeling of being free from responsibility except to opinion and his
own conscience. The question however is, whether, in the peculiar position
of a judge, and supposing that all practicable securities have been taken
for an honest appointment, irresponsibility, except to his own and the
public conscience, has not, on the whole, less tendency to pervert his
conduct than responsibility to the government or to a popular vote.
Experience has long decided this point in the affirmative as regards
responsibility to the executive, and the case is quite equally strong when
the responsibility sought to be enforced is to the suffrages of electors.
Among the good qualities of a popular constituency, those peculiarly
incumbent upon a judge, calmness and impartiality, are not numbered.
Happily, in that intervention of popular suffrage which is essential to
freedom they are not the qualities required. Even the quality of justice,
though necessary to all human beings, and therefore to all electors, is
not the inducement which decides any popular election. Justice and
impartiality are as little wanted for electing a member of Parliament as
they can be in any transaction of men. The electors have not to award
something which either candidate has a right to, nor to pass judgment on
the general merits of the competitors, but to declare which of them has
most of their personal confidence, or best represents their political
convictions. A judge is bound to treat his political friend, or the person
best known to him, exactly as he treats other people; but it would be a
breach of duty, as well as an absurdity, if an elector did so. No argument
can be grounded on the beneficial effect produced on judges, as on all
other functionaries, by the moral jurisdiction of opinion; for even in
this respect, that which really exercises a useful control over the
proceedings of a judge, when fit for the judicial office, is not (except
sometimes in political cases) the opinion of the community generally, but
that of the only public by whom his conduct or qualifications can be duly
estimated, the bar of his own court. I must not be understood to say that
the participation of the general public in the administration of justice
is of no importance; it is of the greatest; but in what manner? By the
actual discharge of a part of the judicial office in the capacity of
jurymen. This is one of the few cases in politics in which it is better
that the people should act directly and personally than through their
representatives, being almost the only case in which the errors that a
person exercising authority may commit can be better borne than the
consequences of making him responsible for them. If a judge could be
removed from office by a popular vote, whoever was desirous of supplanting
him would make capital for that purpose out of all his judicial decisions;
would carry all of them, as far as he found practicable, by irregular
appeal before a public opinion wholly incompetent, for want of having
heard the case, or from having heard it without either the precautions or
the impartiality belonging to a judicial hearing; would play upon popular
passion and prejudice where they existed, and take pains to arouse them
where they did not. And in this, if the case were interesting, and he took
sufficient trouble, he would infallibly be successful, unless the judge or
his friends descended into the arena, and made equally powerful appeals on
the other side. Judges would end by feeling that they risked their office
upon every decision they gave in a case susceptible of general interest,
and that it was less essential for them to consider what decision was
just, than what would be most applauded by the public, or would least
admit of insidious misrepresentation. The practice introduced by some of
the new or revised State Constitutions in America, of submitting judicial
officers to periodical popular re-election, will be found, I apprehend, to
be one of the most dangerous errors ever yet committed by democracy; and,
were it not that the practical good sense which never totally deserts the
people of the United States is said to be producing a reaction, likely in
no long time to lead to the retraction of the error, it might with reason
be regarded as the first great downward step in the degeneration of modern
democratic government.

With regard to that large and important body which constitutes the
permanent strength of the public service, those who do not change with
changes of politics, but remain to aid every minister by their experience
and traditions, inform him by their knowledge of business, and conduct
official details under his general control—those, in short, who form
the class of professional public servants, entering their profession as
others do while young, in the hope of rising progressively to its higher
grades as they advance in life—it is evidently inadmissible that
these should be liable to be turned out, and deprived of the whole benefit
of their previous service, except for positive, proved, and serious
misconduct. Not, of course, such delinquency only as makes them amenable
to the law, but voluntary neglect of duty, or conduct implying
untrustworthiness for the purposes for which their trust is given them.
Since, therefore, unless in case of personal culpability, there is no way
of getting rid of them except by quartering them on the public as
pensioners, it is of the greatest importance that the appointments should
be well made in the first instance; and it remains to be considered by
what mode of appointment this purpose can best be attained.

In making first appointments, little danger is to be apprehended from want
of special skill and knowledge in the choosers, but much from partiality,
and private or political interest. Being all appointed at the commencement
of manhood, not as having learned, but in order that they may learn, their
profession, the only thing by which the best candidates can be
discriminated is proficiency in the ordinary branches of liberal
education; and this can be ascertained without difficulty, provided there
be the requisite pains and the requisite impartiality in those who are
appointed to inquire into it. Neither the one nor the other can reasonably
be expected from a minister, who must rely wholly on recommendations, and,
however disinterested as to his personal wishes, never will be proof
against the solicitations of persons who have the power of influencing his
own election, or whose political adherence is important to the ministry to
which he belongs. These considerations have introduced the practice of
submitting all candidates for first appointments to a public examination,
conducted by persons not engaged in politics, and of the same class and
quality with the examiners for honors at the Universities. This would
probably be the best plan under any system; and under our Parliamentary
government it is the only one which affords a chance, I do not say of
honest appointment, but even of abstinence from such as are manifestly and
flagrantly profligate.

It is also absolutely necessary that the examinations should be
competitive, and the appointments given to those who are most successful.
A mere pass examination never, in the long run, does more than exclude
absolute dunces. When the question, in the mind of an examiner, lies
between blighting the prospects of an individual and performing a duty to
the public which, in the particular instance, seldom appears of first rate
importance, and when he is sure to be bitterly reproached for doing the
first, while in general no one will either know or care whether he has
done the latter, the balance, unless he is a man of very unusual stamp,
inclines to the side of good-nature. A relaxation in one instance
establishes a claim to it in others, which every repetition of indulgence
makes it more difficult to resist; each of these, in succession, becomes a
precedent for more, until the standard of proficiency sinks gradually to
something almost contemptible. Examinations for degrees at the two great
Universities have generally been as slender in their requirements as those
for honors are trying and serious. Where there is no inducement to exceed
a certain minimum, the minimum comes to be the maximum: it becomes the
general practice not to aim at more; and as in every thing there are some
who do not attain all they aim at, however low the standard may be
pitched, there are always several who fall short of it. When, on the
contrary, the appointments are given to those, among a great number of
candidates, who most distinguish themselves, and where the successful
competitors are classed in order of merit, not only each is stimulated to
do his very utmost, but the influence is felt in every place of liberal
education throughout the country. It becomes with every schoolmaster an
object of ambition and an avenue to success to have furnished pupils who
have gained a high place in these competitions, and there is hardly any
other mode in which the state can do so much to raise the quality of
educational institutions throughout the country. Though the principle of
competitive examinations for public employment is of such recent
introduction in this country, and is still so imperfectly carried out, the
Indian service being as yet nearly the only case in which it exists in its
completeness, a sensible effect has already begun to be produced on the
places of middle-class education, notwithstanding the difficulties which
the principle has encountered from the disgracefully low existing state of
education in the country, which these very examinations have brought into
strong light. So contemptible has the standard of acquirement been found
to be, among the youths who obtain the nomination from the minister, which
entitles them to offer themselves as candidates, that the competition of
such candidates produces almost a poorer result than would be obtained
from a mere pass examination; for no one would think of fixing the
conditions of a pass examination so low as is actually found sufficient to
enable a young man to surpass his fellow-candidates. Accordingly, it is
said that successive years show on the whole a decline of attainments,
less effort being made, because the results of former examinations have
proved that the exertions then used were greater than would have been
sufficient to attain the object. Partly from this decrease of effort, and
partly because, even at the examinations which do not require a previous
nomination, conscious ignorance reduces the number of competitors to a
mere handful, it has so happened that though there have always been a few
instances of great proficiency, the lower part of the list of successful
candidates represents but a very moderate amount of acquirement; and we
have it on the word of the commissioners that nearly all who have been
unsuccessful have owed their failure to ignorance, not of the higher
branches of instruction, but of its very humblest elements—spelling
and arithmetic.

The outcries which continue to be made against these examinations by some
of the organs of opinion are often, I regret to say, as little creditable
to the good faith as to the good sense of the assailants. They proceed
partly by misrepresentation of the kind of ignorance which, as a matter of
fact, actually leads to failure in the examinations. They quote with
emphasis the most recondite questions [8] which can be shown to have
been ever asked, and make it appear as if unexceptionable answers to all
these were made the sine quâ non of success. Yet it has been
repeated to satiety that such questions are not put because it is expected
of every one that he should answer them, but in order that whoever is able
to do so may have the means of proving and availing himself of that
portion of his knowledge. It is not as a ground of rejection, but as an
additional means of success, that this opportunity is given. We are then
asked whether the kind of knowledge supposed in this, that, or the other
question, is calculated to be of any use to the candidate after he has
attained his object. People differ greatly in opinion as to what knowledge
is useful. There are persons in existence, and a late Foreign Secretary of
State is one of them, who think English spelling a useless accomplishment
in a diplomatic attaché or a clerk in a government office. About one thing
the objectors seem to be unanimous, that general mental cultivation is not
useful in these employments, whatever else may be so. If, however (as I
presume to think), it is useful, or if any education at all is useful, it
must be tested by the tests most likely to show whether the candidate
possesses it or not. To ascertain whether he has been well educated, he
must be interrogated in the things which he is likely to know if he has
been well educated, even though not directly pertinent to the work to
which he is to be appointed. Will those who object to his being questioned
in classics and mathematics, tell us what they would have him questioned
in? There seems, however, to be equal objection to examining him in these,
and to examining him in any thing but these. If the Commissioners—anxious
to open a door of admission to those who have not gone through the routine
of a grammar-school, or who make up for the smallness of their knowledge
of what is there taught by greater knowledge of something else—allow
marks to be gained by proficiency in any other subject of real utility,
they are reproached for that too. Nothing will satisfy the objectors but
free admission of total ignorance.

We are triumphantly told that neither Clive nor Wellington could have
passed the test which is prescribed for an aspirant to an engineer
cadetship; as if, because Clive and Wellington did not do what was not
required of them, they could not have done it if it had been required. If
it be only meant to inform us that it is possible to be a great general
without these things, so it is without many other things which are very
useful to great generals. Alexander the Great had never heard of Vauban’s
rules, nor could Julius Cæsar speak French. We are next informed that
book-worms, a term which seems to be held applicable to whoever has the
smallest tincture of book-knowledge, may not be good at bodily exercises,
or have the habits of gentlemen. This is a very common line of remark with
dunces of condition; but, whatever the dunces may think, they have no
monopoly of either gentlemanly habits or bodily activity. Wherever these
are needed, let them be inquired into and separately provided for, not to
the exclusion of mental qualifications, but in addition. Meanwhile, I am
credibly informed that in the Military Academy at Woolwich the competition
cadets are as superior to those admitted on the old system of nomination
in these respects as in all others; that they learn even their drill more
quickly, as indeed might be expected, for an intelligent person learns all
things sooner than a stupid one; and that in general demeanor they
contrast so favorably with their predecessors, that the authorities of the
institutions are impatient for the day to arrive when the last remains of
the old leaven shall have disappeared from the place. If this be so, and
it is easy to ascertain whether it is so, it is to be hoped we shall soon
have heard for the last time that ignorance is a better qualification than
knowledge for the military, and, à fortiori, for every other
profession, or that any one good quality, however little apparently
connected with liberal education, is at all likely to be promoted by going
without it.

Though the first admission to government employment be decided by
competitive examination, it would in most cases be impossible that
subsequent promotion should be so decided; and it seems proper that this
should take place, as it usually does at present, on a mixed system of
seniority and selection. Those whose duties are of a routine character
should rise by seniority to the highest point to which duties merely of
that description can carry them, while those to whom functions of
particular trust, and requiring special capacity, are confided, should be
selected from the body on the discretion of the chief of the office. And
this selection will generally be made honestly by him if the original
appointments take place by open competition, for under that system his
establishment will generally consist of individuals to whom, but for the
official connection, he would have been a stranger. If among them there be
any in whom he, or his political friends and supporters, take an interest,
it will be but occasionally, and only when to this advantage of connection
is added, as far as the initiatory examination could test it, at least
equality of real merit; and, except when there is a very strong motive to
job these appointments, there is always a strong one to appoint the
fittest person, being the one who gives to his chief the most useful
assistance, saves him most trouble, and helps most to build up that
reputation for good management of public business which necessarily and
properly redound to the credit of the minister, however much the qualities
to which it is immediately owing may be those of his subordinates.

Chapter XV—Of Local Representative Bodies.

It is but a small portion of the public business of a country which can be
well done or safely attempted by the central authorities; and even in our
own government, the least centralized in Europe, the legislative portion
at least of the governing body busies itself far too much with local
affairs, employing the supreme power of the State in cutting small knots
which there ought to be other and better means of untying. The enormous
amount of private business which takes up the time of Parliament and the
thoughts of its individual members, distracting them from the proper
occupations of the great council of the nation, is felt by all thinkers
and observers as a serious evil, and, what is worse, an increasing one.

It would not be appropriate to the limited design of this treatise to
discuss at large the great question, in no way peculiar to representative
government, of the proper limits of governmental action. I have said
elsewhere [9]
what seemed to me most essential respecting the principles by which the
extent of that action ought to be determined. But after subtracting from
the functions performed by most European governments those which ought not
to be undertaken by public authorities at all, there still remains so
great and various an aggregate of duties, that, if only on the principle
of division of labor, it is indispensable to share them between central
and local authorities. Not solely are separate executive officers required
for purely local duties (an amount of separation which exists under all
governments), but the popular control over those officers can only be
advantageously exerted through a separate organ. Their original
appointment, the function of watching and checking them, the duty of
providing or the discretion of withholding the supplies necessary for
their operations, should rest, not with the national Parliament or the
national executive, but with the people of the locality. That the people
should exercise these functions directly and personally is evidently
inadmissable. Administration by the assembled people is a relic of
barbarism opposed to the whole spirit of modern life; yet so much has the
course of English institutions depended on accident, that this primitive
mode of local government remained the general rule in parochial matters up
to the present generation; and, having never been legally abolished,
probably subsists unaltered in many rural parishes even now. There remains
the plan of representative sub-Parliaments for local affairs, and these
must henceforth be considered as one of the fundamental institutions of a
free government. They exist in England but very incompletely, and with
great irregularity and want of system; in some other countries much less
popularly governed, their constitution is far more rational. In England
there has always been more liberty but worse organization, while in other
countries there is better organization but less liberty. It is necessary,
then, that, in addition to the national representation, there should be
municipal and provisional representations; and the two questions which
remain to be resolved are, how the local representative bodies should be
constituted, and what should be the extent of their functions.

In considering these questions, two points require an equal degree of our
attention: how the local business itself can be best done, and how its
transaction can be made most instrumental to the nourishment of public
spirit and the development of intelligence. In an earlier part of this
inquiry I have dwelt in strong language—hardly any language is
strong enough to express the strength of my conviction—on the
importance of that portion of the operation of free institutions which may
be called the public education of the citizens. Now of this operation the
local administrative institutions are the chief instrument. Except by the
part they may take as jurymen in the administration of justice, the mass
of the population have very little opportunity of sharing personally in
the conduct of the general affairs of the community. Reading newspapers,
and perhaps writing to them, public meetings, and solicitations of
different sorts addressed to the political authorities, are the extent of
the participation of private citizens in general politics during the
interval between one Parliamentary election and another. Though it is
impossible to exaggerate the importance of these various liberties, both
as securities for freedom and as means of general cultivation, the
practice which they give is more in thinking than in action, and in
thinking without the responsibilities of action, which with most people
amounts to little more than passively receiving the thoughts of some one
else. But in the case of local bodies, besides the function of electing,
many citizens in turn have the chance of being elected, and many, either
by selection or by rotation, fill one or other of the numerous local
executive offices. In these positions they have to act for public
interests, as well as to think and to speak, and the thinking can not all
be done by proxy. It may be added that these local functions, not being in
general sought by the higher ranks, carry down the important political
education which they are the means of conferring to a much lower grade in
society. The mental discipline being thus a more important feature in
local concerns than in the general affairs of the state, while there are
not such vital interests dependent on the quality of the administration, a
greater weight may be given to the former consideration, and the latter
admits much more frequently of being postponed to it than in matters of
general legislation and the conduct of imperial affairs.

The proper constitution of local representative bodies does not present
much difficulty. The principles which apply to it do not differ in any
respect from those applicable to the national representation. The same
obligation exists, as in the case of the more important function, for
making the bodies elective; and the same reasons operate as in that case,
but with still greater force, for giving them a widely democratic basis;
the dangers being less, and the advantages, in point of popular education
and cultivation, in some respects even greater. As the principal duty of
the local bodies consists of the imposition and expenditure of local
taxation, the electoral franchise should vest in all who contribute to the
local rates, to the exclusion of all who do not. I assume that there is no
indirect taxation, no octroi duties, or that, if there are, they
are supplementary only, those on whom their burden falls being also rated
to a direct assessment. The representation of minorities should be
provided for in the same manner as in the national Parliament, and there
are the same strong reasons for plurality of votes; only there is not so
decisive an objection, in the inferior as in the higher body, to making
the plural voting depend (as in some of the local elections of our own
country) on a mere money qualification; for the honest and frugal
dispensation of money forms so much larger a part of the business of the
local than of the national body, that there is more justice as well as
policy in allowing a greater proportional influence to those who have a
larger money interest at stake.

In the most recently established of our local representative institutions,
the Boards of Guardians, the justices of peace of the district sit ex
officio along with the elected members, in number limited by law to a
third of the whole. In the peculiar constitution of English society, I
have no doubt of the beneficial effect of this provision. It secures the
presence in these bodies of a more educated class than it would perhaps be
practicable to attract thither on any other terms; and while the
limitation in number of the ex officio members precludes them from
acquiring predominance by mere numerical strength, they, as a virtual
representation of another class, having sometimes a different interest
from the rest, are a check upon the class interests of the farmers or
petty shopkeepers who form the bulk of the elected guardians. A similar
commendation can not be given to the constitution of the only provincial
boards we possess, the Quarter Sessions, consisting of the justices of
peace alone, on whom, over and above their judicial duties, some of the
most important parts of the administrative business of the country depend
for their performance. The mode of formation of these bodies is most
anomalous, they being neither elected, nor, in any proper sense of the
term, nominated, but holding their important functions, like the feudal
lords to whom they succeeded, virtually by right of their acres; the
appointment vested in the crown (or, speaking practically, in one of
themselves, the lord lieutenant) being made use of only as a means of
excluding any one who it is thought would do discredit to the body, or,
now and then, one who is on the wrong side in politics. The institution is
the most aristocratic in principle which now remains in England; far more
so than the House of Lords, for it grants public money and disposes of
important public interests, not in conjunction with a popular assembly,
but alone. It is clung to with proportionate tenacity by our aristocratic
classes, but is obviously at variance with all the principles which are
the foundation of representative government. In a County Board there is
not the same justification as in Boards of Guardians for even an admixture
of ex officio with elected members, since the business of a county
being on a sufficiently large scale to be an object of interest and
attraction to country gentlemen, they would have no more difficulty in
getting themselves elected to the Board than they have in being returned
to Parliament as county members.

In regard to the proper circumscription of the constituencies which elect
the local representative bodies, the principle which, when applied as an
exclusive and unbending rule to Parliamentary representation, is
inappropriate, namely community of local interests, is here the only just
and applicable one. The very object of having a local representation is in
order that those who have any interest in common which they do not share
with the general body of their countrymen may manage that joint interest
by themselves, and the purpose is contradicted if the distribution of the
local representation follows any other rule than the grouping of those
joint interests. There are local interests peculiar to every town, whether
great or small, and common to all its inhabitants; every town, therefore,
without distinction of size, ought to have its municipal council. It is
equally obvious that every town ought to have but one. The different
quarters of the same town have seldom or never any material diversities of
local interest; they all require to have the same things done, the same
expenses incurred; and, except as to their churches, which it is probably
desirable to leave under simply parochial management, the same
arrangements may be made to serve for all. Paving, lighting, water supply,
drainage, port and market regulations, can not, without great waste and
inconvenience, be different for different quarters of the same town. The
subdivision of London into six or seven independent districts, each with
its separate arrangements for local business (several of them without
unity of administration even within themselves), prevents the possibility
of consecutive or well-regulated co-operation for common objects,
precludes any uniform principle for the discharge of local duties, compels
the general government to take things upon itself which would be best left
to local authorities if there were any whose authority extended to the
entire metropolis, and answers no purpose but to keep up the fantastical
trappings of that union of modern jobbing and antiquated foppery, the
Corporation of the City of London.

Another equally important principle is, that in each local circumscription
there should be but one elective body for all local business, not
different bodies for different parts of it. Division of labor does not
mean cutting up every business into minute fractions; it means the union
of such operations as are fit to be performed by the same persons, and the
separation of such as can be better performed by different persons. The
executive duties of the locality do indeed require to be divided into
departments for the same reason as those of the state—because they
are of divers kinds, each requiring knowledge peculiar to itself, and
needing, for its due performance, the undivided attention of a specially
qualified functionary. But the reasons for subdivision which apply to the
execution do not apply to the control. The business of the elective body
is not to do the work, but to see that it is properly done, and that
nothing necessary is left undone. This function can be fulfilled for all
departments by the same superintending body, and by a collective and
comprehensive far better than by a minute and microscopic view. It is as
absurd in public affairs as it would be in private, that every workman
should be looked after by a superintendent to himself. The government of
the crown consists of many departments, and there are many ministers to
conduct them, but those ministers have not a Parliament apiece to keep
them to their duty. The local, like the national Parliament, has for its
proper business to consider the interest of the locality as a whole,
composed of parts all of which must be adapted to one another, and
attended to in the order and ratio of their importance. There is another
very weighty reason for uniting the control of all the business of a
locality under one body. The greatest imperfection of popular local
institutions, and the chief cause of the failure which so often attends
them, is the low calibre of the men by whom they are almost always carried
on. That these should be of a very miscellaneous character is, indeed,
part of the usefulness of the institution; it is that circumstance chiefly
which renders it a school of political capacity and general intelligence.
But a school supposes teachers as well as scholars: the utility of the
instruction greatly depends on its bringing inferior minds into contact
with superior, a contact which in the ordinary course of life is
altogether exceptional, and the want of which contributes more than any
thing else to keep the generality of mankind on one level of contented
ignorance. The school, moreover, is worthless, and a school of evil
instead of good, if, through the want of due surveillance, and of the
presence within itself of a higher order of characters, the action of the
body is allowed, as it so often is, to degenerate into an equally
unscrupulous and stupid pursuit of the self-interest of its members. Now
it is quite hopeless to induce persons of a high class, either socially or
intellectually, to take a share of local administration in a corner by
piecemeal, as members of a Paving Board or a Drainage Commission. The
entire local business of their town is not more than a sufficient object
to induce men whose tastes incline them, and whose knowledge qualifies
them for national affairs, to become members of a mere local body, and
devote to it the time and study which are necessary to render their
presence any thing more than a screen for the jobbing of inferior persons,
under the shelter of their responsibility. A mere Board of Works, though
it comprehend the entire metropolis, is sure to be composed of the same
class of persons as the vestries of the London parishes; nor is it
practicable, or even desirable, that such should not form the majority;
but it is important for every purpose which local bodies are designed to
serve, whether it be the enlightened and honest performance of their
special duties, or the cultivation of the political intelligence of the
nation, that every such body should contain a portion of the very best
minds of the locality, who are thus brought into perpetual contact, of the
most useful kind, with minds of a lower grade, receiving from them what
local or professional knowledge they have to give, and, in return,
inspiring them with a portion of their own more enlarged ideas, and higher
and more enlightened purposes.

A mere village has no claim to a municipal representation. By a village I
mean a place whose inhabitants are not markedly distinguished by
occupation or social relations from those of the rural districts
adjoining, and for whose local wants the arrangements made for the
surrounding territory will suffice. Such small places have rarely a
sufficient public to furnish a tolerable municipal council: if they
contain any talent or knowledge applicable to public business, it is apt
to be all concentrated in some one man, who thereby becomes the dominator
of the place. It is better that such places should be merged in a larger
circumscription. The local representation of rural districts will
naturally be determined by geographical considerations, with due regard to
those sympathies of feeling by which human beings are so much aided to act
in concert, and which partly follow historical boundaries, such as those
of counties or provinces, and partly community of interest and occupation,
as in agriculture, maritime, manufacturing, or mining districts. Different
kinds of local business require different areas of representation. The
Unions of parishes have been fixed on as the most appropriate basis for
the representative bodies which superintend the relief of indigence;
while, for the proper regulation of highways, or prisons, or police, a
large extent, like that of an average county, is not more than sufficient.
In these large districts, therefore, the maxim, that an elective body
constituted in any locality should have authority over all the local
concerns common to the locality, requires modification from another
principle, as well as from the competing consideration of the importance
of obtaining for the discharge of the local duties the highest
qualifications possible. For example, if it be necessary (as I believe it
to be) for the proper administration of the poor-laws that the area of
rating should not be more extensive than most of the present Unions, a
principle which requires a Board of Guardians for each Union, yet, as a
much more highly qualified class of persons is likely to be obtainable for
a County Board than those who compose an average Board of Guardians, it
may, on that ground, be expedient to reserve for the County Boards some
higher descriptions of local business, which might otherwise have been
conveniently managed within itself by each separate Union.

Besides the controlling council or local sub-Parliament, local business
has its executive department. With respect to this, the same questions
arise as with respect to the executive authorities in the state, and they
may, for the most part, be answered in the same manner. The principles
applicable to all public trusts are in substance the same. In the first
place, each executive officer should be single, and singly responsible for
the whole of the duty committed to his charge. In the next place, he
should be nominated, not elected. It is ridiculous that a surveyor, or a
health officer, or even a collector of rates should be appointed by
popular suffrage. The popular choice usually depends on interest with a
few local leaders, who, as they are not supposed to make the appointment,
are not responsible for it; or on an appeal to sympathy, founded on having
twelve children, and having been a rate-payer in the parish for thirty
years. If, in cases of this description, election by the population is a
farce, appointment by the local representative body is little less
objectionable. Such bodies have a perpetual tendency to become joint-stock
associations for carrying into effect the private jobs of their various
members. Appointments should be made on the individual responsibility of
the chairman of the body, let him be called mayor, chairman of Quarter
Sessions, or by whatever other title. He occupies in the locality a
position analogous to that of the prime minister in the state, and under a
well organized system the appointment and watching of the local officers
would be the most important part of his duty; he himself being appointed
by the council from its own number, subject either to annual re-election,
or to removal by a vote of the body.

From the constitution of the local bodies, I now pass to the equally
important and more difficult subject of their proper attributions. This
question divides itself into two parts: what should be their duties, and
whether they should have full authority within the sphere of those duties,
or should be liable to any, and what, interference on the part of the
central government.

It is obvious, to begin with, that all business purely local—all
which concerns only a single locality—should devolve upon the local
authorities. The paving, lighting, and cleansing of the streets of a town,
and, in ordinary circumstances, the draining of its houses, are of little
consequence to any but its inhabitants. The nation at large is interested
in them in no other way than that in which it is interested in the private
well-being of all its individual citizens. But among the duties classed as
local, or performed by local functionaries, there are many which might
with equal propriety be termed national, being the share belonging to the
locality of some branch of the public administration in the efficiency of
which the whole nation is alike interested: the jails, for instance, most
of which in this country are under county management; the local police;
the local administration of justice, much of which, especially in
corporate towns, is performed by officers elected by the locality, and
paid from local funds. None of these can be said to be matters of local,
as distinguished from national importance. It would not be a matter
personally indifferent to the rest of the country if any part of it became
a nest of robbers or a focus of demoralization, owing to the
maladministration of its police; or if, through the bad regulations of its
jail, the punishment which the courts of justice intended to inflict on
the criminals confined therein (who might have come from, or committed
their offenses in, any other district) might be doubled in intensity or
lowered to practical impunity. The points, moreover, which constitute good
management of these things are the same every where; there is no good
reason why police, or jails, or the administration of justice should be
differently managed in one part of the kingdom and in another, while there
is great peril that in things so important, and to which the most
instructed minds available to the state are not more than adequate, the
lower average of capacities which alone can be counted on for the service
of the localities might commit errors of such magnitude as to be a serious
blot upon the general administration of the country. Security of person
and property, and equal justice between individuals, are the first needs
of society and the primary ends of government: if these things can be left
to any responsibility below the highest, there is nothing except war and
treaties which requires a general government at all. Whatever are the best
arrangements for securing these primary objects should be made universally
obligatory, and, to secure their enforcement, should be placed under
central superintendence. It is often useful, and with the institutions of
our own country even necessary, from the scarcity, in the localities, of
officers representing the general government, that the execution of duties
imposed by the central authority should be intrusted to functionaries
appointed for local purposes by the locality. But experience is daily
forcing upon the public a conviction of the necessity of having at least
inspectors appointed by the general government to see that the local
officers do their duty. If prisons are under local management, the central
government appoints inspectors of prisons, to take care that the rules
laid down by Parliament are observed, and to suggest others if the state
of the jails shows them to be requisite, as there are inspectors of
factories and inspectors of schools, to watch over the observance of the
Acts of Parliament relating to the first, and the fulfillment of the
conditions on which state assistance is granted to the latter.

But if the administration of justice, police and jails included, is both
so universal a concern, and so much a matter of general science,
independent of local peculiarities, that it may be, and ought to be,
uniformly regulated throughout the country, and its regulation enforced by
more trained and skillful hands than those of purely local authorities,
there is also business, such as the administration of the poor-laws,
sanitary regulation, and others, which, while really interesting to the
whole country, can not, consistently with the very purposes of local
administration, be managed otherwise than by the localities. In regard to
such duties, the question arises how far the local authorities ought to be
trusted with discretionary power, free from any superintendence or control
of the state.

To decide this question, it is essential to consider what is the
comparative position of the central and the local authorities as capacity
for the work, and security against negligence or abuse. In the first
place, the local representative bodies and their officers are almost
certain to be of a much lower grade of intelligence and knowledge than
Parliament and the national executive. Secondly, besides being themselves
of inferior qualifications, they are watched by, and accountable to an
inferior public opinion. The public under whose eyes they act, and by whom
they are criticized, is both more limited in extent and generally far less
enlightened than that which surrounds and admonishes the highest
authorities at the capital, while the comparative smallness of the
interests involved causes even that inferior public to direct its thoughts
to the subject less intently and with less solicitude. Far less
interference is exercised by the press and by public discussion, and that
which is exercised may with much more impunity be disregarded in the
proceedings of local than in those of national authorities. Thus far, the
advantage seems wholly on the side of management by the central
government; but, when we look more closely, these motives of preference
are found to be balanced by others fully as substantial. If the local
authorities and public are inferior to the central ones in knowledge of
the principles of administration, they have the compensatory advantage of
a far more direct interest in the result. A man’s neighbors or his
landlord may be much cleverer than himself, and not without an indirect
interest in his prosperity, but, for all that, his interests will be
better attended to in his own keeping than in theirs. It is further to be
remembered that, even supposing the central government to administer
through its own officers, its officers do not act at the centre, but in
the locality; and however inferior the local public may be to the central,
it is the local public alone which has any opportunity of watching them,
and it is the local opinion alone which either acts directly upon their
own conduct, or calls the attention of the government to the points in
which they may require correction. It is but in extreme cases that the
general opinion of the country is brought to bear at all upon details of
local administration, and still more rarely has it the means of deciding
upon them with any just appreciation of the case. Now the local opinion
necessarily acts far more forcibly upon purely local administrators. They,
in the natural course of things, are permanent residents, not expecting to
be withdrawn from the place when they cease to exercise authority in it;
and their authority itself depends, by supposition, on the will of the
local public. I need not dwell on the deficiencies of the central
authority in detailed knowledge of local persons and things, and the too
great engrossment of its time and thoughts by other concerns to admit of
its acquiring the quantity and quality of local knowledge necessary even
for deciding on complaints, and enforcing responsibility from so great a
number of local agents. In the details of management, therefore, the local
bodies will generally have the advantage, but in comprehension of the
principles even of purely local management, the superiority of the central
government, when rightly constituted, ought to be prodigious, not only by
reason of the probably great personal superiority of the individuals
composing it, and the multitude of thinkers and writers who are at all
times engaged in pressing useful ideas upon their notice, but also because
the knowledge and experience of any local authority is but local knowledge
and experience, confined to their own part of the country and its modes of
management, whereas the central government has the means of knowing all
that is to be learned from the united experience of the whole kingdom,
with the addition of easy access to that of foreign countries.

The practical conclusion from these premises is not difficult to draw. The
authority which is most conversant with principles should be supreme over
principles, while that which is most competent in details should have the
details left to it. The principal business of the central authority should
be to give instruction, of the local authority to apply it. Power may be
localized, but knowledge, to be most useful, must be centralized; there
must be somewhere a focus at which all its scattered rays are collected,
that the broken and colored lights which exist elsewhere may find there
what is necessary to complete and purify them. To every branch of local
administration which affects the general interest there should be a
corresponding central organ, either a minister, or some specially
appointed functionary under him, even if that functionary does no more
than collect information from all quarters, and bring the experience
acquired in one locality to the knowledge of another where it is wanted.
But there is also something more than this for the central authority to
do. It ought to keep open a perpetual communication with the localities—informing
itself by their experience, and them by its own; giving advice freely when
asked, volunteering it when seen to be required; compelling publicity and
recordation of proceedings, and enforcing obedience to every general law
which the Legislature has laid down on the subject of local management.
That some such laws ought to be laid down few are likely to deny. The
localities may be allowed to mismanage their own interests, but not to
prejudice those of others, nor violate those principles of justice between
one person and another of which it is the duty of the state to maintain
the rigid observance. If the local majority attempts to oppress the
minority, or one class another, the state is bound to interpose. For
example, all local rates ought to be voted exclusively by the local
representative body; but that body, though elected solely by rate-payers,
may raise its revenues by imposts of such a kind, or assess them in such a
manner, as to throw an unjust share of the burden on the poor, the rich,
or some particular class of the population: it is the duty, therefore, of
the Legislature, while leaving the mere amount of the local taxes to the
discretion of the local body, to lay down authoritatively the mode of
taxation and rules of assessment which alone the localities shall be
permitted to use. Again, in the administration of public charity, the
industry and morality of the whole laboring population depends, to a most
serious extent, upon adherence to certain fixed principles in awarding
relief. Though it belongs essentially to the local functionaries to
determine who, according to those principles, is entitled to be relieved,
the national Parliament is the proper authority to prescribe the
principles themselves; and it would neglect a most important part of its
duty if it did not, in a matter of such grave national concern, lay down
imperative rules, and make effectual provision that those rules should not
be departed from. What power of actual interference with the local
administrators it may be necessary to retain, for the due enforcement of
the laws, is a question of detail into which it would be useless to enter.
The laws themselves will naturally define the penalties, and fix the mode
of their enforcement. It may be requisite, to meet extreme cases, that the
power of the central authority should extend to dissolving the local
representative council or dismissing the local executive, but not to
making new appointments or suspending the local institutions. Where
Parliament has not interfered, neither ought any branch of the executive
to interfere with authority; but as an adviser and critic, an enforcer of
the laws, and a denouncer to Parliament or the local constituencies of
conduct which it deems condemnable, the functions of the executive are of
the greatest possible value.

Some may think that, however much the central authority surpasses the
local in knowledge of the principles of administration, the great object
which has been so much insisted on, the social and political education of
the citizens, requires that they should be left to manage these matters by
their own, however imperfect lights. To this it might be answered that the
education of the citizens is not the only thing to be considered;
government and administration do not exist for that alone, great as its
importance is. But the objection shows a very imperfect understanding of
the function of popular institutions as a means of political instruction.
It is but a poor education that associates ignorance with ignorance, and
leaves them, if they care for knowledge, to grope their way to it without
help, and to do without it if they do not. What is wanted is the means of
making ignorance aware of itself, and able to profit by knowledge;
accustoming minds which know only routine to act upon, and feel the value
of principles; teaching them to compare different modes of action, and
learn, by the use of their reason, to distinguish the best. When we desire
to have a good school, we do not eliminate the teacher. The old remark,
“As the schoolmaster is, so will be the school,” is as true of the
indirect schooling of grown people by public business as of the schooling
of youth in academies and colleges. A government which attempts to do
every thing is aptly compared by M. Charles de Rémusat to a schoolmaster
who does all the pupils’ tasks for them; he may be very popular with the
pupils, but he will teach them little. A government, on the other hand,
which neither does any thing itself that can possibly be done by any one
else, nor shows any one else how to do any thing, is like a school in
which there is no schoolmaster, but only pupil-teachers who have never
themselves been taught.

Chapter XVI—Of Nationality, as connected with Representative
Government.

A portion of mankind may be said to constitute a nationality if they are
united among themselves by common sympathies which do not exist between
them and any others—which make them co-operate with each other more
willingly than with other people, desire to be under the same government,
and desire that it should be government by themselves, or a portion of
themselves, exclusively. This feeling of nationality may have been
generated by various causes. Sometimes it is the effect of identity of
race and descent. Community of language and community of religion greatly
contribute to it. Geographical limits are one of its causes. But the
strongest of all is identity of political antecedents; the possession of a
national history, and consequent community of recollections; collective
pride and humiliation, pleasure and regret, connected with the same
incidents in the past. None of these circumstances, however, are either
indispensable or necessarily sufficient by themselves. Switzerland has a
strong sentiment of nationality, though the cantons are of different
races, different languages, and different religions. Sicily has hitherto
felt itself quite distinct in nationality from Naples, notwithstanding
identity of religion, almost identity of language, and a considerable
amount of common historical antecedents. The Flemish and the Walloon
provinces of Belgium, notwithstanding diversity of race and language, have
a much greater feeling of common nationality than the former have with
Holland, or the latter with France. Yet in general the national feeling is
proportionally weakened by the failure of any of the causes which
contribute to it. Identity of language, literature, and, to some extent,
of race and recollections, have maintained the feeling of nationality in
considerable strength among the different portions of the German name,
though they have at no time been really united under the same government;
but the feeling has never reached to making the separate states desire to
get rid of their autonomy. Among Italians, an identity far from complete
of language and literature, combined with a geographical position which
separates them by a distinct line from other countries, and, perhaps more
than every thing else, the possession of a common name, which makes them
all glory in the past achievements in arts, arms, politics, religious
primacy, science, and literature, of any who share the same designation,
give rise to an amount of national feeling in the population which, though
still imperfect, has been sufficient to produce the great events now
passing before us, notwithstanding a great mixture of races, and although
they have never, in either ancient or modern history, been under the same
government, except while that government extended or was extending itself
over the greater part of the known world.

Where the sentiment of nationality exists in any force, there is a primâ
facie case for uniting all the members of the nationality under the
same government, and a government to themselves apart. This is merely
saying that the question of government ought to be decided by the
governed. One hardly knows what any division of the human race should be
free to do if not to determine with which of the various collective bodies
of human beings they choose to associate themselves. But, when a people
are ripe for free institutions, there is a still more vital consideration.
Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different
nationalities. Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they
read and speak different languages, the united public opinion necessary to
the working of representative government can not exist. The influences
which form opinions and decide political acts are different in the
different sections of the country. An altogether different set of leaders
have the confidence of one part of the country and of another. The same
books, newspapers, pamphlets, speeches, do not reach them. One section
does not know what opinions or what instigations are circulating in
another. The same incidents, the same acts, the same system of government,
affect them in different ways, and each fears more injury to itself from
the other nationalities than from the common arbiter, the state. Their
mutual antipathies are generally much stronger than jealousy of the
government. That any one of them feels aggrieved by the policy of the
common ruler is sufficient to determine another to support that policy.
Even if all are aggrieved, none feel that they can rely on the others for
fidelity in a joint resistance; the strength of none is sufficient to
resist alone, and each may reasonably think that it consults its own
advantage most by bidding for the favor of the government against the
rest. Above all, the grand and only reliable security in the last resort
against the despotism of the government is in that case wanting—the
sympathy of the army with the people. The military are the part of every
community in whom, from the nature of the case, the distinction between
their fellow-countrymen and foreigners is the deepest and strongest. To
the rest of the people foreigners are merely strangers; to the soldier,
they are men against whom he may be called, at a week’s notice, to fight
for life or death. The difference to him is that between friends and
enemies—we may almost say between fellow-men and another kind of
animals; for, as respects the enemy, the only law is that of force, and
the only mitigation the same as in the case of other animals—that of
simple humanity. Soldiers to whose feelings half or three fourths of the
subjects of the same government are foreigners will have no more scruple
in mowing them down, and no more desire to ask the reason why, than they
would have in doing the same thing against declared enemies. An army
composed of various nationalities has no other patriotism than devotion to
the flag. Such armies have been the executioners of liberty through the
whole duration of modern history. The sole bond which holds them together
is their officers and the government which they serve, and their only
idea, if they have any, of public duty, is obedience to orders. A
government thus supported, by keeping its Hungarian regiments in Italy and
its Italian in Hungary, can long continue to rule in both places with the
iron rod of foreign conquerors.

If it be said that so broadly-marked a distinction between what is due to
a fellow-countryman and what is due merely to a human creature is more
worthy of savages than of civilized beings, and ought, with the utmost
energy, to be contended against, no one holds that opinion more strongly
than myself. But this object, one of the worthiest to which human
endeavour can be directed, can never, in the present state of
civilization, be promoted by keeping different nationalities of any thing
like equivalent strength under the same government. In a barbarous state
of society the case is sometimes different. The government may then be
interested in softening the antipathies of the races, that peace may be
preserved and the country more easily governed. But when there are either
free institutions, or a desire for them, in any of the peoples
artificially tied together, the interest of the government lies in an
exactly opposite direction. It is then interested in keeping up and
envenoming their antipathies, that they may be prevented from coalescing,
and it may be enabled to use some of them as tools for the enslavement of
others. The Austrian court has now for a whole generation made these
tactics its principal means of government, with what fatal success, at the
time of the Vienna insurrection and the Hungarian contest the world knows
too well. Happily there are now signs that improvement is too far advanced
to permit this policy to be any longer successful.

For the preceding reasons, it is in general a necessary condition of free
institutions that the boundaries of governments should coincide in the
main with those of nationalities. But several considerations are liable to
conflict in practice with this general principle. In the first place, its
application is often precluded by geographical hindrances. There are parts
even of Europe in which different nationalities are so locally
intermingled that it is not practicable for them to be under separate
governments. The population of Hungary is composed of Magyars, Slovaks,
Croats, Serbs, Roumans, and in some districts Germans, so mixed up as to
be incapable of local separation; and there is no course open to them but
to make a virtue of necessity, and reconcile themselves to living together
under equal rights and laws. Their community of servitude, which dates
only from the destruction of Hungarian independence in 1849, seems to be
ripening and disposing them for such an equal union. The German colony of
East Prussia is cut off from Germany by part of the ancient Poland, and
being too weak to maintain separate independence, must, if geographical
continuity is to be maintained, be either under a non-German government,
or the intervening Polish territory must be under a German one. Another
considerable region in which the dominant element of the population is
German, the provinces of Courland, Esthonia, and Livonia, is condemned by
its local situation to form part of a Slavonian state. In Eastern Germany
itself there is a large Slavonic population; Bohemia is principally
Slavonic, Silesia and other districts partially so. The most united
country in Europe, France, is far from being homogeneous: independently of
the fragments of foreign nationalities at its remote extremities, it
consists, as language and history prove, of two portions, one occupied
almost exclusively by a Gallo-Roman population, while in the other the
Frankish, Burgundian, and other Teutonic races form a considerable
ingredient.

When proper allowance has been made for geographical exigencies, another
more purely moral and social consideration offers itself. Experience
proves that it is possible for one nationality to merge and be absorbed in
another; and when it was originally an inferior and more backward portion
of the human race, the absorption is greatly to its advantage. Nobody can
suppose that it is not more beneficial to a Breton, or a Basque of French
Navarre, to be brought into the current of the ideas and feelings of a
highly civilized and cultivated people—to be a member of the French
nationality, admitted on equal terms to all the privileges of French
citizenship, sharing the advantages of French protection, and the dignity
and prestige of French power—than to sulk on his own rocks,
the half-savage relic of past times, revolving in his own little mental
orbit, without participation or interest in the general movement of the
world. The same remark applies to the Welshman or the Scottish Highlander
as members of the British nation.

Whatever really tends to the admixture of nationalities, and the blending
of their attributes and peculiarities in a common union, is a benefit to
the human race. Not by extinguishing types, of which, in these cases,
sufficient examples are sure to remain, but by softening their extreme
forms, and filling up the intervals between them. The united people, like
a crossed breed of animals (but in a still greater degree, because the
influences in operation are moral as well as physical), inherits the
special aptitudes and excellences of all its progenitors, protected by the
admixture from being exaggerated into the neighboring vices. But, to
render this admixture possible, there must be peculiar conditions. The
combinations of circumstances which occur, and which effect the result,
are various.

The nationalities brought together under the same government may be about
equal in numbers and strength, or they may be very unequal. If unequal,
the least numerous of the two may either be the superior in civilization,
or the inferior. Supposing it to be superior, it may either, through that
superiority, be able to acquire ascendancy over the other, or it may be
overcome by brute strength and reduced to subjection. This last is a sheer
mischief to the human race, and one which civilized humanity with one
accord should rise in arms to prevent. The absorption of Greece by
Macedonia was one of the greatest misfortunes which ever happened to the
world; that of any of the principal countries of Europe by Russia would be
a similar one.

If the smaller nationality, supposed to be the more advanced in
improvement, is able to overcome the greater, as the Macedonians,
re-enforced by the Greeks, did Asia, and the English India, there is often
a gain to civilization, but the conquerors and the conquered can not in
this case live together under the same free institutions. The absorption
of the conquerors in the less advanced people would be an evil: these must
be governed as subjects, and the state of things is either a benefit or a
misfortune, according as the subjugated people have or have not reached
the state in which it is an injury not to be under a free government, and
according as the conquerors do or do not use their superiority in a manner
calculated to fit the conquered for a higher stage of improvement. This
topic will be particularly treated of in a subsequent chapter.

When the nationality which succeeds in overpowering the other is both the
most numerous and the most improved, and especially if the subdued
nationality is small, and has no hope of reasserting its independence,
then, if it is governed with any tolerable justice, and if the members of
the more powerful nationality are not made odious by being invested with
exclusive privileges, the smaller nationality is gradually reconciled to
its position, and becomes amalgamated with the larger. No Bas-Breton, nor
even any Alsatian, has the smallest wish at the present day to be
separated from France. If all Irishmen have not yet arrived at the same
disposition towards England, it is partly because they are sufficiently
numerous to be capable of constituting a respectable nationality by
themselves, but principally because, until of late years, they had been so
atrociously governed that all their best feelings combined with their bad
ones in rousing bitter resentment against the Saxon rule. This disgrace to
England and calamity to the whole empire has, it may be truly said,
completely ceased for nearly a generation. No Irishman is now less free
than an Anglo-Saxon, nor has a less share of every benefit either to his
country or to his individual fortunes than if he were sprung from any
other portion of the British dominions. The only remaining real grievance
of Ireland, that of the State Church, is one which half, or nearly half
the people of the larger island have in common with them. There is now
next to nothing, except the memory of the past, and the difference in the
predominant religion, to keep apart two races perhaps the most fitted of
any two in the world to be the completing counterpart of one another. The
consciousness of being at last treated not only with equal justice, but
with equal consideration, is making such rapid way in the Irish nation as
to be wearing off all feelings that could make them insensible to the
benefits which the less numerous and less wealthy people must necessarily
derive from being fellow-citizens instead of foreigners to those who are
not only their nearest neighbors, but the wealthiest, and one of the
freest, as well as most civilized and powerful nations of the earth.

The cases in which the greatest practical obstacles exist to the blending
of nationalities are when the nationalities which have been bound together
are nearly equal in numbers and in the other elements of power. In such
cases, each, confiding in its strength, and feeling itself capable of
maintaining an equal struggle with any of the others, is unwilling to be
merged in it; each cultivates with party obstinacy its distinctive
peculiarities; obsolete customs, and even declining languages, are
revived, to deepen the separation; each deems itself tyrannized over if
any authority is exercised within itself by functionaries of a rival race;
and whatever is given to one of the conflicting nationalities is
considered to be taken from all the rest. When nations thus divided are
under a despotic government which is a stranger to all of them, or which,
though sprung from one, yet feeling greater interest in its own power than
in any sympathies of nationality, assigns no privilege to either nation,
and chooses its instruments indifferently from all, in the course of a few
generations identity of situation often produces harmony of feeling, and
the different races come to feel towards each other as fellow-countrymen,
particularly if they are dispersed over the same tract of country. But if
the era of aspiration to free government arrives before this fusion has
been effected, the opportunity has gone by for effecting it. From that
time, if the unreconciled nationalities are geographically separate, and
especially if their local position is such that there is no natural
fitness or convenience in their being under the same government (as in the
case of an Italian province under a French or German yoke), there is not
only an obvious propriety, but, if either freedom or concord is cared for,
a necessity for breaking the connection altogether. There may be cases in
which the provinces, after separation, might usefully remain united by a
federal tie; but it generally happens that if they are willing to forego
complete independence, and become members of a federation, each of them
has other neighbors with whom it would prefer to connect itself, having
more sympathies in common, if not also greater community of interest.

Chapter XVII—Of Federal Representative Governments.

Portions of mankind who are not fitted or not disposed to live under the
same internal government may often, with advantage, be federally united as
to their relations with foreigners, both to prevent wars among themselves,
and for the sake of more effectual protection against the aggression of
powerful states.

To render a federation advisable several conditions are necessary. The
first is that there should be a sufficient amount of mutual sympathy among
the populations. The federation binds them always to fight on the same
side; and if they have such feelings toward one another, or such diversity
of feeling toward their neighbors that they would generally prefer to
fight on opposite sides, the federal tie is neither likely to be of long
duration, nor to be well observed while it subsists. The sympathies
available for the purpose are those of race, language, religion, and,
above all, of political institutions, as conducing most to a feeling of
identity of political interest. When a few free states, separately
insufficient for their own defense, are hemmed in on all sides by military
or feudal monarchs, who hate and despise freedom even in a neighbor, those
states have no chance for preserving liberty and its blessings but by a
federal union. The common interest arising from this cause has in
Switzerland, for several centuries, been found adequate to maintain
efficiently the federal bond, in spite not only of difference of religion
when religion was the grand source of irreconcilable political enmity
throughout Europe, but also in spite of great weakness in the constitution
of the federation itself. In America, where all the conditions for the
maintenance of union existed at the highest point, with the sole drawback
of difference of institutions in the single but most important article of
slavery, this one difference goes so far in alienating from each other’s
sympathies the two divisions of the Union as to be now actually effecting
the disruption of a tie of so much value to them both.

A second condition of the stability of a federal government is that the
separate states be not so powerful as to be able to rely for protection
against foreign encroachment on their individual strength. If they are,
they will be apt to think that they do not gain, by union with others, the
equivalent of what they sacrifice in their own liberty of action; and
consequently, whenever the policy of the confederation, in things reserved
to its cognizance, is different from that which any one of its members
would separately pursue, the internal and sectional breach will, through
absence of sufficient anxiety to preserve the Union, be in danger of going
so far as to dissolve it.

A third condition, not less important than the two others, is that there
be not a very marked inequality of strength among the several contracting
states. They can not, indeed, be exactly equal in resources; in all
federations there will be a gradation of power among the members; some
will be more populous, rich, and civilized than others. There is a wide
difference in wealth and population between New York and Rhode Island;
between Berne, and Zug or Glaris. The essential is, that there should not
be any one state so much more powerful than the rest as to be capable of
vying in strength with many of them combined. If there be such a one, and
only one, it will insist on being master of the joint deliberations; if
there be two, they will be irresistible when they agree; and whenever they
differ, every thing will be decided by a struggle for ascendancy between
the rivals. This cause is alone enough to reduce the German Bund to almost
a nullity, independently of its wretched internal constitution. It effects
none of the real purposes of a confederation. It has never bestowed on
Germany a uniform system of customs, nor so much as a uniform coinage, and
has served only to give Austria and Prussia a legal right of pouring in
their troops to assist the local sovereigns in keeping their subjects
obedient to despotism, while, in regard to external concerns, the Bund
would make all Germany a dependency of Prussia if there were no Austria,
and of Austria if there were no Prussia; and, in the mean time, each petty
prince has little choice but to be a partisan of one or the other, or to
intrigue with foreign governments against both.

There are two different modes of organizing a federal union. The federal
authorities may represent the governments solely, and their acts may be
obligatory only on the governments as such, or they may have the power of
enacting laws and issuing orders which are binding directly on individual
citizens. The former is the plan of the German so-called Confederation,
and of the Swiss Constitution previous to 1847. It was tried in America
for a few years immediately following the War of Independence. The other
principle is that of the existing Constitution of the United States, and
has been adopted within the last dozen years by the Swiss Confederacy. The
Federal Congress of the American Union is a substantive part of the
government of every individual state. Within the limits of its
attributions, it makes laws which are obeyed by every citizen
individually, executes them through its own officers, and enforces them by
its own tribunals. This is the only principle which has been found, or
which is ever likely to produce an effective federal government. A union
between the governments only is a mere alliance, and subject to all the
contingencies which render alliances precarious. If the acts of the
President and of Congress were binding solely on the governments of New
York, Virginia, or Pennsylvania, and could only be carried into effect
through orders issued by those governments to officers appointed by them,
under responsibility to their own courts of justice, no mandates of the
federal government which were disagreeable to a local majority would ever
be executed. Requisitions issued to a government have no other sanction or
means of enforcement than war, and a federal army would have to be always
in readiness to enforce the decrees of the federation against any
recalcitrant state, subject to the probability that other states,
sympathizing with the recusant, and perhaps sharing its sentiments on the
particular point in dispute, would withhold their contingents, if not send
them to fight in the ranks of the disobedient State. Such a federation is
more likely to be a cause than a preventive of internal wars; and if such
was not its effect in Switzerland until the events of the years
immediately preceding 1847, it was only because the federal government
felt its weakness so strongly that it hardly ever attempted to exercise
any real authority. In America, the experiment of a federation on this
principle broke down in the first few years of its existence, happily
while the men of enlarged knowledge and acquired ascendancy who founded
the independence of the Republic were still alive to guide it through the
difficult transition. The “Federalist,” a collection of papers by three of
these eminent men, written in explanation and defense of the new federal
Constitution while still awaiting the national acceptance, is even now the
most instructive treatise we possess on federal government. In Germany,
the more imperfect kind of federation, as all know, has not even answered
the purpose of maintaining an alliance. It has never, in any European war,
prevented single members of the confederation from allying themselves with
foreign powers against the rest. Yet this is the only federation which
seems possible among monarchical states. A king, who holds his power by
inheritance, not by delegation, and who can not be deprived of it, nor
made responsible to any one for its use, is not likely to renounce having
a separate army, or to brook the exercise of sovereign authority over his
own subjects, not through him, but directly by another power. To enable
two or more countries under kingly government to be joined together in an
effectual confederation, it seems necessary that they should all be under
the same king. England and Scotland were a federation of this description
during the interval of about a century between the union of the crowns and
that of the Parliaments. Even this was effective, not through federal
institutions, for none existed, but because the regal power in both
Constitutions was so nearly absolute as to enable the foreign policy of
both to be shaped according to a single will.

Under the more perfect mode of federation, where every citizen of each
particular state owes obedience to two governments, that of his own state
and that of the federation, it is evidently necessary not only that the
constitutional limits of the authority of each should be precisely and
clearly defined, but that the power to decide between them in any case of
dispute should not reside in either of the governments, or in any
functionary subject to it, but in an umpire independent of both. There
must be a Supreme Court of Justice, and a system of subordinate courts in
every state of the Union, before whom such questions shall be carried, and
whose judgment on them, in the last stage of appeal, shall be final. Every
state of the Union, and the federal government itself, as well as every
functionary of each, must be liable to be sued in those courts for
exceeding their powers, or for non-performance of their federal duties,
and must in general be obliged to employ those courts as the instrument
for enforcing their federal rights. This involves the remarkable
consequence, actually realized in the United States, that a court of
justice, the highest federal tribunal, is supreme over the various
governments, both state and federal, having the right to declare that any
law made, or act done by them, exceeds the powers assigned to them by the
federal Constitution, and, in consequence, has no legal validity. It was
natural to feel strong doubts, before trial had been made, how such a
provision would work; whether the tribunal would have the courage to
exercise its constitutional power; if it did, whether it would exercise it
wisely, and whether the governments would consent to submit peaceably to
its decision. The discussions on the American Constitution, before its
final adoption, give evidence that these natural apprehensions were
strongly felt; but they are now entirely quieted, since, during the two
generations and more which have subsequently elapsed, nothing has occurred
to verify them, though there have at times been disputes of considerable
acrimony, and which became the badges of parties, respecting the limits of
the authority of the federal and state governments. The eminently
beneficial working of so singular a provision is probably, as M. de
Tocqueville remarks, in a great measure attributable to the peculiarity
inherent in a court of justice acting as such—namely, that it does
not declare the law eo nomine and in the abstract, but waits until
a case between man and man is brought before it judicially, involving the
point in dispute; from which arises the happy effect that its declarations
are not made in a very early stage of the controversy; that much popular
discussion usually precedes them; that the Court decides after hearing the
point fully argued on both sides by lawyers of reputation; decides only as
much of the question at a time as is required by the case before it, and
its decision, instead of being volunteered for political purposes, is
drawn from it by the duty which it can not refuse to fulfil, of dispensing
justice impartially between adverse litigants. Even these grounds of
confidence would not have sufficed to produce the respectful submission
with which all authorities have yielded to the decisions of the Supreme
Court on the interpretation of the Constitution, were it not that complete
reliance has been felt, not only on the intellectual pre-eminence of the
judges composing that exalted tribunal, but on their entire superiority
over either private or sectional partialities. This reliance has been in
the main justified; but there is nothing which more vitally imports the
American people than to guard with the most watchful solicitude against
every thing which has the remotest tendency to produce deterioration in
the quality of this great national institution. The confidence on which
depends the stability of federal institutions has been for the first time
impaired by the judgment declaring slavery to be of common right, and
consequently lawful in the Territories while not yet constituted as
states, even against the will of a majority of their inhabitants. The main
pillar of the American Constitution is scarcely strong enough to bear many
more such shocks.

The tribunals which act as umpires between the federal and the state
governments naturally also decide all disputes between two states, or
between a citizen of one state and the government of another. The usual
remedies between nations, war and diplomacy, being precluded by the
federal union, it is necessary that a judicial remedy should supply their
place. The Supreme Court of the federation dispenses international law,
and is the first great example of what is now one of the most prominent
wants of civilized society, a real international tribunal.

The powers of a federal government naturally extend not only to peace and
war, and all questions which arise between the country and foreign
governments, but to making any other arrangements which are, in the
opinion of the states, necessary to their enjoyment of the full benefits
of union. For example, it is a great advantage to them that their mutual
commerce should be free, without the impediment of frontier duties and
custom-houses. But this internal freedom can not exist if each state has
the power of fixing the duties on interchange of commodities between
itself and foreign countries, since every foreign product let in by one
state would be let into all the rest; and hence all custom duties and
trade regulations in the United States are made or repealed by the federal
government exclusively. Again, it is a great convenience to the states to
have but one coinage, and but one system of weights and measures, which
can only be insured if the regulation of these matters is intrusted to the
federal government. The certainty and celerity of post-office
communication is impeded, and its expense increased, if a letter has to
pass through half a dozen sets of public offices, subject to different
supreme authorities: it is convenient, therefore, that all post-offices
should be under the federal government; but on such questions the feelings
of different communities are liable to be different. One of the American
states, under the guidance of a man who has displayed powers as a
speculative political thinker superior to any who has appeared in American
politics since the authors of the “Federalist,” [10] claimed a veto for each
state on the custom laws of the federal Congress; and that statesman, in a
posthumous work of great ability, which has been printed and widely
circulated by the Legislature of South Carolina, vindicated this
pretension on the general principle of limiting the tyranny of the
majority, and protecting minorities by admitting them to a substantial
participation in political power. One of the most disputed topics in
American politics during the early part of this century was whether the
power of the federal government ought to extend, and whether by the
Constitution it did extend, to making roads and canals at the cost of the
Union. It is only in transactions with foreign powers that the authority
of the federal government is of necessity complete. On every other subject
the question depends on how closely the people in general wish to draw the
federal tie; what portion of their local freedom of action they are
willing to surrender, in order to enjoy more fully the benefit of being
one nation.

Respecting the fitting constitution of a federal government within itself,
much need not be said. It of course consists of a legislative branch and
an executive, and the constitution of each is amenable to the same
principles as that of representative governments generally. As regards the
mode of adapting these general principles to a federal government, the
provision of the American Constitution seems exceedingly judicious, that
Congress should consist of two houses, and that while one of them is
constituted according to population, each state being entitled to
representatives in the ratio of the number of its inhabitants, the other
should represent not the citizens, but the state governments, and every
state, whether large or small, should be represented in it by the same
number of members. This provision precludes any undue power from being
exercised by the more powerful states over the rest, and guarantees the
reserved rights of the state governments by making it impossible, as far
as the mode of representation can prevent, that any measure should pass
Congress unless approved not only by a majority of the citizens, but by a
majority of the states. I have before adverted to the further incidental
advantage obtained of raising the standard of qualifications in one of the
houses. Being nominated by select bodies, the Legislatures of the various
states, whose choice, for reasons already indicated, is more likely to
fall on eminent men than any popular election—who have not only the
power of electing such, but a strong motive to do so, because the
influence of their state in the general deliberations must be materially
affected by the personal weight and abilities of its representatives—the
Senate of the United States, thus chosen, has always contained nearly all
the political men of established and high reputation in the Union; while
the Lower House of Congress has, in the opinion of competent observers,
been generally as remarkable for the absence of conspicuous personal
merit, as the Upper House for its presence.

When the conditions exist for the formation of efficient and durable
federal unions, the multiplication of them is always a benefit to the
world. It has the same salutary effect as any other extension of the
practice of co-operation, through which the weak, by uniting, can meet on
equal terms with the strong. By diminishing the number of those petty
states which are not equal to their own defense, it weakens the
temptations to an aggressive policy, whether working directly by arms, or
through the prestige of superior power. It of course puts an end to
war and diplomatic quarrels, and usually also to restrictions on commerce,
between the states composing the Union; while, in reference to neighboring
nations, the increased military strength conferred by it is of a kind to
be almost exclusively available for defensive, scarcely at all for
aggressive purposes. A federal government has not a sufficiently
concentrated authority to conduct with much efficiency any war but one of
self-defense, in which it can rely on the voluntary co-operation of every
citizen; nor is there any thing very flattering to national vanity or
ambition in acquiring, by a successful war, not subjects, nor even
fellow-citizens, but only new, and perhaps troublesome independent members
of the confederation. The warlike proceedings of the Americans in Mexico
was purely exceptional, having been carried on principally by volunteers,
under the influence of the migratory propensity which prompts individual
Americans to possess themselves of unoccupied land, and stimulated, if by
any public motive, not by that of national aggrandizement, but by the
purely sectional purpose of extending slavery. There are few signs in the
proceedings of Americans, nationally or individually, that the desire of
territorial acquisition for their country as such has any considerable
power over them. Their hankering after Cuba is, in the same manner, merely
sectional, and the Northern States, those opposed to slavery, have never
in any way favored it.

The question may present itself (as in Italy at its present uprising)
whether a country which is determined to be united should form a complete
or a merely federal union. The point is sometimes necessarily decided by
the mere territorial magnitude of the united whole. There is a limit to
the extent of country which can advantageously be governed, or even whose
government can be conveniently superintended from a single centre. There
are vast countries so governed; but they, or at least their distant
provinces, are in general deplorably ill administered, and it is only when
the inhabitants are almost savages that they could not manage their
affairs better separately. This obstacle does not exist in the case of
Italy, the size of which does not come up to that of several very
efficiently governed single states in past and present times. The question
then is, whether the different parts of the nation require to be governed
in a way so essentially different that it is not probable the same
Legislature, and the same ministry or administrative body, will give
satisfaction to them all. Unless this be the case, which is a question of
fact, it is better for them to be completely united. That a totally
different system of laws and very different administrative institutions
may exist in two portions of a country without being any obstacle to
legislative unity, is proved by the case of England and Scotland. Perhaps,
however, this undisturbed coexistence of two legal systems under one
united Legislature, making different laws for the two sections of the
country in adaptation to the previous differences, might not be so well
preserved, or the same confidence might not be felt in its preservation,
in a country whose legislators are more possessed (as is apt to be the
case on the Continent) with the mania for uniformity. A people having that
unbounded toleration which is characteristic of this country for every
description of anomaly, so long as those whose interests it concerns do
not feel aggrieved by it, afforded an exceptionally advantageous field for
trying this difficult experiment. In most countries, if it was an object
to retain different systems of law, it might probably be necessary to
retain distinct legislatures as guardians of them, which is perfectly
compatible with a national Parliament and king, or a national Parliament
without a king, supreme over the external relations of all the members of
the body.

Whenever it is not deemed necessary to maintain permanently, in the
different provinces, different systems of jurisprudence, and fundamental
institutions grounded on different principles, it is always practicable to
reconcile minor diversities with the maintenance of unity of government.
All that is needful is to give a sufficiently large sphere of action to
the local authorities. Under one and the same central government there may
be local governors, and provincial assemblies for local purposes. It may
happen, for instance, that the people of different provinces may have
preferences in favor of different modes of taxation. If the general
Legislature could not be depended on for being guided by the members for
each province in modifying the general system of taxation to suit that
province, the Constitution might provide that as many of the expenses of
the government as could by any possibility be made local should be
defrayed by local rates imposed by the provincial assemblies, and that
those which must of necessity be general, such as the support of an army
and navy, should, in the estimates for the year, be apportioned among the
different provinces according to some general estimate of their resources,
the amount assigned to each being levied by the local assembly on the
principles most acceptable to the locality, and paid en bloc into
the national treasury. A practice approaching to this existed even in the
old French monarchy, so far as regarded the pays d’états, each of
which, having consented or been required to furnish a fixed sum, was left
to assess it upon the inhabitants by its own officers, thus escaping the
grinding despotism of the royal intendants and subdélégués;
and this privilege is always mentioned as one of the advantages which
mainly contributed to render them, as some of them were, the most
flourishing provinces of France.

Identity of central government is compatible with many different degrees
of centralisation, not only administrative, but even legislative. A people
may have the desire and the capacity for a closer union than one merely
federal, while yet their local peculiarities and antecedents render
considerable diversities desirable in the details of their government. But
if there is a real desire on all hands to make the experiment successful,
there needs seldom be any difficulty in not only preserving these
diversities, but giving them the guaranty of a constitutional provision
against any attempt at assimilation except by the voluntary act of those
who would be affected by the change.

Chapter XVIII—Of the Government of Dependencies by a Free State.

Free states, like all others, may possess dependencies, acquired either by
conquest or by colonization, and our own is the greatest instance of the
kind in modern history. It is a most important question how such
dependencies ought to be governed.

It is unnecessary to discuss the case of small posts, like Gibraltar,
Aden, or Heligoland, which are held only as naval or military positions.
The military or naval object is in this case paramount, and the
inhabitants can not, consistently with it, be admitted to the government
of the place, though they ought to be allowed all liberties and privileges
compatible with that restriction, including the free management of
municipal affairs, and, as a compensation for being locally sacrificed to
the convenience of the governing state, should be admitted to equal rights
with its native subjects in all other parts of the empire.

Outlying territories of some size and population, which are held as
dependencies, that is, which are subject, more or less, to acts of
sovereign power on the part of the paramount country, without being
equally represented (if represented at all) in its Legislature, may be
divided into two classes. Some are composed of people of similar
civilization to the ruling country, capable of, and ripe for,
representative government, such as the British possessions in America and
Australia. Others, like India, are still at a great distance from that
state.

In the case of dependencies of the former class, this country has at
length realized, in rare completeness, the true principle of government.
England has always felt under a certain degree of obligation to bestow on
such of her outlying populations as were of her own blood and language,
and on some who were not, representative institutions formed in imitation
of her own; but, until the present generation, she has been on the same
bad level with other countries as to the amount of self-government which
she allowed them to exercise through the representative institutions that
she conceded to them. She claimed to be the supreme arbiter even of their
purely internal concerns, according to her own, not their ideas of how
those concerns could be best regulated. This practice was a natural
corollary from the vicious theory of colonial policy—once common to
all Europe, and not yet completely relinquished by any other people—which
regarded colonies as valuable by affording markets for our commodities
that could be kept entirely to ourselves; a privilege we valued so highly
that we thought it worth purchasing by allowing to the colonies the same
monopoly of our market for their own productions which we claimed for our
commodities in theirs. This notable plan for enriching them and ourselves
by making each pay enormous sums to the other, dropping the greatest part
by the way, has been for some time abandoned. But the bad habit of
meddling in the internal government of the colonies did not at once die
out when we relinquished the idea of making any profit by it. We continued
to torment them, not for any benefit to ourselves, but for that of a
section or faction among the colonists; and this persistence in
domineering cost us a Canadian rebellion before we had the happy thought
of giving it up. England was like an ill brought-up elder brother, who
persists in tyrannizing over the younger ones from mere habit, till one of
them, by a spirited resistance, though with unequal strength, gives him
notice to desist. We were wise enough not to require a second warning. A
new era in the colonial policy of nations began with Lord Durham’s Report;
the imperishable memorial of that nobleman’s courage, patriotism, and
enlightened liberality, and of the intellect and practical sagacity of its
joint authors, Mr. Wakefield and the lamented Charles Buller. [11]

It is now a fixed principle of the policy of Great Britain, professed in
theory and faithfully adhered to in practice, that her colonies of
European race, equally with the parent country, possess the fullest
measure of internal self-government. They have been allowed to make their
own free representative constitutions by altering in any manner they
thought fit the already very popular constitutions which we had given
them. Each is governed by its own Legislature and executive, constituted
on highly democratic principles. The veto of the crown and of Parliament,
though nominally reserved, is only exercised (and that very rarely) on
questions which concern the empire, and not solely the particular colony.
How liberal a construction has been given to the distinction between
imperial and colonial questions is shown by the fact that the whole of the
unappropriated lands in the regions behind our American and Australian
colonies have been given up to the uncontrolled disposal of the colonial
communities, though they might, without injustice, have been kept in the
hands of the imperial government, to be administered for the greatest
advantage of future emigrants from all parts of the empire. Every colony
has thus as full power over its own affairs as it could have if it were a
member of even the loosest federation, and much fuller than would belong
to it under the Constitution of the United States, being free even to tax
at its pleasure the commodities imported from the mother country. Their
union with Great Britain is the slightest kind of federal union; but not a
strictly equal federation, the mother country retaining to itself the
powers of a federal government, though reduced in practice to their very
narrowest limits. This inequality is, of course, as far as it goes, a
disadvantage to the dependencies, which have no voice in foreign policy,
but are bound by the decisions of the superior country. They are compelled
to join England in war without being in any way consulted previous to
engaging in it.

Those (now happily not a few) who think that justice is as binding on
communities as it is on individuals, and that men are not warranted in
doing to other countries, for the supposed benefit of their own country,
what they would not be justified in doing to other men for their own
benefit, feel even this limited amount of constitutional subordination on
the part of the colonies to be a violation of principle, and have often
occupied themselves in looking out for means by which it may be avoided.
With this view it has been proposed by some that the colonies should
return representatives to the British Legislature, and by others that the
powers of our own, as well as of their Parliaments, should be confined to
internal policy, and that there should be another representative body for
foreign and imperial concerns, in which last the dependencies of Great
Britain should be represented in the same manner, and with the same
completeness as Great Britain itself. On this system there would be a
perfectly equal federation between the mother country and her colonies,
then no longer dependencies.

The feelings of equity and conceptions of public morality from which these
suggestions emanate are worthy of all praise, but the suggestions
themselves are so inconsistent with rational principles of government that
it is doubtful if they have been seriously accepted as a possibility by
any reasonable thinker. Countries separated by half the globe do not
present the natural conditions for being under one government, or even
members of one federation. If they had sufficiently the same interests,
they have not, and never can have, a sufficient habit of taking council
together. They are not part of the same public; they do not discuss and
deliberate in the same arena, but apart, and have only a most imperfect
knowledge of what passes in the minds of one another. They neither know
each other’s objects, nor have confidence in each other’s principles of
conduct. Let any Englishman ask himself how he should like his destinies
to depend on an assembly of which one third was British American, and
another third South African and Australian. Yet to this it must come if
there were any thing like fair or equal representation; and would not
every one feel that the representatives of Canada and Australia, even in
matters of an imperial character, could not know or feel any sufficient
concern for the interests, opinions, or wishes of English, Irish, and
Scotch? Even for strictly federative purposes the conditions do not exist
which we have seen to be essential to a federation. England is sufficient
for her own protection without the colonies, and would be in a much
stronger, as well as more dignified position, if separated from them, than
when reduced to be a single member of an American, African, and Australian
confederation. Over and above the commerce which she might equally enjoy
after separation, England derives little advantage, except in prestige,
from her dependencies, and the little she does derive is quite outweighed
by the expense they cost her, and the dissemination they necessitate of
her naval and military force, which, in case of war, or any real
apprehension of it, requires to be double or treble what would be needed
for the defense of this country alone.

But, though Great Britain could do perfectly well without her colonies,
and though, on every principle of morality and justice, she ought to
consent to their separation, should the time come when, after full trial
of the best form of union, they deliberately desire to be dissevered,
there are strong reasons for maintaining the present slight bond of
connection so long as not disagreeable to the feelings of either party. It
is a step, as far as it goes, towards universal peace and general friendly
co-operation among nations. It renders war impossible among a large number
of otherwise independent communities, and, moreover, hinders any of them
from being absorbed into a foreign state, and becoming a source of
additional aggressive strength to some rival power, either more despotic
or closer at hand, which might not always be so unambitious or so pacific
as Great Britain. It at least keeps the markets of the different countries
open to one another, and prevents that mutual exclusion by hostile tariffs
which none of the great communities of mankind except England have yet
outgrown. And in the case of the British possessions it has the advantage,
especially valuable at the present time, of adding to the moral influence
and weight in the councils of the world of the power which, of all in
existence, best understands liberty—and, whatever may have been its
errors in the past, has attained to more of conscience and moral principle
in its dealings with foreigners than any other great nation seems either
to conceive as possible or recognize as desirable. Since, then, the union
can only continue, while it does continue, on the footing of an unequal
federation, it is important to consider by what means this small amount of
inequality can be prevented from being either onerous or humiliating to
the communities occupying the less exalted position.

The only inferiority necessarily inherent in the case is that the mother
country decides, both for the colonies and for herself, on questions of
peace and war. They gain, in return, the obligation on the mother country
to repel aggressions directed against them; but, except when the minor
community is so weak that the protection of a stronger power is
indispensable to it, reciprocity of obligation is not a full equivalent
for non-admission to a voice in the deliberations. It is essential,
therefore, that in all wars, save those which, like the Caffre or New
Zealand wars, are incurred for the sake of the particular colony, the
colonists should not (without their own voluntary request) be called on to
contribute any thing to the expense except what may be required for the
specific local defense of their ports, shores, and frontiers against
invasion. Moreover, as the mother country claims the privilege, at her
sole discretion, of taking measures or pursuing a policy which may expose
them to attack, it is just that she should undertake a considerable
portion of the cost of their military defense even in time of peace; the
whole of it, so far as it depends upon a standing army.

But there is a means, still more effectual than these, by which, and in
general by which alone, a full equivalent can be given to a smaller
community for sinking its individuality, as a substantive power among
nations, in the greater individuality of a wide and powerful empire. This
one indispensable, and, at the same time, sufficient expedient, which
meets at once the demands of justice and the growing exigencies of policy,
is to open the service of government in all its departments, and in every
part of the empire, on perfectly equal terms, to the inhabitants of the
colonies. Why does no one ever hear a breath of disloyalty from the
Islands in the British Channel? By race, religion, and geographical
position they belong less to England than to France; but, while they
enjoy, like Canada and New South Wales, complete control over their
internal affairs and their taxation, every office or dignity in the gift
of the crown is freely open to the native of Guernsey or Jersey. Generals,
admirals, peers of the United Kingdom are made, and there is nothing which
hinders prime ministers to be made from those insignificant islands. The
same system was commenced in reference to the colonies generally by an
enlightened colonial secretary, too early lost, Sir William Molesworth,
when he appointed Mr. Hinckes, a leading Canadian politician, to a West
Indian government. It is a very shallow view of the springs of political
action in a community which thinks such things unimportant because the
number of those in a position actually to profit by the concession might
not be very considerable. That limited number would be composed precisely
of those who have most moral power over the rest; and men are not so
destitute of the sense of collective degradation as not to feel the
withholding of an advantage from even one person, because of a
circumstance which they all have in common with him, an affront to all. If
we prevent the leading men of a community from standing forth to the world
as its chiefs and representatives in the general councils of mankind, we
owe it both to their legitimate ambition and to the just pride of the
community to give them in return an equal chance of occupying the same
prominent position in a nation of greater power and importance. Were the
whole service of the British crown opened to the natives of the Ionian
Islands, we should hear no more of the desire for union with Greece. Such
a union is not desirable for the people, to whom it would be a step
backward in civilization; but it is no wonder if Corfu, which has given a
minister of European reputation to the Russian Empire, and a president to
Greece itself before the arrival of the Bavarians, should feel it a
grievance that its people are not admissable to the highest posts in some
government or other.

Thus far of the dependencies whose population is in a sufficiently
advanced state to be fitted for representative government; but there are
others which have not attained that state, and which, if held at all, must
be governed by the dominant country, or by persons delegated for that
purpose by it. This mode of government is as legitimate as any other, if
it is the one which in the existing state of civilization of the subject
people most facilitates their transition to a higher stage of improvement.
There are, as we have already seen, conditions of society in which a
vigorous despotism is in itself the best mode of government for training
the people in what is specifically wanting to render them capable of a
higher civilization. There are others, in which the mere fact of despotism
has indeed no beneficial effect, the lessons which it teaches having
already been only too completely learned, but in which, there being no
spring of spontaneous improvement in the people themselves, their almost
only hope of making any steps in advance depends on the chances of a good
despot. Under a native despotism, a good despot is a rare and transitory
accident; but when the dominion they are under is that of a more civilized
people, that people ought to be able to supply it constantly. The ruling
country ought to be able to do for its subjects all that could be done by
a succession of absolute monarchs, guaranteed by irresistible force
against the precariousness of tenure attendant on barbarous despotisms,
and qualified by their genius to anticipate all that experience has taught
to the more advanced nation. Such is the ideal rule of a free people over
a barbarous or semi-barbarous one. We need not expect to see that ideal
realized; but, unless some approach to it is, the rulers are guilty of a
dereliction of the highest moral trust which can devolve upon a nation;
and if they do not even aim at it, they are selfish usurpers, on a par in
criminality with any of those whose ambition and rapacity have sported
from age to age with the destiny of masses of mankind.

As it is already a common, and is rapidly tending to become the universal
condition of the more backward populations to be either held in direct
subjection by the more advanced, or to be under their complete political
ascendancy, there are in this age of the world few more important problems
than how to organize this rule, so as to make it a good instead of an evil
to the subject people, providing them with the best attainable present
government, and with the conditions most favorable to future permanent
improvement. But the mode of fitting the government for this purpose is by
no means so well understood as the conditions of good government in a
people capable of governing themselves. We may even say that it is not
understood at all.

The thing appears perfectly easy to superficial observers. If India (for
example) is not fit to govern itself, all that seems to them required is
that there should be a minister to govern it, and that this minister, like
all other British ministers, should be responsible to the British
Parliament. Unfortunately this, though the simplest mode of attempting to
govern a dependency, is about the worst, and betrays in its advocates a
total want of comprehension of the conditions of good government. To
govern a country under responsibility to the people of that country, and
to govern one country under responsibility to the people of another, are
two very different things. What makes the excellence of the first is, that
freedom is preferable to despotism: but the last is despotism. The
only choice the case admits is a choice of despotisms, and it is not
certain that the despotism of twenty millions is necessarily better than
that of a few or of one; but it is quite certain that the despotism of
those who neither hear, nor see, nor know any thing about their subjects,
has many chances of being worse than that of those who do. It is not
usually thought that the immediate agents of authority govern better
because they govern in the name of an absent master, and of one who has a
thousand more pressing interests to attend to. The master may hold them to
a strict responsibility, enforced by heavy penalties, but it is very
questionable if those penalties will often fall in the right place.

It is always under great difficulties, and very imperfectly, that a
country can be governed by foreigners, even when there is no extreme
disparity in habits and ideas between the rulers and the ruled. Foreigners
do not feel with the people. They can not judge, by the light in which a
thing appears to their own minds, or the manner in which it affects their
feelings, how it will affect the feelings or appear to the minds of the
subject population. What a native of the country, of average practical
ability, knows as it were by instinct, they have to learn slowly, and,
after all, imperfectly, by study and experience. The laws, the customs,
the social relations for which they have to legislate, instead of being
familiar to them from childhood, are all strange to them. For most of
their detailed knowledge they must depend on the information of natives,
and it is difficult for them to know whom to trust. They are feared,
suspected, probably disliked by the population; seldom sought by them
except for interested purposes; and they are prone to think that the
servilely submissive are the trustworthy. Their danger is of despising the
natives; that of the natives is, of disbelieving that any thing the
strangers do can be intended for their good. These are but a part of the
difficulties that any rulers have to struggle with, who honestly attempt
to govern well a country in which they are foreigners. To overcome these
difficulties in any degree will always be a work of much labor, requiring
a very superior degree of capacity in the chief administrators, and a high
average among the subordinates; and the best organization of such a
government is that which will best insure the labor, develop the capacity,
and place the highest specimens of it in the situations of greatest trust.
Responsibility to an authority which has gone through none of the labor,
acquired none of the capacity, and for the most part is not even aware
that either, in any peculiar degree, is required, can not be regarded as a
very effectual expedient for accomplishing these ends.

The government of a people by itself has a meaning and a reality, but such
a thing as government of one people by another does not and can not exist.
One people may keep another as a warren or preserve for its own use, a
place to make money in, a human-cattle farm to be worked for the profit of
its own inhabitants; but if the good of the governed is the proper
business of a government, it is utterly impossible that a people should
directly attend to it. The utmost they can do is to give some of their
best men a commission to look after it, to whom the opinion of their own
country can neither be much of a guide in the performance of their duty,
nor a competent judge of the mode in which it has been performed. Let any
one consider how the English themselves would be governed if they knew and
cared no more about their own affairs than they know and care about the
affairs of the Hindoos. Even this comparison gives no adequate idea of the
state of the case; for a people thus indifferent to politics altogether
would probably be simply acquiescent, and let the government alone;
whereas in the case of India, a politically active people like the
English, amid habitual acquiescence, are every now and then interfering,
and almost always in the wrong place. The real causes which determine the
prosperity or wretchedness, the improvement or deterioration of the
Hindoos, are too far off to be within their ken. They have not the
knowledge necessary for suspecting the existence of those causes, much
less for judging of their operation. The most essential interests of the
country may be well administered without obtaining any of their
approbation, or mismanaged to almost any excess without attracting their
notice. The purposes for which they are principally tempted to interfere,
and control the proceedings of their delegates, are of two kinds. One is
to force English ideas down the throats of the natives; for instance, by
measures of proselytism, or acts intentionally or unintentionally
offensive to the religious feelings of the people. This misdirection of
opinion in the ruling country is instructively exemplified (the more so,
because nothing is meant but justice and fairness, and as much
impartiality as can be expected from persons really convinced) by the
demand now so general in England for having the Bible taught, at the
option of pupils or of their parents, in the government schools. From the
European point of view nothing can wear a fairer aspect, or seem less open
to objection on the score of religious freedom. To Asiatic eyes it is
quite another thing. No Asiatic people ever believes that a government
puts its paid officers and official machinery into motion unless it is
bent upon an object; and when bent on an object, no Asiatic believes that
any government, except a feeble and contemptible one, pursues it by
halves. If government schools and schoolmasters taught Christianity,
whatever pledges might be given of teaching it only to those who
spontaneously sought it, no amount of evidence would ever persuade the
parents that improper means were not used to make their children
Christians, or, at all events, outcasts from Hindooism. If they could, in
the end, be convinced of the contrary, it would only be by the entire
failure of the schools, so conducted, to make any converts. If the
teaching had the smallest effect in promoting its object, it would
compromise not only the utility and even existence of the government
education, but perhaps the safety of the government itself. An English
Protestant would not be easily induced, by disclaimers of proselytism, to
place his children in a Roman Catholic seminary; Irish Catholics will not
send their children to schools in which they can be made Protestants; and
we expect that Hindoos, who believe that the privileges of Hindooism can
be forfeited by a merely physical act, will expose theirs to the danger of
being made Christians!

Such is one of the modes in which the opinion of the dominant country
tends to act more injuriously than beneficially on the conduct of its
deputed governors. In other respects, its interference is likely to be
oftenest exercised where it will be most pertinaciously demanded, and that
is, on behalf of some interest of the English settlers. English settlers
have friends at home, have organs, have access to the public; they have a
common language, and common ideas with their countrymen; any complaint by
an Englishman is more sympathetically heard, even if no unjust preference
is intentionally accorded to it. Now if there be a fact to which all
experience testifies, it is that, when a country holds another in
subjection, the individuals of the ruling people who resort to the foreign
country to make their fortunes are of all others those who most need to be
held under powerful restraint. They are always one of the chief
difficulties of the government. Armed with the prestige and filled
with the scornful overbearingness of the conquering nation, they have the
feelings inspired by absolute power without its sense of responsibility.
Among a people like that of India, the utmost efforts of the public
authorities are not enough for the effectual protection of the weak
against the strong; and of all the strong, the European settlers are the
strongest. Wherever the demoralizing effect of the situation is not in a
most remarkable degree corrected by the personal character of the
individual, they think the people of the country mere dirt under their
feet: it seems to them monstrous that any rights of the natives should
stand in the way of their smallest pretensions; the simplest act of
protection to the inhabitants against any act of power on their part which
they may consider useful to their commercial objects they denounce, and
sincerely regard as an injury. So natural is this state of feeling in a
situation like theirs, that, even under the discouragement which it has
hitherto met with from the ruling authorities, it is impossible that more
or less of the spirit should not perpetually break out. The government,
itself free from this spirit, is never able sufficiently to keep it down
in the young and raw even of its own civil and military officers, over
whom it has so much more control than over the independent residents. As
it is with the English in India, so, according to trustworthy testimony,
it is with the French in Algiers; so with the Americans in the countries
conquered from Mexico; so it seems to be with the Europeans in China, and
already even in Japan: there is no necessity to recall how it was with the
Spaniards in South America. In all these cases, the government to which
these private adventurers are subject is better than they, and does the
most it can to protect the natives against them. Even the Spanish
government did this, sincerely and earnestly, though ineffectually, as is
known to every reader of Mr. Helps’ instructive history. Had the Spanish
government been directly accountable to Spanish opinion, we may question
if it would have made the attempt, for the Spaniards, doubtless, would
have taken part with their Christian friends and relations rather than
with pagans. The settlers, not the natives, have the ear of the public at
home; it is they whose representations are likely to pass for truth,
because they alone have both the means and the motive to press them
perseveringly upon the inattentive and uninterested public mind. The
distrustful criticism with which Englishmen, more than any other people,
are in the habit of scanning the conduct of their country towards
foreigners, they usually reserve for the proceedings of the public
authorities. In all questions between a government and an individual, the
presumption in every Englishman’s mind is that the government is in the
wrong. And when the resident English bring the batteries of English
political action to bear upon any of the bulwarks erected to protect the
natives against their encroachments, the executive, with their real but
faint velleities of something better, generally find it safer to their
Parliamentary interest, and, at any rate, less troublesome, to give up the
disputed position than to defend it.

What makes matters worse is that, when the public mind is invoked (as, to
its credit, the English mind is extremely open to be) in the name of
justice and philanthropy in behalf of the subject community or race, there
is the same probability of its missing the mark; for in the subject
community also there are oppressors and oppressed—powerful
individuals or classes, and slaves prostrate before them; and it is the
former, not the latter, who have the means of access to the English
public. A tyrant or sensualist who has been deprived of the power he had
abused, and, instead of punishment, is supported in as great wealth and
splendor as he ever enjoyed; a knot of privileged landholders, who demand
that the state should relinquish to them its reserved right to a rent from
their lands, or who resent as a wrong any attempt to protect the masses
from their extortion—these have no difficulty in procuring
interested or sentimental advocacy in the British Parliament and press.
The silent myriads obtain none.

The preceding observations exemplify the operation of a principle—which
might be called an obvious one, were it not that scarcely anybody seems to
be aware of it—that, while responsibility to the governed is the
greatest of all securities for good government, responsibility to somebody
else not only has no such tendency, but is as likely to produce evil as
good. The responsibility of the British rulers of India to the British
nation is chiefly useful because, when any acts of the government are
called in question, it insures publicity and discussion; the utility of
which does not require that the public at large should comprehend the
point at issue, provided there are any individuals among them who do; for
a merely moral responsibility not being responsibility to the collective
people, but to every separate person among them who forms a judgment,
opinions may be weighed as well as counted, and the approbation or
disapprobation of one person well versed in the subject may outweigh that
of thousands who know nothing about it at all. It is doubtless a useful
restraint upon the immediate rulers that they can be put upon their
defense, and that one or two of the jury will form an opinion worth having
about their conduct, though that of the remainder will probably be several
degrees worse than none. Such as it is, this is the amount of benefit to
India from the control exercised over the Indian government by the British
Parliament and people.

It is not by attempting to rule directly a country like India, but by
giving it good rulers, that the English people can do their duty to that
country; and they can scarcely give it a worse one than an English cabinet
minister, who is thinking of English, not Indian politics; who does not
remains long enough in office to acquire an intelligent interest in so
complicated a subject; upon whom the factitious public opinion got up in
Parliament, consisting of two or three fluent speakers, acts with as much
force as if it were genuine; while he is under none of the influences of
training and position which would lead or qualify him to form an honest
opinion of his own. A free country which attempts to govern a distant
dependency, inhabited by a dissimilar people, by means of a branch of its
own executive, will almost inevitably fail. The only mode which has any
chance of tolerable success is to govern through a delegated body of a
comparatively permanent character, allowing only a right of inspection and
a negative voice to the changeable administration of the state. Such a
body did exist in the case of India; and I fear that both India and
England will pay a severe penalty for the shortsighted policy by which
this intermediate instrument of government was done away with.

It is of no avail to say that such a delegated body can not have all the
requisites of good government; above all, can not have that complete and
over-operative identity of interest with the governed which it is so
difficult to obtain even where the people to be ruled are in some degree
qualified to look after their own affairs. Real good government is not
compatible with the conditions of the case. There is but a choice of
imperfections. The problem is, so to construct the governing body that,
under the difficulties of the position, it shall have as much interest as
possible in good government, and as little in bad. Now these conditions
are best found in an intermediate body. A delegated administration has
always this advantage over a direct one, that it has, at all events, no
duty to perform except to the governed. It has no interests to consider
except theirs. Its own power of deriving profit from misgovernment may be
reduced—in the latest Constitution of the East India Company it was
reduced—to a singularly small amount; and it can be kept entirely
clear of bias from the individual or class interests of any one else. When
the home government and Parliament are swayed by such partial influences
in the exercise of the power reserved to them in the last resort, the
intermediate body is the certain advocate and champion of the dependency
before the imperial tribunal. The intermediate body, moreover, is, in the
natural course of things, chiefly composed of persons who have acquired
professional knowledge of this part of their country’s concerns; who have
been trained to it in the place itself, and have made its administration
the main occupation of their lives. Furnished with these qualifications,
and not being liable to lose their office from the accidents of home
politics, they identify their character and consideration with their
special trust, and have a much more permanent interest in the success of
their administration, and in the prosperity of the country which they
administer, than a member of a cabinet under a representative constitution
can possibly have in the good government of any country except the one
which he serves. So far as the choice of those who carry on the management
on the spot devolves upon this body, their appointment is kept out of the
vortex of party and Parliamentary jobbing, and freed from the influence of
those motives to the abuse of patronage for the reward of adherents, or to
buy off those who would otherwise be opponents, which are always stronger
with statesmen of average honesty than a conscientious sense of the duty
of appointing the fittest man. To put this one class of appointments as
far as possible out of harm’s way is of more consequence than the worst
which can happen to all other offices in the state; for, in every other
department, if the officer is unqualified, the general opinion of the
community directs him in a certain degree what to do; but in the position
of the administrators of a dependency where the people are not fit to have
the control in their own hands, the character of the government entirely
depends on the qualifications, moral and intellectual, of the individual
functionaries.

It can not be too often repeated that, in a country like India, every
thing depends on the personal qualities and capacities of the agents of
government. This truth is the cardinal principle of Indian administration.
The day when it comes to be thought that the appointment of persons to
situations of trust from motives of convenience, already so criminal in
England, can be practiced with impunity in India, will be the beginning of
the decline and fall of our empire there. Even with a sincere intention of
preferring the best candidate, it will not do to rely on chance for
supplying fit persons. The system must be calculated to form them. It has
done this hitherto; and because it has done so, our rule in India has
lasted, and been one of constant, if not very rapid improvement in
prosperity and good administration. As much bitterness is now manifested
against this system, and as much eagerness displayed to overthrow it, as
if educating and training the officers of government for their work were a
thing utterly unreasonable and indefensible, an unjustifiable interference
with the rights of ignorance and inexperience. There is a tacit conspiracy
between those who would like to job in first-rate Indian offices for their
connections here, and those who, being already in India, claim to be
promoted from the indigo factory or the attorney’s office to administer
justice or fix the payments due to government from millions of people. The
“monopoly” of the civil service, so much inveighed against, is like the
monopoly of judicial offices by the bar; and its abolition would be like
opening the bench in Westminster Hall to the first comer whose friends
certify that he has now and then looked into Blackstone. Were the course
ever adopted of sending men from this country, or encouraging them in
going out, to get themselves put into high appointments without having
learned their business by passing through the lower ones, the most
important offices would be thrown to Scotch cousins and adventurers,
connected by no professional feeling with the country or the work, held to
no previous knowledge, and eager only to make money rapidly and return
home. The safety of the country is, that those by whom it is administered
be sent out in youth, as candidates only, to begin at the bottom of the
ladder, and ascend higher or not, as, after a proper interval, they are
proved qualified. The defect of the East India Company’s system was that,
though the best men were carefully sought out for the most important
posts, yet, if an officer remained in the service, promotion, though it
might be delayed, came at last in some shape or other, to the least as
well as to the most competent. Even the inferior in qualifications among
such a corps of functionaries consisted, it must be remembered, of men who
had been brought up to their duties, and had fulfilled them for many
years, at lowest without disgrace, under the eye and authority of a
superior. But, though this diminished the evil, it was nevertheless
considerable. A man who never becomes fit for more than an assistant’s
duty should remain an assistant all his life, and his juniors should be
promoted over him. With this exception, I am not aware of any real defect
in the old system of Indian appointments. It had already received the
greatest other improvement it was susceptible of, the choice of the
original candidates by competitive examination, which, besides the
advantage of recruiting from a higher grade of industry and capacity, has
the recommendation that under it, unless by accident, there are no
personal ties between the candidates for offices and those who have a
voice in conferring them.

It is in no way unjust that public officers thus selected and trained
should be exclusively eligible to offices which require specially Indian
knowledge and experience. If any door to the higher appointments, without
passing through the lower, be opened even for occasional use, there will
be such incessant knocking at it by persons of influence that it will be
impossible ever to keep it closed. The only excepted appointment should be
the highest one of all. The Viceroy of British India should be a person
selected from all Englishmen for his great general capacity for
government. If he have this, he will be able to distinguish in others, and
turn to his own use, that special knowledge and judgment in local affairs
which he has not himself had the opportunity of acquiring. There are good
reasons why the viceroy should not be a member of the regular service. All
services have, more or less, their class prejudices, from which the
supreme ruler ought to be exempt. Neither are men, however able and
experienced, who have passed their lives in Asia, so likely to possess the
most advanced European ideas in general statesmanship, which the chief
ruler should carry out with him, and blend with the results of Indian
experience. Again, being of a different class, and especially if chosen by
a different authority, he will seldom have any personal partialities to
warp his appointments to office. This great security for honest bestowal
of patronage existed in rare perfection under the mixed government of the
crown and the East India Company. The supreme dispensers of office—the
governor general and governors—were appointed, in fact though not
formally, by the crown, that is, by the general government, not by the
intermediate body, and a great officer of the crown probably had not a
single personal or political connection in the local service, while the
delegated body, most of whom had themselves served in the country, had,
and were likely to have, such connections. This guaranty for impartiality
would be much impaired if the civil servants of government, even though
sent out in boyhood as mere candidates for employment, should come to be
furnished, in any considerable proportion, by the class of society which
supplies viceroys and governors. Even the initiatory competitive
examination would then be an insufficient security. It would exclude mere
ignorance and incapacity; it would compel youths of family to start in the
race with the same amount of instruction and ability as other people; the
stupidest son could not be put into the Indian service, as he can be into
the Church; but there would be nothing to prevent undue preference
afterwards. No longer, all equally unknown and unheard of by the arbiter
of their lot, a portion of the service would be personally, and a still
greater number politically, in close relation with him. Members of certain
families, and of the higher classes and influential connections generally,
would rise more rapidly than their competitors, and be often kept in
situations for which they were unfit, or placed in those for which others
were fitter. The same influences would be brought into play which affect
promotions in the army; and those alone, if such miracles of simplicity
there be, who believe that these are impartial, would expect impartiality
in those of India. This evil is, I fear, irremediable by any general
measures which can be taken under the present system. No such will afford
a degree of security comparable to that which once flowed spontaneously
from the so-called double government.

What is accounted so great an advantage in the case of the English system
of government at home has been its misfortune in India—that it grew
up of itself, not from preconceived design, but by successive expedients,
and by the adaptation of machinery originally created for a different
purpose. As the country on which its maintenance depended was not the one
out of whose necessities it grew, its practical benefits did not come home
to the mind of that country, and it would have required theoretic
recommendations to render it acceptable. Unfortunately, these were exactly
what it seemed to be destitute of; and undoubtedly the common theories of
government did not furnish it with such, framed as those theories have
been for states of circumstances differing in all the most important
features from the case concerned. But in government as in other
departments of human agency, almost all principles which have been durable
were first suggested by observation of some particular case, in which the
general laws of nature acted in some new or previously unnoticed
combination of circumstances. The institutions of Great Britain, and those
of the United States, have the distinction of suggesting most of the
theories of government which, through good and evil fortune, are now, in
the course of generations, reawakening political life in the nations of
Europe. It has been the destiny of the government of the East India
Company to suggest the true theory of the government of a semi-barbarous
dependency by a civilized country, and after having done this, to perish.
It would be a singular fortune if, at the end of two or three more
generations, this speculative result should be the only remaining fruit of
our ascendancy in India; if posterity should say of us that, having
stumbled accidentally upon better arrangements than our wisdom would ever
have devised, the first use we made of our awakened reason was to destroy
them, and allow the good which had been in course of being realized to
fall through and be lost from ignorance of the principles on which it
depended. Dî meliora; but if a fate so disgraceful to England and
to civilization can be averted, it must be through far wider political
conceptions than merely English or European practice can supply, and
through a much more profound study of Indian experience and of the
conditions of Indian government than either English politicians, or those
who supply the English public with opinions, have hitherto shown any
willingness to undertake.

The End

Footnotes:

1 (return)
[ I limit the expression to
past time, because I would say nothing derogatory of a great, and now at
last a free, people, who are entering into the general movement of
European progress with a vigor which bids fair to make up rapidly the
ground they have lost. No one can doubt what Spanish intellect and energy
are capable of; and their faults as a people are chiefly those for which
freedom and industrial ardor are a real specific.]

2 (return)
[ Italy, which alone can be
quoted as an exception, is only so in regard to the final stage of its
transformation. The more difficult previous advance from the city
isolation of Florence, Pisa, or Milan, to the provincial unity of Tuscany
or Lombardy, took place in the usual manner.]

3 (return)
[ This blunder of Mr.
Disraeli (from which, greatly to his credit, Sir John Pakington took an
opportunity soon after of separating himself) is a speaking instance,
among many, how little the Conservative leaders understand Conservative
principles. Without presuming to require from political parties such an
amount of virtue and discernment as that they should comprehend, and know
when to apply, the principles of their opponents, we may yet say that it
would be a great improvement if each party understood and acted upon its
own. Well would it be for England if Conservatives voted consistently for
every thing conservative, and Liberals for every thing liberal. We should
not then have to wait long for things which, like the present and many
other great measures, are eminently both the one and the other. The
Conservatives, as being by the law of their existence the stupidest party,
have much the greatest sins of this description to answer for; and it is a
melancholy truth, that if any measure were proposed on any subject truly,
largely, and far-sightedly conservative, even if Liberals were willing to
vote for it, the great bulk of the Conservative party would rush blindly
in and prevent it from being carried.]

4 (return)
[ “Thoughts on Parliamentary
Reform,” 2nd ed. p. 32-36.]

5 (return)
[ “This expedient has been
recommended both on the score of saving expense and on that of obtaining
the votes of many electors who otherwise would not vote, and who are
regarded by the advocates of the plan as a particularly desirable class of
voters. The scheme has been carried into practice in the election of
poor-law guardians, and its success in that instance is appealed to in
favor of adopting it in the more important case of voting for a member of
the Legislature. But the two cases appear to me to differ in the point on
which the benefits of the expedient depend. In a local election for a
special kind of administrative business, which consists mainly in the
dispensation of a public fund, it is an object to prevent the choice from
being exclusively in the hands of those who actively concern themselves
about it; for the public interest which attaches to the election being of
a limited kind, and in most cases not very great in degree, the
disposition to make themselves busy in the matter is apt to be in a great
measure confined to persons who hope to turn their activity to their own
private advantage; and it may be very desirable to render the intervention
of other people as little onerous to them as possible, if only for the
purpose of swamping these private interests. But when the matter in hand
is the great business of national government, in which every one must take
an interest who cares for any thing out of himself, or who cares even for
himself intelligently, it is much rather an object to prevent those from
voting who are indifferent to the subject, than to induce them to vote by
any other means than that of awakening their dormant minds. The voter who
does not care enough about the election to go to the poll is the very man
who, if he can vote without that small trouble, will give his vote to the
first person who asks for it, or on the most trifling or frivolous
inducement. A man who does not care whether he votes is not likely to care
much which way he votes; and he who is in that state of mind has no moral
right to vote at all; since, if he does so, a vote which is not the
expression of a conviction, counts for as much, and goes as far in
determining the result as one which represents the thoughts and purposes
of a life.”—Thoughts, etc., p. 39.]

6 (return)
[ Several of the witnesses
before the Committee of the House of Commons in 1860, on the operation of
the Corrupt Practices Prevention Act, some of them of great practical
experience in election matters, were favorable (either absolutely or as a
last resort) to the principle of requiring a declaration from members of
Parliament, and were of opinion that, if supported by penalties, it would
be, to a great degree, effectual. (Evidence, pp. 46, 54-7, 67, 123,
198-202, 208.) The chief commissioner of the Wakefield Inquiry said (in
reference certainly to a different proposal), “If they see that the
Legislature is earnest upon the subject, the machinery will work…. I am
quite sure that if some personal stigma were applied upon conviction of
bribery, it would change the current of public opinion” (pp. 26 and 32). A
distinguished member of the committee (and of the present cabinet) seemed
to think it very objectionable to attach the penalties of perjury to a
merely promissory as distinguished from an assertory oath; but he was
reminded that the oath taken by a witness in a court of justice is a
promissory oath; and the rejoinder (that the witness’s promise relates to
an act to be done at once, while the member’s would be a promise for all
future time) would only be to the purpose if it could be supposed that the
swearer might forget the obligation he had entered into, or could possibly
violate it unawares: contingencies which, in a case like the present, are
out of the question.

A more substantial difficulty is, that one of the forms most frequently
assumed by election expenditure is that of subscriptions to local
charities or other local objects; and it would be a strong measure to
enact that money should not be given in charity within a place by the
member for it. When such subscriptions are bonâ fide, the
popularity which may be derived from them is an advantage which it seems
hardly possible to deny to superior riches. But the greatest part of the
mischief consists in the fact that money so contributed is employed in
bribery, under the euphonious name of keeping up the member’s interest. To
guard against this, it should be part of the member’s promissory
declaration that all sums expended by him in the place, or for any purpose
connected with it or with any of its inhabitants (with the exception
perhaps of his own hotel expenses) should pass through the hands of the
election auditor, and be by him (and not by the member himself or his
friends) applied to its declared purpose.

The principle of making all lawful expenses of a charge, not upon the
candidate, but upon the locality, was upheld by two of the best witnesses
(pp. 20, 65-70, 277).]

7 (return)
[ “As Mr. Lorimer remarks, by
creating a pecuniary inducement to persons of the lowest class to devote
themselves to public affairs, the calling of the demagogue would be
formally inaugurated. Nothing is more to be deprecated than making it the
private interest of a number of active persons to urge the form of
government in the direction of its natural perversion. The indications
which either a multitude or an individual can give when merely left to
their own weaknesses, afford but a faint idea of what those weaknesses
would become when played upon by a thousand flatterers. If there were 658
places of certain, however moderate emolument, to be gained by persuading
the multitude that ignorance is as good as knowledge, and better, it is
terrible odds that they would believe and act upon the lesson.”—(Article
in Fraser’s Magazine for April, 1859, headed “Recent Writers on
Reform.”)]

8 (return)
[ Not always, however, the
most recondite; for one of the latest denouncers of competitive
examination in the House of Commons had the näiveté to produce a
set of almost elementary questions in algebra, history, and geography, as
a proof of the exorbitant amount of high scientific attainment which the
Commissioners were so wild as to exact.]

9 (return)
[ On Liberty, concluding
chapter; and, at greater length, in the final chapter of “Principles of
Political Economy.”]

10 (return)
[ Mr. Calhoun.]

11 (return)
[ I am speaking here of the
adoption of this improved policy, not, of course, of its original
suggestion. The honor of having been its earliest champion belongs
unquestionably to Mr. Roebuck.]

CONSIDERATIONS ON REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT

By John Stuart Mill

Author Of “A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive”

Preface