Preface
Those who have done me the honour of reading my previous writings will
probably receive no strong impression of novelty from the present volume; for
the principles are those to which I have been working up during the greater part
of my life, and most of the practical suggestions have been anticipated by
others or by myself. There is novelty, however, in the fact of bringing them
together, and exhibiting them in their 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 anything which he really feels to be valuable in
his own creed. When so many feel obscurely the want of such a doctrine, and so
few even flatter themselves that they have attained it, any one may without
presumption offer what his own thoughts, and the best that he knows of those of
others, are able to contribute towards its formation.
Chapter 1
To what extent Forms of Government are a Matter of Choice
All speculations concerning
forms of government bear the impress, more or less exclusive, of two conflicting
theories respecting political 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 fulfil those purposes.
Having satisfied ourselves on these two points, and ascertained the form of
government which combines the greatest amount of good with the least of evil,
what further remains is to obtain the concurrence of our countrymen, or those
for whom the institutions are intended, in the 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 plough, or a threshing machine.
To these stand opposed another kind of political reasoners, who are so far
from assimilating a form of government to a machine, that they regard it as a
sort of spontaneous product, and the science of 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
cannot 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
superduce upon any people whose nature and circumstances had not spontaneously
evolved it.
It is difficult to decide which of these doctrines would be the most absurd,
if we could suppose either of them held as an exclusive theory. But the
principles which men profess, on any controverted subject, are usually a very
incomplete exponent of the opinions they really hold. No one believes that every
people is capable of working every sort of institutions.
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 fulfil
its purposes. The word "do" is to be understood as including
forbearances as well as acts. They must be capable of fulfilling the conditions
of action, and the conditions of self-restraint, which are necessary either for
keeping the established polity in existence, or for enabling it to achieve the
ends, its conduciveness to which forms its recommendation.
The failure of any of these conditions renders a form of government, whatever
favourable 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 civilised 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 fulfil
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 fulfil
the duties which a particular form of government requires of them.
A rude
people, though in some degree alive to the benefits of civilised society, may be
unable to practise the forbearance which it demands: their passions may be too
violent, or their personal pride too exacting, to forego private conflict, and
leave to the laws the avenging of their real or supposed wrongs. In such a case,
a civilised government, to be really advantageous to them, will require to be in
a considerable degree despotic: to be one over which they do not themselves
exercise control, and which imposes a great amount of forcible restraint upon
their actions.
Again, a people must be considered unfit for more than a limited and
qualified freedom, who will not co-operate actively with the law and the public
authorities in the repression of evil-doers. A people who are more disposed to
shelter a criminal than to apprehend him; who, like the Hindoos, will perjure
themselves to screen the man who has robbed them, rather than take trouble or
expose themselves to vindictiveness by giving evidence against him; who, like
some nations of Europe down to a recent date, if a man poniards another in the
public street, pass by on the other side, because it is the business of the
police to look to the matter, and it is safer not to interfere in what does not
concern them; a people who are revolted by an execution, but not shocked at an
assassination � require that the public authorities should be armed with much
sterner powers of repression than elsewhere, since the first indispensable
requisites of civilised 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 cannot be governed with as little power exercised over them
as a people whose sympathies are on the side of the law, and who are willing to
give active assistance in its enforcement.
Again, 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 practised, 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 fulfil 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 civilisation, differ much from one another. The
capability of any given people for fulfilling the conditions of a given form of
government cannot 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. Everything which can be said by way of
disparaging the efficacy of human will and purpose in matters of government
might be said of it in every other of its applications.
In all things there are
very strict limits to human power. It can only act by wielding some one or more
of the forces of nature. Forces, therefore, that can be applied to the desired
use must exist; and will only act according to their own laws. We cannot make
the river run backwards; but we do not therefore say that watermills "are
not made, but grow." In politics, as in mechanics, the power which is to
keep the engine going must be sought for outside the machinery; and if it is not
forthcoming, or is insufficient to surmount the obstacles which may 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 cannot be durable unless preceded or
accompanied by an altered distribution of power in society itself. A nation,
therefore, cannot choose its form of government. The mere details, and practical
organisation, it may choose; but the essence of the whole, the seat of the
supreme power, is determined for it by social circumstances.
That there is a portion of truth in this doctrine I at once admit; but to
make it of any use, it must be reduced to a distinct expression and proper
limits. When it is said that the strongest power in society will make itself
strongest in the government, what is meant by power? Not thews and sinews;
otherwise pure democracy would be the only form of polity that could exist. To
mere muscular strength, add two other elements, property and intelligence, and
we are nearer the truth, but far from 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
organised; and the advantage in organisation 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 anything
which acts on the will? To think that because those who wield the power in
society wield in the end that of government, therefore it is of no use to
attempt to influence the constitution of the government by acting on opinion, is
to forget that opinion is itself one of the greatest active social forces.
One
person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only
interests.
They who can succeed in creating a general persuasion that a certain
form of government, or social fact of any kind, deserves to be preferred, have
made nearly the most important step which can possibly be taken towards ranging
the powers of society on its side. On the day when the proto-martyr was stoned
to death at Jerusalem, while he who was to be the Apostle of the Gentiles stood
by "consenting unto his death," would any one have supposed that the
party of that stoned man were then and there the strongest power in society? And
has not the event proved that they were so?
Because theirs was the most powerful
of then existing beliefs. The same element made a monk of Wittenberg, at the
meeting of the Diet of Worms, a more powerful social force than the Emperor
Charles the Fifth, and all the princes there assembled. But these, it may be
said, are cases in which religion was concerned, and religious convictions are
something peculiar in their strength. Then let us take a case purely political,
where religion, so far as concerned at all, was chiefly on the losing side.
If
any one requires to be convinced that speculative thought is one of the chief
elements of social power, let him bethink himself of the age in which there was
scarcely a throne in Europe which was not filled by a liberal and reforming
king, a liberal and reforming emperor, or, strangest of all, a liberal and
reforming pope; the age of Frederic the Great, of Catherine the Second, of
Joseph the Second, of Peter Leopold, of Benedict XIV., of Ganganelli, of Pombal,
of Aranda; when the very Bourbons of Naples were liberals and reformers, and all
the active minds among the noblesse of France were filled with the ideas which
were soon after to cost them so dear. Surely a conclusive example how far mere
physical and economic power is from being the whole of social power.
It was not by any change in the distribution of material interests, but by
the spread of moral convictions, that Negro slavery has been put 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
recognise one social arrangement, or political or other institution, as good,
and another as bad, one as desirable, another as condemnable, very much has been
done towards giving to the one, or withdrawing from the other, that
preponderance of social force which enables it to subsist. And the maxim, that
the government of a country is what the social forces in existence compel it to
be, is true only in the sense in which it favours, instead of discouraging, the
attempt to exercise, among all forms of government practicable in the existing
condition of society, a rational choice.
Chapter 2
The Criterion of a Good Form of Government.
The form of government for any
given country being (within certain definite conditions) amenable to choice, it
is now to be considered by what test the choice should be directed; what are the
distinctive 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 cannot be sufficiently estimated while we
confine our attention to the legitimate sphere of governmental functions. For
though the goodness of a government is necessarily circumscribed within that
sphere, its badness unhappily is not.
Every kind and degree of evil of which
mankind are susceptible may be inflicted on them by their government; and none
of the good which social existence is capable of can be any further realised
than as the constitution of the government is compatible with, and allows scope
for, its attainment. Not to speak of indirect effects, the direct meddling of
the public authorities has no necessary limits but those of human existence; 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 towards it are
as yet limited, so far as I am aware, to a single step.
The classification
begins and ends with a partition of the exigencies of society between the two
heads of Order and Progress (in the phraseology of French thinkers); Permanence
and Progression in the words of Coleridge. This division is plausible and
seductive, from the apparently clean-cut opposition between its two members, and
the 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,
cannot be said to govern. But though a necessary condition, this is not the
object of government. That it should make itself obeyed is requisite, in order
that it may accomplish some other purpose. We are still to seek what is this
other purpose, which government ought to fulfil, abstractedly from the idea of
improvement, and which has to be fulfilled in every society, whether stationary
or progressive.
In a sense somewhat more enlarged, Order means the preservation of peace by
the cessation of private violence. Order is said to exist where the people of
the country have, as a general rule, ceased to prosecute their quarrels by
private force, and acquired the habit of referring the decision of their
disputes and the redress of their injuries to the public authorities. But in
this larger use of the term, as well as in the former narrow one, Order
expresses rather one of the conditions of 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 everything which a government can be
required to promote. But, thus understood, it affords no basis for a philosophy
of government.
We cannot say that, in constituting a polity, certain provisions
ought to be made for Order 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 versa: the
sole difference being, that a greater degree of those agencies is required for
the latter purpose than for the former.
What, for example, are the qualities in the citizens individually which
conduce most to keep up the amount of good conduct, of good management, of
success and prosperity, which already exist in society? Everybody 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 anything
certain in human affairs, it is that valuable acquisitions are only to be
retained by the continuation of the same energies which gained them.
Things left
to take care of themselves inevitably decay. Those whom success induces to relax
their habits of care and thoughtfulness, and their willingness to encounter
disagreeables, seldom long retain their good fortune at its height. The mental
attribute which seems exclusively dedicated to Progress, and is the culmination
of the tendencies to it, is Originality, or Invention. Yet this is no less
necessary for Permanence; since, in the inevitable changes of human affairs, new
inconveniences and dangers continually grow up, which must be encountered by new
resources and contrivances, in order to keep things going on even only as well
as they did before. Whatever qualities, therefore, in a government, tend to
encourage activity, energy, courage, originality, are requisites of Permanence
as well as of Progress; only a somewhat less degree of them will on the average
suffice for the former purpose than for the latter.
To pass now from the mental to the outward and objective 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 organisation. Yet if it
is effectual to promote Order, that is, if it represses crime, and enables every
one to feel his person and property secure, can any state of things be more
conducive to Progress?
The greater security of property is one of the main
conditions and causes of greater production, which is Progress in its most
familiar and vulgarest aspect. The better repression of crime represses the
dispositions which tend to crime, and this is Progress in a somewhat higher
sense. The release of the individual from the cares and anxieties of a state of
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 favours
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 versa, 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 demoralise 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 everything. No more does Progress in one thing imply Progress in everything.
Progress of any kind includes Permanence in that same kind; whenever Permanence
is sacrificed to some particular kind of Progress, other Progress is still more
sacrificed to it; and if it be not worth the sacrifice, not the interest of
Permanence alone has been disregarded, but the 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 pre-requisites of good
government, not for its idea and essence.
Order would find a more suitable place
among the conditions of Progress; since, if we would increase our sum of good,
nothing is more indispensable than to take due care of what we already have. If
we are endeavouring after more riches, our very first rule should be not to
squander uselessly our existing means. Order, thus considered, is not an
additional end to be reconciled with Progress, but a part and means of Progress
itself. If a gain in one respect is purchased by a more than equivalent loss in
the same or in any other, there is not Progress. 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 towards improvement; we ought not to forget that there is an
incessant and ever-flowing current of human affairs towards the worse,
consisting of all the follies, all the vices, all the negligences, indolences,
and supinenesses of mankind; which is only controlled, and kept from sweeping
all before it, by the exertions which some persons constantly, and others by
fits, put forth in the direction of good and worthy objects. It gives a very
insufficient idea of the importance of the strivings which take place to improve
and elevate human nature and life, to suppose that their chief value consists in
the amount of actual improvement realised by their means, and that the
consequence of their cessation would merely be that we should remain as we are.
A very small diminution of those exertions would not only put a stop to
improvement, but would turn the general tendency of things towards
deterioration; which, once begun, would proceed with increasingly rapidity, and
become more and more difficult to check, until it reached a state often seen in
history, and in which many large portions of mankind even now grovel; when
hardly anything short of superhuman power seems sufficient to turn the tide, and
give a fresh commencement to the upward movement.
These reasons make the word Progress as unapt as the terms Order and
Permanence to become the basis for a classification of the requisites of a form
of government. The fundamental antithesis which these words express does not lie
in the things themselves, so much as in the types of human character which
answer to them. There are, we know, some minds in which caution, and others in
which boldness, predominates: in some, the desire to avoid imperilling what is
already possessed is a stronger 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 ensure this object,
provided care is taken to admit nothing inconsistent with it. The natural and
spontaneous admixture of the old and the young, of those whose position and
reputation are made and those who have them still to make, will in general
sufficiently answer the purpose, if only this natural balance is not disturbed
by artificial regulation.
Since the distinction most commonly adopted for the classification of social
exigencies does not possess the properties needful for that use, we have to seek
for some other leading distinction better adapted to the purpose. Such a
distinction would seem to be indicated by the 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 cannot be induced to serve, and the duties are left to
those who undertake them because they have some private interest to be promoted?
Of what avail is the most broadly popular representative system if the electors
do not care to choose the best member of parliament, but choose him who will
spend most money to be elected? How can a representative 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 anything, those who ought to cooperate
with him form a tacit combination to make him fail? Whenever the general
disposition of the people is such that each individual regards those only of his
interests which are selfish, and does not dwell on, or concern himself for, his
share of the general interest, in such a state of things good government is
impossible. The influence of defects of intelligence in obstructing all the
elements of good government requires no 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 censure through the press; the mode of taking
evidence, according as it is well or ill adapted to elicit truth; the
facilities, whatever be their amount, for obtaining access to the tribunals; the
arrangements for 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, favouritism, 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 organisation of some part of the good
qualities existing in the individual members of the community for the conduct of
its collective affairs. A representative constitution is a means of bringing the
general standard of intelligence and honesty existing in the community, and the
individual intellect and virtue of its wisest members, more directly to bear
upon the government, and investing them with greater influence in it, than they
would in general have under any other mode of organisation; though, under any,
such influence as they do have is the source of all good that there is in the
government, and the hindrance of every evil that there is not. The greater the
amount of these good qualities which the institutions of a country succeed in
organising, and the better the mode of organisation, the better will be the
government.
We have now, therefore, obtained a foundation for a twofold 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 organise the moral, intellectual, and active worth already
existing, so as to operate with the greatest effect on public affairs. A
government is to be judged by its action upon men, and by its action upon
things; by what it makes of the citizens, and what it does with them; its
tendency to improve or 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 organised
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 ensure 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 civilisation, than the first. It has also much less to do with the
fundamental constitution of the government. The mode of conducting the practical
business of government, which is best under a free constitution, would generally
be best also in an absolute monarchy: only an absolute monarchy is not so likely
to practise 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, or
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 details, to adapt them to any state of society
sufficiently advanced to possess rulers capable of understanding them. A
government to which they would be wholly unsuitable must be one so bad in
itself, or so opposed to public feeling, as to be unable to maintain itself in
existence by honest means.
It is otherwise with that portion of the interests of the community which
relate to the better or worse training of the people themselves. Considered as
instrumental to this, institutions need to be radically 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 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 favour
of which it may be forgiven almost any amount of other demerit compatible with
progress, is that its operation on the people is favourable, or not unfavourable,
to the next step which it is necessary for them to take, in order to raise
themselves to a higher level.
Thus (to repeat a former example), a people in a state of savage
independence, in which every one lives for himself, exempt, unless by fits, from
any external control, is practically incapable of making any progress in
civilisation until it has learnt to obey. The indispensable virtue, therefore,
in a government which establishes itself over a people of this sort is, that it
make itself obeyed. To enable it to do this, the constitution of the government
must be nearly, or quite, despotic. A constitution in any degree popular,
dependent on the voluntary 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
civilisation of such tribes, when not the result of juxtaposition with others
already civilised, is almost always the work of an absolute ruler, deriving his
power either from religion or military prowess; very often from foreign arms.
Again, uncivilised races, and the bravest and most energetic still more than
the rest, are averse to continuous labour of an unexciting kind. Yet all real
civilisation is at this price; without such labour, neither can the mind be
disciplined into the habits required by civilised society, nor the material
world prepared to receive it. There needs a rare 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 civilised people have far other means of
imparting civilisation 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 civilised influences, that its adoption under any circumstances whatever
in modern society is a relapse into worse than barbarism.
At some period, however, of their history, almost every people, now civilised,
have consisted, in majority, of slaves. A people in that 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 ensure their
improvement than to make them free: when freed, they may often be fit, like
Roman freedmen, to be admitted at once to the full rights of citizenship. This,
however, is not the normal condition of slavery, and is generally a sign that it
is becoming obsolete. A slave, properly so called, is a being who has not learnt
to help himself. He is, no doubt, one step in advance of a savage. He has not
the first lesson of political society still to acquire. He has learnt to obey.
But what he obeys is only a direct command. It is the characteristic of born
slaves to be incapable of conforming their conduct to a rule, or law. They can
only do what they are ordered, and only when they are ordered to do it. If a man
whom they fear is standing over them and threatening them with punishment, they
obey; but when his back is turned, the work remains undone. The motive
determining them must appeal not to their interests, but to their instincts;
immediate hope or immediate terror. A despotism, which may tame the savage,
will, in so far as it is a despotism, only confirm the slaves in their
incapacities. Yet a government under their own control would be entirely
unmanageable by them. Their improvement cannot come from themselves, but must be
superinduced from without. The step which they have to take, and their only path
to improvement, is to be raised from a government of will to one of law. They
have to be taught self-government, and this, in its initial stage, means the
capacity to act on general instructions. What they require is not a government
of force, but one of guidance. Being, however, in too low a state to yield to
the guidance of any but those to whom they look up as the possessors of force,
the sort of government fittest for them is one which possesses force, but seldom
uses it: a parental despotism or aristocracy, resembling the St. Simonian form
of Socialism; 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 minutae of industry and life,
necessarily leaves and induces individuals to do much of themselves. This, which
may be termed the government of leading-strings, seems to be the one required to
carry such a people the most rapidly through the next 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 cannot 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 civilisation which they attained. But having reached
that point, they were brought to a permanent halt for want of mental liberty and
individuality; requisites of improvement which the institutions that had carried
them thus far entirely incapacitated them from acquiring; and as the
institutions did not break down and give place to others, further improvement
stopped.
In contrast with these nations, let us consider the example of an opposite
character afforded by another and a comparatively insignificant Oriental people
� the Jews. They, too, had an absolute monarchy and a hierarchy, their
organised 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
unorganised institution � the Order (if it may be so termed) of Prophets.
Under the protection, generally though not always effectual, of their sacred
character, the Prophets were a power in the nation, often more 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 favourable to Progress could not easily exist:
accordingly, the Jews, instead of being stationary like other Asiatics, were,
next to the Greeks, the most progressive people of antiquity, and, jointly with
them, have been the starting-point and main propelling agency of modern
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, favour and promote not some one
improvement, but all forms and degrees of it. This having been done, we must
consider what are the mental conditions of all sorts, necessary to enable this
government to realise its tendencies, and what, therefore, are the various
defects by which a people is made incapable of reaping its benefits. It would
then 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 3
That the ideally best Form of Government is Representative Government.
IT HAS long (perhaps throughout
the entire duration of British freedom) been a common saying, that if a good
despot could be ensured, despotic monarchy would be the best form of government.
I look upon this as a radical and most pernicious misconception of what good
government is; which, until it can be got rid of, will fatally vitiate all our
speculations on government.
The supposition is, that absolute power, in the hands of an eminent
individual, would ensure a virtuous and intelligent performance of all the
duties of government. Good laws would be established and enforced, bad laws
would be reformed; the best men would be placed in all situations of trust;
justice would be as well administered, the public burthens 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 realisation
would in fact imply, not merely a good monarch, but an all-seeing one. He must
be at all times informed correctly, in considerable detail, of the conduct and
working of every branch of administration, in every district of the country, and
must be able, in the twenty-four hours per day which are all that is granted to
a king as to the humblest labourer, to give an effective share of attention and
superintendence to all parts of this vast field; or he must at least be capable
of discerning and choosing out, from among the mass of his subjects, not only a
large abundance of honest and able men, fit to conduct every branch of public
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 organisation of
the best mental power in the country in some special direction (commonly
military) to promote the grandeur of the despot. But the public at large remain
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 anything, that the era of national decline has arrived: that is, if the
nation had ever attained anything to decline from. If it has never risen above
the condition of an Oriental people, in that condition it continues to stagnate.
But if, like Greece or Rome, it had realised anything higher, through the
energy, patriotism, and enlargement of mind, which as 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 unfavourable 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 realise
in a very imperfect degree those of a free government; since however great an
amount of liberty the citizens might practically enjoy, they could never forget
that they held it on sufferance, and by a concession which under the existing
constitution of the state might at any moment be resumed; that they were legally
slaves, though of a 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 intractableness, 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 realisation 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 cannot pass by the people's minds, and amend their affairs
for them without amending them. If it were possible for the people to be well
governed in spite of themselves, their good 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 civilisation, is more noxious than a bad one; for it is far more
relaxing and enervating to the thoughts, feelings, and energies of the people.
The despotism of Augustus prepared the Romans for Tiberius. If the whole tone of
their character had not first been prostrated by nearly two generations of that
mild slavery, they would probably have had spirit enough left to rebel against
the more odious one.
There is no difficulty in showing that the ideally best form of 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 civilisation, 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 favourable to present good government, and promotes a better and higher
form of national character, than any other polity whatsoever.
Its superiority in reference to present well-being rests upon two 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 elite of mankind, and may become so among the rest. But as
this opinion is anything but popular with those defenders of existing
institutions who find fault with the doctrine of the 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 labourers as such have an
interest, is it regarded from any point of view but that of the employers of
labour? I do not say that the working men's view of these questions is in
general nearer to the truth than the other: but it is 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 anterevolutionary
France. Their superior prosperity was too obvious ever to have been gainsaid:
while their superiority in good government and social relations is proved by the
prosperity, and is manifest besides in every page of history. If we compare, not
one age with another, but the different governments which co-existed in the same
age, no amount of disorder which exaggeration itself can pretend to have existed
amidst the publicity of the free states can be compared for a moment with the
contemptuous trampling upon the mass of the people which pervaded the whole life
of the monarchical countries, or the disgusting individual tyranny which was of
more than daily occurrence under the systems of plunder which they called fiscal
arrangements, and in the secrecy of their frightful courts of justice.
It must be acknowledged that the benefits of freedom, so far as they have
hitherto been enjoyed, were obtained by the extension of its privileges to a
part only of the community; and that a government in which they are extended
impartially to all is a desideratum still unrealised. But though every approach
to this has an independent value, and in many cases more than an approach could
not, in the existing state of general improvement, be made, the participation of
all in these benefits is the ideally perfect conception of free government. In
proportion as any, no matter who, are excluded from it, the interests of the
excluded are left without the guarantee accorded to the rest, and they
themselves have less scope and encouragement than they might otherwise have to
that exertion of their energies for the good of themselves and of the 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
favour of the passive type. Energetic characters may be admired, but the
acquiescent and submissive are those which most men personally prefer. The
passiveness of our neighbours increases our sense of security, and plays into
the hands of our wilfulness. Passive 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 vigourous
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 Vedas.
With respect to practical improvement, the case is still more evident. The
character which improves human life is that which struggles with natural powers
and tendencies, not that which gives way to them. The self-benefiting qualities
are all on the side of the active and energetic character: and the habits and
conduct which 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 favour of the inactive character, as being more in harmony
with the submission due to the divine will. Christianity as well as other
religions has fostered this sentiment; but it is the prerogative of
Christianity, as regards this and many other perversions, that it is able to
throw them off. Abstractedly from religious considerations, a passive character,
which yields to obstacles instead of striving to overcome them, may not indeed
be very useful to others, no more than to itself, but it might be expected to be
at least inoffensive. Contentment is always counted among the moral virtues. But
it is a complete error to suppose that contentment is necessarily or naturally
attendant on passivity of character; and useless it is, the moral consequences
are mischievous. Where there exists a desire for advantages not possessed, the
mind which does not potentially possess them by means of its own energies is apt
to look with hatred and malice on those who do. The person bestirring himself
with hopeful prospects to improve his circumstances is the one who feels
good-will towards others engaged in, or who have succeeded in, the same pursuit.
And where the majority are so engaged, those who do not attain the object have
had the tone given to their feelings by the general habit of the country, and
ascribe their failure to want of effort or opportunity, or to their personal ill
luck. But those who, while desiring what others possess, put no energy into
striving for it, are either 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 anything
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 favourable to it.
There are, no doubt, in all countries, really contented characters, who not
merely do not seek, but do not desire, what they do not already possess, and
these naturally bear no ill-will towards such as have apparently a more favoured
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 neighbourhood, 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 cannot
be had, a just appreciation of the comparative value of different objects of
desire, and a willing renunciation of the less when incompatible with the
greater. These, however, are excellences more natural to the character, in
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 anything goes amiss the habitual impulse of French people is to
say, "ll faut de la patience"; and of English people, "What a
shame." The people who think it a shame when anything goes wrong � who
rush to the conclusion that the evil could and ought to have been prevented, are
those who, in the long run, do most to make the world better. If the desires are
low placed, if they extend to little beyond physical comfort, and the show of
riches, the immediate results of the energy will not be much more than the
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 are 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
favoured 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 labour of love, but of self-interest
in the most elementary form, the satisfaction of daily wants; neither the thing
done, nor the process of doing it, introduces the mind to thoughts or feelings
extending beyond individuals; if instructive 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 anything of
which there is yet an example in any other mass of men, ancient or modern. The
proofs of this are apparent in every page of our great historian of Greece; but
we need scarcely look further than to the high quality of the addresses which
their great orators deemed best calculated to act with effect on their
understanding and will. A benefit of the same kind, though far less in degree,
is produced on Englishmen of the lower middle class by their liability to be
placed on juries and to serve parish offices; which, though it does not occur to
so many, nor is so continuous, nor introduces them to so great a variety of
elevated considerations, as to admit of comparison with the public education
which every citizen of Athens obtained from her democratic institutions, must
make them nevertheless very different beings, in range of ideas and development
of faculties, from those who have done nothing in their lives but drive a quill,
or sell goods over a counter.
Still more salutary is the moral part of the instruction afforded by the
participation of the private citizen, if even rarely, in public 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 common good: and he usually finds associated with him in the same
work minds more familiarised than his own with these ideas and operations, whose
study it will be to supply reasons to his understanding, and stimulation to his
feeling for the general interest. He is made to feel himself one of the public,
and whatever is for their benefit to be for his benefit. Where this school of
public spirit does not exist, scarcely any sense is entertained that private
persons, in no eminent social situation, owe any duties to society, except to
obey the laws and submit to the government. There is no unselfish sentiment of
identification with the public. Every thought or feeling, either of interest or
of duty, is absorbed in the individual and in the family. The man never thinks
of any collective interest, of any objects to be pursued jointly with others,
but only in competition with them, and in some measure at their expense. A
neighbour, not being an ally or an associate, since he is never engaged in any
common undertaking for joint benefit, is therefore only a rival. Thus even
private morality 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 everywhere 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 cannot, in a community exceeding
a single small town, participate personally in any but some very minor portions
of the public business, it follows that the ideal type of a perfect government
must be representative.
Chapter 4
Under what Social Conditions Representative Government is Inapplicable.
WE HAVE recognised in
representative government the ideal type of the most perfect polity, for which,
in consequence, any portion of mankind are better adapted in proportion to their
degree of general improvement. As they range lower and lower in development,
that form of government will be, generally speaking, less suitable to them;
though this is not true universally: for the adaptation of a people to
representative government does not depend so much upon the place they occupy in
the general scale of humanity as upon the degree in which they possess certain
special requisites; requisites, however, so closely connected with their degree
of general advancement, that any variation between the two is rather the
exception than the rule. Let us examine at what point in the descending series
representative government ceases altogether to be admissible, 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 cannot permanently subsist � i.e. in which it does not
fulfil the three fundamental conditions enumerated in the first chapter. These
were � 1. That the people should be willing to receive it. 2. That they should
be willing and able to do what is necessary for its preservation. 3. That they
should be willing and able to fulfil the duties and discharge the functions
which it imposes on them.
The willingness of the people to accept representative government only
becomes a practical question when an enlightened ruler, or a 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 fulfil 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,[2]
it can hardly be doubted, that the placehunters 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 co-existence with the popular body of an hereditary king. If,
instead of struggling for the favours of the chief ruler, these selfish and
sordid factions struggled for the chief place itself, they would certainly, as
in Spanish America, keep the country in a state of chronic revolution and civil
war. A despotism, not even legal, but of illegal violence, would be alternately
exercised by a succession of political adventurers, and the name and forms of
representation would have no effect but to prevent despotism from attaining the
stability and security by which alone its evils can be mitigated, or its few
advantages realised.
The preceding are the cases in which representative government cannot
permanently exist. There are others in which it possibly might exist, but in
which some other form of government would be preferable. These are principally
when the people, in order to advance in civilisation, have some lesson to learn,
some habit not yet acquired, to the 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 civilisation, that of obedience.
A race who have been trained in energy and courage by struggles with Nature and
their neighbours, but who have not yet settled down into permanent obedience to
any common superior, would be little likely to acquire this habit under the
collective government of their own body. A representative assembly drawn from
among themselves would simply reflect their own turbulent insubordination. It
would refuse its authority to all proceedings which would impose, on their
savage independence, any improving restraint. The mode in which such tribes are
usually brought to submit to the primary conditions of civilised society is
through the necessities of warfare, and the despotic authority 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 Mahomet, is also a
military chief, and goes forth the armed apostle of a new religion; or unless
the military chiefs ally themselves with his influence, and turn it into a prop
for their own 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 prima facie might be expected to lighten it. On the contrary, many a
people has gradually emerged from this condition by the aid of a central
authority, whose position has made it the rival, and has ended by making it the
master, of the local despots, and which, above all, has been single. French
history, from Hugh Capet to Richelieu and Louis XIV., is a continued example of
this course of things. Even when the King was scarcely so powerful as many of
his chief feudatories, the great advantage which he derived from being but one
has been recognised by French historians. To him the eyes of all the locally
oppressed were turned; he was the object of hope and reliance throughout the
kingdom; while each local potentate was only powerful within a more or less
confined space. At his hands, refuge and protection were sought from every part
of the country, against first one, then another, of the immediate oppressors.
His progress to ascendancy was slow; but it resulted from successively taking
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 neighbouring
castle: and the monarch was long compelled by necessities of position to exert
his authority as the ally, rather than the master, of the classes whom he had
aided in affecting their liberation. In this manner a central power, despotic in
principle though generally much restricted in practice, was mainly 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. Nothing short of despotic rule, or a general massacre, could have
effected the emancipation of the serfs in the Russian Empire.
The same passages of history forcibly illustrate another mode in which
unlimited monarchy overcomes obstacles to the progress of civilisation which
representative government would have had a decided tendency to aggravate. One of
the strongest hindrances to improvement, up to a rather advanced stage, is an
inveterate spirit of locality. Portions of mankind, in many other respects
capable of, and prepared for, 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 realised a tolerably effective popular government on that restricted scale,
and may yet have but slender sympathies with anything beyond, and no habit or
capacity of dealing with interests common to many such communities.
I am not aware that history furnishes any example in which a number of these
political atoms or corpuscles have coalesced into a body, and learnt to feel
themselves one people, except through previous subjection to a central authority
common to all.[3]
It is through the habit of deferring to that authority, entering into its plans
and subserving its purposes, that a people such as we have supposed receive into
their minds the conception of large interests, common to a considerable
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 favourable
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 short-comings in a people might be pointed
out, which pro tanto disqualify them from making the best use of representative
government; but in regard to these it is not equally obvious that the government
of One or a Few would have any tendency to cure or alleviate the evil. Strong
prejudices of any kind; obstinate adherence to old habits; positive defects of
national character, or mere ignorance, and deficiency of mental cultivation, if
prevalent in a people, will be in general faithfully reflected in their
representative assemblies: and should it happen that the executive
administration, the direct 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 civilisation, the One
and his counsellors, or the Few, are not likely to be habitually exempt; except
in the case of their being foreigners, belonging to a superior people or a more
advanced state of society. Then, indeed, the rulers may be, to almost any
extent, superior in civilisation to those over whom they rule; and subjection to
a foreign government of this description, notwithstanding its inevitable evils,
is of ten of the greatest advantage to a people, carrying them rapidly through
several stages of progress, and clearing away obstacles to improvement which
might have lasted 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 civilised origin, or other peculiarities of circumstance, are
markedly superior in civilisation and general character to the remainder. Under
those conditions, government by the representatives of the mass would stand a
chance of depriving them of much of the benefit they might derive from the
greater civilisation of the superior ranks; while government by the
representatives of those ranks would probably rivet the degradation of the
multitude, and leave them no hope of decent treatment except by ridding
themselves of one of the most valuable elements of future advancement. The best
prospect of improvement for a people thus composed lies in the existence of a
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 favourable prospects of improvement which can well occur to a
community thus circumstanced and constituted.
Among the tendencies which, without absolutely rendering a people unfit for
representative government, seriously incapacitate them from reaping the full
benefit of it, one deserves particular notice. There are two states of the
inclinations, intrinsically very different, but which have 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
over-meddling, 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 everything shall belong to one class or another, perhaps merely to
one knot of public men or another; where the idea entertained of democracy is
merely that of opening offices to the competition of all instead of a few;
where, the more popular the institutions, the more innumerable are the places
created, and the more monstrous the over-government exercised by all over each,
and by the executive over all.
It would be as unjust as it would be ungenerous
to offer this, or anything approaching to it, as an unexaggerated picture of the
French people; yet the degree in which they do participate in this type of
character has caused representative government by a limited class to break down
by excess of corruption, and the attempt at representative government by the
whole male population to end in giving one man the power of 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
favours.
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 5
Of the Proper Functions of Representative Bodies.
IN TREATING of representative
government, it is above all necessary to keep in view the distinction between
its idea or essence, and the 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
characterises it; either the laws or the unwritten maxims would soon have to be
changed. The British government is thus a representative government in the
correct sense of the term: and the powers which it leaves in hands not directly
accountable to the people can only be considered as precautions which the ruling
power is willing should be taken against its own errors. Such precautions have
existed in all well-constructed democracies. The 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 everything in the last resort.
There is a radical distinction between controlling the business of government
and actually doing it. The same person or body may be able to control
everything, but cannot possibly do everything; and in many cases its control
over everything will be more perfect the less it 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 cannot be done except by bodies; other things cannot be well done by
them. It is one question, therefore, what a popular assembly should control,
another what it should itself do. It should, as we have already seen, control
all the operations of government. But in order to determine through what channel
this general control may most expediently be exercised, and what portion of the
business of government the representative assembly should hold in its own hands,
it is necessary to consider what kinds of business a numerous body is competent
to perform properly. That alone which it can do well it ought to take personally
upon itself. With regard to the rest, its proper province is not to do it, but
to take means for having it well done by others.
For example, the duty which is considered as belonging more 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 recognised 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 organised 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
everybody 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 cannot keep their minds
vigilant or their judgments discerning in matters they know nothing about; and
an indolent majority, like an indolent individual, belongs to the 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 everybody to be
completely exculpated however disastrous may be the consequences. Besides, an
assembly never personally experiences the inconveniences of its bad measures
until they have reached the dimensions of national evils. Ministers and
administrators see them approaching, and have to bear all the annoyance and
trouble of attempting to ward them off.
The proper duty of a representative assembly in regard to matters of
administration is not to decide them by its own vote, but to take care that the
persons who have to decide them shall be the proper persons. Even this they
cannot advantageously do by nominating the individuals. There is no act which
more imperatively requires to be performed under a strong sense of individual
responsibility than the nomination to 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 recognised by those who know the individuals, or who make it their
business to examine and judge of persons from what they have done, or from the
evidence of those who are in a position to judge. When these conscientious
obligations are so little regarded by great public officers who can be made
responsible for their appointments, how must it be with assemblies who cannot?
Even now, the worst appointments are those which are made for the sake of
gaining support or disarming opposition in the 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 anything for which he can
offer himself as a candidate. When appointments made by a public body are not
decided, as they almost always are, by party connection or private jobbing, a
man is appointed either because he has a reputation, often quite undeserved, for
general ability, or frequently for no better reason than that he is personally
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 recognises the fact that
a certain person is the candidate of the party whose general policy commands its
support. In reality, the only thing which Parliament decides is, which of two,
or at most three, 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. To 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 cannot 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 defence rests upon some minister or member of
Parliament who did not frame them, who is dependent on cramming for all his
arguments but those which are perfectly obvious, who does not know the full
strength of his case, nor the best reasons by which to support it, and is wholly
incapable of 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 recognised 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
civilisation would have as one of its fundamental elements a small body, not
exceeding in number the members of a Cabinet, who should act as a Commission of
legislation, having for its appointed office to make the laws. If the laws of
this country were, as surely they will soon be, 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 Nomothetae, 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 labour 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 censure them if found condemnable, and, if the men who compose
the government abuse their trust, or fulfil it in a manner which conflicts with
the deliberate sense of the nation, to expel them from office, and either
expressly or virtually appoint their successors. This is surely ample power, and
security enough for the liberty of the nation. In addition to this, the
Parliament has an office, not inferior even to this in importance; to be at once
the nation's Committee of 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 anywhere, and one of the foremost benefits of free government. Such
"talking" would never be looked upon with disparagement if it were not
allowed to stop "doing"; which it never would, if assemblies knew and
acknowledged that talking and discussion are their proper business, while doing,
as the result of discussion, is the task not of a miscellaneous body, but of
individuals specially trained to it; that the fit office of an assembly is to
see that those individuals are honestly and intelligently chosen, and to
interfere no further with them, except by unlimited latitude of suggestion and
criticism, and by applying or withholding the final seal of national assent. It
is for want of this judicious reserve that popular assemblies attempt to do what
they cannot do well � to govern and legislate � and provide no machinery but
their own for much of it, when of course every hour spent in talk is an hour
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
guarantee 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
practised 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 6
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 fulfil
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
entrusted to the executive, this can only arise from a jealous feeling on the
part of the assembly towards the administration, never likely to exist but where
the constitutional power of the assembly to turn them out of office has not yet
sufficiently established itself. Wherever that 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 derivable
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 favourably with the vacillation and
shortsightedness of even a qualified democracy. These propositions, however, are
not by any means so well founded as they at first sight appear.
Compared with simple monarchy, representative government is in these respects
at no disadvantage. Except in a rude age, hereditary 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 guarantee
for the intellectual and active capacities of the sovereign. His personal will
is constantly encountering obstacles from the wilfulness 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, anything above mediocrity in an
hereditary king has become extremely rare, while the general average has been
even below mediocrity, both in talent and in vigour of character. A monarchy
constitutionally absolute now only maintains itself in existence (except
temporarily in the hands of some active-minded usurper) through the mental
qualifications of a 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 vigour 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
general exclusively composed of persons who had exercised public functions, and
had either already filled or were looking forward to fill the higher offices of
the state, at the peril of a severe responsibility in case of incapacity and
failure. When once 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 favourable
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 vigour and originality. That the Roman aristocracy escaped this
characteristic disease of a bureaucracy was evidently owing to its popular
element. All special offices, both those which gave a seat in the Senate and
those which were sought by senators, were conferred by popular election. The
Russian government is a characteristic 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 organised 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 cannot 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,
cannot do. We find, however, that an outside element of freedom is necessary to
enable it to do effectually or permanently even its own business. And so, also,
freedom cannot produce its best effects, and often breaks down altogether,
unless means can be found of combining it with trained and skilled
administration. There could not be a moment's hesitation 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 recognising the line of separation, discussed in the
preceding chapter, between the work of government properly so called, which can
only be well performed after special cultivation, and that of selecting,
watching, and, when needful, controlling the governors, which in this case, as
in others, properly devolves, not on those who do the work, but on those for
whose benefit it ought to be done. No progress at all can be made towards
obtaining a skilled democracy unless the 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 pretences, or will
withhold support from those who endeavour to fulfil their trust conscientiously;
it will countenance, or impose, a selfish, a capricious and impulsive, a
short-sighted, ignorant, and prejudiced general policy, foreign and domestic; it
will abrogate good laws, or enact bad ones, let in new evils, or cling with
perverse obstinacy to old; it will even, perhaps, under misleading impulses,
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 versa: 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
realised property, and upon the larger incomes, an unfair share, or even the
whole, of the burden of taxation; and having done so, add to the amount without
scruple, expending the proceeds in modes supposed to conduce to the profit and
advantage of the labouring class? Suppose, again, a minority of skilled
labourers, a majority of unskilled: the experience of many trade unions, unless
they are greatly calumniated, justifies the apprehension that equality of
earnings might be imposed as an obligation, and that piecework, payment by the
hour, and all practices which enable superior industry or abilities to gain a
superior reward might be put down. Legislative attempts to raise wages,
limitation of competition in the labour market, taxes or restrictions on
machinery, and on improvements of all kinds tending to dispense with any of the
existing labour � even, perhaps, 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
labourers.
It will be said that none of these things are for the real interest of the
most numerous class: to which I answer, that if the conduct of human beings was
determined by no other interested considerations than those which constitute
their "real" interest, neither monarchy nor oligarchy would be such
bad governments as they are; for assuredly very strong arguments may be, and
often have been, adduced to show that either a king or a governing senate are in
much the most enviable position, when ruling justly and vigilantly over an
active, wealthy, enlightened, and high-minded people. But a king only now and
then, and an oligarchy in no known instance, have taken this exalted view of
their self-interest: and why should we expect a loftier mode of thinking from
the labouring classes? It is not what their interest is, but what they suppose
it to be, that is the important consideration with respect to their conduct: and
it is quite conclusive against any theory of government that it assumes the
numerical majority to do habitually what is never done, nor expected to be done,
save in very exceptional cases, by any other depositaries of power � namely,
to direct their conduct by their real ultimate interest, in opposition to their
immediate and apparent interest. No one, surely, can doubt that many of the
pernicious measures above enumerated, and many others as bad, would be for the
immediate interest of the general body of unskilled labourers. It is quite
possible that they would be for the selfish interest of the whole existing
generation of the class. The relaxation of industry and activity, and diminished
encouragement to saving which would be their ultimate consequence, might perhaps
be little felt by the class of unskilled labourers in the space of a single
lifetime.
Some of the most fatal changes in human affairs have been, as to their more
manifest immediate effects, beneficial. The establishment of the despotism of
the Caesars was a great benefit to the entire generation in which it took place.
It put a stop to civil war, abated a vast amount of malversation and tyranny by
praetors and proconsuls; it fostered many of the graces of life, and
intellectual cultivation in all departments not political; it produced monuments
of literary genius dazzling to the 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 regime by whose
gradual operation all the civilisation 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. Everybody has two kinds of interests, interests
which he cares for, and interests which he does not care for. Everybody 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 neighbour, who does, is probably a happier man than he; but could
he be persuaded of this, the persuasion would, most likely, only still further
exasperate his malignity or his irritability. On the average, a person who cares
for other people, for his country, or for mankind, is a happier man than one who
does not; but of what use is it to preach this doctrine to a man who cares for
nothing but his own ease, or his own pocket? He cannot care for other people if
he would. It is like preaching to the worm who crawls on the ground how much
better it would be for him if he were an eagle.
Now it is a universally observed fact that the two evil dispositions in
question, the disposition to prefer a man's selfish interests to those which he
shares with other people, and his immediate and direct 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 cannot be maintained that any
form of government would be rational which required as a condition that these
exalted principles of action should be the guiding and master motives in the
conduct of average human beings. A certain amount of conscience, and, of
disinterested public spirit, may fairly be calculated on in the citizens of any
community ripe for representative government. But it would be ridiculous to
expect such a degree of it, combined with such intellectual discernment, as
would be proof against any plausible fallacy tending to make that which was for
their class interest appear the dictate of justice and of the general good.
We all know what specious fallacies may be urged in defence of every act of
injustice yet proposed for the imaginary benefit of the mass. We know how many,
not otherwise fools or bad men, have thought it justifiable to repudiate the
national debt. We know how many, not destitute of ability, and of considerable
popular influence, think it fair to throw the whole burthen of taxation upon
savings, under the name of realised property, allowing those whose progenitors
and themselves have always spent all they received to remain, as a reward for
such 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 recognised if people had the least encouragement to disbelieve
it. Is it reasonable to think that even much more cultivated minds than those of
the numerical majority can be expected to be will have so delicate a conscience,
and so just an appreciation of what is against their own apparent interest, that
they will reject these and the innumerable other fallacies which will press in
upon them from all 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, should be
able to exercise a preponderant influence in the government. A modern community,
not divided within itself by strong antipathies of race, language, or
nationality, may be considered as in the main divisible into two sections,
which, in spite of partial variations, correspond on the whole with two
divergent directions of apparent interest. Let us call them (in brief general
terms) labourers on the one hand, employers of labour on the other: including
however along with employers of labour, not only retired capitalists, and the
possessors of inherited wealth, but all that highly paid description of
labourers (such as the professions) whose education and way of life assimilate
them with the rich, and whose prospect and ambition it is to raise themselves
into that class. With the labourers, on the other hand, may be ranked those
smaller employers of labour, who by interests, habits, and educational
impressions are assimilated in wishes, tastes, and objects to the labouring
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 organisation
must be such that these two classes, manual labourers and their affinities on
one side, employers of labour and their affinities on the other, should be, in
the arrangement of the 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 against the whole of the others, usually after sufficient discussion and
agitation become strong enough to turn the balance in favour of the body of
private interests 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 7
Of True and False Democracy; Representation of All, and Representation of the
Majority only.
IT HAS been seen that the
dangers incident to a representative democracy are of two kinds: danger of a low
grade of intelligence in the 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 organise the democracy as, without interfering
materially with the characteristic benefits of democratic government, to do away
with these two great evils, or at least to abate them, in the utmost degree
attainable by human contrivance.
The common mode of attempting this is by limiting the democratic character of
the representation, through a more or less restricted 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, cannot 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 favour of the predominant class. Two
very different ideas are usually confounded under the name democracy. The pure
idea of democracy, according to its definition, is the government of the whole
people by the whole people, equally represented. Democracy as commonly conceived
and hitherto practised is the government of the whole people by a mere majority
of the people, exclusively represented. The former is synonymous with the
equality of all citizens; the latter, strangely confounded with it, is a
government of privilege, in favour of the 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 guarantee 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 not at all
improbable, 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 labourers; and when there was any question
pending, on which these classes were at issue with the rest of the community, no
other class could succeed in getting represented anywhere. Even now, is it not a
great grievance that in every Parliament a very numerous portion of the
electors, willing and anxious to be represented, have no member in the 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 colours, 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. The choice of the majority
is therefore very likely to be determined by that portion of the body who are
the most timid, the most narrow-minded and prejudiced, or who cling most
tenaciously to the exclusive class-interest; in which case the electoral rights
of the minority, while useless for the purposes for which votes are given, serve
only for compelling the majority to accept the candidate of the weakest or worst
portion of themselves.
That, while recognising these evils, many should consider them as the
necessary price paid for a free government is in no way surprising: it was the
opinion of all the friends of freedom up to a recent period. But the habit of
passing them over as irremediable has become so inveterate that many persons
seem to have lost the capacity of looking at them as things which they would be
glad to remedy if they could. From 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.[4]
Others have proposed that each elector should be allowed to vote only for one.
By either of these plans, a minority equalling or exceeding a third of the local
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 recognised the right principle, and prepared the way for its more
complete application. But real equality of representation is not obtained unless
any set of electors amounting to the average number of a 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 cannot make up the quota,
or are able to make it up without his vote, the vote may still be used for some
one whom it may assist in returning. To obtain the full number of members
required to complete the House, as well as to prevent very popular 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 e knowledge of
its very simple machinery, I must refer to Mr. Hare's Treatise on the Election
of Representatives (a small volume Published in 1859),[5]
and to a pamphlet by Mr. Henry Fawcett (now Professor of Political Economy in
the University, of Cambridge), published in 1860, and entitled Mr. Hare's Reform
Bill simplified and explained. This last is a very clear and concise exposition
of the plan, reduced to its simplest elements, by the omission of some of Mr.
Hare's original provisions, which, though in themselves beneficial, we're
thought to take more from the simplicity of the scheme than they added to its
practical usefulness. The more these works are studied the stronger, I venture
to predict, will 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 s, which may be the only choice offered to him
in his local market. Under this relation the tie between the elector and the
representative would be of a strength, and a value, of which at present we have
no experience. Every one of the electors would be personally identified with his
representative, and the representative with his constituents. Every elector who
voted for him would have done so either because, among all the candidates for
Parliament who are favourably known to a certain number of electors, he is the
one who best expresses the voter's own opinions, because he is one of those
whose abilities and character the voter most respects, and whom he most
willingly trusts to think for him. The member would represent persons, not the
mere bricks and mortar of the town � the voters 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 could make up the quota within itself, the
majority would generally prefer to be represented by one of themselves; by a
person of local knowledge, and residing in the locality, if there is any such
person to be found among the candidates, who is otherwise well qualified to be
their representative. It would be the minorities chiefly, who being unable to
return the local member, would look out elsewhere 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, or who could not succeed in
carrying the local candidate they preferred, would have the power to fill up
their voting papers by a selection from all the persons of national reputation,
on the list of candidates, with whose general political principles they were in
sympathy. Almost every person, therefore, who had made himself in any way
honourably distinguished, though devoid of local influence, and having sworn
allegiance to no political party, would have a fair chance of making up the
quota; and with this encouragement such persons might be expected to offer
themselves, in numbers hitherto undreamt of. Hundreds of able men of independent
thought, who would have no chance whatever of being chosen by the majority of
any 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 elite of the
country.
And it is not solely through the votes of minorities that this system of
election would raise the intellectual standard of the House of 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 number 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 civilisation,
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, seldom even offer themselves for
Congress or the State Legislatures, so little likelihood have they of being
returned.
Had a plan like Mr. Hare's by good fortune suggested itself to the
enlightened and patriotic founders of the American Republic, the 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 anything
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 out vote 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 at least some portion of his just weight, it is through
institutions or usages which keep him out of sight. In the old democracies there
were no means of keeping out of sight any able man: the bema was open to him; he
needed nobody's consent to become a public adviser. It is not so in a
representative government; and the best friends of representative democracy can
hardly be without misgivings that the Themistocles or Demosthenes, whose
counsels would have saved the nation, might be unable during his whole life ever
to obtain a seat. But if the presence in the representative assembly can be
insured of even a few of the first minds in the country, though the remainder
consist only of average minds, the influence of these leading spirits is sure to
make itself sensibly felt in the general deliberations, even though they be
known to be, in many respects, opposed to the tone of popular opinion and
feeling. I am unable to conceive any mode by which the presence of such minds
can be so positively insured as by that proposed by Mr. Hare.
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
anything which makes permanent head against it, any influence not in agreement
with its spirit. Yet if it succeeds in suppressing all rival influences, and
moulding everything 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 disfavour. For want of such a point
d'appui, the older societies, and all but a few modern ones, either fell into
dissolution or became stationary (which means slow deterioration) through the
exclusive 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 organisation 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 elite 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
counsels heard on all important subjects, and for taking an active part in
public business. Their abilities would probably draw to them more than their
numerical share of the actual administration of government; as the Athenians did
not confide responsible public 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 sympathise more with oligarchy than with democracy. The
instructed minority would, in the actual voting, count only for their numbers,
but as a moral power they would count for much more, in virtue of their
knowledge, and of the influence it would give them over the rest. An arrangement
better adapted to keep popular opinion within reason and justice, and to guard
it from the various deteriorating 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
pretence of equal justice, aim only at substituting the class ascendancy of the
poor for that of the rich, will of course be unfavourable to a scheme which
places both on a level. But I do not believe that any such wish exists at
present among the working classes of this country, though I would not answer for
the effect which 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 cannot 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 cannot see why the feelings and interests which arrange
mankind according to localities should be the only one thought worthy of being
represented; or why people who have other feelings and interests, which they
value more than they do their geographical ones, should be restricted to these
as the sole 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, stigmatised as
insurmountably prejudiced against anything which can be proved to be good either
for themselves or for others. It also appears to me that when prejudices persist
obstinately, it is the fault of nobody so much as of those who make a point of
proclaiming them insuperable, as an excuse to themselves for never joining in an
attempt to remove them. Any prejudice whatever will be 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 in this case there is in general, among
those who have yet heard of the proposition, no other hostility to it than the
natural and healthy distrust attaching to all novelties which have not been
sufficiently canvassed to make 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.
Since the first publication of this Treatise, several adverse criticisms have
been made on Mr. Hare's plan, which indicate at least a careful examination of
it, and a more intelligent consideration than had previously been given to its
pretensions. This is the natural progress of the discussion of great
improvements. They are at first met by a blind prejudice, and by arguments to
which only blind prejudice could attach any value. As the prejudice weakens, the
arguments it employs for some time increase in strength; since, the plan being
better understood, its inevitable inconveniences, and the circumstances which
militate against its at once producing all the benefits it is intrinsically
capable of, come to light along with its merits. But of all the objections,
having any semblance of reason, which have come under my notice, there is not
one which had not been foreseen, considered, and canvassed by the supporters of
the plan, and found either unreal or easily surmountable.
The most serious, in appearance, of the objections may be the most briefly
answered; the assumed impossibility of guarding against fraud, or suspicion of
fraud, in the operations of the Central Office. Publicity, and complete liberty
of inspecting the voting papers after the election, were the securities
provided; but these, it is maintained, would be unavailing; because, to check
the returns, a voter would have to go over all the work that had been done by
the staff of clerks. This would be a very weighty objection, if there were any
necessity that the returns should be verified individually by every voter. All
that a simple voter could be expected to do in the way of verification would be
to check the use made of his own voting paper; for which purpose every paper
would be returned, after a proper interval, to the place from whence it came.
But what he could not do would be done for him by the unsuccessful candidates
and their agents. Those among the defeated who thought that they ought to have
been returned would, singly or a number together, employ an agency for verifying
the process of the election; and if they detected material error, the documents
would be referred to a Committee of the House of Commons, by whom the entire
electoral operations of the nation would be examined and verified, at a tenth
part the expense of time and money necessary for the scrutiny of a single return
before an Election Committee under the system now in force.
Assuming the plan to be workable, two modes have been alleged in which its
benefits might be frustrated, and injurious consequences produced in lieu of
them. First, it is said that undue power would be given to knots or cliques;
sectarian combinations; associations for special objects, such as the Maine Law
League, the Ballot or Liberation Society; or bodies united by class interests or
community of religious persuasion. It is in the second place objected that the
system would admit of being worked for party purposes. A central organ of each
political party would send its list of 658 candidates all through the country,
to be voted for by the whole of its supporters in every constituency. Their
votes would far outnumber those which could ever be obtained by any independent
candidate. The "ticket" system, it is contended, would, as it does in
America, operate solely in favour of the great organised parties, whose tickets
would be accepted blindly, and voted for in their integrity; and would hardly
ever be outvoted, except occasionally, by the sectarian groups, or knots of men
bound together by a common crotchet who have been already spoken of.
The answer to this appears to be conclusive. No one pretends that under Mr.
Hare's or any other plan organisation would cease to be an advantage. Scattered
elements are always at a disadvantage compared with organised bodies. As Mr.
Hare's plan cannot alter the nature of things, we must expect that all parties
or sections, great or small, which possess organisation, would avail themselves
of it to the utmost to strengthen their influence. But under the existing system
those influences are everything. The scattered elements are absolutely nothing.
The voters who are neither bound to the great political nor to any of the little
sectarian divisions have no means of making their votes available. Mr. Hare's
plan gives them the means. They might be more, or less, dexterous in using it.
They might obtain their share of influence, or much less than their share. But
whatever they did acquire would be clear gain. And when it is assumed that every
petty interest, or combination for a petty object, would give itself an
organisation, why should we suppose that the great interest of national
intellect and character would alone remain unorganised? If there would be
Temperance tickets, and Ragged School tickets, and the like, would not one
public-spirited person in a constituency be sufficient to put forth a
"personal merit" ticket, and circulate it through a whole
neighbourhood? And might not a few such persons, meeting in London, select from
the list of candidates the most distinguished names, without regard to technical
divisions of opinion, and publish them at a trifling expense through all the
constituencies? It must be remembered that the influence of the two great
parties, under the present mode of election, is unlimited: in Mr. Hare's scheme
it would be great, but confined within bounds. Neither they, nor any of the
smaller knots, would be able to elect more members than in proportion to the
relative number of their adherents. The ticket system in America operates under
conditions the reverse of this. In America electors vote for the party ticket,
because the election goes by a mere majority, and a vote for any one who is
certain not to obtain the majority is thrown away. But, on Mr. Hare's system, a
vote given to a person of known worth has almost as much chance of obtaining its
object as one given to a party candidate. It might be hoped, therefore, that
every Liberal or Conservative, who was anything besides a Liberal or a
Conservative � who had any preferences of his own in addition to those of his
party � would scratch through the names of the more obscure and insignificant
party candidates, and inscribe in their stead some of the men who are an honour
to the nation. And the probability of this fact would operate as a strong
inducement with those who drew up the party lists not to confine themselves to
pledged party men, but to include along with these, in their respective tickets,
such of the national notabilities as were more in sympathy with their side than
with the opposite.
The real difficulty, for it is not to be dissembled that there is a
difficulty, is that the independent voters, those who are desirous of voting for
unpatronised persons of merit, would be apt to put down the names of a few such
persons, and to fill up the remainder of their list with mere party candidates,
thus helping to swell the numbers against those by whom they would prefer to be
represented. There would be an easy remedy for this, should it be necessary to
resort to it, namely, to impose a limit to the number of secondary or contingent
votes. No voter is likely to have an independent preference, grounded on
knowledge, for 658, or even for 100 candidates. There would be little objection
to his being limited to twenty, fifty, or whatever might be the number in the
selection of whom there was some probability that his own choice would be
exercised � that he would vote as an individual, and not as one of the mere
rank and file of a party. But even without this restriction, the evil would be
likely to cure itself as soon as the system came to be well understood. To
counteract it would become a paramount object with all the knots and cliques
whose influence is so much deprecated. From these, each in itself a small
minority, the word would go forth, "Vote for your special candidates only;
or at least put their names foremost, so as to give them the full chance which
your numerical strength warrants, of obtaining the quota by means of first
votes, or without descending low in the scale." And those voters who did
not belong to any clique would profit by the lesson.
The minor groups would have precisely the amount of power which they ought to
have. The influence they could exercise would be exactly that which their number
of voters entitled them to; not a particle more; while to ensure even that, they
would have a motive to put up, as representatives of their special objects,
candidates whose other recommendations would enable them to obtain the suffrages
of voters not of the sect or clique. It is curious to observe how the popular
line of argument in defence of existing systems veers round, according to the
nature of the attack made upon them. Not many years ago it was the favourite
argument in support of the then existing system of representation, that under it
all "interests" or "classes" were represented. And
certainly, all interests or classes of any importance ought to be represented,
that is, ought to have spokesmen, or advocates, in Parliament. But from thence
it was argued that a system ought to be supported which gave to the partial
interests not advocates merely, but the tribunal itself. Now behold the change.
Mr. Hare's system makes it impossible for partial interests to have the command
of the tribunal, but it ensures them advocates, and for doing even this it is
reproached. Because it unites the good points of class representation and the
good points of numerical representation, it is attacked from both sides at once.
But it is not such objections as these that are the real difficulty in
getting the system accepted; it is the exaggerated notion entertained of its
complexity, and the consequent doubt whether it is capable of being carried into
effect. The only complete answer to this objection would be actual trial. When
the merits of the plan shall have become more generally known, and shall have
gained for it a wider support among impartial thinkers, an effort should be made
to obtain its introduction experimentally in some limited field, such as the
municipal election of some great town. An opportunity was lost when the decision
was taken to divide the West Riding of Yorkshire for the purpose of giving it
four members; instead of trying the new principle, by leaving the constituency
undivided, and allowing a candidate to be returned on obtaining either in first
or secondary votes a fourth part of the whole number of votes given. Such
experiments, would be a very imperfect test of the worth of the plan: but they
would be an exemplification of its mode of working; they would enable people to
convince themselves that it is not impracticable; would familiarise them with
its machinery, and afford some materials for judging whether the difficulties
which are thought to be so formidable are real or imaginary. The day when such a
partial trial shall be sanctioned by Parliament will, I believe, inaugurate a
new era of Parliamentary Reform; destined to give to Representative Government a
shape fitted to its mature and triumphant period, when it shall have passed
through the militant stage in which alone the world has yet seen it.[6]
Though Denmark is as yet the only country in which Personal Representation
has become an institution, the progress of the idea among thinking minds has
been very rapid. In almost all the countries in which universal suffrage is now
regarded as a necessity, the scheme is rapidly making its way: with the friends
of democracy, as a logical consequence of their principle; with those who rather
accept than prefer democratic government, as indispensable corrective of its
inconveniences. The political thinkers of Switzerland led the way. Those of
France followed. To mention no others, within a very recent period two of the
most influential and authoritative writers in France, one belonging to the
moderate liberal and the other to the extreme democratic school, have given in a
public adhesion to the plan. Among its German supporters is numbered one of the
most eminent political thinkers in Germany, who is also a distinguished member
of the liberal Cabinet of the Grand Duke of Baden. This subject, among others,
has its share in the important awakening of thought in the American republic,
which is already one of the fruits of the great pending contest for human
freedom. In the two principal of our Australian colonies Mr. Hare's plan has
been brought under the consideration of their respective legislatures, and
though not yet adopted, has already a strong party in its favour; while the
clear and complete understanding of its principles, shown by the majority of the
speakers both on the Conservative and on the Radical side of general politics,
shows how unfounded is the notion of its being too complicated to be capable of
being generally comprehended and acted on. Nothing is required to make both the
plan and its advantages intelligible to all, except that the time should have
come when they will think it worth their while to take the trouble of really
attending to it.
Chapter 8
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 biasses, prepossessions, and general
modes of thinking, and a class, to say no more, not the most highly cultivated.
The constitution would therefore still be liable to the characteristic evils of
class government: in a far less degree, assuredly, than that exclusive
government by a class, which now usurps the name of democracy; but still, under
no effective restraint, except what might be found in the good sense,
moderation, and forbearance of the class itself. If checks of this description
are 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 cannot,
misemploy it. Democracy is not the ideally best form of government unless this
weak side of it can be strengthened; unless it can be so organised that no
class, not even the most numerous, shall be able to reduce all but itself to
political insignificance, and direct the course of legislation and
administration by its exclusive class interest. The 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 recognise a potent instrument of mental
improvement in the exercise of political franchises by manual labourers. Yet
unless substantial mental cultivation in the mass of mankind is to be 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 travellers 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.[7]
Yet this is nothing to what we might look for in a government equally
democratic in its unexclusiveness, but better organised 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
labourer, 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 civilised 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 anything 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 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 a priori theory has silenced common sense will maintain that power over
others, over the whole community, should be imparted to people who have not
acquired the commonest and most essential requisities for taking care of
themselves; for pursuing intelligently their own interests, and those of the
persons most nearly allied to them. This argument, doubtless, might be pressed
further, and made to prove much more. It would be eminently desirable that other
things besides reading, writing, and arithmetic could be made necessary to the
suffrage; that some knowledge of the 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 anywhere save in the Northern
United States, accessible to the whole people; nor does there exist any
trustworthy machinery for ascertaining whether they have been acquired or not.
The attempt, at present, would lead to partiality, chicanery, and every kind of
fraud. It is better that the suffrage should be conferred 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 economise. As far as
money matters are concerned, any power of voting possessed by them is a
violation of the fundamental principle of free government; a severance of the
power of control from the 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 some of the great towns of
the United States is known to have produced a scale of local taxation onerous
beyond example, and wholly borne by the wealthier classes. That representation
should be co-extensive with taxation, not stopping short of it, but also not
going beyond it, is in accordance with the theory of British institutions. But
to reconcile this, as a condition annexed to the 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 labouring family which does
not contribute to the indirect taxes, by the purchase of tea, coffee, sugar, not
to mention narcotics or stimulants. But this mode of defraying a share of the
public expenses is hardly felt: the payer, unless a person of education and
reflection, does not identify his interest with a low scale of public
expenditure as closely as when money for its support is demanded directly from
himself; and even 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 everyone might feel that the money which
he assisted in voting was partly his own, and that he was interested in keeping
down its amount.
However this may be, I regard it as required by first principles, that the
receipt of parish relief should be a peremptory disqualification for the
franchise. He who cannot by his labour suffice for his own support has no claim
to the privilege of helping himself to the money of others. By becoming
dependent on the remaining members of the community for actual subsistence, he
abdicates his claim to equal rights with them in other respects. Those to whom
he is indebted for the continuance of his very existence may justly claim the
exclusive management of those common concerns, to which he now brings nothing,
or less than he takes away. As a condition of the franchise, a term should be
fixed, say five years previous to the registry, during which the applicant's
name has not been on the parish books as a recipient of relief. To be an
uncertified bankrupt, or to have taken the benefit of the Insolvent Act, should
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
cannot 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 fulfil if they choose. They leave the
suffrage accessible to all who are in the normal condition of a human being: and
if any one has to forego it, he either does not care sufficiently for it to do
for its sake what he is already bound to do, or he is in a general condition of
depression and degradation in which this slight addition, necessary for security
of others, would be unfelt, and on emerging from which, this mark of 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 labourers; 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, cannot justly be excluded from it. But though every one ought to have a
voice � that every one should have an equal voice is a totally different
proposition. When two persons who have a joint interest in any business differ
in opinion, does justice require that both opinions should be held of exactly
equal value? If, with equal virtue, one is superior to the other in knowledge
and 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 pretence for applying
this doctrine to any case which could with reason be considered as one of
individual and private right. In an affair which concerns only one of two
persons, that one is entitled to follow his own opinion, however much wiser the
other may be than himself. But we are speaking of things which equally concern
them both; where, if the more ignorant does not yield his share of the matter to
the guidance of the wiser man, the wiser man must resign his to that of the more
ignorant. Which of these modes of getting over the difficulty is most for the
interest of both, and most conformable to the general 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, anything
necessarily invidious to those to whom it assigns the lower degrees of
influence. Entire exclusion from a voice in the common concerns is one thing:
the concession to others of a more potential voice, on the ground of greater
capacity for the management of the joint interests, is another. The two things
are not merely different, they are incommensurable. Every one has a right to
feel insulted by being made a nobody, and stamped as of no account at all. No
one but a fool, and only a fool of a peculiar description, feels offended by the
acknowledgment that there are others whose opinion, and even whose wish, is
entitled to a greater amount of consideration than his. To have no voice in what
are partly his own concerns is a thing which nobody willingly submits to; but
when what is partly his concern is also partly another's, and he feels the other
to understand the subject better than himself, that the other's opinion should
be counted for more than his own accords with his expectations, and with the
course of things which in all other affairs of life he is accustomed to acquiese
in. It is only necessary that this superior influence should be assigned on
grounds which he can comprehend, and of which he is able to perceive the
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 anything but proportional to riches, is on
the average better in the richer half of society than in the poorer. But the
criterion is so imperfect; accident has so much more to do than merit with
enabling men to rise in the world; and it is so 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 discrediting 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 labour is on the average more intelligent than a labourer;
for he must labour with his head, and not solely with his hands. A foreman is
generally more intelligent than an ordinary labourer, and a labourer in the
skilled trades than in the unskilled. A banker, merchant, or manufacturer is
likely to be more intelligent than a tradesman, because he has larger and more
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 practised, 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 pretence. The
"local" or "middle class" examination for the degree of
Associate, so laudably and public-spiritedly established by the Universities of
Oxford and Cambridge, and any similar ones which may be instituted by other
competent bodies (provided they are fairly open to all comers), afford a ground
on which plurality of votes might with great advantage be 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 favour of education, right in itself, is
further and strongly recommended by its preserving the educated from the class
legislation of the uneducated; but it must stop short of enabling them to
practise class legislation on their own account. Let me add, that I 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 realised 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 practised in vestry elections and those of poor-law
guardians, is so unfamiliar in elections to Parliament that it is not likely to
be soon or willingly adopted: but as the time will certainly arrive when the
only choice will be between this and equal universal suffrage, whoever does not
desire the last, cannot too soon begin to reconcile himself to the former. In
the meantime, though the suggestion, for the present, may not be a practical
one, it will serve to mark what is best in principle, and enable us to judge of
the eligibility of any indirect means, either existing or capable of being
adopted, which may promote in a less perfect manner the same end. A person may
have a double vote by other means than that of tendering two votes at the same
hustings; he may have a vote in each of two different constituencies: and though
this exceptional privilege at present belongs rather to superiority of means
than of intelligence, I would not abolish it where it exists, since until a
truer test of education is adopted it would be unwise to dispense with even so
imperfect a one as is afforded by pecuniary circumstances. Means might be found
of giving a further extension to the privilege, which would connect it in a more
direct manner with superior education. In any future Reform Bill which lowers
greatly the pecuniary conditions of the suffrage, it might be a wise provision
to allow all graduates of 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 cannot be obtained without bringing with them, as it appears
to me, a chance of more than equivalent evils. It is possible, indeed (and this
is perhaps one of the transitions through which we may have to pass in our
progress to a really good representative system), that the barriers which
restrict the suffrage might be entirely levelled in some particular
constituencies, whose members, consequently, would be returned principally by
manual labourers; the existing electoral qualification being maintained
elsewhere, or any alteration in it being accompanied by such a grouping of the
constituencies as to prevent the labouring class from becoming 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 recognising a wrong standard, and exercising a bad influence on the
voter's mind. It is not useful, but hurtful, that the constitution of the
country should declare ignorance to be entitled to as much political power as
knowledge. The national institutions should place all things that they are
concerned with before the mind of the citizen in the light in which it is for
his good that he should regard them: and as it is for his good that he should
think that every one is entitled to some influence, but the better and wiser to
more than others, it is 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 unfavourable 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 everything, whether they be One, or Few, or Many,
have no longer need of the arms of reason: they can make their mere will
prevail; and those who cannot be resisted are usually far too well satisfied
with their own opinion 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 realise that kind of relative perfection which is alone
compatible with the complicated nature of human affairs.
In the preceding argument for universal, but graduated suffrage, I have taken
no account of difference of sex. I consider it to be as entirely irrelevant to
political rights as difference in height or in the colour of the hair. All human
beings have the same interest in good government; the welfare of all is alike
affected by it, and they have equal need of a voice in it to secure their share
of its benefits. If there be any difference, women require it more than men,
since, being physically weaker, they are more dependent on law and society for
protection. Mankind have long since abandoned the only premises which will
support the conclusion that women ought not to have votes. No one now holds that
women should be in personal servitude, that they should have no thought, wish,
or occupation, but to be the domestic drudges of husbands, fathers, or 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 anything, it is for proving that
these points can only be rightly judged of by the individuals themselves and
that, under complete freedom of choice, wherever there are real diversities of
aptitude, the great number will apply themselves to the things for which they
are on the average fittest, and the exceptional course will only be taken by the
exceptions. Either the whole tendency of modern social improvements has been
wrong, or it ought to be carried out to the total abolition of all exclusions
and disabilities which close any honest employment to a human being.
But it is not even necessary to maintain so much in order to prove that women
should have the suffrage. Were it as right, as it is wrong, that they should be
a subordinate class, confined to domestic 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 labourers in cornfields or manufactories; but this does not
render the suffrage less desirable for them, nor their claim to it less
irresistible, when not likely to make a bad use of it. Nobody pretends to think
that woman would make a bad use of the suffrage. The worst that is said is that
they would vote as mere dependents, the bidding of their male 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 cannot exact, and are
yet desirous to have. It would also be no small benefit 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 realise to herself that there is a point of
honour in them, and most people have as little sympathy in the point of honour
of others, when their own is not placed in the same thing, as they have in the
religious feelings of those whose religion differs from theirs. Give the woman a
vote, and she comes under the operation of the political point of honour. She
learns to look on politics as a thing on which she is allowed to have an
opinion, and in which if one has an opinion it ought to be acted upon; she
acquires a sense of personal accountability in the matter, and will no longer
feel, as she does at present, that whatever amount of bad 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 9
Should there be Two Stages of Election?
IN SOME representative
constitutions the plan has been adopted of choosing the members of the
representative body by a double process, the 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 defence; since it may be said, with great appearance of reason, that
less intellect and instruction are required for judging who among our neighbours
can be most safely trusted to choose a member of parliament, than who is himself
fittest to be one.
In the first place, however, if the dangers incident to popular power may be
thought to be in some degree lessened by this indirect arrangement, so also are
its benefits; and the latter effect is much more certain than the former. To
enable the system to work as desired, it must be carried into effect in the
spirit in which it is planned; the electors must use the suffrage in the manner
supposed by the theory, that is, each of them must not ask himself who the
member of parliament should be, but only whom he would best like to choose one
for him. It is evident that the advantages which indirect is supposed to have
over direct election require this disposition of mind in the voter, and will
only be realised by his taking the doctrine au serieux, that his sole business
is to choose the choosers, not the member himself. The supposition must be, that
he will not occupy his thoughts with political opinions and measures, or
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 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, cannot 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 takes place. 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
Lincoln ticket, or the Breckenridge 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 entrusted with power is the person most unwilling to
accept it. The electors are to make choice of one of those who have offered
themselves as candidates: and those who choose the electors already know who
these are. If there is any political activity in the country, all electors, who
care to vote at all, have made up their minds which of these candidates they
would like 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 cannot 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 entrusted to local bodies whose other functions extend to the most important
concerns of the nation. The only bodies in any analogous position which exist,
or are likely to exist, in this country are the municipalities, or any other
boards which have been or may be created for similar local purposes. Few
persons, however, would think it any improvement in our parliamentary
constitution if the members for the City of London were chosen by the Aldermen
and 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 aedileship are no guarantee of any special fitness to
judge of the comparative qualifications of candidates for a seat in Parliament.
They probably would not fulfil this duty any better than it is fulfilled by the
inhabitants voting directly; while, on the other hand, if fitness for electing
members of Parliament had to be taken into consideration in selecting persons
for the office of vestrymen or town councillors, many of those who are fittest
for that more limited duty would inevitably be excluded from it, if only by the
necessity there would be of choosing persons whose 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 entrusted with the other office.
It appears, therefore, that every benefit of indirect election which is
attainable at all is attainable under direct; that such of the benefits 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.
The best which could be said for this political contrivance that in some
states of opinion it might be a more practicable expedient than that of plural
voting for giving to every member of the community a vote of some sort, without
rendering the mere numerical majority predominant in Parliament: as, for
instance, if the present constituency of this country were increased by the
addition of a numerous and select portion of the labouring classes, elected by
the remainder. Circumstances might render such a scheme a convenient mode of
temporary compromise, but it does not carry out any principle sufficiently
thoroughly to be likely to recommend itself to any class of thinkers as a
permanent arrangement.
Chapter 10
Of the Mode of Voting.
THE QUESTION of greatest moment
in regard to modes of voting is that of secrecy or publicity; and to this we
will at once address ourselves.
It would be a great mistake to make the discussion turn on 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 anything else to
which he really has a right. The suffrage is indeed due to him, among other
reasons, as a means to his own 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 everybody, 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 prima 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, anything
may be tolerated which enables them to throw off the yoke. The strongest case
for the ballot is when the mischievous power of the Few over the Many is
increasing. In the decline of the Roman republic the reasons for the ballot were
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 anything was capable of shaking
it but a strong popular enthusiasm, seldom known to exist but in a good cause. A
vote given in opposition to those 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 over-ruling influence of oligarchy. Could the voter at that
time have been enabled, with safety to himself, to exercise his privilege
freely, even though 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 labourers, even these would, or might, still have a
class interest distinct from the unskilled. Suppose it extended to all men �
suppose that what was formerly called by the misapplied name of universal
suffrage, and now by the silly title of manhood suffrage, became the law; the
voters would still have a class interest, as distinguished from women. Suppose
that there were a question before the Legislature specially affecting women; as
whether women should be allowed to graduate at 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 labourers may be very useful as one influence
among others on the minds of the voters, as well as on those of the Legislature;
and yet it might be highly 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 cannot think that even if the people
were fit for, and had obtained, universal suffrage, the ballot would be
desirable. First, because it could not, in such circumstances be 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 ensure the
performance of a public duty, without either the stimulus or the restraint
derived from the opinion of our fellow creatures. A man's own particular share
of the public interest, even though he may have no private interest drawing him
in the opposite direction, is not, as a 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 cannot have an interest in voting against the interest of the
community will be found on examination to have more sound than meaning in it.
Though the community as a whole can have (as the terms imply) no other interest
than its collective interest, any or every individual in it may. A man's
interest consists of whatever he takes an interest in. Everybody has as many
different interests as he has feelings; likings or dislikings, either of a
selfish or of a better kind. It cannot be said that any of these, taken by
itself, constitutes 'his interest'; he is a good man or a bad according as he
prefers one class of his interests or another. A man who is a tyrant at home
will be apt to sympathise with tyranny (when not exercised over himself): he
will be almost certain not to sympathise with resistance to tyranny. An envious
man will vote against Aristides because he is called the just. A selfish man
will prefer even a trifling individual benefit to his share of the advantage
which his 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 favourable to it, a
much stronger case is requisite than can now be made out for its necessity (and
the case is continually becoming still weaker) to make its adoption
desirable."[8]
On the other debateable points connected with the mode of voting it is not
necessary to expend so many words. The system of personal representation, as
organised by Mr. Hare, renders necessary the employment of voting papers. But it
appears to me indispensable that the signature of the elector should be affixed
to the paper at a public polling place, or if there be no such place
conveniently accessible, at some office open to all the world, and in the
presence of a responsible public officer. The proposal which has been thrown out
of allowing the voting papers to be filled up at the voter's own residence, and
sent by the post, or called for by a public officer, I should regard as fatal.
The act would be done in the absence of the salutary and the presence of all the
pernicious influences. The briber might, in the shelter of privacy, behold with
his own eyes his bargain fulfilled, and the intimidator could see the extorted
obedience rendered irrevocably on the spot; while the beneficent
counter-influence of the presence of those who knew the voter's real sentiments,
and the inspiring effect of the sympathy of those of his own party or opinion,
would be shut out.[9]
The polling places should be so numerous as to be within easy reach of every
voter; and no expenses of conveyance, at the cost of the candidate, should be
tolerated under any pretext. The infirm, and they only on medical certificate,
should have the right of claiming suitable carriage conveyance, at the cost of
the State, or of the locality. Hustings, poll clerks, and all the necessary
machinery of elections, should be at the public charge. Not only the candidate
should not be required, he should not be permitted, to incur any but a limited
and trifling expense for his election. Mr. Hare thinks it desirable that a sum
of �50 should be required from every one who places his name on the list of
candidates, to prevent persons who have no chance of success, and no real
intention of attempting it, from becoming candidates in wantonness or from mere
love of notoriety, and perhaps carrying off a few votes which are needed for the
return of more serious aspirants. There is one expense which a candidate or his
supporters cannot help incurring, and which it can hardly be expected that the
public should defray for every one who may choose to demand it; that of making
his claims known to the electors, by advertisements, placards, and circulars.
For all necessary 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 honour 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 honour would be considered
binding.[10]
"Opinion tolerates a false disclaimer, only when it already tolerates the
thing disclaimed." This is notoriously the case with regard to electoral
corruption. There has never yet been, among political men, any real and serious
attempt to prevent bribery, because there has been no real desire that elections
should not be costly. Their costliness is an advantage to those who can afford
the expense, by excluding a multitude of competitors; and anything, however
noxious, is cherished as having a conservative 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.
A more substantial difficulty is that one of the forms most frequently
assumed by election expenditure is that of subscriptions to local charities, or
other local objects; and it would be a strong measure to enact that money should
not be given in charity, within a place, by the member for it. When such
subscriptions are bona fide, the popularity which may be derived from them is an
advantage which it seems hardly possible to deny to superior riches. But the
greatest part of the mischief consists in the fact that money so contributed is
employed in bribery, under the euphemistic name of keeping up the member's
interest. To guard against this, it should be part of the member's promissory
declaration, that all sums expended by him in the place, or for any purpose
connected with it or with any of its inhabitants (with the exception perhaps of
his own hotel expenses), should pass through the hands of the election auditor,
and be by him (and not by the member himself or his friends) applied to its
declared purpose.
The principle of making all lawful expenses of a charge not upon the
candidate, but upon the locality, was upheld by two of the best witnesses (pp.
20, 65-70, 277).
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 favour to be conferred, a thing which the depositary is
to ask for as desiring it for himself, and even pay for as if it were designed
for his pecuniary benefit. Men are not fond of paying large sums for leave to
perform a laborious duty. Plato had a much juster view of the conditions of good
government when he asserted that the persons who should be sought out to be
invested with political power are those who are personally most averse to it,
and that the only motive which can be relied on for inducing the fittest men to
take upon 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, pay for his seat, all endeavours, will fail to make the business of
election anything 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 favour to
be solicited, no effort will avail to implant in an ordinary voter the feeling
that the election of a member of Parliament is also a matter of duty, and that
he is not at liberty to bestow his vote on any other consideration than that of
personal fitness."
The same principle which demands that no payment of money for election
purposes should be either required or tolerated on the part of the person
elected dictates another conclusion, apparently of contrary tendency, but really
directed to the same object. It negatives what has often been proposed as a
means of rendering Parliament accessible to persons of all ranks and
circumstances; the payment of members of Parliament. If, as in some of our
colonies, there are scarcely any fit 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 business of a member of
Parliament would therefore become an occupation in itself; carried on, like
other professions, with a view chiefly to its pecuniary returns, and under the
demoralising influences of an 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 rivalling each other in
pandering to the meanest feelings and most ignorant prejudices of the vulgarest
part of the crowd. The auction between Cleon and the 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 organised system of tillage for raising a
rich crop of vicious courtiership.[11]
When, by reason of pre-eminent qualifications (as may at any time 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 Marvell, by the contributions of his
constituents. This mode is unobjectionable for such an honour 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 guarantee for the possession of an
independent opinion and will.
Chapter 11
Of the Duration of Parliaments.
AFTER HOW long a term should
members of Parliament be subject to re-election? The principles involved are
here very obvious; the difficulty lies in their application. On the one hand,
the member ought not to have so long a tenure of his seat as to make him forget
his responsibility, take his duties easily, conduct them with a view to his own
personal 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 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 12
Ought Pledges to be Required from Members of Parliament?
SHOULD A member of the
legislature be bound by the instructions of his constituents? Should he be the
organ of their sentiments, or of his own? their ambassador to a congress, or
their professional agent, empowered not only to act for them, but to judge for
them what ought to be done? These two theories of the duty of a legislator in a
representative government have each its supporters, and each is the recognised
doctrine of some representative governments. In the Dutch United Provinces, the
members of the States General were mere delegates; and to such a length was the
doctrine carried, that when any important question arose which had not been
provided for in their instructions, they had to refer back to their
constituents, exactly as an ambassador does to the government from which he is
accredited. In this and most other countries which possess representative
constitutions, law and custom warrant a member of Parliament in voting according
to his opinion of right, however 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 cannot
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 honour, when no longer willing to act in
that capacity, to resign his seat. And since they have the power of doing this,
the theory of the Constitution ought to suppose that they will wish to do it;
since the very principle of constitutional government requires it to be assumed
that political power will be abused to promote the particular purposes of the
holder; not because it always is so, but because such is the natural tendency of
things, to guard against which is the especial use of free institutions. However
wrong, therefore, or 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,
recognised 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 defence with weapons as strong as the others can wield for attack � the
government can only be carried on by forbearance on all sides to exercise those
extreme powers, unless provoked by conduct equally extreme on the part of some
other sharer of power: and in this case we may truly say that only by the regard
paid to maxims of constitutional morality is the constitution kept in existence.
The question of pledges is not one of those which vitally concern the existence
of representative governments; but it is very material to their beneficial
operation. The laws cannot prescribe to the electors the principles by which
they shall direct their choice; but it makes a great practical difference by
what principles they think they ought to direct it. And the whole of that great
question is involved in the inquiry whether they should make it a condition that
the representative shall adhere to certain opinions laid down for him by his
constituents.
No reader of this treatise can doubt what conclusion, as to this matter,
results from the general principles which it professes. We have from the first
affirmed, and unveryingly kept in view, the co-equal 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 cannot be inferred from the former; and
if the electors are to put their own opinions in abeyance, what criterion
remains to them of the ability to govern well? Neither, if they could ascertain,
even 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 versa. His abilities, in these cases, might only enable him to go greater
lengths, and act with greater effect, in what they may conscientiously believe
to be a wrong course; and they may be bound, by their sincere convictions, to
think it more important that their representative should be kept, on these
points, to what they deem the dictate of duty, than that they should be
represented by a 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 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 recognise 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 recognised 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 honours 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 cannot be denied that a complete democracy has a strong
tendency to cast the sentiments of the electors in this mould. Democracy is not
favourable to the reverential spirit. That it destroys reverence for mere social
position must be counted among the good, not the bad part of its influences;
though by doing this it closes the principal school of reverence (as to merely
human relations) which exists in 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 cannot be expected
to postpone their particular opinions, unless in order that they may be served
by a person of superior knowledge to their own. They would do well, indeed, even
then, to remember, that when once chosen, the representative, if he devotes
himself to his duty, has greater 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 cannot be expected not to make conformity to his
own sentiments the primary requisite. It is enough if he does not regard a
subsequent change of those sentiments, honestly avowed, with its grounds
undisguisedly stated, as a peremptory reason for 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
superiority, of which it is one of the most sacred not to desert the cause which
has the clamour against it, nor to deprive of his services those of his opinions
which need them the most. A man of conscience and known ability should insist on
full freedom to act as he in his own judgment deems best; and should not consent
to serve on any other terms. But the electors are entitled to know how he means
to act; what opinions, on all things which concern his public duty, he intends
should guide his conduct. If some of these are 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 favour of his general value, many
and great differences between his opinions and their own.
There are some differences, however, which they cannot be expected to
overlook. Whoever feels the amount of interest in the government of his country
which befits a freeman, has some convictions on national affairs which are like
his life-blood; which the strength of his belief in their truth, together with
the importance he attaches to them, forbid him to make a subject of compromise,
or postpone to the judgment of any person, however greatly his superior. Such
convictions, when they exist in a people, or in any appreciable portion of one,
are entitled to influence in virtue of their mere existence, and not solely in
that of the probability of their being grounded in truth. A people cannot 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 unfavourable social circumstances or faulty
institutions, the electors are so narrowed in their choice as to be compelled to
fix it on a person presumptively under the influence of partialities hostile to
their interest: That they are entitled to a full knowledge of the political
opinions and sentiments of the 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
entrusted 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 towards 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 recognised 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 everything would depend upon cultivating it to
the highest point. But, once invested with political omnipotence, if the
operative classes voluntarily concurred in imposing in this or any other manner
any considerable limitation upon their self-opinion and self-will, they would
prove themselves wiser than any class, possessed of absolute power, has shown
itself, or, we may venture to say, is ever likely to show itself, under that
corrupting influence.
Chapter 13
Of a Second Chamber.
OF ALL topics relating to the
theory of representative government, none has been the subject of more
discussion, especially on the Continent, than what is known as the question of
the Two Chambers. It has 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
but of secondary 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 unfavourable to it in the other; any improvement, therefore, which
could be thus impeded, would in almost all cases be one which had not much more
than a simple majority in the entire body, and the worst consequence that could
ensue would be to delay for a short time the passing of the measure, or give
rise to a fresh appeal to the electors to ascertain if the small majority in
Parliament corresponded to an effective one in the country. The inconvenience of
delay, and the advantages of the appeal to the nation, might be regarded in this
case as about equally balanced.
I attach little weight to the argument oftenest urged for having two Chambers
� to prevent precipitancy, and compel a second deliberation; for it must be a
very ill-constituted representative assembly in which the established forms of
business do not require many more than two deliberations. The consideration
which tells most, in my judgment, in favour of two Chambers (and this I do
regard as of some moment) is the evil effect produced upon the mind of any
holder of power, whether an individual or an assembly, by the consciousness of
having only themselves to consult. It is important that no set of persons
should, in great affairs, be able, even temporarily, to make their sic volo
prevail without asking any one else for his consent. A majority in a single
assembly, when it has assumed a permanent character � when composed of the
same 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 cannot believe that, in a really democratic state of society,
the House of Lords would be of any practical value as a moderator of democracy.
When the force on one side is feeble in 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 ensure the utter
defeat of the less powerful. It can only act to advantage by not holding itself
apart, and compelling every one to declare himself either with or against it,
but taking a position among, rather than in opposition to, the crowd, and
drawing to itself the elements most capable of allying themselves with it on any
given point; not appearing at all as an antagonist body, to provoke a general
rally against it, but working as one of the elements in a mixed mass, infusing
its leaven, and often making what would be the weaker part the stronger, by the
addition of its influence. The really moderating power in a democratic
constitution must act in and through the 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 cannot 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 ensure the perpetual presence in the House by
the same popular title as its other members, of so many of the first intellects
in the country, that without being in any way banded apart, or invested with any
invidious prerogative, this portion of the national 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 conceivable modes impede its
attainment. If, however, for the other reasons already mentioned, the decision
were taken that there should be such a Chamber, it is desirable that it should
be composed of elements which, without being open to the imputation of class
interests adverse to the majority, would incline it to oppose itself to the
class interests of the majority, and qualify it to raise its voice with
authority against their errors and weaknesses. These conditions evidently are
not found in a body constituted in the manner of our House of Lords. So soon as
conventional rank and individual riches no longer overawe the democracy, a House
of Lords becomes insignificant.
Of all principles on which a wisely conservative body, destined to moderate
and regulate democratic ascendancy, could possibly be 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 offices or employments. Such a Chamber would be fitted for much more
than to be a merely moderating body. It would not be exclusively a check, but
also an impelling force. In its hands the power of holding the people back would
be vested in those most competent, and who would generally be most inclined, to
lead them forward in any right course. The council to whom the task would be
entrusted of rectifying the people's mistakes would not represent a class
believed to be opposed to their interest, but would consist of their own natural
leaders in the path of progress. No mode of composition could approach to this
in giving weight and efficacy to their function of moderators. It would be
impossible to cry down a body always foremost in promoting improvements as a
mere obstructive body, whatever amount of mischief it might obstruct.
Were the place vacant in England for such a Senate (I need scarcely say that
this is a mere hypothesis), it might be composed of some such elements as the
following. All who were or had been members of the Legislative Commission
described in a former chapter, and which I 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 who had held, during
ten years, first-class diplomatic appointments. All who had been
Governors-General of India or British America, and all who had held for ten
years any Colonial 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. If, along with the persons
thus qualified by practical experience in the administration of public affairs,
any representation of the speculative class were to be included � a thing in
itself desirable � it would be worth consideration whether certain
professorships, in certain national institutions, after a tenure of a few years,
might confer a seat in the Senate. Mere scientific and literary eminence are too
indefinite and disputable: they imply a power of 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 favour 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, 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 14
Of the Executive in a Representative Government.
IT WOULD be out of place, in
this treatise, to discuss the question into what departments or branches the
executive business of government may most conveniently be divided. In this
respect the exigencies of 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 is
probably without the appropriate departmental experience, to take care of the
real end. The different classes of means are not combined and adapted to one
another under the guidance of any leading idea; and while every 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 everything, and through whose default anything was left
undone. Responsibility is null when nobody knows who is responsible. Nor, even
when real, can it be 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 offence: if there has been legal
criminality they may all be punished legally, and their punishment needs not be
less severe than if there had been only one person concerned. But it is not so
with the penalties, any more than with the rewards, of opinion: these are always
diminished by being shared. Where there has been no definite legal offence, no
corruption or 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 anything, 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
counsellors 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 clamour 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 guarantee 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 cannot be
properly judged of except by persons who have themselves some share of those
qualifications, or some practical experience of them. The business of finding
the fittest persons to fill public employments � not merely selecting the best
who offer, but looking out for the absolutely best, and taking note of all fit
persons who are met with, that they may be found when wanted � is very
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'etat, 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'etat
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 paralyse 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 promote opposition in any
quarter that has either direct or indirect influence in the pending struggle.
I have not taken account of the case in which the vast power centralised in
the chief magistrate, and the insufficient attachment of the mass of the people
to free institutions, give him a chance of success in an attempt to subvert the
Constitution, and usurp sovereign power. Where such peril exists, no first
magistrate is admissible whom the Parliament cannot, by a single vote, reduce to
a private station. In a state of things holding out any encouragement to that
most audacious and profligate of all breaches of trust, even this entireness of
constitutional dependence is but a weak protection.
Of all officers of government, those in whose appointment any 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 anything like equal importance. Some thinkers, among others
Mr. Bentham, have been of opinion that, although it is better that judges should
not be appointed by popular election, the people of their district ought to have
the power, after sufficient experience, of removing them from their trust. It
cannot be denied that the irremovability of any public officer, to whom great
interests are entrusted, is in itself an evil. It is far from desirable that
there should be no means of getting rid of a bad or incompetent judge, unless
for such misconduct as he can be made to answer for in a 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.[12]
With regard to that large and important body which constitutes the permanent
strength of the public service, those who do not change with changes of
politics, but remain to aid every minister by their experience and traditions,
inform him by their knowledge of business, and conduct official details under
his general control; those, in short, who form the class of professional public
servants, entering their profession as others do while young, in the hope of
rising progressively to its higher grades as they advance in life; it is
evidently inadmissible that these should be liable to be turned out, and
deprived of the whole benefit of their 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, as a rule, appointed at the commencement
of manhood, not as having learnt, but in order that they may learn, their
profession, the only thing by which the best 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 honours at the Universities. This would probably be the
best plan under any system; and under our parliamentary government it is the
only one which 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 neglecting a duty to the public which, in the particular
instance, seldom appears of first rate importance; and when he is sure to be
bitterly reproached for doing the first, while in general no one will either
know or care whether he has done the latter; the balance, unless he is a man of
very unusual stamp, inclines to the side of good nature. A relaxation in one
instance 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
honours 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 everything 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[13]
which can be shown to have been ever asked, and make it appear as if
unexceptionable answers to all these were made the sine qua non of success. Yet
it has been repeated to satiety that such questions are not put because it is
expected of every one that he should answer them, but in order that whoever is
able to do so may have the means of proving and availing himself of that portion
of his knowledge. It is not as a ground of rejection, but as an additional means
of success, that this opportunity is given. We are then asked whether the kind
of knowledge supposed in this, that, or the other question is calculated to be
of any use to the candidate after he has attained his object. People differ
greatly in opinion as to what 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 attache, 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, in a country where the only things regularly taught are classics
and mathematics, tell us what they would have him questioned in? There seems,
however, to be equal objection to examining him in these, and to examining him
in anything but these. If the Commissioners � anxious to open a door of
admission to those who have not gone through the routine of a grammar school, or
who make up for the smallness of their knowledge of what is there taught by
greater knowledge of something else � allow marks to be gained by proficiency
in any other subject of real utility, they are reproached for that too. Nothing
will satisfy the objectors but free admission of total 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 Caesar speak French. We are
next informed that bookworms, a term which seems to be held applicable to
whoever has the smallest tincture of book � knowledge, may not be good at
bodily exercises, or have the habits of gentlemen. This is a very common line of
remark with dunces of condition; but whatever the dunces may think, they have no
monopoly of either gentlemanly habits or bodily activity. Wherever these are
needed, let them be inquired into and separately provided for, not to the
exclusion of mental qualifications, but in 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 demeanour they contrast so favourably with their
predecessors, that the authorities of the institutions are impatient for the day
to arrive when the last remains of the old leaven shall have disappeared from
the place. If this be so, and it is easy to ascertain whether it is so, it is to
be hoped we shall soon have heard for the last time that ignorance is a better
qualification than knowledge for the military and a fortiori for every other,
profession; or that any one good quality, however little 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 redounds to the credit of the minister, however much
the qualities to which it is immediately owing may be those of his subordinates.
Chapter 15
Of Local Representative Bodies.
IT IS BUT a small portion of
the public business of a country which can be well done, or safely attempted, by
the central authorities; and even in our own government, the least centralised
in Europe, the legislative 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[14]
what seemed to me most essential respecting the principles by which the extent
of that action ought to be determined. But after subtracting from the functions
performed by most European 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 labour, it is
indispensable to share them between central and local authorities. Not only 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. In some of the New England
States these functions are still exercised directly by the assembled people; it
is said with better results than might be expected; and those highly educated
communities are so well satisfied with this primitive mode of local government,
that they have no desire to exchange it for the only representative system they
are acquainted with, by which all minorities are disfranchised. Such very
peculiar circumstances, however, are required to make this arrangement work
tolerably in practice, that recourse must generally be had to the plan of
representative sub-Parliaments for local affairs. These exist in England, but
very incompletely, and with great irregularity and want of system: in some other
countries much less popularly governed their constitution is far more rational.
In England there has always been more liberty, but worse organisation, while in
other countries there is better organisation, but less liberty. It is necessary,
then, that in addition to the national representation there should be municipal
and provincial 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 cannot all be done
by proxy. It may be added, that these local functions, not being in general
sought by the higher ranks, carry down the important political education which
they are the means of conferring to a much lower grade in society. The 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
cannot be given to the constitution of the only provincial boards we possess,
the Quarter Sessions, consisting of the justices of peace alone; on whom, over
and above their judicial duties, some of the most important parts of the
administrative business of the country depend for their performance. The mode of
formation of these bodies is most 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, cannot without great waste and
inconvenience be different for different quarters of the same town. The
subdivision of London into six or seven independent districts, each with its
separate arrangements for local business (several of them without unity of
administration even within themselves), prevents the possibility of consecutive
or well regulated cooperation for common objects, precludes any uniform
principle for the discharge of local 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 elected body for all local business, not different
bodies for different parts of it. Division of labour does not mean cutting up
every business into minute fractions; it means the union of such operations as
are fit to be performed by the same persons, and the separation of such as can
be better performed by different persons. The executive duties of the locality
do indeed require to be divided into departments, for the same reason as those
of the State; because they are of diverse 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 anything else to keep the generality of mankind on one
level of contented ignorance. The school, moreover, is worthless, and a school
of evil instead of good, if through the want of due surveillance, and of the
presence within itself of a higher order of characters, the action of the body
is allowed, as it so often is, to degenerate into an equally unscrupulous and
stupid pursuit of the self-interest of its members. Now it is quite hopeless to
induce persons of a high class, either socially or intellectually, to take a
share of local administration in a corner by piece-meal, as members of a 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 anything 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 organised system the appointment and watching of the
local officers would be the most important part of his duty: he himself being
appointed by the Council from its own number, subject either to annual
re-election, or to removal by a vote of the body.
From the constitution of the local bodies I now pass to the equally important
and more difficult subject of their proper attributions. This question divides
itself into two parts: what should be their duties, and whether they should have
full authority within the sphere of those 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 gaols, 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 demoralisation, owing to the maladministration of
its police; or if, through the bad regulations of its gaol, the punishment which
the courts of justice intended to inflict on the criminals confined therein (who
might have come from, or committed their offences in, any other district) might
be doubled in intensity, or lowered to practical impunity. The points, moreover,
which constitute good management of these things are the same everywhere; there
is no good reason why police, or gaols, or the administration of justice, should
be differently managed in one part of the kingdom and in another; while there is
great peril that in things so important, and to which the most instructed minds
available to the State are not more than adequate, the lower average of
capacities which alone can be counted on for the 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 entrusted 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 gaols shows them to be requisite: as there are
inspectors of factories, and inspectors of schools, to watch over the observance
of the Acts of Parliament relating to the first, and the fulfilment of the
conditions on which State assistance is granted to the latter.
But, if the administration of justice, police and gaols included, is both so
universal a concern, and so much a matter of general science independent of
local peculiarities, that it may be, and ought to be, uniformly regulated
throughout the country, and its regulation enforced by more trained and skilful
hands than those of purely local authorities � there is also business, such as
the administration of the poor laws, sanitary regulation, and others, which,
while really interesting to the whole country, cannot 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 criticised, 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 compensating advantage of a far more direct
interest in the result. A man's neighbours or his landlord may be much cleverer
than himself, and not without an indirect interest in his prosperity, but for
all that his interests will be better attended to in his own keeping than in
theirs. It is further to be remembered, that even supposing the central
government to administer through its own officers, its officers do not act at
the centre, but in the locality: and however inferior the local public may be to
the central, it is the local public alone which has any opportunity of watching
them, and it is the local opinion alone which either acts directly upon their
own conduct, or calls the attention of the government to the points in which
they may require correction. It is but in extreme cases that the general opinion
of the country is brought to bear at all upon details of local administration,
and still more rarely has it the means of deciding upon them with any just
appreciation of the case. Now, the local opinion necessarily acts far more
forcibly upon purely local administrators. They, in the natural course of
things, are permanent residents, not expecting to be withdrawn from the place
when they cease to exercise authority in it; and their authority itself depends,
by supposition, on the will of the local public. I need not dwell on the
deficiencies of the central authority in detailed knowledge of local persons and
things, and the too great 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 learnt from the united experience of
the whole kingdom, with the addition of easy access to that of foreign
countries.
The practical conclusion from these premises is not difficult to draw. The
authority which is most conversant with principles should be 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 localised,
but knowledge, to be most useful, must be centralised; there must be somewhere a
focus at which all its scattered rays are collected, that the broken and
coloured lights which exist 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 modes 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 labouring population depend, 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 everything is aptly
compared by M. Charles de Remusat to a schoolmaster who does all the pupils'
tasks for them; he may be very popular with the pupils, but he will teach them
little. A government, on the other hand, which neither does anything itself that
can possibly be done by any one else, nor shows any one else how to do anything,
is like a school in which there is no schoolmaster, but only pupil teachers who
have never themselves been taught.
Chapter 16
Of Nationality, as connected with Representative Government.
A PORTION of mankind may be
said to constitute a Nationality if they are united among themselves by common
sympathies which do not exist between them and any others � which make them
co-operate with each other more willingly than with other people, desire to be
under the same government, and desire that it should be government by themselves
or a portion of themselves exclusively. This feeling of nationality may have
been generated by various causes. Sometimes it is the effect of identity of race
and descent. Community of language, and community of 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, throughout history, felt itself quite distinct in
nationality from Naples, notwithstanding identity of religion, almost identity
of language, and a considerable amount of common historical antecedents. The
Flemish and the Walloon provinces of Belgium, notwithstanding diversity of race
and language, have a much greater feeling of common nationality than the former
have with Holland, or the latter with France. Yet in general 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 everything else, the possession of a common
name, which makes them all glory in the past achievements in arts, arms,
politics, religious primacy, science, and literature, of any who share the same
designation, give rise to an amount of national 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 prima
facie case for uniting all the members of the nationality under the same
government, and a government to themselves apart. This is merely saying that the
question of government ought to be decided by the 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, cannot 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
favour of the government against the rest. Above all, the grand and only
effectual security in the last resort against the despotism of the government is
in that case wanting: the sympathy of the army with the people. The military are
the part of every community in whom, from the nature of the case, the
distinction 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 foes
� we may almost say between fellow-men and another kind of animals: for as
respects the enemy, the only law is that of force, and the only mitigation the
same as in the case of other animals � that of simple humanity.
Soldiers to
whose feelings half or three-fourths of the 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 civilised beings, and ought, with the utmost energy, to be
contended against, no one holds that opinion more strongly than myself. But this
object, one of the worthiest to which human endeavour can be directed, can
never, in the present state of civilisation, be promoted by keeping different
nationalities of anything like equivalent strength under the same government. In
a barbarous state of society the case is sometimes different. The government may
then be 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 civilised and cultivated people
� to be a member of the French nationality, admitted on equal terms to all the
privileges of French citizenship, sharing the advantages of French 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
neighbouring vices. But to render this admixture possible, there must be
peculiar conditions. The combinations of circumstances which occur, and which
effect the result, are various.
The nationalities brought together under the same government may be about
equal in numbers and strength, or they may be very unequal. If unequal, the
least numerous of the two may either be the superior in civilisation, or the
inferior. Supposing it to be superior, it may either, through that superiority,
be able to acquire ascendancy over the other, or it may be overcome by brute
strength and reduced to subjection. This last is a sheer mischief to the human
race, and one which civilised 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, reinforced by the Greeks,
did Asia, and the English India, there is often a gain to civilisation: but the
conquerors and the conquered cannot in this case live together under the same
free institutions. The absorption of the conquerors in the less advanced people
would be an evil: these, must be governed as subjects, and the state of things
is either a benefit or a misfortune, according as the subjugated people have or
have not reached the state in which it is an injury not to be under a free
government, and according as the conquerors do or do not use their superiority
in a 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 neighbours, but the wealthiest, and one of
the freest, as well as most civilised and powerful, nations of the earth.
The cases in which the greatest practical obstacles exist to the 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 tyrannised over if any authority is exercised within itself by
functionaries of a rival race; and whatever is given to one of the conflicting
nationalities is considered to be taken from all the rest. When nations, thus
divided, are under a despotic 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 neighbours with whom it would prefer to connect itself,
having more sympathies in common, if not also greater community of interest.
Chapter 17
Of Federal Representative Governments.
PORTIONS OF mankind who are not
fitted, or not disposed, to live under the same internal government, may often
with advantage be federally united as to their relations with foreigners: both
to prevent wars among themselves, and for the sake of more effectual protection
against the aggression of powerful States.
To render a federation advisable, several conditions are necessary. The first
is, that there should be a sufficient amount of mutual sympathy among the
populations. The federation binds them always to fight on the same side; and if
they have such feelings towards one another, or such diversity of feeling
towards their neighbours, that they would generally prefer to fight on opposite
sides, the federal tie is neither likely to be of long duration, not to be well
observed while it subsists. The 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 defence, are hemmed in on all
sides by military or feudal monarchs, who hate and despise freedom even in a
neighbour, those states have no chance for preserving liberty and its blessings
but by a federal union. The common interest arising from this cause has in
Switzerland, for several centuries, been found adequate to maintain 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 has gone so
far in alienating from each other's sympathies the two divisions of the Union,
that the maintenance or disruption of a tie of so much value to them both
depends on the issue of an obstinate civil war.
A second condition of the stability of a federal government is that the
separate states be not so powerful as to be able to rely, for protection against
foreign encroachment, on their individual strength. If they are, they will be
apt to think that they do not gain, by union with others, the equivalent of what
they sacrifice in their own liberty of action; and consequently, whenever the
policy of the Confederation, in things reserved to its cognisance, 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 cannot, 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 civilised than others. There is a wide difference in wealth and
population between New York and Rhode Island; between Bern and Zug or Glaris.
The essential is, that there should not be any one State so much more powerful
than the rest as to be capable of vying in strength with many of them combined.
If there be such a one, and only one, it will insist on being master of the
joint deliberations: if there be two, they will be irresistible when they agree;
and whenever they differ everything will be decided by a struggle for ascendancy
between the rivals. This cause is alone enough to reduce the German Bund to
almost a nullity, independently of its wretched 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 meantime each petty prince has little choice but to be a
partisan of one or the other, or to intrigue with foreign governments against
both.
There are two different modes of organising a Federal Union. The federal
authorities may represent the Governments solely, and their acts may be
obligatory only on the Governments as such; or they may have the power of
enacting laws and issuing orders which are binding 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, sympathising
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
defence of the new Federal Constitution while still awaiting the national
acceptance, is even now the most instructive treatise we possess on federal
government.[15]
In Germany, the more imperfect kind of federation, as all know, has not even
answered the purpose of 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 cannot be deprived of it, nor made responsible to any
one for its use, is not likely to renounce having a separate army, or to brook
the exercise of sovereign authority over his own subjects, not through him but
directly, by another power. To enable two or more countries under kingly
government to be joined together in an effectual confederation it seems
necessary that they should all be under the same king. England and Scotland were
a federation of this description during the interval of about a century between
the union of the Crowns and that of the Parliaments. Even this was effective,
not through federal institutions, for none existed, but because the regal power
in both Constitutions was during the greater part of that time so nearly
absolute as to enable the foreign policy of both to be shaped according to a
single will.
Under the more perfect mode of federation, where every citizen of each
particular State owes obedience to two Governments, that of his own state and
that of the federation, it is evidently necessary not only that the
constitutional limits of the authority of each should be precisely and clearly
defined, but that the power to decide between them in any case of dispute should
not reside in either of the Governments, or in any functionary subject to it,
but in an umpire independent of both. There must be a Supreme Court of justice,
and a system of subordinate Courts in every State of the Union, before whom such
questions shall be 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 realised 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 cannot refuse to
fulfil, of dispensing justice impartially between adverse litigants. Even these
grounds of confidence would not have sufficed to produce the respectful
submission with which all authorities have yielded to the decisions of the
Supreme Court on the interpretation of the Constitution, were it not that
complete reliance has been felt, not only on the intellectual pre-eminence of
the judges composing that exalted tribunal, but on their entire superiority over
either private or sectional partialities. This 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 everything which has the
remotest tendency to produce deterioration in the quality of this great national
institution. The confidence on which depends the stability of federal
institutions was for the first time impaired by the judgment declaring slavery
to be of common right, and consequently lawful in the Territories while not yet
constituted as States, even against the will of a majority of their inhabitants.
This memorable decision has probably done more than anything else to bring the
sectional division to the crisis which has issued in civil war. The main pillar
of the American Constitution is scarcely strong enough to bear many more such
shocks.
The tribunals which act as umpires between the Federal and the State
Governments naturally also decide all disputes between two States, or between a
citizen of one State and the government of another. The usual remedies between
nations, war and diplomacy, being precluded by the federal union, it is
necessary that a judicial remedy should supply their place. The Supreme Court of
the Federation dispenses international law, and is the first great example of
what is now one of the most prominent wants of civilised society, a real
International Tribunal.
The powers of a Federal Government naturally extend not only to peace and
war, and all questions which arise between the country and foreign governments,
but to making any other arrangements which are, in the opinion of the States,
necessary to their enjoyment of the full benefits of union. For example, it is a
great advantage to them that their mutual commerce should be free, without the
impediment of frontier duties and custom-houses. But this internal freedom
cannot exist if each State has the power of fixing the duties on interchange of
commodities between itself and foreign countries; since every foreign product
let in by one State would be let into all the rest. And hence all custom duties
and trade regulations, in the United States, are made or repealed by the Federal
Government exclusively. Again, it is a great convenience to the States to have
but one coinage, and but one system of weights and measures; which can only be
ensured if the regulation of these matters is entrusted to the Federal
Government. The certainty and celerity of Post Office communication is impeded,
and its expense increased, if a letter has to pass through half a dozen sets of
public offices, subject to 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,[16]
claimed a veto for each State on the custom laws of the Federal Congress: and
that statesman, in a posthumous work of great ability, which has been printed
and widely circulated by the legislature of South Carolina, vindicated this
pretension on the general principle of limiting the tyranny of the majority, and
protecting minorities by admitting them to a substantial participation in
political power. One of the most disputed topics in American politics, during
the early part of this century, was whether the power of the Federal Government
ought to extend, and whether by the Constitution it did extend, to making roads
and canals at the cost of the Union. It is only in transactions with foreign
powers that the authority of the Federal Government is of necessity complete. On
every other subject, the question depends on how closely the people in general
wish to draw the federal tie; what portion of their local freedom of action they
are willing to surrender, in order to enjoy more fully the benefit of being one
nation.
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
defence, 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
neighbouring nations, the increased military strength conferred by it is of a
kind to be almost exclusively available for defensive, scarcely at all for
aggressive, purposes. A federal government has not a sufficiently concentrated
authority to conduct with much efficiency any war but one of self-defence, in
which it can rely on the voluntary co-operation of every citizen: nor is there
anything very flattering to national vanity or ambition in acquiring, by a
successful war, not subjects, nor even fellow-citizens, but only new, and
perhaps troublesome, independent members of the confederation. The warlike
proceedings of the Americans in Mexico were purely exceptional, having been
carried on principally by volunteers, under the influence of the migratory
propensity which prompts individual Americans to possess themselves of
unoccupied land; and stimulated, if by any public motive, not by that of
national aggrandisement, but by the purely sectional purpose of extending
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 favoured it.
The question may present itself (as in Italy at its present uprising) whether
a country, which is determined to be united, should form a 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
co-existence 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 were 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 favour of different modes of
taxation.
If the general legislature could not be depended on for being guided
by the members for each province in modifying the general system of taxation to
suit that province, the Constitution might provide that as many of the expenses
of the government as could by any possibility be made local should be defrayed
by local rates imposed by the provincial assemblies, and that those which must
of necessity be general, such as the support of an army and navy, should, in the
estimates for the year, be 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'etats;
each of which, having consented or been required to furnish a fixed sum, was
left to assess it upon the inhabitants by its own officers, thus escaping the
grinding despotism of the royal intendants and subdelegues; 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
guarantee of a constitutional provision against any attempt at assimilation,
except by the voluntary act of those who would be affected by the change.
Chapter 18
Of the Government of Dependencies by a Free State.
FREE STATES, like all others,
may possess dependencies, acquired either by conquest or by colonisation; and
our own is the greatest instance of the kind in modern history. It is a most
important question how such dependencies ought to be governed.
It is unnecessary to discuss the case of small posts, like Gibraltar, Aden,
or Heligoland, which are held only as naval or military positions. The military
or naval object is in this case paramount, and the inhabitants cannot,
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 civilisation to the ruling country,
capable of, and ripe for, representative government: such as the British
possessions in America and Australia. Others, like India, are still at a great
distance from that state.
In the case of dependencies of the former class, this country has at length
realised, in rare completeness, the true principle of government. England has
always felt under a certain degree of obligation to bestow on such of her
outlying populations as were of her own blood and 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 terminate 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 tyrannising over the younger ones
from mere habit, till one of them, by a spirited resistance, though with unequal
strength, gives him notice to desist. We were wise enough not to require a
second warning. A new era in the colonial policy of nations began with Lord
Durham's Report; the 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.[17]
It is now a fixed principle of the policy of Great Britain, professed in
theory and faithfully adhered to in practice, that her colonies of 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 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 counsel together. They are not part of the same public; they do
not discuss and deliberate in the same arena, but apart, and have only a most
imperfect knowledge of what passes in the minds of one another. They neither
know each other's objects, nor have confidence in each other's principles of
conduct. Let any Englishman ask himself how he should like his destinies to
depend on an assembly of which one-third was British American, and another third
South African and Australian. Yet to this it must come if there were anything
like fair or equal 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 defence 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 cooperation among nations. It
renders war impossible among a large number of otherwise independent
communities; and moreover hinders any of them from being absorbed into a foreign
state, and becoming a source of additional aggressive strength to some rival
power, either more despotic or closer at hand, which might not always be so
unambitious or so pacific as Great Britain. It at least keeps the markets of the
different countries open to one another, and prevents that mutual exclusion by
hostile tariffs, which none of the great communities of mankind, except England,
have yet completely outgrown. And in the case of the British possessions it has
the advantage, especially valuable at the present time, of adding to the moral
influence, and weight in the councils of the world, of the Power which, of all
in existence, best understands liberty � and whatever may have been its errors
in the past, has attained to more of conscience and moral principle in its
dealings with foreigners than any other great nation seems either to conceive as
possible or recognise as desirable. Since, then, the union can only continue,
while it does 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 anything to the expense, except what may be required for the
specific local defence 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
defence even in time of peace; the whole of it, so far as it depends upon a
standing army.
But there is a means, still more effectual than these, by which, and 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.
Thus far of the dependencies whose population is in a sufficiently advanced
state to be fitted for representative government. But there are others which
have not attained that state, and which, if held at all, must be governed by the
dominant country, or by persons delegated for that purpose by it. This mode of
government is as legitimate as any other if it is the one which in the existing
state of civilisation of the subject people most facilitates their transition to
a higher stage of improvement. There are, as we have already seen, conditions of
society in which a vigorous despotism is in itself the best mode of government
for training the people in what is specifically wanting to render them capable
of a higher civilisation. There are others, in which the mere fact of despotism
has indeed no beneficial effect, the lessons which it teaches having already
been only too completely learnt; but in which, there being no spring of
spontaneous improvement in the people themselves, their 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 civilised 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 realised; but unless some approach to it is, the rulers are guilty of
a dereliction of the highest moral trust which can devolve upon a nation: and if
they do not even 'him at it, they are selfish usurpers, on a par in criminality
with any of those whose ambition and rapacity have sported from age to age with
the destiny of masses of mankind.
As it is already a common, and is rapidly tending to become the universal,
condition of the more backward populations, to be either held in direct
subjection by the more advanced, or to be under their complete political
ascendancy; there are in this age of the world few more important problems than
how to organise this rule, so as to make it a good instead of an evil to the
subject people; providing them with the best attainable present government, and
with the conditions most favourable to future permanent improvement. But the
mode of fitting the 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 anything about their
subjects, has many chances of being worse than that of those who do. It is not
usually thought that the immediate agents of authority govern better because
they govern in the name of an absent master, and of one who has a thousand more
pressing interests to attend to. The master may hold them to a strict
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 cannot judge, by the light in which a thing appears to their
own minds, or the manner in which it affects their feelings, how it will affect
the feelings or appear to the minds of the subject population. What a native of
the country, of average practical ability, knows as it were by instinct, they
have to learn slowly, and after all imperfectly, by study and experience. The
laws, the customs, the social relations, for which they have to legislate,
instead of being 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 anything the strangers do can be intended for their good.
These are but a part of the difficulties that any rulers have to struggle with
who honestly attempt to govern well a country in which they are foreigners. To
overcome these difficulties in any degree will always be a work of much labour,
requiring a very superior degree of capacity in the chief administrators, and a
high average among the subordinates: and the best organisation of such a
government is that which will best ensure the labour, develop the capacity, and
place the highest specimens of it in the situations of greatest trust.
Responsibility to an authority which bas gone through none of the labour,
acquired none of the capacity, and for the most part is not even aware that
either, in any peculiar degree, is required, cannot be regarded as a very
effectual expedient for accomplishing these ends.
The government of a people by itself has a meaning and a reality; but such a
thing as government of one people by another does not and cannot exist. One
people may keep another as a warren or preserve for its own use, a place to make
money in, a human cattle farm to be worked for the profit of its own
inhabitants. But if the good of the governed is the proper business of a
government, it is utterly impossible that a people should directly attend to it.
The utmost they can do is to give some of their best men a commission to look
after it; to whom the opinion of their own country can neither be much of a
guide in the performance of their duty, nor a competent judge of the mode in
which it has been 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, amidst habitual acquiescence, are every now and then interfering, and
almost always in the wrong place. The real causes which determine the prosperity
or wretchedness, the 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 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
demoralising 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
splendour as he ever enjoyed; a knot of privileged landholders, who demand that
the State should relinquish to them its reserved right to a rent from their
lands, or who resent as a wrong any attempt to protect the masses from their
extortion; these have no difficulty in procuring interested or 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 ensures publicity and
discussion; the utility of which does not require that the public at large
should comprehend the point at issue, provided there are any individuals among
them who do; for, a merely moral responsibility not being responsibility to the
collective people, but to every separate person among them who forms a 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 defence, and that one
or two of the jury will form an opinion worth having about their conduct, though
that of the remainder will probably be several degrees worse than none. Such as
it is, this is the amount of 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 seldom remains long enough in
office to acquire an intelligent interest in so complicated a subject; upon whom
the factitious public opinion got up in Parliament, consisting of two or three
fluent speakers, acts with as much force as if it were genuine; while he is
under none of the influences of training and position which would lead or
qualify him to form an honest opinion of his own. A free country which attempts
to govern a distant dependency, inhabited by a dissimilar people, by means of a
branch of its own executive, will almost inevitably fail. The only mode which
has any chance of tolerable success is to govern through a 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 cannot have all the
requisites of good government; above all, cannot have that complete and
ever-operative identity of interest with the governed which it is so difficult
to obtain even where the people to be ruled are in some degree qualified to look
after their own affairs. Real good government is not compatible with the
conditions of the case. There is but a choice of imperfections. The problem is,
so to construct the governing body that, under the difficulties of the position,
it shall have as much interest as possible in good government, and as little in
bad. Now these conditions are best found in an intermediate body. A delegated
administration has always this advantage over a direct one, that it has, at all
events, no duty to perform except to the governed. It has no interests to
consider except theirs. Its own power of deriving profit from misgovernment may
be reduced � in the latest constitution of the East India Company it was
reduced � to a singularly small amount: and it can be kept entirely clear of
bias from the individual or class interests of any one else.
When the home government and Parliament are swayed by those partial
influences in the exercise of the power reserved to them in the 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, the appointments are 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 cannot be too often repeated, that in a country like India everything
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 practised with
impunity in India, will be the beginning of the decline and fall of our empire
there. Even with a sincere intention of preferring the best candidate, it will
not do to rely on chance for supplying fit persons. The system must be
calculated to form them. It has done this hitherto; and because it has done so,
our rule in India has lasted, and been one of constant, if not very rapid,
improvement in prosperity and good administration. As much bitterness is now
manifested against this system, and as much eagerness displayed to overthrow it,
as if educating and training the officers of government for their work were a
thing utterly unreasonable and indefensible, an unjustifiable interference with
the rights of ignorance and inexperience. There is a tacit conspiracy between
those who would like to job in first-rate Indian offices for their connections
here, and those who, being already in India, claim to be promoted from the
indigo factory or the attorney's office, to administer justice or fix the
payments due to government from millions of people. The "monopoly" of
the Civil Service, so much inveighed against, is like the monopoly of judicial
offices by the bar; and its abolition would be like opening the bench in
Westminster Hall to the first comer whose friends certify that he has now and
then looked into Blackstone. Were the course ever adopted of sending men from
this country, or encouraging them in going out, to get themselves put into high
appointments without having learnt their business by passing through the lower
ones, the most important offices would be thrown to Scotch cousins and
adventurers, connected by no professional feeling with the country or the work,
held to no previous knowledge, and eager only to make money rapidly and return
home.
The safety of the country is, that those by whom it is administered be sent
out in youth, as candidates only, to begin at the bottom of the ladder, and
ascend higher or not, as, after a proper interval, they are proved qualified.
The defect of the East India Company's system was, that though the best men were
carefully sought out for the most important posts, yet if an officer remained in
the service, promotion, though it might be delayed, came at last in some shape
or other, to the least as well as to the most competent. Even the inferior in
qualifications, among such a corps of functionaries, consisted, it must be
remembered, of men who had been brought up to their duties, and had fulfilled
them for many years, at lowest without disgrace, under the eye and authority of
a superior. But though this diminished the evil, it was nevertheless
considerable. A man who never becomes fit for more than an assistant's duty
should remain an assistant all his life, and his juniors should be promoted over
him. With this exception, I am not aware of any real defect in the old system of
Indian appointments. It had already received the greatest other improvement it
was susceptible of, the choice of the original candidates by competitive
examination: which, besides the advantage of recruiting from a higher grade of
industry and capacity, has the recommendation, that under it, unless by
accident, there are no personal ties between the candidates for offices and
those who have a voice in conferring them.
It is in no way unjust that public officers thus selected and trained should
be exclusively eligible to offices which require specially Indian knowledge and
experience. If any door to the higher appointments, without passing through the
lower, be opened even for occasional use, there will be such incessant knocking
at it by persons of influence that it will be impossible ever to keep it closed.
The only excepted appointment should be the highest one of all. The Viceroy of
British India should be a person selected from all Englishmen for his great
general capacity for government. If he have this, he will be able to distinguish
in others, and turn to his own use, that special knowledge and judgment in local
affairs which he has not himself had the opportunity of acquiring. There are
good reasons why (saving exceptional cases) the Viceroy should not be a member
of the regular service. All services have, more or less, their class prejudices,
from which the supreme ruler ought to be exempt. Neither are men, however able
and experienced, who have passed their lives in Asia, so likely to possess the
most advanced European ideas in general statesmanship; which the chief ruler
should carry out with him, and blend with the results of Indian experience.
Again, being of a different class, and especially if chosen by a different
authority, he will seldom have any personal partialities to warp his
appointments to office. This great security for honest bestowal of patronage
existed in rare perfection under the mixed government of the Crown and the East
India Company. The supreme dispensers of office, the Governor-General and
Governors, were appointed, in fact though not formally, by the Crown, that is,
by the general Government, not by the intermediate body; and a great officer of
the Crown probably had not a single personal or political connection in the
local service: while the delegated body, most of whom had themselves served in
the country, had and were likely to have such connections.
This guarantee for impartiality would be much impaired if the civil servants
of Government, even though sent out in boyhood as mere candidates for
employment, should come to be furnished, in any considerable proportion, by the
class of society which supplies Viceroys and Governors. Even the initiatory
competitive examination would then be an insufficient security. It would exclude
mere ignorance and incapacity; it would compel youths of family to start in the
race with the same amount of instruction and ability as other people; the
stupidest son could not be put into the Indian service as he can be into the
church; but there would be nothing to prevent undue preference afterwards. No
longer all equally unknown and unheard of by the arbiter of their lot, a portion
of the service would be personally, and a still greater number politically, in
close relation with him. Members of certain families, and of the higher classes
and influential connections generally, would rise more rapidly than their
competitors, and be often kept in situations for which they were unfit, or
placed in those for which others were fitter. The same influences would be
brought into play which affect promotions in the army: and those alone, if such
miracles of simplicity there be, who believe that these are impartial, would
expect impartiality in those of India. This evil is, I fear, irremediable by any
general measures which can be taken under the present system. No such will
afford a degree of security comparable to that which once flowed spontaneously
from the so-called double government.
What is accounted so great an advantage in the case of the English system of
government at home has been its misfortune in India � that it grew up of
itself, not from preconceived design, but by successive expedients, and by the
adaptation of machinery originally created for a different purpose. As the
country on which its maintenance depended was not the one out of whose
necessities it grew, its practical benefits did not come home to the mind of
that country, and it would have required theoretic recommendations to render it
acceptable. Unfortunately, these were exactly what it seemed to be destitute of:
and undoubtedly the common theories of government did not furnish it with such,
framed as those theories have been for states of circumstances differing in all
the most important features from the case concerned. But in government, as in
other departments of human agency, almost all principles which have been durable
were first suggested by observation of some particular case in which the general
laws of nature acted in some new or previously unnoticed combination of
circumstances. The institutions of Great Britain, and those of the United
States, have the distinction of suggesting most of the theories of government
which, through good and evil fortune, are now, in the course of generations,
reawakening political life in the nations of Europe. It has been the destiny of
the government of the East India Company to suggest the true theory of the
government of a semibarbarous dependency by a civilised country, and after
having done this, to perish. It would be a singular fortune if, at the end of
two or three more generations, this speculative result should be the only
remaining fruit of our ascendancy in India; if posterity should say of us, that
having stumbled accidentally upon better arrangements than our wisdom would ever
have devised, the first use we made of our awakened reason was to destroy them,
and allow the good which had been in course of being realised to fall through
and be lost, from ignorance of the principles on which it depended. Di meliora:
but if a fate so disgraceful to England and to civilisation can be averted, it
must be through far wider political conceptions than merely English or European
practice can supply, and through a much more profound study of Indian
experience, and of the conditions of Indian government, than either English
politicians, or those who supply the English public with opinions, have hitherto
shown any willingness to undertake.
� THE END �
Notes:
1. I limit the expression to past time,
because I would say nothing derogatory of a great, and now at last a free,
people, who are entering into the general movement of European progress with a
vigour which bids fair to make up rapidly the ground they have lost. No one can
doubt what Spanish intellect and energy are capable of; and their faults as a
people are chiefly those for which freedom and industrial ardour are a real
specific.
2. Written before the salutary revolution of
1862, which, provoked by popular disgust at the system of governing by
corruption, and the general demoralisation of political men, has opened to that
rapidly improving people a new and hopeful chance of real constitutional
government.
3. Italy, which alone can be quoted as an
exception, is only so in regard to the final stage of its transformation. The
more difficult previous advance from the city isolation of Florence, Pisa, or
Milan, to the provincial unity of Tuscany or Lombardy, took place in the usual
manner.
4. This blunder of Mr. Disraeli (from which,
greatly to his credit, Sir John Pakington took an opportunity, soon after, of
separating himself) is a speaking instance among many, how little the
Conservative leaders understand Conservative principles. Without presuming to
require from political Parties such an amount of virtue and discernment as that
they should comprehend, and know when to apply, the principles of their
opponents, we may yet say that it would be a great improvement if each party
understood and acted upon its own. Well would it be for England if Conservatives
voted consistently for everything conservative, and Liberals for everything
liberal. We should not then have to wait long for things which, like the present
and many other great measures, are eminently both the one and the other. The
Conservatives, as being by the law of their existence the stupidest party, have
much the greatest sins of this description to answer for: and it is a melancholy
truth, that if any measure were proposed, on any subject, truly, largely, and
far-sightedly conservative, even if Liberals were willing to vote for it, the
great bulk of the Conservative party would rush blindly in and prevent it from
being carried.
5. In a second edition, published recently,
Mr. Hare has made important improvements in some of the detailed provisions.
6. In the interval between the last and
present editions of this treatise, it has become known that the experiment here
suggested has actually been made on a larger than any municipal or provincial
scale, and has been in course of trial for several years. In the Danish
Constitution (not that of Denmark proper, but the Constitution framed for the
entire Danish kingdom) the equal representation of minorities was provided for
on a plan so nearly identical with Mr. Hare's, as to add another to the examples
how the ideas which resolve difficulties arising out of a general situation of
the human mind or of society, present themselves, without communication, to
several superior minds at once. This feature of the Danish electoral law has
been brought fully and clearly before the British public in an able paper by Mr.
Robert Lytton, forming one of the valuable reports by Secretaries of Legation,
printed by order of the House of Commons in 1864, Mr. Hare's plan, which may now
be also called M. Andrae's, has thus advanced from the position of a simple
project to that of a realised political fact.
7. The following "extract from the
Report of the English Commissioner to the New York Exhibition," which I
quote from Mr. Carey's Principles of Social Science bears striking
testimony to one part, at least, of the assertion in the text: �
"We have a few great engineers and mechanics, and a
large body of clever workmen; but the Americans seem likely to become a whole
nation of such people. Already, their rivers swarm with steamboats; their
valleys are becoming crowded with factories; their towns, surpassing those of
every state of Europe, except Belgium, Holland, and England, are the abodes of
all the skill which now distinguishes a town population; and there is scarcely
an art in Europe not carried on in America with equal or greater skill than in
Europe, though it has been here cultivated and improved through ages. A whole
nation of Franklins, Stephensons, and Watts in prospect, is something
wonderful for other nations to contemplate. In contrast with the comparative
inertness and ignorance of the bulk of the people of Europe, whatever may be
the superiority of a few well-instructed and gifted persons, the America is
the circumstance most worthy of public attention."
8. Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform,
2nd ed. pp 32-36.
9. "This expedient has been
recommended, both on the score of saving expense, and on that of obtaining the
votes of many electors who otherwise would not vote, and who are regarded by the
advocates of the plan as a particularly desirable class of voters. The scheme
has been carried into practice in the election of poor-law guardians, and its
success in that instance is appealed to in favour of adopting it in the more
important case of voting for a member of the Legislature. But the two cases
appear to me to differ in the point on which the benefits of the expedient
depend. In a local election for a special kind of administrative business, which
consists mainly in the dispensation of a public fund, it is an object to prevent
the choice from being exclusively in the hands of those who actively concern
themselves about it; for the public interest which attaches to the election
being of a limited kind, and in most cases not very great in degree, the
disposition to make themselves busy in the matter is apt to be in a great
measure confined to persons who hope to turn their activity to their own private
advantage; and it may be very desirable to render the intervention of other
people as little onerous to them as possible, if only for the purpose of
swamping these private interests. But when the matter in hand is the great
business of national government, in which every one must take an interest who
cares for anything out of himself, or who cares even for himself intelligently,
it is much rather an object to prevent those from voting who are indifferent to
the subject, than to induce them to vote by any other means than that of
awakening their dormant minds. The voter who does not care enough about the
election to go to the poll, is the very man who, if he can vote without that
small trouble, will give his vote to the first person who asks for it, or on the
most trifling or frivolous inducement. A man who does not care whether he votes,
is not likely to care much which way he votes; and he who is in that state of
mind has no moral right to vote at all; since, if he does so, a vote which is
not the expression of a conviction, counts for as much, and goes as far in
determining the result, as one which represents the thoughts and purposes of a
life." � Thoughts, etc., p. 39.
10. Several of the witnesses before the
Committee of the House of Commons in 1860, on the operation of the Corrupt
Practices Prevention Act, some of them of great practical experience in election
matters, were favourable (either absolutely or as a last resort) to the
principle of requiring a declaration from members of Parliament; and were of
opinion that, if supported by penalties, it would be, to a great degree,
effectual. (Evidence, pp. 46, 54-57, 67, 123, 198-202, 208.) The Chief
Commissioner of the Wakefield Inquiry said (in reference certainly to a
different proposal), "If they see that the Legislature is earnest upon the
subject, the machinery will work.... I am quite sure that if some personal
stigma were applied upon conviction of bribery, it would change the current of
public opinion" (pp. 26 and 32). A distinguished member of the Committee
(and of the present Cabinet) seemed to think it very objectionable to attach the
penalties of perjury to a merely promissory as distinguished from an assertory
oath; but he was reminded, that the oath taken by a witness in a court of
justice is a promissory oath: and the rejoinder (that the witness's promise
relates to an act to be done at once, while the member's would be a promise for
all future time) would only be to the purpose, if it could be supposed that the
swearer might forget the obligation he had entered into, or could possibly
violate it unawares: contingencies which, in a case like the present, are out of
the question.
11. "As Mr. Lorimer remarks, by
creating a pecuniary inducement to persons of the lowest class to devote
themselves to public affairs, the calling of the demagogue would be formally
inaugurated. Nothing is more to be deprecated than making it the private
interest of a number of active persons to urge the form of government in the
direction of its natural perversion. The indications which either a multitude or
an individual can give, when merely left to their own weaknesses, afford but a
faint idea of what those weaknesses would become when played upon by a thousand
flatterers. If there were 658 places of certain, however moderate, emolument, to
be gained by persuading the multitude that ignorance is as good as knowledge,
and better, it is terrible odds that they would believe and act upon the
lesson." � (Article in Fraser's Magazine for April 1859, headed
"Recent Writers on Reform.")
12. I have been informed, however, that in
the States which have made their judges elective, the choice is not really made
by the people, but by the leaders of parties; no elector ever thinking of voting
for any one but the party candidate: and that, in consequence, the person
elected is usually in effect the same who would have been appointed to the
office by the President or by the Governor of the State. Thus one bad practice
limits and corrects another; and the habit of voting en masse under a party
banner, which is so full of evil in all cases in which the function of electing
is rightly vested in the people, tends to alleviate a still greater mischief in
a case where the officer to be elected is one who ought to be chosen not by the
people but for them.
13. Not always, however, the most recondite;
for a late denouncer of competitive examination in the House of Commons had the
naivete to produce a set of almost elementary questions in algebra, history, and
geography, as a proof of the exorbitant amount of high scientific attainment
which the Commissioners were so wild as to exact.
14. On Liberty, concluding chapter;
and, at greater length, in the final chapter of Principles of Political
Economy.
15. Mr. Freeman's History of Federal
Governments, of which only the first volume has yet appeared, is already an
accession to the literature of the subject, equally valuable by its enlightened
principles and its mastery of historical details.
16. Mr. Calhoun.
17. I am speaking here of the adoption of
this improved policy, not, of course, of its original suggestion. The honour of
having been its earliest champion belongs unquestionably to Mr. Roebuck.
