We have recognized 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 can not permanently
subsist--_i.e._, in which it does not fulfill 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 fulfill 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 fulfill the part which belongs to them in
a representative constitution. When nobody, or only some small
fraction, feels the degree of interest in the general affairs of the
state necessary to the formation of a public opinion, the electors
will seldom make any use of the right of suffrage but to serve their
private interest, or the interest of their locality, or of some one
with whom they are connected as adherents or dependents. The small
class who, in this state of public feeling, gain the command of the
representative body, for the most part use it solely as a means of
seeking their fortune. If the executive is weak, the country is
distracted by mere struggles for place; if strong, it makes itself
despotic, at the cheap price of appeasing the representatives, or such
of them as are capable of giving trouble, by a share of the spoil; and
the only fruit produced by national representation is, that in
addition to those who really govern, there is an assembly quartered on
the public, and no abuse in which a portion of the assembly are
interested is at all likely to be removed. When, however, the evil
stops here, the price may be worth paying for the publicity and
discussion which, though not an invariable, are a natural
accompaniment of any, even nominal, representation. In the modern
kingdom of Greece, for example, it can hardly be doubted, that the
place-hunters 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 coexistence with the popular body of an hereditary
king. If, instead of struggling for the favors 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 realized.
The preceding are the cases in which representative government can not
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 civilization,
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 civilization,
that of obedience. A race who have been trained in energy and courage
by struggles with Nature and their neighbors, 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
civilized society is through the necessities of warfare, and the
despotic authority indispensable to military command. A military
leader is the only superior to whom they will submit, except
occasionally some prophet supposed to be inspired from above, or
conjurer regarded as possessing miraculous power. These may exercise a
temporary ascendancy, but as it is merely personal, it rarely effects
any change in the general habits of the people, unless the prophet,
like Mohammed, is also a military chief, and goes forth the armed
apostle of a new religion; or unless the military chiefs ally
themselves with his influence, and turn it into a prop for their own
government.
A people are no less unfitted for representative government by the
contrary fault to that last specified--by extreme passiveness, and
ready submission to tyranny. If a people thus prostrated by character
and circumstances could obtain representative institutions, they would
inevitably choose their tyrants as their representatives, and the yoke
would be made heavier on them by the contrivance which _primâ facie_
might be expected to lighten it. On the contrary, many a people has
gradually emerged from this condition by the aid of a central
authority, whose position has made it the rival, and has ended by
making it the master, of the local despots, and which, above all, has
been single. French history, from Hugh Capet to Richelieu and Louis
XIV., is a continued example of this course of things. Even when the
king was scarcely so powerful as many of his chief feudatories, the
great advantage which he derived from being but one has been
recognized by French historians. To him the eyes of _all_ the locally
oppressed were turned; he was the object of hope and reliance
throughout the kingdom, while each local potentate was only powerful
within a more or less confined space. At his hands, refuge and
protection were sought from every part of the country against first
one, then another of the immediate oppressors. His progress to
ascendancy was slow; but it resulted from successively taking
advantage of opportunities which offered themselves only to him. It
was, therefore, sure; and, in proportion as it was accomplished, it
abated, in the oppressed portion of the community, the habit of
submitting to oppression. The king's interest lay in encouraging all
partial attempts on the part of the serfs to emancipate themselves
from their masters, and place themselves in immediate subordination to
himself. Under his protection numerous communities were formed which
knew no one above them but the king. Obedience to a distant monarch is
liberty itself compared with the dominion of the lord of the
neighboring castle; and the monarch was long compelled by necessities
of position to exert his authority as the ally rather than the master
of the classes whom he had aided in affecting their liberation. In
this manner a central power, despotic in principle, though generally
much restricted in practice, was mainly instrumental in carrying the
people through a necessary stage of improvement, which representative
government, if real, would most likely have prevented them from
entering upon. There are parts of Europe where the same work is still
to be done, and no prospect of its being done by any other means.
Nothing short of despotic rule or a general massacre could effect the
emancipation of the serfs in the Russian Empire.
The same passages of history forcibly illustrate another mode in which
unlimited monarchy overcomes obstacles to the progress of civilization
which representative government would have had a decided tendency to
aggravate. One of the strongest hindrances to improvement, up to a
rather advanced stage, is an inveterate spirit of locality. Portions
of mankind, in many other respects capable of, and prepared for
freedom, may be unqualified for amalgamating into even the smallest
nation. Not only may jealousies and antipathies repel them from one
another, and bar all possibility of voluntary union, but they may not
yet have acquired any of the feelings or habits which would make the
union real, supposing it to be nominally accomplished. They may, like
the citizens of an ancient community, or those of an Asiatic village,
have had considerable practice in exercising their faculties on
village or town interests, and have even realized a tolerably
effective popular government on that restricted scale, and may yet
have but slender sympathies with any thing beyond, and no habit or
capacity of dealing with interests common to many such communities. I
am not aware that history furnishes any example in which a number of
these political atoms or corpuscles have coalesced into a body, and
learned to feel themselves one people, except through previous
subjection to a central authority common to all. [2] It is through
the habit of deferring to that authority, entering into its plans and
subserving its purposes, that a people such as we have supposed
receive into their minds the conception of large interests common to a
considerable geographical extent. Such interests, on the contrary, are
necessarily the predominant consideration in the mind of the central
ruler; and through the relations, more or less intimate, which he
progressively establishes with the localities, they become familiar to
the general mind. The most favorable concurrence of circumstances
under which this step in improvement could be made would be one which
should raise up representative institutions without representative
government; a representative body or bodies, drawn from the
localities, making itself the auxiliary and instrument of the central
power, but seldom attempting to thwart or control it. The people being
thus taken, as it were, into council, though not sharing the supreme
power, the political education given by the central authority is
carried home, much more effectually than it could otherwise be, to the
local chiefs and to the population generally, while, at the same time,
a tradition is kept up of government by general consent, or at least,
the sanction of tradition is not given to government without it,
which, when consecrated by custom, has so often put a bad end to a
good beginning, and is one of the most frequent causes of the sad
fatality which in most countries has stopped improvement in so early a
stage, because the work of some one period has been so done as to bar
the needful work of the ages following. Meanwhile, it may be laid down
as a political truth, that by irresponsible monarchy rather than by
representative government can a multitude of insignificant political
units be welded into a people, with common feelings of cohesion, power
enough to protect itself against conquest or foreign aggression, and
affairs sufficiently various and considerable of its own to occupy
worthily and expand to fit proportions the social and political
intelligence of the population.
For these several reasons, kingly government, free from the control
(though perhaps strengthened by the support) of representative
institutions, is the most suitable form of polity for the earliest
stages of any community, not excepting a city community like those of
ancient Greece; where, accordingly, the government of kings, under
some real, but no ostensible or constitutional control by public
opinion, did historically precede by an unknown and probably great
duration all free institutions, and gave place at last, during a
considerable lapse of time, to oligarchies of a few families.
A hundred other infirmities or shortcomings in a people might be
pointed out which _pro tanto_ disqualify them from making the best use
of representative government; but in regard to these it is not equally
obvious that the government of One or a Few would have any tendency to
cure or alleviate the evil. Strong prejudices of any kind; obstinate
adherence to old habits; positive defects of national character, or
mere ignorance, and deficiency of mental cultivation, if prevalent in
a people, will be in general faithfully reflected in their
representative assemblies; and should it happen that the executive
administration, the direct management of public affairs, is in the
hands of persons comparatively free from these defects, more good
would frequently be done by them when not hampered by the necessity of
carrying with them the voluntary assent of such bodies. But the mere
position of the rulers does not in these, as it does in the other
cases which we have examined, of itself invest them with interests and
tendencies operating in the beneficial direction. From the general
weaknesses of the people or of the state of civilization, the One and
his councillors, or the Few, are not likely to be habitually exempt;
except in the case of their being foreigners, belonging to a superior
people or a more advanced state of society. Then, indeed, the rulers
may be, to almost any extent, superior in civilization to those over
whom they rule; and subjection to a foreign government of this
description, notwithstanding its inevitable evils, is often of the
greatest advantage to a people, carrying them rapidly through several
stages of progress, and clearing away obstacles to improvement which
might have lasted indefinitely if the subject population had been left
unassisted to its native tendencies and chances. In a country not
under the dominion of foreigners, the only cause adequate to producing
similar benefits is the rare accident of a monarch of extraordinary
genius. There have been in history a few of these who, happily for
humanity, have reigned long enough to render some of their
improvements permanent, by leaving them under the guardianship of a
generation which had grown up under their influence. Charlemagne may
be cited as one instance; Peter the Great is another. Such examples
however are so unfrequent that they can only be classed with the happy
accidents which have so often decided at a critical moment whether
some leading portion of humanity should make a sudden start, or sink
back towards barbarism--chances like the existence of Themistocles at
the time of the Persian invasion, or of the first or third William of
Orange. It would be absurd to construct institutions for the mere
purpose of taking advantage of such possibilities, especially as men
of this calibre, in any distinguished position, do not require
despotic power to enable them to exert great influence, as is
evidenced by the three last mentioned. The case most requiring
consideration in reference to institutions is the not very uncommon
one in which a small but leading portion of the population, from
difference of race, more civilized origin, or other peculiarities of
circumstance, are markedly superior in civilization and general
character to the remainder. Under those conditions, government by the
representatives of the mass would stand a chance of depriving them of
much of the benefit they might derive from the greater civilization of
the superior ranks, while government by the representatives of those
ranks would probably rivet the degradation of the multitude, and leave
them no hope of decent treatment except by ridding themselves of one
of the most valuable elements of future advancement. The best prospect
of improvement for a people thus composed lies in the existence of a
constitutionally unlimited, or at least a practically preponderant
authority in the chief ruler of the dominant class. He alone has by
his position an interest in raising and improving the mass, of whom he
is not jealous, as a counterpoise to his associates, of whom he is;
and if fortunate circumstances place beside him, not as controllers
but as subordinates, a body representative of the superior caste,
which, by its objections and questionings, and by its occasional
outbreaks of spirit, keeps alive habits of collective resistance, and
may admit of being, in time and by degrees, expanded into a really
national representation (which is in substance the history of the
English Parliament), the nation has then the most favorable prospects
of improvement which can well occur to a community thus circumstanced
and constituted.
Among the tendencies which, without absolutely rendering a people
unfit for representative government, seriously incapacitate them from
reaping the full benefit of it, one deserves particular notice. There
are two states of the inclinations, intrinsically very different, but
which have something in common, by virtue of which they often coincide
in the direction they give to the efforts of individuals and of
nations; one is, the desire to exercise power over others; the other
is disinclination to have power exercised over themselves. The
difference between different portions of mankind in the relative
strength of these two dispositions is one of the most important
elements in their history. There are nations in whom the passion for
governing others is so much stronger than the desire of personal
independence, that for the mere shadow of the one they are found ready
to sacrifice the whole of the other. Each one of their number is
willing, like the private soldier in an army, to abdicate his personal
freedom of action into the hands of his general, provided the army is
triumphant and victorious, and he is able to flatter himself that he
is one of a conquering host, though the notion that he has himself any
share in the domination exercised over the conquered is an illusion. A
government strictly limited in its powers and attributions, required
to hold its hands from overmeddling, and to let most things go on
without its assuming the part of guardian or director, is not to the
taste of such a people; in their eyes the possessors of authority can
hardly take too much upon themselves, provided the authority itself is
open to general competition. An average individual among them prefers
the chance, however distant or improbable, of wielding some share of
power over his fellow-citizens, above the certainty, to himself and
others, of having no unnecessary power exercised over them. These are
the elements of a people of place-hunters, in whom the course of
politics is mainly determined by place-hunting; where equality alone
is cared for, but not liberty; where the contests of political parties
are but struggles to decide whether the power of meddling in every
thing shall belong to one class or another, perhaps merely to one knot
of public men or another; where the idea entertained of democracy is
merely that of opening offices to the competition of all instead of a
few; where, the more popular the institutions, the more innumerable
are the places created, and the more monstrous the overgovernment
exercised by all over each, and by the executive over all. It would be
as unjust as it would be ungenerous to offer this, or any thing
approaching to it, as an unexaggerated picture of the French people;
yet the degree in which they do participate in this type of character
has caused representative government by a limited class to break down
by excess of corruption, and the attempt at representative government
by the whole male population to end in giving one man the power of
consigning any number of the rest, without trial, to Lambessa or
Cayenne, provided he allows all of them to think themselves not
excluded from the possibility of sharing his favors. The point of
character which, beyond any other, fits the people of this country for
representative government, is that they have almost universally the
contrary characteristic. They are very jealous of any attempt to
exercise power over them not sanctioned by long usage and by their own
opinion of right; but they in general care very little for the
exercise of power over others. Not having the smallest sympathy with
the passion for governing, while they are but too well acquainted with
the motives of private interest from which that office is sought, they
prefer that it should be performed by those to whom it comes without
seeking, as a consequence of social position. If foreigners understood
this, it would account to them for some of the apparent contradictions
in the political feelings of Englishmen; their unhesitating readiness
to let themselves be governed by the higher classes, coupled with so
little personal subservience to them, that no people are so fond of
resisting authority when it oversteps certain prescribed limits, or so
determined to make their rulers always remember that they will only be
governed in the way they themselves like best. Place-hunting,
accordingly, is a form of ambition to which the English, considered
nationally, are almost strangers. If we except the few families or
connections of whom official employment lies directly in the way,
Englishmen's views of advancement in life take an altogether different
direction--that of success in business or in a profession. They have
the strongest distaste for any mere struggle for office by political
parties or individuals; and there are few things to which they have a
greater aversion than to the multiplication of public employments; a
thing, on the contrary, always popular with the bureaucracy-ridden
nations of the Continent, who would rather pay higher taxes than
diminish, by the smallest fraction, their individual chances of a
place for themselves or their relatives, and among whom a cry for
retrenchment never means abolition of offices, but the reduction of
the salaries of those which are too considerable for the ordinary
citizen to have any chance of being appointed to them.