1861
REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT
by John Stuart Mill
PREFACE
PREFACE.
THOSE who have done me the honour of reading my previous writings
will probably receive no strong impression of novelty from the present
volume; for the principles are those to which I have been working up
during the greater part of my life, and most of the practical
suggestions have been anticipated by others or by myself. There is
novelty, however, in the fact of bringing them together, and
exhibiting them in their connection; and also, I believe, in much that
is brought forward in their support. Several of the opinions at all
events, if not new, are for the present as little likely to meet
with general acceptance as if they were.
It seems to me, however, from various indications, and from none
more than the recent debates on Reform of Parliament, that both
Conservatives and Liberals (if I may continue to call them what they
still call themselves) have lost confidence in the political creeds
which they nominally profess, while neither side appears to have
made any progress in providing itself with a better. Yet such a better
doctrine must be possible; not a mere compromise, by splitting the
difference between the two, but something wider than either, which, in
virtue of its superior comprehensiveness, might be adopted by either
Liberal or Conservative without renouncing anything which he really
feels to be valuable in his own creed. When so many feel obscurely the
want of such a doctrine, and so few even flatter themselves that
they have attained it, any one may without presumption offer what
his own thoughts, and the best that he knows of those of others, are
able to contribute towards its formation.
Chapter 1
To what extent Forms of Government are a Matter of Choice.
ALL SPECULATIONS concerning forms of government bear the impress,
more or less exclusive, of two conflicting theories respecting
political institutions; or, to speak more properly, conflicting
conceptions of what political institutions are.
By some minds, government is conceived as strictly a practical
art, giving rise to no questions but those of means and an end.
Forms of government are assimilated to any other expedients for the
attainment of human objects. They are regarded as wholly an affair
of invention and contrivance. Being made by man, it is assumed that
man has the choice either to make them or not, and how or on what
pattern they shall be made. Government, according to this
conception, is a problem, to be worked like any other question of
business. The first step is to define the purposes which governments
are required to promote. The next, is to inquire what form of
government is best fitted to fulfil those purposes. Having satisfied
ourselves on these two points, and ascertained the form of
government which combines the greatest amount of good with the least
of evil, what further remains is to obtain the concurrence of our
countrymen, or those for whom the institutions are intended, in the
opinion which we have privately arrived at. To find the best form of
government; to persuade others that it is the best; and having done
so, to stir them up to insist on having it, is the order of ideas in
the minds of those who adopt this view of political philosophy. They
look upon a constitution in the same light (difference of scale
being allowed for) as they would upon a steam plough, or a threshing
machine.
To these stand opposed another kind of political reasoners, who
are so far from assimilating a form of government to a machine, that
they regard it as a sort of spontaneous product, and the science of
government as a branch (so to speak) of natural history. According
to them, forms of government are not a matter of choice. We must
take them, in the main, as we find them. Governments cannot be
constructed by premeditated design. They "are not made, but grow." Our
business with them, as with the other facts of the universe, is to
acquaint ourselves with their natural properties, and adapt
ourselves to them. The fundamental political institutions of a
people are considered by this school as a sort of organic growth
from the nature and life of that people: a product of their habits,
instincts, and unconscious wants and desires, scarcely at all of their
deliberate purposes. Their will has had no part in the matter but that
of meeting the necessities of the moment by the contrivances of the
moment, which contrivances, if in sufficient conformity to the
national feelings and character, commonly last, and by successive
aggregation constitute a polity, suited to the people who possess
it, but which it would be vain to attempt to superduce upon any people
whose nature and circumstances had not spontaneously evolved it.
It is difficult to decide which of these doctrines would be the most
absurd, if we could suppose either of them held as an exclusive
theory. But the principles which men profess, on any controverted
subject, are usually a very incomplete exponent of the opinions they
really hold. No one believes that every people is capable of working
every sort of institutions. Carry the analogy of mechanical
contrivances as far as we will, a man does not choose even an
instrument of timber and iron on the sole ground that it is in
itself the best. He considers whether he possesses the other
requisites which must be combined with it to render its employment
advantageous, and in particular whether those by whom it will have
to be worked possess the knowledge and skill necessary for its
management. On the other hand, neither are those who speak of
institutions as if they were a kind of living organisms really the
political fatalists they give themselves out to be. They do not
pretend that mankind have absolutely no range of choice as to the
government they will live under, or that a consideration of the
consequences which flow from different forms of polity is no element
at all in deciding which of them should be preferred. But though
each side greatly exaggerates its own theory, out of opposition to the
other, and no one holds without modification to either, the two
doctrines correspond to a deep-seated difference between two modes
of thought; and though it is evident that neither of these is entirely
in the right, yet it being equally evident that neither is wholly in
the wrong, we must endeavour to get down to what is at the root of
each, and avail ourselves of the amount of truth which exists in
either.
Let us remember, then, in the first place, that political
institutions (however the proposition may be at times ignored) are the
work of men; owe their origin and their whole existence to human will.
Men did not wake on a summer morning and find them sprung up.
Neither do they resemble trees, which, once planted, "are aye growing"
while men "are sleeping." In every stage of their existence they are
made what they are by human voluntary agency. Like all things,
therefore, which are made by men, they may be either well or ill made;
judgment and skill may have been exercised in their production, or the
reverse of these. And again, if a people have omitted, or from outward
pressure have not had it in their power, to give themselves a
constitution by the tentative process of applying a corrective to each
evil as it arose, or as the sufferers gained strength to resist it,
this retardation of political progress is no doubt a great
disadvantage to them, but it does not prove that what has been found
good for others would not have been good also for them, and will not
be so still when they think fit to adopt it.
On the other hand, it is also to be borne in mind that political
machinery does not act of itself. As it is first made, so it has to be
worked, by men, and even by ordinary men. It needs, not their simple
acquiescence, but their active participation; and must be adjusted
to the capacities and qualities of such men as are available. This
implies three conditions. The people for whom the form of government
is intended must be willing to accept it; or at least not so unwilling
as to oppose an insurmountable obstacle to its establishment. They
must be willing and able to do what is necessary to keep it
standing. And they must be willing and able to do what it requires
of them to enable it to fulfil its purposes. The word "do" is to be
understood as including forbearances as well as acts. They must be
capable of fulfilling the conditions of action, and the conditions
of self-restraint, which are necessary either for keeping the
established polity in existence, or for enabling it to achieve the
ends, its conduciveness to which forms its ...
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