Considerations on Representative Government

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Redacted by Curtis A. Weyant

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_italicized text_.]

[Footnotes initially found throughout the text have been numbered and
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CONSIDERATIONS
ON
REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT

BY
JOHN STUART MILL,

AUTHOR OF
"A SYSTEM OF LOGIC, RATIOCINATIVE AND INDUCTIVE"

Preface

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

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

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.
To What Extent Forms of Government Are a Matter of Choice.

CHAPTER II.
The Criterion of a Good Form of Government.

CHAPTER III.
That the Ideally Best Form of Government is Representative
Government.

CHAPTER IV.
Under What Social Conditions Representative Government is
Inapplicable.

CHAPTER V.
Of the Proper Functions of Representative Bodies.

CHAPTER VI.
Of the Infirmities and Dangers to Which Representative Government
Is Liable.

CHAPTER VII.
Of True and False Democracy; Representation of All, and
Representation of the Majority Only.

CHAPTER VIII.
Of the Extension of the Suffrage.

CHAPTER IX.
Should There Be Two Stages of Election?

CHAPTER X.
Of the Mode of Voting.

CHAPTER XI.
Of the Duration of Parliaments.

CHAPTER XII.
Ought Pledges to Be Required from Members of Parliament.

CHAPTER XIII.
Of a Second Chamber.

CHAPTER XIV.
Of the Executive in a Representative Government.

CHAPTER XV.
Of Local Representative Bodies.

CHAPTER XVI.
Of Nationality as Connected with Representative Government.

CHAPTER XVII.
Of Federal Representative Governments.

CHAPTER XVIII.
Of the Government of Dependencies by a Free State.

Chapter I

To What Extent Forms of Government are a Matter of Choice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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