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Representative
Government
John Stuart Mill
1861
Batoche Books
Kitchener
2001
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Contents
Preface ............................................................................................... 5
Chapter 1: To what extent Forms of Government are a Matter of
Choice.......................................................................................... 6
Chapter 2: The Criterion of a Good Form of Government............... 15
Chapter 3: That the ideally best Form of Government is Representa-
tive Government. ....................................................................... 32
Chapter 4: Under what Social Conditions Representative Government
is Inapplicable. .......................................................................... 47
Chapter 5: Of the Proper Functions of Representative Bodies......... 57
Chapter 6: Of the Infirmities and Dangers to which Representative
Government is Liable. ............................................................... 70
Chapter 7: Of True and False Democracy; Representation of All, and
Representation of the Majority only. ......................................... 84
Chapter 8: Of the Extension of the Suffrage.................................. 102
Chapter 9: Should there be Two Stages of Election? ......................118
Chapter 10: Of the Mode of Voting................................................ 123
Chapter 11: Of the Duration of Parliaments. ................................. 136
Chapter 12: Ought Pledges to be Required from Members of Parlia-
ment? ....................................................................................... 138
Chapter 13: Of a Second Chamber. ............................................... 147
Chapter 14: Of the Executive in a Representative Government. .... 154
Chapter 15: Of Local Representative Bodies. ................................ 168
Chapter 16: Of Nationality, as connected with Representative Govern-
ment. ........................................................................................ 181
Chapter 17: Of Federal Representative Governments. ................... 188
Chapter 18: Of the Government of Dependencies by a Free State. 197
Notes .............................................................................................. 214
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Preface
Those who have done me the honour 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 con-
nection; 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 Con-
servatives 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 pos-
sible; 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 anything 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 forma-
tion.
6/John Stuart Mill
Chapter 1
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 institu-
tions; or, to speak more properly, conflicting conceptions of what politi-
cal 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 fulfil 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 opin-
ion which we have privately arrived at. To find the best form of govern-
ment; 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 constitu-
tion in the same light (difference of scale being allowed for) as they
would upon a steam plough, 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 govern-
ment 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 cannot be constructed by pre-
meditated 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 funda-
mental 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 prod-
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uct 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 contriv-
ances 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 superduce 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 insti-
tutions. 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 employ-
ment 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 institu-
tions as if they were a kind of living organisms really the political fatal-
ists 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 dif-
ferent 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 modifi-
cation to either, the two doctrines correspond to a deep-seated differ-
ence 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
8/John Stuart Mill
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 pro-
cess 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 ma-
chinery 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 acquies-
cence, but their active participation; and must be adjusted to the capaci-
ties and qualities of such men as are available. This implies three condi-
tions. 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 insur-
mountable 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 fulfil 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 govern-
ment, whatever favourable promise it may otherwise hold out, unsuit-
able 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. Noth-
ing but foreign force would induce a tribe of North American Indians to
submit to the restraints of a regular and civilised government. The same
might have been said, though somewhat less absolutely, of the barbar-
ians who overran the Roman Empire. It required centuries of time, and
an entire change of circumstances, to discipline them into regular obedi-
ence even to their own leaders, when not actually serving under their
banner. There are nations who will not voluntarily submit to any gov-
ernment but that of certain families, which have from time immemorial
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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 fulfil its conditions. They may be incapable of fulfilling such
of them as are necessary to keep the government even in nominal exist-
ence. Thus a people may prefer a free government, but if, from indo-
lence, 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 tempo-
rary 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 fulfil the duties which
a particular form of government requires of them. A rude people, though
in some degree alive to the benefits of civilised society, may be unable to
practise the forbearance 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 civilised government, to be really advantageous to them,
will require to be in a considerable degree despotic: to be 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 assassi-
10/John Stuart Mill
nation- require that the public authorities should be armed with much
sterner powers of repression than elsewhere, since the first indispens-
able requisites of civilised life have nothing else to rest on. These de-
plorable states of feeling, in any people who have emerged from savage
life, are, no doubt, usually the consequence of previous bad govern-
ment, 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 cannot 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, representa-
tive 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
practised, instead of a security against misgovernment, is but an addi-
tional 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 indepen-
dence, there could be nothing like a regulated popular government be-
yond 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 sur-
mount 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 unavoid-
ably 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 volun-
tary fidelity for the obedience even of his army, nor did there exist the
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means of making the people pay an amount of taxes sufficient for keep-
ing up the force necessary to compel obedience throughout a large terri-
tory. 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 preclud-
ing its existence, or hindering it from being practically preferable to any
other which can be had. This last question mainly depends upon a con-
sideration 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 ad-
aptation 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 fulfil the first and second conditions, and, in some considerable
measure, the third; their doctrine, thus limited, is incontestable. What-
ever 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, consid-
ered 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 con-
ditions. 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
12/John Stuart Mill
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 civilisation, 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 particu-
lar 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 govern-
ment 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. Everything
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 cannot 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
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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 politi-
cians 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 cannot be durable
unless preceded or accompanied by an altered distribution of power in
society itself. A nation, therefore, cannot choose its form of govern-
ment. The mere details, and practical organisation, 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 hav-
ing 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 organised;
and the advantage in organisation is necessarily with those who are in
possession of the government. A much weaker party in all other ele-
ments of power may greatly preponderate when the powers of govern-
ment 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 bal-
anced 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 quies-
14/John Stuart Mill
cent, 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 anything 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
towards ranging the powers of society on its side. On the day when the
proto-martyr 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 po-
litical, where religion, so far as 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 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
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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 persua-
sions and convictions of average men are in a much greater degree de-
termined 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 recognise
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 favours,
instead of discouraging, the attempt to exercise, among all forms of
government practicable in the existing condition of society, a rational
choice.
Chapter 2
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 charac-
teristics 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 func-
tions of a government are not a fixed thing, but different in different
states of society; much more extensive in a backward than in an ad-
vanced state. And, secondly, the character of a government or set of
political institutions cannot 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
16/John Stuart Mill
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 realised 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 nec-
essary limits but those of human existence; and the influence of govern-
ment 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 so-
ciety, 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 facil-
ity if we could say the good of society consists of such and such ele-
ments; one of these elements requires such conditions, another such oth-
ers; 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 towards 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 re-
markable 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
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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 govern-
ment 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 indi-
vidual 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 under-
stood, expresses, doubtless, an indispensable attribute of government.
Those who are unable to make their ordinances obeyed, cannot 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 fulfil, 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 govern-
ment, than either its purpose or the criterion of its excellence. For the
habit may be well established of submitting to the government, and re-
ferring 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 everything
which a government can be required to promote. But, thus understood,
it affords no basis for a philosophy of government. We cannot say that,
in constituting a polity, certain provisions ought to be made for Order
18/John Stuart Mill
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 al-
ready exists are the very same which promote the increase of it, and vice
versa: 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 manage-
ment, 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 im-
provement? and is not any growth of these virtues in the community in
itself the greatest of improvements? If so, whatever qualities in the gov-
ernment are promotive of industry, integrity, justice, and prudence, con-
duce 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 di-
rectly 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 anything 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 requi-
Representative Government/19
sites 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 in-
stance, the common institution of a police. Order is the object which
seems most immediately interested in the efficiency of this part of the
social organisation. 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 imper-
fect 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 taxa-
tion 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 favours the creation of more. A
just distribution of burthens, 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 levy-
ing 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 versa, all errors in finance and taxa-
tion which obstruct the improvement of the people in wealth and morals
tend also, if of sufficiently serious amount, positively to impoverish and
demoralise them. It holds, in short, universally, that when Order and
Permanence are taken in their widest sense, for the stability of existing
20/John Stuart Mill
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 classi-
fication, we shall perhaps be reminded that Progress may be at the ex-
pense 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. Grant-
ing 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 everything.
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 gen-
eral interest of Progress has been mistaken.
If these improperly contrasted ideas are to be used at all in the at-
tempt 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 Or-
der, 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 pre-requisites 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. Condu-
civeness to Progress, thus understood, includes the whole excellence of
a government.
But, though metaphysically defensible, this definition of the crite-
Representative Government/21
rion 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 towards improvement; we ought not to forget that there is an
incessant and ever-flowing current of human affairs towards 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 realised
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 towards 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
anything 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
22/John Stuart Mill
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 per-
sonnel 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 ensure 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 consider-
ations to which I now proceed.
If we ask ourselves on what causes and conditions good govern-
ment 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 effi-
cacy 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 indiffer-
ence to the subject that those who would administer honestly and capa-
bly cannot 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
Representative Government/23
assembly work for good if its members can be bought, or if their excit-
ability 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 anything, 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 illustra-
tion. 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 pro-
portion 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 supe-
rior 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 them-
selves. 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 gov-
ernment 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 govern-
ment, 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
24/John Stuart Mill
the moving force which works the machinery. This leaves, as the other
constituent element of the merit of a government, the quality of the ma-
chinery 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 differ-
ence between a good and a bad system of judicature lies in the contriv-
ances 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 intelli-
gence; the salutary forms of procedure; the publicity which allows ob-
servation and criticism of whatever is amiss; the liberty of discussion
and censure 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 de-
tecting 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 ex-
ecutive 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 re-
sponsible, and is known to others as responsible for it; when the best-
contrived checks are provided against negligence, favouritism, or job-
bery, 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
Representative Government/25
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 im-
pediment 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 administra-
tion of the government is still more evidently true of its general constitu-
tion. All government which aims at being good is an organisation 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 govern-
ment, and investing them with greater influence in it, than they would in
general have under any other mode of organisation; 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 organising, and the better the mode of organisation,
the better will be the government.
We have now, therefore, obtained a foundation for a twofold divi-
sion 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 advance-
ment in intellect, in virtue, and in practical activity and efficiency; and
partly of the degree of perfection with which they organise 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 deterio-
rate 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 organised arrange-
ments for public business: in the first capacity its beneficial action is
chiefly indirect, but not therefore less vital, while its mischievous action
26/John Stuart Mill
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 con-
nection with one another. The institutions which ensure the best man-
agement 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 oner-
ous 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 never-
theless 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 op-
eration as an agency of national education, and its arrangements for
conducting the collective affairs of the community in the state of educa-
tion in which they already are; the last evidently varies much less, from
difference of country and state of civilisation, 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 abso-
lute monarchy: only an absolute monarchy is not so likely to practise it.
The laws of property, for example; the principles of evidence and judi-
cial 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
Representative Government/27
equally likely to be understood, or acted on under all forms of govern-
ment, yet, if understood and acted on, would in general be equally ben-
eficial 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 details, 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 dif-
ferent, according to the stage of advancement already reached. The rec-
ognition 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
customary to claim representative democracy for England or France by
arguments which would equally have proved it the only fit form of gov-
ernment 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 consid-
erable, and the future possible extension vastly greater. A community
can only be developed out of one of these states into a higher by a con-
course 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 obedi-
ence, are the most powerful of the influences, except their religious be-
lief, 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 ad-
vancement. And the one indispensable merit of a government, in favour
of which it may be forgiven almost any amount of other demerit com-
patible with progress, is that its operation on the people is favourable,
or not unfavourable, 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
28/John Stuart Mill
fits, from any external control, is practically incapable of making any
progress in civilisation until it has learnt 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 surren-
der by the different members of the community of their individual free-
dom of action, would fail to enforce the first lesson which the pupils, in
this stage of their progress, require. Accordingly, the civilisation of such
tribes, when not the result of juxtaposition with others already civilised,
is almost always the work of an absolute ruler, deriving his power either
from religion or military prowess; very often from foreign arms.
Again, uncivilised races, and the bravest and most energetic still
more than the rest, are averse to continuous labour of an unexciting
kind. Yet all real civilisation is at this price; without such labour, neither
can the mind be disciplined into the habits required by civilised society,
nor the material world prepared to receive it. There needs a rare concur-
rence 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 com-
pelled 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 civilised people have far other means of imparting civilisation
to those under their influence; and slavery is, in all its details, so repug-
nant 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 civilised 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
civilised, have consisted, in majority, of slaves. A people in that condi-
tion 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 asso-
ciated 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 ensure 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
Representative Government/29
condition of slavery, and is generally a sign that it is becoming obsolete.
A slave, properly so called, is a being who has not learnt 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 learnt 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 despo-
tism, only confirm the slaves in their incapacities. Yet a government
under their own control would be entirely unmanageable by them. Their
improvement cannot 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; maintain-
ing 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 minutae 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 neces-
sary 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 admis-
sible 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 govern-
ment, but on political science at large. For our more limited purpose we
30/John Stuart Mill
borrow from political philosophy only its general principles. To deter-
mine 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 cannot advance, or advance only in a lame and
lopsided manner. We must not, however, forget the reservation neces-
sary 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 des-
potism of China, were very fit instruments for carrying those nations up
to the point of civilisation 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 insignifi-
cant Oriental people- the Jews. They, too, had an absolute monarchy
and a hierarchy, their organised institutions were as obviously of sacer-
dotal 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 mould-
ing 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
unorganised 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
Representative Government/31
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 estab-
lished, and a barrier against further improvement. The remark of a dis-
tinguished 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 deserv-
ing of such treatment, but could give forth better and higher interpreta-
tions of the national religion, which thenceforth became part of the reli-
gion. 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 his-
torical 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
favourable 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 cultiva-
tion.
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 gov-
ernment most eligible in itself, that is, which, if the necessary conditions
existed for giving effect to its beneficial tendencies, would, more than
all others, favour 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
realise its tendencies, and what, therefore, are the various defects by
which a people is made incapable of reaping its benefits. It would then
32/John Stuart Mill
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 govern-
ment will be found in some one or other variety of the Representative
System.
Chapter 3
That the ideally best Form of Government is
Representative Government.
It has long (perhaps throughout the entire duration of British freedom)
been a common saying, that if a good despot could be ensured, 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 ensure 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 situa-
tions of trust; justice would be as well administered, the public burthens
would be as light and as judiciously imposed, every branch of adminis-
tration would be as purely and as intelligently conducted, as the circum-
stances of the country and its degree of intellectual and moral cultiva-
tion 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 realisation 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
Representative Government/33
are all that is granted to a king as to the humblest labourer, 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 administra-
tion 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 extraordi-
nary 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 be-
yond. 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 at-
tain under it? On matters of pure theory they might perhaps be allowed
to speculate, so long as their speculations either did not approach poli-
tics, 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 busi-
ness 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
34/John Stuart Mill
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 organisation 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 with-
out 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 ca-
pacities 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 do-
mestic 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 reli-
gion, even supposing it to escape perversion for the purposes of despo-
tism, 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 ac-
cepting 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
Representative Government/35
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
anything, that the era of national decline has arrived: that is, if the na-
tion had ever attained anything 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 realised anything higher,
through the energy, patriotism, and enlargement of mind, which as na-
tional qualities are the fruits solely of freedom, it relapses in a few gen-
erations 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 necessi-
ties 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 sup-
posed good despot abstains from exercising his power, and, though hold-
ing 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 ex-
ecutive 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 govern-
ments must displease many persons, and these having now regular or-
gans, and being able to express their sentiments, opinions adverse to the
measures of government would often be expressed. What is the mon-
arch to do when these unfavourable opinions happen to be in the major-
36/John Stuart Mill
ity? 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 obedi-
ence 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 realise 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 pru-
dent, or indulgent, master.
It is not much to be wondered at if impatient or disappointed re-
formers, groaning under the impediments opposed to the most salutary
public improvements by the ignorance, the indifference, the intractable-
ness, 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 gov-
erned. 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 realisation of their hopes
leave out of the idea of good government its principal element, the im-
provement of the people themselves. One of the benefits of freedom is
that under it the ruler cannot 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 govern-
ment would last no longer than the freedom of a people usually lasts
who have been liberated by foreign arms without their own co-opera-
tion. 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.
Representative Government/37
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 as-
sumption 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 ob-
stacles 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 dan-
gerous of chimeras. Evil for evil, a good despotism, in a country at all
advanced in civilisation, 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 gov-
ernment 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 func-
tion, 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 fac-
ulties.
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
38/John Stuart Mill
civilisation, but the one which, in the circumstances in which it is prac-
ticable and eligible, is attended with the greatest amount of beneficial
consequences, immediate and prospective. A completely popular gov-
ernment is the only polity which can make out any claim to this charac-
ter. It is pre-eminent in both the departments between which the excel-
lence of a political constitution is divided. It is both more favourable 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 prin-
ciples, of as universal truth and applicability as any general proposi-
tions 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 ha-
bitually disposed, to stand up for them. The second is, that the general
prosperity attains a greater height, and is more widely diffused, in pro-
portion 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 pru-
dence, which every person, capable of conducting his own affairs, im-
plicitly 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 assur-
edly 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 elite of mankind, and may become
so among the rest. But as this opinion is anything but popular with those
defenders of existing institutions who find fault with the doctrine of the
Representative Government/39
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 sup-
pose that when power resides in an exclusive class, that class will know-
ingly and deliberately sacrifice the other classes to themselves: it suf-
fices 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 di-
rectly concerns.
In this country, for example, what are called the working classes
may be considered as excluded from all direct participation in the gov-
ernment. 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 sacri-
fices, especially of their pecuniary interest, for the benefit of the work-
ing classes, and err rather by too lavish and indiscriminating benefi-
cence; 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 com-
posing it, ever for an instant look at any question with the eyes of a
working man? When a subject arises in which the labourers as such
have an interest, is it regarded from any point of view but that of the
employers of labour? 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 some-
times 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, how-
ever sincere, of protecting the interests of others can make it safe or
40/John Stuart Mill
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; Swit-
zerland, Holland, and England, with Austria or anterevolutionary France.
Their superior prosperity was too obvious ever to have been gainsaid:
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
co-existed 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 privi-
leges to a part only of the community; and that a government in which
they are extended impartially to all is a desideratum still unrealised. 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 guarantee 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 commu-
nity, to which the general prosperity is always proportioned.
Thus stands the case as regards present well-being; the good man-
agement 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,
Representative Government/41
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 favour 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 neighbours increases our sense
of security, and plays into the hands of our wilfulness. Passive charac-
ters, 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 in-
tellectual 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 vigourous thinking, the
thinking which ascertains truths instead of dreaming dreams, is suc-
cessful 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 Vedas. 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 pro-
mote 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 advance-
ment of the community as a whole.
42/John Stuart Mill
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 favour 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 inces-
santly grumbling that fortune does not do for them what they do not
attempt to do for themselves, or overflowing with envy and ill-will to-
wards 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 anything desirable, be it a palace, a handsome child, or
even good health and spirits: the supposed effect of his mere look con-
stitutes the all-pervading superstition of the evil eye. Next to Orientals
in envy, as in activity, are some of the Southern Europeans. The Span-
iards pursued all their great men with it, embittered their lives, and gen-
erally 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,
Representative Government/43
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 counteract-
ing elements in the French character, and most of all to the great indi-
vidual energy which, though less persistent and more intermittent than
in the self-helping and struggling Anglo-Saxons, has nevertheless mani-
fested itself among the French in nearly every direction in which the
operation of their institutions has been favourable 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 ap-
parently a more favoured lot. But the great mass of seeming content-
ment 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 spiri-
tual worth, or at least a disinterested zeal to benefit others. The con-
tented man, or the contented family, who have no ambition to make any
one else happier, to promote the good of their country or their
neighbourhood, or to improve themselves in moral excellence, excite in
us neither admiration nor approval. We rightly ascribe this sort of con-
tentment to mere unmanliness and want of spirit. The content which we
approve is an ability to do cheerfully without what cannot 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 pro-
portion as it is actively engaged in the attempt to improve its own or
some other lot. He who is continually measuring his energy against dif-
ficulties 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 oth-
ers 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 likeli-
est to acquire all that is really excellent or desirable in the opposite type.
44/John Stuart Mill
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 man-
kind. It has been acutely remarked that whenever anything goes amiss
the habitual impulse of French people is to say, “ll faut de la patience”;
and of English people, “What a shame.” The people who think it a shame
when anything 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 con-
tinual 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 per-
fecting 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 are that through
which alone, when existing in the mass, any very formidable misdirec-
tion by an energetic few becomes possible. It is this, mainly, which re-
tains 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 favoured by the government of one or a few, and the active self-
helping type by that of the Many. Irresponsible rulers need the quies-
cence 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 encourage-
ment from despots, has to get itself forgiven by them. Even when irre-
sponsible rulers are not sufficiently conscious of danger from the men-
tal 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. Be-
Representative Government/45
tween 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 gov-
ernment 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 indi-
vidual, 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 invigo-
rating 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 de-
mand 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 concep-
tions or to their sentiments. Their work is a routine; not a labour 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
46/John Stuart Mill
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 be-
yond anything 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 institu-
tions, must make 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 func-
tions. 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 common good: and he usually
finds associated with him in the same work minds more familiarised
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 for their benefit to be for his benefit. 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
Representative Government/47
be pursued jointly with others, but only in competition with them, and in
some measure at their expense. A neighbour, 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 suf-
fers, 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 everywhere be as great as the general degree of improvement of
the community will allow; and that nothing less can be ultimately desir-
able than the admission of all to a share in the sovereign power of the
state. But since all cannot, 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 4
Under what Social Conditions Representative
Government is Inapplicable.
We have recognised 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, ei-
ther through its own unfitness, or the superior fitness of some other
regimen.
First, then, representative, like any other government, must be un-
48/John Stuart Mill
suitable in any case in which it cannot permanently subsist—i.e., in
which it does not fulfil 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 neces-
sary for its preservation. 3. That they should be willing and able to fulfil
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 for-
eign 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 enter-
prise 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 opposi-
tion, 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. Un-
less, therefore, the authorities whose office it is to check the executive
are backed by an effective opinion and feeling in the country, the execu-
tive has always the means of setting them aside, or compelling them to
subservience, and is sure to be well supported in doing so. Representa-
tive 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,
Representative Government/49
are almost sure to be overthrown, as soon as the head of the govern-
ment, 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 fulfil the part which belongs to them in a repre-
sentative 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 adher-
ents 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 addi-
tion 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,
2
it can
hardly be doubted, that the placehunters who chiefly compose the repre-
sentative 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 co-existence with the popular body
of an hereditary king. If, instead of struggling for the favours 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
realised.
50/John Stuart Mill
The preceding are the cases in which representative government
cannot 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 civilisation,
have some lesson to learn, some habit not yet acquired, to the acquisi-
tion 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 civilisation, that of
obedience. A race who have been trained in energy and courage by
struggles with Nature and their neighbours, 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 inde-
pendence, any improving restraint. The mode in which such tribes are
usually brought to submit to the primary conditions of civilised society
is through the necessities of warfare, and the despotic authority indis-
pensable 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 Mahomet, 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 gov-
ernment.
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 cir-
cumstances could obtain representative institutions, they would inevita-
bly choose their tyrants as their representatives, and the yoke would be
made heavier on them by the contrivance which prima 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
Representative Government/51
as many of his chief feudatories, the great advantage which he derived
from being but one has been recognised 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 advan-
tage of opportunities which offered themselves only to him. It was, there-
fore, sure; and, in proportion as it was accomplished, it abated, in the
oppressed portion of the community, the habit of submitting to oppres-
sion. 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 neighbouring 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 in-
strumental in carrying the people through a necessary stage of improve-
ment, which representative government, if real, would most likely have
prevented them from entering upon. Nothing short of despotic rule, or a
general massacre, could have effected 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
civilisation 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, free-
dom, may be unqualified for amalgamating into even the smallest na-
tion. Not only may jealousies and antipathies repel them from one an-
other, 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
52/John Stuart Mill
interests, and have even realised a tolerably effective popular govern-
ment on that restricted scale, and may yet have but slender sympathies
with anything 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 num-
ber of these political atoms or corpuscles have coalesced into a body,
and learnt to feel themselves one people, except through previous sub-
jection to a central authority common to all.
3
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 geo-
graphical 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
favourable concurrence of circumstances under which this step in im-
provement could be made, would be one which should raise up repre-
sentative institutions without representative government; a representa-
tive body, or bodies, drawn from the localities, making itself the auxil-
iary 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 cen-
tral authority is carried home, much more effectually than it could oth-
erwise 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 fatal-
ity 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 repre-
sentative 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 suf-
ficiently various and considerable of its own to occupy worthily and
expand to fit proportions the social and political intelligence of the popu-
lation.
For these several reasons, kingly government, free from the control
Representative Government/53
(though perhaps strengthened by the support) of representative institu-
tions, 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 institu-
tions, and gave place at last, during a considerable lapse of time, to
oligarchies of a few families.
A hundred other infirmities or short-comings 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 man-
agement 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 as-
sent 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 civilisation,
the One and his counsellors, or the Few, are not likely to be habitually
exempt; except in the case of their being foreigners, belonging to a supe-
rior people or a more advanced state of society. Then, indeed, the rulers
may be, to almost any extent, superior in civilisation to those over whom
they rule; and subjection to a foreign government of this description,
notwithstanding its inevitable evils, is of ten 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 in-
definitely if the subject population had been left unassisted to its native
tendencies and chances. In a country not under the dominion of foreign-
ers, the only cause adequate to producing similar benefits is the rare
accident of a monarch of extraordinary genius. There have been in his-
tory 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 influ-
54/John Stuart Mill
ence. 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 criti-
cal 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 men-
tioned. The case most requiring consideration in reference to institu-
tions is the not very uncommon one in which a small but leading portion
of the population, from difference of race, more civilised origin, or other
peculiarities of circumstance, are markedly superior in civilisation 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 civilisation
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 con-
stitutionally 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 circum-
stances 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 hab-
its of collective resistance, and may admit of being, in time and by de-
grees, expanded into a really national representation (which is in sub-
stance the history of the English Parliament), the nation has then the
most favourable 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
Representative Government/55
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 exer-
cised over the conquered is an illusion. A government strictly limited in
its powers and attributions, required to hold its hands from over-med-
dling, 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, pro-
vided the authority itself is open to general competition. An average
individual among them prefers the chance, however distant or improb-
able, 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-hunt-
ers; in whom the course of politics is mainly determined by place-hunt-
ing; 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 everything 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 over-
government 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 anything
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 con-
56/John Stuart Mill
signing 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 favours.
The point of character which, beyond any other, fits the people of
this country for representative government is that they have almost uni-
versally the contrary characteristic. They are very jealous of any at-
tempt 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 per-
sonal subservience to them, that no people are so fond of resisting au-
thority 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 strang-
ers. If we except the few families or connections of whom official em-
ployment 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 bureau-
cracy-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 retrench-
ment 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.
Representative Government/57
Chapter 5
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 particu-
lar 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 periodi-
cally 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 authori-
ties 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 exer-
cised, would enable it to stop all the machinery of government. Nomi-
nally, 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
58/John Stuart Mill
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 main-
tain themselves in existence, on condition of harmonising with the ac-
tual 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 Con-
stitution to that one of the powers which has the preponderance of ac-
tive 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 Con-
stitution would not possess the stability which characterises 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 Athe-
nian Constitution had many such provisions; and so has that of the United
States.
But while it is essential to representative government that the prac-
tical 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 everything 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 everything, but cannot possibly do everything; and in many
cases its control over everything will be more perfect the less it person-
Representative Government/59
ally attempts to do. The commander of an army could not direct its
movements effectually if he himself fought in the ranks, or led an as-
sault. It is the same with bodies of men. Some things cannot be done
except by bodies; other things cannot 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 pecu-
liarly 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 esti-
mates. Though the supplies can only be voted by the House of Com-
mons, and though the sanction of the House is also required for the
appropriation of the revenues to the different items of the public expen-
diture, 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 judg-
ment in the detail of its application, can only be expected when the
executive government, through whose hands it is to pass, is made re-
sponsible 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 recognised in this constitu-
tional doctrine, if followed as far as they will go, are a guide to the
limitation and definition of the general functions of representative as-
semblies. In the first place, it is admitted in all countries in which the
representative system is practically understood, that numerous repre-
sentative 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 organised and under command, is fit for action, in the proper
60/John Stuart Mill
sense. Even a select board, composed of few members, and these spe-
cially 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 opin-
ions, 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 prac-
tice, if not in theory, a managing director; its good or bad management
depends essentially on some one person’s qualifications, and the remain-
ing 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 respon-
sibility 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 pecu-
liar 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 per-
son of good sense, who has in his mind a true picture of the circum-
stances 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 ca-
Representative Government/61
pacity, 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 ac-
tion 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 depart-
ment, the consequences liable to follow from any particular mode of
conducting it, require for weighing and estimating them a kind of knowl-
edge, 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 as-
sembly 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 cannot 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 per-
son who takes most pains with it. The bad measures or bad appoint-
ments 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
62/John Stuart Mill
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 everybody 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 cannot 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 em-
ployments. The experience of every person conversant with public af-
fairs 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 recognised 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 obliga-
tions are so little regarded by great public officers who can be made
Representative Government/63
responsible for their appointments, how must it be with assemblies who
cannot? Even now, the worst appointments are those which are made
for the sake of gaining support or disarming opposition in the represen-
tative 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 anything 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 frequently for no better reason than that he is personally popu-
lar.
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 recognises 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, par-
ties or bodies of men, shall furnish the executive government: the opin-
ion 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 Constitu-
tion, these things seem to be on as good a footing as they can be. Parlia-
ment does not nominate any minister, but the Crown appoints the head
of the administration in conformity to the general wishes and inclina-
tions manifested by Parliament, and the other ministers on the recom-
mendation of the chief; while every minister has the undivided moral
responsibility of appointing fit persons to the other offices of adminis-
tration 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 subor-
dinates. To all these considerations, at least theoretically, I fully antici-
pate a general assent: though, practically, the tendency is strong in rep-
resentative bodies to interfere more and more in the details of adminis-
tration, by virtue of the general law, that whoever has the strongest
64/John Stuart Mill
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 accu-
rate 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 con-
ditions 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 con-
tradiction 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 Parlia-
ment 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 cannot be passed, because the House of Com-
mons 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 after-
Representative Government/65
wards 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 smat-
tering of the subject, leading to consequences which the member who
introduced or those who supported the Bill did not at the moment fore-
see, 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 ema-
nated, who probably has not a seat in the House. Their defence 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 meet-
ing unforeseen objections. This evil, as far as Government bills are con-
cerned, 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 recognised that, in
legislation as well as administration, the only task to which a represen-
tative 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 sanc-
66/John Stuart Mill
tion to it when performed. Any government fit for a high state of
civilisation 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, re-
vised 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 improve-
ments 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 Com-
mission 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 coun-
try 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 Parlia-
ment, 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 Parlia-
ment. At the expiration of the five years a member should cease to hold
office unless reappointed, in order to provide a convenient mode of get-
ting 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 Nomothetae, whose duty it also was to revise the whole of the laws,
and keep them consistent with one another. In the English Constitution
Representative Government/67
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 adminis-
tration of the Poor Laws, or the Inclosure Commission. If, in consider-
ation 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 Com-
mons would gradually find it convenient, and likely to facilitate the pass-
ing 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 intro-
duce 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 aban-
doned, but laid up in the same armoury with the royal veto, the right of
withholding the supplies, and other ancient instruments of political war-
fare, 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 labour and special study and experi-
68/John Stuart Mill
ence; while the most important liberty of the nation, that of being gov-
erned 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 accom-
pany 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 censure them if found condemnable, and, if the men
who compose the government abuse their trust, or fulfil 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 Griev-
ances, 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 it-
self 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 contro-
versy; 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 representa-
tives 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 employ-
ment, 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 mea-
sures with some regard not solely to present exigencies, but to tenden-
cies in progress.
Representative assemblies are often taunted by their enemies with
being places of mere talk and bavardage. There has seldom been more
Representative Government/69
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 anywhere, 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 with-
holding the final seal of national assent. It is for want of this judicious
reserve that popular assemblies attempt to do what they cannot 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 with-
drawn 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
70/John Stuart Mill
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 guarantee the one from those which
essentially require the other; by disjoining the office of control and criti-
cism 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 practised intel-
ligence 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 repre-
sentative 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 con-
sidered the most proper composition of the great representative body,
destined to control as sovereign the enactment of laws and the adminis-
tration of the general affairs of the nation.
Chapter 6
Of the Infirmities and Dangers to which
Representative Government is Liable.
The defects of any form of government may be either negative or posi-
tive. It is negatively defective if it does not concentrate in the hands of
the authorities power sufficient to fulfil the necessary offices of a gov-
ernment; 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 pre-
serve 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 inde-
pendence 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 ob-
served) 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 en-
trusted to the executive, this can only arise from a jealous feeling on the
Representative Government/71
part of the assembly towards 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 constitu-
tional 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 con-
trary, 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 check-
ing those who govern, have been sufficiently dwelt upon in the preced-
ing 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, in-
tellectual, and active, of the people, has been exhibited generally in set-
ting 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 mu-
nicipal offices, and above all by the utmost possible publicity and lib-
erty 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 deriv-
able 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
72/John Stuart Mill
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 li-
able in a greater degree than any other. The energy of a monarch, the
steadiness and prudence of an aristocracy, are thought to contrast most
favourably with the vacillation and shortsightedness of even a 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 mon-
archy, when it is really such, and not aristocracy in disguise, far sur-
passes democracy in all the forms of incapacity supposed to be charac-
teristic of the last. I say, except in a rude age, because in a really rude
state of society there is a considerable guarantee for the intellectual and
active capacities of the sovereign. His personal will is constantly en-
countering obstacles from the wilfulness of his subjects, and of power-
ful 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 en-
ergy. 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 sec-
ond 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 commence-
ment 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 vigour 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 per-
manent bureaucracy. The Russian and Austrian Governments, and even
the French Government in its normal condition, are oligarchies of offi-
Representative Government/73
cials, 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 sus-
tained mental ability and vigour in the conduct of affairs have generally
been aristocracies. But they have been, without any exception, aristoc-
racies 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 man-
agement 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 general exclusively composed of persons who
had exercised public functions, and had either already filled or were
looking forward to fill the higher offices of the state, at the peril of a
severe responsibility in case of incapacity and failure. When once mem-
bers of the Senate, their lives were pledged to the conduct of public
affairs; they were not permitted even to leave Italy except in the dis-
charge 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 ad-
ministered, 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 suc-
cess 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,
74/John Stuart Mill
whether under monarchical or aristocratic forms, have been essentially
bureaucracies. The work of government has been in the hands of gover-
nors 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 consid-
erable 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 phe-
nomenon as a great king.
The comparison, therefore, as to the intellectual attributes of a gov-
ernment, has to be made between a representative democracy and a bu-
reaucracy; 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 experi-
ence, 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 favourable to indi-
vidual energy of mind. The disease which afflicts bureaucratic govern-
ments, 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
Representative Government/75
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 concep-
tions of the man of original genius among them to prevail over the ob-
structive spirit of trained mediocrity. Only in a popular government (set-
ting 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 vigour 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 exemplifi-
cation 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
organised hostility to improvements from without, which even the auto-
cratic power of a vigorous-minded Emperor is seldom or never suffi-
cient 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 Chi-
nese 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 exclu-
sive 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 cannot do, for a country, the things
which can be done by a free government; but it might be supposed ca-
pable of doing some things which free government, of itself, cannot 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 cannot 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 be-
tween 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
76/John Stuart Mill
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 recognising 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 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 de-
mocracy 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 repre-
sentative 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, minis-
try; it will connive at, or overlook in them, abuses of trust, will be de-
luded by their false pretences, or will withhold support from those who
endeavour to fulfil 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, mo-
mentary 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 con-
flicting more or less with the general good of the community.
It is universally admitted that, of the evils incident to monarchical
Representative Government/77
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 them-
selves 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 inter-
est of the people is to have as little control exercised over them in any
respect as is consistent with attaining the legitimate ends of govern-
ment. 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 aris-
tocracy or an aristocratic monarchy, is to assume to themselves an end-
less 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
78/John Stuart Mill
the rule of the numerical majority, it is surely possible that the ruling
power may be under the dominion of sectional or class interests, point-
ing 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 versa: is it likely that the majority would allow
equal justice to the minority? Suppose the majority Catholics, the mi-
nority 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. Be-
tween these two classes, on many questions, there is complete opposi-
tion of apparent interest. We will suppose the majority sufficiently intel-
ligent to be aware that it is not for their advantage to weaken the secu-
rity 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 realised 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, ex-
pending the proceeds in modes supposed to conduce to the profit and
advantage of the labouring class? Suppose, again, a minority of skilled
labourers, a majority of unskilled: the experience of many trade unions,
unless they are greatly calumniated, justifies the apprehension that equal-
ity of earnings might be imposed as an obligation, and that piecework,
payment by the hour, 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 labour market,
taxes or restrictions on machinery, and on improvements of all kinds
tending to dispense with any of the existing labour- even, perhaps, pro-
tection 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 labourers.
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
Representative Government/79
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 labouring
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 labourers. 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 labourers 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 Caesars 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 praetors 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 imagi-
nations 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 regime by
whose gradual operation all the civilisation which had been gained in-
sensibly faded away, until the Empire, which had conquered and em-
braced the world in its grasp, so completely lost even its military effi-
ciency, 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 indi-
80/John Stuart Mill
vidual 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 practi-
cally a man’s interest, you must know the cast of his habitual feelings
and thoughts. Everybody has two kinds of interests, interests which he
cares for, and interests which he does not care for. Everybody has self-
ish 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 neighbour, 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 cannot 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 inter-
ests 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
Representative Government/81
hands, the man’s individual interest, or the class’s separate interest, ac-
quires an entirely new degree of importance in their eyes. Finding them-
selves 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 cannot 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.
82/John Stuart Mill
We all know what specious fallacies may be urged in defence 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 des-
titute of ability, and of considerable popular influence, think it fair to
throw the whole burthen of taxation upon savings, under the name of
realised property, allowing those whose progenitors and themselves have
always spent all they received to remain, as a reward for such exem-
plary 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 use-
less and mischievous by able men. Nothing but that acquaintance with
external nature, empirically acquired, which serves directly for the pro-
duction of objects necessary to existence or agreeable to the senses,
would get its utility recognised 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 quar-
ters 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 op-
position 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 ques-
tions 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 per-
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sons who have the same sinister interest- that is, whose direct and ap-
parent 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, should 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 in-
terest. Let us call them (in brief general terms) labourers on the one
hand, employers of labour on the other: including however along with
employers of labour, not only retired capitalists, and the possessors of
inherited wealth, but all that highly paid description of labourers (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 labourers, on the other hand, may be ranked
those smaller employers of labour, who by interests, habits, and educa-
tional impressions are assimilated in wishes, tastes, and objects to the
labouring classes; comprehending a large proportion of petty trades-
men. 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 organisation must be such that these two classes, manual
labourers and their affinities on one side, employers of labour and their
affinities on the other, should be, in the arrangement of the representa-
tive 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 con-
siderations, though too few and weak to prevail against the whole of the
others, usually after sufficient discussion and agitation become strong
enough to turn the balance in favour of the body of private interests
84/John Stuart Mill
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 suc-
cesses on carrying with it at least a large proportion of those who act on
higher motives and more comprehensive and distant views.
Chapter 7
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 representa-
tive 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 organise 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 suf-
frage. 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, cannot be di-
vested of certain evils; but those evils are greatly aggravated by the fact
that the democracies which at present exist are not equal, but systemati-
cally unequal in favour 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 com-
monly conceived and hitherto practised 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 favour of the nu-
merical majority, who alone possess practically any voice in the State.
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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 ma-
jority, the smaller number to the greater, is a familiar idea; and accord-
ingly 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 mi-
nority none? Is it necessary that the minority should not even be heard?
Nothing but habit and old association can reconcile any reasonable be-
ing to the needless injustice. In a really equal democracy, every or any
section would be represented, not disproportionately, but proportion-
ately. A majority of the electors would always have a majority of the
representatives; but a minority of the electors would always have a mi-
nority of the representatives. Man for man they would be as fully repre-
sented 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 govern-
ment, but, above all, contrary to the principle of democracy, which pro-
fesses 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 nu-
86/John Stuart Mill
merical 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 suf-
frage, there is a contested election in every constituency, and every elec-
tion is carried by a small majority. The Parliament thus brought to-
gether 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 guarantee is there that these measures ac-
cord with the wishes of a majority of the people? Nearly half the elec-
tors, 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 prob-
ably are, hostile to the measures, having voted against those by whom
they have been carried. Of the remaining electors, nearly half have cho-
sen representatives who, by supposition, have voted against the mea-
sures. It is possible, therefore, and not at all improbable, that the opin-
ion 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 coun-
try 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 popula-
tion; for in that case the majority in every locality would consist of
manual labourers; 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 anywhere. 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
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House for whom they have voted? Is it just that every elector of
Marylebone is obliged to be represented by two nominees of the ves-
tries, 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 misrepre-
sented. 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 ne-
cessity of not dividing the party, for fear of letting in its opponents,
induces all to vote either for the first person who presents himself wear-
ing their colours, or for the one brought forward by their local leaders;
and these, if we pay them the compliment, which they very seldom de-
serve, of supposing their choice to be unbiassed by their personal inter-
ests, 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. The choice
of the majority is therefore very likely to be determined by that portion
of the body who are the most timid, the most narrow-minded and preju-
88/John Stuart Mill
diced, or who cling most tenaciously to the exclusive class-interest; in
which case the electoral rights of the minority, while useless for the
purposes for which votes are given, serve only for compelling the ma-
jority to accept the candidate of the weakest or worst portion of them-
selves.
That, while recognising 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 despair-
ing 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 connec-
tion 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 with-
out 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 opin-
ion, 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.
4
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 constitu-
ency, 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
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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 man-
ner; 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 recognised 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 con-
stituency, 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 draw-
ing 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 elec-
tors 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 lib-
erty to vote for any candidate in whatever part of the country he might
offer himself. Those electors, therefore, who did not wish to be repre-
sented 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
90/John Stuart Mill
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 cannot 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 can-
didates from engrossing nearly all the suffrages, it is necessary, how-
ever 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 expedi-
ent. 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 al-
lotted 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 con-
cerned; and if any one who had obtained the quota was not duly re-
turned 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),
5
and to a pamphlet by Mr. Henry Fawcett (now Professor of
Political Economy in the University, of Cambridge), 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 usefulness.
The more these works are studied the stronger, I venture to predict, will
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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 improve-
ments yet made in the theory and practice of government.
In the first place, it secures a representation, in proportion to num-
bers, 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 as-
sortment 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, among all the candidates for Parlia-
ment who are favourably known to a certain number of electors, he is
the one who best expresses the voter’s own opinions, 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 them-
selves, not a few vestrymen or parish notabilities merely. All however,
that is worth preserving in the representation of places would be pre-
served. 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 could make up the quota within itself, 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 well
qualified to be their representative. It would be the minorities chiefly,
who being unable to return the local member, would look out elsewhere
92/John Stuart Mill
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 quali-
fications desirable in the representatives. At present, by universal ad-
mission, it is becoming more and more difficult for any one who has
only talents and character to gain admission into the House of Com-
mons. The only persons who can get elected are those who possess local
influence, or make their way by lavish expenditure, or who, on the invi-
tation 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, or who could not succeed in
carrying the local candidate they preferred, would have the power to fill
up their voting papers by a selection from all the persons of national
reputation, on the list of candidates, with whose general political prin-
ciples they were in sympathy. Almost every person, therefore, who had
made himself in any way honourably 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
undreamt of. Hundreds of able men of independent thought, who would
have no chance whatever of being chosen by the majority of any exist-
ing 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 elec-
tion, 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 elite 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 Com-
mons. 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 impos-
sible any longer to foist upon the electors the first person who presents
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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 some-
where else, and the minority would prevail. The slavery of the majority
to the least estimable portion of their number would be at an end: the
very best and most capable of the local notabilities would be put for-
ward by preference; if possible, such as were known in some advanta-
geous 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
civilisation, is towards collective mediocrity: and this tendency is in-
creased 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, seldom
even offer themselves for Congress or the State Legislatures, so little
likelihood have they of being returned.
Had a plan like Mr. Hare’s by good fortune suggested itself to the
enlightened and patriotic founders of the American Republic, the Fed-
eral and State Assemblies would have contained many of these distin-
guished men, and democracy would have been spared its greatest re-
proach 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 constituen-
cies 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 anything considerable.
94/John Stuart Mill
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 out vote them, but they would speak and
vote in their presence, and subject to their criticism. When any differ-
ence 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 as-
sume 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 insen-
sibly raised by the influence of the minds with which they were in con-
tact, 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 at least some 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 gov-
ernment; and the best friends of representative democracy can hardly be
without misgivings that the Themistocles or Demosthenes, whose coun-
sels 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 sensibly 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.
Representative Government/95
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 unful-
filled without condemning that government to infallible degeneracy and
decay. This may be called the function of Antagonism. In every govern-
ment there is some power stronger than all the rest; and the power which
is strongest tends perpetually to become the sole power. Partly by inten-
tion, and partly unconsciously, it is ever striving to make all other things
bend to itself; and is not content while there is anything 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 ev-
erything after its own model, improvement, in that country, is at an end,
and decline commences. Human improvement is a product of many fac-
tors, 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 exis-
tent 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 inter-
est, 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 resis-
tance to the tendencies of the ruling power; a protection, a rallying point,
for opinions and interests which the ascendant public opinion views
96/John Stuart Mill
with disfavour. 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 pre-
dominance 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 mod-
ern society admit of. The only quarter in which to look for a supple-
ment, or completing corrective, to the instincts of a democratic major-
ity, 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 aggre-
gate of minorities would afford that organ in its greatest perfection. A
separate organisation of the instructed classes, even if practicable, would
be invidious, and could only escape from being offensive by being to-
tally without influence. But if the elite of these classes formed part of
the Parliament, by the same title as any other of its members—by repre-
senting 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 opin-
ions and counsels 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 func-
tions 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 sympathise 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 influ-
ences which assail the weak side of democracy, could scarcely by hu-
man 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.
Representative Government/97
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 pretence of equal justice, aim only at substi-
tuting the class ascendancy of the poor for that of the rich, will of course
be unfavourable 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 opportu-
nity and demagogic artifices may hereafter have in exciting it. In the
United States, where the numerical majority have long been in full pos-
session 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 feel-
ings cannot exist without somebody who feels them; nor local interests
without somebody interested in them. If the human beings whose feel-
ings 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 cannot 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 prin-
ciple 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
98/John Stuart Mill
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 affirm-
ing 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, stigmatised as insurmountably prejudiced against anything
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 insurmount-
able 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 in this case
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 gener-
ally 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 unfamiliar-
ity 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 gen-
erally awakened interest in improvement, what formerly was the work
of centuries, often requires only years.
Since the first publication of this Treatise, several adverse criti-
cisms have been made on Mr. Hare’s plan, which indicate at least a
careful examination of it, and a more intelligent consideration than had
previously been given to its pretensions. This is the natural progress of
the discussion of great improvements. They are at first met by a blind
prejudice, and by arguments to which only blind prejudice could attach
any value. As the prejudice weakens, the arguments it employs for some
time increase in strength; since, the plan being better understood, its
inevitable inconveniences, and the circumstances which militate against
its at once producing all the benefits it is intrinsically capable of, come
to light along with its merits. But of all the objections, having any sem-
blance of reason, which have come under my notice, there is not one
Representative Government/99
which had not been foreseen, considered, and canvassed by the support-
ers of the plan, and found either unreal or easily surmountable.
The most serious, in appearance, of the objections may be the most
briefly answered; the assumed impossibility of guarding against fraud,
or suspicion of fraud, in the operations of the Central Office. Publicity,
and complete liberty of inspecting the voting papers after the election,
were the securities provided; but these, it is maintained, would be un-
availing; because, to check the returns, a voter would have to go over all
the work that had been done by the staff of clerks. This would be a very
weighty objection, if there were any necessity that the returns should be
verified individually by every voter. All that a simple voter could be
expected to do in the way of verification would be to check the use made
of his own voting paper; for which purpose every paper would be re-
turned, after a proper interval, to the place from whence it came. But
what he could not do would be done for him by the unsuccessful candi-
dates and their agents. Those among the defeated who thought that they
ought to have been returned would, singly or a number together, employ
an agency for verifying the process of the election; and if they detected
material error, the documents would be referred to a Committee of the
House of Commons, by whom the entire electoral operations of the na-
tion would be examined and verified, at a tenth part the expense of time
and money necessary for the scrutiny of a single return before an Elec-
tion Committee under the system now in force.
Assuming the plan to be workable, two modes have been alleged in
which its benefits might be frustrated, and injurious consequences pro-
duced in lieu of them. First, it is said that undue power would be given
to knots or cliques; sectarian combinations; associations for special
objects, such as the Maine Law League, the Ballot or Liberation Soci-
ety; or bodies united by class interests or community of religious per-
suasion. It is in the second place objected that the system would admit
of being worked for party purposes. A central organ of each political
party would send its list of 658 candidates all through the country, to be
voted for by the whole of its supporters in every constituency. Their
votes would far outnumber those which could ever be obtained by any
independent candidate. The “ticket” system, it is contended, would, as it
does in America, operate solely in favour of the great organised parties,
whose tickets would be accepted blindly, and voted for in their integrity;
and would hardly ever be outvoted, except occasionally, by the sectar-
ian groups, or knots of men bound together by a common crotchet who
100/John Stuart Mill
have been already spoken of.
The answer to this appears to be conclusive. No one pretends that
under Mr. Hare’s or any other plan organisation would cease to be an
advantage. Scattered elements are always at a disadvantage compared
with organised bodies. As Mr. Hare’s plan cannot alter the nature of
things, we must expect that all parties or sections, great or small, which
possess organisation, would avail themselves of it to the utmost to
strengthen their influence. But under the existing system those influ-
ences are everything. The scattered elements are absolutely nothing.
The voters who are neither bound to the great political nor to any of the
little sectarian divisions have no means of making their votes available.
Mr. Hare’s plan gives them the means. They might be more, or less,
dexterous in using it. They might obtain their share of influence, or
much less than their share. But whatever they did acquire would be
clear gain. And when it is assumed that every petty interest, or combina-
tion for a petty object, would give itself an organisation, why should we
suppose that the great interest of national intellect and character would
alone remain unorganised? If there would be Temperance tickets, and
Ragged School tickets, and the like, would not one public-spirited per-
son in a constituency be sufficient to put forth a “personal merit” ticket,
and circulate it through a whole neighbourhood? And might not a few
such persons, meeting in London, select from the list of candidates the
most distinguished names, without regard to technical divisions of opin-
ion, and publish them at a trifling expense through all the constituen-
cies? It must be remembered that the influence of the two great parties,
under the present mode of election, is unlimited: in Mr. Hare’s scheme it
would be great, but confined within bounds. Neither they, nor any of the
smaller knots, would be able to elect more members than in proportion
to the relative number of their adherents. The ticket system in America
operates under conditions the reverse of this. In America electors vote
for the party ticket, because the election goes by a mere majority, and a
vote for any one who is certain not to obtain the majority is thrown
away. But, on Mr. Hare’s system, a vote given to a person of known
worth has almost as much chance of obtaining its object as one given to
a party candidate. It might be hoped, therefore, that every Liberal or
Conservative, who was anything besides a Liberal or a Conservative—
who had any preferences of his own in addition to those of his party—
would scratch through the names of the more obscure and insignificant
party candidates, and inscribe in their stead some of the men who are an
Representative Government/101
honour to the nation. And the probability of this fact would operate as a
strong inducement with those who drew up the party lists not to confine
themselves to pledged party men, but to include along with these, in
their respective tickets, such of the national notabilities as were more in
sympathy with their side than with the opposite.
The real difficulty, for it is not to be dissembled that there is a diffi-
culty, is that the independent voters, those who are desirous of voting
for unpatronised persons of merit, would be apt to put down the names
of a few such persons, and to fill up the remainder of their list with mere
party candidates, thus helping to swell the numbers against those by
whom they would prefer to be represented. There would be an easy
remedy for this, should it be necessary to resort to it, namely, to impose
a limit to the number of secondary or contingent votes. No voter is likely
to have an independent preference, grounded on knowledge, for 658, or
even for 100 candidates. There would be little objection to his being
limited to twenty, fifty, or whatever might be the number in the selection
of whom there was some probability that his own choice would be exer-
cised-that he would vote as an individual, and not as one of the mere
rank and file of a party. But even without this restriction, the evil would
be likely to cure itself as soon as the system came to be well understood.
To counteract it would become a paramount object with all the knots
and cliques whose influence is so much deprecated. From these, each in
itself a small minority, the word would go forth, “Vote for your special
candidates only; or at least put their names foremost, so as to give them
the full chance which your numerical strength warrants, of obtaining
the quota by means of first votes, or without descending low in the
scale.” And those voters who did not belong to any clique would profit
by the lesson.
The minor groups would have precisely the amount of power which
they ought to have. The influence they could exercise would be exactly
that which their number of voters entitled them to; not a particle more;
while to ensure even that, they would have a motive to put up, as repre-
sentatives of their special objects, candidates whose other recommenda-
tions would enable them to obtain the suffrages of voters not of the sect
or clique. It is curious to observe how the popular line of argument in
defence of existing systems veers round, according to the nature of the
attack made upon them. Not many years ago it was the favourite argu-
ment in support of the then existing system of representation, that under
it all “interests” or “classes” were represented. And certainly, all inter-
102/John Stuart Mill
ests or classes of any importance ought to be represented, that is, ought
to have spokesmen, or advocates, in Parliament. But from thence it was
argued that a system ought to be supported which gave to the partial
interests not advocates merely, but the tribunal itself. Now behold the
change. Mr. Hare’s system makes it impossible for partial interests to
have the command of the tribunal, but it ensures them advocates, and
for doing even this it is reproached. Because it unites the good points of
class representation and the good points of numerical representation, it
is attacked from both sides at once.
But it is not such objections as these that are the real difficulty in
getting the system accepted; it is the exaggerated notion entertained of
its complexity, and the consequent doubt whether it is capable of being
carried into effect. The only complete answer to this objection would be
actual trial. When the merits of the plan shall have become more gener-
ally known, and shall have gained for it a wider support among impar-
tial thinkers, an effort should be made to obtain its introduction experi-
mentally in some limited field, such as the municipal election of some
great town. An opportunity was lost when the decision was taken to
divide the West Riding of Yorkshire for the purpose of giving it four
members; instead of trying the new principle, by leaving the constitu-
ency undivided, and allowing a candidate to be returned on obtaining
either in first or secondary votes a fourth part of the whole number of
votes given. Such experiments, would be a very imperfect test of the
worth of the plan: but they would be an exemplification of its mode of
working; they would enable people to convince themselves that it is not
impracticable; would familiarise them with its machinery, and afford
some materials for judging whether the difficulties which are thought to
be so formidable are real or imaginary. The day when such a partial
trial shall be sanctioned by Parliament will, I believe, inaugurate a new
era of Parliamentary Reform; destined to give to Representative Gov-
ernment a shape fitted to its mature and triumphant period, when it shall
have passed through the militant stage in which alone the world has yet
seen it.
6
Chapter 8
Of the Extension of the Suffrage.
Such a representative democracy as has now been sketched, representa-
tive of all, and not solely of the majority—in which the interests the
opinions, the grades of intellect which are outnumbered would never-
Representative Government/103
theless be heard, and would have a chance of obtaining by weight of
character and strength of argument an influence which would not be-
long 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 major-
ity; and these would be composed exclusively of a single class, alike in
biasses, 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 suf-
ficient, the philosophy of constitutional government is but solemn tri-
fling. All trust in constitutions is grounded on the assurance they may
afford, not that the depositaries of power will not, but that they cannot,
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
organised 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 prob-
lem 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 limi-
tation of the suffrage, involving the compulsory exclusion of any por-
tion of the citizens from a voice in the representation. Among the fore-
most 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 recognise a potent instrument of mental
improvement in the exercise of political franchises by manual labourers.
Yet unless substantial mental cultivation in the mass of mankind is to be
104/John Stuart Mill
a mere vision, this is the road by which it must come. If any one sup-
poses 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 travellers are struck by the fact that every Ameri-
can is in some sense both a patriot, and a person of cultivated intelli-
gence; 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.
7
Yet this is nothing to what we might look for in a government equally
democratic in its unexclusiveness, but better organised in other impor-
tant 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 un-
der a formal disqualification. The Demos, too, being in America the one
source of power, all the selfish ambition of the country gravitates to-
wards it, as it does in despotic countries towards the monarch: the people,
like the despot, is pursued with adulation and sycophancy, and the cor-
rupting effects of power fully keep pace with its improving and enno-
bling influences. If, even with this alloy, democratic institutions pro-
duce 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, dis-
tant, 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 labourer, whose employment is a routine, and whose
way of life brings him in contact with no variety of impressions, cir-
cumstances, or ideas, is taught that remote causes, and events which
take place far off, have a most sensible effect even on his personal inter-
ests; 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 dis-
cussions fly over the heads of those who have no votes, and are not
endeavouring to acquire them. Their position, in comparison with the
Representative Government/105
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 civilised nation;
no persons disqualified, except through their own default. Every one is
degraded, whether aware of it or not, when other people, without con-
sulting him, take upon themselves unlimited power to regulate his des-
tiny. 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 dis-
posed, they are in general too fully occupied with things which they
must attend to, to have much room in their thoughts for anything which
they can with impunity disregard. No arrangement of the suffrage, there-
fore, 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 rea-
sons, which do not conflict with this principle, and which, though an
106/John Stuart Mill
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 exceed-
ing what the poorest who 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 fun-
damental of the two must be fulfilled first: universal teaching must pre-
cede universal enfranchisement. No one but those in whom an a 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 confor-
mation 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, how-
ever indispensable to an intelligent use of the suffrage, are not, in this
country, nor probably anywhere 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 indiscrimi-
nately, 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
Representative Government/107
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 applica-
tion 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 some-
thing 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 economise. 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 inter-
est 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 some of 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 representa-
tion should be co-extensive 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 repre-
sentation, with universality, it is essential, as it is on many other ac-
counts desirable, that taxation, in a visible shape, should descend to the
poorest class. In this country, and in most others, there is probably no
labouring 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 sup-
posing him to do so, he would doubtless take care that, however lavish
an expenditure he might, by his vote, assist in imposing upon the gov-
ernment, it should not be defrayed by any additional taxes on the ar-
ticles 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 elec-
tor on allowing himself to be rated extra ordinem to the assessed taxes;
or that a small annual payment, rising and falling with the gross expen-
108/John Stuart Mill
diture of the country, should be required from every registered elector;
that so everyone 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 cannot by his labour 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 uncertified
bankrupt, or to have taken the benefit of the Insolvent Act, should dis-
qualify 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, depen-
dent on eleemosynary support. Non-payment of taxes, when so long
persisted in that it cannot have arisen from inadvertence, should dis-
qualify while it lasts. These exclusions are not in their nature perma-
nent. They exact such conditions only as all are able, or ought to be
able, to fulfil 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 security of
others, would be unfelt, and on emerging from which, this mark of infe-
riority 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 labourers; and the twofold danger, that of too low a
standard of political intelligence, and that of class legislation, would
Representative Government/109
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 hu-
man 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, cannot 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 intelli-
gence—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 virtu-
ally 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 pretence for applying this doctrine to any case which could
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 fit-
ness 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 dif-
ference, 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 suf-
frages of those whose opinion is entitled to greater weight. There is not,
110/John Stuart Mill
in this arrangement, anything 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 jus-
tice.
I hasten to say that I consider it entirely inadmissible, unless as a
temporary makeshift, that the superiority of influence should be con-
ferred in consideration of property. I do not deny that property is a kind
of test; education in most countries, though anything 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 impos-
sible 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 con-
nect plurality of votes with any pecuniary qualification would be not
only objectionable in itself, but a sure mode of discrediting the prin-
ciple, and making its permanent maintenance impracticable. The De-
mocracy, 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 na-
tional education or a trustworthy system of general examination, educa-
Representative Government/111
tion might be tested directly. In the absence of these, the nature of a
person’s occupation is some test. An employer of labour is on the aver-
age more intelligent than a labourer; for he must labour with his head,
and not solely with his hands. A foreman is generally more intelligent
than an ordinary labourer, and a labourer 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 compli-
cated 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 qualifica-
tions; 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 nomi-
nally practised, imply, of course, a still higher degree of instruction; and
wherever a sufficient examination, or any serious conditions of educa-
tion, 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 pretence. The
“local” or “middle class” examination for the degree of Associate, so
laudably and public-spiritedly established by the Universities of Oxford
and Cambridge, 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 ac-
corded 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 politi-
cal 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
112/John Stuart Mill
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 representa-
tive 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 commu-
nity. The distinction in favour of education, right in itself, is further and
strongly recommended by its preserving the educated from the class
legislation of the uneducated; but it must stop short of enabling them to
practise class legislation on their own account. Let me add, that I con-
sider 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 ex-
aminations 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 realised the conditions on which in theory and principle it is depen-
dent would not necessarily be repugnant to any one’s sentiment of jus-
tice: but it would certainly be so, if, while conferred on general pre-
sumptions not always infallible, it were denied to direct proof.
Plural voting, though practised 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, cannot too soon begin to
reconcile himself to the former. In the meantime, 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
Representative Government/113
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 further 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 uni-
versities, all persons who have passed creditably through the higher
schools, all members of the liberal professions, and perhaps some oth-
ers, to be registered specifically in those characters, and to give their
votes as such in any constituency in which they choose to register; re-
taining, 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 coun-
terpoise to the numerical weight of the least educated class; for so long
the benefits of completely universal suffrage cannot be obtained with-
out bringing with them, as it appears to me, a chance of 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 levelled in some particular constituencies,
whose members, consequently, would be returned principally by manual
labourers; 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 labouring class from becoming prepon-
derant in Parliament. By such a compromise, the anomalies in the repre-
sentation 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.
114/John Stuart Mill
So much importance do I attach to the emancipation of those who
already have votes, but whose votes are useless, because always out-
numbered; 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 recognising 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 impor-
tant that this conviction should be professed by the State, and embodied
in the national institutions. Such things constitute the spirit of the insti-
tutions of a country: that portion of their influence which is least re-
garded by common, and especially by English, thinkers; though the in-
stitutions 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 unfavourable points in American char-
acter. 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 al-
most 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 influ-
ence, man for man, to the most and to the least instructed, is neverthe-
Representative Government/115
less 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 enlight-
ening their judgment and ridding them of errors and prejudices, are pow-
erful 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 strenu-
ously 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 everything, 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 cannot be resisted are usually far too well satis-
fied with their own opinion to be willing to change them, or listen with-
out 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 superi-
ority of weight to superiority of mental qualities, a political constitution
would realise 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 colour 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
116/John Stuart Mill
brothers. It is allowed to unmarried, and wants but little of being con-
ceded to married women, to hold property, and have pecuniary and busi-
ness 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 anything, 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 diversi-
ties of aptitude, the great 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 occupa-
tions 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 labourers in cornfields 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 rela-
tions. 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 prefer-
ence, respecting the most important concerns of humanity. There would
be some benefit to them individually in having something to bestow
which their male relatives cannot exact, and are yet desirous to have. It
Representative Government/117
would also be no small benefit that the husband would necessarily dis-
cuss the matter with his wife, and that the vote would not be his exclu-
sive 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 en-
tirely 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 in-
duce 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 pub-
lic 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 cer-
tainty, 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 realise to herself that there is a point of honour in them, and most
people have as little sympathy in the point of honour 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 honour.
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 influ-
ence 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
118/John Stuart Mill
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 condi-
tions 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 depriv-
ing its possessor of the equal protection and just privileges of a citizen.
Chapter 9
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 pri-
mary electors only choosing other electors, and these electing the mem-
ber 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 ex-
pected 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 intermedi-
ate body admits of a very plausible defence; since it may be said, with
great appearance of reason, that less intellect and instruction are re-
quired for judging who among our neighbours can be most safely trusted
to choose a member of parliament, than who is himself fittest to be one.
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In the first place, however, if the dangers incident to popular power
may be thought to be in some degree lessened by this indirect arrange-
ment, 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 realised 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 politi-
cal 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, more-
over, 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 repre-
sentative 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 does not
care who is elected, or feels bound to put that consideration in abey-
ance, to take any interest whatever in merely naming the worthiest per-
son 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 cultiva-
tion, 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 virtu-
ous 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
120/John Stuart Mill
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, cannot judge well of the qualifications of a candi-
date 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 confi-
dential person privately what candidate he had better vote for. In that
case the two modes of election coincide in their result, and every advan-
tage of indirect election is obtained under direct. The systems only di-
verge 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 takes place. Nominally, the election is indirect:
the population at large does not vote for the President; it votes for elec-
tors 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 Lincoln ticket, or the Breckenridge ticket. It must be re-
membered 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 entrusted
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
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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 im-
portant 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 legis-
lation 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 refer-
ence to public opinion necessary in all acts of the government of a de-
mocracy. 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 cannot be said that indirect popular elec-
tion is never advantageous. Under certain conditions it is the very best
system that can be adopted. But those conditions are hardly to be ob-
tained in practice, except in a federal government like that of the United
States, where the election can be entrusted 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 Com-
122/John Stuart Mill
mon 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 aedileship are no
guarantee of any special fitness to judge of the comparative qualifica-
tions of candidates for a seat in Parliament. They probably would not
fulfil 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 senti-
ments 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 in-
tended 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 physi-
cian, 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 entrusted 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 ex-
pected from it, as would not be obtained under direct election, will just
as much fail to be obtained under indirect; while the latter has consider-
able disadvantages peculiar to itself. The mere fact that it is an addi-
tional and superfluous wheel in the machinery is no trifling objection.
Its decided inferiority as a means of cultivating public spirit and politi-
cal 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 compara-
tively small number of persons in whose hands, at last, the election of a
member of Parliament would reside, could not but afford great addi-
tional facilities to intrigue, and to every form of corruption compatible
with the station in life of the electors. The constituencies would univer-
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sally 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 dis-
cretion left to the chosen electors. The only case in which they would
probably be afraid to employ their vote for the promotion of their per-
sonal 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 circum-
stances similar to those of the election of Senators in the United States.
The best which could be said for this political contrivance that in
some states of opinion it might be a more practicable expedient than
that of plural voting for giving to every member of the community a
vote of some sort, without rendering the mere numerical majority pre-
dominant in Parliament: as, for instance, if the present constituency of
this country were increased by the addition of a numerous and select
portion of the labouring classes, elected by the remainder. Circumstances
might render such a scheme a convenient mode of temporary compro-
mise, but it does not carry out any principle sufficiently thoroughly to
be likely to recommend itself to any class of thinkers as a permanent
arrangement.
Chapter 10
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 senti-
mentalities 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 pref-
124/John Stuart Mill
erable 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 demo-
crats think themselves greatly concerned in maintaining that the fran-
chise 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 what-
ever 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 anything else to which he really has a right. The suffrage is
indeed due to him, among other reasons, as a means to his own protec-
tion, 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 conscien-
tious 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
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his mind. Instead of opening his heart to an exalted patriotism and the
obligation of public duty, it awakens and nourishes in him the disposi-
tion 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 everybody, the
rejected person included. An additional reason rendering the ballot un-
objectionable 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 suffi-
ciently 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 prima
126/John Stuart Mill
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 co-
gent 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 practi-
cally 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, anything 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 irre-
sistible. 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 habitu-
ally 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 declin-
ing; 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 indi-
vidually or as a member of a class. To secure him against the first, at the
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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 per-
sonal 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 em-
ployer, or of a landlord, was so firmly established, that hardly anything
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 influ-
ences 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 over-ruling
influence of oligarchy. Could the voter at that time have been enabled,
with safety to himself, to exercise his privilege freely, even though nei-
ther 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 coun-
try—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
128/John Stuart Mill
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 major-
ity of cases, the vote of the electors, whether in opposition to or in ac-
cordance 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 brib-
ery, 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 bor-
oughs, 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 or-
gans 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 indispens-
able. 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
labourers, 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 Universi-
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ties; 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 Parlia-
ment, 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 candi-
date 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 labourers 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 mischie-
vous to give them the preponderant influence by admitting them, in their
present state of morals and intelligence, to the full exercise of the suf-
frage. 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
130/John Stuart Mill
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 obli-
gation 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 delib-
eration, 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 legis-
lation; then the electors, being the nation, can have no interest apart
from the general interest: even if individuals still vote according to pri-
vate 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 in-
fluences, will be wholly beneficial.
“Even in this I do not agree. I cannot 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 sup-
posed 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, pub-
lic 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 land-
lords 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
Representative Government/131
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
ensure 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 gen-
eral 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 cannot 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 indi-
vidual in it may. A man’s interest consists of whatever he takes an inter-
est in. Everybody has as many different interests as he has feelings;
likings or dislikings, either of a selfish or of a better kind. It cannot 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 sympathise with
tyranny (when not exercised over himself): he will be almost certain not
to sympathise 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 coun-
try 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 fre-
quent—in which almost the only restraint upon a majority of knaves
consists in their involuntary respect for the opinion of an honest minor-
ity. In such a case as that of the repudiating States of North America, is
132/John Stuart Mill
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 favourable 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.”
8
On the other debateable points connected with the mode of voting it is
not necessary to expend so many words. The system of personal represen-
tation, as organised 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.
9
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 cannot 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 ex-
penses of this kind the £50 proposed by Mr. Hare, if allowed to be drawn
Representative Government/133
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 com-
mittees 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 false-
hood, a declaration on oath or honour should be required from every mem-
ber 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 prob-
able 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 soci-
ety as a venial peccadillo. When once this effect has been produced, there
need be no doubt that the declaration on oath or honour would be consid-
ered binding.
10
“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 anything, however noxious, is cherished as having a conservative ten-
dency 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, in-
stead 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 ten-
ure 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, sub-
134/John Stuart Mill
ject 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 rep-
resenting political functions as a favour 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 them-
selves 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 obli-
gation 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 candi-
dates. So long as the elected member, in any shape or manner, pay 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 him-
self, 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
favour 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
Representative Government/135
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 ad-
vantage. 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 busi-
ness 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 demoralising influences of an occupa-
tion essentially precarious. It would become an object of desire to ad-
venturers 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 rivalling 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 sau-
sage-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
organised system of tillage for raising a rich crop of vicious courtiership.
11
When, by reason of pre-eminent qualifications (as may at any time hap-
pen to be the case), it is desirable that a person entirely without indepen-
dent 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
Marvell, by the contributions of his constituents. This mode is unobjec-
tionable for such an honour will never be paid to mere subserviency:
bodies of men do not care so much for the difference between one syco-
phant 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 representa-
tive, are some presumption of it, and, at all events, some guarantee for
the possession of an independent opinion and will.
136/John Stuart Mill
Chapter 11
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 advan-
tage, 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 compat-
ible 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 differ-
ent direction from the popular one, to tone down any democratic feel-
ings 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 obli-
gation 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 imme-
diately 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
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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 re-
formers, 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 unneces-
sary length, is hardly worth altering for any benefit likely to be pro-
duced; 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 man-
date, 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 recom-
mending 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 con-
stituency, 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 forfeiting
their seats, to give free utterance to the most unpopular sentiments. There
is another reason, of much weight, against the gradual and partial re-
newal 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
138/John Stuart Mill
different parties and opinions. This is not done conclusively by any par-
tial 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 12
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 govern-
ment have each its supporters, and each is the recognised 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 dif-
ferent 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 con-
science 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 tradi-
tions 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
Representative Government/139
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 cannot be prevented from mak-
ing 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 opin-
ions, 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 honour, 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 how-
ever foolish, we may think it in the electors to convert their representa-
tive 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 mo-
rality are of no less practical moment than those relating to the constitu-
tion itself. The very existence of some governments, and all that renders
others endurable, rests on the practical observance of doctrines of con-
stitutional morality; traditional notions in the minds of the several con-
stituted authorities, which modify the use that might otherwise be made
of their powers. In unbalanced governments—pure monarchy, pure ar-
istocracy, 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 constitu-
tional morality, recognised and sustained by opinion, that any regard at
140/John Stuart Mill
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 defence 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 ma-
terial to their beneficial operation. The laws cannot 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 mat-
ter, results from the general principles which it professes. We have from
the first affirmed, and unveryingly kept in view, the co-equal impor-
tance 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 pos-
sible, 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
Representative Government/141
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 cannot 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 infalli-
bly, 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 Dis-
senters or Evangelicals; and vice versa. 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 per-
son 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 num-
bers ought to be felt in the legislature: and the constitution being sup-
posed to have made due provision that other and conflicting modes of
thinking shall be represented likewise, to secure the proper representa-
tion 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 candi-
dates; but under the existing system, in which the electors are almost
always obliged, by the expenses of election and the general circum-
stances of society, to select their representative from persons of a sta-
tion in life widely different from theirs, and having a different class-
142/John Stuart Mill
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 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 opin-
ions, should not enter largely into, their judgment as to who possesses
the wisdom, and how far its presumed possessor has verified the pre-
sumption 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 recognise it, where it exists, by other signs than thinking ex-
actly as they do, and even in spite of considerable differences of opin-
ion: and when they have recognised it they will be far too desirous to
secure it, at any admissible cost, to be prone to impose their own opin-
ion as a law upon persons whom they look up to as wiser than them-
selves. 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 honours will endeavour, as Plato says in the “Gorgias,” to fashion
themselves after the model of the Demos, and make themselves as like
Representative Government/143
to it as possible. It cannot be denied that a complete democracy has a
strong tendency to cast the sentiments of the electors in this mould.
Democracy is not favourable 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 soci-
ety. But also democracy, in its very essence, insists so much more forc-
ibly 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 an-
other, 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 impor-
tance 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 conse-
quences, 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 appli-
cable 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 posi-
144/John Stuart Mill
tion 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, constituen-
cies 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 unfet-
tered judgment; to whom it would be an affront to require that they
should give up that judgment at the behest of their inferiors in knowl-
edge.
If such persons, honestly sought, are not to be found, then indeed
the electors are justified in taking other precautions; for they cannot 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 opportu-
nities 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 impar-
tiality 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 cannot 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 withdraw-
ing 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 superior-
ity is not to go the length of self-annihilation—abnegation of any per-
sonal opinion. But when the difference does not relate to the fundamen-
tals of politics, however decided the elector may be in his own senti-
ments, 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 rec-
Representative Government/145
oncile both wishes, by inducing the able man to sacrifice his own opin-
ion 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 superiority, of which it is one of the most
sacred not to desert the cause which has the clamour 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 unaccept-
able 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 favour
of his general value, many and great differences between his opinions
and their own.
There are some differences, however, which they cannot 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 influ-
ence in virtue of their mere existence, and not solely in that of the prob-
ability of their being grounded in truth. A people cannot be well gov-
erned 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 them-
selves 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
146/John Stuart Mill
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 unfavourable social cir-
cumstances or faulty 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 candi-
date; 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 express-
ing 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 entrusted with full power of obeying the dictates of his own judg-
ment: That they should consider it a duty which they owe to their fel-
low-countrymen, to do their utmost towards placing men of this quality
in the legislature: and that it is of much greater importance to them-
selves to be represented by such a man than by one who professes agree-
ment 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 prin-
ciples 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 recognised by the Constitu-
tion; 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
Representative Government/147
of the majority to be heard in Parliament. In that falsely called democ-
racy 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 willing-
ness to do this might reasonably be expected, and everything 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 influ-
ence.
Chapter 13
Of a Second Chamber.
Of all topics relating to the theory of representative government, none
has been the subject of more discussion, especially on the Continent,
than what is known as the question of the Two Chambers. It has occu-
pied a greater amount of the attention of thinkers than many questions
of ten times its importance, and has been regarded as a sort of touch-
stone which distinguishes the partisans of limited from those of uncon-
trolled 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 but of secondary importance whether the Parlia-
ment consists of two Chambers, or only of one.
If there are two Chambers, they may either be of similar, or of dis-
similar 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 com-
148/John Stuart Mill
posed, one will be almost unanimous, and the other nearly equally di-
vided: if a majority in one rejects a measure, there will generally have
been a large minority unfavourable 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 delib-
erations. The consideration which tells most, in my judgment, in favour
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 indi-
vidual or an assembly, by the consciousness of having only themselves
to consult. It is important that no set of persons should, in great affairs,
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 per-
sons 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 Ro-
mans to have two consuls makes it desirable there should be two Cham-
bers: 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
Representative Government/149
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 cannot 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 com-
parison 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 ensure 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 posi-
tion among, rather than in opposition to, the crowd, 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 demo-
cratic House.
That there should be, in every polity, a centre of resistance to the
predominant power in the Constitution—and in a democratic constitu-
tion, therefore, a nucleus of resistance to the democracy—I have al-
ready maintained; and I regard it as a fundamental maxim of govern-
ment. 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 cannot think that where democracy is
the ruling power in society the Second House would have any real abil-
ity to resist even the aberrations of the first. It might be suffered to exist
150/John Stuart Mill
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 mea-
sures.
The practicability of any real check to the ascendancy of the major-
ity depends henceforth on the distribution of strength in the most popu-
lar 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 ad-
vantageously 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 demo-
cratic principles, of being represented proportionally to their numbers,
this provision will ensure 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 representa-
tion 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 conceivable modes impede its attainment. 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 con-
structed, the best seems to be that exemplified in the Roman Senate,
itself the most consistently prudent and sagacious body that ever admin-
istered public affairs. The deficiencies of a democratic assembly, which
represents the general public, are the deficiencies of the public itself,
Representative Government/151
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 Cham-
ber, the other should be the Chamber of Statesmen; a council composed
of all living public men who have passed through important political
offices or employments. 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
generally be most inclined, to lead them forward in any right course.
The council to whom the task would be entrusted 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 re-
gard as an indispensable ingredient in a well-constituted popular gov-
ernment. 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 quali-
fies 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 who had held, during ten years, first-class diplomatic
appointments. All who had been Governors-General of India or British
America, and all who had held for ten years any Colonial Governor-
ships. The permanent civil service should also be represented; all should
152/John Stuart Mill
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. If, along with the persons
thus qualified by practical experience in the administration of public
affairs, any representation of the speculative class were to be included—
a thing in itself desirable—it would be worth consideration whether cer-
tain professorships, in certain national institutions, after a tenure of a
few years, might confer a seat in the Senate. Mere scientific and literary
eminence are too indefinite and disputable: they imply a power of selec-
tion, whereas the other qualifications speak for themselves; if the writ-
ings 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 rep-
resentatives 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 them-
selves 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
Representative Government/153
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 constitu-
ency, 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 amount-
ing 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 favour of somebody already elected. With this inconsid-
erable exception, every representative Peer would represent ten mem-
bers 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 prece-
dent, and actual brilliant success, can to the greatest extent be pleaded.
It is not, however, the only feasible plan that might be proposed. An-
other possible mode of forming a Second Chamber would be to have it
elected by the First; subject to the restriction that they should not nomi-
nate 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 nomina-
tion it would be peculiarly unlikely to excite the jealousy of, 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 popu-
lar 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 temper-
154/John Stuart Mill
ing 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 14
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 dif-
ferent 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 suffi-
cient to say that the classification of functionaries should correspond to
that of subjects, and that there should not be several departments inde-
pendent 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 commis-
sioned 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 is probably
without the appropriate 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 depart-
ment 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 everything, and through
whose default anything was left undone. Responsibility is null when
nobody knows who is responsible. Nor, even when real, can it be di-
vided without being weakened. To maintain it at its highest there must
Representative Government/155
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 de-
stroyed. It is enfeebled when the concurrence of more than one function-
ary 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 offence: 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 offence, no corruption or malver-
sation, 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 them-
selves almost absolved, if those whose duty it was to resist and remon-
strate 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 indi-
vidual member feels this further than his disposition leads him to iden-
tify 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, there-
fore, are not a fit instrument for executive business; and are only admis-
sible 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 mul-
titude of counsellors there is wisdom; and that a man seldom judges
156/John Stuart Mill
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 respon-
sibility, 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 at-
tainments 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 discus-
sions among a body of advisers. This, for example, is emphatically nec-
essary in military and naval affairs. The military and naval ministers,
therefore, and probably several others, should be provided with a Coun-
cil, composed, at least in those two departments, of able and experi-
enced professional men. As a means of obtaining the best men for the
purpose under every change of administration, they ought to be perma-
nent: by which I mean, that they ought not, like the Lords of the Admi-
ralty, 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 reap-
pointed; 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
Representative Government/157
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 senti-
ment, it is at the option of every member, and is the invariable practice,
to record the reasons of his opinion: the Governor-General, or Gover-
nor, 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 ca-
pable 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 osten-
sible 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 busi-
ness 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
158/John Stuart Mill
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 circum-
stances and the materials, it is probably destined to perish in the general
holocaust which the traditions of Indian government seem fated to un-
dergo, 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 clamour has long been urgent, and is
daily obtaining more countenance in the highest quarters, for the abro-
gation of the professional civil service which breeds the men that com-
pose the Councils, and the existence of which is the sole guarantee for
their being of any value.
A most important principle of good government in a popular consti-
tution 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 em-
ployment; the qualifications for the discharge of it are of that special
and professional kind which cannot 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 labo-
rious, and requires a delicate as well as highly conscientious discern-
ment; and as there is no public duty which is in general so badly per-
formed, 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,
Representative Government/159
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 of-
ficers by popular suffrage, ought the chief of the executive, in a repub-
lican 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’etat,
in making the chief minister constitutionally independent of the legisla-
tive body, and rendering the two great branches of the government, while
equally popular both in their origin and in their responsibility, an effec-
tive 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 Con-
stitution. 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 fore-
most, and often the very foremost person in political life: while the Presi-
dent 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 acci-
dent, 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 avail-
able 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 with-
out antecedents, of whom nothing is known but that he professes the
creed of the party, is readily voted for by its entire strength. Another
160/John Stuart Mill
important consideration is the great mischief of unintermitted election-
eering. When the highest dignity in the State is to be conferred by popu-
lar 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 ex-
pected 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 ques-
tion, 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 En-
gland, 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 an-
other mode of giving the head of the administration as much indepen-
dence of the legislature as is at all compatible with the essentials of free
government. He never could be unduly dependent on a vote of Parlia-
ment, 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 Par-
liament 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 Presi-
dent 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’etat being at-
tempted, 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 paralyse each other’s opera-
tions is to suppose that the political life of the country will always be
Representative Government/161
pervaded by a spirit of mutual forbearance and compromise, imperturb-
able 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 promote 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
centralised 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
cannot, 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 par-
ticipation of popular suffrage is the most objectionable are judicial of-
ficers. 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 anything 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 cannot
be denied that the irremovability of any public officer, to whom great
interests are entrusted, 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 crimi-
nal court; and that a functionary on whom so much depends should have
162/John Stuart Mill
the feeling of being free from responsibility except to opinion and his
own conscience. The question however is, whether in the peculiar posi-
tion 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 im-
partiality 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 con-
victions. 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 re-
spect, 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 esti-
mated, 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 per-
sonally 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
Representative Government/163
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 incom-
petent, for want of having heard the case, or from having heard it with-
out either the precautions or the impartiality belonging to a judicial hear-
ing; 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 ap-
plauded by the public, or would least admit of insidious misrepresenta-
tion. The practice introduced by some of the new or revised State Con-
stitutions in America, of submitting judicial officers to periodical popu-
lar re-election, will be found, I apprehend, to be one of the most danger-
ous 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 govern-
ment.
12
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 previ-
ous 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
164/John Stuart Mill
first instance; and it remains to be considered by what mode of appoint-
ment 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, as a rule, appointed at
the commencement of manhood, not as having learnt, but in order that
they may learn, their profession, the only thing by which the best candi-
dates can be discriminated is proficiency in the ordinary branches of
liberal education: and this can be ascertained without difficulty, pro-
vided 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 rec-
ommendations, 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 intro-
duced 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 honours at the
Universities. This would probably be the best plan under any system;
and under our parliamentary government it is the only one which af-
fords a chance, I do not say of honest appointment, but even of absti-
nence from such as are manifestly and flagrantly profligate.
It is also absolutely necessary that the examinations should be com-
petitive, 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 neglecting 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 estab-
lishes a claim to it in others, which every repetition of indulgence makes
it more difficult to resist; each of these in succession becomes a prece-
dent for more, until the standard of proficiency sinks gradually to some-
thing almost contemptible. Examinations for degrees at the two great
Universities have generally been as slender in their requirements as those
for honours are trying and serious. Where there is no inducement to
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exceed a certain minimum, the minimum comes to be the maximum: it
becomes the general practice not to aim at more, and as in everything
there are some who do not attain all they aim at, however low the stan-
dard 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 school-
master an object of ambition, and an avenue to success, to have fur-
nished 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 em-
ployment 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; notwith-
standing 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 pro-
duces 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 suc-
cessive 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 hand-
ful, it has so happened that though there have always been a few in-
stances of great proficiency, the lower part of the list of successful can-
didates 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
166/John Stuart Mill
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
13
which can be shown
to have been ever asked, and make it appear as if unexceptionable an-
swers to all these were made the sine qua 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 knowl-
edge is useful. There are persons in existence, and a late Foreign Secre-
tary of State is one of them, who think English spelling a useless accom-
plishment in a diplomatic attache, or a clerk in a government office.
About one thing the objectors seem to be unanimous, that general men-
tal 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, in a country where the
only things regularly taught are 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 anything
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
Representative Government/167
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 with-
out 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 Caesar speak French. We are next informed that
bookworms, 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 addi-
tion. 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 demeanour they contrast so favourably 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 a fortiori for
every other, profession; or that any one good quality, however little ap-
parently 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 par-
ticular trust, and requiring special capacity, are confided, should be se-
lected from the body on the discretion of the chief of the office. And this
168/John Stuart Mill
selection will generally be made honestly by him if the original appoint-
ments take place by open competition: for under that system his estab-
lishment will generally consist of individuals to whom, but for the offi-
cial 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 connec-
tion, 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 fit-
test person; being the one who gives to his chief the most useful assis-
tance, saves him most trouble, and helps most to build up that reputa-
tion for good management of public business which necessarily and
properly redounds to the credit of the minister, however much the quali-
ties to which it is immediately owing may be those of his subordinates.
Chapter 15
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 centralised in Europe, the legislative por-
tion 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 enor-
mous 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 think-
ers 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
14
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 govern-
ments 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 labour, it is indispensable to share
them between central and local authorities. Not only are separate execu-
tive officers required for purely local duties (an amount of separation
Representative Government/169
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 nec-
essary for their operations, should rest, not with the national Parliament
or the national executive, but with the people of the locality. In some of
the New England States these functions are still exercised directly by
the assembled people; it is said with better results than might be ex-
pected; and those highly educated communities are so well satisfied with
this primitive mode of local government, that they have no desire to
exchange it for the only representative system they are acquainted with,
by which all minorities are disfranchised. Such very peculiar circum-
stances, however, are required to make this arrangement work tolerably
in practice, that recourse must generally be had to the plan of represen-
tative sub-Parliaments for local affairs. These 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
organisation, while in other countries there is better organisation, but
less liberty. It is necessary, then, that in addition to the national repre-
sentation there should be municipal and provincial representations: and
the two questions which remain to be resolved are, how the local repre-
sentative 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 in-
quiry 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 admin-
istrative 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 con-
duct 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 partici-
pation of private citizens in general politics during the interval between
170/John Stuart Mill
one parliamentary election and another. Though it is impossible to ex-
aggerate 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 re-
sponsibilities 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 cannot 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 men-
tal 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 fre-
quently 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 mak-
ing 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 taxa-
tion, 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 indi-
rect taxation, no octroi duties, or that if there are, they are supplemen-
tary 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
Representative Government/171
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 inter-
est at stake.
In the most recently established of our local representative institu-
tions, 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 pres-
ence, 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 representa-
tion of another class, having sometimes a different interest from the
rest, are a check upon the class interests of the farmers or petty shop-
keepers who form the bulk of the elected Guardians. A similar commen-
dation cannot 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 anoma-
lous, 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 appoint-
ment 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 them-
selves elected to the Board than they have in being returned to Parlia-
172/John Stuart Mill
ment 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 distribu-
tion 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 coun-
cil. 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, wa-
ter supply, drainage, port and market regulations, cannot 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 cooperation for common
objects, precludes any uniform principle for the discharge of local du-
ties, 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 anti-
quated foppery, the Corporation of the City of London.
Another equally important principle is, that in each local circum-
scription there should be but one elected body for all local business, not
different bodies for different parts of it. Division of labour 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
Representative Government/173
of diverse kinds, each requiring knowledge peculiar to itself, and need-
ing, for its due performance, the undivided attention of a specially quali-
fied 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 depart-
ments by the same superintending body; and by a collective and com-
prehensive 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 minis-
ters 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 local-
ity under one body. The greatest imperfection of popular local institu-
tions, 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 instruc-
tion 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 anything 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 piece-meal, as members of a Pav-
ing 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
174/John Stuart Mill
study which are necessary to render their presence anything more than a
screen for the jobbing of inferior persons under the shelter of their re-
sponsibility. 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 en-
lightened and honest performance of their special duties, or the cultiva-
tion 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 adjoin-
ing, and for whose local wants the arrangements made for the surround-
ing territory will suffice. Such small places have rarely a sufficient pub-
lic 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 agri-
culture, 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 repre-
sentative 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 dis-
charge of the local duties the highest qualifications possible. For ex-
Representative Government/175
ample, if it be necessary (as I believe it to be) for the proper administra-
tion of the Poor Laws that the area of rating should not be more exten-
sive 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 busi-
ness has its executive department. With respect to this, the same ques-
tions 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 prin-
ciples applicable to all public trusts are in substance the same. In the
first place, each executive officer should be single, and singly respon-
sible 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 sur-
veyor, or a health officer, or even a collector of rates, should be ap-
pointed 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 be-
come 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 organised 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 du-
ties, or should be liable to any, and what, interference on the part of the
176/John Stuart Mill
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 authori-
ties. The paving, lighting, and cleansing of the streets of a town, and in
ordinary circumstances the draining of its houses, are of little conse-
quence 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 effi-
ciency of which the whole nation is alike interested: the gaols, for in-
stance, most of which in this country are under county management; the
local police; the local administration of justice, much of which, espe-
cially in corporate towns, is performed by officers elected by the local-
ity, 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 demoralisation, owing to the maladmin-
istration of its police; or if, through the bad regulations of its gaol, the
punishment which the courts of justice intended to inflict on the crimi-
nals confined therein (who might have come from, or committed their
offences in, any other district) might be doubled in intensity, or lowered
to practical impunity. The points, moreover, which constitute good man-
agement of these things are the same everywhere; there is no good rea-
son why police, or gaols, 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 ser-
vice 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 indi-
viduals, are the first needs of society, and the primary ends of govern-
ment: if these things can be left to any responsibility below the highest,
there is nothing, except war and treaties, which requires a general gov-
ernment 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
Representative Government/177
often useful, and with the institutions of our own country even neces-
sary, from the scarcity, in the localities, of officers representing the gen-
eral government, that the execution of duties imposed by the central
authority should be entrusted to functionaries appointed for local pur-
poses 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 inspec-
tors of prisons to take care that the rules laid down by Parliament are
observed, and to suggest others if the state of the gaols 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 fulfilment of the conditions on which State assistance is
granted to the latter.
But, if the administration of justice, police and gaols 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, uni-
formly regulated throughout the country, and its regulation enforced by
more trained and skilful hands than those of purely local authorities—
there is also business, such as the administration of the poor laws, sani-
tary regulation, and others, which, while really interesting to the whole
country, cannot consistently with the very purposes of local administra-
tion, 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 com-
parative 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 pub-
lic opinion. The public under whose eyes they act, and by whom they
are criticised, is both more limited in extent, and generally far less en-
lightened, than that which surrounds and admonishes the highest au-
thorities 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
178/John Stuart Mill
exercised by the press and by public discussion, and that which is exer-
cised 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 knowl-
edge of the principles of administration, they have the compensating
advantage of a far more direct interest in the result. A man’s neighbours
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 en-
grossment 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
Representative Government/179
local knowledge and experience, confined to their own part of the coun-
try and its modes of management, whereas the central government has
the means of knowing all that is to be learnt 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 su-
preme 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 localised, but knowledge, to be most useful, must be
centralised; there must be somewhere a focus at which all its scattered
rays are collected, that the broken and coloured lights which exist else-
where 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 expe-
rience acquired in one locality to the knowledge of another where it is
wanted. But there is also something more than this for the central au-
thority 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 re-
quired; compelling publicity and recordation of proceedings, and en-
forcing 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 be-
tween 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 repre-
sentative 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 dis-
cretion of the local body, to lay down authoritatively the modes of taxa-
180/John Stuart Mill
tion, and rules of assessment, which alone the localities shall be permit-
ted to use.
Again, in the administration of public charity the industry and mo-
rality of the whole labouring population depend, to a most serious ex-
tent, upon adherence to certain fixed principles in awarding relief. Though
it belongs essentially to the local functionaries to determine who, ac-
cording to those principles, is entitled to be relieved, the national Parlia-
ment 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 con-
demnable, 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 ob-
ject which has been so much insisted on, the social and political educa-
tion 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 po-
litical 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
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different modes of action, and learn, by the use of their reason, to distin-
guish the best. When we desire to have a good school, we do not elimi-
nate 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 gov-
ernment which attempts to do everything is aptly compared by M. Charles
de Remusat 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 anything itself that
can possibly be done by any one else, nor shows any one else how to do
anything, is like a school in which there is no schoolmaster, but only
pupil teachers who have never themselves been taught.
Chapter 16
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 reli-
gion, greatly contribute to it. Geographical limits are one of its causes.
But the strongest of all is identity of political antecedents; the posses-
sion 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. Switzer-
land has a strong sentiment of nationality, though the cantons are of
different races, different languages, and different religions. Sicily has,
throughout history, 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
182/John Stuart Mill
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 sepa-
rate states desire to get rid of their autonomy. Among Italians an iden-
tity far from complete, of language and literature, combined with a geo-
graphical position which separates them by a distinct line from other
countries, and, perhaps more than everything 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 feel-
ing 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 gov-
ernment 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
prima 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 gov-
erned. 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, cannot exist. The influ-
ences 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 sec-
tion does not know what opinions, or what instigations, are circulating
in another. The same incidents, the same acts, the same system of gov-
ernment, affect them in different ways; and each fears more injury to
itself from the other nationalities than from the common arbiter, the
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state. Their mutual antipathies are generally much stronger than jeal-
ousy 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 favour of the government against the
rest. Above all, the grand and only effectual 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 be-
tween their fellow-countrymen and foreigners is the deepest and stron-
gest. 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 foes—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 sub-
jects 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 civilised 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 hu-
man endeavour can be directed, can never, in the present state of
civilisation, be promoted by keeping different nationalities of anything
like equivalent strength under the same government. In a barbarous state
of society the case is sometimes different. The government may then be
184/John Stuart Mill
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 artifi-
cially 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 ad-
vanced 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 li-
able 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 inter-
mingled that it is not practicable for them to be under separate govern-
ments. 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 indepen-
dence, 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 domi-
nant 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 nation-
alities at its remote extremities, it consists, as language and history prove,
of two portions, one occupied almost exclusively by a Gallo-Roman
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population, while in the other the Frankish, Burgundian, and other Teu-
tonic races form a considerable ingredient.
When proper allowance has been made for geographical exigen-
cies, 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 civilised 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 pro-
tection, 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 move-
ment 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 blend-
ing 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 spe-
cial aptitudes and excellences of all its progenitors, protected by the
admixture from being exaggerated into the neighbouring 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
civilisation, 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 civilised hu-
manity 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
186/John Stuart Mill
by Russia would be a similar one.
If the smaller nationality, supposed to be the more advanced in im-
provement, is able to overcome the greater, as the Macedonians, rein-
forced by the Greeks, did Asia, and the English India, there is often a
gain to civilisation: but the conquerors and the conquered cannot 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 man-
ner 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 indepen-
dence; then, if it is governed with any tolerable justice, and if the mem-
bers 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 suf-
ficiently numerous to be capable of constituting a respectable national-
ity 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
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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 neighbours, but the wealthiest,
and one of the freest, as well as most civilised and powerful, nations of
the earth.
The cases in which the greatest practical obstacles exist to the blend-
ing 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 pecu-
liarities; obsolete customs, and even declining languages, are revived to
deepen the separation; each deems itself tyrannised 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 gov-
ernment 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 sym-
pathies 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; particu-
larly 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 ef-
fected, 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 conve-
nience 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 ne-
cessity, 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 neighbours with whom it would prefer to connect itself,
having more sympathies in common, if not also greater community of
interest.
188/John Stuart Mill
Chapter 17
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 towards one another, or
such diversity of feeling towards their neighbours, that they would gen-
erally prefer to fight on opposite sides, the federal tie is neither likely to
be of long duration, not to be well observed while it subsists. The sym-
pathies 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 insuffi-
cient for their own defence, are hemmed in on all sides by military or
feudal monarchs, who hate and despise freedom even in a neighbour,
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 ef-
ficiently the federal bond, in spite not only of difference of religion when
religion was the grand source of irreconcilable political enmity through-
out Europe, but also in spite of great weakness in the constitution of the
federation itself. In America, where all the conditions for the mainte-
nance of union existed at the highest point, with the sole drawback of
difference of institutions in the single but most important article of Sla-
very, this one difference has gone so far in alienating from each other’s
sympathies the two divisions of the Union, that the maintenance or dis-
ruption of a tie of so much value to them both depends on the issue of an
obstinate civil war.
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 con-
sequently, whenever the policy of the Confederation, in things reserved
to its cognisance, is different from that which any one of its members
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would separately pursue, the internal and sectional breach will, through
absence of sufficient anxiety to preserve the union, be in danger of go-
ing 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 cannot, indeed, be exactly equal in resources:
in all federations there will be a gradation of power among the mem-
bers; some will be more populous, rich, and civilised than others. There
is a wide difference in wealth and population between New York and
Rhode Island; between Bern 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 everything 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 in-
ternal constitution. It effects none of the real purposes of a confedera-
tion. 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 re-
gard to external concerns, the Bund would make all Germany a depen-
dency of Prussia if there were no Austria, and of Austria if there were
no Prussia: and in the meantime 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 organising 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 di-
rectly 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
190/John Stuart Mill
citizen individually, executes them through its own officers, and en-
forces them by its own tribunals. This is the only principle which has
been found, or which is ever likely, to produce an effective federal gov-
ernment. 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 Gov-
ernments of New York, Virginia, or Pennsylvania, and could only be
carried into effect through orders issued by those Governments to offic-
ers appointed by them, under responsibility to their own courts of jus-
tice no mandates of the Federal Government which were disagreeable to
a local majority would ever be executed. Requisitions issued to a gov-
ernment 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, sympathising with the recusant, and per-
haps 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 Federal-
ist, a collection of papers by three of these eminent men, written in
explanation and defence of the new Federal Constitution while still await-
ing the national acceptance, is even now the most instructive treatise we
possess on federal government.
15
In Germany, the more imperfect kind
of federation, as all know, has not even answered the purpose of main-
taining 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 pos-
sible among monarchical states. A king, who holds his power by inher-
itance, not by delegation, and who cannot 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
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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 during the greater part of that time 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 car-
ried, 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 fed-
eral duties, and must in general be obliged to employ those Courts as the
instrument for enforcing their federal rights. This involves the remark-
able consequence, actually realised in the United States, that a Court of
justice, the highest federal tribunal, is supreme over the various Gov-
ernments, 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 peace-
ably to its decision. The discussions on the American Constitution, be-
fore 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, re-
192/John Stuart Mill
specting the limits of the authority of the Federal and State Govern-
ments. 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 involv-
ing the point in dispute: from which arises the happy effect that its dec-
larations 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 reputa-
tion; 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 cannot 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 reli-
ance has been in the main justified; but there is nothing which more
vitally imports the American people than to guard with the most watch-
ful solicitude against everything 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
was 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. This memorable decision has probably done more than any-
thing else to bring the sectional division to the crisis which has issued in
civil war. 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 interna-
tional law, and is the first great example of what is now one of the most
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prominent wants of civilised 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 cannot 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 mea-
sures; which can only be ensured if the regulation of these matters is
entrusted 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 differ-
ent 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 pow-
ers as a speculative political thinker superior to any who has appeared
in American politics since the authors of the Federalist,
16
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.
194/John Stuart Mill
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 rep-
resentatives 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 ex-
ercised 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, be-
cause the influence of their State in the general deliberations must be
materially affected by the personal weight and abilities of its represen-
tatives; the Senate of the United States, thus chosen, has always con-
tained 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 prac-
tice 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 defence, it weakens the tempta-
tions 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
Representative Government/195
neighbouring 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-defence, in which it can rely on the voluntary co-operation of
every citizen: nor is there anything very flattering to national vanity or
ambition in acquiring, by a successful war, not subjects, nor even fel-
low-citizens, but only new, and perhaps troublesome, independent mem-
bers of the confederation. The warlike proceedings of the Americans in
Mexico were 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
aggrandisement, but by the purely sectional purpose of extending sla-
very. 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 favoured 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 com-
plete or a merely federal union. The point is sometimes necessarily de-
cided 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 man-
age 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 Legisla-
ture, and the same ministry or administrative body, will give satisfac-
tion 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
196/John Stuart Mill
undisturbed co-existence of two legal systems, under one united legisla-
ture, making different laws for the two sections of the country in adap-
tation 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 were more possessed (as is apt to be the case on the Conti-
nent) 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 ag-
grieved 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 dis-
tinct 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 funda-
mental institutions grounded on different principles, it is always practi-
cable 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 govern-
ment there may be local governors, and provincial assemblies for local
purposes. It may happen, for instance, that the people of different prov-
inces may have preferences in favour 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 appor-
tioned among the different provinces according to some general esti-
mate 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’etats; 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
Representative Government/197
subdélégués; and this privilege is always mentioned as one of the ad-
vantages 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 govern-
ment. 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 guarantee of a constitutional pro-
vision against any attempt at assimilation, except by the voluntary act
of those who would be affected by the change.
Chapter 18
Of the Government of Dependencies by a Free
State.
Free states, like all others, may possess dependencies, acquired either
by conquest or by colonisation; 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 inhabit-
ants cannot, consistently with it, be admitted to the government of the
place; though they ought to be allowed all liberties and privileges com-
patible with that restriction, including the free management of munici-
pal 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 sover-
eign 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 civilisation 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.
198/John Stuart Mill
In the case of dependencies of the former class, this country has at
length realised, 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 lan-
guage, 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-govern-
ment which she allowed them to exercise through the representative in-
stitutions 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 mar-
kets 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 no-
table plan for enriching them and ourselves, by making each pay enor-
mous 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 terminate when we relin-
quished 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 Ca-
nadian rebellion before we had the happy thought of giving it up. En-
gland was like an ill-brought-up elder brother, who persists in tyrannising
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 im-
perishable memorial of that nobleman’s courage, patriotism, and en-
lightened liberality, and of the intellect and practical sagacity of its joint
authors, Mr. Wakefield and the lamented Charles Buller.
17
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 Euro-
pean 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
Representative Government/199
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 Aus-
tralian 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 prac-
tice 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 coun-
try, 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 perfectly equal federation between the mother country and her colo-
200/John Stuart Mill
nies, 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 sug-
gestions themselves are so inconsistent with rational principles of gov-
ernment 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 govern-
ment, 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 counsel 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 anything like fair or equal repre-
sentation; 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 federa-
tion. 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 de-
rives 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 defence of this country
alone.
But though Great Britain could do perfectly well without her colo-
nies, 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 connec-
tion, so long as not disagreeable to the feelings of either party. It is a
Representative Government/201
step, as far as it goes, towards universal peace, and general friendly
cooperation 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 completely 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 recognise as
desirable. Since, then, the union can only continue, while it does con-
tinue, 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 coun-
try 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
anything to the expense, except what may be required for the specific
local defence of their ports, shores, and frontiers against invasion. More-
over, 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 defence 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
202/John Stuart Mill
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 is-
lands. The same system was commenced in reference to the Colonies
generally by an enlightened Colonial Secretary, too early lost, Sir Will-
iam 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 un-
important 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 degrada-
tion as not to feel the withholding of an advantage from even one per-
son, 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 ambi-
tion, 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.
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 civilisation of the subject
people most facilitates their transition to a higher stage of improvement.
Representative Government/203
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 civilisation. There are others, in which the mere fact of despo-
tism has indeed no beneficial effect, the lessons which it teaches having
already been only too completely learnt; but in which, there being no
spring of spontaneous improvement in the people themselves, their al-
most 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 civilised people, that people ought to be able to supply it con-
stantly. 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 bar-
barous 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 realised; 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 ‘him 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 impor-
tant problems than how to organise 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 favourable
to future permanent improvement. But the mode of fitting the govern-
ment for this purpose is by no means so well understood as the condi-
tions 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
204/John Stuart Mill
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 des-
potism 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 anything 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 responsibil-
ity, enforced by heavy penalties; but it is very questionable if those pen-
alties 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. Foreign-
ers do not feel with the people. They cannot 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 famil-
iar 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, sus-
pected, probably disliked by the population; seldom sought by them
except for interested purposes; and they are prone to think that the ser-
vilely submissive are the trustworthy. Their danger is of despising the
natives; that of the natives is of disbelieving that anything 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 difficul-
ties in any degree will always be a work of much labour, requiring a
very superior degree of capacity in the chief administrators, and a high
average among the subordinates: and the best organisation of such a
Representative Government/205
government is that which will best ensure the labour, develop the capac-
ity, and place the highest specimens of it in the situations of greatest
trust. Responsibility to an authority which bas gone through none of the
labour, acquired none of the capacity, and for the most part is not even
aware that either, in any peculiar degree, is required, cannot 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
cannot 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 per-
formed. 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 compari-
son 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, amidst 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 im-
provement 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 offen-
sive 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
206/John Stuart Mill
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, out-
casts 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 con-
ducted, 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 coun-
try 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 prefer-
ence 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 subjec-
tion, the individuals of the ruling people who resort to the foreign coun-
try 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 difficul-
ties 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.
Representative Government/207
Among a people like that India the utmost efforts of the public au-
thorities 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 demoralising effect of the situation is not in a most re-
markable 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 inhabit-
ants 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 testi-
mony, 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 gov-
ernment 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 inef-
fectually, as is known to every reader of Mr. Helps’ instructive history.
Had the Spanish Government been directly accountable to Spanish opin-
ion we may question if it would have made the attempt: for the Span-
iards, 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 pub-
lic 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
208/John Stuart Mill
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 parlia-
mentary interest, and at any rate less troublesome, to give up the dis-
puted 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 individu-
als 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 splendour 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 senti-
mental 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 some-
body 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 ensures 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 judg-
ment, opinions may be weighed as well as counted, and the approbation
or disapprobation of one person well versed in the subject may out-
weigh 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 defence, 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
Representative Government/209
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 Cabi-
net Minister, who is thinking of English, not Indian politics; who seldom
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 del-
egated body of a comparatively permanent character; allowing only a
right of inspection, and a negative voice, to the changeable Administra-
tion 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 short-
sighted policy by which this intermediate instrument of government was
done away with.
It is of no avail to say that such a delegated body cannot have all the
requisites of good government; above all, cannot have that complete
and ever-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 those
partial influences in the exercise of the power reserved to them in the
210/John Stuart Mill
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 per-
sons 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. Fur-
nished 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, the appointments are kept out of the vortex of party and parlia-
mentary 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 states-
men of average honesty, than a conscientious sense of the duty of ap-
pointing 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 depart-
ment, 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 cannot 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 administra-
tion. The day when it comes to be thought that the appointment of per-
sons to situations of trust from motives of convenience, already so crimi-
nal in England, can be practised 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
Representative Government/211
prosperity and good administration. As much bitterness is now mani-
fested against this system, and as much eagerness displayed to over-
throw it, as if educating and training the officers of government for their
work were a thing utterly unreasonable and indefensible, an unjustifi-
able interference with the rights of ignorance and inexperience. There is
a tacit conspiracy between those who would like to job in first-rate In-
dian 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 in-
veighed 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 learnt 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 impor-
tant 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 con-
siderable. 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 ad-
vantage of recruiting from a higher grade of industry and capacity, has
212/John Stuart Mill
the recommendation, that under it, unless by accident, there are no per-
sonal 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, with-
out 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 (saving exceptional cases) 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 statesman-
ship; which the chief ruler should carry out with him, and blend with the
results of Indian experience. Again, being of a different class, and espe-
cially if chosen by a different authority, he will seldom have any personal
partialities to warp his appointments to office. This great security for hon-
est bestowal of patronage existed in rare perfection under the mixed gov-
ernment of the Crown and the East India Company. The supreme dispens-
ers 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 del-
egated body, most of whom had themselves served in the country, had and
were likely to have such connections.
This guarantee for impartiality would be much impaired if the civil
servants of Government, even though sent out in boyhood as mere candi-
dates 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
Representative Government/213
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 expedi-
ents, 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 govern-
ment of the East India Company to suggest the true theory of the govern-
ment of a semi-barbarous dependency by a civilised country, and after hav-
ing 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 remain-
ing fruit of our ascendancy in India; if posterity should say of us, that
having stumbled accidentally upon better arrangements than our wisdom
214/John Stuart Mill
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
realised to fall through and be lost, from ignorance of the principles on
which it depended. Di meliora: but if a fate so disgraceful to England and
to civilisation can be averted, it must be through far wider political concep-
tions 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 un-
dertake.
The End
Notes
1. I limit the expression to past time, because I would say nothing de-
rogatory of a great, and now at last a free, people, who are entering
into the general movement of European progress with a vigour 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
ardour are a real specific.
2. Written before the salutary revolution of 1862, which, provoked by
popular disgust at the system of governing by corruption, and the
general demoralisation of political men, has opened to that rapidly
improving people a new and hopeful chance of real constitutional
government.
3. 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.
4. This blunder of Mr. Disraeli (from which, greatly to his credit, Sir
John Pakington took an opportunity, soon after, of separating him-
self) 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 discern-
ment 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
Representative Government/215
would it be for England if Conservatives voted consistently for ev-
erything conservative, and Liberals for everything 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 Lib-
erals were willing to vote for it, the great bulk of the Conservative
party would rush blindly in and prevent it from being carried.
5. In a second edition, published recently, Mr. Hare has made important
improvements in some of the detailed provisions.
6. In the interval between the last and present editions of this treatise, it
has become known that the experiment here suggested has actually
been made on a larger than any municipal or provincial scale, and
has been in course of trial for several years. In the Danish Constitu-
tion (not that of Denmark proper, but the Constitution framed for the
entire Danish kingdom) the equal representation of minorities was
provided for on a plan so nearly identical with Mr. Hare’s, as to add
another to the examples how the ideas which resolve difficulties aris-
ing out of a general situation of the human mind or of society, present
themselves, without communication, to several superior minds at once.
This feature of the Danish electoral law has been brought fully and
clearly before the British public in an able paper by Mr. Robert Lytton,
forming one of the valuable reports by Secretaries of Legation, printed
by order of the House of Commons in 1864, Mr. Hare’s plan, which
may now be also called M. Andrae’s, has thus advanced from the
position of a simple project to that of a realised political fact.
Though Denmark is as yet the only country in which Personal
Representation has become an institution, the progress of the idea
among thinking minds has been very rapid. In almost all the coun-
tries in which universal suffrage is now regarded as a necessity, the
scheme is rapidly making its way: with the friends of democracy, as
a logical consequence of their principle; with those who rather accept
than prefer democratic government, as indispensable corrective of its
inconveniences. The political thinkers of Switzerland led the way.
Those of France followed. To mention no others, within a very recent
period two of the most influential and authoritative writers in France,
one belonging to the moderate liberal and the other to the extreme
216/John Stuart Mill
democratic school, have given in a public adhesion to the plan. Among
its German supporters is numbered one of the most eminent political
thinkers in Germany, who is also a distinguished member of the lib-
eral Cabinet of the Grand Duke of Baden. This subject, among oth-
ers, has its share in the important awakening of thought in the Ameri-
can republic, which is already one of the fruits of the great pending
contest for human freedom. In the two principal of our Australian
colonies Mr. Hare’s plan has been brought under the consideration of
their respective legislatures, and though not yet adopted, has already
a strong party in its favour; while the clear and complete understand-
ing of its principles, shown by the majority of the speakers both on
the Conservative and on the Radical side of general politics, shows
how unfounded is the notion of its being too complicated to be ca-
pable of being generally comprehended and acted on. Nothing is re-
quired to make both the plan and its advantages intelligible to all,
except that the time should have come when they will think it worth
their while to take the trouble of really attending to it.
7. The following “extract from the Report of the English Commissioner
to the New York Exhibition,” which I quote from Mr. Carey’s Prin-
ciples of Social Science bears striking testimony to one part, at least,
of the assertion in the text:—
“We have a few great engineers and mechanics, and a large
body of clever workmen; but the Americans seem likely to become a
whole nation of such people. Already, their rivers swarm with steam-
boats; their valleys are becoming crowded with factories; their towns,
surpassing those of every state of Europe, except Belgium, Holland,
and England, are the abodes of all the skill which now distinguishes a
town population; and there is scarcely an art in Europe not carried on
in America with equal or greater skill than in Europe, though it has
been here cultivated and improved through ages. A whole nation of
Franklins, Stephensons, and Watts in prospect, is something wonder-
ful for other nations to contemplate. In contrast with the comparative
inertness and ignorance of the bulk of the people of Europe, whatever
may be the superiority of a few well-instructed and gifted persons,
the America is the circumstance most worthy of public attention.”
8. Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform, 2nd ed. pp 32–36.
9. “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
Representative Government/217
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 favour 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 dispo-
sition 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 anything 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 sub-
ject, 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.
10. Several of the witnesses before the Committee of the House of Com-
mons in 1860, on the operation of the Corrupt Practices Prevention
Act, some of them of great practical experience in election matters,
were favourable (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, 54-57, 67, 123, 198–202, 208.) The
Chief Commissioner of the Wakefield Inquiry said (in reference cer-
218/John Stuart Mill
tainly 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 per-
jury 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 prom-
ise 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 en-
tered 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 fre-
quently assumed by election expenditure is that of subscriptions to
local charities, or other local objects; and it would be a strong mea-
sure to enact that money should not be given in charity, within a
place, by the member for it. When such subscriptions are bona 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 euphemistic 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).
11. “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
Representative Government/219
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 mul-
titude 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 Re-
form.”)
12. I have been informed, however, that in the States which have made
their judges elective, the choice is not really made by the people, but
by the leaders of parties; no elector ever thinking of voting for any
one but the party candidate: and that, in consequence, the person
elected is usually in effect the same who would have been appointed
to the office by the President or by the Governor of the State. Thus
one bad practice limits and corrects another; and the habit of voting
en masse under a party banner, which is so full of evil in all cases in
which the function of electing is rightly vested in the people, tends to
alleviate a still greater mischief in a case where the officer to be
elected is one who ought to be chosen not by the people but for them.
13. Not always, however, the most recondite; for a late denouncer of
competitive examination in the House of Commons had the naivete
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.
14. On Liberty, concluding chapter; and, at greater length, in the final
chapter of Principles of Political Economy.
15. Mr. Freeman’s History of Federal Governments, of which only the
first volume has yet appeared, is already an accession to the litera-
ture of the subject, equally valuable by its enlightened principles and
its mastery of historical details.
16. Mr. Calhoun.
17. I am speaking here of the adoption of this improved policy, not, of
course, of its original suggestion. The honour of having been its ear-
liest champion belongs unquestionably to Mr. Roebuck.
