Representative Government E-Book

John Stuart Mill

• Herausgeber: John Stuart Mill
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Philosopher, son of James Mill, born in London, was educated by his father with the view of making him the successor of Bentham and himself, as the exponent of the Utilitarian philosophy. In all respects he proved an apt pupil, and by his 15th year had studied classical literature, logic, political economy, and mathematics. In that year he went to France, where he was under the charge of Sir S. Bentham, a brother of Jeremy. His studies had led him to the adoption of the utilitarian philosophy, and after his return he became acquainted with Grote, the Austins, and other Benthamites.In 1823 he entered the India House as a clerk, and, like his father, rose to be examiner of Indian correspondence; and, on the dissolution of the Company, retired on a liberal pension. In 1825 he edited Bentham’s Rationale of Judicial Evidence. During the following years he was a frequent contributor to Radical journals, and edited the London Review. His Logic appeared in 1843, and produced a profound impression; and in 1848 he published Principles of Political Economy. The years between 1858 and 1865 were very productive, his treatises on Liberty, Utilitarianism, Representative Government, and his Examination of Sir W. Hamilton’s Philosophy being published during this period. In 1865 he entered the House of Commons as one of the members for Westminster, where, though highly respected, he made no great mark. After this political parenthesis he returned to his literary pursuits, and wrote The Subjection of Women [1869], The Irish Land Question [1870], and an Autobiography. Mill had married in 1851 Mrs. Taylor, for whom he showed an extraordinary devotion, and whom he survived for 15 years. He died at Avignon.His Autobiography gives a singular, and in some respects painful account of the methods and views of his father in his education. Though remaining all his life an adherent of the utilitarian philosophy, Mill did not transmit it to his disciples altogether unmodified, but, finding it too narrow and rigid for his own intellectual and moral requirements, devoted himself to widening it, and infusing into it a certain element of idealism.

Leseprobe

Representative Government

John Stuart Mill

Table of Contents

Preface.

To what extent Forms of Government are a Matter of Choice.

The Criterion of a Good Form of Government.

That the ideally best Form of Government is Representative Government.

Under what Social Conditions Representative Government is Inapplicable.

Of the Proper Functions of Representative Bodies.

Of the Infirmities and Dangers to which Representative Government is Liable.

Of True and False Democracy; Representation of All, and Representation of the Majority only.

Of the Extension of the Suffrage.

Should there be Two Stages of Election?

Of the Mode of Voting.

Of the Duration of Parliaments.

Ought Pledges to be Required from Members of Parliament?

Of a Second Chamber.

Of the Executive in a Representative Government.

Of Local Representative Bodies.

Of Nationality, as connected with Representative Government.

Of Federal Representative Governments.

Of the Government of Dependencies by a Free State.

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.