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Title: Considerations on Representative Government

Author: John Stuart Mill

Release date: May 1, 2004 [eBook #5669]
Most recently updated: February 7, 2013

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK
CONSIDERATIONS ON REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT ***

CONSIDERATIONS ON
REPRESENTATIVE
GOVERNMENT

By John Stuart Mill

Author Of "A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive"

CONTENTS

Preface

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.
Footnotes

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.

Chapter I—To What Extent Forms of
Government are a Matter of Choice.
All speculations concerning forms of government bear the impress, more
or less exclusive, of two conflicting theories respecting political
institutions; or, to speak more properly, conflicting conceptions of what
political institutions are.
By some minds, government is conceived as strictly a practical art,
giving rise to no questions but those of means and an end. Forms of
government are assimilated to any other expedients for the attainment of
human objects. They are regarded as wholly an affair of invention and
contrivance. Being made by man, it is assumed that man has the choice
either to make them or not, and how or on what pattern they shall be made.
Government, according to this conception, is a problem, to be worked like
any other question of business. The first step is to define the purposes which
governments are required to promote. The next, is to inquire what form of
government is best fitted to fulfill those purposes. Having satisfied
ourselves on these two points, and ascertained the form of government
which combines the greatest amount of good with the least of evil, what
further remains is to obtain the concurrence of our countrymen, or those for
whom the institutions are intended, in the opinion which we have privately
arrived at. To find the best form of government; to persuade others that it is
the best; and, having done so, to stir them up to insist on having it, is the
order of ideas in the minds of those who adopt this view of political
philosophy. They look upon a constitution in the same light (difference of
scale being allowed for) as they would upon a steam plow, or a threshing
machine.
To these stand opposed another kind of political reasoners, who are so far
from assimilating a form of government to a machine, that they regard it as
a sort of spontaneous product, and the science of government as a branch
(so to speak) of natural history. According to them, forms of government
are not a matter of choice. We must take them, in the main, as we find them.
Governments can not be constructed by premeditated design. They "are not

made, but grow." Our business with them, as with the other facts of the
universe, is to acquaint ourselves with their natural properties, and adapt
ourselves to them. The fundamental political institutions of a people are
considered by this school as a sort of organic growth from the nature and
life of that people; a product of their habits, instincts, and unconscious
wants and desires, scarcely at all of their deliberate purposes. Their will has
had no part in the matter but that of meeting the necessities of the moment
by the contrivances of the moment, which contrivances, if in sufficient
conformity to the national feelings and character, commonly last, and, by
successive aggregation, constitute a polity suited to the people who possess
it, but which it would be vain to attempt to superinduce upon any people
whose nature and circumstances had not spontaneously evolved it.
It is difficult to decide which of these doctrines would be the most
absurd, if we could suppose either of them held as an exclusive theory. But
the principles which men profess, on any controverted subject, are usually a
very incomplete exponent of the opinions they really hold. No one believes
that every people is capable of working every sort of institution. Carry the
analogy of mechanical contrivances as far as we will, a man does not
choose even an instrument of timber and iron on the sole ground that it is in
itself the best. He considers whether he possesses the other requisites which
must be combined with it to render its employment advantageous, and, in
particular whether those by whom it will have to be worked possess the
knowledge and skill necessary for its management. On the other hand,
neither are those who speak of institutions as if they were a kind of living
organisms really the political fatalists they give themselves out to be. They
do not pretend that mankind have absolutely no range of choice as to the
government they will live under, or that a consideration of the consequences
which flow from different forms of polity is no element at all in deciding
which of them should be preferred. But, though each side greatly
exaggerates its own theory, out of opposition to the other, and no one holds
without modification to either, the two doctrines correspond to a deep-
seated difference between two modes of thought; and though it is evident
that neither of these is entirely in the right, yet it being equally evident that
neither is wholly in the wrong, we must endeavour to get down to what is at
the root of each, and avail ourselves of the amount of truth which exists in
either.

Let us remember, then, in the first place, that political institutions
(however the proposition may be at times ignored) are the work of men—
owe their origin and their whole existence to human will. Men did not wake
on a summer morning and find them sprung up. Neither do they resemble
trees, which, once planted, "are aye growing" while men "are sleeping." In
every stage of their existence they are made what they are by human
voluntary agency. Like all things, therefore, which are made by men, they
may be either well or ill made; judgment and skill may have been exercised
in their production, or the reverse of these. And again, if a people have
omitted, or from outward pressure have not had it in their power to give
themselves a constitution by the tentative process of applying a corrective
to each evil as it arose, or as the sufferers gained strength to resist it, this
retardation of political progress is no doubt a great disadvantage to them,
but it does not prove that what has been found good for others would not
have been good also for them, and will not be so still when they think fit to
adopt it.
On the other hand, it is also to be borne in mind that political machinery
does not act of itself. As it is first made, so it has to be worked, by men, and
even by ordinary men. It needs, not their simple acquiescence, but their
active participation; and must be adjusted to the capacities and qualities of
such men as are available. This implies three conditions. The people for
whom the form of government is intended must be willing to accept it, or, at
least not so unwilling as to oppose an insurmountable obstacle to its
establishment. They must be willing and able to do what is necessary to
keep it standing. And they must be willing and able to do what it requires of
them to enable it to fulfill its purposes. The word "do" is to be understood
as including forbearances as well as acts. They must be capable of fulfilling
the conditions of action and the conditions of self-restraint, which are
necessary either for keeping the established polity in existence, or for
enabling it to achieve the ends, its conduciveness to which forms its
recommendation.
The failure of any of these conditions renders a form of government,
whatever favorable promise it may otherwise hold out, unsuitable to the
particular case.
The first obstacle, the repugnance of the people to the particular form of
government, needs little illustration, because it never can in theory have

been overlooked. The case is of perpetual occurrence. Nothing but foreign
force would induce a tribe of North American Indians to submit to the
restraints of a regular and civilized government. The same might have been
said, though somewhat less absolutely, of the barbarians who overran the
Roman Empire. It required centuries of time, and an entire change of
circumstances, to discipline them into regular obedience even to their own
leaders, when not actually serving under their banner. There are nations
who will not voluntarily submit to any government but that of certain
families, which have from time immemorial had the privilege of supplying
them with chiefs. Some nations could not, except by foreign conquest, be
made to endure a monarchy; others are equally averse to a republic. The
hindrance often amounts, for the time being, to impracticability.
But there are also cases in which, though not averse to a form of
government—possibly even desiring it—a people may be unwilling or
unable to fulfill its conditions. They may be incapable of fulfilling such of
them as are necessary to keep the government even in nominal existence.
Thus a people may prefer a free government; but if, from indolence, or
carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the
exertions necessary for preserving it; if they will not fight for it when it is
directly attacked; if they can be deluded by the artifices used to cheat them
out of it; if, by momentary discouragement, or temporary panic, or a fit of
enthusiasm for an individual, they can be induced to lay their liberties at the
feet even of a great man, or trust him with powers which enable him to
subvert their institutions—in all these cases they are more or less unfit for
liberty; and though it may be for their good to have had it even for a short
time, they are unlikely long to enjoy it. Again, a people may be unwilling or
unable to fulfill the duties which a particular form of government requires
of them. A rude people, though in some degree alive to the benefits of
civilized society, may be unable to practice the forbearances which it
demands; their passions may be too violent, or their personal pride too
exacting, to forego private conflict, and leave to the laws the avenging of
their real or supposed wrongs. In such a case, a civilized government, to be
really advantageous to them, will require to be in a considerable degree
despotic; one over which they do not themselves exercise control, and
which imposes a great amount of forcible restraint upon their actions.
Again, a people must be considered unfit for more than a limited and
qualified freedom who will not co-operate actively with the law and the

public authorities in the repression of evil-doers. A people who are more
disposed to shelter a criminal than to apprehend him; who, like the
Hindoos, will perjure themselves to screen the man who has robbed them,
rather than take trouble or expose themselves to vindictiveness by giving
evidence against him; who, like some nations of Europe down to a recent
date, if a man poniards another in the public street, pass by on the other
side, because it is the business of the police to look to the matter, and it is
safer not to interfere in what does not concern them; a people who are
revolted by an execution, but not shocked at an assassination—require that
the public authorities should be armed with much sterner powers of
repression than elsewhere, since the first indispensable requisites of
civilized life have nothing else to rest on. These deplorable states of feeling,
in any people who have emerged from savage life, are, no doubt, usually the
consequence of previous bad government, which has taught them to regard
the law as made for other ends than their good, and its administrators as
worse enemies than those who openly violate it. But, however little blame
may be due to those in whom these mental habits have grown up, and
however the habits may be ultimately conquerable by better government,
yet, while they exist, a people so disposed can not be governed with as little
power exercised over them as a people whose sympathies are on the side of
the law, and who are willing to give active assistance in its enforcement.
Again, representative institutions are of little value, and may be a mere
instrument of tyranny or intrigue, when the generality of electors are not
sufficiently interested in their own government to give their vote, or, if they
vote at all, do not bestow their suffrages on public grounds, but sell them
for money, or vote at the beck of some one who has control over them, or
whom for private reasons they desire to propitiate. Popular election thus
practiced, instead of a security against misgovernment, is but an additional
wheel in its machinery.
Besides these moral hindrances, mechanical difficulties are often an
insuperable impediment to forms of government. In the ancient world,
though there might be, and often was, great individual or local
independence, there could be nothing like a regulated popular government
beyond the bounds of a single city-community; because there did not exist
the physical conditions for the formation and propagation of a public
opinion, except among those who could be brought together to discuss
public matters in the same agora. This obstacle is generally thought to have

ceased by the adoption of the representative system. But to surmount it
completely, required the press, and even the newspaper press, the real
equivalent, though not in all respects an adequate one, of the Pnyx and the
Forum. There have been states of society in which even a monarchy of any
great territorial extent could not subsist, but unavoidably broke up into petty
principalities, either mutually independent, or held together by a loose tie
like the feudal: because the machinery of authority was not perfect enough
to carry orders into effect at a great distance from the person of the ruler. He
depended mainly upon voluntary fidelity for the obedience even of his
army, nor did there exist the means of making the people pay an amount of
taxes sufficient for keeping up the force necessary to compel obedience
throughout a large territory. In these and all similar cases, it must be
understood that the amount of the hindrance may be either greater or less. It
may be so great as to make the form of government work very ill, without
absolutely precluding its existence, or hindering it from being practically
preferable to any other which can be had. This last question mainly depends
upon a consideration which we have not yet arrived at—the tendencies of
different forms of government to promote Progress.
We have now examined the three fundamental conditions of the
adaptation of forms of government to the people who are to be governed by
them. If the supporters of what may be termed the naturalistic theory of
politics, mean but to insist on the necessity of these three conditions; if they
only mean that no government can permanently exist which does not fulfill
the first and second conditions, and, in some considerable measure, the
third; their doctrine, thus limited, is incontestable. Whatever they mean
more than this appears to me untenable. All that we are told about the
necessity of an historical basis for institutions, of their being in harmony
with the national usages and character, and the like, means either this, or
nothing to the purpose. There is a great quantity of mere sentimentality
connected with these and similar phrases, over and above the amount of
rational meaning contained in them. But, considered practically, these
alleged requisites of political institutions are merely so many facilities for
realising the three conditions. When an institution, or a set of institutions,
has the way prepared for it by the opinions, tastes, and habits of the people,
they are not only more easily induced to accept it, but will more easily
learn, and will be, from the beginning, better disposed, to do what is
required of them both for the preservation of the institutions, and for

bringing them into such action as enables them to produce their best results.
It would be a great mistake in any legislator not to shape his measures so as
to take advantage of such pre-existing habits and feelings when available.
On the other hand, it is an exaggeration to elevate these mere aids and
facilities into necessary conditions. People are more easily induced to do,
and do more easily, what they are already used to; but people also learn to
do things new to them. Familiarity is a great help; but much dwelling on an
idea will make it familiar, even when strange at first. There are abundant
instances in which a whole people have been eager for untried things. The
amount of capacity which a people possess for doing new things, and
adapting themselves to new circumstances; is itself one of the elements of
the question. It is a quality in which different nations, and different stages
of civilization, differ much from one another. The capability of any given
people for fulfilling the conditions of a given form of government can not
be pronounced on by any sweeping rule. Knowledge of the particular
people, and general practical judgment and sagacity, must be the guides.
There is also another consideration not to be lost sight of. A people may
be unprepared for good institutions; but to kindle a desire for them is a
necessary part of the preparation. To recommend and advocate a particular
institution or form of government, and set its advantages in the strongest
light, is one of the modes, often the only mode within reach, of educating
the mind of the nation not only for accepting or claiming, but also for
working, the institution. What means had Italian patriots, during the last and
present generation, of preparing the Italian people for freedom in unity, but
by inciting them to demand it? Those, however, who undertake such a task,
need to be duly impressed, not solely with the benefits of the institution or
polity which they recommend, but also with the capacities, moral,
intellectual, and active, required for working it; that they may avoid, if
possible, stirring up a desire too much in advance of the capacity.
The result of what has been said is, that, within the limits set by the three
conditions so often adverted to, institutions and forms of government are a
matter of choice. To inquire into the best form of government in the abstract
(as it is called) is not a chimerical, but a highly practical employment of
scientific intellect; and to introduce into any country the best institutions
which, in the existing state of that country, are capable of, in any tolerable
degree, fulfilling the conditions, is one of the most rational objects to which
practical effort can address itself. Every thing which can be said by way of

disparaging the efficacy of human will and purpose in matters of
government might be said of it in every other of its applications. In all
things there are very strict limits to human power. It can only act by
wielding some one or more of the forces of nature. Forces, therefore, that
can be applied to the desired use must exist; and will only act according to
their own laws. We can not make the river run backwards; but we do not
therefore say that watermills "are not made, but grow." In politics, as in
mechanics, the power which is to keep the engine going must be sought for
outside the machinery; and if it is not forthcoming, or is insufficient to
surmount the obstacles which may reasonably be expected, the contrivance
will fail. This is no peculiarity of the political art; and amounts only to
saying that it is subject to the same limitations and conditions as all other
arts.
At this point we are met by another objection, or the same objection in a
different form. The forces, it is contended, on which the greater political
phenomena depend, are not amenable to the direction of politicians or
philosophers. The government of a country, it is affirmed, is, in all
substantial respects, fixed and determined beforehand by the state of the
country in regard to the distribution of the elements of social power.
Whatever is the strongest power in society will obtain the governing
authority; and a change in the political constitution can not be durable
unless preceded or accompanied by an altered distribution of power in
society itself. A nation, therefore, can not choose its form of government.
The mere details, and practical organization, it may choose; but the essence
of the whole, the seat of the supreme power, is determined for it by social
circumstances.
That there is a portion of truth in this doctrine I at once admit; but to
make it of any use, it must be reduced to a distinct expression and proper
limits. When it is said that the strongest power in society will make itself
strongest in the government, what is meant by power? Not thews and
sinews; otherwise pure democracy would be the only form of polity that
could exist. To mere muscular strength, add two other elements, property
and intelligence, and we are nearer the truth, but far from having yet
reached it. Not only is a greater number often kept down by a less, but the
greater number may have a preponderance in property, and individually in
intelligence, and may yet be held in subjection, forcibly or otherwise, by a
minority in both respects inferior to it. To make these various elements of

power politically influential they must be organized; and the advantage in
organization is necessarily with those who are in possession of the
government. A much weaker party in all other elements of power may
greatly preponderate when the powers of government are thrown into the
scale; and may long retain its predominance through this alone: though, no
doubt, a government so situated is in the condition called in mechanics
unstable equilibrium, like a thing balanced on its smaller end, which, if
once disturbed, tends more and more to depart from, instead of reverting to,
its previous state.
But there are still stronger objections to this theory of government in the
terms in which it is usually stated. The power in society which has any
tendency to convert itself into political power is not power quiescent, power
merely passive, but active power; in other words, power actually exerted;
that is to say, a very small portion of all the power in existence. Politically
speaking, a great part of all power consists in will. How is it possible, then,
to compute the elements of political power, while we omit from the
computation any thing which acts on the will? To think that, because those
who wield the power in society wield in the end that of government,
therefore it is of no use to attempt to influence the constitution of the
government by acting on opinion, is to forget that opinion is itself one of
the greatest active social forces. One person with a belief is a social power
equal to ninety-nine who have only interests. They who can succeed in
creating a general persuasion that a certain form of government, or social
fact of any kind, deserves to be preferred, have made nearly the most
important step which can possibly be taken toward ranging the powers of
society on its side. On the day when the protomartyr was stoned to death at
Jerusalem, while he who was to be the Apostle of the Gentiles stood by
"consenting unto his death," would any one have supposed that the party of
that stoned man were then and there the strongest power in society? And
has not the event proved that they were so? Because theirs was the most
powerful of then existing beliefs. The same element made a monk of
Wittenberg, at the meeting of the Diet of Worms, a more powerful social
force than the Emperor Charles the Fifth, and all the princes there
assembled. But these, it may be said, are cases in which religion was
concerned, and religious convictions are something peculiar in their
strength. Then let us take a case purely political, where religion, if
concerned at all, was chiefly on the losing side. If any one requires to be

convinced that speculative thought is one of the chief elements of social
power, let him bethink himself of the age in which there was scarcely a
throne in Europe which was not filled by a liberal and reforming king, a
liberal and reforming emperor, or, strangest of all, a liberal and reforming
pope; the age of Frederic the Great, of Catherine the Second, of Joseph the
Second, of Peter Leopold, of Benedict XIV., of Ganganelli, of Pombal, of
D'Aranda; when the very Bourbons of Naples were liberals and reformers,
and all the active minds among the noblesse of France were filled with the
ideas which were soon after to cost them so dear. Surely a conclusive
example how far mere physical and economic power is from being the
whole of social power. It was not by any change in the distribution of
material interests, but by the spread of moral convictions, that negro slavery
has been put an end to in the British Empire and elsewhere. The serfs in
Russia owe their emancipation, if not to a sentiment of duty, at least to the
growth of a more enlightened opinion respecting the true interest of the
state. It is what men think that determines how they act; and though the
persuasions and convictions of average men are in a much greater degree
determined by their personal position than by reason, no little power is
exercised over them by the persuasions and convictions of those whose
personal position is different, and by the united authority of the instructed.
When, therefore, the instructed in general can be brought to recognize one
social arrangement, or political or other institution, as good, and another as
bad—one as desirable, another as condemnable, very much has been done
towards giving to the one, or withdrawing from the other, that
preponderance of social force which enables it to subsist. And the maxim,
that the government of a country is what the social forces in existence
compel it to be, is true only in the sense in which it favors, instead of
discouraging, the attempt to exercise, among all forms of government
practicable in the existing condition of society, a rational choice.

Chapter II—The Criterion of a Good Form of
Government.
The form of government for any given country being (within certain
definite conditions) amenable to choice, it is now to be considered by what
test the choice should be directed; what are the distinctive characteristics of
the form of government best fitted to promote the interests of any given
society.
Before entering into this inquiry, it may seem necessary to decide what
are the proper functions of government; for, government altogether being
only a means, the eligibility of the means must depend on their adaptation
to the end. But this mode of stating the problem gives less aid to its
investigation than might be supposed, and does not even bring the whole of
the question into view. For, in the first place, the proper functions of a
government are not a fixed thing, but different in different states of society;
much more extensive in a backward than in an advanced state. And,
secondly, the character of a government or set of political institutions can
not be sufficiently estimated while we confine our attention to the
legitimate sphere of governmental functions; for, though the goodness of a
government is necessarily circumscribed within that sphere, its badness
unhappily is not. Every kind and degree of evil of which mankind are
susceptible may be inflicted on them by their government, and none of the
good which social existence is capable of can be any further realized than as
the constitution of the government is compatible with, and allows scope for,
its attainment. Not to speak of indirect effects, the direct meddling of the
public authorities has no necessary limits but those of human life, and the
influence of government on the well-being of society can be considered or
estimated in reference to nothing less than the whole of the interests of
humanity.
Being thus obliged to place before ourselves, as the test of good and bad
government, so complex an object as the aggregate interests of society, we
would willingly attempt some kind of classification of those interests,
which, bringing them before the mind in definite groups, might give

indication of the qualities by which a form of government is fitted to
promote those various interests respectively. It would be a great facility if
we could say the good of society consists of such and such elements; one of
these elements requires such conditions, another such others; the
government, then, which unites in the greatest degree all these conditions,
must be the best. The theory of government would thus be built up from the
separate theorems of the elements which compose a good state of society.
Unfortunately, to enumerate and classify the constituents of social well-
being, so as to admit of the formation of such theorems is no easy task.
Most of those who, in the last or present generation, have applied
themselves to the philosophy of politics in any comprehensive spirit, have
felt the importance of such a classification, but the attempts which have
been made toward it are as yet limited, so far as I am aware, to a single step.
The classification begins and ends with a partition of the exigencies of
society between the two heads of Order and Progress (in the phraseology of
French thinkers); Permanence and Progression, in the words of Coleridge.
This division is plausible and seductive, from the apparently clean-cut
opposition between its two members, and the remarkable difference
between the sentiments to which they appeal. But I apprehend that
(however admissible for purposes of popular discourse) the distinction
between Order, or Permanence and Progress, employed to define the
qualities necessary in a government, is unscientific and incorrect.
For, first, what are Order and Progress? Concerning Progress there is no
difficulty, or none which is apparent at first sight. When Progress is spoken
of as one of the wants of human society, it may be supposed to mean
Improvement. That is a tolerably distinct idea. But what is Order?
Sometimes it means more, sometimes less, but hardly ever the whole of
what human society needs except improvement.
In its narrowest acceptation, Order means Obedience. A government is
said to preserve order if it succeeds in getting itself obeyed. But there are
different degrees of obedience, and it is not every degree that is
commendable. Only an unmitigated despotism demands that the individual
citizen shall obey unconditionally every mandate of persons in authority.
We must at least limit the definition to such mandates as are general, and
issued in the deliberate form of laws. Order, thus understood, expresses,
doubtless, an indispensable attribute of government. Those who are unable

to make their ordinances obeyed, can not be said to govern. But, though a
necessary condition, this is not the object of government. That it should
make itself obeyed is requisite, in order that it may accomplish some other
purpose. We are still to seek what is this other purpose, which government
ought to fulfill abstractedly from the idea of improvement, and which has to
be fulfilled in every society, whether stationary or progressive.
In a sense somewhat more enlarged, Order means the preservation of
peace by the cessation of private violence. Order is said to exist where the
people of the country have, as a general rule, ceased to prosecute their
quarrels by private force, and acquired the habit of referring the decision of
their disputes and the redress of their injuries to the public authorities. But
in this larger use of the term, as well as in the former narrow one, Order
expresses rather one of the conditions of government, than either its
purpose or the criterion of its excellence; for the habit may be well
established of submitting to the government, and referring all disputed
matters to its authority, and yet the manner in which the government deals
with those disputed matters, and with the other things about which it
concerns itself, may differ by the whole interval which divides the best
from the worst possible.
If we intend to comprise in the idea of Order all that society requires
from its government which is not included in the idea of Progress, we must
define Order as the preservation of all kinds and amounts of good which
already exist, and Progress as consisting in the increase of them. This
distinction does comprehend in one or the other section every thing which a
government can be required to promote. But, thus understood, it affords no
basis for a philosophy of government. We can not say that, in constituting a
polity, certain provisions ought to be made for Order and certain others for
Progress, since the conditions of Order, in the sense now indicated, and
those of Progress, are not opposite, but the same. The agencies which tend
to preserve the social good which already exists are the very same which
promote the increase of it, and vice versâ, the sole difference being, that a
greater degree of those agencies is required for the latter purpose than for
the former.
What, for example, are the qualities in the citizens individually which
conduce most to keep up the amount of good conduct, of good
management, of success and prosperity, which already exist in society?

Every body will agree that those qualities are industry, integrity, justice, and
prudence. But are not these, of all qualities, the most conducive to
improvement? and is not any growth of these virtues in the community in
itself the greatest of improvements? If so, whatever qualities in the
government are promotive of industry, integrity, justice, and prudence,
conduce alike to permanence and to progression, only there is needed more
of those qualities to make the society decidedly progressive than merely to
keep it permanent.
What, again, are the particular attributes in human beings which seem to
have a more especial reference to Progress, and do not so directly suggest
the ideas of Order and Preservation? They are chiefly the qualities of mental
activity, enterprise, and courage. But are not all these qualities fully as
much required for preserving the good we have as for adding to it? If there
is any thing certain in human affairs, it is that valuable acquisitions are only
to be retained by the continuation of the same energies which gained them.
Things left to take care of themselves inevitably decay. Those whom
success induces to relax their habits of care and thoughtfulness, and their
willingness to encounter disagreeables, seldom long retain their good
fortune at its height. The mental attribute which seems exclusively
dedicated to Progress, and is the culmination of the tendencies to it, is
Originality, or Invention. Yet this is no less necessary for Permanence,
since, in the inevitable changes of human affairs, new inconveniences and
dangers continually grow up, which must be encountered by new resources
and contrivances, in order to keep things going on even only as well as they
did before. Whatever qualities, therefore, in a government, tend to
encourage activity, energy, courage, originality, are requisites of
Permanence as well as of Progress, only a somewhat less degree of them
will, on the average, suffice for the former purpose than for the latter.
To pass now from the mental to the outward and objective requisites of
society: it is impossible to point out any contrivance in politics, or
arrangement of social affairs, which conduces to Order only, or to Progress
only; whatever tends to either promotes both. Take, for instance, the
common institution of a police. Order is the object which seems most
immediately interested in the efficiency of this part of the social
organization. Yet, if it is effectual to promote Order, that is, if it represses
crime, and enables every one to feel his person and property secure, can any
state of things be more conducive to Progress? The greater security of

property is one of the main conditions and causes of greater production,
which is Progress in its most familiar and vulgarest aspect. The better
repression of crime represses the dispositions which tend to crime, and this
is Progress in a somewhat higher sense. The release of the individual from
the cares and anxieties of a state of imperfect protection sets his faculties
free to be employed in any new effort for improving his own state and that
of others, while the same cause, by attaching him to social existence, and
making him no longer see present or prospective enemies in his fellow
creatures, fosters all those feelings of kindness and fellowship towards
others, and interest in the general well-being of the community, which are
such important parts of social improvement.
Take, again, such a familiar case as that of a good system of taxation and
finance. This would generally be classed as belonging to the province of
Order. Yet what can be more conducive to Progress? A financial system
which promotes the one, conduces, by the very same excellences, to the
other. Economy, for example, equally preserves the existing stock of
national wealth, and favors the creation of more. A just distribution of
burdens, by holding up to every citizen an example of morality and good
conscience applied to difficult adjustments, and an evidence of the value
which the highest authorities attach to them, tends in an eminent degree to
educate the moral sentiments of the community, both in respect of strength
and of discrimination. Such a mode of levying the taxes as does not impede
the industry, or unnecessarily interfere with the liberty of the citizen,
promotes, not the preservation only, but the increase of the national wealth,
and encourages a more active use of the individual faculties. And vice
versâ, all errors in finance and taxation which obstruct the improvement of
the people in wealth and morals, tend also, if of sufficiently serious amount,
positively to impoverish and demoralize them. It holds, in short,
universally, that when Order and Permanence are taken in their widest sense
for the stability of existing advantages, the requisites of Progress are but the
requisites of Order in a greater degree; those of Permanence merely those of
Progress in a somewhat smaller measure.
In support of the position that Order is intrinsically different from
Progress, and that preservation of existing and acquisition of additional
good are sufficiently distinct to afford the basis of a fundamental
classification, we shall perhaps be reminded that Progress may be at the
expense of Order; that while we are acquiring, or striving to acquire, good

of one kind, we may be losing ground in respect to others; thus there may
be progress in wealth, while there is deterioration in virtue. Granting this,
what it proves is, not that Progress is generically a different thing from
Permanence, but that wealth is a different thing from virtue. Progress is
permanence and something more; and it is no answer to this to say that
Progress in one thing does not imply Permanence in every thing. No more
does Progress in one thing imply Progress in every thing. Progress of any
kind includes Permanence in that same kind: whenever Permanence is
sacrificed to some particular kind of Progress, other Progress is still more
sacrificed to it; and if it be not worth the sacrifice, not the interest of
Permanence alone has been disregarded, but the general interest of Progress
has been mistaken.
If these improperly contrasted ideas are to be used at all in the attempt to
give a first commencement of scientific precision to the notion of good
government, it would be more philosophically correct to leave out of the
definition the word Order, and to say that the best government is that which
is most conducive to Progress. For Progress includes Order, but Order does
not include Progress. Progress is a greater degree of that of which Order is a
less. Order, in any other sense, stands only for a part of the prerequisites of
good government, not for its idea and essence. Order would find a more
suitable place among the conditions of Progress, since, if we would increase
our sum of good, nothing is more indispensable than to take due care of
what we already have. If we are endeavouring after more riches, our very
first rule should be, not to squander uselessly our existing means. Order,
thus considered, is not an additional end to be reconciled with Progress, but
a part and means of Progress itself. If a gain in one respect is purchased by
a more than equivalent loss in the same or in any other, there is not
Progress. Conduciveness to Progress, thus understood, includes the whole
excellence of a government.
But, though metaphysically defensible, this definition of the criterion of
good government is not appropriate, because, though it contains the whole
of the truth, it recalls only a part. What is suggested by the term Progress is
the idea of moving onward, whereas the meaning of it here is quite as much
the prevention of falling back. The very same social causes—the same
beliefs, feelings, institutions, and practices—are as much required to
prevent society from retrograding as to produce a further advance. Were
there no improvement to be hoped for, life would not be the less an

unceasing struggle against causes of deterioration, as it even now is.
Politics, as conceived by the ancients, consisted wholly in this. The natural
tendency of men and their works was to degenerate, which tendency,
however, by good institutions virtuously administered, it might be possible
for an indefinite length of time to counteract. Though we no longer hold this
opinion; though most men in the present age profess the contrary creed,
believing that the tendency of things, on the whole, is toward improvement,
we ought not to forget that there is an incessant and ever-flowing current of
human affairs toward the worse, consisting of all the follies, all the vices, all
the negligences, indolences, and supinenesses of mankind, which is only
controlled, and kept from sweeping all before it, by the exertions which
some persons constantly, and others by fits, put forth in the direction of
good and worthy objects. It gives a very insufficient idea of the importance
of the strivings which take place to improve and elevate human nature and
life to suppose that their chief value consists in the amount of actual
improvement realized by their means, and that the consequence of their
cessation would merely be that we should remain as we are. A very small
diminution of those exertions would not only put a stop to improvement,
but would turn the general tendency of things toward deterioration, which,
once begun, would proceed with increasingly rapidity, and become more
and more difficult to check, until it reached a state often seen in history, and
in which many large portions of mankind even now grovel; when hardly
any thing short of superhuman power seems sufficient to turn the tide, and
give a fresh commencement to the upward movement.
These reasons make the word Progress as unapt as the terms Order and
Permanence to become the basis for a classification of the requisites of a
form of government. The fundamental antithesis which these words express
does not lie in the things themselves, so much as in the types of human
character which answer to them. There are, we know, some minds in which
caution, and others in which boldness, predominates; in some, the desire to
avoid imperilling what is already possessed is a stronger sentiment than that
which prompts to improve the old and acquire new advantages; while there
are others who lean the contrary way, and are more eager for future than
careful of present good. The road to the ends of both is the same; but they
are liable to wander from it in opposite directions. This consideration is of
importance in composing the personnel of any political body: persons of
both types ought to be included in it, that the tendencies of each may be

tempered, in so far as they are excessive, by a due proportion of the other.
There needs no express provision to insure this object, provided care is
taken to admit nothing inconsistent with it. The natural and spontaneous
admixture of the old and the young, of those whose position and reputation
are made and those who have them still to make, will in general sufficiently
answer the purpose, if only this natural balance is not disturbed by artificial
regulation.
Since the distinction most commonly adopted for the classification of
social exigencies does not possess the properties needful for that use, we
have to seek for some other leading distinction better adapted to the
purpose. Such a distinction would seem to be indicated by the
considerations to which I now proceed.
If we ask ourselves on what causes and conditions good government in
all its senses, from the humblest to the most exalted, depends, we find that
the principal of them, the one which transcends all others, is the qualities of
the human beings composing the society over which the government is
exercised.
We may take, as a first instance, the administration of justice; with the
more propriety, since there is no part of public business in which the mere
machinery, the rules and contrivances for conducting the details of the
operation, are of such vital consequence. Yet even these yield in importance
to the qualities of the human agents employed. Of what efficacy are rules of
procedure in securing the ends of justice if the moral condition of the
people is such that the witnesses generally lie, and the judges and their
subordinates take bribes? Again, how can institutions provide a good
municipal administration if there exists such indifference to the subject that
those who would administer honestly and capably can not be induced to
serve, and the duties are left to those who undertake them because they
have some private interest to be promoted? Of what avail is the most
broadly popular representative system if the electors do not care to choose
the best member of Parliament, but choose him who will spend most money
to be elected? How can a representative assembly work for good if its
members can be bought, or if their excitability of temperament, uncorrected
by public discipline or private self-control, makes them incapable of calm
deliberation, and they resort to manual violence on the floor of the House,
or shoot at one another with rifles? How, again, can government, or any

joint concern, be carried on in a tolerable manner by people so envious that,
if one among them seems likely to succeed in any thing, those who ought to
cooperate with him form a tacit combination to make him fail? Whenever
the general disposition of the people is such that each individual regards
those only of his interests which are selfish, and does not dwell on, or
concern himself for, his share of the general interest, in such a state of
things good government is impossible. The influence of defects of
intelligence in obstructing all the elements of good government requires no
illustration. Government consists of acts done by human beings; and if the
agents, or those who choose the agents, or those to whom the agents are
responsible, or the lookers-on whose opinion ought to influence and check
all these, are mere masses of ignorance, stupidity, and baleful prejudice,
every operation of government will go wrong; while, in proportion as the
men rise above this standard, so will the government improve in quality up
to the point of excellence, attainable but nowhere attained, where the
officers of government, themselves persons of superior virtue and intellect,
are surrounded by the atmosphere of a virtuous and enlightened public
opinion.
The first element of good government, therefore, being the virtue and
intelligence of the human beings composing the community, the most
important point of excellence which any form of government can possess is
to promote the virtue and intelligence of the people themselves. The first
question in respect to any political institutions is how far they tend to foster
in the members of the community the various desirable qualities, moral and
intellectual, or rather (following Bentham's more complete classification)
moral, intellectual, and active. The government which does this the best has
every likelihood of being the best in all other respects, since it is on these
qualities, so far as they exist in the people, that all possibility of goodness in
the practical operations of the government depends.
We may consider, then, as one criterion of the goodness of a government,
the degree in which it tends to increase the sum of good qualities in the
governed, collectively and individually, since, besides that their well-being
is the sole object of government, their good qualities supply the moving
force which works the machinery. This leaves, as the other constituent
element of the merit of a government, the quality of the machinery itself;
that is, the degree in which it is adapted to take advantage of the amount of
good qualities which may at any time exist, and make them instrumental to

the right purposes. Let us again take the subject of judicature as an example
and illustration. The judicial system being given, the goodness of the
administration of justice is in the compound ratio of the worth of the men
composing the tribunals, and the worth of the public opinion which
influences or controls them. But all the difference between a good and a bad
system of judicature lies in the contrivances adopted for bringing whatever
moral and intellectual worth exists in the community to bear upon the
administration of justice, and making it duly operative on the result. The
arrangements for rendering the choice of the judges such as to obtain the
highest average of virtue and intelligence; the salutary forms of procedure;
the publicity which allows observation and criticism of whatever is amiss;
the liberty of discussion and cinsure through the press; the mode of taking
evidence, according as it is well or ill adapted to elicit truth; the facilities,
whatever be their amount, for obtaining access to the tribunals; the
arrangements for detecting crimes and apprehending offenders-all these
things are not the power, but the machinery for bringing the power into
contact with the obstacle; and the machinery has no action of itself, but
without it the power, let it be ever so ample, would be wasted and of no
effect. A similar distinction exists in regard to the constitution of the
executive departments of administration. Their machinery is good, when the
proper tests are prescribed for the qualifications of officers, the proper rules
for their promotion; when the business is conveniently distributed among
those who are to transact it, a convenient and methodical order established
for its transaction, a correct and intelligible record kept of it after being
transacted; when each individual knows for what he is responsible, and is
known to others as responsible for it; when the best-contrived checks are
provided against negligence, favoritism, or jobbery in any of the acts of the
department. But political checks will no more act of themselves than a
bridle will direct a horse without a rider. If the checking functionaries are as
corrupt or as negligent as those whom they ought to check, and if the
public, the mainspring of the whole checking machinery, are too ignorant,
too passive, or too careless and inattentive to do their part, little benefit will
be derived from the best administrative apparatus. Yet a good apparatus is
always preferable to a bad. It enables such insufficient moving or checking
power as exists to act at the greatest advantage; and without it, no amount
of moving or checking power would be sufficient. Publicity, for instance, is
no impediment to evil, nor stimulus to good, if the public will not look at

what is done; but without publicity, how could they either check or
encourage what they were not permitted to see? The ideally perfect
constitution of a public office is that in which the interest of the functionary
is entirely coincident with his duty. No mere system will make it so, but still
less can it be made so without a system, aptly devised for the purpose.
What we have said of the arrangements for the detailed administration of
the government is still more evidently true of its general constitution. All
government which aims at being good is an organization of some part of the
good qualities existing in the individual members of the community for the
conduct of its collective affairs. A representative constitution is a means of
bringing the general standard of intelligence and honesty existing in the
community, and the individual intellect and virtue of its wisest members,
more directly to bear upon the government, and investing them with greater
influence in it than they would have under any other mode of organization;
though, under any, such influence as they do have is the source of all good
that there is in the government, and the hindrance of every evil that there is
not. The greater the amount of these good qualities which the institutions of
a country succeed in organizing, and the better the mode of organization,
the better will be the government.
We have now, therefore, obtained a foundation for a twofold division of
the merit which any set of political institutions can possess. It consists
partly of the degree in which they promote the general mental advancement
of the community, including under that phrase advancement in intellect, in
virtue, and in practical activity and efficiency, and partly of the degree of
perfection with which they organize the moral, intellectual, and active
worth already existing, so as to operate with the greatest effect on public
affairs. A government is to be judged by its action upon men and by its
action upon things; by what it makes of the citizens, and what it does with
them; its tendency to improve or deteriorate the people themselves, and the
goodness or badness of the work it performs for them, and by means of
them. Government is at once a great influence acting on the human mind,
and a set of organized arrangements for public business: in the first capacity
its beneficial action is chiefly indirect, but not therefore less vital, while its
mischievous action may be direct.
The difference between these two functions of a government is not, like
that between Order and Progress, a difference merely in degree, but in kind.

We must not, however, suppose that they have no intimate connection with
one another. The institutions which insure the best management of public
affairs practicable in the existing state of cultivation tend by this alone to
the further improvement of that state. A people which had the most just
laws, the purest and most efficient judicature, the most enlightened
administration, the most equitable and least onerous system of finance,
compatible with the stage it had attained in moral and intellectual
advancement, would be in a fair way to pass rapidly into a higher stage. Nor
is there any mode in which political institutions can contribute more
effectually to the improvement of the people than by doing their more direct
work well. And reversely, if their machinery is so badly constructed that
they do their own particular business ill, the effect is felt in a thousand ways
in lowering the morality and deadening the intelligence and activity of the
people. But the distinction is nevertheless real, because this is only one of
the means by which political institutions improve or deteriorate the human
mind, and the causes and modes of that beneficial or injurious influence
remain a distinct and much wider subject of study.
Of the two modes of operation by which a form of government or set of
political institutions affects the welfare of the community—its operation as
an agency of national education, and its arrangements for conducting the
collective affairs of the community in the state of education in which they
already are, the last evidently varies much less, from difference of country
and state of civilization, than the first. It has also much less to do with the
fundamental constitution of the government. The mode of conducting the
practical business of government, which is best under a free constitution,
would generally be best also in an absolute monarchy, only an absolute
monarchy is not so likely to practice it. The laws of property, for example;
the principles of evidence and judicial procedure; the system of taxation and
of financial administration, need not necessarily be different in different
forms of government. Each of these matters has principles and rules of its
own, which are a subject of separate study. General jurisprudence, civil and
penal legislation, financial and commercial policy, are sciences in
themselves, or, rather, separate members of the comprehensive science or
art of government; and the most enlightened doctrines on all these subjects,
though not equally likely to be understood and acted on under all forms of
government, yet, if understood and acted on, would in general be equally
beneficial under them all. It is true that these doctrines could not be applied

without some modifications to all states of society and of the human mind;
nevertheless, by far the greater number of them would require modifications
solely of detail to adapt them to any state of society sufficiently advanced to
possess rulers capable of understanding them. A government to which they
would be wholly unsuitable must be one so bad in itself, or so opposed to
public feeling, as to be unable to maintain itself in existence by honest
means.
It is otherwise with that portion of the interests of the community which
relate to the better or worse training of the people themselves. Considered
as instrumental to this, institutions need to be radically different, according
to the stage of advancement already reached. The recognition of this truth,
though for the most part empirically rather than philosophically, may be
regarded as the main point of superiority in the political theories of the
present above those of the last age, in which it was customary to claim
representative democracy for England or France by arguments which would
equally have proved it the only fit form of government for Bedouins or
Malays. The state of different communities, in point of culture and
development, ranges downwards to a condition very little above the highest
of the beasts. The upward range, too, is considerable, and the future
possible extension vastly greater. A community can only be developed out
of one of these states into a higher by a concourse of influences, among the
principal of which is the government to which they are subject. In all states
of human improvement ever yet attained, the nature and degree of authority
exercised over individuals, the distribution of power, and the conditions of
command and obedience, are the most powerful of the influences, except
their religious belief, which make them what they are, and enable them to
become what they can be. They may be stopped short at any point in their
progress by defective adaptation of their government to that particular stage
of advancement. And the one indispensable merit of a government, in favor
of which it may be forgiven almost any amount of other demerit compatible
with progress, is that its operation on the people is favorable, or not
unfavorable, to the next step which it is necessary for them to take in order
to raise themselves to a higher level.
Thus (to repeat a former example), a people in a state of savage
independence, in which every one lives for himself, exempt, unless by fits,
from any external control, is practically incapable of making any progress
in civilization until it has learned to obey. The indispensable virtue,

therefore, in a government which establishes itself over a people of this sort
is that it make itself obeyed. To enable it to do this, the constitution of the
government must be nearly, or quite despotic. A constitution in any degree
popular, dependent on the voluntary surrender by the different members of
the community of their individual freedom of action, would fail to enforce
the first lesson which the pupils, in this stage of their progress, require.
Accordingly, the civilization of such tribes, when not the result of
juxtaposition with others already civilized, is almost always the work of an
absolute ruler, deriving his power either from religion or military prowess
—very often from foreign arms.
Again, uncivilized races, and the bravest and most energetic still more
than the rest, are averse to continuous labor of an unexciting kind. Yet all
real civilization is at this price; without such labor, neither can the mind be
disciplined into the habits required by civilized society, nor the material
world prepared to receive it. There needs a rare concurrence of
circumstances, and for that reason often a vast length of time, to reconcile
such a people to industry, unless they are for a while compelled to it. Hence
even personal slavery, by giving a commencement to industrial life, and
enforcing it as the exclusive occupation of the most numerous portion of the
community, may accelerate the transition to a better freedom than that of
fighting and rapine. It is almost needless to say that this excuse for slavery
is only available in a very early state of society. A civilized people have far
other means of imparting civilization to those under their influence; and
slavery is, in all its details, so repugnant to that government of law, which is
the foundation of all modern life, and so corrupting to the master-class
when they have once come under civilized influences, that its adoption
under any circumstances whatever in modern society is a relapse into worse
than barbarism.
At some period, however, of their history, almost every people, now
civilized, have consisted, in majority, of slaves. A people in that condition
require to raise them out of it a very different polity from a nation of
savages. If they are energetic by nature, and especially if there be associated
with them in the same community an industrious class who are neither
slaves nor slave-owners (as was the case in Greece), they need, probably, no
more to insure their improvement than to make them free: when freed, they
may often be fit, like Roman freedmen, to be admitted at once to the full
rights of citizenship. This, however, is not the normal condition of slavery,

and is generally a sign that it is becoming obsolete. A slave, properly so
called, is a being who has not learned to help himself. He is, no doubt, one
step in advance of a savage. He has not the first lesson of political society
still to acquire. He has learned to obey. But what he obeys is only a direct
command. It is the characteristic of born slaves to be incapable of
conforming their conduct to a rule or law. They can only do what they are
ordered, and only when they are ordered to do it. If a man whom they fear
is standing over them and threatening them with punishment, they obey; but
when his back is turned, the work remains undone. The motive determining
them must appeal, not to their interests, but to their instincts; immediate
hope or immediate terror. A despotism, which may tame the savage, will, in
so far as it is a despotism, only confirm the slaves in their incapacities. Yet a
government under their own control would be entirely unmanageable by
them. Their improvement can not come from themselves, but must be
superinduced from without. The step which they have to take, and their only
path to improvement, is to be raised from a government of will to one of
law. They have to be taught self-government, and this, in its initial stage,
means the capacity to act on general instructions. What they require is not a
government of force, but one of guidance. Being, however, in too low a
state to yield to the guidance of any but those to whom they look up as the
possessors of force, the sort of government fittest for them is one which
possesses force, but seldom uses it; a parental despotism or aristocracy,
resembling the St. Simonian form of Socialism; maintaining a general
superintendence over all the operations of society, so as to keep before each
the sense of a present force sufficient to compel his obedience to the rule
laid down, but which, owing to the impossibility of descending to regulate
all the minutiæ of industry and life, necessarily leaves and induces
individuals to do much of themselves. This, which may be termed the
government of leading-strings, seems to be the one required to carry such a
people the most rapidly through the next necessary step in social progress.
Such appears to have been the idea of the government of the Incas of Peru,
and such was that of the Jesuits of Paraguay. I need scarcely remark that
leading-strings are only admissible as a means of gradually training the
people to walk alone.
It would be out of place to carry the illustration further. To attempt to
investigate what kind of government is suited to every known state of
society would be to compose a treatise, not on representative government,

but on political science at large. For our more limited purpose we borrow
from political philosophy only its general principles. To determine the form
of government most suited to any particular people, we must be able,
among the defects and shortcomings which belong to that people, to
distinguish those that are the immediate impediment to progress—to
discover what it is which (as it were) stops the way. The best government
for them is the one which tends most to give them that for want of which
they can not advance, or advance only in a lame and lopsided manner. We
must not, however, forget the reservation necessary in all things which have
for their object improvement or Progress, namely, that in seeking the good
which is needed, no damage, or as little as possible, be done to that already
possessed. A people of savages should be taught obedience, but not in such
a manner as to convert them into a people of slaves. And (to give the
observation a higher generality) the form of government which is most
effectual for carrying a people through the next stage of progress will still
be very improper for them if it does this in such a manner as to obstruct, or
positively unfit them for, the step next beyond. Such cases are frequent, and
are among the most melancholy facts in history. The Egyptian hierarchy, the
paternal despotism of China, were very fit instruments for carrying those
nations up to the point of civilization which they attained. But having
reached that point, they were brought to a permanent halt for want of
mental liberty and individuality—requisites of improvement which the
institutions that had carried them thus far entirely incapacitated them from
acquiring—and as the institutions did not break down and give place to
others, further improvement stopped. In contrast with these nations, let us
consider the example of an opposite character afforded by another and a
comparatively insignificant Oriental people—the Jews. They, too, had an
absolute monarchy and a hierarchy, and their organized institutions were as
obviously of sacerdotal origin as those of the Hindoos. These did for them
what was done for other Oriental races by their institutions—subdued them
to industry and order, and gave them a national life. But neither their kings
nor their priests ever obtained, as in those other countries, the exclusive
moulding of their character. Their religion, which enabled persons of genius
and a high religious tone to be regarded and to regard themselves as
inspired from heaven, gave existence to an inestimably precious
unorganized institution—the Order (if it may be so termed) of Prophets.
Under the protection, generally though not always effectual, of their sacred

character, the Prophets were a power in the nation, often more than a match
for kings and priests, and kept up, in that little corner of the earth, the
antagonism of influences which is the only real security for continued
progress. Religion, consequently, was not there what it has been in so many
other places—a consecration of all that was once established, and a barrier
against further improvement. The remark of a distinguished Hebrew, M.
Salvador, that the Prophets were, in Church and State, the equivalent of the
modern liberty of the press, gives a just but not an adequate conception of
the part fulfilled in national and universal history by this great element of
Jewish life; by means of which, the canon of inspiration never being
complete, the persons most eminent in genius and moral feeling could not
only denounce and reprobate, with the direct authority of the Almighty,
whatever appeared to them deserving of such treatment, but could give
forth better and higher interpretations of the national religion, which
thenceforth became part of the religion. Accordingly, whoever can divest
himself of the habit of reading the Bible as if it was one book, which until
lately was equally inveterate in Christians and in unbelievers, sees with
admiration the vast interval between the morality and religion of the
Pentateuch, or even of the historical books (the unmistakable work of
Hebrew Conservatives of the sacerdotal order), and the morality and
religion of the prophecies—a distance as wide as between these last and the
Gospels. Conditions more favorable to Progress could not easily exist;
accordingly, the Jews, instead of being stationary like other Asiatics, were,
next to the Greeks, the most progressive people of antiquity, and, jointly
with them, have been the starting-point and main propelling agency of
modern cultivation.
It is, then, impossible to understand the question of the adaptation of
forms of government to states of society, without taking into account not
only the next step, but all the steps which society has yet to make; both
those which can be foreseen, and the far wider indefinite range which is at
present out of sight. It follows, that to judge of the merits of forms of
government, an ideal must be constructed of the form of government most
eligible in itself, that is, which, if the necessary conditions existed for
giving effect to its beneficial tendencies, would, more than all others, favor
and promote, not some one improvement, but all forms and degrees of it.
This having been done, we must consider what are the mental conditions of
all sorts necessary to enable this government to realize its tendencies, and

what, therefore, are the various defects by which a people is made incapable
of reaping its benefits. It would then be possible to construct a theorem of
the circumstances in which that form of government may wisely be
introduced; and also to judge, in cases in which it had better not be
introduced, what inferior forms of polity will best carry those communities
through the intermediate stages which they must traverse before they can
become fit for the best form of government.
Of these inquiries, the last does not concern us here, but the first is an
essential part of our subject; for we may, without rashness, at once
enunciate a proposition, the proofs and illustrations of which will present
themselves in the ensuing pages, that this ideally best form of government
will be found in some one or other variety of the Representative System.

Chapter III—That the ideally best Form of
Government is Representative Government.
It has long (perhaps throughout the entire duration of British freedom)
been a common form of speech, that if a good despot could be insured,
despotic monarchy would be the best form of government. I look upon this
as a radical and most pernicious misconception of what good government
is, which, until it can be got rid of, will fatally vitiate all our speculations on
government.
The supposition is, that absolute power, in the hands of an eminent
individual, would insure a virtuous and intelligent performance of all the
duties of government. Good laws would be established and enforced, bad
laws would be reformed; the best men would be placed in all situations of
trust; justice would be as well administered, the public burdens would be as
light and as judiciously imposed, every branch of administration would be
as purely and as intelligently conducted as the circumstances of the country
and its degree of intellectual and moral cultivation would admit. I am
willing, for the sake of the argument, to concede all this, but I must point
out how great the concession is, how much more is needed to produce even
an approximation to these results than is conveyed in the simple expression,
a good despot. Their realization would in fact imply, not merely a good
monarch, but an all-seeing one. He must be at all times informed correctly,
in considerable detail, of the conduct and working of every branch of
administration, in every district of the country, and must be able, in the
twenty-four hours per day, which are all that is granted to a king as to the
humblest laborer, to give an effective share of attention and superintendence
to all parts of this vast field; or he must at least be capable of discerning and
choosing out, from among the mass of his subjects, not only a large
abundance of honest and able men, fit to conduct every branch of public
administration under supervision and control, but also the small number of
men of eminent virtues and talents who can be trusted not only to do
without that supervision, but to exercise it themselves over others. So
extraordinary are the faculties and energies required for performing this task
in any supportable manner, that the good despot whom we are supposing

can hardly be imagined as consenting to undertake it unless as a refuge
from intolerable evils, and a transitional preparation for something beyond.
But the argument can do without even this immense item in the account.
Suppose the difficulty vanquished. What should we then have? One man of
superhuman mental activity managing the entire affairs of a mentally
passive people. Their passivity is implied in the very idea of absolute
power. The nation as a whole, and every individual composing it, are
without any potential voice in their own destiny. They exercise no will in
respect to their collective interests. All is decided for them by a will not
their own, which it is legally a crime for them to disobey. What sort of
human beings can be formed under such a regimen? What development can
either their thinking or their active faculties attain under it? On matters of
pure theory they might perhaps be allowed to speculate, so long as their
speculations either did not approach politics, or had not the remotest
connection with its practice. On practical affairs they could at most be only
suffered to suggest; and even under the most moderate of despots, none but
persons of already admitted or reputed superiority could hope that their
suggestions would be known to, much less regarded by, those who had the
management of affairs. A person must have a very unusual taste for
intellectual exercise in and for itself who will put himself to the trouble of
thought when it is to have no outward effect, or qualify himself for
functions which he has no chance of being allowed to exercise. The only
sufficient incitement to mental exertion, in any but a few minds in a
generation, is the prospect of some practical use to be made of its results. It
does not follow that the nation will be wholly destitute of intellectual
power. The common business of life, which must necessarily be performed
by each individual or family for themselves, will call forth some amount of
intelligence and practical ability, within a certain narrow range of ideas.
There may be a select class of savants who cultivate science with a view to
its physical uses or for the pleasure of the pursuit. There will be a
bureaucracy, and persons in training for the bureaucracy, who will be taught
at least some empirical maxims of government and public administration.
There may be, and often has been, a systematic organization of the best
mental power in the country in some special direction (commonly military)
to promote the grandeur of the despot. But the public at large remain
without information and without interest on all greater matters of practice;
or, if they have any knowledge of them, it is but a dilettante knowledge,

like that which people have of the mechanical arts who have never handled
a tool. Nor is it only in their intelligence that they suffer. Their moral
capacities are equally stunted. Wherever the sphere of action of human
beings is artificially circumscribed, their sentiments are narrowed and
dwarfed in the same proportion. The food of feeling is action; even
domestic affection lives upon voluntary good offices. Let a person have
nothing to do for his country, and he will not care for it. It has been said of
old that in a despotism there is at most but one patriot, the despot himself;
and the saying rests on a just appreciation of the effects of absolute
subjection even to a good and wise master. Religion remains; and here, at
least, it may be thought, is an agency that may be relied on for lifting men's
eyes and minds above the dust at their feet. But religion, even supposing it
to escape perversion for the purposes of despotism, ceases in these
circumstances to be a social concern, and narrows into a personal affair
between an individual and his Maker, in which the issue at stake is but his
private salvation. Religion in this shape is quite consistent with the most
selfish and contracted egoism, and identifies the votary as little in feeling
with the rest of his kind as sensuality itself.
A good despotism means a government in which, so far as depends on
the despot, there is no positive oppression by officers of state, but in which
all the collective interests of the people are managed for them, all the
thinking that has relation to collective interests done for them, and in which
their minds are formed by, and consenting to, this abdication of their own
energies. Leaving things to the government, like leaving them to
Providence, is synonymous with caring nothing about them, and accepting
their results, when disagreeable, as visitations of Nature. With the
exception, therefore, of a few studious men who take an intellectual interest
in speculation for its own sake, the intelligence and sentiments of the whole
people are given up to the material interests, and when these are provided
for, to the amusement and ornamentation of private life. But to say this is to
say, if the whole testimony of history is worth any thing, that the era of
national decline has arrived; that is, if the nation had ever attained any thing
to decline from. If it has never risen above the condition of an Oriental
people, in that condition it continues to stagnate; but if, like Greece or
Rome, it had realized any thing higher, through the energy, patriotism, and
enlargement of mind, which, as national qualities, are the fruits solely of
freedom, it relapses in a few generations into the Oriental state. And that

state does not mean stupid tranquillity, with security against change for the
worse; it often means being overrun, conquered, and reduced to domestic
slavery either by a stronger despot, or by the nearest barbarous people who
retain along with their savage rudeness the energies of freedom.
Such are not merely the natural tendencies, but the inherent necessities of
despotic government; from which there is no outlet, unless in so far as the
despotism consents not to be despotism; in so far as the supposed good
despot abstains from exercising his power, and, though holding it in reserve,
allows the general business of government to go on as if the people really
governed themselves. However little probable it may be, we may imagine a
despot observing many of the rules and restraints of constitutional
government. He might allow such freedom of the press and of discussion as
would enable a public opinion to form and express itself on national affairs.
He might suffer local interests to be managed, without the interference of
authority, by the people themselves. He might even surround himself with a
council or councils of government, freely chosen by the whole or some
portion of the nation, retaining in his own hands the power of taxation, and
the supreme legislative as well as executive authority. Were he to act thus,
and so far abdicate as a despot, he would do away with a considerable part
of the evils characteristic of despotism. Political activity and capacity for
public affairs would no longer be prevented from growing up in the body of
the nation, and a public opinion would form itself, not the mere echo of the
government. But such improvement would be the beginning of new
difficulties. This public opinion, independent of the monarch's dictation,
must be either with him or against him; if not the one, it will be the other.
All governments must displease many persons, and these having now
regular organs, and being able to express their sentiments, opinions adverse
to the measures of government would often be expressed. What is the
monarch to do when these unfavorable opinions happen to be in the
majority? Is he to alter his course? Is he to defer to the nation? If so, he is
no longer a despot, but a constitutional king; an organ or first minister of
the people, distinguished only by being irremovable. If not, he must either
put down opposition by his despotic power, or there will arise a permanent
antagonism between the people and one man, which can have but one
possible ending. Not even a religious principle of passive obedience and
"right divine" would long ward off the natural consequences of such a
position. The monarch would have to succumb, and conform to the

conditions of constitutional royalty, or give place to some one who would.
The despotism, being thus chiefly nominal, would possess few of the
advantages supposed to belong to absolute monarchy, while it would realize
in a very imperfect degree those of a free government, since, however great
an amount of liberty the citizens might practically enjoy, they could never
forget that they held it on sufferance, and by a concession which, under the
existing constitution of the state might at any moment be resumed; that they
were legally slaves, though of a prudent or indulgent master.
It is not much to be wondered at if impatient or disappointed reformers,
groaning under the impediments opposed to the most salutary public
improvements by the ignorance, the indifference, the untractableness, the
perverse obstinacy of a people, and the corrupt combinations of selfish
private interests, armed with the powerful weapons afforded by free
institutions, should at times sigh for a strong hand to bear down all these
obstacles, and compel a recalcitrant people to be better governed. But
(setting aside the fact that for one despot who now and then reforms an
abuse, there are ninety-nine who do nothing but create them) those who
look in any such direction for the realization of their hopes leave out of the
idea of good government its principal element, the improvement of the
people themselves. One of the benefits of freedom is that under it the ruler
can not pass by the people's minds, and amend their affairs for them without
amending them. If it were possible for the people to be well governed in
spite of themselves, their good government would last no longer than the
freedom of a people usually lasts who have been liberated by foreign arms
without their own co-operation. It is true, a despot may educate the people,
and to do so really would be the best apology for his despotism. But any
education which aims at making human beings other than machines, in the
long run makes them claim to have the control of their own actions. The
leaders of French philosophy in the eighteenth century had been educated
by the Jesuits. Even Jesuit education, it seems, was sufficiently real to call
forth the appetite for freedom. Whatever invigorates the faculties, in
however small a measure, creates an increased desire for their more
unimpeded exercise; and a popular education is a failure if it educates the
people for any state but that which it will certainly induce them to desire,
and most probably to demand.
I am far from condemning, in cases of extreme exigency, the assumption
of absolute power in the form of a temporary dictatorship. Free nations

have, in times of old, conferred such power by their own choice, as a
necessary medicine for diseases of the body politic which could not be got
rid of by less violent means. But its acceptance, even for a time strictly
limited, can only be excused, if, like Solon or Pittacus, the dictator employs
the whole power he assumes in removing the obstacles which debar the
nation from the enjoyment of freedom. A good despotism is an altogether
false ideal, which practically (except as a means to some temporary
purpose) becomes the most senseless and dangerous of chimeras. Evil for
evil, a good despotism, in a country at all advanced in civilization, is more
noxious than a bad one, for it is far more relaxing and enervating to the
thoughts, feelings, and energies of the people. The despotism of Augustus
prepared the Romans for Tiberius. If the whole tone of their character had
not first been prostrated by nearly two generations of that mild slavery, they
would probably have had spirit enough left to rebel against the more odious
one.
There is no difficulty in showing that the ideally best form of government
is that in which the sovereignty, or supreme controlling power in the last
resort, is vested in the entire aggregate of the community, every citizen not
only having a voice in the exercise of that ultimate sovereignty, but being,
at least occasionally, called on to take an actual part in the government by
the personal discharge of some public function, local or general.
To test this proposition, it has to be examined in reference to the two
branches into which, as pointed out in the last chapter, the inquiry into the
goodness of a government conveniently divides itself, namely, how far it
promotes the good management of the affairs of society by means of the
existing faculties, moral, intellectual, and active, of its various members,
and what is its effect in improving or deteriorating those faculties.
The ideally best form of government, it is scarcely necessary to say, does
not mean one which is practicable or eligible in all states of civilization, but
the one which, in the circumstances in which it is practicable and eligible, is
attended with the greatest amount of beneficial consequences, immediate
and prospective. A completely popular government is the only polity which
can make out any claim to this character. It is pre-eminent in both the
departments between which the excellence of a political Constitution is
divided. It is both more favorable to present good government, and

promotes a better and higher form of national character than any other
polity whatsoever.
Its superiority in reference to present well-being rests upon two
principles, of as universal truth and applicability as any general propositions
which can be laid down respecting human affairs. The first is, that the rights
and interests of every or any person are only secure from being disregarded
when the person interested is himself able, and habitually disposed to stand
up for them. The second is, that the general prosperity attains a greater
height, and is more widely diffused, in proportion to the amount and variety
of the personal energies enlisted in promoting it.
Putting these two propositions into a shape more special to their present
application—human beings are only secure from evil at the hands of others
in proportion as they have the power of being, and are, self-protecting; and
they only achieve a high degree of success in their struggle with Nature in
proportion as they are self-dependent, relying on what they themselves can
do, either separately or in concert, rather than on what others do for them.
The former proposition—that each is the only safe guardian of his own
rights and interests—is one of those elementary maxims of prudence which
every person capable of conducting his own affairs implicitly acts upon
wherever he himself is interested. Many, indeed, have a great dislike to it as
a political doctrine, and are fond of holding it up to obloquy as a doctrine of
universal selfishness. To which we may answer, that whenever it ceases to
be true that mankind, as a rule, prefer themselves to others, and those
nearest to them to those more remote, from that moment Communism is not
only practicable, but the only defensible form of society, and will, when that
time arrives, be assuredly carried into effect. For my own part, not believing
in universal selfishness, I have no difficulty in admitting that Communism
would even now be practicable among the élite of mankind, and may
become so among the rest. But as this opinion is any thing but popular with
those defenders of existing institutions who find fault with the doctrine of
the general predominance of self-interest, I am inclined to think they do in
reality believe that most men consider themselves before other people. It is
not, however, necessary to affirm even thus much in order to support the
claim of all to participate in the sovereign power. We need not suppose that
when power resides in an exclusive class, that class will knowingly and
deliberately sacrifice the other classes to themselves: it suffices that, in the

absence of its natural defenders, the interest of the excluded is always in
danger of being overlooked; and, when looked at, is seen with very different
eyes from those of the persons whom it directly concerns. In this country,
for example, what are called the working-classes may be considered as
excluded from all direct participation in the government. I do not believe
that the classes who do participate in it have in general any intention of
sacrificing the working classes to themselves. They once had that intention;
witness the persevering attempts so long made to keep down wages by law.
But in the present day, their ordinary disposition is the very opposite: they
willingly make considerable sacrifices, especially of their pecuniary
interest, for the benefit of the working classes, and err rather by too lavish
and indiscriminating beneficence; nor do I believe that any rulers in history
have been actuated by a more sincere desire to do their duty towards the
poorer portion of their countrymen. Yet does Parliament, or almost any of
the members composing it, ever for an instant look at any question with the
eyes of a working man? When a subject arises in which the laborers as such
have an interest, is it regarded from any point of view but that of the
employers of labor? I do not say that the working men's view of these
questions is in general nearer to the truth than the other, but it is sometimes
quite as near; and in any case it ought to be respectfully listened to, instead
of being, as it is, not merely turned away from, but ignored. On the question
of strikes, for instance, it is doubtful if there is so much as one among the
leading members of either House who is not firmly convinced that the
reason of the matter is unqualifiedly on the side of the masters, and that the
men's view of it is simply absurd. Those who have studied the question
know well how far this is from being the case, and in how different, and
how infinitely less superficial a manner the point would have to be argued,
if the classes who strike were able to make themselves heard in Parliament.
It is an adherent condition of human affairs that no intention, however
sincere, of protecting the interests of others can make it safe or salutary to
tie up their own hands. Still more obviously true is it that by their own
hands only can any positive and durable improvement of their
circumstances in life be worked out. Through the joint influence of these
two principles, all free communities have both been more exempt from
social injustice and crime, and have attained more brilliant prosperity than
any others, or than they themselves after they lost their freedom. Contrast
the free states of the world, while their freedom lasted, with the

cotemporary subjects of monarchical or oligarchical despotism: the Greek
cities with the Persian satrapies; the Italian republics and the free towns of
Flanders and Germany, with the feudal monarchies of Europe; Switzerland,
Holland, and England, with Austria or ante-revolutionary France. Their
superior prosperity was too obvious ever to have been gainsayed; while
their superiority in good government and social relations is proved by the
prosperity, and is manifest besides in every page of history. If we compare,
not one age with another, but the different governments which coexisted in
the same age, no amount of disorder which exaggeration itself can pretend
to have existed amidst the publicity of the free states can be compared for a
moment with the contemptuous trampling upon the mass of the people
which pervaded the whole life of the monarchical countries, or the
disgusting individual tyranny which was of more than daily occurrence
under the systems of plunder which they called fiscal arrangements, and in
the secrecy of their frightful courts of justice.
It must be acknowledged that the benefits of freedom, so far as they have
hitherto been enjoyed, were obtained by the extension of its privileges to a
part only of the community; and that a government in which they are
extended impartially to all is a desideratum still unrealized. But, though
every approach to this has an independent value, and in many cases more
than an approach could not, in the existing state of general improvement, be
made, the participation of all in these benefits is the ideally perfect
conception of free government. In proportion as any, no matter who, are
excluded from it, the interests of the excluded are left without the guaranty
accorded to the rest, and they themselves have less scope and
encouragement than they might otherwise have to that exertion of their
energies for the good of themselves and of the community, to which the
general prosperity is always proportioned.
Thus stands the case as regards present well-being—the good
management of the affairs of the existing generation. If we now pass to the
influence of the form of government upon character, we shall find the
superiority of popular government over every other to be, if possible, still
more decided and indisputable.
This question really depends upon a still more fundamental one, viz.,
which of two common types of character, for the general good of humanity,
it is most desirable should predominate—the active or the passive type; that

which struggles against evils, or that which endures them; that which bends
to circumstances, or that which endeavours to make circumstances bend to
itself.
The commonplaces of moralists and the general sympathies of mankind
are in favor of the passive type. Energetic characters may be admired, but
the acquiescent and submissive are those which most men personally prefer.
The passiveness of our neighbors increases our sense of security, and plays
into the hands of our wilfulness. Passive characters, if we do not happen to
need their activity, seem an obstruction the less in our own path. A
contented character is not a dangerous rival. Yet nothing is more certain
than that improvement in human affairs is wholly the work of the
uncontented characters; and, moreover, that it is much easier for an active
mind to acquire the virtues of patience, than for a passive one to assume
those of energy.
Of the three varieties of mental excellence, intellectual, practical, and
moral, there never could be any doubt in regard to the first two, which side
had the advantage. All intellectual superiority is the fruit of active effort.
Enterprise, the desire to keep moving, to be trying and accomplishing new
things for our own benefit or that of others, is the parent even of
speculative, and much more of practical, talent. The intellectual culture
compatible with the other type is of that feeble and vague description which
belongs to a mind that stops at amusement or at simple contemplation. The
test of real and vigorous thinking, the thinking which ascertains truths
instead of dreaming dreams, is successful application to practice. Where
that purpose does not exist, to give definiteness, precision, and an
intelligible meaning to thought, it generates nothing better than the mystical
metaphysics of the Pythagoreans or the Veds. With respect to practical
improvement, the case is still more evident. The character which improves
human life is that which struggles with natural powers and tendencies, not
that which gives way to them. The self-benefiting qualities are all on the
side of the active and energetic character, and the habits and conduct which
promote the advantage of each individual member of the community must
be at least a part of those which conduce most in the end to the
advancement of the community as a whole.
But on the point of moral preferability, there seems at first sight to be
room for doubt. I am not referring to the religious feeling which has so

generally existed in favor of the inactive character, as being more in
harmony with the submission due to the divine will. Christianity, as well as
other religions, has fostered this sentiment; but it is the prerogative of
Christianity, as regards this and many other perversions, that it is able to
throw them off. Abstractedly from religious considerations, a passive
character, which yields to obstacles instead of striving to overcome them,
may not indeed be very useful to others, no more than to itself, but it might
be expected to be at least inoffensive. Contentment is always counted
among the moral virtues. But it is a complete error to suppose that
contentment is necessarily or naturally attendant on passivity of character;
and useless it is, the moral consequences are mischievous. Where there
exists a desire for advantages not possessed, the mind which does not
potentially possess them by means of its own energies is apt to look with
hatred and malice on those who do. The person bestirring himself with
hopeful prospects to improve his circumstances is the one who feels good-
will towards others engaged in, or who have succeeded in the same pursuit.
And where the majority are so engaged, those who do not attain the object
have had the tone given to their feelings by the general habit of the country,
and ascribe their failure to want of effort or opportunity, or to their personal
ill luck. But those who, while desiring what others possess, put no energy
into striving for it, are either incessantly grumbling that fortune does not do
for them what they do not attempt to do for themselves, or overflowing with
envy and ill-will towards those who possess what they would like to have.
In proportion as success in life is seen or believed to be the fruit of
fatality or accident and not of exertion in that same ratio does envy develop
itself as a point of national character. The most envious of all mankind are
the Orientals. In Oriental moralists, in Oriental tales, the envious man is
remarkably prominent. In real life, he is the terror of all who possess any
thing desirable, be it a palace, a handsome child, or even good health and
spirits: the supposed effect of his mere look constitutes the all-pervading
superstition of the evil eye. Next to Orientals in envy, as in activity, are
some of the Southern Europeans. The Spaniards pursued all their great men
with it, embittered their lives, and generally succeeded in putting an early
stop to their successes. [1] With the French, who are essentially a Southern
people, the double education of despotism and Catholicism has, in spite of
their impulsive temperament, made submission and endurance the common
character of the people, and their most received notion of wisdom and

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

The striving, go-ahead character of England and the United States is only
a fit subject of disapproving criticism on account of the very secondary
objects on which it commonly expends its strength. In itself it is the
foundation of the best hopes for the general improvement of mankind. It has
been acutely remarked that whenever any thing goes amiss, the habitual
impulse of French people is to say, "Il faut de la patience;" and of English
people, "What a shame!" The people who think it a shame when any thing
goes wrong—who rush to the conclusion that the evil could and ought to
have been prevented, are those who, in the long run, do most to make the
world better. If the desires are low placed, if they extend to little beyond
physical comfort, and the show of riches, the immediate results of the
energy will not be much more than the continual extension of man's power
over material objects; but even this makes room, and prepares the
mechanical appliances for the greatest intellectual and social achievements;
and while the energy is there, some persons will apply it, and it will be
applied more and more, to the perfecting, not of outward circumstances
alone, but of man's inward nature. Inactivity, unaspiringness, absence of
desire, are a more fatal hindrance to improvement than any misdirection of
energy, and is that through which alone, when existing in the mass, any very
formidable misdirection by an energetic few becomes possible. It is this,
mainly, which retains in a savage or semi-savage state the great majority of
the human race.
Now there can be no kind of doubt that the passive type of character is
favored by the government of one or a few, and the active self-helping type
by that of the many. Irresponsible rulers need the quiescence of the ruled
more than they need any activity but that which they can compel.
Submissiveness to the prescriptions of men as necessities of nature is the
lesson inculcated by all governments upon those who are wholly without
participation in them. The will of superiors, and the law as the will of
superiors, must be passively yielded to. But no men are mere instruments or
materials in the hands of their rulers who have will, or spirit, or a spring of
internal activity in the rest of their proceedings, and any manifestation of
these qualities, instead of receiving encouragement from despots, has to get
itself forgiven by them. Even when irresponsible rulers are not sufficiently
conscious of danger from the mental activity of their subjects to be desirous
of repressing it, the position itself is a repression. Endeavour is even more
effectually restrained by the certainty of its impotence than by any positive

discouragement. Between subjection to the will of others and the virtues of
self-help and self-government there is a natural incompatibility. This is
more or less complete according as the bondage is strained or relaxed.
Rulers differ very much in the length to which they carry the control of the
free agency of their subjects, or the supersession of it by managing their
business for them. But the difference is in degree, not in principle; and the
best despots often go the greatest lengths in chaining up the free agency of
their subjects. A bad despot, when his own personal indulgences have been
provided for, may sometimes be willing to let the people alone; but a good
despot insists on doing them good by making them do their own business in
a better way than they themselves know of. The regulations which restricted
to fixed processes all the leading branches of French manufactures were the
work of the great Colbert.
Very different is the state of the human faculties where a human being
feels himself under no other external restraint than the necessities of nature,
or mandates of society which he has his share in imposing, and which it is
open to him, if he thinks them wrong, publicly to dissent from, and exert
himself actively to get altered. No doubt, under a government partially
popular, this freedom may be exercised even by those who are not partakers
in the full privileges of citizenship; but it is a great additional stimulus to
any one's self-help and self-reliance when he starts from even ground, and
has not to feel that his success depends on the impression he can make upon
the sentiments and dispositions of a body of whom he is not one. It is a
great discouragement to an individual, and a still greater one to a class, to
be left out of the constitution; to be reduced to plead from outside the door
to the arbiters of their destiny, not taken into consultation within. The
maximum of the invigorating effect of freedom upon the character is only
obtained when the person acted on either is, or is looking forward to
becoming, a citizen as fully privileged as any other. What is still more
important than even this matter of feeling is the practical discipline which
the character obtains from the occasional demand made upon the citizens to
exercise, for a time and in their turn, some social function. It is not
sufficiently considered how little there is in most men's ordinary life to give
any largeness either to their conceptions or to their sentiments. Their work
is a routine; not a labor of love, but of self-interest in the most elementary
form, the satisfaction of daily wants; neither the thing done, nor the process
of doing it, introduces the mind to thoughts or feelings extending beyond

individuals; if instructive books are within their reach, there is no stimulus
to read them; and, in most cases, the individual has no access to any person
of cultivation much superior to his own. Giving him something to do for the
public supplies, in a measure, all these deficiencies. If circumstances allow
the amount of public duty assigned him to be considerable, it makes him an
educated man. Notwithstanding the defects of the social system and moral
ideas of antiquity, the practice of the dicastery and the ecclesia raised the
intellectual standard of an average Athenian citizen far beyond any thing of
which there is yet an example in any other mass of men, ancient or modern.
The proofs of this are apparent in every page of our great historian of
Greece; but we need scarcely look further than to the high quality of the
addresses which their great orators deemed best calculated to act with effect
on their understanding and will. A benefit of the same kind, though far less
in degree, is produced on Englishmen of the lower middle class by their
liability to be placed on juries and to serve parish offices, which, though it
does not occur to so many, nor is so continuous, nor introduces them to so
great a variety of elevated considerations as to admit of comparison with
the public education which every citizen of Athens obtained from her
democratic institutions, makes them nevertheless very different beings, in
range of ideas and development of faculties, from those who have done
nothing in their lives but drive a quill, or sell goods over a counter. Still
more salutary is the moral part of the instruction afforded by the
participation of the private citizen, if even rarely, in public functions. He is
called upon, while so engaged, to weigh interests not his own; to be guided,
in case of conflicting claims, by another rule than his private partialities; to
apply, at every turn, principles and maxims which have for their reason of
existence the general good; and he usually finds associated with him in the
same work minds more familiarized than his own with these ideas and
operations, whose study it will be to supply reasons to his understanding,
and stimulation to his feeling for the general interest. He is made to feel
himself one of the public, and whatever is their interest to be his interest.
Where this school of public spirit does not exist, scarcely any sense is
entertained that private persons, in no eminent social situation, owe any
duties to society except to obey the laws and submit to the government.
There is no unselfish sentiment of identification with the public. Every
thought or feeling, either of interest or of duty, is absorbed in the individual
and in the family. The man never thinks of any collective interest, of any

objects to be pursued jointly with others, but only in competition with them,
and in some measure at their expense. A neighbor, not being an ally or an
associate, since he is never engaged in any common undertaking for joint
benefit, is therefore only a rival. Thus even private morality suffers, while
public is actually extinct. Were this the universal and only possible state of
things, the utmost aspirations of the lawgiver or the moralist could only
stretch to make the bulk of the community a flock of sheep innocently
nibbling the grass side by side.
From these accumulated considerations, it is evident that the only
government which can fully satisfy all the exigencies of the social state is
one in which the whole people participate; that any participation, even in
the smallest public function, is useful; that the participation should every
where be as great as the general degree of improvement of the community
will allow; and that nothing less can be ultimately desirable than the
admission of all to a share in the sovereign power of the state. But since all
can not, in a community exceeding a single small town, participate
personally in any but some very minor portions of the public business, it
follows that the ideal type of a perfect government must be representative.

Chapter IV—Under what Social Conditions
Representative Government is Inapplicable.
We have recognized in representative government the ideal type of the
most perfect polity for which, in consequence, any portion of mankind are
better adapted in proportion to their degree of general improvement. As
they range lower and lower in development, that form of government will
be, generally speaking, less suitable to them, though this is not true
universally; for the adaptation of a people to representative government
does not depend so much upon the place they occupy in the general scale of
humanity as upon the degree in which they possess certain special
requisites; requisites, however, so closely connected with their degree of
general advancement, that any variation between the two is rather the
exception than the rule. Let us examine at what point in the descending
series representative government ceases altogether to be admissible, either
through its own unfitness or the superior fitness of some other regimen.
First, then, representative, like any other government, must be unsuitable
in any case in which it can not permanently subsist—i.e., in which it does
not fulfill the three fundamental conditions enumerated in the first chapter.
These were, 1. That the people should be willing to receive it. 2. That they
should be willing and able to do what is necessary for its preservation. 3.
That they should be willing and able to fulfill the duties and discharge the
functions which it imposes on them.
The willingness of the people to accept representative government only
becomes a practical question when an enlightened ruler, or a foreign nation
or nations who have gained power over the country, are disposed to offer it
the boon. To individual reformers the question is almost irrelevant, since, if
no other objection can be made to their enterprise than that the opinion of
the nation is not yet on their side, they have the ready and proper answer,
that to bring it over to their side is the very end they aim at. When opinion
is really adverse, its hostility is usually to the fact of change rather than to
representative government in itself. The contrary case is not indeed
unexampled; there has sometimes been a religious repugnance to any

limitation of the power of a particular line of rulers; but, in general, the
doctrine of passive obedience meant only submission to the will of the
powers that be, whether monarchical or popular. In any case in which the
attempt to introduce representative government is at all likely to be made,
indifference to it, and inability to understand its processes and requirements,
rather than positive opposition, are the obstacles to be expected. These,
however, are as fatal, and may be as hard to be got rid of as actual aversion;
it being easier, in most cases, to change the direction of an active feeling
than to create one in a state previously passive. When a people have no
sufficient value for, and attachment to, a representative constitution, they
have next to no chance of retaining it. In every country, the executive is the
branch of the government which wields the immediate power, and is in
direct contact with the public; to it, principally, the hopes and fears of
individuals are directed, and by it both the benefits, and the terrors, and
prestige of government are mainly represented to the public eye. Unless,
therefore, the authorities whose office it is to check the executive are
backed by an effective opinion and feeling in the country, the executive has
always the means of setting them aside or compelling them to subservience,
and is sure to be well supported in doing so. Representative institutions
necessarily depend for permanence upon the readiness of the people to fight
for them in case of their being endangered. If too little valued for this, they
seldom obtain a footing at all, and if they do, are almost sure to be
overthrown as soon as the head of the government, or any party leader who
can muster force for a coup de main, is willing to run some small risk for
absolute power.
These considerations relate to the first two causes of failure in a
representative government. The third is when the people want either the will
or the capacity to fulfill the part which belongs to them in a representative
constitution. When nobody, or only some small fraction, feels the degree of
interest in the general affairs of the state necessary to the formation of a
public opinion, the electors will seldom make any use of the right of
suffrage but to serve their private interest, or the interest of their locality, or
of some one with whom they are connected as adherents or dependents. The
small class who, in this state of public feeling, gain the command of the
representative body, for the most part use it solely as a means of seeking
their fortune. If the executive is weak, the country is distracted by mere
struggles for place; if strong, it makes itself despotic, at the cheap price of

appeasing the representatives, or such of them as are capable of giving
trouble, by a share of the spoil; and the only fruit produced by national
representation is, that in addition to those who really govern, there is an
assembly quartered on the public, and no abuse in which a portion of the
assembly are interested is at all likely to be removed. When, however, the
evil stops here, the price may be worth paying for the publicity and
discussion which, though not an invariable, are a natural accompaniment of
any, even nominal, representation. In the modern kingdom of Greece, for
example, it can hardly be doubted, that the place-hunters who chiefly
compose the representative assembly, though they contribute little or
nothing directly to good government, nor even much temper the arbitrary
power of the executive, yet keep up the idea of popular rights, and conduce
greatly to the real liberty of the press which exists in that country. This
benefit, however, is entirely dependent on the coexistence with the popular
body of an hereditary king. If, instead of struggling for the favors of the
chief ruler, these selfish and sordid factions struggled for the chief place
itself, they would certainly, as in Spanish America, keep the country in a
state of chronic revolution and civil war. A despotism, not even legal, but of
illegal violence, would be alternately exercised by a succession of political
adventurers, and the name and forms of representation would have no effect
but to prevent despotism from attaining the stability and security by which
alone its evils can be mitigated or its few advantages realized.
The preceding are the cases in which representative government can not
permanently exist. There are others in which it possibly might exist, but in
which some other form of government would be preferable. These are
principally when the people, in order to advance in civilization, have some
lesson to learn, some habit not yet acquired, to the acquisition of which
representative government is likely to be an impediment.
The most obvious of these cases is the one already considered, in which
the people have still to learn the first lesson of civilization, that of
obedience. A race who have been trained in energy and courage by
struggles with Nature and their neighbors, but who have not yet settled
down into permanent obedience to any common superior, would be little
likely to acquire this habit under the collective government of their own
body. A representative assembly drawn from among themselves would
simply reflect their own turbulent insubordination. It would refuse its
authority to all proceedings which would impose, on their savage

independence, any improving restraint. The mode in which such tribes are
usually brought to submit to the primary conditions of civilized society is
through the necessities of warfare, and the despotic authority indispensable
to military command. A military leader is the only superior to whom they
will submit, except occasionally some prophet supposed to be inspired from
above, or conjurer regarded as possessing miraculous power. These may
exercise a temporary ascendancy, but as it is merely personal, it rarely
effects any change in the general habits of the people, unless the prophet,
like Mohammed, is also a military chief, and goes forth the armed apostle
of a new religion; or unless the military chiefs ally themselves with his
influence, and turn it into a prop for their own government.
A people are no less unfitted for representative government by the
contrary fault to that last specified—by extreme passiveness, and ready
submission to tyranny. If a people thus prostrated by character and
circumstances could obtain representative institutions, they would
inevitably choose their tyrants as their representatives, and the yoke would
be made heavier on them by the contrivance which primâ facie might be
expected to lighten it. On the contrary, many a people has gradually
emerged from this condition by the aid of a central authority, whose
position has made it the rival, and has ended by making it the master, of the
local despots, and which, above all, has been single. French history, from
Hugh Capet to Richelieu and Louis XIV., is a continued example of this
course of things. Even when the king was scarcely so powerful as many of
his chief feudatories, the great advantage which he derived from being but
one has been recognized by French historians. To him the eyes of all the
locally oppressed were turned; he was the object of hope and reliance
throughout the kingdom, while each local potentate was only powerful
within a more or less confined space. At his hands, refuge and protection
were sought from every part of the country against first one, then another of
the immediate oppressors. His progress to ascendancy was slow; but it
resulted from successively taking advantage of opportunities which offered
themselves only to him. It was, therefore, sure; and, in proportion as it was
accomplished, it abated, in the oppressed portion of the community, the
habit of submitting to oppression. The king's interest lay in encouraging all
partial attempts on the part of the serfs to emancipate themselves from their
masters, and place themselves in immediate subordination to himself.
Under his protection numerous communities were formed which knew no

one above them but the king. Obedience to a distant monarch is liberty
itself compared with the dominion of the lord of the neighboring castle; and
the monarch was long compelled by necessities of position to exert his
authority as the ally rather than the master of the classes whom he had aided
in affecting their liberation. In this manner a central power, despotic in
principle, though generally much restricted in practice, was mainly
instrumental in carrying the people through a necessary stage of
improvement, which representative government, if real, would most likely
have prevented them from entering upon. There are parts of Europe where
the same work is still to be done, and no prospect of its being done by any
other means. Nothing short of despotic rule or a general massacre could
effect the emancipation of the serfs in the Russian Empire.
The same passages of history forcibly illustrate another mode in which
unlimited monarchy overcomes obstacles to the progress of civilization
which representative government would have had a decided tendency to
aggravate. One of the strongest hindrances to improvement, up to a rather
advanced stage, is an inveterate spirit of locality. Portions of mankind, in
many other respects capable of, and prepared for freedom, may be
unqualified for amalgamating into even the smallest nation. Not only may
jealousies and antipathies repel them from one another, and bar all
possibility of voluntary union, but they may not yet have acquired any of
the feelings or habits which would make the union real, supposing it to be
nominally accomplished. They may, like the citizens of an ancient
community, or those of an Asiatic village, have had considerable practice in
exercising their faculties on village or town interests, and have even
realized a tolerably effective popular government on that restricted scale,
and may yet have but slender sympathies with any thing beyond, and no
habit or capacity of dealing with interests common to many such
communities. I am not aware that history furnishes any example in which a
number of these political atoms or corpuscles have coalesced into a body,
and learned to feel themselves one people, except through previous
subjection to a central authority common to all. [2] It is through the habit of
deferring to that authority, entering into its plans and subserving its
purposes, that a people such as we have supposed receive into their minds
the conception of large interests common to a considerable geographical
extent. Such interests, on the contrary, are necessarily the predominant
consideration in the mind of the central ruler; and through the relations,

more or less intimate, which he progressively establishes with the localities,
they become familiar to the general mind. The most favorable concurrence
of circumstances under which this step in improvement could be made
would be one which should raise up representative institutions without
representative government; a representative body or bodies, drawn from the
localities, making itself the auxiliary and instrument of the central power,
but seldom attempting to thwart or control it. The people being thus taken,
as it were, into council, though not sharing the supreme power, the political
education given by the central authority is carried home, much more
effectually than it could otherwise be, to the local chiefs and to the
population generally, while, at the same time, a tradition is kept up of
government by general consent, or at least, the sanction of tradition is not
given to government without it, which, when consecrated by custom, has so
often put a bad end to a good beginning, and is one of the most frequent
causes of the sad fatality which in most countries has stopped improvement
in so early a stage, because the work of some one period has been so done
as to bar the needful work of the ages following. Meanwhile, it may be laid
down as a political truth, that by irresponsible monarchy rather than by
representative government can a multitude of insignificant political units be
welded into a people, with common feelings of cohesion, power enough to
protect itself against conquest or foreign aggression, and affairs sufficiently
various and considerable of its own to occupy worthily and expand to fit
proportions the social and political intelligence of the population.
For these several reasons, kingly government, free from the control
(though perhaps strengthened by the support) of representative institutions,
is the most suitable form of polity for the earliest stages of any community,
not excepting a city community like those of ancient Greece; where,
accordingly, the government of kings, under some real, but no ostensible or
constitutional control by public opinion, did historically precede by an
unknown and probably great duration all free institutions, and gave place at
last, during a considerable lapse of time, to oligarchies of a few families.
A hundred other infirmities or shortcomings in a people might be pointed
out which pro tanto disqualify them from making the best use of
representative government; but in regard to these it is not equally obvious
that the government of One or a Few would have any tendency to cure or
alleviate the evil. Strong prejudices of any kind; obstinate adherence to old
habits; positive defects of national character, or mere ignorance, and

deficiency of mental cultivation, if prevalent in a people, will be in general
faithfully reflected in their representative assemblies; and should it happen
that the executive administration, the direct management of public affairs, is
in the hands of persons comparatively free from these defects, more good
would frequently be done by them when not hampered by the necessity of
carrying with them the voluntary assent of such bodies. But the mere
position of the rulers does not in these, as it does in the other cases which
we have examined, of itself invest them with interests and tendencies
operating in the beneficial direction. From the general weaknesses of the
people or of the state of civilization, the One and his councillors, or the
Few, are not likely to be habitually exempt; except in the case of their being
foreigners, belonging to a superior people or a more advanced state of
society. Then, indeed, the rulers may be, to almost any extent, superior in
civilization to those over whom they rule; and subjection to a foreign
government of this description, notwithstanding its inevitable evils, is often
of the greatest advantage to a people, carrying them rapidly through several
stages of progress, and clearing away obstacles to improvement which
might have lasted indefinitely if the subject population had been left
unassisted to its native tendencies and chances. In a country not under the
dominion of foreigners, the only cause adequate to producing similar
benefits is the rare accident of a monarch of extraordinary genius. There
have been in history a few of these who, happily for humanity, have reigned
long enough to render some of their improvements permanent, by leaving
them under the guardianship of a generation which had grown up under
their influence. Charlemagne may be cited as one instance; Peter the Great
is another. Such examples however are so unfrequent that they can only be
classed with the happy accidents which have so often decided at a critical
moment whether some leading portion of humanity should make a sudden
start, or sink back towards barbarism—chances like the existence of
Themistocles at the time of the Persian invasion, or of the first or third
William of Orange. It would be absurd to construct institutions for the mere
purpose of taking advantage of such possibilities, especially as men of this
calibre, in any distinguished position, do not require despotic power to
enable them to exert great influence, as is evidenced by the three last
mentioned. The case most requiring consideration in reference to
institutions is the not very uncommon one in which a small but leading
portion of the population, from difference of race, more civilized origin, or

other peculiarities of circumstance, are markedly superior in civilization
and general character to the remainder. Under those conditions, government
by the representatives of the mass would stand a chance of depriving them
of much of the benefit they might derive from the greater civilization of the
superior ranks, while government by the representatives of those ranks
would probably rivet the degradation of the multitude, and leave them no
hope of decent treatment except by ridding themselves of one of the most
valuable elements of future advancement. The best prospect of
improvement for a people thus composed lies in the existence of a
constitutionally unlimited, or at least a practically preponderant authority in
the chief ruler of the dominant class. He alone has by his position an
interest in raising and improving the mass, of whom he is not jealous, as a
counterpoise to his associates, of whom he is; and if fortunate
circumstances place beside him, not as controllers but as subordinates, a
body representative of the superior caste, which, by its objections and
questionings, and by its occasional outbreaks of spirit, keeps alive habits of
collective resistance, and may admit of being, in time and by degrees,
expanded into a really national representation (which is in substance the
history of the English Parliament), the nation has then the most favorable
prospects of improvement which can well occur to a community thus
circumstanced and constituted.
Among the tendencies which, without absolutely rendering a people unfit
for representative government, seriously incapacitate them from reaping the
full benefit of it, one deserves particular notice. There are two states of the
inclinations, intrinsically very different, but which have something in
common, by virtue of which they often coincide in the direction they give
to the efforts of individuals and of nations; one is, the desire to exercise
power over others; the other is disinclination to have power exercised over
themselves. The difference between different portions of mankind in the
relative strength of these two dispositions is one of the most important
elements in their history. There are nations in whom the passion for
governing others is so much stronger than the desire of personal
independence, that for the mere shadow of the one they are found ready to
sacrifice the whole of the other. Each one of their number is willing, like the
private soldier in an army, to abdicate his personal freedom of action into
the hands of his general, provided the army is triumphant and victorious,
and he is able to flatter himself that he is one of a conquering host, though

the notion that he has himself any share in the domination exercised over
the conquered is an illusion. A government strictly limited in its powers and
attributions, required to hold its hands from overmeddling, and to let most
things go on without its assuming the part of guardian or director, is not to
the taste of such a people; in their eyes the possessors of authority can
hardly take too much upon themselves, provided the authority itself is open
to general competition. An average individual among them prefers the
chance, however distant or improbable, of wielding some share of power
over his fellow-citizens, above the certainty, to himself and others, of
having no unnecessary power exercised over them. These are the elements
of a people of place-hunters, in whom the course of politics is mainly
determined by place-hunting; where equality alone is cared for, but not
liberty; where the contests of political parties are but struggles to decide
whether the power of meddling in every thing shall belong to one class or
another, perhaps merely to one knot of public men or another; where the
idea entertained of democracy is merely that of opening offices to the
competition of all instead of a few; where, the more popular the institutions,
the more innumerable are the places created, and the more monstrous the
overgovernment exercised by all over each, and by the executive over all. It
would be as unjust as it would be ungenerous to offer this, or any thing
approaching to it, as an unexaggerated picture of the French people; yet the
degree in which they do participate in this type of character has caused
representative government by a limited class to break down by excess of
corruption, and the attempt at representative government by the whole male
population to end in giving one man the power of consigning any number of
the rest, without trial, to Lambessa or Cayenne, provided he allows all of
them to think themselves not excluded from the possibility of sharing his
favors. The point of character which, beyond any other, fits the people of
this country for representative government, is that they have almost
universally the contrary characteristic. They are very jealous of any attempt
to exercise power over them not sanctioned by long usage and by their own
opinion of right; but they in general care very little for the exercise of
power over others. Not having the smallest sympathy with the passion for
governing, while they are but too well acquainted with the motives of
private interest from which that office is sought, they prefer that it should be
performed by those to whom it comes without seeking, as a consequence of
social position. If foreigners understood this, it would account to them for

some of the apparent contradictions in the political feelings of Englishmen;
their unhesitating readiness to let themselves be governed by the higher
classes, coupled with so little personal subservience to them, that no people
are so fond of resisting authority when it oversteps certain prescribed limits,
or so determined to make their rulers always remember that they will only
be governed in the way they themselves like best. Place-hunting,
accordingly, is a form of ambition to which the English, considered
nationally, are almost strangers. If we except the few families or
connections of whom official employment lies directly in the way,
Englishmen's views of advancement in life take an altogether different
direction—that of success in business or in a profession. They have the
strongest distaste for any mere struggle for office by political parties or
individuals; and there are few things to which they have a greater aversion
than to the multiplication of public employments; a thing, on the contrary,
always popular with the bureaucracy-ridden nations of the Continent, who
would rather pay higher taxes than diminish, by the smallest fraction, their
individual chances of a place for themselves or their relatives, and among
whom a cry for retrenchment never means abolition of offices, but the
reduction of the salaries of those which are too considerable for the
ordinary citizen to have any chance of being appointed to them.

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

By constitutional law, the crown can refuse its assent to any act of
Parliament, and can appoint to office and maintain in it any minister, in
opposition to the remonstrances of Parliament. But the constitutional
morality of the country nullifies these powers, preventing them from being
ever used; and, by requiring that the head of the administration should
always be virtually appointed by the House of Commons, makes that body
the real sovereign of the state.
These unwritten rules, which limit the use of lawful powers, are,
however, only effectual, and maintain themselves in existence on condition
of harmonising with the actual distribution of real political strength. There
is in every constitution a strongest power—one which would gain the
victory if the compromises by which the Constitution habitually works were
suspended, and there came a trial of strength. Constitutional maxims are
adhered to, and are practically operative, so long as they give the
predominance in the Constitution to that one of the powers which has the
preponderance of active power out of doors. This, in England, is the popular
power. If, therefore, the legal provisions of the British Constitution,
together with the unwritten maxims by which the conduct of the different
political authorities is in fact regulated, did not give to the popular element
in the Constitution that substantial supremacy over every department of the
government which corresponds to its real power in the country, the
Constitution would not possess the stability which characterizes it; either
the laws or the unwritten maxims would soon have to be changed. The
British government is thus a representative government in the correct sense
of the term; and the powers which it leaves in hands not directly
accountable to the people can only be considered as precautions which the
ruling power is willing should be taken against its own errors. Such
precautions have existed in all well-constructed democracies. The Athenian
Constitution had many such provisions, and so has that of the United States.
But while it is essential to representative government that the practical
supremacy in the state should reside in the representatives of the people, it
is an open question what actual functions, what precise part in the
machinery of government, shall be directly and personally discharged by
the representative body. Great varieties in this respect are compatible with
the essence of representative government, provided the functions are such
as secure to the representative body the control of every thing in the last
resort.

There is a radical distinction between controlling the business of
government and actually doing it. The same person or body may be able to
control every thing, but can not possibly do every thing; and in many cases
its control over every thing will be more perfect the less it personally
attempts to do. The commander of an army could not direct its movements
effectually if he himself fought in the ranks or led an assault. It is the same
with bodies of men. Some things can not be done except by bodies; other
things can not be well done by them. It is one question, therefore, what a
popular assembly should control, another what it should itself do. It should,
as we have already seen, control all the operations of government. But, in
order to determine through what channel this general control may most
expediently be exercised, and what portion of the business of government
the representative assembly should hold in its own hands, it is necessary to
consider what kinds of business a numerous body is competent to perform
properly. That alone which it can do well it ought to take personally upon
itself. With regard to the rest, its proper province is not to do it, but to take
means for having it well done by others.
For example, the duty which is considered as belonging more peculiarly
than any other to an assembly representative of the people is that of voting
the taxes. Nevertheless, in no country does the representative body
undertake, by itself or its delegated officers, to prepare the estimates.
Though the supplies can only be voted by the House of Commons, and
though the sanction of the House is also required for the appropriation of
the revenues to the different items of the public expenditure, it is the maxim
and the uniform practice of the Constitution that money can be granted only
on the proposition of the crown. It has, no doubt, been felt that moderation
as to the amount, and care and judgment in the detail of its application, can
only be expected when the executive government, through whose hands it is
to pass, is made responsible for the plans and calculations on which the
disbursements are grounded. Parliament, accordingly, is not expected, nor
even permitted, to originate directly either taxation or expenditure. All it is
asked for is its consent, and the sole power it possesses is that of refusal.
The principles which are involved and recognized in this constitutional
doctrine, if followed as far as they will go, are a guide to the limitation and
definition of the general functions of representative assemblies. In the first
place, it is admitted in all countries in which the representative system is
practically understood, that numerous representative bodies ought not to

administer. The maxim is grounded not only on the most essential principles
of good government, but on those of the successful conduct of business of
any description. No body of men, unless organized and under command, is
fit for action, in the proper sense. Even a select board, composed of few
members, and these specially conversant with the business to be done, is
always an inferior instrument to some one individual who could be found
among them, and would be improved in character if that one person were
made the chief, and all the others reduced to subordinates. What can be
done better by a body than by any individual is deliberation. When it is
necessary or important to secure hearing and consideration to many
conflicting opinions, a deliberative body is indispensable. Those bodies,
therefore, are frequently useful, even for administrative business, but in
general only as advisers; such business being, as a rule, better conducted
under the responsibility of one. Even a joint-stock company has always in
practice, if not in theory, a managing director; its good or bad management
depends essentially on some one person's qualifications, and the remaining
directors, when of any use, are so by their suggestions to him, or by the
power they possess of watching him, and restraining or removing him in
case of misconduct. That they are ostensibly equal shares with him in the
management is no advantage, but a considerable set-off against any good
which they are capable of doing: it weakens greatly the sense in his own
mind, and in those of other people, of that individual responsibility in which
he should stand forth personally and undividedly.
But a popular assembly is still less fitted to administer, or to dictate in
detail to those who have the charge of administration. Even when honestly
meant, the interference is almost always injurious. Every branch of public
administration is a skilled business, which has its own peculiar principles
and traditional rules, many of them not even known in any effectual way,
except to those who have at some time had a hand in carrying on the
business, and none of them likely to be duly appreciated by persons not
practically acquainted with the department. I do not mean that the
transaction of public business has esoteric mysteries, only to be understood
by the initiated. Its principles are all intelligible to any person of good
sense, who has in his mind a true picture of the circumstances and
conditions to be dealt with; but to have this he must know those
circumstances and conditions; and the knowledge does not come by
intuition. There are many rules of the greatest importance in every branch

of public business (as there are in every private occupation), of which a
person fresh to the subject neither knows the reason or even suspects the
existence, because they are intended to meet dangers or provide against
inconveniences which never entered into his thoughts. I have known public
men, ministers of more than ordinary natural capacity, who, on their first
introduction to a department of business new to them, have excited the
mirth of their inferiors by the air with which they announced as a truth
hitherto set at nought, and brought to light by themselves, something which
was probably the first thought of every body who ever looked at the subject,
given up as soon as he had got on to a second. It is true that a great
statesman is he who knows when to depart from traditions, as well as when
to adhere to them; but it is a great mistake to suppose that he will do this
better for being ignorant of the traditions. No one who does not thoroughly
know the modes of action which common experience has sanctioned is
capable of judging of the circumstances which require a departure from
those ordinary modes of action. The interests dependent on the acts done by
a public department, the consequences liable to follow from any particular
mode of conducting it, require for weighing and estimating them a kind of
knowledge, and of specially exercised judgment, almost as rarely found in
those not bred to it, as the capacity to reform the law in those who have not
professionally studied it. All these difficulties are sure to be ignored by a
representative assembly which attempts to decide on special acts of
administration. At its best, it is inexperience sitting in judgment on
experience, ignorance on knowledge; ignorance which, never suspecting the
existence of what it does not know, is equally careless and supercilious,
making light of, if not resenting, all pretensions to have a judgment better
worth attending to than its own. Thus it is when no interested motives
intervene; but when they do, the result is jobbery more unblushing and
audacious than the worst corruption which can well take place in a public
office under a government of publicity. It is not necessary that the interested
bias should extend to the majority of the assembly. In any particular case it
is of ten enough that it affects two or three of their number. Those two or
three will have a greater interest in misleading the body than any other of its
members are likely to have in putting it right. The bulk of the assembly may
keep their hands clean, but they can not keep their minds vigilant or their
judgments discerning in matters they know nothing about; and an indolent
majority, like an indolent individual, belongs to the person who takes most

pains with it. The bad measures or bad appointments of a minister may be
checked by Parliament; and the interest of ministers in defending, and of
rival partisans in attacking, secures a tolerably equal discussion; but quis
custodiet custodes? who shall check the Parliament? A minister, a head of
an office, feels himself under some responsibility. An assembly in such
cases feels under no responsibility at all; for when did any member of
Parliament lose his seat for the vote he gave on any detail of
administration? To a minister, or the head of an office, it is of more
importance what will be thought of his proceedings some time hence, than
what is thought of them at the instant; but an assembly, if the cry of the
moment goes with it, however hastily raised or artificially stirred up, thinks
itself and is thought by every body, to be completely exculpated, however
disastrous may be the consequences. Besides, an assembly never personally
experiences the inconveniences of its bad measures until they have reached
the dimensions of national evils. Ministers and administrators see them
approaching, and have to bear all the annoyance and trouble of attempting
to ward them off.
The proper duty of a representative assembly in regard to matters of
administration is not to decide them by its own vote, but to take care that
the persons who have to decide them shall be the proper persons. Even this
they can not advantageously do by nominating the individuals. There is no
act which more imperatively requires to be performed under a strong sense
of individual responsibility than the nomination to employments. The
experience of every person conversant with public affairs bears out the
assertion that there is scarcely any act respecting which the conscience of
an average man is less sensitive; scarcely any case in which less
consideration is paid to qualifications, partly because men do not know, and
partly because they do not care for, the difference in qualifications between
one person and another. When a minister makes what is meant to be an
honest appointment, that is, when he does not actually job it for his personal
connections or his party, an ignorant person might suppose that he would
try to give it to the person best qualified. No such thing. An ordinary
minister thinks himself a miracle of virtue if he gives it to a person of merit,
or who has a claim on the public on any account, though the claim or the
merit may be of the most opposite description to that required. Il fallait un
calculateur, ce fut un danseur qui l'obtint, is hardly more of a caricature
than in the days of Figaro; and the minister doubtless thinks himself not

only blameless, but meritorious, if the man dances well. Besides, the
qualifications which fit special individuals for special duties can only be
recognized by those who know the individuals, or who make it their
business to examine and judge of persons from what they have done, or
from the evidence of those who are in a position to judge. When these
conscientious obligations are so little regarded by great public officers who
can be made responsible for their appointments, how must it be with
assemblies who can not? Even now, the worst appointments are those which
are made for the sake of gaining support or disarming opposition in the
representative body; what might we expect if they were made by the body
itself? Numerous bodies never regard special qualifications at all. Unless a
man is fit for the gallows, he is thought to be about as fit as other people for
almost any thing for which he can offer himself as a candidate. When
appointments made by a public body are not decided, as they almost always
are, by party connection or private jobbing, a man is appointed either
because he has a reputation, often quite undeserved, for general ability, or
oftener for no better reason than that he is personally popular.
It has never been thought desirable that Parliament should itself nominate
even the members of a cabinet. It is enough that it virtually decides who
shall be prime minister, or who shall be the two or three individuals from
whom the prime minister shall be chosen. In doing this, it merely
recognizes the fact that a certain person is the candidate of the party whose
general policy commands its support. In reality, the only thing which
Parliament decides is, which of two, or at most three, parties or bodies of
men shall furnish the executive government: the opinion of the party itself
decides which of its members is fittest to be placed at the head. According
to the existing practice of the British Constitution, these things seem to be
on as good a footing as they can be. Parliament does not nominate any
minister, but the crown appoints the head of the administration in
conformity to the general wishes and inclinations manifested by Parliament,
and the other ministers on the recommendation of the chief; while every
minister has the undivided moral responsibility of appointing fit persons to
the other offices of administration which are not permanent. In a republic,
some other arrangement would be necessary; but the nearer it approached in
practice to that which has long existed in England, the more likely it would
be to work well. Either, as in the American republic, the head of the
executive must be elected by some agency entirely independent of the

representative body; or the body must content itself with naming the prime
minister, and making him responsible for the choice of his associates and
subordinates. In all these considerations, at least theoretically, I fully
anticipate a general assent; though, practically, the tendency is strong in
representative bodies to interfere more and more in the details of
administration, by virtue of the general law, that whoever has the strongest
power is more and more tempted to make an excessive use of it; and this is
one of the practical dangers to which the futurity of representative
governments will be exposed.
But it is equally true, though only of late and slowly beginning to be
acknowledged, that a numerous assembly is as little fitted for the direct
business of legislation as for that of administration. There is hardly any kind
of intellectual work which so much needs to be done not only by
experienced and exercised minds, but by minds trained to the task through
long and laborious study, as the business of making laws. This is a sufficient
reason, were there no other, why they can never be well made but by a
committee of very few persons. A reason no less conclusive is, that every
provision of a law requires to be framed with the most accurate and long-
sighted perception of its effect on all the other provisions; and the law when
made should be capable of fitting into a consistent whole with the
previously existing laws. It is impossible that these conditions should be in
any degree fulfilled when laws are voted clause by clause in a
miscellaneous assembly. The incongruity of such a mode of legislating
would strike all minds, were it not that our laws are already, as to form and
construction, such a chaos, that the confusion and contradiction seem
incapable of being made greater by any addition to the mass. Yet even now,
the utter unfitness of our legislative machinery for its purpose is making
itself practically felt every year more and more. The mere time necessarily
occupied in getting through bills, renders Parliament more and more
incapable of passing any, except on detached and narrow points. If a bill is
prepared which even attempts to deal with the whole of any subject (and it
is impossible to legislate properly on any part without having the whole
present to the mind), it hangs over from session to session through sheer
impossibility of finding time to dispose of it. It matters not though the bill
may have been deliberately drawn up by the authority deemed the best
qualified, with all appliances and means to boot; or by a select commission,
chosen for their conversancy with the subject, and having employed years

in considering and digesting the particular measure: it can not be passed,
because the House of Commons will not forego the precious privilege of
tinkering it with their clumsy hands. The custom has of late been to some
extent introduced, when the principle of a bill has been affirmed on the
second reading, of referring it for consideration in detail to a select
committee; but it has not been found that this practice causes much less
time to be lost afterwards in carrying it through the committee of the whole
House: the opinions or private crotchets which have been overruled by
knowledge always insist on giving themselves a second chance before the
tribunal of ignorance. Indeed, the practice itself has been adopted
principally by the House of Lords, the members of which are less busy and
fond of meddling, and less jealous of the importance of their individual
voices, than those of the elective House. And when a bill of many clauses
does succeed in getting itself discussed in detail, what can depict the state in
which it comes out of committee! Clauses omitted which are essential to the
working of the rest; incongruous ones inserted to conciliate some private
interest, or some crotchety member who threatens to delay the bill; articles
foisted in on the motion of some sciolist with a mere smattering of the
subject, leading to consequences which the member who introduced or
those who supported the bill did not at the moment foresee, and which need
an amending act in the next session to correct their mischiefs. It is one of
the evils of the present mode of managing these things, that the explaining
and defending of a bill, and of its various provisions, is scarcely ever
performed by the person from whose mind they emanated, who probably
has not a seat in the House. Their defense rests upon some minister or
member of Parliament who did not frame them, who is dependent on
cramming for all his arguments but those which are perfectly obvious, who
does not know the full strength of his case, nor the best reasons by which to
support it, and is wholly incapable of meeting unforeseen objections. This
evil, as far as government bills are concerned, admits of remedy, and has
been remedied in some representative constitutions, by allowing the
government to be represented in either House by persons in its confidence,
having a right to speak, though not to vote.
If that, as yet considerable, majority of the House of Commons who
never desire to move an amendment or make a speech would no longer
leave the whole regulation of business to those who do; if they would
bethink themselves that better qualifications for legislation exist, and may

be found if sought for, than a fluent tongue, and the faculty of getting
elected by a constituency, it would soon be recognized that, in legislation as
well as administration, the only task to which a representative assembly can
possibly be competent is not that of doing the work, but of causing it to be
done; of determining to whom or to what sort of people it shall be confided,
and giving or withholding the national sanction to it when performed. Any
government fit for a high state of civilization would have as one of its
fundamental elements a small body, not exceeding in number the members
of a cabinet, who should act as a Commission of Legislation, having for its
appointed office to make the laws. If the laws of this country were, as surely
they will soon be, revised and put into a connected form, the Commission
of Codification by which this is effected should remain as a permanent
institution, to watch over the work, protect it from deterioration, and make
further improvements as often as required. No one would wish that this
body should of itself have any power of enacting laws; the Commission
would only embody the element of intelligence in their construction;
Parliament would represent that of will. No measure would become a law
until expressly sanctioned by Parliament; and Parliament, or either house,
would have the power not only of rejecting but of sending back a bill to the
commission for reconsideration or improvement. Either house might also
exercise its initiative by referring any subject to the commission, with
directions to prepare a law. The commission, of course, would have no
power of refusing its instrumentality to any legislation which the country
desired. Instructions, concurred in by both houses, to draw up a bill which
should effect a particular purpose, would be imperative on the
commissioners, unless they preferred to resign their office. Once framed,
however, Parliament should have no power to alter the measure, but solely
to pass or reject it; or, if partially disapproved of, remit it to the commission
for reconsideration. The commissioners should be appointed by the crown,
but should hold their offices for a time certain, say five years, unless
removed on an address from the two Houses of Parliament, grounded either
on personal misconduct (as in the case of judges), or on refusal to draw up a
bill in obedience to the demands of Parliament. At the expiration of the five
years a member should cease to hold office unless reappointed, in order to
provide a convenient mode of getting rid of those who had not been found
equal to their duties, and of infusing new and younger blood into the body.

The necessity of some provision corresponding to this was felt even in
the Athenian Democracy, where, in the time of its most complete
ascendancy, the popular Ecclesia could pass psephisms (mostly decrees on
single matters of policy), but laws, so called, could only be made or altered
by a different and less numerous body, renewed annually, called the
Nomothetæ, whose duty it also was to revise the whole of the laws, and
keep them consistent with one another. In the English Constitution there is
great difficulty in introducing any arrangement which is new both in form
and in substance, but comparatively little repugnance is felt to the
attainment of new purposes by an adaptation of existing forms and
traditions. It appears to me that the means might be devised of enriching the
Constitution with this great improvement through the machinery of the
House of Lords. A commission for preparing bills would in itself be no
more an innovation on the Constitution than the Board for the
administration of the Poor Laws, or the Inclosure Commission. If, in
consideration of the great importance and dignity of the trust, it were made
a rule that every person appointed a member of the Legislative
Commission, unless removed from office on an address from Parliament,
should be a peer for life, it is probable that the same good sense and taste
which leave the judicial functions of the peerage practically to the exclusive
care of the law lords would leave the business of legislation, except on
questions involving political principles and interests, to the professional
legislators; that bills originating in the Upper House would always be drawn
up by them; that the government would devolve on them the framing of all
its bills; and that private members of the House of Commons would
gradually find it convenient, and likely to facilitate the passing of their
measures through the two houses, if, instead of bringing in a bill and
submitting it directly to the house, they obtained leave to introduce it and
have it referred to the Legislative Commission; for it would, of course, be
open to the House to refer for the consideration of that body not a subject
merely, but any specific proposal, or a Draft of a Bill in extenso, when any
member thought himself capable of preparing one such as ought to pass;
and the House would doubtless refer every such draft to the commission, if
only as materials, and for the benefit of the suggestions it might contain, as
they would, in like manner, refer every amendment or objection which
might be proposed in writing by any member of the House after a measure
had left the commissioners' hands. The alteration of bills by a committee of

the whole House would cease, not by formal abolition, but by desuetude;
the right not being abandoned, but laid up in the same armoury with the
royal veto, the right of withholding the supplies, and other ancient
instruments of political warfare, which no one desires to see used, but no
one likes to part with, lest they should any time be found to be still needed
in an extraordinary emergency. By such arrangements as these, legislation
would assume its proper place as a work of skilled labor and special study
and experience; while the most important liberty of the nation, that of being
governed only by laws assented to by its elected representatives, would be
fully preserved, and made more valuable by being detached from the
serious, but by no means unavoidable drawbacks which now accompany it
in the form of ignorant and ill-considered legislation.
Instead of the function of governing, for which it is radically unfit, the
proper office of a representative assembly is to watch and control the
government; to throw the light of publicity on its acts; to compel a full
exposition and justification of all of them which any one considers
questionable; to cinsure them if found condemnable, and, if the men who
compose the government abuse their trust, or fulfill it in a manner which
conflicts with the deliberate sense of the nation, to expel them from office,
and either expressly or virtually appoint their successors. This is surely
ample power, and security enough for the liberty of the nation. In addition
to this, the Parliament has an office not inferior even to this in importance;
to be at once the nation's Committee of Grievances and its Congress of
Opinions; an arena in which not only the general opinion of the nation, but
that of every section of it, and, as far as possible, of every eminent
individual whom it contains, can produce itself in full light and challenge
discussion; where every person in the country may count upon finding
somebody who speaks his mind as well or better than he could speak it
himself—not to friends and partisans exclusively, but in the face of
opponents, to be tested by adverse controversy; where those whose opinion
is overruled, feel satisfied that it is heard, and set aside not by a mere act of
will, but for what are thought superior reasons, and commend themselves as
such to the representatives of the majority of the nation; where every party
or opinion in the country can muster its strength, and be cured of any
illusion concerning the number or power of its adherents; where the opinion
which prevails in the nation makes itself manifest as prevailing, and
marshals its hosts in the presence of the government, which is thus enabled

and compelled to give way to it on the mere manifestation, without the
actual employment of its strength; where statesmen can assure themselves,
far more certainly than by any other signs, what elements of opinion and
power are growing and what declining, and are enabled to shape their
measures with some regard not solely to present exigencies, but to
tendencies in progress. Representative assemblies are often taunted by their
enemies with being places of mere talk and bavardage. There has seldom
been more misplaced derision. I know not how a representative assembly
can more usefully employ itself than in talk, when the subject of talk is the
great public interests of the country, and every sentence of it represents the
opinion either of some important body of persons in the nation, or of an
individual in whom some such body have reposed their confidence. A place
where every interest and shade of opinion in the country can have its cause
even passionately pleaded, in the face of the government and of all other
interests and opinions, can compel them to listen, and either comply, or
state clearly why they do not, is in itself, if it answered no other purpose,
one of the most important political institutions that can exist any where, and
one of the foremost benefits of free government. Such "talking" would
never be looked upon with disparagement if it were not allowed to stop
"doing"; which it never would, if assemblies knew and acknowledged that
talking and discussion are their proper business, while doing, as the result
of discussion, is the task not of a miscellaneous body, but of individuals
specially trained to it; that the fit office of an assembly is to see that those
individuals are honestly and intelligently chosen, and to interfere no further
with them, except by unlimited latitude of suggestion and criticism, and by
applying or withholding the final seal of national assent. It is for want of
this judicious reserve that popular assemblies attempt to do what they can
not do well—to govern and legislate—and provide no machinery but their
own for much of it, when of course every hour spent in talk is an hour
withdrawn from actual business. But the very fact which most unfits such
bodies for a council of legislation, qualifies them the more for their other
office—namely, that they are not a selection of the greatest political minds
in the country, from whose opinions little could with certainty be inferred
concerning those of the nation, but are, when properly constituted, a fair
sample of every grade of intellect among the people which is at all entitled
to a voice in public affairs. Their part is to indicate wants, to be an organ for
popular demands, and a place of adverse discussion for all opinions relating

to public matters, both great and small; and, along with this, to check by
criticism, and eventually by withdrawing their support, those high public
officers who really conduct the public business, or who appoint those by
whom it is conducted. Nothing but the restriction of the function of
representative bodies within these rational limits will enable the benefits of
popular control to be enjoyed in conjunction with the no less important
requisites (growing ever more important as human affairs increase in scale
and in complexity) of skilled legislation and administration. There are no
means of combining these benefits except by separating the functions which
guaranty the one from those which essentially require the other; by
disjoining the office of control and criticism from the actual conduct of
affairs, and devolving the former on the representatives of the Many, while
securing for the latter, under strict responsibility to the nation, the acquired
knowledge and practiced intelligence of a specially trained and experienced
Few.
The preceding discussion of the functions which ought to devolve on the
sovereign representative assembly of the nation would require to be
followed by an inquiry into those properly vested in the minor
representative bodies, which ought to exist for purposes that regard only
localities. And such an inquiry forms an essential part of the present
treatise; but many reasons require its postponement, until we have
considered the most proper composition of the great representative body,
destined to control as sovereign the enactment of laws and the
administration of the general affairs of the nation.

Chapter VI—Of the Infirmities and Dangers to
which Representative Government is Liable.
The defects of any form of government may be either negative or
positive. It is negatively defective if it does not concentrate in the hands of
the authorities power sufficient to fulfill the necessary offices of a
government, or if it does not sufficiently develop by exercise the active
capacities and social feelings of the individual citizens. On neither of these
points is it necessary that much should be said at this stage of our inquiry.
The want of an amount power in the government adequate to preserve
order and allow of progress in the people is incident rather to a wild and
rude state of society generally than to any particular form of political union.
When the people are too much attached to savage independence to be
tolerant of the amount of power to which it is for their good that they should
be subject, the state of society (as already observed) is not yet ripe for
representative government. When the time for that government has arrived,
sufficient power for all needful purposes is sure to reside in the sovereign
assembly; and if enough of it is not intrusted to the executive, this can only
arise from a jealous feeling on the part of the assembly toward the
administration, never likely to exist but where the constitutional power of
the assembly to turn them out of office has not yet sufficiently established
itself. Wherever that constitutional right is admitted in principle and fully
operative in practice, there is no fear that the assembly will not be willing to
trust its own ministers with any amount of power really desirable; the
danger is, on the contrary, lest they should grant it too ungrudgingly, and
too indefinite in extent, since the power of the minister is the power of the
body who make and who keep him so. It is, however, very likely, and is one
of the dangers of a controlling assembly, that it may be lavish of powers,
but afterwards interfere with their exercise; may give power by wholesale,
and take it back in detail, by multiplied single acts of interference in the
business of administration. The evils arising from this assumption of the
actual function of governing, in lieu of that of criticising and checking those
who govern, have been sufficiently dwelt upon in the preceding chapter. No

safeguard can in the nature of things be provided against this improper
meddling, except a strong and general conviction of its injurious character.
The other negative defect which may reside in a government, that of not
bringing into sufficient exercise the individual faculties, moral, intellectual,
and active, of the people, has been exhibited generally in setting forth the
distinctive mischiefs of despotism. As between one form of popular
government and another, the advantage in this respect lies with that which
most widely diffuses the exercise of public functions; on the one hand, by
excluding fewest from the suffrage; on the other, by opening to all classes
of private citizens, so far as is consistent with other equally important
objects, the widest participation in the details of judicial and administrative
business; as by jury-trial, admission to municipal offices, and, above all, by
the utmost possible publicity and liberty of discussion, whereby not merely
a few individuals in succession, but the whole public, are made, to a certain
extent, participants in the government, and sharers in the instruction and
mental exercise derived from it. The further illustration of these benefits, as
well as of the limitations under which they must be aimed at, will be better
deferred until we come to speak of the details of administration.
The positive evils and dangers of the representative, as of every other
form of government, may be reduced to two heads: first, general ignorance
and incapacity, or, to speak more moderately, insufficient mental
qualifications, in the controlling body; secondly, the danger of its being
under the influence of interests not identical with the general welfare of the
community.
The former of these evils, deficiency in high mental qualifications, is one
to which it is generally supposed that popular government is liable in a
greater degree than any other. The energy of a monarch, the steadiness and
prudence of an aristocracy, are thought to contrast most favorably with the
vacillation and shortsightedness of even the most qualified democracy.
These propositions, however, are not by any means so well founded as they
at first sight appear.
Compared with simple monarchy, representative government is in these
respects at no disadvantage. Except in a rude age, hereditary monarchy,
when it is really such, and not aristocracy in disguise, far surpasses
democracy in all the forms of incapacity supposed to be characteristic of the
last. I say, except in a rude age, because in a really rude state of society

there is a considerable guaranty for the intellectual and active capacities of
the sovereign. His personal will is constantly encountering obstacles from
the willfulness of his subjects, and of powerful individuals among their
number. The circumstances of society do not afford him much temptation to
mere luxurious self-indulgence; mental and bodily activity, especially
political and military, are his principal excitements; and among turbulent
chiefs and lawless followers he has little authority, and is seldom long
secure even of his throne, unless he possesses a considerable amount of
personal daring, dexterity, and energy. The reason why the average of talent
is so high among the Henries and Edwards of our history may be read in the
tragical fate of the second Edward and the second Richard, and the civil
wars and disturbances of the reigns of John and his incapable successor.
The troubled period of the Reformation also produced several eminent
hereditary monarchs—Elizabeth, Henri Quatre, Gustavus Adolphus; but
they were mostly bred up in adversity, succeeded to the throne by the
unexpected failure of nearer heirs, or had to contend with great difficulties
in the commencement of their reign. Since European life assumed a settled
aspect, any thing above mediocrity in an hereditary king has become
extremely rare, while the general average has been even below mediocrity,
both in talent and in vigor of character. A monarchy constitutionally
absolute now only maintains itself in existence (except temporarily in the
hands of some active-minded usurper) through the mental qualifications of
a permanent bureaucracy. The Russian and Austrian governments, and even
the French government in its normal condition, are oligarchies of officials,
of whom the head of the state does little more than select the chiefs. I am
speaking of the regular course of their administration; for the will of the
master of course determines many of their particular acts.
The governments which have been remarkable in history for sustained
mental ability and vigor in the conduct of affairs have generally been
aristocracies. But they have been, without any exception, aristocracies of
public functionaries. The ruling bodies have been so narrow, that each
member, or at least each influential member of the body, was able to make,
and did make, public business an active profession, and the principal
occupation of his life. The only aristocracies which have manifested high
governing capacities, and acted on steady maxims of policy through many
generations, are those of Rome and Venice. But, at Venice, though the
privileged order was numerous, the actual management of affairs was

rigidly concentrated in a small oligarchy within the oligarchy, whose whole
lives were devoted to the study and conduct of the affairs of the state. The
Roman government partook more of the character of an open aristocracy
like our own. But the really governing body, the Senate, was in exclusively
composed of persons who had exercised public functions, and had either
already filled, or were looking forward to fill the highest offices of the state,
at the peril of a severe responsibility in case of incapacity and failure. When
once members of the Senate, their lives were pledged to the conduct of
public affairs; they were not permitted even to leave Italy except in the
discharge of some public trust; and unless turned out of the Senate by the
censors for character or conduct deemed disgraceful, they retained their
powers and responsibilities to the end of life. In an aristocracy thus
constituted, every member felt his personal importance entirely bound up
with the dignity and estimation of the commonwealth which he
administered, and with the part he was able to play in its councils. This
dignity and estimation were quite different things from the prosperity or
happiness of the general body of the citizens, and were often wholly
incompatible with it. But they were closely linked with the external success
and aggrandisement of the state; and it was, consequently, in the pursuit of
that object almost exclusively, that either the Roman or the Venetian
aristocracies manifested the systematically wise collective policy and the
great individual capacities for government for which history has deservedly
given them credit.
It thus appears that the only governments, not representative, in which
high political skill and ability have been other than exceptional, whether
under monarchical or aristocratic forms, have been essentially
bureaucracies. The work of government has been in the hands of governors
by profession, which is the essence and meaning of bureaucracy. Whether
the work is done by them because they have been trained to it, or they are
trained to it because it is to be done by them, makes a great difference in
many respects, but none at all as to the essential character of the rule.
Aristocracies, on the other hand, like that of England, in which the class
who possessed the power derived it merely from their social position,
without being specially trained or devoting themselves exclusively to it
(and in which, therefore, the power was not exercised directly, but through
representative institutions oligarchically constituted), have been, in respect
to intellectual endowments, much on a par with democracies; that is, they

have manifested such qualities in any considerable degree only during the
temporary ascendancy which great and popular talents, united with a
distinguished position, have given to some one man. Themistocles and
Pericles, Washington and Jefferson, were not more completely exceptions in
their several democracies, and were assuredly much more splendid
exceptions, than the Chathams and Peels of the representative aristocracy of
Great Britain, or even the Sullys and Colberts of the aristocratic monarchy
of France. A great minister, in the aristocratic governments of modern
Europe, is almost as rare a phenomenon as a great king.
The comparison, therefore, as to the intellectual attributes of a
government has to be made between a representative democracy and a
bureaucracy; all other governments may be left out of the account. And here
it must be acknowledged that a bureaucratic government has, in some
important respects, greatly the advantage. It accumulates experience,
acquires well-tried and well-considered traditional maxims, and makes
provision for appropriate practical knowledge in those who have the actual
conduct of affairs. But it is not equally favorable to individual energy of
mind. The disease which afflicts bureaucratic governments, and which they
usually die of, is routine. They perish by the immutability of their maxims,
and, still more, by the universal law that whatever becomes a routine loses
its vital principle, and, having no longer a mind acting within it, goes on
revolving mechanically, though the work it is intended to do remains
undone. A bureaucracy always tends to become a pedantocracy. When the
bureaucracy is the real government, the spirit of the corps (as with the
Jesuits) bears down the individuality of its more distinguished members. In
the profession of government, as in other professions, the sole idea of the
majority is to do what they have been taught; and it requires a popular
government to enable the conceptions of the man of original genius among
them to prevail over the obstructive spirit of trained mediocrity. Only in a
popular government (setting apart the accident of a highly intelligent
despot) could Sir Rowland Hill have been victorious over the Post-office. A
popular government installed him in the Post-office, and made the body, in
spite of itself, obey the impulse given by the man who united special
knowledge with individual vigor and originality. That the Roman
aristocracy escaped this characteristic disease of a bureaucracy was
evidently owing to its popular element. All special offices, both those which
gave a seat in the Senate and those which were sought by senators, were

conferred by popular election. The Russian government is a characteristic
exemplification of both the good and bad side of bureaucracy: its fixed
maxims, directed with Roman perseverance to the same unflinchingly-
pursued ends from age to age; the remarkable skill with which those ends
are generally pursued; the frightful internal corruption, and the permanent
organized hostility to improvements from without, which even the
autocratic power of a vigorous-minded emperor is seldom or never
sufficient to overcome; the patient obstructiveness of the body being in the
long run more than a match for the fitful energy of one man. The Chinese
government, a bureaucracy of Mandarins, is, as far as known to us, another
apparent example of the same qualities and defects.
In all human affairs, conflicting influences are required to keep one
another alive and efficient even for their own proper uses; and the exclusive
pursuit of one good object, apart from some other which should accompany
it, ends not in excess of one and defect of the other, but in the decay and
loss even of that which has been exclusively cared for. Government by
trained officials can not do for a country the things which can be done by a
free government, but it might be supposed capable of doing some things
which free government of itself can not do. We find, however, that an
outside element of freedom is necessary to enable it to do effectually or
permanently even its own business. And so, also, freedom can not produce
its best effects, and often breaks down altogether, unless means can be
found of combining it with trained and skilled administration. There could
not be a moment's hesitation between representative government, among a
people in any degree ripe for it, and the most perfect imaginable
bureaucracy. But it is, at the same time, one of the most important ends of
political institutions, to attain as many of the qualities of the one as are
consistent with the other; to secure, as far as they can be made compatible,
the great advantage of the conduct of affairs by skilled persons, bred to it as
an intellectual profession, along with that of a general control vested in, and
seriously exercised by, bodies representative of the entire people. Much
would be done towards this end by recognizing the line of separation,
discussed in the preceding chapter, between the work of government
properly so called, which can only be well performed after special
cultivation, and that of selecting, watching, and, when needful, controlling
the governors, which in this case, as in all others, properly devolves, not on
those who do the work, but on those for whose benefit it ought to be done.

No progress at all can be made towards obtaining a skilled democracy,
unless the democracy are willing that the work which requires skill should
be done by those who possess it. A democracy has enough to do in
providing itself with an amount of mental competency sufficient for its own
proper work, that of superintendence and check.
How to obtain and secure this amount is one of the questions to taken
into consideration in judging of the proper constitution of a representative
body. In proportion as its composition fails to secure this amount, the
assembly will encroach, by special acts, on the province of the executive; it
will expel a good, or elevate and uphold a bad ministry; it will connive at,
or overlook in them, abuses of trust, will be deluded by their false
pretenses, or will withhold support from those who endeavour to fulfill their
trust conscientiously; it will countenance or impose a selfish, a capricious
and impulsive, a short-sighted, ignorant, and prejudiced general policy,
foreign and domestic; it will abrogate good laws, or enact bad ones; let in
new evils, or cling with perverse obstinacy to old; it will even, perhaps,
under misleading impulses, momentary or permanent, emanating from itself
or from its constituents, tolerate or connive at proceedings which set law
aside altogether, in cases where equal justice would not be agreeable to
popular feeling. Such are among the dangers of representative government,
arising from a constitution of the representation which does not secure an
adequate amount of intelligence and knowledge in the representative
assembly.
We next proceed to the evils arising from the prevalence of modes of
action in the representative body, dictated by sinister interests (to employ
the useful phrase introduced by Bentham), that is, interests conflicting more
or less with the general good of the community.
It is universally admitted that, of the evils incident to monarchical and
aristocratic governments, a large proportion arise from this cause. The
interest of the monarch, or the interest of the aristocracy, either collective or
that of its individual members, is promoted, or they themselves think that it
will be promoted, by conduct opposed to that which the general interest of
the community requires. The interest, for example, of the government is to
tax heavily; that of the community is to be as little taxed as the necessary
expenses of good government permit. The interest of the king and of the
governing aristocracy is to possess and exercise unlimited power over the

people; to enforce, on their part, complete conformity to the will and
preferences of the rulers. The interest of the people is to have as little
control exercised over them in any respect as is consistent with attaining the
legitimate ends of government. The interest, or apparent and supposed
interest of the king or aristocracy, is to permit no censure of themselves, at
least in any form which they may consider either to threaten their power or
seriously to interfere with their free agency. The interest of the people is
that there should be full liberty of censure on every public officer, and on
every public act or measure. The interest of a ruling class, whether in an
aristocracy or an aristocratic monarchy, is to assume to themselves an
endless variety of unjust privileges, sometimes benefiting their pockets at
the expense of the people, sometimes merely tending to exalt them above
others, or, what is the same thing in different words, to degrade others
below themselves. If the people are disaffected, which under such a
government they are very likely to be, it is the interest of the king or
aristocracy to keep them at a low level of intelligence and education,
foment dissensions among them, and even prevent them from being too
well off, lest they should "wax fat, and kick," agreeably to the maxim of
Cardinal Richelieu in his celebrated "Testament Politique." All these things
are for the interest of a king or aristocracy, in a purely selfish point of view,
unless a sufficiently strong counter-interest is created by the fear of
provoking resistance. All these evils have been, and many of them still are,
produced by the sinister interests of kings and aristocracies, where their
power is sufficient to raise them above the opinion of the rest of the
community; nor is it rational to expect, as a consequence of such a position,
any other conduct.
These things are superabundantly evident in the case of a monarchy or an
aristocracy; but it is sometimes rather gratuitously assumed that the same
kind of injurious influences do not operate in a democracy. Looking at
democracy in the way in which it is commonly conceived, as the rule of the
numerical majority, it is surely possible that the ruling power may be under
the dominion of sectional or class interests, pointing to conduct different
from that which would be dictated by impartial regard for the interest of all.
Suppose the majority to be whites, the minority negroes, or vice versâ: is it
likely that the majority would allow equal justice to the minority? Suppose
the majority Catholics, the minority Protestants, or the reverse; will there
not be the same danger? Or let the majority be English, the minority Irish,

or the contrary: is there not a great probability of similar evil? In all
countries there is a majority of poor, a minority who, in contradistinction,
may be called rich. Between these two classes, on many questions, there is
complete opposition of apparent interest. We will suppose the majority
sufficiently intelligent to be aware that it is not for their advantage to
weaken the security of property, and that it would be weakened by any act
of arbitrary spoliation. But is there not a considerable danger lest they
should throw upon the possessors of what is called realized property, and
upon the larger incomes, an unfair share, or even the whole, of the burden
of taxation, and having done so, add to the amount without scruple,
expending the proceeds in modes supposed to conduce to the profit and
advantage of the laboring class? Suppose, again, a minority of skilled
laborers, a majority of unskilled: the experience of many Trade Unions,
unless they are greatly calumniated, justifies the apprehension that equality
of earnings might be imposed as an obligation, and that piecework, and all
practices which enable superior industry or abilities to gain a superior
reward, might be put down. Legislative attempts to raise wages, limitation
of competition in the labor market, taxes or restrictions on machinery, and
on improvements of all kinds tending to dispense with any of the existing
labor—even, perhaps, protection of the home producer against foreign
industry—are very natural (I do not venture to say whether probable) results
of a feeling of class interest in a governing majority of manual laborers.
It will be said that none of these things are for the real interest of the
most numerous class: to which I answer, that if the conduct of human
beings was determined by no other interested considerations than those
which constitute their "real" interest, neither monarchy nor oligarchy would
be such bad governments as they are; for assuredly very strong arguments
may be, and often have been, adduced to show that either a king or a
governing senate are in much the most enviable position when ruling justly
and vigilantly over an active, wealthy, enlightened, and high-minded
people. But a king only now and then, and an oligarchy in no known
instance, have taken this exalted view of their self-interest; and why should
we expect a loftier mode of thinking from the laboring classes? It is not
what their interest is, but what they suppose it to be, that is the important
consideration with respect to their conduct; and it is quite conclusive
against any theory of government that it assumes the numerical majority to
do habitually what is never done, nor expected to be done, save in very

exceptional cases, by any other depositaries of power—namely, to direct
their conduct by their real ultimate interest, in opposition to their immediate
and apparent interest. No one, surely, can doubt that many of the pernicious
measures above enumerated, and many others as bad, would be for the
immediate interest of the general body of unskilled laborers. It is quite
possible that they would be for the selfish interest of the whole existing
generation of the class. The relaxation of industry and activity, and
diminished encouragement to saving which would be their ultimate
consequence, might perhaps be little felt by the class of unskilled laborers
in the space of a single lifetime. Some of the most fatal changes in human
affairs have been, as to their more manifest immediate effects, beneficial.
The establishment of the despotism of the Cæsars was a great benefit to the
entire generation in which it took place. It put a stop to civil war, abated a
vast amount of malversation and tyranny by prætors and proconsuls; it
fostered many of the graces of life, and intellectual cultivation in all
departments not political; it produced monuments of literary genius
dazzling to the imaginations of shallow readers of history, who do not
reflect that the men to whom the despotism of Augustus (as well as of
Lorenzo de' Medici and of Louis XIV.) owes its brilliancy were all formed
in the generation preceding. The accumulated riches, and the mental energy
and activity produced by centuries of freedom, remained for the benefit of
the first generation of slaves. Yet this was the commencement of a régime
by whose gradual operation all the civilization which had been gained
insensibly faded away, until the empire, which had conquered and embraced
the world in its grasp so completely lost even its military efficiency that
invaders whom three or four legions had always sufficed to coerce were
able to overrun and occupy nearly the whole of its vast territory. The fresh
impulse given by Christianity came but just in time to save arts and letters
from perishing, and the human race from sinking back into perhaps endless
night.
When we talk of the interest of a body of men, or even of an individual
man, as a principle determining their actions, the question what would be
considered their interest by an unprejudiced observer is one of the least
important parts of the whole matter. As Coleridge observes, the man makes
the motive, not the motive the man. What it is the man's interest to do or
refrain from depends less on any outward circumstances than upon what
sort of man he is. If you wish to know what is practically a man's interest,

you must know the cast of his habitual feelings and thoughts. Every body
has two kinds of interests—interests which he cares for and interests which
he does not care for. Every body has selfish and unselfish interests, and a
selfish man has cultivated the habit of caring for the former and not caring
for the latter. Every one has present and distant interests, and the
improvident man is he who cares for the present interests and does not care
for the distant. It matters little that on any correct calculation the latter may
be the more considerable, if the habits of his mind lead him to fix his
thoughts and wishes solely on the former. It would be vain to attempt to
persuade a man who beats his wife and ill-treats his children that he would
be happier if he lived in love and kindness with them. He would be happier
if he were the kind of person who could so live; but he is not, and it is
probably too late for him to become that kind of person. Being what he is,
the gratification of his love of domineering and the indulgence of his
ferocious temper are to his perceptions a greater good to himself than he
would be capable of deriving from the pleasure and affection of those
dependent on him. He has no pleasure in their pleasure, and does not care
for their affection. His neighbor, who does, is probably a happier man than
he; but could he be persuaded of this, the persuasion would, most likely,
only still further exasperate his malignity or his irritability. On the average,
a person who cares for other people, for his country, or for mankind, is a
happier man than one who does not; but of what use is it to preach this
doctrine to a man who cares for nothing but his own ease or his own
pocket? He can not care for other people if he would. It is like preaching to
the worm who crawls on the ground how much better it would be for him if
he were an eagle.
Now it is a universally observed fact that the two evil dispositions in
question, the disposition to prefer a man's selfish interests to those which he
shares with other people, and his immediate and direct interests to those
which are indirect and remote, are characteristics most especially called
forth and fostered by the possession of power. The moment a man, or a
class of men, find themselves with power in their hands, the man's
individual interest, or the class's separate interest, acquires an entirely new
degree of importance in their eyes. Finding themselves worshipped by
others, they become worshippers of themselves, and think themselves
entitled to be counted at a hundred times the value of other people, while
the facility they acquire of doing as they like without regard to

consequences insensibly weakens the habits which make men look forward
even to such consequences as affect themselves. This is the meaning of the
universal tradition, grounded on universal experience, of men's being
corrupted by power. Every one knows how absurd it would be to infer from
what a man is or does when in a private station, that he will be and do
exactly the like when a despot on a throne; where the bad parts of his
human nature, instead of being restrained and kept in subordination by
every circumstance of his life and by every person surrounding him, are
courted by all persons, and ministered to by all circumstances. It would be
quite as absurd to entertain a similar expectation in regard to a class of men;
the Demos, or any other. Let them be ever so modest and amenable to
reason while there is a power over them stronger than they, we ought to
expect a total change in this respect when they themselves become the
strongest power.
Governments must be made for human beings as they are, or as they are
capable of speedily becoming; and in any state of cultivation which
mankind, or any class among them, have yet attained, or are likely soon to
attain, the interests by which they will be led, when they are thinking only
of self-interest, will be almost exclusively those which are obvious at first
sight, and which operate on their present condition. It is only a disinterested
regard for others, and especially for what comes after them, for the idea of
posterity, of their country, or of mankind, whether grounded on sympathy or
on a conscientious feeling, which ever directs the minds and purposes of
classes or bodies of men towards distant or unobvious interests; and it can
not be maintained that any form of government would be rational which
required as a condition that these exalted principles of action should be the
guiding and master motives in the conduct of average human beings. A
certain amount of conscience and of disinterested public spirit may fairly be
calculated on in the citizens of any community ripe for representative
government. But it would be ridiculous to expect such a degree of it,
combined with such intellectual discernment, as would be proof against any
plausible fallacy tending to make that which was for their class interest
appear the dictate of justice and of the general good. We all know what
specious fallacies may be urged in defense of every act of injustice yet
proposed for the imaginary benefit of the mass. We know how many, not
otherwise fools or bad men, have thought it justifiable to repudiate the
national debt. We know how many, not destitute of ability and of

considerable popular influence, think it fair to throw the whole burden of
taxation upon savings, under the name of realized property, allowing those
whose progenitors and themselves have always spent all they received, to
remain, as a reward for such exemplary conduct, wholly untaxed. We know
what powerful arguments, the more dangerous because there is a portion of
truth in them, may be brought against all inheritance, against the power of
bequest, against every advantage which one person seems to have over
another. We know how easily the uselessness of almost every branch of
knowledge may be proved to the complete satisfaction of those who do not
possess it. How many, not altogether stupid men, think the scientific study
of languages useless, think ancient literature useless, all erudition useless,
logic and metaphysics useless, poetry and the fine arts idle and frivolous,
political economy purely mischievous? Even history has been pronounced
useless and mischievous by able men. Nothing but that acquaintance with
external nature, empirically acquired, which serves directly for the
production of objects necessary to existence or agreeable to the senses,
would get its utility recognized if people had the least encouragement to
disbelieve it. Is it reasonable to think that even much more cultivated minds
than those of the numerical majority can be expected to be, will have so
delicate a conscience, and so just an appreciation of what is against their
own apparent interest, that they will reject these and the innumerable other
fallacies which will press in upon them from all quarters as soon as they
come into power, to induce them to follow their own selfish inclinations
and short-sighted notions of their own good, in opposition to justice, at the
expense of all other classes and of posterity?
One of the greatest dangers, therefore, of democracy, as of all other forms
of government, lies in the sinister interest of the holders of power: it is the
danger of class legislation, of government intended for (whether really
effecting it or not) the immediate benefit of the dominant class, to the
lasting detriment of the whole. And one of the most important questions
demanding consideration in determining the best constitution of a
representative government is how to provide efficacious securities against
this evil.
If we consider as a class, politically speaking, any number of persons
who have the same sinister interest—that is, whose direct and apparent
interest points towards the same description of bad measures—the desirable
object would be that no class, and no combination of classes likely to

combine, shall be able to exercise a preponderant influence in the
government. A modern community, not divided within itself by strong
antipathies of race, language, or nationality, may be considered as in the
main divisible into two sections, which, in spite of partial variations,
correspond on the whole with two divergent directions of apparent interest.
Let us call them (in brief general terms) laborers on the one hand,
employers of labor on the other; including, however, along with employers
of labor not only retired capitalists and the possessors of inherited wealth,
but all that highly paid description of laborers (such as the professions)
whose education and way of life assimilate them with the rich, and whose
prospect and ambition it is to raise themselves into that class. With the
laborers, on the other hand, may be ranked those smaller employers of labor
who by interests, habits, and educational impressions are assimilated in
wishes, tastes, and objects to the laboring classes, comprehending a large
proportion of petty tradesmen. In a state of society thus composed, if the
representative system could be made ideally perfect, and if it were possible
to maintain it in that state, its organization must be such that these two
classes, manual laborers and their affinities on one side, employers of labor
and their affinities on the other, should be, in the arrangement of the
representative system, equally balanced, each influencing about an equal
number of votes in Parliament; since, assuming that the majority of each
class, in any difference between them, would be mainly governed by their
class interests, there would be a minority of each in whom that
consideration would be subordinate to reason, justice, and the good of the
whole; and this minority of either, joining with the whole of the other,
would turn the scale against any demands of their own majority which were
not such as ought to prevail. The reason why, in any tolerable constituted
society, justice and the general interest mostly in the end carry their point, is
that the separate and selfish interests of mankind are almost always divided;
some are interested in what is wrong, but some, also, have their private
interest on the side of what is right; and those who are governed by higher
considerations, though too few and weak to prevail alone, usually, after
sufficient discussion and agitation, become strong enough to turn the
balance in favor of the body of private interests which is on the same side
with them. The representative system ought to be so constituted as to
maintain this state of things; it ought not to allow any of the various
sectional interests to be so powerful as to be capable of prevailing against

truth and justice, and the other sectional interests combined. There ought
always to be such a balance preserved among personal interests as may
render any one of them dependent for its successes on carrying with it at
least a large proportion of those who act on higher motives, and more
comprehensive and distant views.

Chapter VII—Of True and False Democracy;
Representation of All, and Representation of the
Majority only.
It has been seen that the dangers incident to a representative democracy
are of two kinds: danger of a low grade of intelligence in the representative
body, and in the popular opinion which controls it; and danger of class
legislation on the part of the numerical majority, these being all composed
of the same class. We have next to consider how far it is possible so to
organize the democracy as, without interfering materially with the
characteristic benefits of democratic government, to do away with these two
great evils, or at least to abate them in the utmost degree attainable by
human contrivance.
The common mode of attempting this is by limiting the democratic
character of the representation through a more or less restricted suffrage.
But there is a previous consideration which, duly kept in view, considerably
modifies the circumstances which are supposed to render such a restriction
necessary. A completely equal democracy, in a nation in which a single
class composes the numerical majority, can not be divested of certain evils;
but those evils are greatly aggravated by the fact that the democracies
which at present exist are not equal, but systematically unequal in favor of
the predominant class. Two very different ideas are usually confounded
under the name democracy. The pure idea of democracy, according to its
definition, is the government of the whole people by the whole people,
equally represented. Democracy, as commonly conceived and hitherto
practiced, is the government of the whole people by a mere majority of the
people exclusively represented. The former is synonymous with the equality
of all citizens; the latter, strangely confounded with it, is a government of
privilege in favor of the numerical majority, who alone possess practically
any voice in the state. This is the inevitable consequence of the manner in
which the votes are now taken, to the complete disfranchisement of
minorities.

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

who may be, and often are, but a minority of the whole. All principles are
most effectually tested by extreme cases. Suppose, then, that, in a country
governed by equal and universal suffrage, there is a contested election in
every constituency, and every election is carried by a small majority. The
Parliament thus brought together represents little more than a bare majority
of the people. This Parliament proceeds to legislate, and adopts important
measures by a bare majority of itself. What guaranty is there that these
measures accord with the wishes of a majority of the people? Nearly half
the electors, having been outvoted at the hustings, have had no influence at
all in the decision; and the whole of these may be, a majority of them
probably are, hostile to the measures, having voted against those by whom
they have been carried. Of the remaining electors, nearly half have chosen
representatives who, by supposition, have voted against the measures. It is
possible, therefore, and even probable, that the opinion which has prevailed
was agreeable only to a minority of the nation, though a majority of that
portion of it whom the institutions of the country have erected into a ruling
class. If democracy means the certain ascendancy of the majority, there are
no means of insuring that, but by allowing every individual figure to tell
equally in the summing up. Any minority left out, either purposely or by the
play of the machinery, gives the power not to the majority, but to a minority
in some other part of the scale.
The only answer which can possibly be made to this reasoning is, that as
different opinions predominate in different localities, the opinion which is
in a minority in some places has a majority in others, and on the whole
every opinion which exists in the constituencies obtains its fair share of
voices in the representation. And this is roughly true in the present state of
the constituency; if it were not, the discordance of the House with the
general sentiment of the country would soon become evident. But it would
be no longer true if the present constituency were much enlarged, still less if
made co-extensive with the whole population; for in that case the majority
in every locality would consist of manual laborers; and when there was any
question pending on which these classes were at issue with the rest of the
community, no other class could succeed in getting represented any where.
Even now, is it not a great grievance that in every Parliament a very
numerous portion of the electors, willing and anxious to be represented,
have no member in the House for whom they have voted? Is it just that
every elector of Marylebone is obliged to be represented by two nominees

of the vestries, every elector of Finsbury or Lambeth by those (as is
generally believed) of the publicans? The constituencies to which most of
the highly educated and public spirited persons in the country belong, those
of the large towns, are now, in great part, either unrepresented or
misrepresented. The electors who are on a different side in party politics
from the local majority are unrepresented. Of those who are on the same
side, a large proportion are misrepresented; having been obliged to accept
the man who had the greatest number of supporters in their political party,
though his opinions may differ from theirs on every other point. The state of
things is, in some respects, even worse than if the minority were not
allowed to vote at all; for then, at least, the majority might have a member
who would represent their own best mind; while now, the necessity of not
dividing the party, for fear of letting in its opponents, induces all to vote
either for the first person who presents himself wearing their colors, or for
the one brought forward by their local leaders; and these, if we pay them the
compliment, which they very seldom deserve, of supposing their choice to
be unbiassed by their personal interests, are compelled, that they may be
sure of mustering their whole strength, to bring forward a candidate whom
none of the party will strongly object to—that is, a man without any
distinctive peculiarity, any known opinions except the shibboleth of the
party. This is strikingly exemplified in the United States; where, at the
election of President, the strongest party never dares put forward any of its
strongest men, because every one of these, from the mere fact that he has
been long in the public eye, has made himself objectionable to some portion
or other of the party, and is therefore not so sure a card for rallying all their
votes as a person who has never been heard of by the public at all until he is
produced as the candidate. Thus, the man who is chosen, even by the
strongest party, represents perhaps the real wishes only of the narrow
margin by which that party outnumbers the other. Any section whose
support is necessary to success possesses a veto on the candidate. Any
section which holds out more obstinately than the rest can compel all the
others to adopt its nominee; and this superior pertinacity is unhappily more
likely to be found among those who are holding out for their own interest
than for that of the public. Speaking generally, the choice of the majority is
determined by that portion of the body who are the most timid, the most
narrow-minded and prejudiced, or who cling most tenaciously to the
exclusive class-interest; and the electoral rights of the minority, while

useless for the purposes for which votes are given, serve only for
compelling the majority to accept the candidate of the weakest or worst
portion of themselves.
That, while recognizing these evils, many should consider them as the
necessary price paid for a free government, is in no way surprising; it was
the opinion of all the friends of freedom up to a recent period. But the habit
of passing them over as irremediable has become so inveterate, that many
persons seem to have lost the capacity of looking at them as things which
they would be glad to remedy if they could. From despairing of a cure,
there is too often but one step to denying the disease; and from this follows
dislike to having a remedy proposed, as if the proposer were creating a
mischief instead of offering relief from one. People are so inured to the
evils that they feel as if it were unreasonable, if not wrong, to complain of
them. Yet, avoidable or not, he must be a purblind lover of liberty on whose
mind they do not weigh; who would not rejoice at the discovery that they
could be dispensed with. Now, nothing is more certain than that the virtual
blotting out of the minority is no necessary or natural consequence of
freedom; that, far from having any connection with democracy, it is
diametrically opposed to the first principle of democracy, representation in
proportion to numbers. It is an essential part of democracy that minorities
should be adequately represented. No real democracy, nothing but a false
show of democracy, is possible without it.
Those who have seen and felt, in some degree, the force of these
considerations, have proposed various expedients by which the evil may be,
in a greater or less degree, mitigated. Lord John Russell, in one of his
Reform Bills, introduced a provision that certain constituencies should
return three members, and that in these each elector should be allowed to
vote only for two; and Mr. Disraeli, in the recent debates, revived the
memory of the fact by reproaching him for it, being of opinion, apparently,
that it befits a Conservative statesman to regard only means, and to disown
scornfully all fellow-feeling with any one who is betrayed, even once, into
thinking of ends. [3] Others have proposed that each elector should be
allowed to vote only for one. By either of these plans, a minority equalling
or exceeding a third of the local constituency, would be able, if it attempted
no more, to return one out of three members. The same result might be
attained in a still better way if, as proposed in an able pamphlet by Mr.
James Garth Marshall, the elector retained his three votes, but was at liberty

to bestow them all upon the same candidate. These schemes, though
infinitely better than none at all, are yet but makeshifts, and attain the end in
a very imperfect manner, since all local minorities of less than a third, and
all minorities, however numerous, which are made up from several
constituencies, would remain unrepresented. It is much to be lamented,
however, that none of these plans have been carried into effect, as any of
them would have recognized the right principle, and prepared the way for
its more complete application. But real equality of representation is not
obtained unless any set of electors amounting to the average number of a
constituency, wherever in the country they happen to reside, have the power
of combining with one another to return a representative. This degree of
perfection in representation appeared impracticable until a man of great
capacity, fitted alike for large general views and for the contrivance of
practical details—Mr. Thomas Hare—had proved its possibility by drawing
up a scheme for its accomplishment, embodied in a Draft of an Act of
Parliament; a scheme which has the almost unparalleled merit of carrying
out a great principle of government in a manner approaching to ideal
perfection as regards the special object in view, while it attains incidentally
several other ends of scarcely inferior importance.
According to this plan, the unit of representation, the quota of electors
who would be entitled to have a member to themselves, would be
ascertained by the ordinary process of taking averages, the number of voters
being divided by the number of seats in the House; and every candidate
who obtained that quota would be returned, from however great a number
of local constituencies it might be gathered. The votes would, as at present,
be given locally; but any elector would be at liberty to vote for any
candidate, in whatever part of the country he might offer himself. Those
electors, therefore, who did not wish to be represented by any of the local
candidates, might aid by their vote in the return of the person they liked best
among all those throughout the country who had expressed a willingness to
be chosen. This would so far give reality to the electoral rights of the
otherwise virtually disfranchised minority. But it is important that not those
alone who refuse to vote for any of the local candidates, but those also who
vote for one of them and are defeated, should be enabled to find elsewhere
the representation which they have not succeeded in obtaining in their own
district. It is therefore provided that an elector may deliver a voting paper
containing other names in addition to the one which stands foremost in his

preference. His vote would only be counted for one candidate; but if the
object of his first choice failed to be returned, from not having obtained the
quota, his second perhaps might be more fortunate. He may extend his list
to a greater number in the order of his preference, so that if the names
which stand near the top of the list either can not make up the quota, or are
able to make it up without his vote, the vote may still be used for some one
whom it may assist in returning. To obtain the full number of members
required to complete the House, as well as to prevent very popular
candidates from engrossing nearly all the suffrages, it is necessary, however
many votes a candidate may obtain, that no more of them than the quota
should be counted for his return; the remainder of those who voted for him
would have their votes counted for the next person on their respective lists
who needed them, and could by their aid complete the quota. To determine
which of a candidate's votes should be used for his return, and which set
free for others, several methods are proposed, into which we shall not here
enter. He would, of course, retain the votes of all those who would not
otherwise be represented; and for the remainder, drawing lots, in default of
better, would be an unobjectionable expedient. The voting papers would be
conveyed to a central office, where the votes would be counted, the number
of first, second, third, and other votes given for each candidate ascertained,
and the quota would be allotted to every one who could make it up, until the
number of the House was complete; first votes being preferred to second,
second to third, and so forth. The voting papers, and all the elements of the
calculation, would be placed in public repositories, accessible to all whom
they concerned; and if any one who had obtained the quota was not duly
returned, it would be in his power easily to prove it.
These are the main provisions of the scheme. For a more minute
knowledge of its very simple machinery, I must refer to Mr. Hare's "Treatise
on the Election of Representatives" (a small volume Published in 1859),
and to a pamphlet by Mr. Henry Fawcett, published in 1860, and entitled
"Mr. Hare's Reform Bill simplified and explained." This last is a very clear
and concise exposition of the plan, reduced to its simplest elements by the
omission of some of Mr. Hare's original provisions, which, though in
themselves beneficial, we're thought to take more from the simplicity of the
scheme than they added to its practical advantages. The more these works
are studied, the stronger, I venture to predict, will be the impression of the
perfect feasibility of the scheme and its transcendant advantages. Such and

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

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

electors the first person who presents himself with the catchwords of the
party in his mouth, and three or four thousand pounds in his pocket. The
majority would insist on having a candidate worthy of their choice, or they
would carry their votes somewhere else, and the minority would prevail.
The slavery of the majority to the least estimable portion of their numbers
would be at an end; the very best and most capable of the local notabilities
would be put forward by preference; if possible, such as were known in
some advantageous way beyond the locality, that their local strength might
have a chance of being fortified by stray votes from elsewhere.
Constituencies would become competitors for the best candidates, and
would vie with one another in selecting from among the men of local
knowledge and connections those who were most distinguished in every
other respect.
The natural tendency of representative government, as of modern
civilization, is towards collective mediocrity: and this tendency is increased
by all reductions and extensions of the franchise, their effect being to place
the principal power in the hands of classes more and more below the
highest level of instruction in the community. But, though the superior
intellects and characters will necessarily be outnumbered, it makes a great
difference whether or not they are heard. In the false democracy which,
instead of giving representation to all, gives it only to the local majorities,
the voice of the instructed minority may have no organs at all in the
representative body. It is an admitted fact that in the American democracy,
which is constructed on this faulty model, the highly-cultivated members of
the community, except such of them as are willing to sacrifice their own
opinions and modes of judgment, and become the servile mouthpieces of
their inferiors in knowledge, do not even offer themselves for Congress or
the State Legislatures, so certain is it that they would have no chance of
being returned. Had a plan like Mr. Hare's by good fortune suggested itself
to the enlightened and disinterested founders of the American Republic, the
federal and state assemblies would have contained many of these
distinguished men, and democracy would have been spared its greatest
reproach and one of its most formidable evils. Against this evil the system
of personal representation proposed by Mr. Hare is almost a specific. The
minority of instructed minds scattered through the local constituencies
would unite to return a number, proportioned to their own numbers, of the
very ablest men the country contains. They would be under the strongest

inducement to choose such men, since in no other mode could they make
their small numerical strength tell for any thing considerable. The
representatives of the majority, besides that they would themselves be
improved in quality by the operation of the system, would no longer have
the whole field to themselves. They would indeed outnumber the others, as
much as the one class of electors outnumbers the other in the country: they
could always outvote them, but they would speak and vote in their
presence, and subject to their criticism. When any difference arose, they
would have to meet the arguments of the instructed few by reasons, at least
apparently, as cogent; and since they could not, as those do who are
speaking to persons already unanimous, simply assume that they are in the
right, it would occasionally happen to them to become convinced that they
were in the wrong. As they would in general be well-meaning (for thus
much may reasonably be expected from a fairly-chosen national
representation), their own minds would be insensibly raised by the
influence of the minds with which they were in contact, or even in conflict.
The champions of unpopular doctrines would not put forth their arguments
merely in books and periodicals, read only by their own side; the opposing
ranks would meet face to face and hand to hand, and there would be a fair
comparison of their intellectual strength in the presence of the country. It
would then be found out whether the opinion which prevailed by counting
votes would also prevail if the votes were weighed as well as counted. The
multitude have often a true instinct for distinguishing an able man when he
has the means of displaying his ability in a fair field before them. If such a
man fails to obtain any portion of his just weight, it is through institutions
or usages which keep him out of sight. In the old democracies there were no
means of keeping out of sight any able man: the bema was open to him; he
needed nobody's consent to become a public adviser. It is not so in a
representative government; and the best friends of representative
democracy can hardly be without misgivings that the Themistocles or
Demosthenes whose councils would have saved the nation, might be unable
during his whole life ever to obtain a seat. But if the presence in the
representative assembly can be insured of even a few of the first minds in
the country, though the remainder consist only of average minds, the
influence of these leading spirits is sure to make itself insensibly felt in the
general deliberations, even though they be known to be, in many respects,
opposed to the tone of popular opinion and feeling. I am unable to conceive

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

themselves ahead of others—a social support, a point d'appui, for
individual resistance to the tendencies of the ruling power; a protection, a
rallying-point, for opinions and interests which the ascendant public
opinion views with disfavor. For want of such a point d'appui, the older
societies, and all but a few modern ones, either fell into dissolution or
became stationary (which means slow deterioration) through the exclusive
predominance of a part only of the conditions of social and mental well-
being.
Now, this great want the system of Personal Representation is fitted to
supply in the most perfect manner which the circumstances of modern
society admit of. The only quarter in which to look for a supplement, or
completing corrective to the instincts of a democratic majority, is the
instructed minority; but, in the ordinary mode of constituting democracy,
this minority has no organ: Mr. Hare's system provides one. The
representatives who would be returned to Parliament by the aggregate of
minorities would afford that organ in its greatest perfection. A separate
organization of the instructed classes, even if practicable, would be
invidious, and could only escape from being offensive by being totally
without influence. But if the élite of these classes formed part of the
Parliament, by the same title as any other of its members—by representing
the same number of citizens, the same numerical fraction of the national
will—their presence could give umbrage to nobody, while they would be in
the position of highest vantage, both for making their opinions and councils
heard on all important subjects, and for taking an active part in public
business. Their abilities would probably draw to them more than their
numerical share of the actual administration of government; as the
Athenians did not confide responsible public functions to Cleon or
Hyperbolus (the employment of Cleon at Pylos and Amphipolis was purely
exceptional), but Nicias, and Theramenes, and Alcibiades were in constant
employment both at home and abroad, though known to sympathize more
with oligarchy than with democracy. The instructed minority would, in the
actual voting, count only for their numbers, but as a moral power they
would count for much more, in virtue of their knowledge, and of the
influence it would give them over the rest. An arrangement better adapted to
keep popular opinion within reason and justice, and to guard it from the
various deteriorating influences which assail the weak side of democracy,
could scarcely by human ingenuity be devised. A democratic people would

in this way be provided with what in any other way it would almost
certainly miss—leaders of a higher grade of intellect and character than
itself. Modern democracy would have its occasional Pericles, and its
habitual group of superior and guiding minds.
With all this array of reasons, of the most fundamental character, on the
affirmative side of the question, what is there on the negative? Nothing that
will sustain examination, when people can once be induced to bestow any
real examination upon a new thing. Those indeed, if any such there be, who,
under pretense of equal justice, aim only at substituting the class
ascendancy of the poor for that of the rich, will of course be unfavorable to
a scheme which places both on a level. But I do not believe that any such
wish exists at present among the working classes of this country, though I
would not answer for the effect which opportunity and demagogic artifices
may hereafter have in exciting it. In the United States, where the numerical
majority have long been in full possession of collective despotism, they
would probably be as unwilling to part with it as a single despot or an
aristocracy. But I believe that the English democracy would as yet be
content with protection against the class legislation of others, without
claiming the power to exercise it in their turn.
Among the ostensible objectors to Mr. Hare's scheme, some profess to
think the plan unworkable; but these, it will be found, are generally people
who have barely heard of it, or have given it a very slight and cursory
examination. Others are unable to reconcile themselves to the loss of what
they term the local character of the representation. A nation does not seem
to them to consist of persons, but of artificial units, the creation of
geography and statistics. Parliament must represent towns and counties, not
human beings. But no one seeks to annihilate towns and counties. Towns
and counties, it may be presumed, are represented when the human beings
who inhabit them are represented. Local feelings can not exist without
somebody who feels them, nor local interests without somebody interested
in them. If the human beings whose feelings and interests these are have
their proper share of representation, these feelings and interests are
represented in common with all other feelings and interests of those
persons. But I can not see why the feelings and interests which arrange
mankind according to localities should be the only one thought worthy of
being represented; or why people who have other feelings and interests,
which they value more than they do their geographical ones, should be

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

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

which is carried down to the very lowest ranks of the people when they are
called to take a part in acts which directly affect the great interests of their
country. On this topic I have already dwelt so emphatically that I only
return to it because there are few who seem to attach to this effect of
popular institutions all the importance to which it is entitled. People think it
fanciful to expect so much from what seems so slight a cause—to recognize
a potent instrument of mental improvement in the exercise of political
franchises by manual laborers. Yet, unless substantial mental cultivation in
the mass of mankind is to be a mere vision, this is the road by which it must
come. If any one supposes that this road will not bring it, I call to witness
the entire contents of M. de Tocqueville's great work, and especially his
estimate of the Americans. Almost all travelers are struck by the fact that
every American is in some sense both a patriot and a person of cultivated
intelligence; and M. de Tocqueville has shown how close the connection is
between these qualities and their democratic institutions. No such wide
diffusion of the ideas, tastes, and sentiments of educated minds has ever
been seen elsewhere, or even conceived as attainable. Yet this is nothing to
what we might look for in a government equally democratic in its
unexclusiveness, but better organized in other important points. For
political life is indeed in America a most valuable school, but it is a school
from which the ablest teachers are excluded; the first minds in the country
being as effectually shut out from the national representation, and from
public functions generally, as if they were under a formal disqualification.
The Demos, too, being in America the one source of power, all the selfish
ambition of the country gravitates towards it, as it does in despotic countries
towards the monarch; the People, like the despot, is pursued with adulation
and sycophancy, and the corrupting effects of power fully keep pace with its
improving and ennobling influences. If, even with this alloy, democratic
institutions produce so marked a superiority of mental development in the
lowest class of Americans, compared with the corresponding classes in
England and elsewhere, what would it be if the good portion of the
influence could be retained without the bad? And this, to a certain extent,
may be done, but not by excluding that portion of the people who have
fewest intellectual stimuli of other kinds from so inestimable an
introduction to large, distant, and complicated interests as is afforded by the
attention they may be induced to bestow on political affairs. It is by political
discussion that the manual laborer, whose employment is a routine, and

whose way of life brings him in contact with no variety of impressions,
circumstances, or ideas, is taught that remote causes, and events which take
place far off, have a most sensible effect even on his personal interests; and
it is from political discussion and collective political action that one whose
daily occupations concentrate his interests in a small circle round himself,
learns to feel for and with his fellow-citizens, and becomes consciously a
member of a great community. But political discussions fly over the heads
of those who have no votes, and are not endeavouring to acquire them.
Their position, in comparison with the electors, is that of the audience in a
court of justice compared with the twelve men in the jury-box. It is not their
suffrages that are asked, it is not their opinion that is sought to be
influenced; the appeals are made, the arguments addressed, to others than
them; nothing depends on the decision they may arrive at, and there is no
necessity and very little inducement to them to come to any. Whoever, in an
otherwise popular government, has no vote, and no prospect of obtaining it,
will either be a permanent malcontent, or will feel as one whom the general
affairs of society do not concern; for whom they are to be managed by
others; who "has no business with the laws except to obey them," nor with
public interests and concerns except as a looker-on. What he will know or
care about them from this position may partly be measured by what an
average woman of the middle class knows and cares about politics
compared with her husband or brothers.
Independently of all these considerations, it is a personal injustice to
withhold from any one, unless for the prevention of greater evils, the
ordinary privilege of having his voice reckoned in the disposal of affairs in
which he has the same interest as other people. If he is compelled to pay, if
he may be compelled to fight, if he is required implicitly to obey, he should
be legally entitled to be told what for; to have his consent asked, and his
opinion counted at its worth, though not at more than its worth. There ought
to be no pariahs in a full-grown and civilized nation; no persons
disqualified except through their own default. Every one is degraded,
whether aware of it or not, when other people, without consulting him, take
upon themselves unlimited power to regulate his destiny. And even in a
much more improved state than the human mind has ever yet reached, it is
not in nature that they who are thus disposed of should meet with as fair
play as those who have a voice. Rulers and ruling classes are under a
necessity of considering the interests and wishes of those who have the

suffrage; but of those who are excluded, it is in their option whether they
will do so or not; and, however honestly disposed, they are, in general, too
fully occupied with things which they must attend to to have much room in
their thoughts for any thing which they can with impunity disregard. No
arrangement of the suffrage, therefore, can be permanently satisfactory in
which any person or class is peremptorily excluded—in which the electoral
privilege is not open to all persons of full age who desire to obtain it.
There are, however, certain exclusions, required by positive reasons,
which do not conflict with this principle, and which, though an evil in
themselves, are only to be got rid of by the cessation of the state of things
which requires them. I regard it as wholly inadmissible that any person
should participate in the suffrage without being able to read, write, and, I
will add, perform the common operations of arithmetic. Justice demands,
even when the suffrage does not depend on it, that the means of attaining
these elementary acquirements should be within the reach of every person,
either gratuitously, or at an expense not exceeding what the poorest, who
can earn their own living, can afford. If this were really the case, people
would no more think of giving the suffrage to a man who could not read,
than of giving it to a child who could not speak; and it would not be society
that would exclude him, but his own laziness. When society has not
performed its duty by rendering this amount of instruction accessible to all,
there is some hardship in the case, but it is a hardship that ought to be
borne. If society has neglected to discharge two solemn obligations, the
more important and more fundamental of the two must be fulfilled first;
universal teaching must precede universal enfranchisement. No one but
those in whom an à priori theory has silenced common sense will maintain
that power over others, over the whole community, should be imparted to
people who have not acquired the commonest and most essential requisities
for taking care of themselves—for pursuing intelligently their own interests,
and those of the persons most nearly allied to them. This argument,
doubtless, might be pressed further, and made to prove much more. It
would be eminently desirable that other things besides reading, writing, and
arithmetic could be made necessary to the suffrage; that some knowledge of
the conformation of the earth, its natural and political divisions, the
elements of general history, and of the history and institutions of their own
country, could be required from all electors. But these kinds of knowledge,
however indispensable to an intelligent use of the suffrage, are not, in this

country, nor probably any where save in the Northern United States,
accessible to the whole people, nor does there exist any trustworthy
machinery for ascertaining whether they have been acquired or not. The
attempt, at present, would lead to partiality, chicanery, and every kind of
fraud. It is better that the suffrage should be conferred indiscriminately, or
even withheld indiscriminately, than that it should be given to one and
withheld from another at the discretion of a public officer. In regard,
however, to reading, writing, and calculating, there need be no difficulty. It
would be easy to require from every one who presented himself for registry
that he should, in the presence of the registrar, copy a sentence from an
English book, and perform a sum in the rule of three; and to secure, by
fixed rules and complete publicity, the honest application of so very simple
a test. This condition, therefore, should in all cases accompany universal
suffrage; and it would, after a few years, exclude none but those who cared
so little for the privilege, that their vote, if given, would not in general be an
indication of any real political opinion.
It is also important, that the assembly which votes the taxes, either
general or local, should be elected exclusively by those who pay something
towards the taxes imposed. Those who pay no taxes, disposing by their
votes of other people's money, have every motive to be lavish and none to
economize. As far as money matters are concerned, any power of voting
possessed by them is a violation of the fundamental principle of free
government, a severance of the power of control from the interest in its
beneficial exercise. It amounts to allowing them to put their hands into
other people's pockets for any purpose which they think fit to call a public
one, which, in the great towns of the United States, is known to have
produced a scale of local taxation onerous beyond example, and wholly
borne by the wealthier classes. That representation should be coextensive
with taxation, not stopping short of it, but also not going beyond it, is in
accordance with the theory of British institutions. But to reconcile this, as a
condition annexed to the representation, with universality, it is essential, as
it is on many other accounts desirable, that taxation, in a visible shape,
should descend to the poorest class. In this country, and in most others,
there is probably no laboring family which does not contribute to the
indirect taxes, by the purchase of tea, coffee, sugar, not to mention narcotics
or stimulants. But this mode of defraying a share of the public expenses is
hardly felt: the payer, unless a person of education and reflection, does not

identify his interest with a low scale of public expenditure as closely as
when money for its support is demanded directly from himself; and even
supposing him to do so, he would doubtless take care that, however lavish
an expenditure he might, by his vote, assist in imposing upon the
government, it should not be defrayed by any additional taxes on the
articles which he himself consumes. It would be better that a direct tax, in
the simple form of a capitation, should be levied on every grown person in
the community; or that every such person should be admitted an elector on
allowing himself to be rated extra ordinem to the assessed taxes; or that a
small annual payment, rising and falling with the gross expenditure of the
country, should be required from every registered elector, that so every one
might feel that the money which he assisted in voting was partly his own,
and that he was interested in keeping down its amount.
However this may be, I regard it as required by first principles that the
receipt of parish relief should be a peremptory disqualification for the
franchise. He who can not by his labor suffice for his own support, has no
claim to the privilege of helping himself to the money of others. By
becoming dependent on the remaining members of the community for
actual subsistence, he abdicates his claim to equal rights with them in other
respects. Those to whom he is indebted for the continuance of his very
existence may justly claim the exclusive management of those common
concerns to which he now brings nothing, or less than he takes away. As a
condition of the franchise, a term should be fixed, say five years previous to
the registry, during which the applicant's name has not been on the parish
books as a recipient of relief. To be an uncertificated bankrupt, or to have
taken the benefit of the Insolvent Act, should disqualify for the franchise
until the person has paid his debts, or at least proved that he is not now, and
has not for some long period been, dependent on eleemosynary support.
Non-payment of taxes, when so long persisted in that it can not have arisen
from inadvertence, should disqualify while it lasts. These exclusions are not
in their nature permanent. They exact such conditions only as all are able,
or ought to be able, to fulfill if they choose. They leave the suffrage
accessible to all who are in the normal condition of a human being; and if
any one has to forego it, he either does not care sufficiently for it to do for
its sake what he is already bound to do, or he is in a general condition of
depression and degradation in which this slight addition, necessary for the

security of others, would be unfelt, and on emerging from which this mark
of inferiority would disappear with the rest.
In the long run, therefore (supposing no restrictions to exist but those of
which we have now treated), we might expect that all, except that (it is to be
hoped) progressively diminishing class, the recipients of parish relief,
would be in possession of votes, so that the suffrage would be, with that
slight abatement, universal. That it should be thus widely expanded is, as
we have seen, absolutely necessary to an enlarged and elevated conception
of good government. Yet in this state of things, the great majority of voters
in most countries, and emphatically in this, would be manual laborers, and
the twofold danger, that of too low a standard of political intelligence, and
that of class legislation, would still exist in a very perilous degree. It
remains to be seen whether any means exist by which these evils can be
obviated.
They are capable of being obviated if men sincerely wish it; not by any
artificial contrivance, but by carrying out the natural order of human life,
which recommends itself to every one in things in which he has no interest
or traditional opinion running counter to it. In all human affairs, every
person directly interested, and not under positive tutelage, has an admitted
claim to a voice, and when his exercise of it is not inconsistent with the
safety of the whole, can not justly be excluded from it. But (though every
one ought to have a voice) that every one should have an equal voice is a
totally different proposition. When two persons who have a joint interest in
any business differ in opinion, does justice require that both opinions should
be held of exactly equal value? If with equal virtue, one is superior to the
other in knowledge and intelligence—or if with equal intelligence, one
excels the other in virtue—the opinion, the judgment of the higher moral or
intellectual being is worth more than that of the inferior; and if the
institutions of the country virtually assert that they are of the same value,
they assert a thing which is not. One of the two, as the wiser or better man,
has a claim to superior weight: the difficulty is in ascertaining which of the
two it is; a thing impossible as between individuals, but, taking men in
bodies and in numbers, it can be done with a certain approach to accuracy.
There would be no pretense for applying this doctrine to any case which can
with reason be considered as one of individual and private right. In an affair
which concerns only one of two persons, that one is entitled to follow his
own opinion, however much wiser the other may be than himself. But we

are speaking of things which equally concern them both; where, if the more
ignorant does not yield his share of the matter to the guidance of the wiser
man, the wiser man must resign his to that of the more ignorant. Which of
these modes of getting over the difficulty is most for the interest of both,
and most conformable to the general fitness of things? If it be deemed
unjust that either should have to give way, which injustice is greatest? that
the better judgment should give way to the worse, or the worse to the
better?
Now national affairs are exactly such a joint concern, with the difference
that no one needs ever be called upon for a complete sacrifice of his own
opinion. It can always be taken into the calculation, and counted at a certain
figure, a higher figure being assigned to the suffrages of those whose
opinion is entitled to greater weight. There is not in this arrangement any
thing necessarily invidious to those to whom it assigns the lower degrees of
influence. Entire exclusion from a voice in the common concerns is one
thing: the concession to others of a more potential voice, on the ground of
greater capacity for the management of the joint interests, is another. The
two things are not merely different, they are incommensurable. Every one
has a right to feel insulted by being made a nobody, and stamped as of no
account at all. No one but a fool, and only a fool of a peculiar description,
feels offended by the acknowledgment that there are others whose opinion,
and even whose wish, is entitled to a greater amount of consideration than
his. To have no voice in what are partly his own concerns is a thing which
nobody willingly submits to; but when what is partly his concern is also
partly another's, and he feels the other to understand the subject better than
himself, that the other's opinion should be counted for more than his own
accords with his expectations, and with the course of things which in all
other affairs of life he is accustomed to acquiese in. It is only necessary that
this superior influence should be assigned on grounds which he can
comprehend, and of which he is able to perceive the justice.
I hasten to say that I consider it entirely inadmissible, unless as a
temporary makeshift, that the superiority of influence should be conferred
in consideration of property. I do not deny that property is a kind of test;
education, in most countries, though any thing but proportional to riches, is
on the average better in the richer half of society than in the poorer. But the
criterion is so imperfect; accident has so much more to do than merit with
enabling men to rise in the world; and it is so impossible for any one, by

acquiring any amount of instruction, to make sure of the corresponding rise
in station, that this foundation of electoral privilege is always, and will
continue to be, supremely odious. To connect plurality of votes with any
pecuniary qualification would be not only objectionable in itself, but a sure
mode of compromising the principle, and making its permanent
maintenance impracticable. The democracy, at least of this country, are not
at present jealous of personal superiority, but they are naturally and must
justly so of that which is grounded on mere pecuniary circumstances. The
only thing which can justify reckoning one person's opinion as equivalent to
more than one is individual mental superiority, and what is wanted is some
approximate means of ascertaining that. If there existed such a thing as a
really national education or a trustworthy system of general examination,
education might be tested directly. In the absence of these, the nature of a
person's occupation is some test. An employer of labor is on the average
more intelligent than a laborer; for he must labor with his head, and not
solely with his hands. A foreman is generally more intelligent than an
ordinary laborer, and a laborer in the skilled trades than in the unskilled. A
banker, merchant, or manufacturer is likely to be more intelligent than a
tradesman, because he has larger and more complicated interests to manage.
In all these cases it is not the having merely undertaken the superior
function, but the successful performance of it, that tests the qualifications;
for which reason, as well as to prevent persons from engaging nominally in
an occupation for the sake of the vote, it would be proper to require that the
occupation should have been persevered in for some length of time (say
three years). Subject to some such condition, two or more votes might be
allowed to every person who exercises any of these superior functions. The
liberal professions, when really and not nominally practiced, imply, of
course, a still higher degree of instruction; and wherever a sufficient
examination, or any serious conditions of education, are required before
entering on a profession, its members could be admitted at once to a
plurality of votes. The same rule might be applied to graduates of
universities; and even to those who bring satisfactory certificates of having
passed through the course of study required by any school at which the
higher branches of knowledge are taught, under proper securities that the
teaching is real, and not a mere pretense. The "local" or "middle class"
examination for the degree of associate, so laudably and public-spiritedly
established by the University of Oxford, and any similar ones which may be

instituted by other competent bodies (provided they are fairly open to all
comers), afford a ground on which plurality of votes might with great
advantage be accorded to those who have passed the test. All these
suggestions are open to much discussion in the detail, and to objections
which it is of no use to anticipate. The time is not come for giving to such
plans a practical shape, nor should I wish to be bound by the particular
proposals which I have made. But it is to me evident that in this direction
lies the true ideal of representative government; and that to work towards it
by the best practical contrivances which can be found is the path of real
political improvement.
If it be asked to what length the principle admits of being carried, or how
many votes might be accorded to an individual on the ground of superior
qualifications, I answer, that this is not in itself very material, provided the
distinctions and gradations are not made arbitrarily, but are such as can be
understood and accepted by the general conscience and understanding. But
it is an absolute condition not to overpass the limit prescribed by the
fundamental principle laid down in a former chapter as the condition of
excellence in the constitution of a representative system. The plurality of
votes must on no account be carried so far that those who are privileged by
it, or the class (if any) to which they mainly belong, shall outweigh by
means of it all the rest of the community. The distinction in favor of
education, right in itself, is farther and strongly recommended by its
preserving the educated from the class legislation of the uneducated; but it
must stop short of enabling them to practice class legislation on their own
account. Let me add, that I consider it an absolutely necessary part of the
plurality scheme that it be open to the poorest individual in the community
to claim its privileges, if he can prove that, in spite of all difficulties and
obstacles, he is, in point of intelligence, entitled to them. There ought to be
voluntary examinations at which any person whatever might present
himself, might prove that he came up to the standard of knowledge and
ability laid down as sufficient, and be admitted, in consequence, to the
plurality of votes. A privilege which is not refused to any one who can show
that he has realized the conditions on which in theory and principle it is
dependent, would not necessarily be repugnant to any one's sentiment of
justice; but it would certainly be so if, while conferred on general
presumptions not always infallible, it were denied to direct proof.

Plural voting, though practiced in vestry elections and those of poor-law
guardians, is so unfamiliar in elections to Parliament that it is not likely to
be soon or willingly adopted; but as the time will certainly arrive when the
only choice will be between this and equal universal suffrage, whoever does
not desire the last can not too soon begin to reconcile himself to the former.
In the mean time, though the suggestion, for the present, may not be a
practical one, it will serve to mark what is best in principle, and enable us to
judge of the eligibility of any indirect means, either existing or capable of
being adopted, which may promote in a less perfect manner the same end. A
person may have a double vote by other means than that of tendering two
votes at the same hustings; he may have a vote in each of two different
constituencies; and though this exceptional privilege at present belongs
rather to superiority of means than of intelligence, I would not abolish it
where it exists, since, until a truer test of education is adopted, it would be
unwise to dispense with even so imperfect a one as is afforded by pecuniary
circumstances. Means might be found of giving a farther extension to the
privilege, which would connect it in a more direct manner with superior
education. In any future Reform Bill which lowers greatly the pecuniary
conditions of the suffrage, it might be a wise provision to allow all
graduates of universities, all persons who have passed creditably through
the higher schools, all members of the liberal professions, and perhaps some
others, to be registered specifically in those characters, and to give their
votes as such in any constituency in which they choose to register;
retaining, in addition, their votes as simple citizens in the localities in which
they reside.
Until there shall have been devised, and until opinion is willing to accept,
some mode of plural voting which may assign to education as such the
degree of superior influence due to it, and sufficient as a counterpoise to the
numerical weight of the least educated class, for so long the benefits of
completely universal suffrage can not be obtained without bringing with
them, as it appears to me, more than equivalent evils. It is possible, indeed
(and this is perhaps one of the transitions through which we may have to
pass in our progress to a really good representative system), that the barriers
which restrict the suffrage might be entirely leveled in some particular
constituencies, whose members, consequently, would be returned
principally by manual laborers; the existing electoral qualification being
maintained elsewhere, or any alteration in it being accompanied by such a

grouping of the constituencies as to prevent the laboring class from
becoming preponderant in Parliament. By such a compromise, the
anomalies in the representation would not only be retained, but augmented;
this, however, is not a conclusive objection; for if the country does not
choose to pursue the right ends by a regular system directly leading to them,
it must be content with an irregular makeshift, as being greatly preferable to
a system free from irregularities, but regularly adapted to wrong ends, or in
which some ends equally necessary with the others have been left out. It is a
far graver objection, that this adjustment is incompatible with the
intercommunity of local constituencies which Mr. Hare's plan requires; that
under it every voter would remain imprisoned within the one or more
constituencies in which his name is registered, and, unless willing to be
represented by one of the candidates for those localities, would not be
represented at all.
So much importance do I attach to the emancipation of those who already
have votes, but whose votes are useless, because always outnumbered—so
much should I hope from the natural influence of truth and reason, if only
secured a hearing and a competent advocacy, that I should not despair of the
operation even of equal and universal suffrage, if made real by the
proportional representation of all minorities, on Mr. Hare's principle. But if
the best hopes which can be formed on this subject were certainties, I
should still contend for the principle of plural voting. I do not propose the
plurality as a thing in itself undesirable, which, like the exclusion of part of
the community from the suffrage, may be temporarily tolerated while
necessary to prevent greater evils. I do not look upon equal voting as among
the things which are good in themselves, provided they can be guarded
against inconveniences. I look upon it as only relatively good; less
objectionable than inequality of privilege grounded on irrelevant or
adventitious circumstances, but in principle wrong, because recognizing a
wrong standard, and exercising a bad influence on the voter's mind. It is not
useful, but hurtful, that the constitution of the country should declare
ignorance to be entitled to as much political power as knowledge. The
national institutions should place all things that they are concerned with
before the mind of the citizen in the light in which it is for his good that he
should regard them; and as it is for his good that he should think that every
one is entitled to some influence, but the better and wiser to more than
others, it is important that this conviction should be professed by the state,

and embodied in the national institutions. Such things constitute the spirit
of the institutions of a country; that portion of their influence which is least
regarded by common, and especially by English thinkers, though the
institutions of every country, not under great positive oppression, produce
more effect by their spirit than by any of their direct provisions, since by it
they shape the national character. The American institutions have imprinted
strongly on the American mind that any one man (with a white skin) is as
good as any other; and it is felt that this false creed is nearly connected with
some of the more unfavorable points in American character. It is not small
mischief that the constitution of any country should sanction this creed; for
the belief in it, whether express or tacit, is almost as detrimental to moral
and intellectual excellence any effect which most forms of government can
produce.
It may, perhaps, be said, that a constitution which gives equal influence,
man for man, to the most and to the least instructed, is nevertheless
conducive to progress, because the appeals constantly made to the less
instructed classes, the exercise given to their mental powers, and the
exertions which the more instructed are obliged to make for enlightening
their judgment and ridding them of errors and prejudices, are powerful
stimulants to their advance in intelligence. That this most desirable effect
really attends the admission of the less educated classes to some, and even
to a large share of power, I admit, and have already strenuously maintained.
But theory and experience alike prove that a counter current sets in when
they are made the possessors of all power. Those who are supreme over
every thing, whether they be One, or Few, or Many, have no longer need of
the arms of reason; they can make their mere will prevail; and those who
can not be resisted are usually far too well satisfied with their own opinions
to be willing to change them, or listen without impatience to any one who
tells them that they are in the wrong. The position which gives the strongest
stimulus to the growth of intelligence is that of rising into power, not that of
having achieved it; and of all resting-points, temporary or permanent, in the
way to ascendancy, the one which develops the best and highest qualities is
the position of those who are strong enough to make reason prevail, but not
strong enough to prevail against reason. This is the position in which,
according to the principles we have laid down, the rich and the poor, the
much and the little educated, and all the other classes and denominations
which divide society between them, ought as far as practicable to be placed;

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

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

the operation of the political point of honor. She learns to look on politics as
a thing on which she is allowed to have an opinion, and in which, if one has
an opinion, it ought to be acted upon; she acquires a sense of personal
accountability in the matter, and will no longer feel, as she does at present,
that whatever amount of bad influence she may exercise, if the man can but
be persuaded, all is right, and his responsibility covers all. It is only by
being herself encouraged to form an opinion, and obtain an intelligent
comprehension of the reasons which ought to prevail with the conscience
against the temptations of personal or family interest, that she can ever
cease to act as a disturbing force on the political conscience of the man. Her
indirect agency can only be prevented from being politically mischievous
by being exchanged for direct.
I have supposed the right of suffrage to depend, as in a good state of
things it would, on personal conditions. Where it depends, as in this and
most other countries, on conditions of property, the contradiction is even
more flagrant. There something more than ordinarily irrational in the fact
that when a woman can give all the guarantees required from a male elector,
independent circumstances, the position of a householder and head of a
family, payment of taxes, or whatever may be the conditions imposed, the
very principle and system of a representation based on property is set aside,
and an exceptionally personal disqualification is created for the mere
purpose of excluding her. When it is added that in the country where this is
done a woman now reigns, and that the most glorious ruler whom that
country ever had was a woman, the picture of unreason and scarcely
disguised injustice is complete. Let us hope that as the work proceeds of
pulling down, one after another, the remains of the mouldering fabric of
monopoly and tyranny, this one will not be the last to disappear; that the
opinion of Bentham, of Mr. Samuel Bailey, of Mr. Hare, and many other of
the most powerful political thinkers of this age and country (not to speak of
others), will make its way to all minds not rendered obdurate by selfishness
or inveterate prejudice; and that, before the lapse another generation, the
accident of sex, no more than the accident of skin, will be deemed a
sufficient justification for depriving its possessor of the equal protection and
just privileges of a citizen.

Chapter IX—Should there be Two Stages of
Election?
In some representative constitutions, the plan has been adopted of
choosing the members of the representative body by a double process, the
primary electors only choosing other electors, and these electing the
member of Parliament. This contrivance was probably intended as a slight
impediment to the full sweep of popular feeling, giving the suffrage, and
with it the complete ultimate power, to the Many, but compelling them to
exercise it through the agency of a comparatively few, who, it was
supposed, would be less moved than the Demos by the gusts of popular
passion; and as the electors, being already a select body, might be expected
to exceed in intellect and character the common level of their constituents,
the choice made by them was thought likely to be more careful and
enlightened, and would, in any case, be made under a greater feeling of
responsibility than election by the masses themselves. This plan of filtering,
as it were, the popular suffrage through an intermediate body admits of a
very plausible defense; since it may be said, with great appearance of
reason, that less intellect and instruction are required for judging who
among our neighbors can be most safely trusted to choose a member of
Parliament than who is himself fittest to be one.
In the first place, however, if the dangers incident to popular power may
be thought to be in some degree lessened by this indirect management, so
also are its benefits; and the latter effect is much more certain than the
former. To enable the system to work as desired, it must be carried into
effect in the spirit in which it is planned; the electors must use the suffrage
in the manner supposed by the theory, that is, each of them must not ask
himself who the member of Parliament should be, but only whom he would
best like to choose one for him. It is evident that the advantages which
indirect is supposed to have over direct election require this disposition of
mind in the voter, and will only be realized by his taking the doctrine au
serieux, that his sole business is to choose the choosers, not the member
himself. The supposition must be, that he will not occupy his thoughts with
political opinions and measures or political men, but will be guided by his

personal respect for some private individual, to whom he will give a general
power of attorney to act for him. Now if the primary electors adopt this
view of their position, one of the principal uses of giving them a vote at all
is defeated; the political function to which they are called fails of
developing public spirit and political intelligence, of making public affairs
an object of interest to their feelings and of exercise to their faculties. The
supposition, moreover, involves inconsistent conditions; for if the voter
feels no interest in the final result, how or why can he be expected to feel
any in the process which leads to it? To wish to have a particular individual
for his representative in Parliament is possible to a person of a very
moderate degree of virtue and intelligence, and to wish to choose an elector
who will elect that individual is a natural consequence; but for a person who
does not care who is elected, or feels bound to put that consideration in
abeyance, to take any interest whatever in merely naming the worthiest
person to elect another according to his own judgment, implies a zeal for
what is right in the abstract, an habitual principle of duty for the sake of
duty, which is possible only to persons of a rather high grade of cultivation,
who, by the very possession of it, show that they may be, and deserve to be,
trusted with political power in a more direct shape. Of all public functions
which it is possible to confer on the poorer members of the community, this
surely is the least calculated to kindle their feelings, and holds out least
natural inducement to care for it, other than a virtuous determination to
discharge conscientiously whatever duty one has to perform; and if the
mass of electors cared enough about political affairs to set any value on so
limited a participation in them, they would not be likely to be satisfied
without one much more extensive.
In the next place, admitting that a person who, from his narrow range of
cultivation, can not judge well of the qualifications of a candidate for
Parliament, may be a sufficient judge of the honesty and general capacity of
somebody whom he may depute to choose a member of Parliament for him,
I may remark, that if the voter acquiesces in this estimate of his capabilities,
and really wishes to have the choice made for him by a person in whom he
places reliance, there is no need of any constitutional provision for the
purpose; he has only to ask this confidential person privately what
candidate he had better vote for. In that case the two modes of election
coincide in their result, and every advantage of indirect election is obtained
under direct. The systems only diverge in their operation if we suppose that

the voter would prefer to use his own judgment in the choice of a
representative, and only lets another choose for him because the law does
not allow him a more direct mode of action. But if this be his state of mind;
if his will does not go along with the limitation which the law imposes, and
he desires to make a direct choice, he can do so notwithstanding the law. He
has only to choose as elector a known partisan of the candidate he prefers,
or some one who will pledge himself to vote for that candidate. And this is
so much the natural working of election by two stages, that, except in a
condition of complete political indifference, it can scarcely be expected to
act otherwise. It is in this way that the election of the President of the
United States practically operates. Nominally, the election is indirect; the
population at large does not vote for the President; it votes for electors who
choose the President. But the electors are always chosen under an express
engagement to vote for a particular candidate; nor does a citizen ever vote
for an elector because of any preference for the man; he votes for the
Breckinridge ticket or the Lincoln ticket. It must be remembered that the
electors are not chosen in order that they may search the country and find
the fittest person in it to be President or to be a member of Parliament.
There would be something to be said for the practice if this were so; but it is
not so, nor ever will be, until mankind in general are of opinion, with Plato,
that the proper person to be intrusted with power is the person most
unwilling to accept it. The electors are to make choice of one of those who
have offered themselves as candidates, and those who choose the electors
already know who these are. If there is any political activity in the country,
all electors who care to vote at all have made up their minds which of these
candidates they would like to have, and will make that the sole
consideration in giving their vote. The partisans of each candidate will have
their list of electors ready, all pledged to vote for that individual; and the
only question practically asked of the primary elector will be, which of
these lists he will support.
The case in which election by two stages answers well in practice is
when the electors are not chosen solely as electors, but have other important
functions to discharge, which precludes their being selected solely as
delegates to give a particular vote. This combination of circumstances
exemplifies itself in another American institution, the Senate of the United
States. That assembly, the Upper House, as it were, of Congress, is
considered to represent not the people directly, but the States as such, and to

be the guardian of that portion of their sovereign rights which they have not
alienated. As the internal sovereignty of each state is, by the nature of an
equal federation, equally sacred whatever be the size or importance of the
state, each returns to the Senate the same number of members (two),
whether it be little Delaware or the "Empire State" of New York. These
members are not chosen by the population, but by the State Legislatures,
themselves elected by the people of each state; but as the whole ordinary
business of a legislative assembly, internal legislation and the control of the
executive, devolves upon these bodies, they are elected with a view to those
objects more than to the other; and in naming two persons to represent the
state in the federal Senate they for the most part exercise their own
judgment, with only that general reference to public opinion necessary in all
acts of the government of a democracy. The elections thus made have
proved eminently successful, and are conspicuously the best of all the
elections in the United States, the Senate invariably consisting of the most
distinguished men among those who have made themselves sufficiently
known in public life. After such an example, it can not be said that indirect
popular election is never advantageous. Under certain conditions it is the
very best system that can be adopted. But those conditions are hardly to be
obtained in practice except in a federal government like that of the United
States, where the election can be intrusted to local bodies whose other
functions extend to the most important concerns of the nation. The only
bodies in any analogous position which exist, or are likely to exist, in this
country, are the municipalities, or any other boards which have been or may
be created for similar local purposes. Few persons, however, would think it
any improvement in our Parliamentary constitution if the members for the
City of London were chosen by the aldermen and Common Council, and
those for the borough of Marylebone avowedly, as they already are
virtually, by the vestries of the component parishes. Even if those bodies,
considered merely as local boards, were far less objectionable than they are,
the qualities that would fit them for the limited and peculiar duties of
municipal or parochial ædileship are no guaranty of any special fitness to
judge of the comparative qualifications of candidates for a seat in
Parliament. They probably would not fulfill this duty any better than it is
fulfilled by the inhabitants voting directly; while, on the other hand, if
fitness for electing members of Parliament had to be taken into
consideration in selecting persons for the office of vestrymen or town

councillors, many of those who are fittest for that more limited duty would
inevitably be excluded from it, if only by the necessity there would be of
choosing persons whose sentiments in general politics agreed with those of
the voters who elected them. The mere indirect political influence of town-
councils has already led to a considerable perversion of municipal elections
from their intended purpose, by making them a matter of party politics. If it
were part of the duty of a man's book-keeper or steward to choose his
physician, he would not be likely to have a better medical attendant than if
he chose one for himself, while he would be restricted in his choice of a
steward or book-keeper to such as might, without too great danger to his
health, be intrusted with the other office.
It appears, therefore, that every benefit of indirect election which is
attainable at all is attainable under direct; that such of the benefits expected
from it as would not be obtained under direct election will just as much fail
to be obtained under indirect; while the latter has considerable
disadvantages peculiar to itself. The mere fact that it is an additional and
superfluous wheel in the machinery is no trifling objection. Its decided
inferiority as a means of cultivating public spirit and political intelligence
has already been dwelt upon; and if it had any effective operation at all—
that is, if the primary electors did to any extent leave to their nominees the
selection of their Parliamentary representative, the voter would be
prevented from identifying himself with his member of Parliament, and the
member would feel a much less active sense of responsibility to his
constituents. In addition to all this, the comparatively small number of
persons in whose hands, at last, the election of a member of Parliament
would reside, could not but afford great additional facilities to intrigue, and
to every form of corruption compatible with the station in life of the
electors. The constituencies would universally be reduced, in point of
conveniences for bribery, to the condition of the small boroughs at present.
It would be sufficient to gain over a small number of persons to be certain
of being returned. If it be said that the electors would be responsible to
those who elected them, the answer is obvious, that, holding no permanent
office or position in the public eye, they would risk nothing by a corrupt
vote except what they would care little for, not to be appointed electors
again: and the main reliance must still be on the penalties for bribery, the
insufficiency of which reliance, in small constituencies, experience has
made notorious to all the world. The evil would be exactly proportional to

the amount of discretion left to the chosen electors. The only case in which
they would probably be afraid to employ their vote for the promotion of
their personal interest would be when they were elected under an express
pledge, as mere delegates, to carry, as it were, the votes of their constituents
to the hustings. The moment the double stage of election began to have any
effect, it would begin to have a bad effect. And this we shall find true of the
principle of indirect election however applied, except in circumstances
similar to those of the election of senators in the United States.
It is unnecessary, as far as England is concerned, to say more in
opposition to a scheme which has no foundation in any of the national
traditions. An apology may even be expected for saying so much against a
political expedient which perhaps could not, in this country, muster a single
adherent. But a conception so plausible at the first glance, and for which
there are so many precedents in history, might perhaps, in the general chaos
of political opinions, rise again to the surface, and be brought forward on
occasions when it might be seductive to some minds; and it could not,
therefore, even if English readers were alone to be considered, be passed
altogether in silence.

Chapter X—Of the Mode of Voting.
The question of greatest moment in regard to modes of voting is that of
secrecy or publicity, and to this we will at once address ourselves.
It would be a great mistake to make the discussion turn on
sentimentalities about skulking or cowardice. Secrecy is justifiable in many
cases, imperative in some, and it is not cowardice to seek protection against
evils which are honestly avoidable. Nor can it be reasonably maintained
that no cases are conceivable in which secret voting is preferable to public;
but I must contend that these cases, in affairs of a political character, are the
exception, not the rule.
The present is one of the many instances in which, as I have already had
occasion to remark, the spirit of an institution, the impression it makes on
the mind of the citizen, is one of the most important parts of its operation.
The spirit of vote by ballot—the interpretation likely to be put on it in the
mind of an elector, is that the suffrage is given to him for himself—for his
particular use and benefit, and not as a trust for the public. For if it is indeed
a trust, if the public are entitled to his vote, are not they entitled to know his
vote? This false and pernicious impression may well be made on the
generality, since it has been made on most of those who of late years have
been conspicuous advocates of the ballot. The doctrine was not so
understood by its earlier promoters; but the effect of a doctrine on the mind
is best shown, not in those who form it, but in those who are formed by it.
Mr. Bright and his school of democrats think themselves greatly concerned
in maintaining that the franchise is what they term a right, not a trust. Now
this one idea, taking root in the general mind, does a moral mischief
outweighing all the good that the ballot could do, at the highest possible
estimate of it. In whatever way we define or understand the idea of a right,
no person can have a right (except in the purely legal sense) to power over
others: every such power, which he is allowed to possess is morally, in the
fullest force of the term, a trust. But the exercise of any political function,
either as an elector or as a representative, is power over others. Those who
say that the suffrage is not a trust, but a right, will scarcely accept the
conclusions to which their doctrine leads. If it is a right, if it belongs to the

voter for his own sake, on what ground can we blame him for selling it, or
using it to recommend himself to any one whom it is his interest to please?
A person is not expected to consult exclusively the public benefit in the use
he makes of his house, or his three per cent. stock, or any thing else to
which he really has a right. The suffrage is indeed due to him, among other
reasons, as a means to his own protection, but only against treatment from
which he is equally bound, so far as depends on his vote, to protect every
one of his fellow-citizens. His vote is not a thing in which he has an option;
it has no more to do with his personal wishes than the verdict of a juryman.
It is strictly a matter of duty; he is bound to give it according to his best and
most conscientious opinion of the public good. Whoever has any other idea
of it is unfit to have the suffrage; its effect on him is to pervert, not to
elevate his mind. Instead of opening his heart to an exalted patriotism and
the obligation of public duty, it awakens and nourishes in him the
disposition to use a public function for his own interest, pleasure, or
caprice; the same feelings and purposes, on a humbler scale, which actuate
a despot and oppressor. Now an ordinary citizen in any public position, or
on whom there devolves any social function, is certain to think and feel,
respecting the obligations it imposes on him, exactly what society appears
to think and feel in conferring it. What seems to be expected from him by
society forms a standard which he may fall below, but which he will seldom
rise above. And the interpretation which he is almost sure to put upon secret
voting is that he is not bound to give his vote with any reference to those
who are not allowed to know how he gives it; but may bestow it simply as
he feels inclined.
This is the decisive reason why the argument does not hold, from the use
of the ballot in clubs and private societies to its adoption in parliamentary
elections. A member of a club is really, what the elector falsely believes
himself to be, under no obligation to consider the wishes or interests of any
one else. He declares nothing by his vote but that he is or is not willing to
associate, in a manner more or less close, with a particular person. This is a
matter on which, by universal admission, his own pleasure or inclination is
entitled to decide; and that he should be able so to decide it without risking
a quarrel is best for every body, the rejected person included. An additional
reason rendering the ballot unobjectionable in these cases is that it does not
necessarily or naturally lead to lying. The persons concerned are of the
same class or rank, and it would be considered improper in one of them to

press another with questions as to how he had voted. It is far otherwise in
Parliamentary elections, and is likely to remain so as long as the social
relations exist which produce the demand for the ballot—as long as one
person is sufficiently the superior of another to think himself entitled to
dictate his vote. And while this is the case, silence or an evasive answer is
certain to be construed as proof that the vote given has not been that which
was desired.
In any political election, even by universal suffrage (and still more
obviously in the case of a restricted suffrage), the voter is under an absolute
moral obligation to consider the interest of the public, not his private
advantage, and give his vote, to the best of his judgment, exactly as he
would be bound to do if he were the sole voter, and the election depended
upon him alone. This being admitted, it is at least a primâ facie
consequence that the duty of voting, like any other public duty, should be
performed under the eye and criticism of the public; every one of whom has
not only an interest in its performance, but a good title to consider himself
wronged if it is performed otherwise than honestly and carefully.
Undoubtedly neither this nor any other maxim of political morality is
absolutely inviolable; it may be overruled by still more cogent
considerations. But its weight is such that the cases which admit of a
departure from it must be of a strikingly exceptional character.
It may unquestionably be the fact, that if we attempt, by publicity, to
make the voter responsible to the public for his vote, he will practically be
made responsible for it to some powerful individual, whose interest is more
opposed to the general interest of the community than that of the voter
himself would be, if, by the shield of secrecy, he were released from
responsibility altogether. When this is the condition, in a high degree, of a
large proportion of the voters, the ballot may be the smaller evil. When the
voters are slaves, any thing may be tolerated which enables them to throw
off the yoke. The strongest case for the ballot is when the mischievous
power of the Few over the Many is increasing. In the decline of the Roman
republic, the reasons for the ballot were irresistible. The oligarchy was
yearly becoming richer and more tyrannical, the people poorer and more
dependent, and it was necessary to erect stronger and stronger barriers
against such abuse of the franchise as rendered it but an instrument the
more in the hands of unprincipled persons of consequence. As little can it
be doubted that the ballot, so far as it existed, had a beneficial operation in

the Athenian constitution. Even in the least unstable of the Grecian
commonwealths, freedom might be for the time destroyed by a single
unfairly obtained popular vote; and though the Athenian voter was not
sufficiently dependent to be habitually coerced, he might have been bribed
or intimidated by the lawless outrages of some knot of individuals, such as
were not uncommon even at Athens among the youth of rank and fortune.
The ballot was in these cases a valuable instrument of order, and conduced
to the Eunomia by which Athens was distinguished among the ancient
commonwealths.
But in the more advanced states of modern Europe, and especially in this
country, the power of coercing voters has declined and is declining; and bad
voting is now less to be apprehended from the influences to which the voter
is subject at the hands of others, than from the sinister interests and
discreditable feelings which belong to himself, either individually or as a
member of a class. To secure him against the first, at the cost of removing
all restraint from the last, would be to exchange a smaller and a diminishing
evil for a greater and increasing one. On this topic, and on the question
generally as applicable to England at the present date, I have, in a pamphlet
on Parliamentary Reform, expressed myself in terms which, as I do not feel
that I can improve upon, I will venture here to transcribe.
"Thirty years ago it was still true that in the election of members of
Parliament the main evil to be guarded against was that which the ballot
would exclude—coercion by landlords, employers, and customers. At
present, I conceive, a much greater source of evil is the selfishness, or the
selfish partialities of the voter himself. A base and mischievous vote is now,
I am convinced, much oftener given from the voter's personal interest, or
class interest, or some mean feeling in his own mind, than from any fear of
consequences at the hands of others; and to these influences the ballot
would enable him to yield himself up, free from all sense of shame or
responsibility.
"In times not long gone by, the higher and richer classes were in
complete possession of the government. Their power was the master
grievance of the country. The habit of voting at the bidding of an employer
or of a landlord was so firmly established that hardly any thing was capable
of shaking it but a strong popular enthusiasm, seldom known to exist but in
a good cause. A vote given in opposition to those influences was therefore,

in general, an honest, a public-spirited vote; but in any case, and by
whatever motive dictated, it was almost sure to be a good vote, for it was a
vote against the monster evil, the overruling influence of oligarchy. Could
the voter at that time have been enabled, with safety to himself, to exercise
his privilege freely, even though neither honestly nor intelligently, it would
have been a great gain to reform, for it would have broken the yoke of the
then ruling power in the country—the power which had created and which
maintained all that was bad in the institutions and the administration of the
state—the power of landlords and boroughmongers.
"The ballot was not adopted; but the progress of circumstances has done
and is doing more and more, in this respect, the work of the ballot. Both the
political and the social state of the country, as they affect this question, have
greatly changed, and are changing every day. The higher classes are not
now masters of the country. A person must be blind to all the signs of the
times who could think that the middle classes are as subservient to the
higher, or the working classes as dependent on the higher and middle, as
they were a quarter of a century ago. The events of that quarter of a century
have not only taught each class to know its own collective strength, but
have put the individuals of a lower class in a condition to show a much
bolder front to those of a higher. In a majority of cases, the vote of the
electors, whether in opposition to or in accordance with the wishes of their
superiors, is not now the effect of coercion, which there are no longer the
same means of applying, but the expression of their own personal or
political partialities. The very vices of the present electoral system are a
proof of this. The growth of bribery, so loudly complained of, and the
spread of the contagion to places formerly free from it, are evidence that the
local influences are no longer paramount; that the electors now vote to
please themselves, and not other people. There is, no doubt, in counties and
in the smaller boroughs, a large amount of servile dependence still
remaining; but the temper of the times is adverse to it, and the force of
events is constantly tending to diminish it. A good tenant can now feel that
he is as valuable to his landlord as his landlord is to him; a prosperous
tradesman can afford to feel independent of any particular customer. At
every election the votes are more and more the voter's own. It is their
minds, far more than their personal circumstances, that now require to be
emancipated. They are no longer passive instruments of other men's will—

mere organs for putting power into the hands of a controlling oligarchy. The
electors themselves are becoming the oligarchy.
"Exactly in proportion as the vote of the elector is determined by his own
will, and not by that of somebody who is his master, his position is similar
to that of a member of Parliament, and publicity is indispensable. So long as
any portion of the community are unrepresented, the argument of the
Chartists against ballot in conjunction with a restricted suffrage is
unassailable. The present electors, and the bulk of those whom any probable
Reform Bill would add to the number, are the middle class, and have as
much a class interest, distinct from the working classes, as landlords or
great manufacturers. Were the suffrage extended to all skilled laborers, even
these would, or might, still have a class interest distinct from the unskilled.
Suppose it extended to all men—suppose that what was formerly called by
the misapplied name of universal suffrage, and now by the silly title of
manhood suffrage, became the law; the voters would still have a class
interest as distinguished from women. Suppose that there were a question
before the Legislature specially affecting women—as whether women
should be allowed to graduate at universities; whether the mild penalties
inflicted on ruffians who beat their wives daily almost to death's door
should be exchanged for something more effectual; or suppose that any one
should propose in the British Parliament what one state after another in
America is enacting, not by a mere law, but by a provision of their revised
Constitutions; that married women should have a right to their own property
—are not a man's wife and daughters entitled to know whether he votes for
or against a candidate who will support these propositions?
"It will of course be objected that these arguments' derive all their weight
from the supposition of an unjust state of the suffrage: that if the opinion of
the non-electors is likely to make the elector vote more honestly or more
beneficially than he would vote if left to himself, they are more fit to be
electors than he is, and ought to have the franchise; that whoever is fit to
influence electors is fit to be an elector; that those to whom voters ought to
be responsible should be themselves voters, and, being such, should have
the safeguard of the ballot, to shield them from the undue influence of
powerful individuals or classes to whom they ought not to be responsible.
"This argument is specious, and I once thought it conclusive. It now
appears to me fallacious. All who are fit to influence electors are not, for

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

"But, if not now (it may be said), at least hereafter, when all are fit to
have votes, and when all men and women are admitted to vote in virtue of
their fitness, then there can no longer be danger of class legislation; then the
electors, being the nation, can have no interest apart from the general
interest: even if individuals still vote according to private or class
inducements, the majority will have no such inducement; and as there will
then be no non-electors to whom they ought to be responsible, the effect of
the ballot, excluding none but the sinister influences, will be wholly
beneficial.
"Even in this I do not agree. I can not think that even if the people were
fit for, and had obtained universal suffrage, the ballot would be desirable.
First, because it could not, in such circumstances, be supposed to be
needful. Let us only conceive the state of things which the hypothesis
implies: a people universally educated, and every grown-up human being
possessed of a vote. If, even when only a small proportion are electors, and
the majority of the population almost uneducated, public opinion is already,
as every one now sees that it is, the ruling power in the last resort, it is a
chimera to suppose that over a community who all read, and who all have
votes, any power could be exercised by landlords and rich people against
their own inclination, which it would be at all difficult for them to throw
off. But, though the protection of secrecy would then be needless, the
control of publicity would be as needful as ever. The universal observation
of mankind has been very fallacious, if the mere fact of being one of the
community, and not being in a position of pronounced contrariety of
interest to the public at large, is enough to insure the performance of a
public duty, without either the stimulus or the restraint derived from the
opinion of our fellow-creatures. A man's own particular share of the public
interest, even though he may have no private interest drawing him in the
opposite direction, is not, as a general rule, found sufficient to make him do
his duty to the public without other external inducements. Neither can it be
admitted that, even if all had votes, they would give their votes as honestly
in secret as in public.
"The proposition that the electors, when they compose the whole of the
community, can not have an interest in voting against the interest of the
community, will be found, on examination, to have more sound than
meaning in it. Though the community, as a whole, can have (as the terms
imply) no other interest than its collective interest, any or every individual

in it may. A man's interest consists of whatever he takes an interest in.
Every body has as many different interests as he has feelings; likings or
dislikings, either of a selfish or of a better kind. It can not be said that any
of these, taken by itself, constitutes 'his interest:' he is a good man or a bad
according as he prefers one class of his interests or another. A man who is a
tyrant at home will be apt to sympathize with tyranny (when not exercised
over himself); he will be almost certain not to sympathize with resistance to
tyranny. An envious man will vote against Aristides because he is called the
Just. A selfish man will prefer even a trifling individual benefit to his share
of the advantage which his country would derive from a good law, because
interests peculiar to himself are those which the habits of his mind both
dispose him to dwell on and make him best able to estimate. A great number
of the electors will have two sets of preferences—those on private and those
on public grounds. The last are the only ones which the elector would like
to avow. The best side of their character is that which people are anxious to
show, even to those who are no better than themselves. People will give
dishonest or mean votes from lucre, from malice, from pique, from personal
rivalry, even from the interests or prejudices of class or sect, more readily in
secret than in public. And cases exist—they may come to be more frequent
—in which almost the only restraint upon a majority of knaves consists in
their involuntary respect for the opinion of an honest minority. In such a
case as that of the repudiating states of North America, is there not some
check to the unprincipled voter in the shame of looking an honest man in
the face? Since all this good would be sacrificed by the ballot, even in the
circumstances most favorable to it, a much stronger case is requisite than
can now be made out for its necessity (and the case is continually becoming
still weaker) to make its adoption desirable." [4]
On the other debateable points connected with the mode of voting, it is
not necessary to expend so many words. The system of personal
representation, as organized by Mr. Hare, renders necessary the
employment of voting papers. But it appears to me indispensable that the
signature of the elector should be affixed to the paper at a public polling-
place, or if there be no such place conveniently accessible, at some office
open to all the world, and in the presence of a responsible public officer.
The proposal which has been thrown out of allowing the voting papers to be
filled up at the voter's own residence, and sent by the post, or called for by a
public officer, I should regard as fatal. The act would be done in the absence

of the salutary and the presence of all the pernicious influences. The briber
might, in the shelter of privacy, behold with his own eyes his bargain
fulfilled, and the intimidator could see the extorted obedience rendered
irrevocably on the spot; while the beneficent counter-influence of the
presence of those who knew the voter's real sentiments, and the inspiring
effect of the sympathy of those of his own party or opinion, would be shut
out. [5]
The polling places should be so numerous as to be within easy reach of
every voter, and no expenses of conveyance, at the cost of the candidate,
should be tolerated under any pretext. The infirm, and they only on medical
certificate, should have the right of claiming suitable carriage conveyance at
the cost of the state or of the locality. Hustings, poll clerks, and all the
necessary machinery of elections, should be at the public charge. Not only
the candidate should not be required, he should not be permitted to incur
any but a limited and trifling expense for his election. Mr. Hare thinks it
desirable that a sum of £50 should be required from every one who places
his name on the list of candidates, to prevent persons who have no chance
of success, and no real intention of attempting it, from becoming candidates
in wantonness or from mere love of notoriety, and perhaps carrying off a
few votes which are needed for the return of more serious aspirants. There
is one expense which a candidate or his supporters can not help incurring,
and which it can hardly be expected that the public should defray for every
one who may choose to demand it—that of making his claims known to the
electors, by advertisements, placards, and circulars. For all necessary
expenses of this kind the £50 proposed by Mr. Hare, if allowed to be drawn
upon for these purposes (it might be made £100 if requisite), ought to be
sufficient. If the friends of the candidate choose to go to expense for
committees and canvassing, there are no means of preventing them; but
such expenses out of the candidates's own pocket, or any expenses whatever
beyond the deposit of £50 (or £100), should be illegal and punishable. If
there appeared any likelihood that opinion would refuse to connive at
falsehood, a declaration on oath or honor should be required from every
member, on taking his seat, that he had not expended, nor would expend,
money or money's worth beyond the £50, directly or indirectly, for the
purposes of his election; and if the assertion were proved to be false or the
pledge to have been broken, he should be liable to the penalties of perjury.
It is probable that those penalties, by showing that the Legislature was in

earnest, would turn the course of opinion in the same direction, and would
hinder it from regarding, as has hitherto done, this most serious crime
against society as a venial peccadillo. When once this effect has been
produced, there need be no doubt that the declaration on oath or honor
would be considered binding. [6] "Opinion tolerates a false disclaimer only
when it already tolerates the thing disclaimed." This is notoriously the case
with regard to electoral corruption. There has never yet been, among
political men, any real and serious attempt to prevent bribery, because there
has been no real desire that elections should not be costly. Their costliness
is an advantage to those who can afford the expense by excluding a
multitude of competitors; and any thing, however noxious, is cherished as
having a conservative tendency, if it limits the access to Parliament to rich
men. This is a rooted feeling among our legislators of both political parties,
and is almost the only point on which I believe them to be really ill-
intentioned. They care comparatively little who votes, as long as they feel
assured that none but persons of their own class can be voted for. They
know that they can rely on the fellow-feeling of one of their class with
another, while the subservience of nouveaux enrichis who are knocking at
the door of the class is a still surer reliance; and that nothing very hostile to
the class interests or feelings of the rich need be apprehended under the
most democratic suffrage, as long as democratic persons can be prevented
from being elected to Parliament. But, even from their own point of view,
this balancing of evil by evil, instead of combining good with good, is a
wretched policy. The object should be to bring together the best members of
both classes, under such a tenure as shall induce them to lay aside their
class preferences, and pursue jointly the path traced by the common
interest, instead of allowing the class feelings of the Many to have full
swing in the constituencies, subject to the impediment of having to act
through persons imbued with the class feelings of the Few.
There is scarcely any mode in which political institutions are more
morally mischievous—work greater evil through their spirit—than by
representing political functions as a favor to be conferred, a thing which the
depositary is to ask for as desiring it for himself, and even pay for as if it
were designed for his pecuniary benefit. Men are not fond of paying large
sums for leave to perform a laborious duty. Plato had a much juster view of
the conditions of good government when he asserted that the persons who
should be sought out to be invested with political power are those who are

personally most averse to it, and that the only motive which can be relied on
for inducing the fittest men to take upon themselves the toils of government
is the fear of being governed by worse men. What must an elector think
when he sees three or four gentlemen, none of them previously observed to
be lavish of their money on projects of disinterested beneficence, vying
with one another in the sums they expend to be enabled to write M.P. after
their names? Is it likely he will suppose that it is for his interest they incur
all this cost? And if he form an uncomplimentary opinion of their part in the
affair, what moral obligation is he likely to feel as to his own? Politicians
are fond of treating it as the dream of enthusiasts that the electoral body will
ever be uncorrupt: truly enough, until they are willing to become so
themselves; for the electors, assuredly, will take their moral tone from the
candidates. So long as the elected member, in any shape or manner, pays for
his seat, all endeavours will fail to make the business of election any thing
but a selfish bargain on all sides. "So long as the candidate himself, and the
customs of the world, seem to regard the function of a member of
Parliament less as a duty to be discharged than a personal favor to be
solicited, no effort will avail to implant in an ordinary voter the feeling that
the election of a member of Parliament is also a matter of duty, and that he
is not at liberty to bestow his vote on any other consideration than that of
personal fitness."
The same principle which demands that no payment of money for
election purposes should be either required or tolerated on the part of the
person elected, dictates another conclusion, apparently of contrary
tendency, but really directed to the same object. It negatives what has often
been proposed as a means of rendering Parliament accessible to persons of
all ranks and circumstances—the payment of members of Parliament. If, as
in some of our colonies, there are scarcely any fit persons who can afford to
attend to an unpaid occupation, the payment should be an indemnity for loss
of time or money, not a salary. The greater latitude of choice which a salary
would give is an illusory advantage. No remuneration which any one would
think of attaching to the post would attract to it those who were seriously
engaged in other lucrative professions, with a prospect of succeeding in
them. The occupation of a member of Parliament would therefore become
an occupation in itself, carried on, like other professions, with a view
chiefly to its pecuniary returns, and under the demoralizing influences of an
occupation essentially precarious. It would become an object of desire to

adventurers of a low class; and 658 persons in possession, with ten or
twenty times as many in expectancy, would be incessantly bidding to attract
or retain the suffrages of the electors, by promising all things, honest or
dishonest, possible or impossible, and rivaling each other in pandering to
the meanest feelings and most ignorant prejudices of the vulgarest part of
the crowd. The auction between Cleon and the sausage-seller in
Aristophanes is a fair caricature of what would be always going on. Such an
institution would be a perpetual blister applied to the most peccant parts of
human nature. It amounts to offering 658 prizes for the most successful
flatterer, the most adroit misleader of a body of his fellow-countrymen.
Under no despotism has there been such an organized system of tillage for
raising a rich crop of vicious courtiership. [7] When, by reason of pre-
eminent qualifications (as may at any time happen to be the case), it is
desirable that a person entirely without independent means, either derived
from property or from a trade or profession, should be brought into
Parliament to render services which no other person accessible can render
as well, there is the resource of a public subscription; he may be supported
while in Parliament, like Andrew Marvel, by the contributions of his
constituents. This mode is unobjectionable for such an honor will never be
paid to mere subserviency: bodies of men do not care so much for the
difference between one sycophant and another as to go to the expense of his
maintenance in order to be flattered by that particular individual. Such a
support will only be given in consideration of striking and impressive
personal qualities, which, though no absolute proof of fitness to be a
national representative, are some presumption of it, and, at all events, some
guaranty for the possession of an independent opinion and will.

Chapter XI—Of the Duration of Parliaments.
After how long a term should members of Parliament be subject to re-
election? The principles involved are here very obvious; the difficulty lies
in their application. On the one hand, the member ought not to have so long
a tenure of his seat as to make him forget his responsibility, take his duties
easily, conduct them with a view to his own personal advantage, or neglect
those free and public conferences with his constituents which, whether he
agrees or differs with them, are one of the benefits of representative
government. On the other hand, he should have such a term of office to look
forward to as will enable him to be judged, not by a single act, but by his
course of action. It is important that he should have the greatest latitude of
individual opinion and discretion compatible with the popular control
essential to free government; and for this purpose it is necessary that the
control should be exercised, as in any case it is best exercised, after
sufficient time has been given him to show all the qualities he possesses,
and to prove that there is some other way than that of a mere obedient voter
and advocate of their opinions, by which he can render himself, in the eyes
of his constituents, a desirable and creditable representative. It is impossible
to fix, by any universal rule, the boundary between these principles. Where
the democratic power in the constitution is weak or over-passive, and
requires stimulation; where the representative, on leaving his constituents,
enters at once into a courtly or aristocratic atmosphere, whose influences all
tend to deflect his course into a different direction from the popular one, to
tone down any democratic feelings which he may have brought with him,
and make him forget the wishes and grow cool to the interests of those who
chose him, the obligation of a frequent return to them for a renewal of his
commission is indispensable to keeping his temper and character up to the
right mark. Even three years, in such circumstances, are almost too long a
period, and any longer term is absolutely inadmissible. Where, on the
contrary, democracy is the ascendant power, and still tends to increase,
requiring rather to be moderated in its exercise than encouraged to any
abnormal activity; where unbounded publicity, and an ever-present
newspaper press give the representative assurance that his every act will be

immediately known, discussed, and judged by his constituents, and that he
is always either gaining or losing ground in the estimation, while, by the
same means, the influence of their sentiments, and all other democratic
influences, are kept constantly alive and active in his own mind, less than
five years would hardly be a sufficient period to prevent timid subserviency.
The change which has taken place in English politics as to all these features
explains why annual Parliaments, which forty years ago stood prominently
in front of the creed of the more advanced reformers, are so little cared for
and so seldom heard of at present. It deserves consideration that, whether
the term is short or long, during the last year of it the members are in
position in which they would always be if Parliaments were annual; so that,
if the term were very brief, there would virtually be annual Parliaments
during a great proportion of all time. As things now are, the period of seven
years, though of unnecessary length, is hardly worth altering for any benefit
likely to be produced, especially since the possibility, always impending, of
an earlier dissolution keeps the motives for standing well with constituents
always before the member's eyes.
Whatever may be the term most eligible for the duration of the mandate,
it might seem natural that the individual member should vacate his seat at
the expiration of that term from the day of his election, and that there
should be no general renewal of the whole House. A great deal might be
said for this system if there were any practical object in recommending it.
But it is condemned by much stronger reasons than can be alleged in its
support. One is, that there would be no means of promptly getting rid of a
majority which had pursued a course offensive to the nation. The certainty
of a general election after a limited, which would often be a nearly expired
period, and the possibility of it at any time when the minister either desires
it for his own sake, or thinks that it would make him popular with the
country, tend to prevent that wide divergence between the feelings of the
assembly and those of the constituency, which might subsist indefinitely if
the majority of the House had always several years of their term still to run
—if it received new infusions drop by drop, which would be more likely to
assume than to modify the qualities of the mass they were joined to. It is as
essential that the general sense of the House should accord in the main with
that of the nation as is that distinguished individuals should be able, without
forfeiting their seats, to give free utterance to the most unpopular
sentiments. There is another reason, of much weight, against the gradual

and partial renewal of a representative assembly. It is useful that there
should be a periodical general muster of opposing forces to gauge the state
of the national mind, and ascertain, beyond dispute, the relative strength of
different parties and opinions. This is not done conclusively by any partial
renewal, even where, as in some of the French constitutions, a large fraction
—a fifth or a third—go out at once.
The reasons for allowing to the executive the power of dissolution will be
considered in a subsequent chapter, relating to the constitution and
functions of the executive in a representative government.

Chapter XII—Ought Pledges to be Required from
Members of Parliament?
Should a member of the legislature be bound by the instructions of his
constituents? Should he be the organ of their sentiments, or of his own?
their ambassador to a congress, or their professional agent, empowered not
only to act for them, but to judge for them what ought to be done? These
two theories of the duty of a legislator in a representative government have
each its supporters, and each is the recognized doctrine of some
representative governments. In the Dutch United Provinces, the members of
the States-General were mere delegates; and to such a length was the
doctrine carried, that when any important question arose which had not
been provided for in their instructions, they had to refer back to their
constituents, exactly as an ambassador does to the government from which
he is accredited. In this and most other countries which possess
representative constitutions, law and custom warrant a member of
Parliament in voting according to his opinion of right, however different
from that of his constituents; but there is a floating notion of the opposite
kind, which has considerable practical operation on many minds, even of
members of Parliament, and often makes them, independently of desire for
popularity or concern for their re-election, feel bound in conscience to let
their conduct on questions on which their constituents have a decided
opinion be the expression of that opinion rather than of their own.
Abstractedly from positive law, and from the historical traditions of any
particular people, which of these notions of the duty of a representative is
the true one?
Unlike the questions which we have hitherto treated, this is not a question
of constitutional legislation, but of what may more properly be called
constitutional morality—the ethics of representative government. It does
not so much concern institutions as the temper of mind which the electors
ought to bring to the discharge of their functions, the ideas which should
prevail as to the moral duties of an elector; for, let the system of
representation be what it may, it will be converted into one of mere
delegation if the electors so choose. As long as they are free not to vote, and

free to vote as they like, they can not be prevented from making their vote
depend on any condition they think fit to annex to it. By refusing to elect
any one who will not pledge himself to all their opinions, and even, if they
please, to consult with them before voting on any important subject not
foreseen, they can reduce their representative to their mere mouthpiece, or
compel him in honor, when no longer willing to act in that capacity, to
resign his seat. And since they have the power of doing this, the theory of
the Constitution ought to suppose that they will wish to do it, since the very
principle of constitutional government requires it to be assumed that
political power will be abused to promote the particular purposes of the
holder; not because it always is so, but because such is the natural tendency
of things, to guard against which is the especial use of free institutions.
However wrong, therefore, or however foolish, we may think it in the
electors to convert their representative into a delegate, that stretch of the
electoral privilege being a natural and not improbable one, the same
precautions ought to be taken as if it were certain. We may hope that the
electors will not act on this notion of the use of the suffrage; but a
representative government needs to be so framed that even if they do, they
shall not be able to effect what ought not to be in the power of any body of
persons—class legislation for their own benefit.
When it is said that the question is only one of political morality, this
does not extenuate its importance. Questions of constitutional morality are
of no less practical moment than those relating to the constitution itself. The
very existence of some governments, and all that renders others endurable,
rests on the practical observance of doctrines of constitutional morality;
traditional notions in the minds of the several constituted authorities, which
modify the use that might otherwise be made of their powers. In unbalanced
governments—pure monarchy, pure aristocracy, pure democracy—such
maxims are the only barrier which restrains the government from the utmost
excesses in the direction of its characteristic tendency. In imperfectly
balanced governments, where some attempt is made to set constitutional
limits to the impulses of the strongest power, but where that power is strong
enough to overstep them with at least temporary impunity, it is only by
doctrines of constitutional morality, recognized and sustained by opinion,
that any regard at all is preserved for the checks and limitations of the
constitution. In well-balanced governments, in which the supreme power is
divided, and each sharer is protected against the usurpations of the others in

the only manner possible, namely, by being armed for defense with
weapons as strong as the others can wield for attack, the government can
only be carried on by forbearance on all sides to exercise those extreme
powers, unless provoked by conduct equally extreme on the part of some
other sharer of power; and in this case we may truly say that only by the
regard paid to maxims of constitutional morality is the constitution kept in
existence. The question of pledges is not one of those which vitally concern
the existence of representative governments, but it is very material to their
beneficial operation. The laws can not prescribe to the electors the
principles by which they shall direct their choice, but it makes a great
practical difference by what principles they think they ought to direct it; and
the whole of that great question is involved in the inquiry whether they
should make it a condition that the representative shall adhere to certain
opinions laid down for him by his constituents.
No reader of this treatise can doubt what conclusion, as to this matter,
results from the general principles which it professes. We have from the
first affirmed, and unvaryingly kept in view, the coequal importance of two
great requisites of government—responsibility to those for whose benefit
political power ought to be, and always professes to be, employed; and
jointly therewith, to obtain, in the greatest measure possible, for the
function of government, the benefits of superior intellect, trained by long
meditation and practical discipline to that special task. If this second
purpose is worth attaining, it is worth the necessary price. Superior powers
of mind and profound study are of no use, if they do not sometimes lead a
person to different conclusions from those which are formed by ordinary
powers of mind without study; and if it be an object to possess
representatives in any intellectual respect superior to average electors, it
must be counted upon that the representative will sometimes differ in
opinion from the majority of his constituents, and that when he does, his
opinion will be the oftenest right of the two. It follows that the electors will
not do wisely if they insist on absolute conformity to their opinions as the
condition of his retaining his seat.
The principle is thus far obvious; but there are real difficulties in its
application, and we will begin by stating them in their greatest force. If it is
important that the electors should choose a representative more highly
instructed than themselves, it is no less necessary that this wiser man should
be responsible to them; in other words, they are the judges of the manner in

which he fulfils his trust; and how are they to judge, except by the standard
of their own opinions? How are they even to select him in the first instance
but by the same standard? It will not do to choose by mere brilliancy—by
superiority of showy talent. The tests by which an ordinary man can judge
beforehand of mere ability are very imperfect; such as they are, they have
almost exclusive reference to the arts of expression, and little or none to the
worth of what is expressed. The latter can not be inferred from the former;
and if the electors are to put their own opinions in abeyance, what criterion
remains to them of the ability to govern well? Neither, if they could
ascertain, even infallibly, the ablest man, ought they to allow him altogether
to judge for them, without any reference to their own opinions. The ablest
candidate may be a Tory, and the electors Liberals; or a Liberal, and they
may be Tories. The political questions of the day may be Church questions,
and he may be a High-Churchman or a Rationalist, while they may be
Dissenters or Evangelicals, and vice versâ. His abilities, in these cases,
might only enable him to go greater lengths, and act with greater effect, in
what they may conscientiously believe to be a wrong course; and they may
be bound, by their sincere convictions, to think it more important that their
representative should be kept, on these points, to what they deem the dictate
of duty, than that they should be represented by a person of more than
average abilities. They may also have to consider, not solely how they can
be most ably represented, but how their particular moral position and
mental point of view shall be represented at all. The influence of every
mode of thinking which is shared by numbers ought to be felt in the
Legislature; and the Constitution being supposed to have made due
provision that other and conflicting modes of thinking shall be represented
likewise, to secure the proper representation for their own mode may be the
most important matter which the electors on the particular occasion have to
attend to. In some cases, too, it may be necessary that the representative
should have his hands tied to keep him true to their interest, or rather to the
public interest as they conceive it. This would not be needful under a
political system which assured them an indefinite choice of honest and
unprejudiced candidates; but under the existing system, in which the
electors are almost always obliged, by the expenses of election and the
general circumstances of society, to select their representative from persons
of a station in life widely different from theirs, and having a different class
interest, who will affirm that they ought to abandon themselves to his

discretion? Can we blame an elector of the poorer classes, who has only the
choice among two or three rich men, for requiring from the one he votes for
a pledge to those measures which he considers as a test of emancipation
from the class interests of the rich? It will, moreover, always happens to
some members of the electoral body to be obliged to accept the
representative selected by a majority of their own side. But, though a
candidate of their own choosing would have no chance, their votes may be
necessary to the success of the one chosen for them, and their only means of
exerting their share of influence on his subsequent conduct may be to make
their support of him dependent on his pledging himself to certain
conditions.
These considerations and counter-considerations are so intimately
interwoven with one another; it is so important that the electors should
choose as their representatives wiser men than themselves, and should
consent to be governed according to that superior wisdom, while it is
impossible that conformity to their own opinions, when they have opinions,
should not enter largely into their judgment as to who possesses the
wisdom, and how far its presumed possessor has verified the presumption
by his conduct, that it seems quite impracticable to lay down for the elector
any positive rule of duty; and the result will depend less on any exact
prescription or authoritative doctrine of political morality than on the
general tone of mind of the electoral body in respect to the important
requisite of deference to mental superiority. Individuals and peoples who
are acutely sensible of the value of superior wisdom are likely to recognize
it, where it exists, by other signs than thinking exactly as they do, and even
in spite of considerable differences of opinion; and when they have
recognized it they will be far too desirous to secure it, at any admissible
cost, to be prone to impose their own opinion as a law upon persons whom
they look up to as wiser than themselves. On the other hand, there is a
character of mind which does not look up to any one; which thinks no other
person's opinion much better than its own, or nearly so good as that of a
hundred or a thousand persons like itself. Where this is the turn of mind of
the electors, they will elect no one who is not, or at least who does not
profess to be, the image of their own sentiments, and will continue him no
longer than while he reflects those sentiments in his conduct; and all
aspirants to political honors will endeavour, as Plato says in the Gorgias, to
fashion themselves after the model of the Demos, and make themselves as

like to it as possible. It can not be denied that a complete democracy has a
strong tendency to cast the sentiments of the electors in this mould.
Democracy is not favorable to the reverential spirit. That it destroys
reverence for mere social position must be counted among the good, not the
bad part of its influences, though by doing this it closes the principal school
of reverence (as to merely human relations) which exists in society. But also
democracy, in its very essence, insists so much more forcibly on the things
in which all are entitled to be considered equally than on those in which one
person is entitled to more consideration than another, that respect for even
personal superiority is likely to be below the mark. It is for this, among
other reasons, I hold it of so much importance that the institutions of the
country should stamp the opinions of persons of a more educated class as
entitled to greater weight than those of the less educated; and I should still
contend for assigning plurality of votes to authenticated superiority of
education were it only to give the tone to public feeling, irrespective of any
direct political consequences.
When there does exist in the electoral body an adequate sense of the
extraordinary difference in value between one person and another, they will
not lack signs by which to distinguish the persons whose worth for their
purposes is the greatest. Actual public services will naturally be the
foremost indication: to have filled posts of magnitude, and done important
things in them, of which the wisdom has been justified by the results; to
have been the author of measures which appear from their effects to have
been wisely planned; to have made predictions which have been of verified
by the event, seldom or never falsified by it; to have given advice, which
when taken has been followed by good consequences—when neglected, by
bad. There is doubtless a large portion of uncertainty in these signs of
wisdom; but we are seeking for such as can be applied by persons of
ordinary discernment. They will do well not to rely much on any one
indication, unless corroborated by the rest, and, in their estimation of the
success or merit of any practical effort, to lay great stress on the general
opinion of disinterested persons conversant with the subject matter. The
tests which I have spoken of are only applicable to tried men, among whom
must be reckoned those who, though untried practically, have been tried
speculatively; who, in public speech or in print, have discussed public
affairs in a manner which proves that they have given serious study to them.
Such persons may, in the mere character of political thinkers, have

exhibited a considerable amount of the same titles to confidence as those
who have been proved in the position of practical statesmen. When it is
necessary to choose persons wholly untried, the best criteria are, reputation
for ability among those who personally know them, and the confidence
placed and recommendations given by persons already looked up to. By
tests like these, constituencies who sufficiently value mental ability, and
eagerly seek for it, will generally succeed in obtaining men beyond
mediocrity, and often men whom they can trust to carry on public affairs
according to their unfettered judgment; to whom it would be an affront to
require that they should give up that judgment at the behest of their inferiors
in knowledge. If such persons, honestly sought, are not to be found, then
indeed the electors are justified in taking other precautions, for they can not
be expected to postpone their particular opinions, unless in order that they
may be served by a person of superior knowledge to their own. They would
do well, indeed, even then, to remember that when once chosen, the
representative, if he devotes himself to his duty, has greater opportunities of
correcting an original false judgment than fall to the lot of most of his
constituents; a consideration which generally ought to prevent them (unless
compelled by necessity to choose some one whose impartiality they do not
fully trust) from exacting a pledge not to change his opinion, or, if he does,
to resign his seat. But when an unknown person, not certified in
unmistakable terms by some high authority, is elected for the first time, the
elector can not be expected not to make conformity to his own sentiments
the primary requisite. It is enough if he does not regard a subsequent change
of those sentiments, honestly avowed, with its grounds undisguisedly
stated, as a peremptory reason for withdrawing his confidence.
Even supposing the most tried ability and acknowledged eminence of
character in the representative, the private opinions of the electors are not to
be placed entirely in abeyance. Deference to mental superiority is not to go
the length of self-annihilation—abnegation of any personal opinion. But
when the difference does not relate to the fundamentals of politics, however
decided the elector may be in his own sentiments, he ought to consider that
when an able man differs from him there is at least a considerable chance of
his being in the wrong, and that even if otherwise, it is worth while to give
up his opinion in things not absolutely essential, for the sake of the
inestimable advantage of having an able man to act for him in the many
matters in which he himself is not qualified to form a judgment. In such

cases he often endeavours to reconcile both wishes by inducing the able
man to sacrifice his own opinion on the points of difference; but for the able
man to lend himself to this compromise is treason against his especial office
—abdication of the peculiar duties of mental supremacy, of which it is one
of the most sacred not to desert the cause which has the clamor against it,
nor to deprive of his services those of his opinions which need them the
most. A man of conscience and known ability should insist on full freedom
to act as he in his own judgment deems best, and should not consent to
serve on any other terms. But the electors are entitled to know how he
means to act; what opinions, on all things which concern his public duty, he
intends should guide his conduct. If some of these are unacceptable to them,
it is for him to satisfy them that he nevertheless deserves to be their
representative; and if they are wise, they will overlook, in favor of his
general value, many and great differences between his opinions and their
own. There are some differences, however, which they can not be expected
to overlook. Whoever feels the amount of interest in the government of his
country which befits a freeman, has some convictions on national affairs
which are like his life-blood; which the strength of his belief in their truth,
together with the importance he attaches to them, forbid him to make a
subject of compromise, or postpone to the judgment of any person, however
greatly his superior. Such convictions, when they exist in a people, or in any
appreciable portion of one, are entitled to influence in virtue of their mere
existence, and not solely in that of the probability of their being grounded in
truth. A people can not be well governed in opposition to their primary
notions of right, even though these may be in some points erroneous. A
correct estimate of the relation which should subsist between governors and
governed does not require the electors to consent to be represented by one
who intends to govern them in opposition to their fundamental convictions.
If they avail themselves of his capacities of useful service in other respects
at a time when the points on which he is vitally at issue with them are not
likely to be mooted, they are justified in dismissing him at the first moment
when a question arises involving these, and on which there is not so assured
a majority for what they deem right as to make the dissenting voice of that
particular individual unimportant. Thus (I mention names to illustrate my
meaning, not for any personal application) the opinions supposed to be
entertained by Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright on resistance to foreign
aggression might be overlooked during the Crimean war, when there was an

overwhelming national feeling on the contrary side, and might yet very
properly lead to their rejection by the electors at the time of the Chinese
quarrel (though in itself a more doubtful question), because it was then for
some time a moot point whether their view of the case might not prevail.
As the general result of what precedes, we may affirm that actual pledges
should not be required unless, from unfavorable social circumstances or
family institutions, the electors are so narrowed in their choice as to be
compelled to fix it on a person presumptively under the influence of
partialities hostile to their interest: That they are entitled to a full knowledge
of the political opinions and sentiments of the candidate; and not only
entitled, but often bound to reject one who differs from themselves on the
few articles which are the foundation of their political belief: that, in
proportion to the opinion they entertain of the mental superiority of a
candidate, they ought to put up with his expressing and acting on opinions
different from theirs on any number of things not included in their
fundamental articles of belief: that they ought to be unremitting in their
search for a representative of such calibre as to be intrusted with full power
of obeying the dictates of his own judgment: that they should consider it a
duty which they owe to their fellow-countrymen, to do their utmost toward
placing men of this quality in the Legislature, and that it is of much greater
importance to themselves to be represented by such a man than by one who
professes agreement in a greater number of their opinions; for the benefits
of his ability are certain, while the hypothesis of his being wrong and their
being right on the points of difference is a very doubtful one.
I have discussed this question on the assumption that the electoral
system, in all that depends on positive institution, conforms to the principles
laid down in the preceding chapters. Even on this hypothesis, the delegation
theory of representation seems to me false, and its practical operation
hurtful, though the mischief would in that case be confined within certain
bounds. But if the securities by which I have endeavoured to guard the
representative principle are not recognized by the Constitution; if provision
is not made for the representation of minorities, nor any difference admitted
in the numerical value of votes, according to some criterion of the amount
of education possessed by the voters—in that case, no words can exaggerate
the importance in principle of leaving an unfettered discretion to the
representative; for it would then be the only chance, under universal
suffrage, for any other opinions than those of the majority to be heard in

Parliament. In that falsely called democracy which is really the exclusive
rule of the operative classes, all others being unrepresented and unheard, the
only escape from class legislation in its narrowest, and political ignorance
in its most dangerous form, would lie in such disposition as the uneducated
might have to choose educated representatives, and to defer to their
opinions. Some willingness to do this might reasonably be expected, and
every thing would depend upon cultivating it to the highest point. But, once
invested with political omnipotence, if the operative classes voluntarily
concurred in imposing in this or any other manner any considerable
limitation upon their self-opinion and self-will, they would prove
themselves wiser than any class possessed of absolute power has shown
itself, or, we may venture to say, is ever likely to show itself under that
corrupting influence.

Chapter XIII—Of a Second Chamber.
Of all topics relating to the theory of representative government, none
have been the subject of more discussion, especially on the Continent, than
what is known as the question of the Two Chambers. It has occupied a
greater amount of the attention of thinkers than many questions of ten times
its importance, and has been regarded as a sort of touchstone which
distinguishes the partisans of limited from those of uncontrolled democracy.
For my own part, I set little value on any check which a Second Chamber
can apply to a democracy otherwise unchecked; and I am inclined to think
that if all other constitutional questions are rightly decided, it is of
comparatively little importance whether the Parliament consists of two
Chambers or only of one.
If there are two chambers, they may either be of similar or of dissimilar
composition. If of similar, both will obey the same influences, and whatever
has a majority in one of the houses will be likely to have it in the other. It is
true that the necessity of obtaining the consent of both to the passing of any
measure may at times be a material obstacle to improvement, since,
assuming both the houses to be representative and equal in their numbers, a
number slightly exceeding a fourth of the entire representation may prevent
the passing of a bill; while, if there is but one house, a bill is secure of
passing if it has a bare majority. But the case supposed is rather abstractedly
possible than likely to occur in practice. It will not often happen that, of two
houses similarly composed, one will be almost unanimous, and the other
nearly equally divided; if a majority in one rejects a measure, there will
generally have been a large minority unfavorable to it in the other; any
improvement, therefore, which could be thus impeded, would in almost all
cases be one which had not much more than a simple majority in the entire
body, and the worst consequence that could ensue would be to delay for a
short time the passing of the measure, or give rise to a fresh appeal to the
electors to ascertain if the small majority in Parliament corresponded to an
effective one in the country. The inconvenience of delay, and the advantages
of the appeal to the nation, might be regarded in this case as about equally
balanced.

I attach little weight to the argument oftenest urged for having two
Chambers—to prevent precipitancy, and compel a second deliberation; for
it must be a very ill-constituted representative assembly in which the
established forms of business do not require many more than two
deliberations. The consideration which tells most, in my judgment, in favor
of two Chambers (and this I do regard as of some moment), is the evil effect
produced upon the mind of any holder of power, whether an individual or
an assembly, by the consciousness of having only themselves to consult. It
is important that no set of persons should be able, even temporarily, to make
their sic volo prevail without asking any one else for his consent. A majority
in a single assembly, when it has assumed a permanent character—when
composed of the same persons habitually acting together, and always
assured of victory in their own House—easily becomes despotic and
overweening if released from the necessity of considering whether its acts
will be concurred in by another constituted authority. The same reason
which induced the Romans to have two consuls makes it desirable there
should be two Chambers—that neither of them may be exposed to the
corrupting influence of undivided power even for the space of a single year.
One of the most indispensable requisites in the practical conduct of politics,
especially in the management of free institutions, is conciliation; a readiness
to compromise; a willingness to concede something to opponents, and to
shape good measures so as to be as little offensive as possible to persons of
opposite views; and of this salutary habit, the mutual give and take (as it has
been called) between two houses is a perpetual school—useful as such even
now, and its utility would probably be even more felt in a more democratic
constitution of the Legislature.
But the houses need not both be of the same composition; they may be
intended as a check on one another. One being supposed democratic, the
other will naturally be constituted with a view to its being some restraint
upon the democracy. But its efficacy in this respect wholly depends on the
social support which it can command outside the House. An assembly
which does not rest on the basis of some great power in the country is
ineffectual against one which does. An aristocratic House is only powerful
in an aristocratic state of society. The House of Lords was once the
strongest power in our Constitution, and the Commons only a checking
body; but this was when the barons were almost the only power out of
doors. I can not believe that, in a really democratic state of society, the

House of Lords would be of any practical value as a moderator of
democracy. When the force on one side is feeble in comparison with that on
the other, the way to give it effect is not to draw both out in line, and muster
their strength in open field over against one another. Such tactics would
insure the utter defeat of the less powerful. It can only act to advantage by
not holding itself apart, and compelling every one to declare himself either
with or against it, but taking a position among the crowd rather than in
opposition to it, and drawing to itself the elements most capable of allying
themselves with it on any given point; not appearing at all as an antagonist
body, to provoke a general rally against it, but working as one of the
elements in a mixed mass, infusing its leaven, and often making what
would be the weaker part the stronger, by the addition of its influence. The
really moderating power in a democratic constitution must act in and
through the democratic House.
That there should be, in every polity, a centre of resistance to the
predominant power in the Constitution—and in a democratic constitution,
therefore, a nucleus of resistance to the democracy—I have already
maintained; and I regard it as a fundamental maxim of government. If any
people who possess a democratic representation are, from their historical
antecedents, more willing to tolerate such a centre of resistance in the form
of a Second Chamber or House of Lords than in any other shape, this
constitutes a stronger reason for having it in that shape. But it does not
appear to me the best shape in itself, nor by any means the most efficacious
for its object. If there are two houses, one considered to represent the
people, the other to represent only a class, or not to be representative at all,
I can not think that, where democracy is the ruling power in society, the
second House would have any real ability to resist even the aberrations of
the first. It might be suffered to exist in deference to habit and association,
but not as an effective check. If it exercised an independent will, it would be
required to do so in the same general spirit as the other House; to be equally
democratic with it, and to content itself with correcting the accidental
oversights of the more popular branch of the Legislature, or competing with
it in popular measures.
The practicability of any real check to the ascendancy of the majority
depends henceforth on the distribution of strength in the most popular
branch of the governing body; and I have indicated the mode in which, to
the best of my judgment, a balance of forces might most advantageously be

established there. I have also pointed out that, even if the numerical
majority were allowed to exercise complete predominance by means of a
corresponding majority in Parliament, yet if minorities also are permitted to
enjoy the equal right due to them on strictly democratic principles, of being
represented proportionally to their numbers, this provision will insure the
perpetual presence in the House, by the same popular title as its other
members, of so many of the first intellects in the country, that without being
in any way banded apart, or invested with any invidious prerogative, this
portion of the national representation will have a personal weight much
more than in proportion to its numerical strength, and will afford, in a most
effective form, the moral centre of resistance which is needed. A second
Chamber, therefore, is not required for this purpose, and would not
contribute to it, but might even, in some degree, tend to compromise it. If,
however, for the other reasons already mentioned, the decision were taken
that there should be such a Chamber, it is desirable that it should be
composed of elements which, without being open to the imputation of class
interests adverse to the majority, would incline it to oppose itself to the
class interests of the majority, and qualify it to raise its voice with authority
against their errors and weaknesses. These conditions evidently are not
found in a body constituted in the manner of our House of Lords. So soon
as conventional rank and individual riches no longer overawe the
democracy, a House of Lords becomes insignificant.
Of all principles on which a wisely conservative body, destined to
moderate and regulate democratic ascendancy, could possibly be
constructed, the best seems to be that exemplified in the Roman Senate,
itself the most consistently prudent and sagacious body that ever
administered public affairs. The deficiencies of a democratic assembly,
which represents the general public, are the deficiencies of the public itself,
want of special training and knowledge. The appropriate corrective is to
associate with it a body of which special training and knowledge should be
the characteristics. If one House represents popular feeling, the other should
represent personal merit, tested and guaranteed by actual public service, and
fortified by practical experience. If one is the People's Chamber, the other
should be the Chamber of Statesmen—a council composed of all living
public men who have passed through important political office or
employment. Such a Chamber would be fitted for much more than to be a
merely moderating body. It would not be exclusively a check, but also an

impelling force. In its hands, the power of holding the people back would
be vested in those most competent, and who would then be most inclined to
lead them forward in any right course. The council to whom the task would
be intrusted of rectifying the people's mistakes would not represent a class
believed to be opposed to their interest, but would consist of their own
natural leaders in the path of progress. No mode of composition could
approach to this in giving weight and efficacy to their function of
moderators. It would be impossible to cry down a body always foremost in
promoting improvements as a mere obstructive body, whatever amount of
mischief it might obstruct.
Were the place vacant in England for such a Senate (I need scarcely say
that this is a mere hypothesis), it might be composed of some such elements
as the following: All who were or had been members of the Legislative
Commission described in a former chapter, and which I regard as an
indispensable ingredient in a well constituted popular government. All who
were or had been chief justices, or heads of any of the superior courts of
law or equity. All who had for five years filled the office of puisne judge.
All who had held for two years any cabinet office; but these should also be
eligible to the House of Commons, and, if elected members of it, their
peerage or senatorial office should be held in suspense. The condition of
time is needed to prevent persons from being named cabinet ministers
merely to give them a seat in the Senate; and the period of two years is
suggested, that the same term which qualifies them for a pension might
entitle them to a senatorship. All who had filled the office of commander-
in-chief; and all who, having commanded an army or a fleet, had been
thanked by Parliament for military or naval successes. All governors
general of India or British America, and all who had held for ten years any
colonial governorships. The permanent civil service should also be
represented; all should be senators who had filled, during ten years, the
important offices of under-secretary to the Treasury, permanent under-
secretary of State, or any others equally high and responsible. The functions
conferring the senatorial dignity should be limited to those of a legal,
political, or military or naval character. Scientific and literary eminence are
too indefinite and disputable: they imply a power of selection, whereas the
other qualifications speak for themselves; if the writings by which
reputation has been gained are unconnected with politics, they are no

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

by whom they were most desirous to be represented. As a compensation to
the peers who were not chosen representatives of their order, they should be
eligible to the House of Commons; a justice now refused to Scotch peers,
and to Irish peers in their own part of the kingdom, while the representation
in the House of Lords of any but the most numerous party in the peerage is
denied equally to both.
The mode of composing a Senate which has been here advocated not
only seems the best in itself, but is that for which historical precedent and
actual brilliant success can to the greatest extent be pleaded. It is not
however the only feasible plan that might be proposed. Another possible
mode of forming a Second Chamber would be to have it elected by the
First; subject to the restriction that they should not nominate any of their
own members. Such an assembly, emanating, like the American Senate,
from popular choice only once removed, would not be considered to clash
with democratic institutions, and would probably acquire considerable
popular influence. From the mode of its nomination, it would be peculiarly
unlikely to excite the jealousy of, or to come into hostile collision with the
popular House. It would, moreover (due provision being made for the
representation of the minority), be almost sure to be well composed, and to
comprise many of that class of highly capable men who, either from
accident or for want of showy qualities, had been unwilling to seek, or
unable to obtain, the suffrages of a popular constituency.
The best constitution of a Second Chamber is that which embodies the
greatest number of elements exempt from the class interests and prejudices
of the majority, but having in themselves nothing offensive to democratic
feeling. I repeat, however, that the main reliance for tempering the
ascendancy of the majority can be placed in a Second Chamber of any kind.
The character of a representative government is fixed by the constitution of
the popular House. Compared with this, all other questions relating to the
form of government are insignificant.

Chapter XIV—Of the Executive in a
Representative Government.
It would be out of place in this treatise to discuss the question into what
departments or branches the executive business of government may most
conveniently be divided. In this respect the exigencies of different
governments are different; and there is little probability that any great
mistake will be made in the classification of the duties when men are
willing to begin at the beginning, and do not hold themselves bound by the
series of accidents which, in an old government like ours, has produced the
existing division of the public business. It may be sufficient to say that the
classification of functionaries should correspond to that of subjects, and that
there should not be several departments independent of one another, to
superintend different parts of the same natural whole, as in our own military
administration down to a recent period, and in a less degree even at present.
Where the object to be attained is single (such as that of having an efficient
army), the authority commissioned to attend to it should be single likewise.
The entire aggregate of means provided for one end should be under one
and the same control and responsibility. If they are divided among
independent authorities, the means with each of those authorities become
ends, and it is the business of nobody except the head of the government,
who has probably no departmental experience, to take care of the real end.
The different classes of means are not combined and adapted to one another
under the guidance of any leading idea; and while every department pushes
forward its own requirements, regardless of those of the rest, the purpose of
the work is perpetually sacrificed to the work itself.
As a general rule, every executive function, whether superior or
subordinate, should be the appointed duty of some given individual. It
should be apparent to all the world who did every thing, and through whose
default any thing was left undone. Responsibility is null when nobody
knows who is responsible; nor, even when real, can it be divided without
being weakened. To maintain it at its highest, there must be one person who
receives the whole praise of what is well done, the whole blame of what is
ill. There are, however, two modes of sharing responsibility; by one it is

only enfeebled, by the other absolutely destroyed. It is enfeebled when the
concurrence of more than one functionary is required to the same act. Each
one among them has still a real responsibility; if a wrong has been done,
none of them can say he did not do it; he is as much a participant as an
accomplice is in an offense: if there has been legal criminality, they may all
be punished legally, and their punishment needs not be less severe than if
there had been only one person concerned. But it is not so with the penalties
any more than with the rewards of opinion; these are always diminished by
being shared. Where there has been no definite legal offense, no corruption
or malversation, only an error or an imprudence, or what may pass for such,
every participator has an excuse to himself and to the world in the fact that
other persons are jointly involved with him. There is hardly any thing, even
to pecuniary dishonesty, for which men will not feel themselves almost
absolved, if those whose duty it was to resist and remonstrate have failed to
do it, still more if they have given a formal assent.
In this case, however, though responsibility is weakened, there still is
responsibility: every one of those implicated has in his individual capacity
assented to, and joined in the act. Things are much worse when the act itself
is only that of a majority—a board deliberating with closed doors, nobody
knowing, or, except in some extreme case, being ever likely to know,
whether an individual member voted for the act or against it. Responsibility
in this case is a mere name. "Boards," it is happily said by Bentham, "are
screens." What "the Board" does is the act of nobody, and nobody can be
made to answer for it. The Board suffers, even in reputation, only in its
collective character; and no individual member feels this further than his
disposition leads him to identify his own estimation with that of the body—
a feeling often very strong when the body is a permanent one, and he is
wedded to it for better for worse; but the fluctuations of a modern official
career give no time for the formation of such an esprit de corps, which, if it
exists at all, exists only in the obscure ranks of the permanent subordinates.
Boards, therefore, are not a fit instrument for executive business, and are
only admissible in it when, for other reasons, to give full discretionary
power to a single minister would be worse.
On the other hand, it is also a maxim of experience that in the multitude
of councillors there is wisdom, and that a man seldom judges right, even in
his own concerns, still less in those of the public, when he makes habitual
use of no knowledge but his own, or that of some single adviser. There is no

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

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

preserved to this country, and an amount of good government produced
which is truly wonderful considering the circumstances and the materials, it
is probably destined to perish in the general holocaust which the traditions
of Indian government seem fated to undergo since they have been placed at
the mercy of public ignorance and the presumptuous vanity of political
men. Already an outcry is raised for abolishing the councils as a superfluous
and expensive clog on the wheels of government; while the clamor has long
been urgent, and is daily obtaining more countenance in the highest
quarters, for the abrogation of the professional civil service, which breeds
the men that compose the councils, and the existence of which is the sole
guaranty for their being of any value.
A most important principle of good government in a popular constitution
is that no executive functionaries should be appointed by popular election,
neither by the votes of the people themselves, nor by those of their
representatives. The entire business of government is skilled employment;
the qualifications for the discharge of it are of that special and professional
kind which can not be properly judged of except by persons who have
themselves some share of those qualifications, or some practical experience
of them. The business of finding the fittest persons to fill public
employments—not merely selecting the best who offer, but looking out for
the absolutely best, and taking note of all fit persons who are met with, that
they may be found when wanted—is very laborious, and requires a delicate
as well as highly conscientious discernment; and as there is no public duty
which is in general so badly performed, so there is none for which it is of
greater importance to enforce the utmost practicable amount of personal
responsibility, by imposing it as a special obligation on high functionaries
in the several departments. All subordinate public officers who are not
appointed by some mode of public competition should be selected on the
direct responsibility of the minister under whom they serve. The ministers,
all but the chief, will naturally be selected by the chief; and the chief
himself, though really designated by Parliament, should be, in a regal
government, officially appointed by the crown. The functionary who
appoints should be the sole person empowered to remove any subordinate
officer who is liable to removal, which the far greater number ought not to
be, except for personal misconduct, since it would be vain to expect that the
body of persons by whom the whole detail of the public business is
transacted, and whose qualifications are generally of much more

importance to the public than those of the minister himself, will devote
themselves to their profession, and acquire the knowledge and skill on
which the minister must often place entire dependence, if they are liable at
any moment to be turned adrift for no fault, that the minister may gratify
himself, or promote his political interest, by appointing somebody else.
To the principle which condemns the appointment of executive officers
by popular suffrage, ought the chief of the executive, in a republican
government, to be an exception? Is it a good rule which, in the American
Constitution, provides for the election of the President once in every four
years by the entire people? The question is not free from difficulty. There is
unquestionably some advantage, in a country like America, where no
apprehension needs be entertained of a coup d'état, in making the chief
minister constitutionally independent of the legislative body, and rendering
the two great branches of the government, while equally popular both in
their origin and in their responsibility, an effective check on one another.
The plan is in accordance with that sedulous avoidance of the concentration
of great masses of power in the same hands, which is a marked
characteristic of the American federal Constitution. But the advantage, in
this instance, is purchased at a price above all reasonable estimates of its
value. It seems far better that the chief magistrate in a republic should be
appointed avowedly, as the chief minister in a constitutional monarchy is
virtually, by the representative body. In the first place, he is certain, when
thus appointed, to be a more eminent man. The party which has the majority
in Parliament would then, as a rule, appoint its own leader, who is always
one of the foremost, and often the very foremost person in political life;
while the President of the United States, since the last survivor of the
founders of the republic disappeared from the scene, is almost always either
an obscure man, or one who has gained any reputation he may possess in
some other field than politics. And this, as I have before observed, is no
accident, but the natural effect of the situation. The eminent men of a party,
in an election extending to the whole country, are never its most available
candidates. All eminent men have made personal enemies, or, have done
something, or at the lowest, professed some opinion obnoxious to some
local or other considerable division of the community, and likely to tell with
fatal effect upon the number of votes; whereas a man without antecedents,
of whom nothing is known but that he professes the creed of the party, is
readily voted for by its entire strength. Another important consideration is

the great mischief of unintermitted electioneering. When the highest dignity
in the state is to be conferred by popular election once in every few years,
the whole intervening time is spent in what is virtually a canvass. President,
ministers, chiefs of parties, and their followers, are all electioneerers: the
whole community is kept intent on the mere personalities of politics, and
every public question is discussed and decided with less reference to its
merits than to its expected bearing on the presidential election. If a system
had been devised to make party spirit the ruling principle of action in all
public affairs, and create an inducement not only to make every question a
party question, but to raise questions for the purpose of founding parties
upon them, it would have been difficult to contrive any means better
adapted to the purpose.
I will not affirm that it would at all times and places be desirable that the
head of the executive should be so completely dependent upon the votes of
a representative assembly as the prime minister is in England, and is
without inconvenience. If it were thought best to avoid this, he might,
though appointed by Parliament, hold his office for a fixed period,
independent of a Parliamentary vote, which would be the American system
minus the popular election and its evils. There is another mode of giving the
head of the administration as much independence of the Legislature as is at
all compatible with the essentials of free government. He never could be
unduly dependent on a vote of Parliament if he had, as the British prime
minister practically has, the power to dissolve the House and appeal to the
people; if, instead of being turned out of office by a hostile vote, he could
only be reduced by it to the alternative of resignation or dissolution. The
power of dissolving Parliament is one which I think it desirable he should
possess, even under the system by which his own tenure of office is secured
to him for a fixed period. There ought not to be any possibility of that
deadlock in politics which would ensue on a quarrel breaking out between a
president and an assembly, neither of whom, during an interval which might
amount to years, would have any legal means of ridding itself of the other.
To get through such a period without a coup d'état being attempted, on
either side or on both, requires such a combination of the love of liberty and
the habit of self-restraint as very few nations have yet shown themselves
capable of; and though this extremity were avoided, to expect that the two
authorities would not paralyze each other's operations is to suppose that the
political life of the country will always be pervaded by a spirit of mutual

forbearance and compromise, imperturbable by the passions and
excitements of the keenest party struggles. Such a spirit may exist, but even
where it does there is imprudence in trying it too far.
Other reasons make it desirable that some power in the state (which can
only be the executive) should have the liberty of at any time, and at
discretion, calling a new Parliament. When there is a real doubt which of
two contending parties has the strongest following, it is important that there
should exist a constitutional means of immediately testing the point and
setting it at rest. No other political topic has a chance of being properly
attended to while this is undecided; and such an interval is mostly an
interregnum for purposes of legislative or administrative improvement,
neither party having sufficient confidence in its strength to attempt things
likely to provoke opposition in any quarter that has either direct or indirect
influence in the pending struggle.
I have not taken account of the case in which the vast power centralized
in the chief magistrate, and the insufficient attachment of the mass of the
people to free institutions, give him a chance of success in an attempt to
subvert the Constitution, and usurp sovereign power. Where such peril
exists, no first magistrate is admissible whom the Parliament can not, by a
single vote, reduce to a private station. In a state of things holding out any
encouragement to that most audacious and profligate of all breaches of
trust, even this entireness of constitutional dependence is but a weak
protection.
Of all officers of government, those in whose appointment any
participation of popular suffrage is the most objectionable are judicial
officers. While there are no functionaries whose special and professional
qualifications the popular judgment is less fitted to estimate, there are none
in whose case absolute impartiality, and freedom from connection with
politicians or sections of politicians, are of any thing like equal importance.
Some thinkers, among others Mr. Bentham, have been of opinion that,
although it is better that judges should not be appointed by popular election,
the people of their district ought to have the power, after sufficient
experience, of removing them from their trust. It can not be denied that the
irremovability of any public officer to whom great interests are intrusted is
in itself an evil. It is far from desirable that there should be no means of
getting rid of a bad or incompetent judge, unless for such misconduct as he

can be made to answer for in a criminal court, and that a functionary on
whom so much depends should have the feeling of being free from
responsibility except to opinion and his own conscience. The question
however is, whether, in the peculiar position of a judge, and supposing that
all practicable securities have been taken for an honest appointment,
irresponsibility, except to his own and the public conscience, has not, on the
whole, less tendency to pervert his conduct than responsibility to the
government or to a popular vote. Experience has long decided this point in
the affirmative as regards responsibility to the executive, and the case is
quite equally strong when the responsibility sought to be enforced is to the
suffrages of electors. Among the good qualities of a popular constituency,
those peculiarly incumbent upon a judge, calmness and impartiality, are not
numbered. Happily, in that intervention of popular suffrage which is
essential to freedom they are not the qualities required. Even the quality of
justice, though necessary to all human beings, and therefore to all electors,
is not the inducement which decides any popular election. Justice and
impartiality are as little wanted for electing a member of Parliament as they
can be in any transaction of men. The electors have not to award something
which either candidate has a right to, nor to pass judgment on the general
merits of the competitors, but to declare which of them has most of their
personal confidence, or best represents their political convictions. A judge is
bound to treat his political friend, or the person best known to him, exactly
as he treats other people; but it would be a breach of duty, as well as an
absurdity, if an elector did so. No argument can be grounded on the
beneficial effect produced on judges, as on all other functionaries, by the
moral jurisdiction of opinion; for even in this respect, that which really
exercises a useful control over the proceedings of a judge, when fit for the
judicial office, is not (except sometimes in political cases) the opinion of
the community generally, but that of the only public by whom his conduct
or qualifications can be duly estimated, the bar of his own court. I must not
be understood to say that the participation of the general public in the
administration of justice is of no importance; it is of the greatest; but in
what manner? By the actual discharge of a part of the judicial office in the
capacity of jurymen. This is one of the few cases in politics in which it is
better that the people should act directly and personally than through their
representatives, being almost the only case in which the errors that a person
exercising authority may commit can be better borne than the consequences

of making him responsible for them. If a judge could be removed from
office by a popular vote, whoever was desirous of supplanting him would
make capital for that purpose out of all his judicial decisions; would carry
all of them, as far as he found practicable, by irregular appeal before a
public opinion wholly incompetent, for want of having heard the case, or
from having heard it without either the precautions or the impartiality
belonging to a judicial hearing; would play upon popular passion and
prejudice where they existed, and take pains to arouse them where they did
not. And in this, if the case were interesting, and he took sufficient trouble,
he would infallibly be successful, unless the judge or his friends descended
into the arena, and made equally powerful appeals on the other side. Judges
would end by feeling that they risked their office upon every decision they
gave in a case susceptible of general interest, and that it was less essential
for them to consider what decision was just, than what would be most
applauded by the public, or would least admit of insidious
misrepresentation. The practice introduced by some of the new or revised
State Constitutions in America, of submitting judicial officers to periodical
popular re-election, will be found, I apprehend, to be one of the most
dangerous errors ever yet committed by democracy; and, were it not that the
practical good sense which never totally deserts the people of the United
States is said to be producing a reaction, likely in no long time to lead to the
retraction of the error, it might with reason be regarded as the first great
downward step in the degeneration of modern democratic government.
With regard to that large and important body which constitutes the
permanent strength of the public service, those who do not change with
changes of politics, but remain to aid every minister by their experience and
traditions, inform him by their knowledge of business, and conduct official
details under his general control—those, in short, who form the class of
professional public servants, entering their profession as others do while
young, in the hope of rising progressively to its higher grades as they
advance in life—it is evidently inadmissible that these should be liable to be
turned out, and deprived of the whole benefit of their previous service,
except for positive, proved, and serious misconduct. Not, of course, such
delinquency only as makes them amenable to the law, but voluntary neglect
of duty, or conduct implying untrustworthiness for the purposes for which
their trust is given them. Since, therefore, unless in case of personal
culpability, there is no way of getting rid of them except by quartering them

on the public as pensioners, it is of the greatest importance that the
appointments should be well made in the first instance; and it remains to be
considered by what mode of appointment this purpose can best be attained.
In making first appointments, little danger is to be apprehended from
want of special skill and knowledge in the choosers, but much from
partiality, and private or political interest. Being all appointed at the
commencement of manhood, not as having learned, but in order that they
may learn, their profession, the only thing by which the best candidates can
be discriminated is proficiency in the ordinary branches of liberal
education; and this can be ascertained without difficulty, provided there be
the requisite pains and the requisite impartiality in those who are appointed
to inquire into it. Neither the one nor the other can reasonably be expected
from a minister, who must rely wholly on recommendations, and, however
disinterested as to his personal wishes, never will be proof against the
solicitations of persons who have the power of influencing his own election,
or whose political adherence is important to the ministry to which he
belongs. These considerations have introduced the practice of submitting all
candidates for first appointments to a public examination, conducted by
persons not engaged in politics, and of the same class and quality with the
examiners for honors at the Universities. This would probably be the best
plan under any system; and under our Parliamentary government it is the
only one which affords a chance, I do not say of honest appointment, but
even of abstinence from such as are manifestly and flagrantly profligate.
It is also absolutely necessary that the examinations should be
competitive, and the appointments given to those who are most successful.
A mere pass examination never, in the long run, does more than exclude
absolute dunces. When the question, in the mind of an examiner, lies
between blighting the prospects of an individual and performing a duty to
the public which, in the particular instance, seldom appears of first rate
importance, and when he is sure to be bitterly reproached for doing the first,
while in general no one will either know or care whether he has done the
latter, the balance, unless he is a man of very unusual stamp, inclines to the
side of good-nature. A relaxation in one instance establishes a claim to it in
others, which every repetition of indulgence makes it more difficult to
resist; each of these, in succession, becomes a precedent for more, until the
standard of proficiency sinks gradually to something almost contemptible.
Examinations for degrees at the two great Universities have generally been

as slender in their requirements as those for honors are trying and serious.
Where there is no inducement to exceed a certain minimum, the minimum
comes to be the maximum: it becomes the general practice not to aim at
more; and as in every thing there are some who do not attain all they aim at,
however low the standard may be pitched, there are always several who fall
short of it. When, on the contrary, the appointments are given to those,
among a great number of candidates, who most distinguish themselves, and
where the successful competitors are classed in order of merit, not only
each is stimulated to do his very utmost, but the influence is felt in every
place of liberal education throughout the country. It becomes with every
schoolmaster an object of ambition and an avenue to success to have
furnished pupils who have gained a high place in these competitions, and
there is hardly any other mode in which the state can do so much to raise
the quality of educational institutions throughout the country. Though the
principle of competitive examinations for public employment is of such
recent introduction in this country, and is still so imperfectly carried out, the
Indian service being as yet nearly the only case in which it exists in its
completeness, a sensible effect has already begun to be produced on the
places of middle-class education, notwithstanding the difficulties which the
principle has encountered from the disgracefully low existing state of
education in the country, which these very examinations have brought into
strong light. So contemptible has the standard of acquirement been found to
be, among the youths who obtain the nomination from the minister, which
entitles them to offer themselves as candidates, that the competition of such
candidates produces almost a poorer result than would be obtained from a
mere pass examination; for no one would think of fixing the conditions of a
pass examination so low as is actually found sufficient to enable a young
man to surpass his fellow-candidates. Accordingly, it is said that successive
years show on the whole a decline of attainments, less effort being made,
because the results of former examinations have proved that the exertions
then used were greater than would have been sufficient to attain the object.
Partly from this decrease of effort, and partly because, even at the
examinations which do not require a previous nomination, conscious
ignorance reduces the number of competitors to a mere handful, it has so
happened that though there have always been a few instances of great
proficiency, the lower part of the list of successful candidates represents but
a very moderate amount of acquirement; and we have it on the word of the

commissioners that nearly all who have been unsuccessful have owed their
failure to ignorance, not of the higher branches of instruction, but of its very
humblest elements—spelling and arithmetic.
The outcries which continue to be made against these examinations by
some of the organs of opinion are often, I regret to say, as little creditable to
the good faith as to the good sense of the assailants. They proceed partly by
misrepresentation of the kind of ignorance which, as a matter of fact,
actually leads to failure in the examinations. They quote with emphasis the
most recondite questions [8] which can be shown to have been ever asked,
and make it appear as if unexceptionable answers to all these were made the
sine quâ non of success. Yet it has been repeated to satiety that such
questions are not put because it is expected of every one that he should
answer them, but in order that whoever is able to do so may have the means
of proving and availing himself of that portion of his knowledge. It is not as
a ground of rejection, but as an additional means of success, that this
opportunity is given. We are then asked whether the kind of knowledge
supposed in this, that, or the other question, is calculated to be of any use to
the candidate after he has attained his object. People differ greatly in
opinion as to what knowledge is useful. There are persons in existence, and
a late Foreign Secretary of State is one of them, who think English spelling
a useless accomplishment in a diplomatic attaché or a clerk in a government
office. About one thing the objectors seem to be unanimous, that general
mental cultivation is not useful in these employments, whatever else may be
so. If, however (as I presume to think), it is useful, or if any education at all
is useful, it must be tested by the tests most likely to show whether the
candidate possesses it or not. To ascertain whether he has been well
educated, he must be interrogated in the things which he is likely to know if
he has been well educated, even though not directly pertinent to the work to
which he is to be appointed. Will those who object to his being questioned
in classics and mathematics, tell us what they would have him questioned
in? There seems, however, to be equal objection to examining him in these,
and to examining him in any thing but these. If the Commissioners—
anxious to open a door of admission to those who have not gone through
the routine of a grammar-school, or who make up for the smallness of their
knowledge of what is there taught by greater knowledge of something else
—allow marks to be gained by proficiency in any other subject of real

utility, they are reproached for that too. Nothing will satisfy the objectors
but free admission of total ignorance.
We are triumphantly told that neither Clive nor Wellington could have
passed the test which is prescribed for an aspirant to an engineer cadetship;
as if, because Clive and Wellington did not do what was not required of
them, they could not have done it if it had been required. If it be only meant
to inform us that it is possible to be a great general without these things, so
it is without many other things which are very useful to great generals.
Alexander the Great had never heard of Vauban's rules, nor could Julius
Cæsar speak French. We are next informed that book-worms, a term which
seems to be held applicable to whoever has the smallest tincture of book-
knowledge, may not be good at bodily exercises, or have the habits of
gentlemen. This is a very common line of remark with dunces of condition;
but, whatever the dunces may think, they have no monopoly of either
gentlemanly habits or bodily activity. Wherever these are needed, let them
be inquired into and separately provided for, not to the exclusion of mental
qualifications, but in addition. Meanwhile, I am credibly informed that in
the Military Academy at Woolwich the competition cadets are as superior to
those admitted on the old system of nomination in these respects as in all
others; that they learn even their drill more quickly, as indeed might be
expected, for an intelligent person learns all things sooner than a stupid one;
and that in general demeanor they contrast so favorably with their
predecessors, that the authorities of the institutions are impatient for the day
to arrive when the last remains of the old leaven shall have disappeared
from the place. If this be so, and it is easy to ascertain whether it is so, it is
to be hoped we shall soon have heard for the last time that ignorance is a
better qualification than knowledge for the military, and, à fortiori, for
every other profession, or that any one good quality, however little
apparently connected with liberal education, is at all likely to be promoted
by going without it.
Though the first admission to government employment be decided by
competitive examination, it would in most cases be impossible that
subsequent promotion should be so decided; and it seems proper that this
should take place, as it usually does at present, on a mixed system of
seniority and selection. Those whose duties are of a routine character should
rise by seniority to the highest point to which duties merely of that
description can carry them, while those to whom functions of particular

trust, and requiring special capacity, are confided, should be selected from
the body on the discretion of the chief of the office. And this selection will
generally be made honestly by him if the original appointments take place
by open competition, for under that system his establishment will generally
consist of individuals to whom, but for the official connection, he would
have been a stranger. If among them there be any in whom he, or his
political friends and supporters, take an interest, it will be but occasionally,
and only when to this advantage of connection is added, as far as the
initiatory examination could test it, at least equality of real merit; and,
except when there is a very strong motive to job these appointments, there
is always a strong one to appoint the fittest person, being the one who gives
to his chief the most useful assistance, saves him most trouble, and helps
most to build up that reputation for good management of public business
which necessarily and properly redound to the credit of the minister,
however much the qualities to which it is immediately owing may be those
of his subordinates.

Chapter XV—Of Local Representative Bodies.
It is but a small portion of the public business of a country which can be
well done or safely attempted by the central authorities; and even in our
own government, the least centralized in Europe, the legislative portion at
least of the governing body busies itself far too much with local affairs,
employing the supreme power of the State in cutting small knots which
there ought to be other and better means of untying. The enormous amount
of private business which takes up the time of Parliament and the thoughts
of its individual members, distracting them from the proper occupations of
the great council of the nation, is felt by all thinkers and observers as a
serious evil, and, what is worse, an increasing one.
It would not be appropriate to the limited design of this treatise to discuss
at large the great question, in no way peculiar to representative government,
of the proper limits of governmental action. I have said elsewhere [9] what
seemed to me most essential respecting the principles by which the extent
of that action ought to be determined. But after subtracting from the
functions performed by most European governments those which ought not
to be undertaken by public authorities at all, there still remains so great and
various an aggregate of duties, that, if only on the principle of division of
labor, it is indispensable to share them between central and local authorities.
Not solely are separate executive officers required for purely local duties
(an amount of separation which exists under all governments), but the
popular control over those officers can only be advantageously exerted
through a separate organ. Their original appointment, the function of
watching and checking them, the duty of providing or the discretion of
withholding the supplies necessary for their operations, should rest, not
with the national Parliament or the national executive, but with the people
of the locality. That the people should exercise these functions directly and
personally is evidently inadmissable. Administration by the assembled
people is a relic of barbarism opposed to the whole spirit of modern life; yet
so much has the course of English institutions depended on accident, that
this primitive mode of local government remained the general rule in
parochial matters up to the present generation; and, having never been

legally abolished, probably subsists unaltered in many rural parishes even
now. There remains the plan of representative sub-Parliaments for local
affairs, and these must henceforth be considered as one of the fundamental
institutions of a free government. They exist in England but very
incompletely, and with great irregularity and want of system; in some other
countries much less popularly governed, their constitution is far more
rational. In England there has always been more liberty but worse
organization, while in other countries there is better organization but less
liberty. It is necessary, then, that, in addition to the national representation,
there should be municipal and provisional representations; and the two
questions which remain to be resolved are, how the local representative
bodies should be constituted, and what should be the extent of their
functions.
In considering these questions, two points require an equal degree of our
attention: how the local business itself can be best done, and how its
transaction can be made most instrumental to the nourishment of public
spirit and the development of intelligence. In an earlier part of this inquiry I
have dwelt in strong language—hardly any language is strong enough to
express the strength of my conviction—on the importance of that portion of
the operation of free institutions which may be called the public education
of the citizens. Now of this operation the local administrative institutions
are the chief instrument. Except by the part they may take as jurymen in the
administration of justice, the mass of the population have very little
opportunity of sharing personally in the conduct of the general affairs of the
community. Reading newspapers, and perhaps writing to them, public
meetings, and solicitations of different sorts addressed to the political
authorities, are the extent of the participation of private citizens in general
politics during the interval between one Parliamentary election and another.
Though it is impossible to exaggerate the importance of these various
liberties, both as securities for freedom and as means of general cultivation,
the practice which they give is more in thinking than in action, and in
thinking without the responsibilities of action, which with most people
amounts to little more than passively receiving the thoughts of some one
else. But in the case of local bodies, besides the function of electing, many
citizens in turn have the chance of being elected, and many, either by
selection or by rotation, fill one or other of the numerous local executive
offices. In these positions they have to act for public interests, as well as to

think and to speak, and the thinking can not all be done by proxy. It may be
added that these local functions, not being in general sought by the higher
ranks, carry down the important political education which they are the
means of conferring to a much lower grade in society. The mental discipline
being thus a more important feature in local concerns than in the general
affairs of the state, while there are not such vital interests dependent on the
quality of the administration, a greater weight may be given to the former
consideration, and the latter admits much more frequently of being
postponed to it than in matters of general legislation and the conduct of
imperial affairs.
The proper constitution of local representative bodies does not present
much difficulty. The principles which apply to it do not differ in any respect
from those applicable to the national representation. The same obligation
exists, as in the case of the more important function, for making the bodies
elective; and the same reasons operate as in that case, but with still greater
force, for giving them a widely democratic basis; the dangers being less,
and the advantages, in point of popular education and cultivation, in some
respects even greater. As the principal duty of the local bodies consists of
the imposition and expenditure of local taxation, the electoral franchise
should vest in all who contribute to the local rates, to the exclusion of all
who do not. I assume that there is no indirect taxation, no octroi duties, or
that, if there are, they are supplementary only, those on whom their burden
falls being also rated to a direct assessment. The representation of
minorities should be provided for in the same manner as in the national
Parliament, and there are the same strong reasons for plurality of votes;
only there is not so decisive an objection, in the inferior as in the higher
body, to making the plural voting depend (as in some of the local elections
of our own country) on a mere money qualification; for the honest and
frugal dispensation of money forms so much larger a part of the business of
the local than of the national body, that there is more justice as well as
policy in allowing a greater proportional influence to those who have a
larger money interest at stake.
In the most recently established of our local representative institutions,
the Boards of Guardians, the justices of peace of the district sit ex officio
along with the elected members, in number limited by law to a third of the
whole. In the peculiar constitution of English society, I have no doubt of the
beneficial effect of this provision. It secures the presence in these bodies of

a more educated class than it would perhaps be practicable to attract thither
on any other terms; and while the limitation in number of the ex officio
members precludes them from acquiring predominance by mere numerical
strength, they, as a virtual representation of another class, having sometimes
a different interest from the rest, are a check upon the class interests of the
farmers or petty shopkeepers who form the bulk of the elected guardians. A
similar commendation can not be given to the constitution of the only
provincial boards we possess, the Quarter Sessions, consisting of the
justices of peace alone, on whom, over and above their judicial duties, some
of the most important parts of the administrative business of the country
depend for their performance. The mode of formation of these bodies is
most anomalous, they being neither elected, nor, in any proper sense of the
term, nominated, but holding their important functions, like the feudal lords
to whom they succeeded, virtually by right of their acres; the appointment
vested in the crown (or, speaking practically, in one of themselves, the lord
lieutenant) being made use of only as a means of excluding any one who it
is thought would do discredit to the body, or, now and then, one who is on
the wrong side in politics. The institution is the most aristocratic in
principle which now remains in England; far more so than the House of
Lords, for it grants public money and disposes of important public interests,
not in conjunction with a popular assembly, but alone. It is clung to with
proportionate tenacity by our aristocratic classes, but is obviously at
variance with all the principles which are the foundation of representative
government. In a County Board there is not the same justification as in
Boards of Guardians for even an admixture of ex officio with elected
members, since the business of a county being on a sufficiently large scale
to be an object of interest and attraction to country gentlemen, they would
have no more difficulty in getting themselves elected to the Board than they
have in being returned to Parliament as county members.
In regard to the proper circumscription of the constituencies which elect
the local representative bodies, the principle which, when applied as an
exclusive and unbending rule to Parliamentary representation, is
inappropriate, namely community of local interests, is here the only just and
applicable one. The very object of having a local representation is in order
that those who have any interest in common which they do not share with
the general body of their countrymen may manage that joint interest by
themselves, and the purpose is contradicted if the distribution of the local

representation follows any other rule than the grouping of those joint
interests. There are local interests peculiar to every town, whether great or
small, and common to all its inhabitants; every town, therefore, without
distinction of size, ought to have its municipal council. It is equally obvious
that every town ought to have but one. The different quarters of the same
town have seldom or never any material diversities of local interest; they all
require to have the same things done, the same expenses incurred; and,
except as to their churches, which it is probably desirable to leave under
simply parochial management, the same arrangements may be made to
serve for all. Paving, lighting, water supply, drainage, port and market
regulations, can not, without great waste and inconvenience, be different for
different quarters of the same town. The subdivision of London into six or
seven independent districts, each with its separate arrangements for local
business (several of them without unity of administration even within
themselves), prevents the possibility of consecutive or well-regulated co-
operation for common objects, precludes any uniform principle for the
discharge of local duties, compels the general government to take things
upon itself which would be best left to local authorities if there were any
whose authority extended to the entire metropolis, and answers no purpose
but to keep up the fantastical trappings of that union of modern jobbing and
antiquated foppery, the Corporation of the City of London.
Another equally important principle is, that in each local circumscription
there should be but one elective body for all local business, not different
bodies for different parts of it. Division of labor does not mean cutting up
every business into minute fractions; it means the union of such operations
as are fit to be performed by the same persons, and the separation of such as
can be better performed by different persons. The executive duties of the
locality do indeed require to be divided into departments for the same
reason as those of the state—because they are of divers kinds, each
requiring knowledge peculiar to itself, and needing, for its due performance,
the undivided attention of a specially qualified functionary. But the reasons
for subdivision which apply to the execution do not apply to the control.
The business of the elective body is not to do the work, but to see that it is
properly done, and that nothing necessary is left undone. This function can
be fulfilled for all departments by the same superintending body, and by a
collective and comprehensive far better than by a minute and microscopic
view. It is as absurd in public affairs as it would be in private, that every

workman should be looked after by a superintendent to himself. The
government of the crown consists of many departments, and there are many
ministers to conduct them, but those ministers have not a Parliament apiece
to keep them to their duty. The local, like the national Parliament, has for its
proper business to consider the interest of the locality as a whole, composed
of parts all of which must be adapted to one another, and attended to in the
order and ratio of their importance. There is another very weighty reason
for uniting the control of all the business of a locality under one body. The
greatest imperfection of popular local institutions, and the chief cause of the
failure which so often attends them, is the low calibre of the men by whom
they are almost always carried on. That these should be of a very
miscellaneous character is, indeed, part of the usefulness of the institution;
it is that circumstance chiefly which renders it a school of political capacity
and general intelligence. But a school supposes teachers as well as scholars:
the utility of the instruction greatly depends on its bringing inferior minds
into contact with superior, a contact which in the ordinary course of life is
altogether exceptional, and the want of which contributes more than any
thing else to keep the generality of mankind on one level of contented
ignorance. The school, moreover, is worthless, and a school of evil instead
of good, if, through the want of due surveillance, and of the presence within
itself of a higher order of characters, the action of the body is allowed, as it
so often is, to degenerate into an equally unscrupulous and stupid pursuit of
the self-interest of its members. Now it is quite hopeless to induce persons
of a high class, either socially or intellectually, to take a share of local
administration in a corner by piecemeal, as members of a Paving Board or a
Drainage Commission. The entire local business of their town is not more
than a sufficient object to induce men whose tastes incline them, and whose
knowledge qualifies them for national affairs, to become members of a
mere local body, and devote to it the time and study which are necessary to
render their presence any thing more than a screen for the jobbing of
inferior persons, under the shelter of their responsibility. A mere Board of
Works, though it comprehend the entire metropolis, is sure to be composed
of the same class of persons as the vestries of the London parishes; nor is it
practicable, or even desirable, that such should not form the majority; but it
is important for every purpose which local bodies are designed to serve,
whether it be the enlightened and honest performance of their special
duties, or the cultivation of the political intelligence of the nation, that every

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

higher descriptions of local business, which might otherwise have been
conveniently managed within itself by each separate Union.
Besides the controlling council or local sub-Parliament, local business
has its executive department. With respect to this, the same questions arise
as with respect to the executive authorities in the state, and they may, for
the most part, be answered in the same manner. The principles applicable to
all public trusts are in substance the same. In the first place, each executive
officer should be single, and singly responsible for the whole of the duty
committed to his charge. In the next place, he should be nominated, not
elected. It is ridiculous that a surveyor, or a health officer, or even a
collector of rates should be appointed by popular suffrage. The popular
choice usually depends on interest with a few local leaders, who, as they are
not supposed to make the appointment, are not responsible for it; or on an
appeal to sympathy, founded on having twelve children, and having been a
rate-payer in the parish for thirty years. If, in cases of this description,
election by the population is a farce, appointment by the local
representative body is little less objectionable. Such bodies have a perpetual
tendency to become joint-stock associations for carrying into effect the
private jobs of their various members. Appointments should be made on the
individual responsibility of the chairman of the body, let him be called
mayor, chairman of Quarter Sessions, or by whatever other title. He
occupies in the locality a position analogous to that of the prime minister in
the state, and under a well organized system the appointment and watching
of the local officers would be the most important part of his duty; he
himself being appointed by the council from its own number, subject either
to annual re-election, or to removal by a vote of the body.
From the constitution of the local bodies, I now pass to the equally
important and more difficult subject of their proper attributions. This
question divides itself into two parts: what should be their duties, and
whether they should have full authority within the sphere of those duties, or
should be liable to any, and what, interference on the part of the central
government.
It is obvious, to begin with, that all business purely local—all which
concerns only a single locality—should devolve upon the local authorities.
The paving, lighting, and cleansing of the streets of a town, and, in ordinary
circumstances, the draining of its houses, are of little consequence to any

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

necessity of having at least inspectors appointed by the general government
to see that the local officers do their duty. If prisons are under local
management, the central government appoints inspectors of prisons, to take
care that the rules laid down by Parliament are observed, and to suggest
others if the state of the jails shows them to be requisite, as there are
inspectors of factories and inspectors of schools, to watch over the
observance of the Acts of Parliament relating to the first, and the fulfillment
of the conditions on which state assistance is granted to the latter.
But if the administration of justice, police and jails included, is both so
universal a concern, and so much a matter of general science, independent
of local peculiarities, that it may be, and ought to be, uniformly regulated
throughout the country, and its regulation enforced by more trained and
skillful hands than those of purely local authorities, there is also business,
such as the administration of the poor-laws, sanitary regulation, and others,
which, while really interesting to the whole country, can not, consistently
with the very purposes of local administration, be managed otherwise than
by the localities. In regard to such duties, the question arises how far the
local authorities ought to be trusted with discretionary power, free from any
superintendence or control of the state.
To decide this question, it is essential to consider what is the comparative
position of the central and the local authorities as capacity for the work, and
security against negligence or abuse. In the first place, the local
representative bodies and their officers are almost certain to be of a much
lower grade of intelligence and knowledge than Parliament and the national
executive. Secondly, besides being themselves of inferior qualifications,
they are watched by, and accountable to an inferior public opinion. The
public under whose eyes they act, and by whom they are criticized, is both
more limited in extent and generally far less enlightened than that which
surrounds and admonishes the highest authorities at the capital, while the
comparative smallness of the interests involved causes even that inferior
public to direct its thoughts to the subject less intently and with less
solicitude. Far less interference is exercised by the press and by public
discussion, and that which is exercised may with much more impunity be
disregarded in the proceedings of local than in those of national authorities.
Thus far, the advantage seems wholly on the side of management by the
central government; but, when we look more closely, these motives of
preference are found to be balanced by others fully as substantial. If the

local authorities and public are inferior to the central ones in knowledge of
the principles of administration, they have the compensatory advantage of a
far more direct interest in the result. A man's neighbors or his landlord may
be much cleverer than himself, and not without an indirect interest in his
prosperity, but, for all that, his interests will be better attended to in his own
keeping than in theirs. It is further to be remembered that, even supposing
the central government to administer through its own officers, its officers do
not act at the centre, but in the locality; and however inferior the local
public may be to the central, it is the local public alone which has any
opportunity of watching them, and it is the local opinion alone which either
acts directly upon their own conduct, or calls the attention of the
government to the points in which they may require correction. It is but in
extreme cases that the general opinion of the country is brought to bear at
all upon details of local administration, and still more rarely has it the
means of deciding upon them with any just appreciation of the case. Now
the local opinion necessarily acts far more forcibly upon purely local
administrators. They, in the natural course of things, are permanent
residents, not expecting to be withdrawn from the place when they cease to
exercise authority in it; and their authority itself depends, by supposition, on
the will of the local public. I need not dwell on the deficiencies of the
central authority in detailed knowledge of local persons and things, and the
too great engrossment of its time and thoughts by other concerns to admit of
its acquiring the quantity and quality of local knowledge necessary even for
deciding on complaints, and enforcing responsibility from so great a
number of local agents. In the details of management, therefore, the local
bodies will generally have the advantage, but in comprehension of the
principles even of purely local management, the superiority of the central
government, when rightly constituted, ought to be prodigious, not only by
reason of the probably great personal superiority of the individuals
composing it, and the multitude of thinkers and writers who are at all times
engaged in pressing useful ideas upon their notice, but also because the
knowledge and experience of any local authority is but local knowledge and
experience, confined to their own part of the country and its modes of
management, whereas the central government has the means of knowing all
that is to be learned from the united experience of the whole kingdom, with
the addition of easy access to that of foreign countries.

The practical conclusion from these premises is not difficult to draw. The
authority which is most conversant with principles should be supreme over
principles, while that which is most competent in details should have the
details left to it. The principal business of the central authority should be to
give instruction, of the local authority to apply it. Power may be localized,
but knowledge, to be most useful, must be centralized; there must be
somewhere a focus at which all its scattered rays are collected, that the
broken and colored lights which exist elsewhere may find there what is
necessary to complete and purify them. To every branch of local
administration which affects the general interest there should be a
corresponding central organ, either a minister, or some specially appointed
functionary under him, even if that functionary does no more than collect
information from all quarters, and bring the experience acquired in one
locality to the knowledge of another where it is wanted. But there is also
something more than this for the central authority to do. It ought to keep
open a perpetual communication with the localities—informing itself by
their experience, and them by its own; giving advice freely when asked,
volunteering it when seen to be required; compelling publicity and
recordation of proceedings, and enforcing obedience to every general law
which the Legislature has laid down on the subject of local management.
That some such laws ought to be laid down few are likely to deny. The
localities may be allowed to mismanage their own interests, but not to
prejudice those of others, nor violate those principles of justice between one
person and another of which it is the duty of the state to maintain the rigid
observance. If the local majority attempts to oppress the minority, or one
class another, the state is bound to interpose. For example, all local rates
ought to be voted exclusively by the local representative body; but that
body, though elected solely by rate-payers, may raise its revenues by
imposts of such a kind, or assess them in such a manner, as to throw an
unjust share of the burden on the poor, the rich, or some particular class of
the population: it is the duty, therefore, of the Legislature, while leaving the
mere amount of the local taxes to the discretion of the local body, to lay
down authoritatively the mode of taxation and rules of assessment which
alone the localities shall be permitted to use. Again, in the administration of
public charity, the industry and morality of the whole laboring population
depends, to a most serious extent, upon adherence to certain fixed principles
in awarding relief. Though it belongs essentially to the local functionaries to

determine who, according to those principles, is entitled to be relieved, the
national Parliament is the proper authority to prescribe the principles
themselves; and it would neglect a most important part of its duty if it did
not, in a matter of such grave national concern, lay down imperative rules,
and make effectual provision that those rules should not be departed from.
What power of actual interference with the local administrators it may be
necessary to retain, for the due enforcement of the laws, is a question of
detail into which it would be useless to enter. The laws themselves will
naturally define the penalties, and fix the mode of their enforcement. It may
be requisite, to meet extreme cases, that the power of the central authority
should extend to dissolving the local representative council or dismissing
the local executive, but not to making new appointments or suspending the
local institutions. Where Parliament has not interfered, neither ought any
branch of the executive to interfere with authority; but as an adviser and
critic, an enforcer of the laws, and a denouncer to Parliament or the local
constituencies of conduct which it deems condemnable, the functions of the
executive are of the greatest possible value.
Some may think that, however much the central authority surpasses the
local in knowledge of the principles of administration, the great object
which has been so much insisted on, the social and political education of
the citizens, requires that they should be left to manage these matters by
their own, however imperfect lights. To this it might be answered that the
education of the citizens is not the only thing to be considered; government
and administration do not exist for that alone, great as its importance is. But
the objection shows a very imperfect understanding of the function of
popular institutions as a means of political instruction. It is but a poor
education that associates ignorance with ignorance, and leaves them, if they
care for knowledge, to grope their way to it without help, and to do without
it if they do not. What is wanted is the means of making ignorance aware of
itself, and able to profit by knowledge; accustoming minds which know
only routine to act upon, and feel the value of principles; teaching them to
compare different modes of action, and learn, by the use of their reason, to
distinguish the best. When we desire to have a good school, we do not
eliminate the teacher. The old remark, "As the schoolmaster is, so will be
the school," is as true of the indirect schooling of grown people by public
business as of the schooling of youth in academies and colleges. A
government which attempts to do every thing is aptly compared by M.

Charles de Rémusat to a schoolmaster who does all the pupils' tasks for
them; he may be very popular with the pupils, but he will teach them little.
A government, on the other hand, which neither does any thing itself that
can possibly be done by any one else, nor shows any one else how to do any
thing, is like a school in which there is no schoolmaster, but only pupil-
teachers who have never themselves been taught.

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

common name, which makes them all glory in the past achievements in
arts, arms, politics, religious primacy, science, and literature, of any who
share the same designation, give rise to an amount of national feeling in the
population which, though still imperfect, has been sufficient to produce the
great events now passing before us, notwithstanding a great mixture of
races, and although they have never, in either ancient or modern history,
been under the same government, except while that government extended or
was extending itself over the greater part of the known world.
Where the sentiment of nationality exists in any force, there is a primâ
facie case for uniting all the members of the nationality under the same
government, and a government to themselves apart. This is merely saying
that the question of government ought to be decided by the governed. One
hardly knows what any division of the human race should be free to do if
not to determine with which of the various collective bodies of human
beings they choose to associate themselves. But, when a people are ripe for
free institutions, there is a still more vital consideration. Free institutions are
next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. Among a
people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different
languages, the united public opinion necessary to the working of
representative government can not exist. The influences which form
opinions and decide political acts are different in the different sections of
the country. An altogether different set of leaders have the confidence of
one part of the country and of another. The same books, newspapers,
pamphlets, speeches, do not reach them. One section does not know what
opinions or what instigations are circulating in another. The same incidents,
the same acts, the same system of government, affect them in different
ways, and each fears more injury to itself from the other nationalities than
from the common arbiter, the state. Their mutual antipathies are generally
much stronger than jealousy of the government. That any one of them feels
aggrieved by the policy of the common ruler is sufficient to determine
another to support that policy. Even if all are aggrieved, none feel that they
can rely on the others for fidelity in a joint resistance; the strength of none
is sufficient to resist alone, and each may reasonably think that it consults
its own advantage most by bidding for the favor of the government against
the rest. Above all, the grand and only reliable security in the last resort
against the despotism of the government is in that case wanting—the
sympathy of the army with the people. The military are the part of every

community in whom, from the nature of the case, the distinction between
their fellow-countrymen and foreigners is the deepest and strongest. To the
rest of the people foreigners are merely strangers; to the soldier, they are
men against whom he may be called, at a week's notice, to fight for life or
death. The difference to him is that between friends and enemies—we may
almost say between fellow-men and another kind of animals; for, as
respects the enemy, the only law is that of force, and the only mitigation the
same as in the case of other animals—that of simple humanity. Soldiers to
whose feelings half or three fourths of the subjects of the same government
are foreigners will have no more scruple in mowing them down, and no
more desire to ask the reason why, than they would have in doing the same
thing against declared enemies. An army composed of various nationalities
has no other patriotism than devotion to the flag. Such armies have been the
executioners of liberty through the whole duration of modern history. The
sole bond which holds them together is their officers and the government
which they serve, and their only idea, if they have any, of public duty, is
obedience to orders. A government thus supported, by keeping its
Hungarian regiments in Italy and its Italian in Hungary, can long continue
to rule in both places with the iron rod of foreign conquerors.
If it be said that so broadly-marked a distinction between what is due to a
fellow-countryman and what is due merely to a human creature is more
worthy of savages than of civilized beings, and ought, with the utmost
energy, to be contended against, no one holds that opinion more strongly
than myself. But this object, one of the worthiest to which human
endeavour can be directed, can never, in the present state of civilization, be
promoted by keeping different nationalities of any thing like equivalent
strength under the same government. In a barbarous state of society the case
is sometimes different. The government may then be interested in softening
the antipathies of the races, that peace may be preserved and the country
more easily governed. But when there are either free institutions, or a desire
for them, in any of the peoples artificially tied together, the interest of the
government lies in an exactly opposite direction. It is then interested in
keeping up and envenoming their antipathies, that they may be prevented
from coalescing, and it may be enabled to use some of them as tools for the
enslavement of others. The Austrian court has now for a whole generation
made these tactics its principal means of government, with what fatal
success, at the time of the Vienna insurrection and the Hungarian contest

the world knows too well. Happily there are now signs that improvement is
too far advanced to permit this policy to be any longer successful.
For the preceding reasons, it is in general a necessary condition of free
institutions that the boundaries of governments should coincide in the main
with those of nationalities. But several considerations are liable to conflict
in practice with this general principle. In the first place, its application is
often precluded by geographical hindrances. There are parts even of Europe
in which different nationalities are so locally intermingled that it is not
practicable for them to be under separate governments. The population of
Hungary is composed of Magyars, Slovaks, Croats, Serbs, Roumans, and in
some districts Germans, so mixed up as to be incapable of local separation;
and there is no course open to them but to make a virtue of necessity, and
reconcile themselves to living together under equal rights and laws. Their
community of servitude, which dates only from the destruction of
Hungarian independence in 1849, seems to be ripening and disposing them
for such an equal union. The German colony of East Prussia is cut off from
Germany by part of the ancient Poland, and being too weak to maintain
separate independence, must, if geographical continuity is to be maintained,
be either under a non-German government, or the intervening Polish
territory must be under a German one. Another considerable region in
which the dominant element of the population is German, the provinces of
Courland, Esthonia, and Livonia, is condemned by its local situation to
form part of a Slavonian state. In Eastern Germany itself there is a large
Slavonic population; Bohemia is principally Slavonic, Silesia and other
districts partially so. The most united country in Europe, France, is far from
being homogeneous: independently of the fragments of foreign nationalities
at its remote extremities, it consists, as language and history prove, of two
portions, one occupied almost exclusively by a Gallo-Roman population,
while in the other the Frankish, Burgundian, and other Teutonic races form
a considerable ingredient.
When proper allowance has been made for geographical exigencies,
another more purely moral and social consideration offers itself. Experience
proves that it is possible for one nationality to merge and be absorbed in
another; and when it was originally an inferior and more backward portion
of the human race, the absorption is greatly to its advantage. Nobody can
suppose that it is not more beneficial to a Breton, or a Basque of French
Navarre, to be brought into the current of the ideas and feelings of a highly

civilized and cultivated people—to be a member of the French nationality,
admitted on equal terms to all the privileges of French citizenship, sharing
the advantages of French protection, and the dignity and prestige of French
power—than to sulk on his own rocks, the half-savage relic of past times,
revolving in his own little mental orbit, without participation or interest in
the general movement of the world. The same remark applies to the
Welshman or the Scottish Highlander as members of the British nation.
Whatever really tends to the admixture of nationalities, and the blending
of their attributes and peculiarities in a common union, is a benefit to the
human race. Not by extinguishing types, of which, in these cases, sufficient
examples are sure to remain, but by softening their extreme forms, and
filling up the intervals between them. The united people, like a crossed
breed of animals (but in a still greater degree, because the influences in
operation are moral as well as physical), inherits the special aptitudes and
excellences of all its progenitors, protected by the admixture from being
exaggerated into the neighboring vices. But, to render this admixture
possible, there must be peculiar conditions. The combinations of
circumstances which occur, and which effect the result, are various.
The nationalities brought together under the same government may be
about equal in numbers and strength, or they may be very unequal. If
unequal, the least numerous of the two may either be the superior in
civilization, or the inferior. Supposing it to be superior, it may either,
through that superiority, be able to acquire ascendancy over the other, or it
may be overcome by brute strength and reduced to subjection. This last is a
sheer mischief to the human race, and one which civilized humanity with
one accord should rise in arms to prevent. The absorption of Greece by
Macedonia was one of the greatest misfortunes which ever happened to the
world; that of any of the principal countries of Europe by Russia would be a
similar one.
If the smaller nationality, supposed to be the more advanced in
improvement, is able to overcome the greater, as the Macedonians, re-
enforced by the Greeks, did Asia, and the English India, there is often a gain
to civilization, but the conquerors and the conquered can not in this case
live together under the same free institutions. The absorption of the
conquerors in the less advanced people would be an evil: these must be
governed as subjects, and the state of things is either a benefit or a

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

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

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

foreign encroachment on their individual strength. If they are, they will be
apt to think that they do not gain, by union with others, the equivalent of
what they sacrifice in their own liberty of action; and consequently,
whenever the policy of the confederation, in things reserved to its
cognizance, is different from that which any one of its members would
separately pursue, the internal and sectional breach will, through absence of
sufficient anxiety to preserve the Union, be in danger of going so far as to
dissolve it.
A third condition, not less important than the two others, is that there be
not a very marked inequality of strength among the several contracting
states. They can not, indeed, be exactly equal in resources; in all federations
there will be a gradation of power among the members; some will be more
populous, rich, and civilized than others. There is a wide difference in
wealth and population between New York and Rhode Island; between
Berne, and Zug or Glaris. The essential is, that there should not be any one
state so much more powerful than the rest as to be capable of vying in
strength with many of them combined. If there be such a one, and only one,
it will insist on being master of the joint deliberations; if there be two, they
will be irresistible when they agree; and whenever they differ, every thing
will be decided by a struggle for ascendancy between the rivals. This cause
is alone enough to reduce the German Bund to almost a nullity,
independently of its wretched internal constitution. It effects none of the
real purposes of a confederation. It has never bestowed on Germany a
uniform system of customs, nor so much as a uniform coinage, and has
served only to give Austria and Prussia a legal right of pouring in their
troops to assist the local sovereigns in keeping their subjects obedient to
despotism, while, in regard to external concerns, the Bund would make all
Germany a dependency of Prussia if there were no Austria, and of Austria if
there were no Prussia; and, in the mean time, each petty prince has little
choice but to be a partisan of one or the other, or to intrigue with foreign
governments against both.
There are two different modes of organizing a federal union. The federal
authorities may represent the governments solely, and their acts may be
obligatory only on the governments as such, or they may have the power of
enacting laws and issuing orders which are binding directly on individual
citizens. The former is the plan of the German so-called Confederation, and
of the Swiss Constitution previous to 1847. It was tried in America for a

few years immediately following the War of Independence. The other
principle is that of the existing Constitution of the United States, and has
been adopted within the last dozen years by the Swiss Confederacy. The
Federal Congress of the American Union is a substantive part of the
government of every individual state. Within the limits of its attributions, it
makes laws which are obeyed by every citizen individually, executes them
through its own officers, and enforces them by its own tribunals. This is the
only principle which has been found, or which is ever likely to produce an
effective federal government. A union between the governments only is a
mere alliance, and subject to all the contingencies which render alliances
precarious. If the acts of the President and of Congress were binding solely
on the governments of New York, Virginia, or Pennsylvania, and could only
be carried into effect through orders issued by those governments to officers
appointed by them, under responsibility to their own courts of justice, no
mandates of the federal government which were disagreeable to a local
majority would ever be executed. Requisitions issued to a government have
no other sanction or means of enforcement than war, and a federal army
would have to be always in readiness to enforce the decrees of the
federation against any recalcitrant state, subject to the probability that other
states, sympathizing with the recusant, and perhaps sharing its sentiments
on the particular point in dispute, would withhold their contingents, if not
send them to fight in the ranks of the disobedient State. Such a federation is
more likely to be a cause than a preventive of internal wars; and if such was
not its effect in Switzerland until the events of the years immediately
preceding 1847, it was only because the federal government felt its
weakness so strongly that it hardly ever attempted to exercise any real
authority. In America, the experiment of a federation on this principle broke
down in the first few years of its existence, happily while the men of
enlarged knowledge and acquired ascendancy who founded the
independence of the Republic were still alive to guide it through the
difficult transition. The "Federalist," a collection of papers by three of these
eminent men, written in explanation and defense of the new federal
Constitution while still awaiting the national acceptance, is even now the
most instructive treatise we possess on federal government. In Germany, the
more imperfect kind of federation, as all know, has not even answered the
purpose of maintaining an alliance. It has never, in any European war,
prevented single members of the confederation from allying themselves

with foreign powers against the rest. Yet this is the only federation which
seems possible among monarchical states. A king, who holds his power by
inheritance, not by delegation, and who can not be deprived of it, nor made
responsible to any one for its use, is not likely to renounce having a separate
army, or to brook the exercise of sovereign authority over his own subjects,
not through him, but directly by another power. To enable two or more
countries under kingly government to be joined together in an effectual
confederation, it seems necessary that they should all be under the same
king. England and Scotland were a federation of this description during the
interval of about a century between the union of the crowns and that of the
Parliaments. Even this was effective, not through federal institutions, for
none existed, but because the regal power in both Constitutions was so
nearly absolute as to enable the foreign policy of both to be shaped
according to a single will.
Under the more perfect mode of federation, where every citizen of each
particular state owes obedience to two governments, that of his own state
and that of the federation, it is evidently necessary not only that the
constitutional limits of the authority of each should be precisely and clearly
defined, but that the power to decide between them in any case of dispute
should not reside in either of the governments, or in any functionary subject
to it, but in an umpire independent of both. There must be a Supreme Court
of Justice, and a system of subordinate courts in every state of the Union,
before whom such questions shall be carried, and whose judgment on them,
in the last stage of appeal, shall be final. Every state of the Union, and the
federal government itself, as well as every functionary of each, must be
liable to be sued in those courts for exceeding their powers, or for non-
performance of their federal duties, and must in general be obliged to
employ those courts as the instrument for enforcing their federal rights. This
involves the remarkable consequence, actually realized in the United States,
that a court of justice, the highest federal tribunal, is supreme over the
various governments, both state and federal, having the right to declare that
any law made, or act done by them, exceeds the powers assigned to them by
the federal Constitution, and, in consequence, has no legal validity. It was
natural to feel strong doubts, before trial had been made, how such a
provision would work; whether the tribunal would have the courage to
exercise its constitutional power; if it did, whether it would exercise it
wisely, and whether the governments would consent to submit peaceably to

its decision. The discussions on the American Constitution, before its final
adoption, give evidence that these natural apprehensions were strongly felt;
but they are now entirely quieted, since, during the two generations and
more which have subsequently elapsed, nothing has occurred to verify
them, though there have at times been disputes of considerable acrimony,
and which became the badges of parties, respecting the limits of the
authority of the federal and state governments. The eminently beneficial
working of so singular a provision is probably, as M. de Tocqueville
remarks, in a great measure attributable to the peculiarity inherent in a court
of justice acting as such—namely, that it does not declare the law eo
nomine and in the abstract, but waits until a case between man and man is
brought before it judicially, involving the point in dispute; from which
arises the happy effect that its declarations are not made in a very early
stage of the controversy; that much popular discussion usually precedes
them; that the Court decides after hearing the point fully argued on both
sides by lawyers of reputation; decides only as much of the question at a
time as is required by the case before it, and its decision, instead of being
volunteered for political purposes, is drawn from it by the duty which it can
not refuse to fulfil, of dispensing justice impartially between adverse
litigants. Even these grounds of confidence would not have sufficed to
produce the respectful submission with which all authorities have yielded to
the decisions of the Supreme Court on the interpretation of the Constitution,
were it not that complete reliance has been felt, not only on the intellectual
pre-eminence of the judges composing that exalted tribunal, but on their
entire superiority over either private or sectional partialities. This reliance
has been in the main justified; but there is nothing which more vitally
imports the American people than to guard with the most watchful
solicitude against every thing which has the remotest tendency to produce
deterioration in the quality of this great national institution. The confidence
on which depends the stability of federal institutions has been for the first
time impaired by the judgment declaring slavery to be of common right,
and consequently lawful in the Territories while not yet constituted as
states, even against the will of a majority of their inhabitants. The main
pillar of the American Constitution is scarcely strong enough to bear many
more such shocks.
The tribunals which act as umpires between the federal and the state
governments naturally also decide all disputes between two states, or

between a citizen of one state and the government of another. The usual
remedies between nations, war and diplomacy, being precluded by the
federal union, it is necessary that a judicial remedy should supply their
place. The Supreme Court of the federation dispenses international law, and
is the first great example of what is now one of the most prominent wants of
civilized society, a real international tribunal.
The powers of a federal government naturally extend not only to peace
and war, and all questions which arise between the country and foreign
governments, but to making any other arrangements which are, in the
opinion of the states, necessary to their enjoyment of the full benefits of
union. For example, it is a great advantage to them that their mutual
commerce should be free, without the impediment of frontier duties and
custom-houses. But this internal freedom can not exist if each state has the
power of fixing the duties on interchange of commodities between itself and
foreign countries, since every foreign product let in by one state would be
let into all the rest; and hence all custom duties and trade regulations in the
United States are made or repealed by the federal government exclusively.
Again, it is a great convenience to the states to have but one coinage, and
but one system of weights and measures, which can only be insured if the
regulation of these matters is intrusted to the federal government. The
certainty and celerity of post-office communication is impeded, and its
expense increased, if a letter has to pass through half a dozen sets of public
offices, subject to different supreme authorities: it is convenient, therefore,
that all post-offices should be under the federal government; but on such
questions the feelings of different communities are liable to be different.
One of the American states, under the guidance of a man who has displayed
powers as a speculative political thinker superior to any who has appeared
in American politics since the authors of the "Federalist," [10] claimed a
veto for each state on the custom laws of the federal Congress; and that
statesman, in a posthumous work of great ability, which has been printed
and widely circulated by the Legislature of South Carolina, vindicated this
pretension on the general principle of limiting the tyranny of the majority,
and protecting minorities by admitting them to a substantial participation in
political power. One of the most disputed topics in American politics during
the early part of this century was whether the power of the federal
government ought to extend, and whether by the Constitution it did extend,
to making roads and canals at the cost of the Union. It is only in

transactions with foreign powers that the authority of the federal
government is of necessity complete. On every other subject the question
depends on how closely the people in general wish to draw the federal tie;
what portion of their local freedom of action they are willing to surrender,
in order to enjoy more fully the benefit of being one nation.
Respecting the fitting constitution of a federal government within itself,
much need not be said. It of course consists of a legislative branch and an
executive, and the constitution of each is amenable to the same principles as
that of representative governments generally. As regards the mode of
adapting these general principles to a federal government, the provision of
the American Constitution seems exceedingly judicious, that Congress
should consist of two houses, and that while one of them is constituted
according to population, each state being entitled to representatives in the
ratio of the number of its inhabitants, the other should represent not the
citizens, but the state governments, and every state, whether large or small,
should be represented in it by the same number of members. This provision
precludes any undue power from being exercised by the more powerful
states over the rest, and guarantees the reserved rights of the state
governments by making it impossible, as far as the mode of representation
can prevent, that any measure should pass Congress unless approved not
only by a majority of the citizens, but by a majority of the states. I have
before adverted to the further incidental advantage obtained of raising the
standard of qualifications in one of the houses. Being nominated by select
bodies, the Legislatures of the various states, whose choice, for reasons
already indicated, is more likely to fall on eminent men than any popular
election—who have not only the power of electing such, but a strong
motive to do so, because the influence of their state in the general
deliberations must be materially affected by the personal weight and
abilities of its representatives—the Senate of the United States, thus chosen,
has always contained nearly all the political men of established and high
reputation in the Union; while the Lower House of Congress has, in the
opinion of competent observers, been generally as remarkable for the
absence of conspicuous personal merit, as the Upper House for its presence.
When the conditions exist for the formation of efficient and durable
federal unions, the multiplication of them is always a benefit to the world. It
has the same salutary effect as any other extension of the practice of co-
operation, through which the weak, by uniting, can meet on equal terms

with the strong. By diminishing the number of those petty states which are
not equal to their own defense, it weakens the temptations to an aggressive
policy, whether working directly by arms, or through the prestige of
superior power. It of course puts an end to war and diplomatic quarrels, and
usually also to restrictions on commerce, between the states composing the
Union; while, in reference to neighboring nations, the increased military
strength conferred by it is of a kind to be almost exclusively available for
defensive, scarcely at all for aggressive purposes. A federal government has
not a sufficiently concentrated authority to conduct with much efficiency
any war but one of self-defense, in which it can rely on the voluntary co-
operation of every citizen; nor is there any thing very flattering to national
vanity or ambition in acquiring, by a successful war, not subjects, nor even
fellow-citizens, but only new, and perhaps troublesome independent
members of the confederation. The warlike proceedings of the Americans in
Mexico was purely exceptional, having been carried on principally by
volunteers, under the influence of the migratory propensity which prompts
individual Americans to possess themselves of unoccupied land, and
stimulated, if by any public motive, not by that of national aggrandizement,
but by the purely sectional purpose of extending slavery. There are few
signs in the proceedings of Americans, nationally or individually, that the
desire of territorial acquisition for their country as such has any
considerable power over them. Their hankering after Cuba is, in the same
manner, merely sectional, and the Northern States, those opposed to slavery,
have never in any way favored it.
The question may present itself (as in Italy at its present uprising)
whether a country which is determined to be united should form a complete
or a merely federal union. The point is sometimes necessarily decided by
the mere territorial magnitude of the united whole. There is a limit to the
extent of country which can advantageously be governed, or even whose
government can be conveniently superintended from a single centre. There
are vast countries so governed; but they, or at least their distant provinces,
are in general deplorably ill administered, and it is only when the
inhabitants are almost savages that they could not manage their affairs
better separately. This obstacle does not exist in the case of Italy, the size of
which does not come up to that of several very efficiently governed single
states in past and present times. The question then is, whether the different
parts of the nation require to be governed in a way so essentially different

that it is not probable the same Legislature, and the same ministry or
administrative body, will give satisfaction to them all. Unless this be the
case, which is a question of fact, it is better for them to be completely
united. That a totally different system of laws and very different
administrative institutions may exist in two portions of a country without
being any obstacle to legislative unity, is proved by the case of England and
Scotland. Perhaps, however, this undisturbed coexistence of two legal
systems under one united Legislature, making different laws for the two
sections of the country in adaptation to the previous differences, might not
be so well preserved, or the same confidence might not be felt in its
preservation, in a country whose legislators are more possessed (as is apt to
be the case on the Continent) with the mania for uniformity. A people
having that unbounded toleration which is characteristic of this country for
every description of anomaly, so long as those whose interests it concerns
do not feel aggrieved by it, afforded an exceptionally advantageous field for
trying this difficult experiment. In most countries, if it was an object to
retain different systems of law, it might probably be necessary to retain
distinct legislatures as guardians of them, which is perfectly compatible
with a national Parliament and king, or a national Parliament without a
king, supreme over the external relations of all the members of the body.
Whenever it is not deemed necessary to maintain permanently, in the
different provinces, different systems of jurisprudence, and fundamental
institutions grounded on different principles, it is always practicable to
reconcile minor diversities with the maintenance of unity of government.
All that is needful is to give a sufficiently large sphere of action to the local
authorities. Under one and the same central government there may be local
governors, and provincial assemblies for local purposes. It may happen, for
instance, that the people of different provinces may have preferences in
favor of different modes of taxation. If the general Legislature could not be
depended on for being guided by the members for each province in
modifying the general system of taxation to suit that province, the
Constitution might provide that as many of the expenses of the government
as could by any possibility be made local should be defrayed by local rates
imposed by the provincial assemblies, and that those which must of
necessity be general, such as the support of an army and navy, should, in the
estimates for the year, be apportioned among the different provinces
according to some general estimate of their resources, the amount assigned

to each being levied by the local assembly on the principles most acceptable
to the locality, and paid en bloc into the national treasury. A practice
approaching to this existed even in the old French monarchy, so far as
regarded the pays d'états, each of which, having consented or been required
to furnish a fixed sum, was left to assess it upon the inhabitants by its own
officers, thus escaping the grinding despotism of the royal intendants and
subdélégués; and this privilege is always mentioned as one of the
advantages which mainly contributed to render them, as some of them were,
the most flourishing provinces of France.
Identity of central government is compatible with many different degrees
of centralisation, not only administrative, but even legislative. A people may
have the desire and the capacity for a closer union than one merely federal,
while yet their local peculiarities and antecedents render considerable
diversities desirable in the details of their government. But if there is a real
desire on all hands to make the experiment successful, there needs seldom
be any difficulty in not only preserving these diversities, but giving them
the guaranty of a constitutional provision against any attempt at
assimilation except by the voluntary act of those who would be affected by
the change.

Chapter XVIII—Of the Government of
Dependencies by a Free State.
Free states, like all others, may possess dependencies, acquired either by
conquest or by colonization, and our own is the greatest instance of the kind
in modern history. It is a most important question how such dependencies
ought to be governed.
It is unnecessary to discuss the case of small posts, like Gibraltar, Aden,
or Heligoland, which are held only as naval or military positions. The
military or naval object is in this case paramount, and the inhabitants can
not, consistently with it, be admitted to the government of the place, though
they ought to be allowed all liberties and privileges compatible with that
restriction, including the free management of municipal affairs, and, as a
compensation for being locally sacrificed to the convenience of the
governing state, should be admitted to equal rights with its native subjects
in all other parts of the empire.
Outlying territories of some size and population, which are held as
dependencies, that is, which are subject, more or less, to acts of sovereign
power on the part of the paramount country, without being equally
represented (if represented at all) in its Legislature, may be divided into two
classes. Some are composed of people of similar civilization to the ruling
country, capable of, and ripe for, representative government, such as the
British possessions in America and Australia. Others, like India, are still at a
great distance from that state.
In the case of dependencies of the former class, this country has at length
realized, in rare completeness, the true principle of government. England
has always felt under a certain degree of obligation to bestow on such of her
outlying populations as were of her own blood and language, and on some
who were not, representative institutions formed in imitation of her own;
but, until the present generation, she has been on the same bad level with
other countries as to the amount of self-government which she allowed
them to exercise through the representative institutions that she conceded to
them. She claimed to be the supreme arbiter even of their purely internal

concerns, according to her own, not their ideas of how those concerns could
be best regulated. This practice was a natural corollary from the vicious
theory of colonial policy—once common to all Europe, and not yet
completely relinquished by any other people—which regarded colonies as
valuable by affording markets for our commodities that could be kept
entirely to ourselves; a privilege we valued so highly that we thought it
worth purchasing by allowing to the colonies the same monopoly of our
market for their own productions which we claimed for our commodities in
theirs. This notable plan for enriching them and ourselves by making each
pay enormous sums to the other, dropping the greatest part by the way, has
been for some time abandoned. But the bad habit of meddling in the
internal government of the colonies did not at once die out when we
relinquished the idea of making any profit by it. We continued to torment
them, not for any benefit to ourselves, but for that of a section or faction
among the colonists; and this persistence in domineering cost us a Canadian
rebellion before we had the happy thought of giving it up. England was like
an ill brought-up elder brother, who persists in tyrannizing over the younger
ones from mere habit, till one of them, by a spirited resistance, though with
unequal strength, gives him notice to desist. We were wise enough not to
require a second warning. A new era in the colonial policy of nations began
with Lord Durham's Report; the imperishable memorial of that nobleman's
courage, patriotism, and enlightened liberality, and of the intellect and
practical sagacity of its joint authors, Mr. Wakefield and the lamented
Charles Buller. [11]
It is now a fixed principle of the policy of Great Britain, professed in
theory and faithfully adhered to in practice, that her colonies of European
race, equally with the parent country, possess the fullest measure of internal
self-government. They have been allowed to make their own free
representative constitutions by altering in any manner they thought fit the
already very popular constitutions which we had given them. Each is
governed by its own Legislature and executive, constituted on highly
democratic principles. The veto of the crown and of Parliament, though
nominally reserved, is only exercised (and that very rarely) on questions
which concern the empire, and not solely the particular colony. How liberal
a construction has been given to the distinction between imperial and
colonial questions is shown by the fact that the whole of the unappropriated
lands in the regions behind our American and Australian colonies have been

given up to the uncontrolled disposal of the colonial communities, though
they might, without injustice, have been kept in the hands of the imperial
government, to be administered for the greatest advantage of future
emigrants from all parts of the empire. Every colony has thus as full power
over its own affairs as it could have if it were a member of even the loosest
federation, and much fuller than would belong to it under the Constitution
of the United States, being free even to tax at its pleasure the commodities
imported from the mother country. Their union with Great Britain is the
slightest kind of federal union; but not a strictly equal federation, the
mother country retaining to itself the powers of a federal government,
though reduced in practice to their very narrowest limits. This inequality is,
of course, as far as it goes, a disadvantage to the dependencies, which have
no voice in foreign policy, but are bound by the decisions of the superior
country. They are compelled to join England in war without being in any
way consulted previous to engaging in it.
Those (now happily not a few) who think that justice is as binding on
communities as it is on individuals, and that men are not warranted in doing
to other countries, for the supposed benefit of their own country, what they
would not be justified in doing to other men for their own benefit, feel even
this limited amount of constitutional subordination on the part of the
colonies to be a violation of principle, and have often occupied themselves
in looking out for means by which it may be avoided. With this view it has
been proposed by some that the colonies should return representatives to the
British Legislature, and by others that the powers of our own, as well as of
their Parliaments, should be confined to internal policy, and that there
should be another representative body for foreign and imperial concerns, in
which last the dependencies of Great Britain should be represented in the
same manner, and with the same completeness as Great Britain itself. On
this system there would be a perfectly equal federation between the mother
country and her colonies, then no longer dependencies.
The feelings of equity and conceptions of public morality from which
these suggestions emanate are worthy of all praise, but the suggestions
themselves are so inconsistent with rational principles of government that it
is doubtful if they have been seriously accepted as a possibility by any
reasonable thinker. Countries separated by half the globe do not present the
natural conditions for being under one government, or even members of one
federation. If they had sufficiently the same interests, they have not, and

never can have, a sufficient habit of taking council together. They are not
part of the same public; they do not discuss and deliberate in the same
arena, but apart, and have only a most imperfect knowledge of what passes
in the minds of one another. They neither know each other's objects, nor
have confidence in each other's principles of conduct. Let any Englishman
ask himself how he should like his destinies to depend on an assembly of
which one third was British American, and another third South African and
Australian. Yet to this it must come if there were any thing like fair or equal
representation; and would not every one feel that the representatives of
Canada and Australia, even in matters of an imperial character, could not
know or feel any sufficient concern for the interests, opinions, or wishes of
English, Irish, and Scotch? Even for strictly federative purposes the
conditions do not exist which we have seen to be essential to a federation.
England is sufficient for her own protection without the colonies, and would
be in a much stronger, as well as more dignified position, if separated from
them, than when reduced to be a single member of an American, African,
and Australian confederation. Over and above the commerce which she
might equally enjoy after separation, England derives little advantage,
except in prestige, from her dependencies, and the little she does derive is
quite outweighed by the expense they cost her, and the dissemination they
necessitate of her naval and military force, which, in case of war, or any real
apprehension of it, requires to be double or treble what would be needed for
the defense of this country alone.
But, though Great Britain could do perfectly well without her colonies,
and though, on every principle of morality and justice, she ought to consent
to their separation, should the time come when, after full trial of the best
form of union, they deliberately desire to be dissevered, there are strong
reasons for maintaining the present slight bond of connection so long as not
disagreeable to the feelings of either party. It is a step, as far as it goes,
towards universal peace and general friendly co-operation among nations. It
renders war impossible among a large number of otherwise independent
communities, and, moreover, hinders any of them from being absorbed into
a foreign state, and becoming a source of additional aggressive strength to
some rival power, either more despotic or closer at hand, which might not
always be so unambitious or so pacific as Great Britain. It at least keeps the
markets of the different countries open to one another, and prevents that
mutual exclusion by hostile tariffs which none of the great communities of

mankind except England have yet outgrown. And in the case of the British
possessions it has the advantage, especially valuable at the present time, of
adding to the moral influence and weight in the councils of the world of the
power which, of all in existence, best understands liberty—and, whatever
may have been its errors in the past, has attained to more of conscience and
moral principle in its dealings with foreigners than any other great nation
seems either to conceive as possible or recognize as desirable. Since, then,
the union can only continue, while it does continue, on the footing of an
unequal federation, it is important to consider by what means this small
amount of inequality can be prevented from being either onerous or
humiliating to the communities occupying the less exalted position.
The only inferiority necessarily inherent in the case is that the mother
country decides, both for the colonies and for herself, on questions of peace
and war. They gain, in return, the obligation on the mother country to repel
aggressions directed against them; but, except when the minor community
is so weak that the protection of a stronger power is indispensable to it,
reciprocity of obligation is not a full equivalent for non-admission to a
voice in the deliberations. It is essential, therefore, that in all wars, save
those which, like the Caffre or New Zealand wars, are incurred for the sake
of the particular colony, the colonists should not (without their own
voluntary request) be called on to contribute any thing to the expense
except what may be required for the specific local defense of their ports,
shores, and frontiers against invasion. Moreover, as the mother country
claims the privilege, at her sole discretion, of taking measures or pursuing a
policy which may expose them to attack, it is just that she should undertake
a considerable portion of the cost of their military defense even in time of
peace; the whole of it, so far as it depends upon a standing army.
But there is a means, still more effectual than these, by which, and in
general by which alone, a full equivalent can be given to a smaller
community for sinking its individuality, as a substantive power among
nations, in the greater individuality of a wide and powerful empire. This one
indispensable, and, at the same time, sufficient expedient, which meets at
once the demands of justice and the growing exigencies of policy, is to open
the service of government in all its departments, and in every part of the
empire, on perfectly equal terms, to the inhabitants of the colonies. Why
does no one ever hear a breath of disloyalty from the Islands in the British
Channel? By race, religion, and geographical position they belong less to

England than to France; but, while they enjoy, like Canada and New South
Wales, complete control over their internal affairs and their taxation, every
office or dignity in the gift of the crown is freely open to the native of
Guernsey or Jersey. Generals, admirals, peers of the United Kingdom are
made, and there is nothing which hinders prime ministers to be made from
those insignificant islands. The same system was commenced in reference
to the colonies generally by an enlightened colonial secretary, too early lost,
Sir William Molesworth, when he appointed Mr. Hinckes, a leading
Canadian politician, to a West Indian government. It is a very shallow view
of the springs of political action in a community which thinks such things
unimportant because the number of those in a position actually to profit by
the concession might not be very considerable. That limited number would
be composed precisely of those who have most moral power over the rest;
and men are not so destitute of the sense of collective degradation as not to
feel the withholding of an advantage from even one person, because of a
circumstance which they all have in common with him, an affront to all. If
we prevent the leading men of a community from standing forth to the
world as its chiefs and representatives in the general councils of mankind,
we owe it both to their legitimate ambition and to the just pride of the
community to give them in return an equal chance of occupying the same
prominent position in a nation of greater power and importance. Were the
whole service of the British crown opened to the natives of the Ionian
Islands, we should hear no more of the desire for union with Greece. Such a
union is not desirable for the people, to whom it would be a step backward
in civilization; but it is no wonder if Corfu, which has given a minister of
European reputation to the Russian Empire, and a president to Greece itself
before the arrival of the Bavarians, should feel it a grievance that its people
are not admissable to the highest posts in some government or other.
Thus far of the dependencies whose population is in a sufficiently
advanced state to be fitted for representative government; but there are
others which have not attained that state, and which, if held at all, must be
governed by the dominant country, or by persons delegated for that purpose
by it. This mode of government is as legitimate as any other, if it is the one
which in the existing state of civilization of the subject people most
facilitates their transition to a higher stage of improvement. There are, as we
have already seen, conditions of society in which a vigorous despotism is in
itself the best mode of government for training the people in what is

specifically wanting to render them capable of a higher civilization. There
are others, in which the mere fact of despotism has indeed no beneficial
effect, the lessons which it teaches having already been only too completely
learned, but in which, there being no spring of spontaneous improvement in
the people themselves, their almost only hope of making any steps in
advance depends on the chances of a good despot. Under a native
despotism, a good despot is a rare and transitory accident; but when the
dominion they are under is that of a more civilized people, that people
ought to be able to supply it constantly. The ruling country ought to be able
to do for its subjects all that could be done by a succession of absolute
monarchs, guaranteed by irresistible force against the precariousness of
tenure attendant on barbarous despotisms, and qualified by their genius to
anticipate all that experience has taught to the more advanced nation. Such
is the ideal rule of a free people over a barbarous or semi-barbarous one. We
need not expect to see that ideal realized; but, unless some approach to it is,
the rulers are guilty of a dereliction of the highest moral trust which can
devolve upon a nation; and if they do not even aim at it, they are selfish
usurpers, on a par in criminality with any of those whose ambition and
rapacity have sported from age to age with the destiny of masses of
mankind.
As it is already a common, and is rapidly tending to become the universal
condition of the more backward populations to be either held in direct
subjection by the more advanced, or to be under their complete political
ascendancy, there are in this age of the world few more important problems
than how to organize this rule, so as to make it a good instead of an evil to
the subject people, providing them with the best attainable present
government, and with the conditions most favorable to future permanent
improvement. But the mode of fitting the government for this purpose is by
no means so well understood as the conditions of good government in a
people capable of governing themselves. We may even say that it is not
understood at all.
The thing appears perfectly easy to superficial observers. If India (for
example) is not fit to govern itself, all that seems to them required is that
there should be a minister to govern it, and that this minister, like all other
British ministers, should be responsible to the British Parliament.
Unfortunately this, though the simplest mode of attempting to govern a
dependency, is about the worst, and betrays in its advocates a total want of

comprehension of the conditions of good government. To govern a country
under responsibility to the people of that country, and to govern one country
under responsibility to the people of another, are two very different things.
What makes the excellence of the first is, that freedom is preferable to
despotism: but the last is despotism. The only choice the case admits is a
choice of despotisms, and it is not certain that the despotism of twenty
millions is necessarily better than that of a few or of one; but it is quite
certain that the despotism of those who neither hear, nor see, nor know any
thing about their subjects, has many chances of being worse than that of
those who do. It is not usually thought that the immediate agents of
authority govern better because they govern in the name of an absent
master, and of one who has a thousand more pressing interests to attend to.
The master may hold them to a strict responsibility, enforced by heavy
penalties, but it is very questionable if those penalties will often fall in the
right place.
It is always under great difficulties, and very imperfectly, that a country
can be governed by foreigners, even when there is no extreme disparity in
habits and ideas between the rulers and the ruled. Foreigners do not feel
with the people. They can not judge, by the light in which a thing appears to
their own minds, or the manner in which it affects their feelings, how it will
affect the feelings or appear to the minds of the subject population. What a
native of the country, of average practical ability, knows as it were by
instinct, they have to learn slowly, and, after all, imperfectly, by study and
experience. The laws, the customs, the social relations for which they have
to legislate, instead of being familiar to them from childhood, are all strange
to them. For most of their detailed knowledge they must depend on the
information of natives, and it is difficult for them to know whom to trust.
They are feared, suspected, probably disliked by the population; seldom
sought by them except for interested purposes; and they are prone to think
that the servilely submissive are the trustworthy. Their danger is of
despising the natives; that of the natives is, of disbelieving that any thing
the strangers do can be intended for their good. These are but a part of the
difficulties that any rulers have to struggle with, who honestly attempt to
govern well a country in which they are foreigners. To overcome these
difficulties in any degree will always be a work of much labor, requiring a
very superior degree of capacity in the chief administrators, and a high
average among the subordinates; and the best organization of such a

government is that which will best insure the labor, develop the capacity,
and place the highest specimens of it in the situations of greatest trust.
Responsibility to an authority which has gone through none of the labor,
acquired none of the capacity, and for the most part is not even aware that
either, in any peculiar degree, is required, can not be regarded as a very
effectual expedient for accomplishing these ends.
The government of a people by itself has a meaning and a reality, but
such a thing as government of one people by another does not and can not
exist. One people may keep another as a warren or preserve for its own use,
a place to make money in, a human-cattle farm to be worked for the profit
of its own inhabitants; but if the good of the governed is the proper business
of a government, it is utterly impossible that a people should directly attend
to it. The utmost they can do is to give some of their best men a commission
to look after it, to whom the opinion of their own country can neither be
much of a guide in the performance of their duty, nor a competent judge of
the mode in which it has been performed. Let any one consider how the
English themselves would be governed if they knew and cared no more
about their own affairs than they know and care about the affairs of the
Hindoos. Even this comparison gives no adequate idea of the state of the
case; for a people thus indifferent to politics altogether would probably be
simply acquiescent, and let the government alone; whereas in the case of
India, a politically active people like the English, amid habitual
acquiescence, are every now and then interfering, and almost always in the
wrong place. The real causes which determine the prosperity or
wretchedness, the improvement or deterioration of the Hindoos, are too far
off to be within their ken. They have not the knowledge necessary for
suspecting the existence of those causes, much less for judging of their
operation. The most essential interests of the country may be well
administered without obtaining any of their approbation, or mismanaged to
almost any excess without attracting their notice. The purposes for which
they are principally tempted to interfere, and control the proceedings of
their delegates, are of two kinds. One is to force English ideas down the
throats of the natives; for instance, by measures of proselytism, or acts
intentionally or unintentionally offensive to the religious feelings of the
people. This misdirection of opinion in the ruling country is instructively
exemplified (the more so, because nothing is meant but justice and fairness,
and as much impartiality as can be expected from persons really convinced)

by the demand now so general in England for having the Bible taught, at the
option of pupils or of their parents, in the government schools. From the
European point of view nothing can wear a fairer aspect, or seem less open
to objection on the score of religious freedom. To Asiatic eyes it is quite
another thing. No Asiatic people ever believes that a government puts its
paid officers and official machinery into motion unless it is bent upon an
object; and when bent on an object, no Asiatic believes that any
government, except a feeble and contemptible one, pursues it by halves. If
government schools and schoolmasters taught Christianity, whatever
pledges might be given of teaching it only to those who spontaneously
sought it, no amount of evidence would ever persuade the parents that
improper means were not used to make their children Christians, or, at all
events, outcasts from Hindooism. If they could, in the end, be convinced of
the contrary, it would only be by the entire failure of the schools, so
conducted, to make any converts. If the teaching had the smallest effect in
promoting its object, it would compromise not only the utility and even
existence of the government education, but perhaps the safety of the
government itself. An English Protestant would not be easily induced, by
disclaimers of proselytism, to place his children in a Roman Catholic
seminary; Irish Catholics will not send their children to schools in which
they can be made Protestants; and we expect that Hindoos, who believe that
the privileges of Hindooism can be forfeited by a merely physical act, will
expose theirs to the danger of being made Christians!
Such is one of the modes in which the opinion of the dominant country
tends to act more injuriously than beneficially on the conduct of its deputed
governors. In other respects, its interference is likely to be oftenest
exercised where it will be most pertinaciously demanded, and that is, on
behalf of some interest of the English settlers. English settlers have friends
at home, have organs, have access to the public; they have a common
language, and common ideas with their countrymen; any complaint by an
Englishman is more sympathetically heard, even if no unjust preference is
intentionally accorded to it. Now if there be a fact to which all experience
testifies, it is that, when a country holds another in subjection, the
individuals of the ruling people who resort to the foreign country to make
their fortunes are of all others those who most need to be held under
powerful restraint. They are always one of the chief difficulties of the
government. Armed with the prestige and filled with the scornful

overbearingness of the conquering nation, they have the feelings inspired by
absolute power without its sense of responsibility. Among a people like that
of India, the utmost efforts of the public authorities are not enough for the
effectual protection of the weak against the strong; and of all the strong, the
European settlers are the strongest. Wherever the demoralizing effect of the
situation is not in a most remarkable degree corrected by the personal
character of the individual, they think the people of the country mere dirt
under their feet: it seems to them monstrous that any rights of the natives
should stand in the way of their smallest pretensions; the simplest act of
protection to the inhabitants against any act of power on their part which
they may consider useful to their commercial objects they denounce, and
sincerely regard as an injury. So natural is this state of feeling in a situation
like theirs, that, even under the discouragement which it has hitherto met
with from the ruling authorities, it is impossible that more or less of the
spirit should not perpetually break out. The government, itself free from this
spirit, is never able sufficiently to keep it down in the young and raw even
of its own civil and military officers, over whom it has so much more
control than over the independent residents. As it is with the English in
India, so, according to trustworthy testimony, it is with the French in
Algiers; so with the Americans in the countries conquered from Mexico; so
it seems to be with the Europeans in China, and already even in Japan: there
is no necessity to recall how it was with the Spaniards in South America. In
all these cases, the government to which these private adventurers are
subject is better than they, and does the most it can to protect the natives
against them. Even the Spanish government did this, sincerely and
earnestly, though ineffectually, as is known to every reader of Mr. Helps'
instructive history. Had the Spanish government been directly accountable
to Spanish opinion, we may question if it would have made the attempt, for
the Spaniards, doubtless, would have taken part with their Christian friends
and relations rather than with pagans. The settlers, not the natives, have the
ear of the public at home; it is they whose representations are likely to pass
for truth, because they alone have both the means and the motive to press
them perseveringly upon the inattentive and uninterested public mind. The
distrustful criticism with which Englishmen, more than any other people,
are in the habit of scanning the conduct of their country towards foreigners,
they usually reserve for the proceedings of the public authorities. In all
questions between a government and an individual, the presumption in

every Englishman's mind is that the government is in the wrong. And when
the resident English bring the batteries of English political action to bear
upon any of the bulwarks erected to protect the natives against their
encroachments, the executive, with their real but faint velleities of
something better, generally find it safer to their Parliamentary interest, and,
at any rate, less troublesome, to give up the disputed position than to defend
it.
What makes matters worse is that, when the public mind is invoked (as,
to its credit, the English mind is extremely open to be) in the name of
justice and philanthropy in behalf of the subject community or race, there is
the same probability of its missing the mark; for in the subject community
also there are oppressors and oppressed—powerful individuals or classes,
and slaves prostrate before them; and it is the former, not the latter, who
have the means of access to the English public. A tyrant or sensualist who
has been deprived of the power he had abused, and, instead of punishment,
is supported in as great wealth and splendor as he ever enjoyed; a knot of
privileged landholders, who demand that the state should relinquish to them
its reserved right to a rent from their lands, or who resent as a wrong any
attempt to protect the masses from their extortion—these have no difficulty
in procuring interested or sentimental advocacy in the British Parliament
and press. The silent myriads obtain none.
The preceding observations exemplify the operation of a principle—
which might be called an obvious one, were it not that scarcely anybody
seems to be aware of it—that, while responsibility to the governed is the
greatest of all securities for good government, responsibility to somebody
else not only has no such tendency, but is as likely to produce evil as good.
The responsibility of the British rulers of India to the British nation is
chiefly useful because, when any acts of the government are called in
question, it insures publicity and discussion; the utility of which does not
require that the public at large should comprehend the point at issue,
provided there are any individuals among them who do; for a merely moral
responsibility not being responsibility to the collective people, but to every
separate person among them who forms a judgment, opinions may be
weighed as well as counted, and the approbation or disapprobation of one
person well versed in the subject may outweigh that of thousands who
know nothing about it at all. It is doubtless a useful restraint upon the
immediate rulers that they can be put upon their defense, and that one or

two of the jury will form an opinion worth having about their conduct,
though that of the remainder will probably be several degrees worse than
none. Such as it is, this is the amount of benefit to India from the control
exercised over the Indian government by the British Parliament and people.
It is not by attempting to rule directly a country like India, but by giving
it good rulers, that the English people can do their duty to that country; and
they can scarcely give it a worse one than an English cabinet minister, who
is thinking of English, not Indian politics; who does not remains long
enough in office to acquire an intelligent interest in so complicated a
subject; upon whom the factitious public opinion got up in Parliament,
consisting of two or three fluent speakers, acts with as much force as if it
were genuine; while he is under none of the influences of training and
position which would lead or qualify him to form an honest opinion of his
own. A free country which attempts to govern a distant dependency,
inhabited by a dissimilar people, by means of a branch of its own executive,
will almost inevitably fail. The only mode which has any chance of
tolerable success is to govern through a delegated body of a comparatively
permanent character, allowing only a right of inspection and a negative
voice to the changeable administration of the state. Such a body did exist in
the case of India; and I fear that both India and England will pay a severe
penalty for the shortsighted policy by which this intermediate instrument of
government was done away with.
It is of no avail to say that such a delegated body can not have all the
requisites of good government; above all, can not have that complete and
over-operative identity of interest with the governed which it is so difficult
to obtain even where the people to be ruled are in some degree qualified to
look after their own affairs. Real good government is not compatible with
the conditions of the case. There is but a choice of imperfections. The
problem is, so to construct the governing body that, under the difficulties of
the position, it shall have as much interest as possible in good government,
and as little in bad. Now these conditions are best found in an intermediate
body. A delegated administration has always this advantage over a direct
one, that it has, at all events, no duty to perform except to the governed. It
has no interests to consider except theirs. Its own power of deriving profit
from misgovernment may be reduced—in the latest Constitution of the East
India Company it was reduced—to a singularly small amount; and it can be
kept entirely clear of bias from the individual or class interests of any one

else. When the home government and Parliament are swayed by such partial
influences in the exercise of the power reserved to them in the last resort,
the intermediate body is the certain advocate and champion of the
dependency before the imperial tribunal. The intermediate body, moreover,
is, in the natural course of things, chiefly composed of persons who have
acquired professional knowledge of this part of their country's concerns;
who have been trained to it in the place itself, and have made its
administration the main occupation of their lives. Furnished with these
qualifications, and not being liable to lose their office from the accidents of
home politics, they identify their character and consideration with their
special trust, and have a much more permanent interest in the success of
their administration, and in the prosperity of the country which they
administer, than a member of a cabinet under a representative constitution
can possibly have in the good government of any country except the one
which he serves. So far as the choice of those who carry on the management
on the spot devolves upon this body, their appointment is kept out of the
vortex of party and Parliamentary jobbing, and freed from the influence of
those motives to the abuse of patronage for the reward of adherents, or to
buy off those who would otherwise be opponents, which are always
stronger with statesmen of average honesty than a conscientious sense of
the duty of appointing the fittest man. To put this one class of appointments
as far as possible out of harm's way is of more consequence than the worst
which can happen to all other offices in the state; for, in every other
department, if the officer is unqualified, the general opinion of the
community directs him in a certain degree what to do; but in the position of
the administrators of a dependency where the people are not fit to have the
control in their own hands, the character of the government entirely
depends on the qualifications, moral and intellectual, of the individual
functionaries.
It can not be too often repeated that, in a country like India, every thing
depends on the personal qualities and capacities of the agents of
government. This truth is the cardinal principle of Indian administration.
The day when it comes to be thought that the appointment of persons to
situations of trust from motives of convenience, already so criminal in
England, can be practiced with impunity in India, will be the beginning of
the decline and fall of our empire there. Even with a sincere intention of
preferring the best candidate, it will not do to rely on chance for supplying