Preface
Those who have done me the honour of reading my previous writings will
probably receive no strong impression of novelty from the present volume; for
the principles are those to which I have been working up during the greater part
of my life, and most of the practical suggestions have been anticipated by
others or by myself. There is novelty, however, in the fact of bringing them
together, and exhibiting them in their connection; and also, I believe, in much
that is brought forward in their support. Several of the opinions at all events,
if not new, are for the present as little likely to meet with general acceptance
as if they were.
It seems to me, however, from various indications, and from none more than
the recent debates on Reform of Parliament, that both Conservatives and Liberals
(if I may continue to call them what they still call themselves) have lost
confidence in the political creeds which they nominally profess, while neither
side appears to have made any progress in providing itself with a better. Yet
such a better doctrine must be possible; not a mere compromise, by splitting the
difference between the two, but something wider than either, which, in virtue of
its superior comprehensiveness, might be adopted by either Liberal or
Conservative without renouncing anything which he really feels to be valuable in
his own creed. When so many feel obscurely the want of such a doctrine, and so
few even flatter themselves that they have attained it, any one may without
presumption offer what his own thoughts, and the best that he knows of those of
others, are able to contribute towards its formation.
Chapter 1
To what extent Forms of Government are a Matter of Choice
All speculations concerning
forms of government bear the impress, more or less exclusive, of two conflicting
theories respecting political institutions; or, to speak more properly,
conflicting conceptions of what political institutions are.
By some minds, government is conceived as strictly a practical art, giving
rise to no questions but those of means and an end. Forms of government are
assimilated to any other expedients for the attainment of human objects. They
are regarded as wholly an affair of invention and contrivance. Being made by
man, it is assumed that man has the choice either to make them or not, and how
or on what pattern they shall be made. Government, according to this conception,
is a problem, to be worked like any other question of business.
The first step
is to define the purposes which governments are required to promote. The next,
is to inquire what form of government is best fitted to fulfil those purposes.
Having satisfied ourselves on these two points, and ascertained the form of
government which combines the greatest amount of good with the least of evil,
what further remains is to obtain the concurrence of our countrymen, or those
for whom the institutions are intended, in the opinion which we have privately
arrived at.
To find the best form of government; to persuade others that it is
the best; and having done so, to stir them up to insist on having it, is the
order of ideas in the minds of those who adopt this view of political
philosophy. They look upon a constitution in the same light (difference of scale
being allowed for) as they would upon a steam plough, or a threshing machine.
To these stand opposed another kind of political reasoners, who are so far
from assimilating a form of government to a machine, that they regard it as a
sort of spontaneous product, and the science of government as a branch (so to
speak) of natural history. According to them, forms of government are not a
matter of choice. We must take them, in the main, as we find them.
Governments
cannot be constructed by premeditated design. They "are not made, but
grow." Our business with them, as with the other facts of the universe, is
to acquaint ourselves with their natural properties, and adapt ourselves to
them.
The fundamental political institutions of a people are considered by this
school as a sort of organic growth from the nature and life of that people: a
product of their habits, instincts, and unconscious wants and desires, scarcely
at all of their deliberate purposes. Their will has had no part in the matter
but that of meeting the necessities of the moment by the contrivances of the
moment, which contrivances, if in sufficient conformity to the national feelings
and character, commonly last, and by successive aggregation constitute a polity,
suited to the people who possess it, but which it would be vain to attempt to
superduce upon any people whose nature and circumstances had not spontaneously
evolved it.
It is difficult to decide which of these doctrines would be the most absurd,
if we could suppose either of them held as an exclusive theory. But the
principles which men profess, on any controverted subject, are usually a very
incomplete exponent of the opinions they really hold. No one believes that every
people is capable of working every sort of institutions.
Carry the analogy of
mechanical contrivances as far as we will, a man does not choose even an
instrument of timber and iron on the sole ground that it is in itself the best.
He considers whether he possesses the other requisites which must be combined
with it to render its employment advantageous, and in particular whether those
by whom it will have to be worked possess the knowledge and skill necessary for
its management.
On the other hand, neither are those who speak of institutions
as if they were a kind of living organisms really the political fatalists they
give themselves out to be. They do not pretend that mankind have absolutely no
range of choice as to the government they will live under, or that a
consideration of the consequences which flow from different forms of polity is
no element at all in deciding which of them should be preferred. But though each
side greatly exaggerates its own theory, out of opposition to the other, and no
one holds without modification to either, the two doctrines correspond to a
deep-seated difference between two modes of thought; and though it is evident
that neither of these is entirely in the right, yet it being equally evident
that neither is wholly in the wrong, we must endeavour to get down to what is at
the root of each, and avail ourselves of the amount of truth which exists in
either.
Let us remember, then, in the first place, that political institutions
(however the proposition may be at times ignored) are the work of men; owe their
origin and their whole existence to human will. Men did not wake on a summer
morning and find them sprung up. Neither do they resemble trees, which, once
planted, "are aye growing" while men "are sleeping."
In
every stage of their existence they are made what they are by human voluntary
agency. Like all things, therefore, which are made by men, they may be either
well or ill made; judgment and skill may have been exercised in their
production, or the reverse of these. And again, if a people have omitted, or
from outward pressure have not had it in their power, to give themselves a
constitution by the tentative process of applying a corrective to each evil as
it arose, or as the sufferers gained strength to resist it, this retardation of
political progress is no doubt a great disadvantage to them, but it does not
prove that what has been found good for others would not have been good also for
them, and will not be so still when they think fit to adopt it.
On the other hand, it is also to be borne in mind that political machinery
does not act of itself. As it is first made, so it has to be worked, by men, and
even by ordinary men. It needs, not their simple acquiescence, but their active
participation; and must be adjusted to the capacities and qualities of such men
as are available.
This implies three conditions. The people for whom the form of
government is intended must be willing to accept it; or at least not so
unwilling as to oppose an insurmountable obstacle to its establishment. They
must be willing and able to do what is necessary to keep it standing. And they
must be willing and able to do what it requires of them to enable it to fulfil
its purposes. The word "do" is to be understood as including
forbearances as well as acts. They must be capable of fulfilling the conditions
of action, and the conditions of self-restraint, which are necessary either for
keeping the established polity in existence, or for enabling it to achieve the
ends, its conduciveness to which forms its recommendation.
The failure of any of these conditions renders a form of government, whatever
favourable promise it may otherwise hold out, unsuitable to the particular case.
The first obstacle, the repugnance of the people to the particular form of
government, needs little illustration, because it never can in theory have been
overlooked. The case is of perpetual occurrence. Nothing but foreign force would
induce a tribe of North American Indians to submit to the restraints of a
regular and civilised government. The same might have been said, though somewhat
less absolutely, of the barbarians who overran the Roman Empire. It required
centuries of time, and an entire change of circumstances, to discipline them
into regular obedience even to their own leaders, when not actually serving
under their banner. There are nations who will not voluntarily submit to any
government but that of certain families, which have from time immemorial had the
privilege of supplying them with chiefs. Some nations could not, except by
foreign conquest, be made to endure a monarchy; others are equally averse to a
republic. The hindrance often amounts, for the time being, to impracticability.
But there are also cases in which, though not averse to a form of government
— possibly even desiring it — a people may be unwilling or unable to fulfil
its conditions. They may be incapable of fulfilling such of them as are
necessary to keep the government even in nominal existence. Thus a people may
prefer a free government, but if, from indolence, or carelessness, or cowardice,
or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for
preserving it; if they will not fight for it when it is directly attacked; if
they can be deluded by the artifices used to cheat them out of it; if by
momentary discouragement, or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an
individual, they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet even of a
great man, or trust him with powers which enable him to subvert their
institutions; in all these cases they are more or less unfit for liberty: and
though it may be for their good to have had it even for a short time, they are
unlikely long to enjoy it.
Again, a people may be unwilling or unable to fulfil
the duties which a particular form of government requires of them.
A rude
people, though in some degree alive to the benefits of civilised society, may be
unable to practise the forbearance which it demands: their passions may be too
violent, or their personal pride too exacting, to forego private conflict, and
leave to the laws the avenging of their real or supposed wrongs. In such a case,
a civilised government, to be really advantageous to them, will require to be in
a considerable degree despotic: to be one over which they do not themselves
exercise control, and which imposes a great amount of forcible restraint upon
their actions.
Again, a people must be considered unfit for more than a limited and
qualified freedom, who will not co-operate actively with the law and the public
authorities in the repression of evil-doers. A people who are more disposed to
shelter a criminal than to apprehend him; who, like the Hindoos, will perjure
themselves to screen the man who has robbed them, rather than take trouble or
expose themselves to vindictiveness by giving evidence against him; who, like
some nations of Europe down to a recent date, if a man poniards another in the
public street, pass by on the other side, because it is the business of the
police to look to the matter, and it is safer not to interfere in what does not
concern them; a people who are revolted by an execution, but not shocked at an
assassination — require that the public authorities should be armed with much
sterner powers of repression than elsewhere, since the first indispensable
requisites of civilised life have nothing else to rest on.
These deplorable
states of feeling, in any people who have emerged from savage life, are, no
doubt, usually the consequence of previous bad government, which has taught them
to regard the law as made for other ends than their good, and its administrators
as worse enemies than those who openly violate it. But however little blame may
be due to those in whom these mental habits have grown up, and however the
habits may be ultimately conquerable by better government, yet while they exist
a people so disposed cannot be governed with as little power exercised over them
as a people whose sympathies are on the side of the law, and who are willing to
give active assistance in its enforcement.
Again, representative institutions
are of little value, and may be a mere instrument of tyranny or intrigue, when
the generality of electors are not sufficiently interested in their own
government to give their vote, or, if they vote at all, do not bestow their
suffrages on public grounds, but sell them for money, or vote at the beck of
some one who has control over them, or whom for private reasons they desire to
propitiate. Popular election thus practised, instead of a security against
misgovernment, is but an additional wheel in its machinery.
Besides these moral hindrances, mechanical difficulties are often an
insuperable impediment to forms of government. In the ancient world, though
there might be, and often was, great individual or local independence, there
could be nothing like a regulated popular government beyond the bounds of a
single city-community; because there did not exist the physical conditions for
the formation and propagation of a public opinion, except among those who could
be brought together to discuss public matters in the same agora. This obstacle
is generally thought to have ceased by the adoption of the representative
system. But to surmount it completely, required the press, and even the
newspaper press, the real equivalent, though not in all respects an adequate
one, of the Pnyx and the Forum.
There have been states of society in which even
a monarchy of any great territorial extent could not subsist, but unavoidably
broke up into petty principalities, either mutually independent, or held
together by a loose tie like the feudal: because the machinery of authority was
not perfect enough to carry orders into effect at a great distance from the
person of the ruler. He depended mainly upon voluntary fidelity for the
obedience even of his army, nor did there exist the means of making the people
pay an amount of taxes sufficient for keeping up the force necessary to compel
obedience throughout a large territory.
In these and all similar cases, it must
be understood that the amount of the hindrance may be either greater or less. It
may be so great as to make the form of government work very ill, without
absolutely precluding its existence, or hindering it from being practically
preferable to any other which can be had. This last question mainly depends upon
a consideration which we have not yet arrived at — the tendencies of different
forms of government to promote Progress.
We have now examined the three fundamental conditions of the adaptation of
forms of government to the people who are to be governed by them. If the
supporters of what may be termed the naturalistic theory of politics, mean but
to insist on the necessity of these three conditions; if they only mean that no
government can permanently exist which does not fulfil the first and second
conditions, and, in some considerable measure, the third; their doctrine, thus
limited, is incontestable. Whatever they mean more than this appears to me
untenable. All that we are told about the necessity of an historical basis for
institutions, of their being in harmony with the national usages and character,
and the like, means either this, or nothing to the purpose.
There is a great
quantity of mere sentimentality connected with these and similar phrases, over
and above the amount of rational meaning contained in them. But, considered
practically, these alleged requisites of political institutions are merely so
many facilities for realising the three conditions.
When an institution, or a
set of institutions, has the way prepared for it by the opinions, tastes, and
habits of the people, they are not only more easily induced to accept it, but
will more easily learn, and will be, from the beginning, better disposed, to do
what is required of them both for the preservation of the institutions, and for
bringing them into such action as enables them to produce their best results. It
would be a great mistake in any legislator not to shape his measures so as to
take advantage of such pre-existing habits and feelings when available. On the
other hand, it is an exaggeration to elevate these mere aids and facilities into
necessary conditions. People are more easily induced to do, and do more easily,
what they are already used to; but people also learn to do things new to them.
Familiarity is a great help; but much dwelling on an idea will make it familiar,
even when strange at first. There are abundant instances in which a whole people
have been eager for untried things. The amount of capacity which a people
possess for doing new things, and adapting themselves to new circumstances; is
itself one of the elements of the question. It is a quality in which different
nations, and different stages of civilisation, differ much from one another. The
capability of any given people for fulfilling the conditions of a given form of
government cannot be pronounced on by any sweeping rule. Knowledge of the
particular people, and general practical judgment and sagacity, must be the
guides.
There is also another consideration not to be lost sight of. A people may be
unprepared for good institutions; but to kindle a desire for them is a necessary
part of the preparation. To recommend and advocate a particular institution or
form of government, and set its advantages in the strongest light, is one of the
modes, often the only mode within reach, of educating the mind of the nation not
only for accepting or claiming, but also for working, the institution. What
means had Italian patriots, during the last and present generation, of preparing
the Italian people for freedom in unity, but by inciting them to demand it?
Those, however, who undertake such a task, need to be duly impressed, not solely
with the benefits of the institution or polity which they recommend, but also
with the capacities, moral, intellectual, and active, required for working it;
that they may avoid, if possible, stirring up a desire too much in advance of
the capacity.
The result of what has been said is, that, within the limits set by the three
conditions so often adverted to, institutions and forms of government are a
matter of choice. To inquire into the best form of government in the abstract
(as it is called) is not a chimerical, but a highly practical employment of
scientific intellect; and to introduce into any country the best institutions
which, in the existing state of that country, are capable of, in any tolerable
degree, fulfilling the conditions, is one of the most rational objects to which
practical effort can address itself. Everything which can be said by way of
disparaging the efficacy of human will and purpose in matters of government
might be said of it in every other of its applications.
In all things there are
very strict limits to human power. It can only act by wielding some one or more
of the forces of nature. Forces, therefore, that can be applied to the desired
use must exist; and will only act according to their own laws. We cannot make
the river run backwards; but we do not therefore say that watermills "are
not made, but grow." In politics, as in mechanics, the power which is to
keep the engine going must be sought for outside the machinery; and if it is not
forthcoming, or is insufficient to surmount the obstacles which may reasonably
be expected, the contrivance will fail. This is no peculiarity of the political
art; and amounts only to saying that it is subject to the same limitations and
conditions as all other arts.
At this point we are met by another objection, or the same objection in a
different form. The forces, it is contended, on which the greater political
phenomena depend, are not amenable to the direction of politicians or
philosophers. The government of a country, it is affirmed, is, in all
substantial respects, fixed and determined beforehand by the state of the
country in regard to the distribution of the elements of social power. Whatever
is the strongest power in society will obtain the governing authority; and a
change in the political constitution cannot be durable unless preceded or
accompanied by an altered distribution of power in society itself. A nation,
therefore, cannot choose its form of government. The mere details, and practical
organisation, it may choose; but the essence of the whole, the seat of the
supreme power, is determined for it by social circumstances.
That there is a portion of truth in this doctrine I at once admit; but to
make it of any use, it must be reduced to a distinct expression and proper
limits. When it is said that the strongest power in society will make itself
strongest in the government, what is meant by power? Not thews and sinews;
otherwise pure democracy would be the only form of polity that could exist. To
mere muscular strength, add two other elements, property and intelligence, and
we are nearer the truth, but far from having yet reached it.
Not only is a
greater number often kept down by a less, but the greater number may have a
preponderance in property, and individually in intelligence, and may yet be held
in subjection, forcibly or otherwise, by a minority in both respects inferior to
it.
To make these various elements of power politically influential they must be
organised; and the advantage in organisation is necessarily with those who are
in possession of the government. A much weaker party in all other elements of
power may greatly preponderate when the powers of government are thrown into the
scale; and may long retain its predominance through this alone: though, no
doubt, a government so situated is in the condition called in mechanics unstable
equilibrium, like a thing balanced on its smaller end, which, if once disturbed,
tends more and more to depart from, instead of reverting to, its previous state.
But there are still stronger objections to this theory of government in the
terms in which it is usually stated. The power in society which has any tendency
to convert itself into political power is not power quiescent, power merely
passive, but active power; in other words, power actually exerted; that is to
say, a very small portion of all the power in existence.
Politically speaking, a
great part of all power consists in will.
How is it possible, then, to compute
the elements of political power, while we omit from the computation anything
which acts on the will? To think that because those who wield the power in
society wield in the end that of government, therefore it is of no use to
attempt to influence the constitution of the government by acting on opinion, is
to forget that opinion is itself one of the greatest active social forces.
One
person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only
interests.
They who can succeed in creating a general persuasion that a certain
form of government, or social fact of any kind, deserves to be preferred, have
made nearly the most important step which can possibly be taken towards ranging
the powers of society on its side. On the day when the proto-martyr was stoned
to death at Jerusalem, while he who was to be the Apostle of the Gentiles stood
by "consenting unto his death," would any one have supposed that the
party of that stoned man were then and there the strongest power in society? And
has not the event proved that they were so?
Because theirs was the most powerful
of then existing beliefs. The same element made a monk of Wittenberg, at the
meeting of the Diet of Worms, a more powerful social force than the Emperor
Charles the Fifth, and all the princes there assembled. But these, it may be
said, are cases in which religion was concerned, and religious convictions are
something peculiar in their strength. Then let us take a case purely political,
where religion, so far as concerned at all, was chiefly on the losing side.
If
any one requires to be convinced that speculative thought is one of the chief
elements of social power, let him bethink himself of the age in which there was
scarcely a throne in Europe which was not filled by a liberal and reforming
king, a liberal and reforming emperor, or, strangest of all, a liberal and
reforming pope; the age of Frederic the Great, of Catherine the Second, of
Joseph the Second, of Peter Leopold, of Benedict XIV., of Ganganelli, of Pombal,
of Aranda; when the very Bourbons of Naples were liberals and reformers, and all
the active minds among the noblesse of France were filled with the ideas which
were soon after to cost them so dear. Surely a conclusive example how far mere
physical and economic power is from being the whole of social power.
It was not by any change in the distribution of material interests, but by
the spread of moral convictions, that Negro slavery has been put an end to in
the British Empire and elsewhere. The serfs in Russia owe their emancipation, if
not to a sentiment of duty, at least to the growth of a more enlightened opinion
respecting the true interest of the State.
It is what men think that determines
how they act; and though the persuasions and convictions of average men are in a
much greater degree determined by their personal position than by reason, no
little power is exercised over them by the persuasions and convictions of those
whose personal position is different, and by the united authority of the
instructed.
When, therefore, the instructed in general can be brought to
recognise one social arrangement, or political or other institution, as good,
and another as bad, one as desirable, another as condemnable, very much has been
done towards giving to the one, or withdrawing from the other, that
preponderance of social force which enables it to subsist. And the maxim, that
the government of a country is what the social forces in existence compel it to
be, is true only in the sense in which it favours, instead of discouraging, the
attempt to exercise, among all forms of government practicable in the existing
condition of society, a rational choice.
Chapter 2
The Criterion of a Good Form of Government.
The form of government for any
given country being (within certain definite conditions) amenable to choice, it
is now to be considered by what test the choice should be directed; what are the
distinctive characteristics of the form of government best fitted to promote the
interests of any given society.
Before entering into this inquiry, it may seem necessary to decide what are
the proper functions of government; for, government altogether being only a
means, the eligibility of the means must depend on their adaptation to the end.
But this mode of stating the problem gives less aid to its investigation than
might be supposed, and does not even bring the whole of the question into view.
For, in the first place, the proper functions of a government are not a fixed
thing, but different in different states of society; much more extensive in a
backward than in an advanced state.
And, secondly, the character of a government
or set of political institutions cannot be sufficiently estimated while we
confine our attention to the legitimate sphere of governmental functions. For
though the goodness of a government is necessarily circumscribed within that
sphere, its badness unhappily is not.
Every kind and degree of evil of which
mankind are susceptible may be inflicted on them by their government; and none
of the good which social existence is capable of can be any further realised
than as the constitution of the government is compatible with, and allows scope
for, its attainment. Not to speak of indirect effects, the direct meddling of
the public authorities has no necessary limits but those of human existence; and
the influence of government on the well-being of society can be considered or
estimated in reference to nothing less than the whole of the interests of
humanity.
Being thus obliged to place before ourselves, as the test of good and bad
government, so complex an object as the aggregate interests of society, we would
willingly attempt some kind of classification of those interests, which,
bringing them before the mind in definite groups, might give indication of the
qualities by which a form of government is fitted to promote those various
interests respectively. It would be a great facility if we could say the good of
society consists of such and such elements; one of these elements requires such
conditions, another such others; the government, then, which unites in the
greatest degree all these conditions, must be the best. The theory of government
would thus be built up from the separate theorems of the elements which compose
a good state of society.
Unfortunately, to enumerate and classify the constituents of social
well-being, so as to admit of the formation of such theorems, is no easy task.
Most of those who, in the last or present generation, have applied themselves to
the philosophy of politics in any comprehensive spirit, have felt the importance
of such a classification; but the attempts which have been made towards it are
as yet limited, so far as I am aware, to a single step.
The classification
begins and ends with a partition of the exigencies of society between the two
heads of Order and Progress (in the phraseology of French thinkers); Permanence
and Progression in the words of Coleridge. This division is plausible and
seductive, from the apparently clean-cut opposition between its two members, and
the remarkable difference between the sentiments to which they appeal. But I
apprehend that (however admissible for purposes of popular discourse) the
distinction between Order, or Permanence, and Progress, employed to define the
qualities necessary in a government, is unscientific and incorrect.
For, first, what are Order and Progress? Concerning Progress there is no
difficulty, or none which is apparent at first sight. When Progress is spoken of
as one of the wants of human society, it may be supposed to mean Improvement.
That is a tolerably distinct idea. But what is Order? Sometimes it means more,
sometimes less, but hardly ever the whole of what human society needs except
improvement.
In its narrowest acceptation Order means Obedience. A government is said to
preserve order if it succeeds in getting itself obeyed. But there are different
degrees of obedience, and it is not every degree that is commendable. Only an
unmitigated despotism demands that the individual citizen shall obey
unconditionally every mandate of persons in authority. We must at least limit
the definition to such mandates as are general and issued in the deliberate form
of laws.
Order, thus understood, expresses, doubtless, an indispensable
attribute of government. Those who are unable to make their ordinances obeyed,
cannot be said to govern. But though a necessary condition, this is not the
object of government. That it should make itself obeyed is requisite, in order
that it may accomplish some other purpose. We are still to seek what is this
other purpose, which government ought to fulfil, abstractedly from the idea of
improvement, and which has to be fulfilled in every society, whether stationary
or progressive.
In a sense somewhat more enlarged, Order means the preservation of peace by
the cessation of private violence. Order is said to exist where the people of
the country have, as a general rule, ceased to prosecute their quarrels by
private force, and acquired the habit of referring the decision of their
disputes and the redress of their injuries to the public authorities. But in
this larger use of the term, as well as in the former narrow one, Order
expresses rather one of the conditions of government, than either its purpose or
the criterion of its excellence. For the habit may be well established of
submitting to the government, and referring all disputed matters to its
authority, and yet the manner in which the government deals with those disputed
matters, and with the other things about which it concerns itself, may differ by
the whole interval which divides the best from the worst possible.
If we intend to comprise in the idea of Order all that society requires from
its government which is not included in the idea of Progress, we must define
Order as the preservation of all kinds and amounts of good which already exist,
and Progress as consisting in the increase of them. This distinction does
comprehend in one or the other section everything which a government can be
required to promote. But, thus understood, it affords no basis for a philosophy
of government.
We cannot say that, in constituting a polity, certain provisions
ought to be made for Order and certain others for Progress; since the conditions
of Order, in the sense now indicated, and those of Progress, are not opposite,
but the same. The agencies which tend to preserve the social good which already
exists are the very same which promote the increase of it, and vice versa: the
sole difference being, that a greater degree of those agencies is required for
the latter purpose than for the former.
What, for example, are the qualities in the citizens individually which
conduce most to keep up the amount of good conduct, of good management, of
success and prosperity, which already exist in society? Everybody will agree
that those qualities are industry, integrity, justice, and prudence. But are not
these, of all qualities, the most conducive to improvement? and is not any
growth of these virtues in the community in itself the greatest of improvements?
If so, whatever qualities in the government are promotive of industry,
integrity, justice, and prudence, conduce alike to permanence and to
progression; only there is needed more of those qualities to make the society
decidedly progressive than merely to keep it permanent.
What, again, are the particular attributes in human beings which seem to have
a more especial reference to Progress, and do not so directly suggest the ideas
of Order and Preservation? They are chiefly the qualities of mental activity,
enterprise, and courage. But are not all these qualities fully as much required
for preserving the good we have, as for adding to it? If there is anything
certain in human affairs, it is that valuable acquisitions are only to be
retained by the continuation of the same energies which gained them.
Things left
to take care of themselves inevitably decay. Those whom success induces to relax
their habits of care and thoughtfulness, and their willingness to encounter
disagreeables, seldom long retain their good fortune at its height. The mental
attribute which seems exclusively dedicated to Progress, and is the culmination
of the tendencies to it, is Originality, or Invention. Yet this is no less
necessary for Permanence; since, in the inevitable changes of human affairs, new
inconveniences and dangers continually grow up, which must be encountered by new
resources and contrivances, in order to keep things going on even only as well
as they did before. Whatever qualities, therefore, in a government, tend to
encourage activity, energy, courage, originality, are requisites of Permanence
as well as of Progress; only a somewhat less degree of them will on the average
suffice for the former purpose than for the latter.
To pass now from the mental to the outward and objective requisites of
society; it is impossible to point out any contrivance in politics, or
arrangement of social affairs, which conduces to Order only, or to Progress
only; whatever tends to either promotes both. Take, for instance, the common
institution of a police. Order is the object which seems most immediately
interested in the efficiency of this part of the social organisation. Yet if it
is effectual to promote Order, that is, if it represses crime, and enables every
one to feel his person and property secure, can any state of things be more
conducive to Progress?
The greater security of property is one of the main
conditions and causes of greater production, which is Progress in its most
familiar and vulgarest aspect. The better repression of crime represses the
dispositions which tend to crime, and this is Progress in a somewhat higher
sense. The release of the individual from the cares and anxieties of a state of
imperfect protection, sets his faculties free to be employed in any new effort
for improving his own state and that of others: while the same cause, by
attaching him to social existence, and making him no longer see present or
prospective enemies in his fellow creatures, fosters all those feelings of
kindness and fellowship towards others, and interest in the general well-being
of the community, which are such important parts of social improvement.
Take, again, such a familiar case as that of a good system of taxation and
finance. This would generally be classed as belonging to the province of Order.
Yet what can be more conducive to Progress? A financial system which promotes
the one, conduces, by the very same excellences, to the other. Economy, for
example, equally preserves the existing stock of national wealth, and favours
the creation of more.
A just distribution of burdens, by holding up to every
citizen an example of morality and good conscience applied to difficult
adjustments, and an evidence of the value which the highest authorities attach
to them, tends in an eminent degree to educate the moral sentiments of the
community, both in respect of strength and of discrimination. Such a mode of
levying the taxes as does not impede the industry, or unnecessarily interfere
with the liberty, of the citizen, promotes, not the preservation only, but the
increase of the national wealth, and encourages a more active use of the
individual faculties.
And vice versa, all errors in finance and taxation which
obstruct the improvement of the people in wealth and morals tend also, if of
sufficiently serious amount, positively to impoverish and demoralise them. It
holds, in short, universally, that when Order and Permanence are taken in their
widest sense, for the stability of existing advantages, the requisites of
Progress are but the requisites of Order in a greater degree; those of
Permanence merely those of Progress in a somewhat smaller measure.
In support of the position that Order is intrinsically different from
Progress, and that preservation of existing and acquisition of additional good
are sufficiently distinct to afford the basis of a fundamental classification,
we shall perhaps be reminded that Progress may be at the expense of Order; that
while we are acquiring, or striving to acquire, good of one kind, we may be
losing ground in respect to others: thus there may be progress in wealth, while
there is deterioration in virtue.
Granting this, what it proves is not that
Progress is generically a different thing from Permanence, but that wealth is a
different thing from virtue. Progress is permanence and something more; and it
is no answer to this to say that Progress in one thing does not imply Permanence
in everything. No more does Progress in one thing imply Progress in everything.
Progress of any kind includes Permanence in that same kind; whenever Permanence
is sacrificed to some particular kind of Progress, other Progress is still more
sacrificed to it; and if it be not worth the sacrifice, not the interest of
Permanence alone has been disregarded, but the general interest of Progress has
been mistaken.
If these improperly contrasted ideas are to be used at all in the attempt to
give a first commencement of scientific precision to the notion of good
government, it would be more philosophically correct to leave out of the
definition the word Order, and to say that the best government is that which is
most conducive to Progress. For Progress includes Order, but Order does not
include Progress. Progress is a greater degree of that of which Order is a less.
Order, in any other sense, stands only for a part of the pre-requisites of good
government, not for its idea and essence.
Order would find a more suitable place
among the conditions of Progress; since, if we would increase our sum of good,
nothing is more indispensable than to take due care of what we already have. If
we are endeavouring after more riches, our very first rule should be not to
squander uselessly our existing means. Order, thus considered, is not an
additional end to be reconciled with Progress, but a part and means of Progress
itself. If a gain in one respect is purchased by a more than equivalent loss in
the same or in any other, there is not Progress. Conduciveness to Progress, thus
understood, includes the whole excellence of a government.
But, though metaphysically defensible, this definition of the criterion of
good government is not appropriate, because, though it contains the whole of the
truth, it recalls only a part. What is suggested by the term Progress is the
idea of moving onward, whereas the meaning of it here is quite as much the
prevention of falling back. The very same social causes — the same beliefs,
feelings, institutions, and practices — are as much required to prevent
society from retrograding, as to produce a further advance. Were there no
improvement to be hoped for, life would not be the less an unceasing struggle
against causes of deterioration; as it even now is. Politics, as conceived by
the ancients, consisted wholly in this. The natural tendency of men and their
works was to degenerate, which tendency, however, by good institutions
virtuously administered, it might be possible for an indefinite length of time
to counteract. Though we no longer hold this opinion; though most men in the
present age profess the contrary creed, believing that the tendency of things,
on the whole, is towards improvement; we ought not to forget that there is an
incessant and ever-flowing current of human affairs towards the worse,
consisting of all the follies, all the vices, all the negligences, indolences,
and supinenesses of mankind; which is only controlled, and kept from sweeping
all before it, by the exertions which some persons constantly, and others by
fits, put forth in the direction of good and worthy objects. It gives a very
insufficient idea of the importance of the strivings which take place to improve
and elevate human nature and life, to suppose that their chief value consists in
the amount of actual improvement realised by their means, and that the
consequence of their cessation would merely be that we should remain as we are.
A very small diminution of those exertions would not only put a stop to
improvement, but would turn the general tendency of things towards
deterioration; which, once begun, would proceed with increasingly rapidity, and
become more and more difficult to check, until it reached a state often seen in
history, and in which many large portions of mankind even now grovel; when
hardly anything short of superhuman power seems sufficient to turn the tide, and
give a fresh commencement to the upward movement.
These reasons make the word Progress as unapt as the terms Order and
Permanence to become the basis for a classification of the requisites of a form
of government. The fundamental antithesis which these words express does not lie
in the things themselves, so much as in the types of human character which
answer to them. There are, we know, some minds in which caution, and others in
which boldness, predominates: in some, the desire to avoid imperilling what is
already possessed is a stronger sentiment than that which prompts to improve the
old and acquire new advantages; while there are others who lean the contrary
way, and are more eager for future than careful of present good. The road to the
ends of both is the same; but they are liable to wander from it in opposite
directions. This consideration is of importance in composing the personnel of
any political body: persons of both types ought to be included in it, that the
tendencies of each may be tempered, in so far as they are excessive, by a due
proportion of the other. There needs no express provision to ensure this object,
provided care is taken to admit nothing inconsistent with it. The natural and
spontaneous admixture of the old and the young, of those whose position and
reputation are made and those who have them still to make, will in general
sufficiently answer the purpose, if only this natural balance is not disturbed
by artificial regulation.
Since the distinction most commonly adopted for the classification of social
exigencies does not possess the properties needful for that use, we have to seek
for some other leading distinction better adapted to the purpose. Such a
distinction would seem to be indicated by the considerations to which I now
proceed.
If we ask ourselves on what causes and conditions good government in all its
senses, from the humblest to the most exalted, depends, we find that the
principal of them, the one which transcends all others, is the qualities of the
human beings composing the society over which the government is exercised.
We may take, as a first instance, the administration of justice; with the
more propriety, since there is no part of public business in which the mere
machinery, the rules and contrivances for conducting the details of the
operation, are of such vital consequence. Yet even these yield in importance to
the qualities of the human agents employed. Of what efficacy are rules of
procedure in securing the ends of justice, if the moral condition of the people
is such that the witnesses generally lie, and the judges and their subordinates
take bribes? Again, how can institutions provide a good municipal administration
if there exists such indifference to the subject that those who would administer
honestly and capably cannot be induced to serve, and the duties are left to
those who undertake them because they have some private interest to be promoted?
Of what avail is the most broadly popular representative system if the electors
do not care to choose the best member of parliament, but choose him who will
spend most money to be elected? How can a representative assembly work for good
if its members can be bought, or if their excitability of temperament,
uncorrected by public discipline or private self-control, makes them incapable
of calm deliberation, and they resort to manual violence on the floor of the
House, or shoot at one another with rifles? How, again, can government, or any
joint concern, be carried on in a tolerable manner by people so envious that, if
one among them seems likely to succeed in anything, those who ought to cooperate
with him form a tacit combination to make him fail? Whenever the general
disposition of the people is such that each individual regards those only of his
interests which are selfish, and does not dwell on, or concern himself for, his
share of the general interest, in such a state of things good government is
impossible. The influence of defects of intelligence in obstructing all the
elements of good government requires no illustration. Government consists of
acts done by human beings; and if the agents, or those who choose the agents, or
those to whom the agents are responsible, or the lookers-on whose opinion ought
to influence and check all these, are mere masses of ignorance, stupidity, and
baleful prejudice, every operation of government will go wrong; while, in
proportion as the men rise above this standard, so will the government improve
in quality; up to the point of excellence, attainable but nowhere attained,
where the officers of government, themselves persons of superior virtue and
intellect, are surrounded by the atmosphere of a virtuous and enlightened public
opinion.
The first element of good government, therefore, being the virtue and
intelligence of the human beings composing the community, the most important
point of excellence which any form of government can possess is to promote the
virtue and intelligence of the people themselves. The first question in respect
to any political institutions is, how far they tend to foster in the members of
the community the various desirable qualities, moral and intellectual; or rather
(following Bentham's more complete classification) moral, intellectual, and
active. The government which does this the best has every likelihood of being
the best in all other respects, since it is on these qualities, so far as they
exist in the people, that all possibility of goodness in the practical
operations of the government depends.
We may consider, then, as one criterion of the goodness of a government, the
degree in which it tends to increase the sum of good qualities in the governed,
collectively and individually; since, besides that their well-being is the sole
object of government, their good qualities supply the moving force which works
the machinery. This leaves, as the other constituent element of the merit of a
government, the quality of the machinery itself; that is, the degree in which it
is adapted to take advantage of the amount of good qualities which may at any
time exist, and make them instrumental to the right purposes. Let us again take
the subject of judicature as an example and illustration. The judicial system
being given, the goodness of the administration of justice is in the compound
ratio of the worth of the men composing the tribunals, and the worth of the
public opinion which influences or controls them. But all the difference between
a good and a bad system of judicature lies in the contrivances adopted for
bringing whatever moral and intellectual worth exists in the community to bear
upon the administration of justice, and making it duly operative on the result.
The arrangements for rendering the choice of the judges such as to obtain the
highest average of virtue and intelligence; the salutary forms of procedure; the
publicity which allows observation and criticism of whatever is amiss; the
liberty of discussion and censure through the press; the mode of taking
evidence, according as it is well or ill adapted to elicit truth; the
facilities, whatever be their amount, for obtaining access to the tribunals; the
arrangements for detecting crimes and apprehending offenders; — all these
things are not the power, but the machinery for bringing the power into contact
with the obstacle: and the machinery has no action of itself, but without it the
power, let it be ever so ample, would be wasted and of no effect.
A similar distinction exists in regard to the constitution of the executive
departments of administration. Their machinery is good, when the proper tests
are prescribed for the qualifications of officers, the proper rules for their
promotion; when the business is conveniently distributed among those who are to
transact it, a convenient and methodical order established for its transaction,
a correct and intelligible record kept of it after being transacted; when each
individual knows for what he is responsible, and is known to others as
responsible for it; when the best-contrived checks are provided against
negligence, favouritism, or jobbery, in any of the acts of the department. But
political checks will no more act of themselves than a bridle will direct a
horse without a rider. If the checking functionaries are as corrupt or as
negligent as those whom they ought to check, and if the public, the mainspring
of the whole checking machinery, are too ignorant, too passive, or too careless
and inattentive, to do their part, little benefit will be derived from the best
administrative apparatus. Yet a good apparatus is always preferable to a bad. It
enables such insufficient moving or checking power as exists to act at the
greatest advantage; and without it, no amount of moving or checking power would
be sufficient. Publicity, for instance, is no impediment to evil nor stimulus to
good if the public will not look at what is done; but without publicity, how
could they either check or encourage what they were not permitted to see? The
ideally perfect constitution of a public office is that in which the interest of
the functionary is entirely coincident with his duty. No mere system will make
it so, but still less can it be made so without a system, aptly devised for the
purpose.
What we have said of the arrangements for the detailed administration of the
government is still more evidently true of its general constitution. All
government which aims at being good is an organisation of some part of the good
qualities existing in the individual members of the community for the conduct of
its collective affairs. A representative constitution is a means of bringing the
general standard of intelligence and honesty existing in the community, and the
individual intellect and virtue of its wisest members, more directly to bear
upon the government, and investing them with greater influence in it, than they
would in general have under any other mode of organisation; though, under any,
such influence as they do have is the source of all good that there is in the
government, and the hindrance of every evil that there is not. The greater the
amount of these good qualities which the institutions of a country succeed in
organising, and the better the mode of organisation, the better will be the
government.
We have now, therefore, obtained a foundation for a twofold division of the
merit which any set of political institutions can possess. It consists partly of
the degree in which they promote the general mental advancement of the
community, including under that phrase advancement in intellect, in virtue, and
in practical activity and efficiency; and partly of the degree of perfection
with which they organise the moral, intellectual, and active worth already
existing, so as to operate with the greatest effect on public affairs. A
government is to be judged by its action upon men, and by its action upon
things; by what it makes of the citizens, and what it does with them; its
tendency to improve or deteriorate the people themselves, and the goodness or
badness of the work it performs for them, and by means of them. Government is at
once a great influence acting on the human mind, and a set of organised
arrangements for public business: in the first capacity its beneficial action is
chiefly indirect, but not therefore less vital, while its mischievous action may
be direct.
The difference between these two functions of a government is not, like that
between Order and Progress, a difference merely in degree, but in kind. We must
not, however, suppose that they have no intimate connection with one another.
The institutions which ensure the best management of public affairs practicable
in the existing state of cultivation tend by this alone to the further
improvement of that state. A people which had the most just laws, the purest and
most efficient judicature, the most enlightened administration, the most
equitable and least onerous system of finance, compatible with the stage it had
attained in moral and intellectual advancement, would be in a fair way to pass
rapidly into a higher stage. Nor is there any mode in which political
institutions can contribute more effectually to the improvement of the people
than by doing their more direct work well. And, reversely, if their machinery is
so badly constructed that they do their own particular business ill, the effect
is felt in a thousand ways in lowering the morality and deadening the
intelligence and activity of the people. But the distinction is nevertheless
real, because this is only one of the means by which political institutions
improve or deteriorate the human mind, and the causes and modes of that
beneficial or injurious influence remain a distinct and much wider subject of
study.
Of the two modes of operation by which a form of government or set of
political institutions affects the welfare of the community — its operation as
an agency of national education, and its arrangements for conducting the
collective affairs of the community in the state of education in which they
already are; the last evidently varies much less, from difference of country and
state of civilisation, than the first. It has also much less to do with the
fundamental constitution of the government. The mode of conducting the practical
business of government, which is best under a free constitution, would generally
be best also in an absolute monarchy: only an absolute monarchy is not so likely
to practise it. The laws of property, for example; the principles of evidence
and judicial procedure; the system of taxation and of financial administration,
need not necessarily be different in different forms of government. Each of
these matters has principles and rules of its own, which are a subject of
separate study. General jurisprudence, civil and penal legislation, financial
and commercial policy, are sciences in themselves, or rather, separate members
of the comprehensive science or art of government: and the most enlightened
doctrines on all these subjects, though not equally likely to be understood, or
acted on under all forms of government, yet, if understood and acted on, would
in general be equally beneficial under them all. It is true that these doctrines
could not be applied without some modifications to all states of society and of
the human mind: nevertheless, by far the greater number of them would require
modifications solely of details, to adapt them to any state of society
sufficiently advanced to possess rulers capable of understanding them. A
government to which they would be wholly unsuitable must be one so bad in
itself, or so opposed to public feeling, as to be unable to maintain itself in
existence by honest means.
It is otherwise with that portion of the interests of the community which
relate to the better or worse training of the people themselves. Considered as
instrumental to this, institutions need to be radically different, according to
the stage of advancement already reached. The recognition of this truth, though
for the most part empirically rather than philosophically, may be regarded as
the main point of superiority in the political theories of the present above
those of the last age; in which it customary to claim representative democracy
for England or France by arguments which would equally have proved it the only
fit form of government for Bedouins or Malays. The state of different
communities, in point of culture and development, ranges downwards to a
condition very little above the highest of the beasts. The upward range, too, is
considerable, and the future possible extension vastly greater. A community can
only be developed out of one of these states into a higher by a concourse of
influences, among the principal of which is the government to which they are
subject. In all states of human improvement ever yet attained, the nature and
degree of authority exercised over individuals, the distribution of power, and
the conditions of command and obedience, are the most powerful of the
influences, except their religious belief, which make them what they are, and
enable them to become what they can be. They may be stopped short at any point
in their progress by defective adaptation of their government to that particular
stage of advancement. And the one indispensable merit of a government, in favour
of which it may be forgiven almost any amount of other demerit compatible with
progress, is that its operation on the people is favourable, or not unfavourable,
to the next step which it is necessary for them to take, in order to raise
themselves to a higher level.
Thus (to repeat a former example), a people in a state of savage
independence, in which every one lives for himself, exempt, unless by fits, from
any external control, is practically incapable of making any progress in
civilisation until it has learnt to obey. The indispensable virtue, therefore,
in a government which establishes itself over a people of this sort is, that it
make itself obeyed. To enable it to do this, the constitution of the government
must be nearly, or quite, despotic. A constitution in any degree popular,
dependent on the voluntary surrender by the different members of the community
of their individual freedom of action, would fail to enforce the first lesson
which the pupils, in this stage of their progress, require. Accordingly, the
civilisation of such tribes, when not the result of juxtaposition with others
already civilised, is almost always the work of an absolute ruler, deriving his
power either from religion or military prowess; very often from foreign arms.
Again, uncivilised races, and the bravest and most energetic still more than
the rest, are averse to continuous labour of an unexciting kind. Yet all real
civilisation is at this price; without such labour, neither can the mind be
disciplined into the habits required by civilised society, nor the material
world prepared to receive it. There needs a rare concurrence of circumstances,
and for that reason often a vast length of time, to reconcile such a people to
industry, unless they are for a while compelled to it. Hence even personal
slavery, by giving a commencement to industrial life, and enforcing it as the
exclusive occupation of the most numerous portion of the community, may
accelerate the transition to a better freedom than that of fighting and rapine.
It is almost needless to say that this excuse for slavery is only available in a
very early state of society. A civilised people have far other means of
imparting civilisation to those under their influence; and slavery is, in all
its details, so repugnant to that government of law, which is the foundation of
all modern life, and so corrupting to the master-class when they have once come
under civilised influences, that its adoption under any circumstances whatever
in modern society is a relapse into worse than barbarism.
At some period, however, of their history, almost every people, now civilised,
have consisted, in majority, of slaves. A people in that condition require to
raise them out of it a very different polity from a nation of savages. If they
are energetic by nature, and especially if there be associated with them in. the
same community an industrious class who are neither slaves nor slave-owners (as
was the case in Greece), they need, probably, no more to ensure their
improvement than to make them free: when freed, they may often be fit, like
Roman freedmen, to be admitted at once to the full rights of citizenship. This,
however, is not the normal condition of slavery, and is generally a sign that it
is becoming obsolete. A slave, properly so called, is a being who has not learnt
to help himself. He is, no doubt, one step in advance of a savage. He has not
the first lesson of political society still to acquire. He has learnt to obey.
But what he obeys is only a direct command. It is the characteristic of born
slaves to be incapable of conforming their conduct to a rule, or law. They can
only do what they are ordered, and only when they are ordered to do it. If a man
whom they fear is standing over them and threatening them with punishment, they
obey; but when his back is turned, the work remains undone. The motive
determining them must appeal not to their interests, but to their instincts;
immediate hope or immediate terror. A despotism, which may tame the savage,
will, in so far as it is a despotism, only confirm the slaves in their
incapacities. Yet a government under their own control would be entirely
unmanageable by them. Their improvement cannot come from themselves, but must be
superinduced from without. The step which they have to take, and their only path
to improvement, is to be raised from a government of will to one of law. They
have to be taught self-government, and this, in its initial stage, means the
capacity to act on general instructions. What they require is not a government
of force, but one of guidance. Being, however, in too low a state to yield to
the guidance of any but those to whom they look up as the possessors of force,
the sort of government fittest for them is one which possesses force, but seldom
uses it: a parental despotism or aristocracy, resembling the St. Simonian form
of Socialism; maintaining a general superintendence over all the operations of
society, so as to keep before each the sense of a present force sufficient to
compel his obedience to the rule laid down, but which, owing to the
impossibility of descending to regulate all the minutae of industry and life,
necessarily leaves and induces individuals to do much of themselves. This, which
may be termed the government of leading-strings, seems to be the one required to
carry such a people the most rapidly through the next necessary step in social
progress. Such appears to have been the idea of the government of the Incas of
Peru; and such was that of the Jesuits of Paraguay. I need scarcely remark that
leading-strings are only admissible as a means of gradually training the people
to walk alone.
It would be out of place to carry the illustration further. To attempt to
investigate what kind of government is suited to every known state of society
would be to compose a treatise, not on representative government, but on
political science at large. For our more limited purpose we borrow from
political philosophy only its general principles. To determine the form of
government most suited to any particular people, we must be able, among the
defects and shortcomings which belong to that people, to distinguish those that
are the immediate impediment to progress; to discover what it is which (as it
were) stops the way. The best government for them is the one which tends most to
give them that for want of which they cannot advance, or advance only in a lame
and lopsided manner. We must not, however, forget the reservation necessary in
all things which have for their object improvement, or Progress; namely, that in
seeking the good which is needed, no damage, or as little as possible, be done
to that already possessed. A people of savages should be taught obedience but
not in such a manner as to convert them into a people of slaves. And (to give
the observation a higher generality) the form of government which is most
effectual for carrying a people through the next stage of progress will still be
very improper for them if it does this in such a manner as to obstruct, or
positively unfit them for, the step next beyond. Such cases are frequent, and
are among the most melancholy facts in history. The Egyptian hierarchy, the
paternal despotism of China, were very fit instruments for carrying those
nations up to the point of civilisation which they attained. But having reached
that point, they were brought to a permanent halt for want of mental liberty and
individuality; requisites of improvement which the institutions that had carried
them thus far entirely incapacitated them from acquiring; and as the
institutions did not break down and give place to others, further improvement
stopped.
In contrast with these nations, let us consider the example of an opposite
character afforded by another and a comparatively insignificant Oriental people
— the Jews. They, too, had an absolute monarchy and a hierarchy, their
organised institutions were as obviously of sacerdotal origin as those of the
Hindoos. These did for them what was done for other Oriental races by their
institutions — subdued them to industry and order, and gave them a national
life. But neither their kings nor their priests ever obtained, as in those other
countries, the exclusive moulding of their character. Their religion, which
enabled persons of genius and a high religious tone to be regarded and to regard
themselves as inspired from heaven, gave existence to an inestimably precious
unorganised institution — the Order (if it may be so termed) of Prophets.
Under the protection, generally though not always effectual, of their sacred
character, the Prophets were a power in the nation, often more than a match for
kings and priests, and kept up, in that little corner of the earth, the
antagonism of influences which is the only real security for continued progress.
Religion consequently was not there what it has been in so many other places —
a consecration of all that was once established, and a barrier against further
improvement. The remark of a distinguished Hebrew, M. Salvador, that the
Prophets were, in Church and State, the equivalent of the modern liberty of the
press, gives a just but not an adequate conception of the part fulfilled in
national and universal history by this great element of Jewish life; by means of
which, the canon of inspiration never being complete, the persons most eminent
in genius and moral feeling could not only denounce and reprobate, with the
direct authority of the Almighty, whatever appeared to them deserving of such
treatment, but could give forth better and higher interpretations of the
national religion, which thenceforth became part of the religion. Accordingly,
whoever can divest himself of the habit of reading the Bible as if it was one
book, which until lately was equally inveterate in Christians and in
unbelievers, sees with admiration the vast interval between the morality and
religion of the Pentateuch, or even of the historical books (the unmistakable
work of Hebrew Conservatives of the sacerdotal order), and the morality and
religion of the Prophecies: a distance as wide as between these last and the
Gospels. Conditions more favourable to Progress could not easily exist:
accordingly, the Jews, instead of being stationary like other Asiatics, were,
next to the Greeks, the most progressive people of antiquity, and, jointly with
them, have been the starting-point and main propelling agency of modern
cultivation.
It is, then, impossible to understand the question of the adaptation of forms
of government to states of society without taking into account not only the next
step, but all the steps which society has yet to make; both those which can be
foreseen, and the far wider indefinite range which is at present out of sight.
It follows, that to judge of the merits of forms of government, an ideal must be
constructed of the form of government most eligible in itself, that is, which,
if the necessary conditions existed for giving effect to its beneficial
tendencies, would, more than all others, favour and promote not some one
improvement, but all forms and degrees of it. This having been done, we must
consider what are the mental conditions of all sorts, necessary to enable this
government to realise its tendencies, and what, therefore, are the various
defects by which a people is made incapable of reaping its benefits. It would
then be possible to construct a theorem of the circumstances in which that form
of government may wisely be introduced; and also to judge, in cases in which it
had better not be introduced, what inferior forms of polity will best carry
those communities through the intermediate stages which they must traverse
before they can become fit for the best form of government.
Of these inquiries, the last does not concern us here; but the first is an
essential part of our subject: for we may, without rashness, at once enunciate a
proposition, the proofs and illustrations of which will present themselves in
the ensuing pages; that this ideally best form of government will be found in
some one or other variety of the Representative System.
Chapter 3
That the ideally best Form of Government is Representative Government.
IT HAS long (perhaps throughout
the entire duration of British freedom) been a common saying, that if a good
despot could be ensured, despotic monarchy would be the best form of government.
I look upon this as a radical and most pernicious misconception of what good
government is; which, until it can be got rid of, will fatally vitiate all our
speculations on government.
The supposition is, that absolute power, in the hands of an eminent
individual, would ensure a virtuous and intelligent performance of all the
duties of government. Good laws would be established and enforced, bad laws
would be reformed; the best men would be placed in all situations of trust;
justice would be as well administered, the public burthens would be as light and
as judiciously imposed, every branch of administration would be as purely and as
intelligently conducted, as the circumstances of the country and its degree of
intellectual and moral cultivation would admit. I am willing, for the sake of
the argument, to concede all this; but I must point out how great the concession
is; how much more is needed to produce even an approximation to these results
than is conveyed in the simple expression, a good despot. Their realisation
would in fact imply, not merely a good monarch, but an all-seeing one. He must
be at all times informed correctly, in considerable detail, of the conduct and
working of every branch of administration, in every district of the country, and
must be able, in the twenty-four hours per day which are all that is granted to
a king as to the humblest labourer, to give an effective share of attention and
superintendence to all parts of this vast field; or he must at least be capable
of discerning and choosing out, from among the mass of his subjects, not only a
large abundance of honest and able men, fit to conduct every branch of public
administration under supervision and control, but also the small number of men
of eminent virtues and talents who can be trusted not only to do without that
supervision, but to exercise it themselves over others. So extraordinary are the
faculties and energies required for performing this task in any supportable
manner, that the good despot whom we are supposing can hardly be imagined as
consenting to undertake it, unless as a refuge from intolerable evils, and a
transitional preparation for something beyond. But the argument can do without
even this immense item in the account. Suppose the difficulty vanquished. What
should we then have? One man of superhuman mental activity managing the entire
affairs of a mentally passive people. Their passivity is implied in the very
idea of absolute power. The nation as a whole, and every individual composing
it, are without any potential voice in their own destiny. They exercise no will
in respect to their collective interests. All is decided for them by a will not
their own, which it is legally a crime for them to disobey.
What sort of human beings can be formed under such a regimen? What
development can either their thinking or their active faculties attain under it?
On matters of pure theory they might perhaps be allowed to speculate, so long as
their speculations either did not approach politics, or had not the remotest
connection with its practice. On practical affairs they could at most be only
suffered to suggest; and even under the most moderate of despots, none but
persons of already admitted or reputed superiority could hope that their
suggestions would be known to, much less regarded by, those who had the
management of affairs. A person must have a very unusual taste for intellectual
exercise in and for itself, who will put himself to the trouble of thought when
it is to have no outward effect, or qualify himself for functions which he has
no chance of being allowed to exercise. The only sufficient incitement to mental
exertion, in any but a few minds in a generation, is the prospect of some
practical use to be made of its results. It does not follow that the nation will
be wholly destitute of intellectual power. The common business of life, which
must necessarily be performed by each individual or family for themselves, will
call forth some amount of intelligence and practical ability, within a certain
narrow range of ideas. There may be a select class of savants, who cultivate
science with a view to its physical uses, or for the pleasure of the pursuit.
There will be a bureaucracy, and persons in training for the bureaucracy, who
will be taught at least some empirical maxims of government and public
administration. There may be, and often has been, a systematic organisation of
the best mental power in the country in some special direction (commonly
military) to promote the grandeur of the despot. But the public at large remain
without information and without interest on all greater matters of practice; or,
if they have any knowledge of them, it is but a dilettante knowledge, like that
which people have of the mechanical arts who have never handled a tool.
Nor is it only in their intelligence that they suffer. Their moral capacities
are equally stunted. Wherever the sphere of action of human beings is
artificially circumscribed, their sentiments are narrowed and dwarfed in the
same proportion. The food of feeling is action: even domestic affection lives
upon voluntary good offices. Let a person have nothing to do for his country,
and he will not care for it. It has been said of old, that in a despotism there
is at most but one patriot, the despot himself; and the saying rests on a just
appreciation of the effects of absolute subjection, even to a good and wise
master. Religion remains: and here at least, it may be thought, is an agency
that may be relied on for lifting men's eyes and minds above the dust at their
feet. But religion, even supposing it to escape perversion for the purposes of
despotism, ceases in these circumstances to be a social concern, and narrows
into a personal affair between an individual and his Maker, in which the issue
at stake is but his private salvation. Religion in this shape is quite
consistent with the most selfish and contracted egoism, and identifies the
votary as little in feeling with the rest of his kind as sensuality itself.
A good despotism means a government in which, so far as depends on the
despot, there is no positive oppression by officers of state, but in which all
the collective interests of the people are managed for them, all the thinking
that has relation to collective interests done for them, and in which their
minds are formed by, and consenting to, this abdication of their own energies.
Leaving things to the Government, like leaving them to Providence, is synonymous
with caring nothing about them, and accepting their results, when disagreeable,
as visitations of Nature. With the exception, therefore, of a few studious men
who take an intellectual interest in speculation for its own sake, the
intelligence and sentiments of the whole people are given up to the material
interests, and, when these are provided for, to the amusement and ornamentation,
of private life. But to say this is to say, if the whole testimony of history is
worth anything, that the era of national decline has arrived: that is, if the
nation had ever attained anything to decline from. If it has never risen above
the condition of an Oriental people, in that condition it continues to stagnate.
But if, like Greece or Rome, it had realised anything higher, through the
energy, patriotism, and enlargement of mind, which as national qualities are the
fruits solely of freedom, it relapses in a few generations into the Oriental
state. And that state does not mean stupid tranquillity, with security against
change for the worse; it often means being overrun, conquered, and reduced to
domestic slavery, either by a stronger despot, or by the nearest barbarous
people who retain along with their savage rudeness the energies of freedom.
Such are not merely the natural tendencies, but the inherent necessities of
despotic government; from which there is no outlet, unless in so far as the
despotism consents not to be despotism; in so far as the supposed good despot
abstains from exercising his power, and, though holding it in reserve, allows
the general business of government to go on as if the people really governed
themselves. However little probable it may be, we may imagine a despot observing
many of the rules and restraints of constitutional government. He might allow
such freedom of the press and of discussion as would enable a public opinion to
form and express itself on national affairs. He might suffer local interests to
be managed, without the interference of authority, by the people themselves. He
might even surround himself with a council or councils of government, freely
chosen by the whole or some portion of the nation; retaining in his own hands
the power of taxation, and the supreme legislative as well as executive
authority. Were he to act thus, and so far abdicate as a despot, he would do
away with a considerable part of the evils characteristic of despotism.
Political activity and capacity for public affairs would no longer be prevented
from growing up in the body of the nation; and a public opinion would form
itself not the mere echo of the government. But such improvement would be the
beginning of new difficulties. This public opinion, independent of the monarch's
dictation, must be either with him or against him; if not the one, it will be
the other. All governments must displease many persons, and these having now
regular organs, and being able to express their sentiments, opinions adverse to
the measures of government would often be expressed. What is the monarch to do
when these unfavourable opinions happen to be in the majority? Is he to alter
his course? Is he to defer to the nation? If so, he is no longer a despot, but a
constitutional king; an organ or first minister of the people, distinguished
only by being irremovable. If not, he must either put down opposition by his
despotic power, or there will arise a permanent antagonism between the people
and one man, which can have but one possible ending. Not even a religious
principle of passive obedience and "right divine" would long ward off
the natural consequences of such a position. The monarch would have to succumb,
and conform to the conditions of constitutional royalty, or give place to some
one who would. The despotism, being thus chiefly nominal, would possess few of
the advantages supposed to belong to absolute monarchy; while it would realise
in a very imperfect degree those of a free government; since however great an
amount of liberty the citizens might practically enjoy, they could never forget
that they held it on sufferance, and by a concession which under the existing
constitution of the state might at any moment be resumed; that they were legally
slaves, though of a prudent, or indulgent, master.
It is not much to be wondered at if impatient or disappointed reformers,
groaning under the impediments opposed to the most salutary public improvements
by the ignorance, the indifference, the intractableness, the perverse obstinacy
of a people, and the corrupt combinations of selfish private interests armed
with the powerful weapons afforded by free institutions, should at times sigh
for a strong hand to bear down all these obstacles, and compel a recalcitrant
people to be better governed. But (setting aside the fact, that for one despot
who now and then reforms an abuse, there are ninety-nine who do nothing but
create them) those who look in any such direction for the realisation of their
hopes leave out of the idea of good government its principal element, the
improvement of the people themselves. One of the benefits of freedom is that
under it the ruler cannot pass by the people's minds, and amend their affairs
for them without amending them. If it were possible for the people to be well
governed in spite of themselves, their good government would last no longer than
the freedom of a people usually lasts who have been liberated by foreign arms
without their own co-operation. It is true, a despot may educate the people; and
to do so really, would be the best apology for his despotism. But any education
which aims at making human beings other than machines, in the long run makes
them claim to have the control of their own actions. The leaders of French
philosophy in the eighteenth century had been educated by the Jesuits. Even
Jesuit education, it seems, was sufficiently real to call forth the appetite for
freedom. Whatever invigorates the faculties, in however small a measure, creates
an increased desire for their more unimpeded exercise; and a popular education
is a failure, if it educates the people for any state but that which it will
certainly induce them to desire, and most probably to demand.
I am far from condemning, in cases of extreme exigency, the assumption of
absolute power in the form of a temporary dictatorship. Free nations have, in
times of old, conferred such power by their own choice, as a necessary medicine
for diseases of the body politic which could not be got rid of by less violent
means. But its acceptance, even for a time strictly limited, can only be
excused, if, like Solon or Pittacus, the dictator employs the whole power he
assumes in removing the obstacles which debar the nation from the enjoyment of
freedom. A good despotism is an altogether false ideal, which practically
(except as a means to some temporary purpose) becomes the most senseless and
dangerous of chimeras. Evil for evil, a good despotism, in a country at all
advanced in civilisation, is more noxious than a bad one; for it is far more
relaxing and enervating to the thoughts, feelings, and energies of the people.
The despotism of Augustus prepared the Romans for Tiberius. If the whole tone of
their character had not first been prostrated by nearly two generations of that
mild slavery, they would probably have had spirit enough left to rebel against
the more odious one.
There is no difficulty in showing that the ideally best form of government is
that in which the sovereignty, or supreme controlling power in the last resort,
is vested in the entire aggregate of the community; every citizen not only
having a voice in the exercise of that ultimate sovereignty, but being, at least
occasionally, called on to take an actual part in the government, by the
personal discharge of some public function, local or general.
To test this proposition, it has to be examined in reference to the two
branches into which, as pointed out in the last chapter, the inquiry into the
goodness of a government conveniently divides itself, namely, how far it
promotes the good management of the affairs of society by means of the existing
faculties, moral, intellectual, and active, of its various members, and what is
its effect in improving or deteriorating those faculties.
The ideally best form of government, it is scarcely necessary to say, does
not mean one which is practicable or eligible in all states of civilisation, but
the one which, in the circumstances in which it is practicable and eligible, is
attended with the greatest amount of beneficial consequences, immediate and
prospective. A completely popular government is the only polity which can make
out any claim to this character. It is pre-eminent in both the departments
between which the excellence of a political constitution is divided. It is both
more favourable to present good government, and promotes a better and higher
form of national character, than any other polity whatsoever.
Its superiority in reference to present well-being rests upon two principles,
of as universal truth and applicability as any general propositions which can be
laid down respecting human affairs. The first is, that the rights and interests
of every or any person are only secure from being disregarded when the person
interested is himself able, and habitually disposed, to stand up for them. The
second is, that the general prosperity attains a greater height, and is more
widely diffused, in proportion to the amount and variety of the personal
energies enlisted in promoting it.
Putting these two propositions into a shape more special to their present
application; human beings are only secure from evil at the hands of others in
proportion as they have the power of being, and are, self-protecting; and they
only achieve a high degree of success in their struggle with Nature in
proportion as they are self-dependent, relying on what they themselves can do,
either separately or in concert, rather than on what others do for them.
The former proposition — that each is the only safe guardian of his own
rights and interests — is one of those elementary maxims of prudence, which
every person, capable of conducting his own affairs, implicitly acts upon,
wherever he himself is interested. Many, indeed, have a great dislike to it as a
political doctrine, and are fond of holding it up to obloquy, as a doctrine of
universal selfishness. To which we may answer, that whenever it ceases to be
true that mankind, as a rule, prefer themselves to others, and those nearest to
them to those more remote, from that moment Communism is not only practicable,
but the only defensible form of society; and will, when that time arrives, be
assuredly carried into effect. For my own part, not believing in universal
selfishness, I have no difficulty in admitting that Communism would even now be
practicable among the elite of mankind, and may become so among the rest. But as
this opinion is anything but popular with those defenders of existing
institutions who find fault with the doctrine of the general predominance of
self-interest, I am inclined to think they do in reality believe that most men
consider themselves before other people. It is not, however, necessary to affirm
even thus much in order to support the claim of all to participate in the
sovereign power. We need not suppose that when power resides in an exclusive
class, that class will knowingly and deliberately sacrifice the other classes to
themselves: it suffices that, in the absence of its natural defenders, the
interest of the excluded is always in danger of being overlooked; and, when
looked at, is seen with very different eyes from those of the persons whom it
directly concerns.
In this country, for example, what are called the working classes may be
considered as excluded from all direct participation in the government. I do not
believe that the classes who do participate in it have in general any intention
of sacrificing the working classes to themselves. They once had that intention;
witness the persevering attempts so long made to keep down wages by law. But in
the present day their ordinary disposition is the very opposite: they willingly
make considerable sacrifices, especially of their pecuniary interest, for the
benefit of the working classes, and err rather by too lavish and
indiscriminating beneficence; nor do I believe that any rulers in history have
been actuated by a more sincere desire to do their duty towards the poorer
portion of their countrymen. Yet does Parliament, or almost any of the members
composing it, ever for an instant look at any question with the eyes of a
working man? When a subject arises in which the labourers as such have an
interest, is it regarded from any point of view but that of the employers of
labour? I do not say that the working men's view of these questions is in
general nearer to the truth than the other: but it is sometimes quite as near;
and in any case it ought to be respectfully listened to, instead of being, as it
is, not merely turned away from, but ignored. On the question of strikes, for
instance, it is doubtful if there is so much as one among the leading members of
either House who is not firmly convinced that the reason of the matter is
unqualifiedly on the side of the masters, and that the men's view of it is
simply absurd. Those who have studied the question know well how far this is
from being the case; and in how different, and how infinitely less superficial a
manner the point would have to be argued, if the classes who strike were able to
make themselves heard in Parliament.
It is an adherent condition of human affairs that no intention, however
sincere, of protecting the interests of others can make it safe or salutary to
tie up their own hands. Still more obviously true is it, that by their own hands
only can any positive and durable improvement of their circumstances in life be
worked out. Through the joint influence of these two principles, all free
communities have both been more exempt from social injustice and crime, and have
attained more brilliant prosperity, than any others, or than they themselves
after they lost their freedom. Contrast the free states of the world, while
their freedom lasted, with the cotemporary subjects of monarchical or
oligarchical despotism: the Greek cities with the Persian satrapies; the Italian
republics and the free towns of Flanders and Germany, with the feudal monarchies
of Europe; Switzerland, Holland, and England, with Austria or anterevolutionary
France. Their superior prosperity was too obvious ever to have been gainsaid:
while their superiority in good government and social relations is proved by the
prosperity, and is manifest besides in every page of history. If we compare, not
one age with another, but the different governments which co-existed in the same
age, no amount of disorder which exaggeration itself can pretend to have existed
amidst the publicity of the free states can be compared for a moment with the
contemptuous trampling upon the mass of the people which pervaded the whole life
of the monarchical countries, or the disgusting individual tyranny which was of
more than daily occurrence under the systems of plunder which they called fiscal
arrangements, and in the secrecy of their frightful courts of justice.
It must be acknowledged that the benefits of freedom, so far as they have
hitherto been enjoyed, were obtained by the extension of its privileges to a
part only of the community; and that a government in which they are extended
impartially to all is a desideratum still unrealised. But though every approach
to this has an independent value, and in many cases more than an approach could
not, in the existing state of general improvement, be made, the participation of
all in these benefits is the ideally perfect conception of free government. In
proportion as any, no matter who, are excluded from it, the interests of the
excluded are left without the guarantee accorded to the rest, and they
themselves have less scope and encouragement than they might otherwise have to
that exertion of their energies for the good of themselves and of the community,
to which the general prosperity is always proportioned.
Thus stands the case as regards present well-being; the good management of
the affairs of the existing generation. If we now pass to the influence of the
form of government upon character, we shall find the superiority of popular
government over every other to be, if possible, still more decided and
indisputable.
This question really depends upon a still more fundamental one, viz., which
of two common types of character, for the general good of humanity, it is most
desirable should predominate — the active, or the passive type; that which
struggles against evils, or that which endures them; that which bends to
circumstances, or that which endeavours to make circumstances bend to itself.
The commonplaces of moralists, and the general sympathies of mankind, are in
favour of the passive type. Energetic characters may be admired, but the
acquiescent and submissive are those which most men personally prefer. The
passiveness of our neighbours increases our sense of security, and plays into
the hands of our wilfulness. Passive characters, if we do not happen to need
their activity, seem an obstruction the less in our own path. A contented
character is not a dangerous rival. Yet nothing is more certain than that
improvement in human affairs is wholly the work of the uncontented characters;
and, moreover, that it is much easier for an active mind to acquire the virtues
of patience than for a passive one to assume those of energy.
Of the three varieties of mental excellence, intellectual, practical, and
moral, there never could be any doubt in regard to the first two which side had
the advantage. All intellectual superiority is the fruit of active effort.
Enterprise, the desire to keep moving, to be trying and accomplishing new things
for our own benefit or that of others, is the parent even of speculative, and
much more of practical, talent. The intellectual culture compatible with the
other type is of that feeble and vague description which belongs to a mind that
stops at amusement, or at simple contemplation. The test of real and vigourous
thinking, the thinking which ascertains truths instead of dreaming dreams, is
successful application to practice. Where that purpose does not exist, to give
definiteness, precision, and an intelligible meaning to thought, it generates
nothing better than the mystical metaphysics of the Pythagoreans or the Vedas.
With respect to practical improvement, the case is still more evident. The
character which improves human life is that which struggles with natural powers
and tendencies, not that which gives way to them. The self-benefiting qualities
are all on the side of the active and energetic character: and the habits and
conduct which promote the advantage of each individual member of the community
must be at least a part of those which conduce most in the end to the
advancement of the community as a whole.
But on the point of moral preferability, there seems at first sight to be
room for doubt. I am not referring to the religious feeling which has so
generally existed in favour of the inactive character, as being more in harmony
with the submission due to the divine will. Christianity as well as other
religions has fostered this sentiment; but it is the prerogative of
Christianity, as regards this and many other perversions, that it is able to
throw them off. Abstractedly from religious considerations, a passive character,
which yields to obstacles instead of striving to overcome them, may not indeed
be very useful to others, no more than to itself, but it might be expected to be
at least inoffensive. Contentment is always counted among the moral virtues. But
it is a complete error to suppose that contentment is necessarily or naturally
attendant on passivity of character; and useless it is, the moral consequences
are mischievous. Where there exists a desire for advantages not possessed, the
mind which does not potentially possess them by means of its own energies is apt
to look with hatred and malice on those who do. The person bestirring himself
with hopeful prospects to improve his circumstances is the one who feels
good-will towards others engaged in, or who have succeeded in, the same pursuit.
And where the majority are so engaged, those who do not attain the object have
had the tone given to their feelings by the general habit of the country, and
ascribe their failure to want of effort or opportunity, or to their personal ill
luck. But those who, while desiring what others possess, put no energy into
striving for it, are either incessantly grumbling that fortune does not do for
them what they do not attempt to do for themselves, or overflowing with envy and
ill-will towards those who possess what they would like to have.
In proportion as success in life is seen or believed to be the fruit of
fatality or accident, and not of exertion, in that same ratio does envy develop
itself as a point of national character. The most envious of all mankind are the
Orientals. In Oriental moralists, in Oriental tales, the envious man is
remarkably prominent. In real life, he is the terror of all who possess anything
desirable, be it a palace, a handsome child, or even good health and spirits:
the supposed effect of his mere look constitutes the all-pervading superstition
of the evil eye. Next to Orientals in envy, as in activity, are some of the
Southern Europeans. The Spaniards pursued all their great men with it,
embittered their lives, and generally succeeded in putting an early stop to
their successes.[1]
With the French, who are essentially a southern people, the double education of
despotism and Catholicism has, in spite of their impulsive temperament, made
submission and endurance the common character of the people, and their most
received notion of wisdom and excellence: and if envy of one another, and of all
superiority, is not more rife among them than it is, the circumstance must be
ascribed to the many valuable counteracting elements in the French character,
and most of all to the great individual energy which, though less persistent and
more intermittent than in the self-helping and struggling Anglo-Saxons, has
nevertheless manifested itself among the French in nearly every direction in
which the operation of their institutions has been favourable to it.
There are, no doubt, in all countries, really contented characters, who not
merely do not seek, but do not desire, what they do not already possess, and
these naturally bear no ill-will towards such as have apparently a more favoured
lot. But the great mass of seeming contentment is real discontent, combined with
indolence or self-indulgence, which, while taking no legitimate means of raising
itself, delights in bringing others down to its own level. And if we look
narrowly even at the cases of innocent contentment, we perceive that they only
win our admiration when the indifference is solely to improvement in outward
circumstances, and there is a striving for perpetual advancement in spiritual
worth, or at least a disinterested zeal to benefit others. The contented man, or
the contented family, who have no ambition to make any one else happier, to
promote the good of their country or their neighbourhood, or to improve
themselves in moral excellence, excite in us neither admiration nor approval. We
rightly ascribe this sort of contentment to mere unmanliness and want of spirit.
The content which we approve is an ability to do cheerfully without what cannot
be had, a just appreciation of the comparative value of different objects of
desire, and a willing renunciation of the less when incompatible with the
greater. These, however, are excellences more natural to the character, in
proportion as it is actively engaged in the attempt to improve its own or some
other lot. He who is continually measuring his energy against difficulties
learns what are the difficulties insuperable to him, and what are those which,
though he might overcome, the success is not worth the cost. He whose thoughts
and activities are all needed for, and habitually employed in, practicable and
useful enterprises, is the person of all others least likely to let his mind
dwell with brooding discontent upon things either not worth attaining, or which
are not so to him. Thus the active, self-helping character is not only
intrinsically the best, but is the likeliest to acquire all that is really
excellent or desirable in the opposite type.
The striving, go-ahead character of England and the United States is only a
fit subject of disapproving criticism on account of the very secondary objects
on which it commonly expends its strength. In itself it is the foundation of the
best hopes for the general improvement of mankind. It has been acutely remarked
that whenever anything goes amiss the habitual impulse of French people is to
say, "ll faut de la patience"; and of English people, "What a
shame." The people who think it a shame when anything goes wrong — who
rush to the conclusion that the evil could and ought to have been prevented, are
those who, in the long run, do most to make the world better. If the desires are
low placed, if they extend to little beyond physical comfort, and the show of
riches, the immediate results of the energy will not be much more than the
continual extension of man's power over material objects; but even this makes
room, and prepares the mechanical appliances, for the greatest intellectual and
social achievements; and while the energy is there, some persons will apply it,
and it will be applied more and more, to the perfecting not of outward
circumstances alone, but of man's inward nature. Inactivity, unaspiringness,
absence of desire, are a more fatal hindrance to improvement than any
misdirection of energy; and are that through which alone, when existing in the
mass, any very formidable misdirection by an energetic few becomes possible. It
is this, mainly, which retains in a savage or semi-savage state the great
majority of the human race.
Now there can be no kind of doubt that the passive type of character is
favoured by the government of one or a few, and the active self-helping type by
that of the Many. Irresponsible rulers need the quiescence of the ruled more
than they need any activity but that which they can compel. Submissiveness to
the prescriptions of men as necessities of nature is the lesson inculcated by
all governments upon those who are wholly without participation in them. The
will of superiors, and the law as the will of superiors, must be passively
yielded to. But no men are mere instruments or materials in the hands of their
rulers who have will or spirit or a spring of internal activity in the rest of
their proceedings: and any manifestation of these qualities, instead of
receiving encouragement from despots, has to get itself forgiven by them. Even
when irresponsible rulers are not sufficiently conscious of danger from the
mental activity of their subjects to be desirous of repressing it, the position
itself is a repression. Endeavour is even more effectually restrained by the
certainty of its impotence than by any positive discouragement. Between
subjection to the will of others, and the virtues of self-help and
self-government, there is a natural incompatibility. This is more or less
complete, according as the bondage is strained or relaxed. Rulers differ very
much in the length to which they carry the control of the free agency of their
subjects, or the supersession of it by managing their business for them. But the
difference is in degree, not in principle; and the best despots often go the
greatest lengths in chaining up the free agency of their subjects. A bad despot,
when his own personal indulgences have been provided for, may sometimes be
willing to let the people alone; but a good despot insists on doing them good,
by making them do their own business in a better way than they themselves know
of. The regulations which restricted to fixed processes all the leading branches
of French manufactures were the work of the great Colbert.
Very different is the state of the human faculties where a human being feels
himself under no other external restraint than the necessities of nature, or
mandates of society which he has his share in imposing, and which it is open to
him, if he thinks them wrong, publicly to dissent from, and exert himself
actively to get altered. No doubt, under a government partially popular, this
freedom may be exercised even by those who are not partakers in the full
privileges of citizenship. But it is a great additional stimulus to any one's
self-help and self-reliance when he starts from even ground, and has not to feel
that his success depends on the impression he can make upon the sentiments and
dispositions of a body of whom he is not one. It is a great discouragement to an
individual, and a still greater one to a class, to be left out of the
constitution; to be reduced to plead from outside the door to the arbiters of
their destiny, not taken into consultation within. The maximum of the
invigorating effect of freedom upon the character is only obtained when the
person acted on either is, or is looking forward to becoming, a citizen as fully
privileged as any other.
What is still more important than even this matter of feeling is the
practical discipline which the character obtains from the occasional demand made
upon the citizens to exercise, for a time and in their turn, some social
function. It is not sufficiently considered how little there is in most men's
ordinary life to give any largeness either to their conceptions or to their
sentiments. Their work is a routine; not a labour of love, but of self-interest
in the most elementary form, the satisfaction of daily wants; neither the thing
done, nor the process of doing it, introduces the mind to thoughts or feelings
extending beyond individuals; if instructive books are within their reach, there
is no stimulus to read them; and in most cases the individual has no access to
any person of cultivation much superior to his own. Giving him something to do
for the public, supplies, in a measure, all these deficiencies. If circumstances
allow the amount of public duty assigned him to be considerable, it makes him an
educated man. Notwithstanding the defects of the social system and moral ideas
of antiquity, the practice of the dicastery and the ecclesia raised the
intellectual standard of an average Athenian citizen far beyond anything of
which there is yet an example in any other mass of men, ancient or modern. The
proofs of this are apparent in every page of our great historian of Greece; but
we need scarcely look further than to the high quality of the addresses which
their great orators deemed best calculated to act with effect on their
understanding and will. A benefit of the same kind, though far less in degree,
is produced on Englishmen of the lower middle class by their liability to be
placed on juries and to serve parish offices; which, though it does not occur to
so many, nor is so continuous, nor introduces them to so great a variety of
elevated considerations, as to admit of comparison with the public education
which every citizen of Athens obtained from her democratic institutions, must
make them nevertheless very different beings, in range of ideas and development
of faculties, from those who have done nothing in their lives but drive a quill,
or sell goods over a counter.
Still more salutary is the moral part of the instruction afforded by the
participation of the private citizen, if even rarely, in public functions. He is
called upon, while so engaged, to weigh interests not his own; to be guided, in
case of conflicting claims, by another rule than his private partialities; to
apply, at every turn, principles and maxims which have for their reason of
existence the common good: and he usually finds associated with him in the same
work minds more familiarised than his own with these ideas and operations, whose
study it will be to supply reasons to his understanding, and stimulation to his
feeling for the general interest. He is made to feel himself one of the public,
and whatever is for their benefit to be for his benefit. Where this school of
public spirit does not exist, scarcely any sense is entertained that private
persons, in no eminent social situation, owe any duties to society, except to
obey the laws and submit to the government. There is no unselfish sentiment of
identification with the public. Every thought or feeling, either of interest or
of duty, is absorbed in the individual and in the family. The man never thinks
of any collective interest, of any objects to be pursued jointly with others,
but only in competition with them, and in some measure at their expense. A
neighbour, not being an ally or an associate, since he is never engaged in any
common undertaking for joint benefit, is therefore only a rival. Thus even
private morality suffers, while public is actually extinct. Were this the
universal and only possible state of things, the utmost aspirations of the
lawgiver or the moralist could only stretch to make the bulk of the community a
flock of sheep innocently nibbling the grass side by side.
From these accumulated considerations it is evident that the only government
which can fully satisfy all the exigencies of the social state is one in which
the whole people participate; that any participation, even in the smallest
public function, is useful; that the participation should everywhere be as great
as the general degree of improvement of the community will allow; and that
nothing less can be ultimately desirable than the admission of all to a share in
the sovereign power of the state. But since all cannot, in a community exceeding
a single small town, participate personally in any but some very minor portions
of the public business, it follows that the ideal type of a perfect government
must be representative.
Chapter 4
Under what Social Conditions Representative Government is Inapplicable.
WE HAVE recognised in
representative government the ideal type of the most perfect polity, for which,
in consequence, any portion of mankind are better adapted in proportion to their
degree of general improvement. As they range lower and lower in development,
that form of government will be, generally speaking, less suitable to them;
though this is not true universally: for the adaptation of a people to
representative government does not depend so much upon the place they occupy in
the general scale of humanity as upon the degree in which they possess certain
special requisites; requisites, however, so closely connected with their degree
of general advancement, that any variation between the two is rather the
exception than the rule. Let us examine at what point in the descending series
representative government ceases altogether to be admissible, either through its
own unfitness, or the superior fitness of some other regimen.
First, then, representative, like any other government, must be unsuitable in
any case in which it cannot permanently subsist — i.e. in which it does not
fulfil the three fundamental conditions enumerated in the first chapter. These
were — 1. That the people should be willing to receive it. 2. That they should
be willing and able to do what is necessary for its preservation. 3. That they
should be willing and able to fulfil the duties and discharge the functions
which it imposes on them.
The willingness of the people to accept representative government only
becomes a practical question when an enlightened ruler, or a foreign nation or
nations who have gained power over the country, are disposed to offer it the
boon. To individual reformers the question is almost irrelevant, since, if no
other objection can be made to their enterprise than that the opinion of the
nation is not yet on their side, they have the ready and proper answer, that to
bring it over to their side is the very end they aim at. When opinion is really
adverse, its hostility is usually to the fact of change, rather than to
representative government in itself. The contrary case is not indeed unexampled;
there has sometimes been a religious repugnance to any limitation of the power
of a particular line of rulers; but, in general, the doctrine of passive
obedience meant only submission to the will of the powers that be, whether
monarchical or popular. In any case in which the attempt to introduce
representative government is at all likely to be made, indifference to it, and
inability to understand its processes and requirements, rather than positive
opposition, are the obstacles to be expected. These, however, are as fatal, and
may be as hard to be got rid of, as actual aversion; it being easier, in most
cases, to change the direction of an active feeling, than to create one in a
state previously passive. When a people have no sufficient value for, and
attachment to, a representative constitution, they have next to no chance of
retaining it. In every country, the executive is the branch of the government
which wields the immediate power, and is in direct contact with the public; to
it, principally, the hopes and fears of individuals are directed, and by it both
the benefits, and the terrors and prestige, of government are mainly represented
to the public eye. Unless, therefore, the authorities whose office it is to
check the executive are backed by an effective opinion and feeling in the
country, the executive has always the means of setting them aside, or compelling
them to subservience, and is sure to be well supported in doing so.
Representative institutions necessarily depend for permanence upon the readiness
of the people to fight for them in case of their being endangered. If too little
valued for this, they seldom obtain a footing at all, and if they do, are almost
sure to be overthrown, as soon as the head of the government, or any party
leader who can muster force for a coup de main, is willing to run some small
risk for absolute power.
These considerations relate to the first two causes of failure in a
representative government. The third is, when the people want either the will or
the capacity to fulfil the part which belongs to them in a representative
constitution. When nobody, or only some small fraction, feels the degree of
interest in the general affairs of the State necessary to the formation of a
public opinion, the electors will seldom make any use of the right of suffrage
but to serve their private interest, or the interest of their locality, or of
some one with whom they are connected as adherents or dependents. The small
class who, in this state of public feeling, gain the command of the
representative body, for the most part use it solely as a means of seeking their
fortune. if the executive is weak, the country is distracted by mere struggles
for place; if strong, it makes itself despotic, at the cheap price of appeasing
the representatives, or such of them as are capable of giving trouble, by a
share of the spoil; and the only fruit produced by national representation is,
that in addition to those who really govern, there is an assembly quartered on
the public, and no abuse in which a portion of the assembly are interested is at
all likely to be removed. When, however, the evil stops here, the price may be
worth paying, for the publicity and discussion which, though not an invariable,
are a natural accompaniment of any, even nominal, representation. In the modern
Kingdom of Greece, for example,[2]
it can hardly be doubted, that the placehunters who chiefly compose the
representative assembly, though they contribute little or nothing directly to
good government, nor even much temper the arbitrary power of the executive, yet
keep up the idea of popular rights, and conduce greatly to the real liberty of
the press which exists in that country. This benefit, however, is entirely
dependent on the co-existence with the popular body of an hereditary king. If,
instead of struggling for the favours of the chief ruler, these selfish and
sordid factions struggled for the chief place itself, they would certainly, as
in Spanish America, keep the country in a state of chronic revolution and civil
war. A despotism, not even legal, but of illegal violence, would be alternately
exercised by a succession of political adventurers, and the name and forms of
representation would have no effect but to prevent despotism from attaining the
stability and security by which alone its evils can be mitigated, or its few
advantages realised.
The preceding are the cases in which representative government cannot
permanently exist. There are others in which it possibly might exist, but in
which some other form of government would be preferable. These are principally
when the people, in order to advance in civilisation, have some lesson to learn,
some habit not yet acquired, to the acquisition of which representative
government is likely to be an impediment.
The most obvious of these cases is the one already considered, in which the
people have still to learn the first lesson of civilisation, that of obedience.
A race who have been trained in energy and courage by struggles with Nature and
their neighbours, but who have not yet settled down into permanent obedience to
any common superior, would be little likely to acquire this habit under the
collective government of their own body. A representative assembly drawn from
among themselves would simply reflect their own turbulent insubordination. It
would refuse its authority to all proceedings which would impose, on their
savage independence, any improving restraint. The mode in which such tribes are
usually brought to submit to the primary conditions of civilised society is
through the necessities of warfare, and the despotic authority indispensable to
military command. A military leader is the only superior to whom they will
submit, except occasionally some prophet supposed to be inspired from above, or
conjurer regarded as possessing miraculous power. These may exercise a temporary
ascendancy, but as it is merely personal, it rarely effects any change in the
general habits of the people, unless the prophet,
