REP_GVMT

1861
REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT
by John Stuart Mill
PREFACE
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 burthens, by holding up to
every citizen an example of morality and good conscience applied to
difficult adjustments, and an evidence of the value which the
highest authorities attach to them, tends in an eminent degree to
educate the moral sentiments of the community, both in respect of
strength and of discrimination. Such a mode of 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.* 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.

* 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.

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,* 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.

* 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.

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