The defects of any form of government may be either negative or
positive. It is negatively defective if it does not concentrate in the
hands of the authorities power sufficient to fulfill the necessary
offices of a government, or if it does not sufficiently develop by
exercise the active capacities and social feelings of the individual
citizens. On neither of these points is it necessary that much should
be said at this stage of our inquiry.
The want of an amount power in the government adequate to preserve
order and allow of progress in the people is incident rather to a wild
and rude state of society generally than to any particular form of
political union. When the people are too much attached to savage
independence to be tolerant of the amount of power to which it is for
their good that they should be subject, the state of society (as
already observed) is not yet ripe for representative government. When
the time for that government has arrived, sufficient power for all
needful purposes is sure to reside in the sovereign assembly; and if
enough of it is not intrusted to the executive, this can only arise
from a jealous feeling on the part of the assembly toward the
administration, never likely to exist but where the constitutional
power of the assembly to turn them out of office has not yet
sufficiently established itself. Wherever that constitutional right is
admitted in principle and fully operative in practice, there is no
fear that the assembly will not be willing to trust its own ministers
with any amount of power really desirable; the danger is, on the
contrary, lest they should grant it too ungrudgingly, and too
indefinite in extent, since the power of the minister is the power of
the body who make and who keep him so. It is, however, very likely,
and is one of the dangers of a controlling assembly, that it may be
lavish of powers, but afterwards interfere with their exercise; may
give power by wholesale, and take it back in detail, by multiplied
single acts of interference in the business of administration. The
evils arising from this assumption of the actual function of
governing, in lieu of that of criticising and checking those who
govern, have been sufficiently dwelt upon in the preceding chapter. No
safeguard can in the nature of things be provided against this
improper meddling, except a strong and general conviction of its
injurious character.
The other negative defect which may reside in a government, that of
not bringing into sufficient exercise the individual faculties, moral,
intellectual, and active, of the people, has been exhibited generally
in setting forth the distinctive mischiefs of despotism. As between
one form of popular government and another, the advantage in this
respect lies with that which most widely diffuses the exercise of
public functions; on the one hand, by excluding fewest from the
suffrage; on the other, by opening to all classes of private citizens,
so far as is consistent with other equally important objects, the
widest participation in the details of judicial and administrative
business; as by jury-trial, admission to municipal offices, and, above
all, by the utmost possible publicity and liberty of discussion,
whereby not merely a few individuals in succession, but the whole
public, are made, to a certain extent, participants in the government,
and sharers in the instruction and mental exercise derived from it.
The further illustration of these benefits, as well as of the
limitations under which they must be aimed at, will be better deferred
until we come to speak of the details of administration.
The _positive_ evils and dangers of the representative, as of every
other form of government, may be reduced to two heads: first, general
ignorance and incapacity, or, to speak more moderately, insufficient
mental qualifications, in the controlling body; secondly, the danger
of its being under the influence of interests not identical with the
general welfare of the community.
The former of these evils, deficiency in high mental qualifications,
is one to which it is generally supposed that popular government is
liable in a greater degree than any other. The energy of a monarch,
the steadiness and prudence of an aristocracy, are thought to contrast
most favorably with the vacillation and shortsightedness of even the
most qualified democracy. These propositions, however, are not by any
means so well founded as they at first sight appear.
Compared with simple monarchy, representative government is in these
respects at no disadvantage. Except in a rude age, hereditary
monarchy, when it is really such, and not aristocracy in disguise, far
surpasses democracy in all the forms of incapacity supposed to be
characteristic of the last. I say, except in a rude age, because in a
really rude state of society there is a considerable guaranty for the
intellectual and active capacities of the sovereign. His personal will
is constantly encountering obstacles from the willfulness of his
subjects, and of powerful individuals among their number. The
circumstances of society do not afford him much temptation to mere
luxurious self-indulgence; mental and bodily activity, especially
political and military, are his principal excitements; and among
turbulent chiefs and lawless followers he has little authority, and is
seldom long secure even of his throne, unless he possesses a
considerable amount of personal daring, dexterity, and energy. The
reason why the average of talent is so high among the Henries and
Edwards of our history may be read in the tragical fate of the second
Edward and the second Richard, and the civil wars and disturbances of
the reigns of John and his incapable successor. The troubled period of
the Reformation also produced several eminent hereditary
monarchs--Elizabeth, Henri Quatre, Gustavus Adolphus; but they were
mostly bred up in adversity, succeeded to the throne by the unexpected
failure of nearer heirs, or had to contend with great difficulties in
the commencement of their reign. Since European life assumed a settled
aspect, any thing above mediocrity in an hereditary king has become
extremely rare, while the general average has been even below
mediocrity, both in talent and in vigor of character. A monarchy
constitutionally absolute now only maintains itself in existence
(except temporarily in the hands of some active-minded usurper)
through the mental qualifications of a permanent bureaucracy. The
Russian and Austrian governments, and even the French government in
its normal condition, are oligarchies of officials, of whom the head
of the state does little more than select the chiefs. I am speaking of
the regular course of their administration; for the will of the master
of course determines many of their particular acts.
The governments which have been remarkable in history for sustained
mental ability and vigor in the conduct of affairs have generally been
aristocracies. But they have been, without any exception,
aristocracies of public functionaries. The ruling bodies have been so
narrow, that each member, or at least each influential member of the
body, was able to make, and did make, public business an active
profession, and the principal occupation of his life. The only
aristocracies which have manifested high governing capacities, and
acted on steady maxims of policy through many generations, are those
of Rome and Venice. But, at Venice, though the privileged order was
numerous, the actual management of affairs was rigidly concentrated in
a small oligarchy within the oligarchy, whose whole lives were devoted
to the study and conduct of the affairs of the state. The Roman
government partook more of the character of an open aristocracy like
our own. But the really governing body, the Senate, was in exclusively
composed of persons who had exercised public functions, and had either
already filled, or were looking forward to fill the highest offices of
the state, at the peril of a severe responsibility in case of
incapacity and failure. When once members of the Senate, their lives
were pledged to the conduct of public affairs; they were not permitted
even to leave Italy except in the discharge of some public trust; and
unless turned out of the Senate by the censors for character or
conduct deemed disgraceful, they retained their powers and
responsibilities to the end of life. In an aristocracy thus
constituted, every member felt his personal importance entirely bound
up with the dignity and estimation of the commonwealth which he
administered, and with the part he was able to play in its councils.
This dignity and estimation were quite different things from the
prosperity or happiness of the general body of the citizens, and were
often wholly incompatible with it. But they were closely linked with
the external success and aggrandisement of the state; and it was,
consequently, in the pursuit of that object almost exclusively, that
either the Roman or the Venetian aristocracies manifested the
systematically wise collective policy and the great individual
capacities for government for which history has deservedly given them
credit.
It thus appears that the only governments, not representative, in
which high political skill and ability have been other than
exceptional, whether under monarchical or aristocratic forms, have
been essentially bureaucracies. The work of government has been in the
hands of governors by profession, which is the essence and meaning of
bureaucracy. Whether the work is done by them because they have been
trained to it, or they are trained to it because it is to be done by
them, makes a great difference in many respects, but none at all as to
the essential character of the rule. Aristocracies, on the other hand,
like that of England, in which the class who possessed the power
derived it merely from their social position, without being specially
trained or devoting themselves exclusively to it (and in which,
therefore, the power was not exercised directly, but through
representative institutions oligarchically constituted), have been, in
respect to intellectual endowments, much on a par with democracies;
that is, they have manifested such qualities in any considerable
degree only during the temporary ascendancy which great and popular
talents, united with a distinguished position, have given to some one
man. Themistocles and Pericles, Washington and Jefferson, were not
more completely exceptions in their several democracies, and were
assuredly much more splendid exceptions, than the Chathams and Peels
of the representative aristocracy of Great Britain, or even the Sullys
and Colberts of the aristocratic monarchy of France. A great minister,
in the aristocratic governments of modern Europe, is almost as rare a
phenomenon as a great king.
The comparison, therefore, as to the intellectual attributes of a
government has to be made between a representative democracy and a
bureaucracy; all other governments may be left out of the account. And
here it must be acknowledged that a bureaucratic government has, in
some important respects, greatly the advantage. It accumulates
experience, acquires well-tried and well-considered traditional
maxims, and makes provision for appropriate practical knowledge in
those who have the actual conduct of affairs. But it is not equally
favorable to individual energy of mind. The disease which afflicts
bureaucratic governments, and which they usually die of, is routine.
They perish by the immutability of their maxims, and, still more, by
the universal law that whatever becomes a routine loses its vital
principle, and, having no longer a mind acting within it, goes on
revolving mechanically, though the work it is intended to do remains
undone. A bureaucracy always tends to become a pedantocracy. When the
bureaucracy is the real government, the spirit of the corps (as with
the Jesuits) bears down the individuality of its more distinguished
members. In the profession of government, as in other professions, the
sole idea of the majority is to do what they have been taught; and it
requires a popular government to enable the conceptions of the man of
original genius among them to prevail over the obstructive spirit of
trained mediocrity. Only in a popular government (setting apart the
accident of a highly intelligent despot) could Sir Rowland Hill have
been victorious over the Post-office. A popular government installed
him _in_ the Post-office, and made the body, in spite of itself, obey
the impulse given by the man who united special knowledge with
individual vigor and originality. That the Roman aristocracy escaped
this characteristic disease of a bureaucracy was evidently owing to
its popular element. All special offices, both those which gave a seat
in the Senate and those which were sought by senators, were conferred
by popular election. The Russian government is a characteristic
exemplification of both the good and bad side of bureaucracy: its
fixed maxims, directed with Roman perseverance to the same
unflinchingly-pursued ends from age to age; the remarkable skill with
which those ends are generally pursued; the frightful internal
corruption, and the permanent organized hostility to improvements from
without, which even the autocratic power of a vigorous-minded emperor
is seldom or never sufficient to overcome; the patient obstructiveness
of the body being in the long run more than a match for the fitful
energy of one man. The Chinese government, a bureaucracy of Mandarins,
is, as far as known to us, another apparent example of the same
qualities and defects.
In all human affairs, conflicting influences are required to keep one
another alive and efficient even for their own proper uses; and the
exclusive pursuit of one good object, apart from some other which
should accompany it, ends not in excess of one and defect of the
other, but in the decay and loss even of that which has been
exclusively cared for. Government by trained officials can not do for
a country the things which can be done by a free government, but it
might be supposed capable of doing some things which free government
of itself can not do. We find, however, that an outside element of
freedom is necessary to enable it to do effectually or permanently
even its own business. And so, also, freedom can not produce its best
effects, and often breaks down altogether, unless means can be found
of combining it with trained and skilled administration. There could
not be a moment's hesitation between representative government, among
a people in any degree ripe for it, and the most perfect imaginable
bureaucracy. But it is, at the same time, one of the most important
ends of political institutions, to attain as many of the qualities of
the one as are consistent with the other; to secure, as far as they
can be made compatible, the great advantage of the conduct of affairs
by skilled persons, bred to it as an intellectual profession, along
with that of a general control vested in, and seriously exercised by,
bodies representative of the entire people. Much would be done towards
this end by recognizing the line of separation, discussed in the
preceding chapter, between the work of government properly so called,
which can only be well performed after special cultivation, and that
of selecting, watching, and, when needful, controlling the governors,
which in this case, as in all others, properly devolves, not on those
who do the work, but on those for whose benefit it ought to be done.
No progress at all can be made towards obtaining a skilled democracy,
unless the democracy are willing that the work which requires skill
should be done by those who possess it. A democracy has enough to do
in providing itself with an amount of mental competency sufficient for
its own proper work, that of superintendence and check.
How to obtain and secure this amount is one of the questions to taken
into consideration in judging of the proper constitution of a
representative body. In proportion as its composition fails to secure
this amount, the assembly will encroach, by special acts, on the
province of the executive; it will expel a good, or elevate and uphold
a bad ministry; it will connive at, or overlook in them, abuses of
trust, will be deluded by their false pretenses, or will withhold
support from those who endeavour to fulfill their trust
conscientiously; it will countenance or impose a selfish, a capricious
and impulsive, a short-sighted, ignorant, and prejudiced general
policy, foreign and domestic; it will abrogate good laws, or enact bad
ones; let in new evils, or cling with perverse obstinacy to old; it
will even, perhaps, under misleading impulses, momentary or permanent,
emanating from itself or from its constituents, tolerate or connive at
proceedings which set law aside altogether, in cases where equal
justice would not be agreeable to popular feeling. Such are among the
dangers of representative government, arising from a constitution of
the representation which does not secure an adequate amount of
intelligence and knowledge in the representative assembly.
We next proceed to the evils arising from the prevalence of modes of
action in the representative body, dictated by sinister interests (to
employ the useful phrase introduced by Bentham), that is, interests
conflicting more or less with the general good of the community.
It is universally admitted that, of the evils incident to monarchical
and aristocratic governments, a large proportion arise from this
cause. The interest of the monarch, or the interest of the
aristocracy, either collective or that of its individual members, is
promoted, or they themselves think that it will be promoted, by
conduct opposed to that which the general interest of the community
requires. The interest, for example, of the government is to tax
heavily; that of the community is to be as little taxed as the
necessary expenses of good government permit. The interest of the king
and of the governing aristocracy is to possess and exercise unlimited
power over the people; to enforce, on their part, complete conformity
to the will and preferences of the rulers. The interest of the people
is to have as little control exercised over them in any respect as is
consistent with attaining the legitimate ends of government. The
interest, or apparent and supposed interest of the king or
aristocracy, is to permit no censure of themselves, at least in any
form which they may consider either to threaten their power or
seriously to interfere with their free agency. The interest of the
people is that there should be full liberty of censure on every public
officer, and on every public act or measure. The interest of a ruling
class, whether in an aristocracy or an aristocratic monarchy, is to
assume to themselves an endless variety of unjust privileges,
sometimes benefiting their pockets at the expense of the people,
sometimes merely tending to exalt them above others, or, what is the
same thing in different words, to degrade others below themselves. If
the people are disaffected, which under such a government they are
very likely to be, it is the interest of the king or aristocracy to
keep them at a low level of intelligence and education, foment
dissensions among them, and even prevent them from being too well off,
lest they should "wax fat, and kick," agreeably to the maxim of
Cardinal Richelieu in his celebrated "Testament Politique." All these
things are for the interest of a king or aristocracy, in a purely
selfish point of view, unless a sufficiently strong counter-interest
is created by the fear of provoking resistance. All these evils have
been, and many of them still are, produced by the sinister interests
of kings and aristocracies, where their power is sufficient to raise
them above the opinion of the rest of the community; nor is it
rational to expect, as a consequence of such a position, any other
conduct.
These things are superabundantly evident in the case of a monarchy or
an aristocracy; but it is sometimes rather gratuitously assumed that
the same kind of injurious influences do not operate in a democracy.
Looking at democracy in the way in which it is commonly conceived, as
the rule of the numerical majority, it is surely possible that the
ruling power may be under the dominion of sectional or class
interests, pointing to conduct different from that which would be
dictated by impartial regard for the interest of all. Suppose the
majority to be whites, the minority negroes, or _vice versâ_: is it
likely that the majority would allow equal justice to the minority?
Suppose the majority Catholics, the minority Protestants, or the
reverse; will there not be the same danger? Or let the majority be
English, the minority Irish, or the contrary: is there not a great
probability of similar evil? In all countries there is a majority of
poor, a minority who, in contradistinction, may be called rich.
Between these two classes, on many questions, there is complete
opposition of apparent interest. We will suppose the majority
sufficiently intelligent to be aware that it is not for their
advantage to weaken the security of property, and that it would be
weakened by any act of arbitrary spoliation. But is there not a
considerable danger lest they should throw upon the possessors of what
is called realized property, and upon the larger incomes, an unfair
share, or even the whole, of the burden of taxation, and having done
so, add to the amount without scruple, expending the proceeds in modes
supposed to conduce to the profit and advantage of the laboring class?
Suppose, again, a minority of skilled laborers, a majority of
unskilled: the experience of many Trade Unions, unless they are
greatly calumniated, justifies the apprehension that equality of
earnings might be imposed as an obligation, and that piecework, and
all practices which enable superior industry or abilities to gain a
superior reward, might be put down. Legislative attempts to raise
wages, limitation of competition in the labor market, taxes or
restrictions on machinery, and on improvements of all kinds tending to
dispense with any of the existing labor--even, perhaps, protection of
the home producer against foreign industry--are very natural (I do not
venture to say whether probable) results of a feeling of class
interest in a governing majority of manual laborers.
It will be said that none of these things are for the _real_ interest
of the most numerous class: to which I answer, that if the conduct of
human beings was determined by no other interested considerations than
those which constitute their "real" interest, neither monarchy nor
oligarchy would be such bad governments as they are; for assuredly
very strong arguments may be, and often have been, adduced to show
that either a king or a governing senate are in much the most enviable
position when ruling justly and vigilantly over an active, wealthy,
enlightened, and high-minded people. But a king only now and then, and
an oligarchy in no known instance, have taken this exalted view of
their self-interest; and why should we expect a loftier mode of
thinking from the laboring classes? It is not what their interest is,
but what they suppose it to be, that is the important consideration
with respect to their conduct; and it is quite conclusive against any
theory of government that it assumes the numerical majority to do
habitually what is never done, nor expected to be done, save in very
exceptional cases, by any other depositaries of power--namely, to
direct their conduct by their real ultimate interest, in opposition to
their immediate and apparent interest. No one, surely, can doubt that
many of the pernicious measures above enumerated, and many others as
bad, would be for the immediate interest of the general body of
unskilled laborers. It is quite possible that they would be for the
selfish interest of the whole existing generation of the class. The
relaxation of industry and activity, and diminished encouragement to
saving which would be their ultimate consequence, might perhaps be
little felt by the class of unskilled laborers in the space of a
single lifetime. Some of the most fatal changes in human affairs have
been, as to their more manifest immediate effects, beneficial. The
establishment of the despotism of the Cæsars was a great benefit to
the entire generation in which it took place. It put a stop to civil
war, abated a vast amount of malversation and tyranny by prætors and
proconsuls; it fostered many of the graces of life, and intellectual
cultivation in all departments not political; it produced monuments of
literary genius dazzling to the imaginations of shallow readers of
history, who do not reflect that the men to whom the despotism of
Augustus (as well as of Lorenzo de' Medici and of Louis XIV.) owes its
brilliancy were all formed in the generation preceding. The
accumulated riches, and the mental energy and activity produced by
centuries of freedom, remained for the benefit of the first generation
of slaves. Yet this was the commencement of a _régime_ by whose
gradual operation all the civilization which had been gained
insensibly faded away, until the empire, which had conquered and
embraced the world in its grasp so completely lost even its military
efficiency that invaders whom three or four legions had always
sufficed to coerce were able to overrun and occupy nearly the whole of
its vast territory. The fresh impulse given by Christianity came but
just in time to save arts and letters from perishing, and the human
race from sinking back into perhaps endless night.
When we talk of the interest of a body of men, or even of an
individual man, as a principle determining their actions, the question
what would be considered their interest by an unprejudiced observer is
one of the least important parts of the whole matter. As Coleridge
observes, the man makes the motive, not the motive the man. What it is
the man's interest to do or refrain from depends less on any outward
circumstances than upon what sort of man he is. If you wish to know
what is practically a man's interest, you must know the cast of his
habitual feelings and thoughts. Every body has two kinds of
interests--interests which he cares for and interests which he does
not care for. Every body has selfish and unselfish interests, and a
selfish man has cultivated the habit of caring for the former and not
caring for the latter. Every one has present and distant interests,
and the improvident man is he who cares for the present interests and
does not care for the distant. It matters little that on any correct
calculation the latter may be the more considerable, if the habits of
his mind lead him to fix his thoughts and wishes solely on the former.
It would be vain to attempt to persuade a man who beats his wife and
ill-treats his children that he would be happier if he lived in love
and kindness with them. He would be happier if he were the kind of
person who _could_ so live; but he is not, and it is probably too late
for him to become that kind of person. Being what he is, the
gratification of his love of domineering and the indulgence of his
ferocious temper are to his perceptions a greater good to himself than
he would be capable of deriving from the pleasure and affection of
those dependent on him. He has no pleasure in their pleasure, and does
not care for their affection. His neighbor, who does, is probably a
happier man than he; but could he be persuaded of this, the persuasion
would, most likely, only still further exasperate his malignity or his
irritability. On the average, a person who cares for other people, for
his country, or for mankind, is a happier man than one who does not;
but of what use is it to preach this doctrine to a man who cares for
nothing but his own ease or his own pocket? He can not care for other
people if he would. It is like preaching to the worm who crawls on the
ground how much better it would be for him if he were an eagle.
Now it is a universally observed fact that the two evil dispositions
in question, the disposition to prefer a man's selfish interests to
those which he shares with other people, and his immediate and direct
interests to those which are indirect and remote, are characteristics
most especially called forth and fostered by the possession of power.
The moment a man, or a class of men, find themselves with power in
their hands, the man's individual interest, or the class's separate
interest, acquires an entirely new degree of importance in their eyes.
Finding themselves worshipped by others, they become worshippers of
themselves, and think themselves entitled to be counted at a hundred
times the value of other people, while the facility they acquire of
doing as they like without regard to consequences insensibly weakens
the habits which make men look forward even to such consequences as
affect themselves. This is the meaning of the universal tradition,
grounded on universal experience, of men's being corrupted by power.
Every one knows how absurd it would be to infer from what a man is or
does when in a private station, that he will be and do exactly the
like when a despot on a throne; where the bad parts of his human
nature, instead of being restrained and kept in subordination by every
circumstance of his life and by every person surrounding him, are
courted by all persons, and ministered to by all circumstances. It
would be quite as absurd to entertain a similar expectation in regard
to a class of men; the Demos, or any other. Let them be ever so modest
and amenable to reason while there is a power over them stronger than
they, we ought to expect a total change in this respect when they
themselves become the strongest power.
Governments must be made for human beings as they are, or as they are
capable of speedily becoming; and in any state of cultivation which
mankind, or any class among them, have yet attained, or are likely
soon to attain, the interests by which they will be led, when they are
thinking only of self-interest, will be almost exclusively those which
are obvious at first sight, and which operate on their present
condition. It is only a disinterested regard for others, and
especially for what comes after them, for the idea of posterity, of
their country, or of mankind, whether grounded on sympathy or on a
conscientious feeling, which ever directs the minds and purposes of
classes or bodies of men towards distant or unobvious interests; and
it can not be maintained that any form of government would be rational
which required as a condition that these exalted principles of action
should be the guiding and master motives in the conduct of average
human beings. A certain amount of conscience and of disinterested
public spirit may fairly be calculated on in the citizens of any
community ripe for representative government. But it would be
ridiculous to expect such a degree of it, combined with such
intellectual discernment, as would be proof against any plausible
fallacy tending to make that which was for their class interest appear
the dictate of justice and of the general good. We all know what
specious fallacies may be urged in defense of every act of injustice
yet proposed for the imaginary benefit of the mass. We know how many,
not otherwise fools or bad men, have thought it justifiable to
repudiate the national debt. We know how many, not destitute of
ability and of considerable popular influence, think it fair to throw
the whole burden of taxation upon savings, under the name of realized
property, allowing those whose progenitors and themselves have always
spent all they received, to remain, as a reward for such exemplary
conduct, wholly untaxed. We know what powerful arguments, the more
dangerous because there is a portion of truth in them, may be brought
against all inheritance, against the power of bequest, against every
advantage which one person seems to have over another. We know how
easily the uselessness of almost every branch of knowledge may be
proved to the complete satisfaction of those who do not possess it.
How many, not altogether stupid men, think the scientific study of
languages useless, think ancient literature useless, all erudition
useless, logic and metaphysics useless, poetry and the fine arts idle
and frivolous, political economy purely mischievous? Even history has
been pronounced useless and mischievous by able men. Nothing but that
acquaintance with external nature, empirically acquired, which serves
directly for the production of objects necessary to existence or
agreeable to the senses, would get its utility recognized if people
had the least encouragement to disbelieve it. Is it reasonable to
think that even much more cultivated minds than those of the numerical
majority can be expected to be, will have so delicate a conscience,
and so just an appreciation of what is against their own apparent
interest, that they will reject these and the innumerable other
fallacies which will press in upon them from all quarters as soon as
they come into power, to induce them to follow their own selfish
inclinations and short-sighted notions of their own good, in
opposition to justice, at the expense of all other classes and of
posterity?
One of the greatest dangers, therefore, of democracy, as of all other
forms of government, lies in the sinister interest of the holders of
power: it is the danger of class legislation, of government intended
for (whether really effecting it or not) the immediate benefit of the
dominant class, to the lasting detriment of the whole. And one of the
most important questions demanding consideration in determining the
best constitution of a representative government is how to provide
efficacious securities against this evil.
If we consider as a class, politically speaking, any number of persons
who have the same sinister interest--that is, whose direct and
apparent interest points towards the same description of bad
measures--the desirable object would be that no class, and no
combination of classes likely to combine, shall be able to exercise a
preponderant influence in the government. A modern community, not
divided within itself by strong antipathies of race, language, or
nationality, may be considered as in the main divisible into two
sections, which, in spite of partial variations, correspond on the
whole with two divergent directions of apparent interest. Let us call
them (in brief general terms) laborers on the one hand, employers of
labor on the other; including, however, along with employers of labor
not only retired capitalists and the possessors of inherited wealth,
but all that highly paid description of laborers (such as the
professions) whose education and way of life assimilate them with the
rich, and whose prospect and ambition it is to raise themselves into
that class. With the laborers, on the other hand, may be ranked those
smaller employers of labor who by interests, habits, and educational
impressions are assimilated in wishes, tastes, and objects to the
laboring classes, comprehending a large proportion of petty tradesmen.
In a state of society thus composed, if the representative system
could be made ideally perfect, and if it were possible to maintain it
in that state, its organization must be such that these two classes,
manual laborers and their affinities on one side, employers of labor
and their affinities on the other, should be, in the arrangement of
the representative system, equally balanced, each influencing about an
equal number of votes in Parliament; since, assuming that the majority
of each class, in any difference between them, would be mainly
governed by their class interests, there would be a minority of each
in whom that consideration would be subordinate to reason, justice,
and the good of the whole; and this minority of either, joining with
the whole of the other, would turn the scale against any demands of
their own majority which were not such as ought to prevail. The reason
why, in any tolerable constituted society, justice and the general
interest mostly in the end carry their point, is that the separate and
selfish interests of mankind are almost always divided; some are
interested in what is wrong, but some, also, have their private
interest on the side of what is right; and those who are governed by
higher considerations, though too few and weak to prevail alone,
usually, after sufficient discussion and agitation, become strong
enough to turn the balance in favor of the body of private interests
which is on the same side with them. The representative system ought
to be so constituted as to maintain this state of things; it ought not
to allow any of the various sectional interests to be so powerful as
to be capable of prevailing against truth and justice, and the other
sectional interests combined. There ought always to be such a balance
preserved among personal interests as may render any one of them
dependent for its successes on carrying with it at least a large
proportion of those who act on higher motives, and more comprehensive
and distant views.
Chapter VII--Of True and False Democracy; Representation of All, and Representation of the Majority only.
It has been seen that the dangers incident to a representative
democracy are of two kinds: danger of a low grade of intelligence in
the representative body, and in the popular opinion which controls it;
and danger of class legislation on the part of the numerical majority,
these being all composed of the same class. We have next to consider
how far it is possible so to organize the democracy as, without
interfering materially with the characteristic benefits of democratic
government, to do away with these two great evils, or at least to
abate them in the utmost degree attainable by human contrivance.
The common mode of attempting this is by limiting the democratic
character of the representation through a more or less restricted
suffrage. But there is a previous consideration which, duly kept in
view, considerably modifies the circumstances which are supposed to
render such a restriction necessary. A completely equal democracy, in
a nation in which a single class composes the numerical majority, can
not be divested of certain evils; but those evils are greatly
aggravated by the fact that the democracies which at present exist are
not equal, but systematically unequal in favor of the predominant
class. Two very different ideas are usually confounded under the name
democracy. The pure idea of democracy, according to its definition, is
the government of the whole people by the whole people, equally
represented. Democracy, as commonly conceived and hitherto practiced,
is the government of the whole people by a mere majority of the people
exclusively represented. The former is synonymous with the equality of
all citizens; the latter, strangely confounded with it, is a
government of privilege in favor of the numerical majority, who alone
possess practically any voice in the state. This is the inevitable
consequence of the manner in which the votes are now taken, to the
complete disfranchisement of minorities.
The confusion of ideas here is great, but it is so easily cleared up
that one would suppose the slightest indication would be sufficient to
place the matter in its true light before any mind of average
intelligence. It would be so but for the power of habit; owing to
which, the simplest idea, if unfamiliar, has as great difficulty in
making its way to the mind as a far more complicated one. That the
minority must yield to the majority, the smaller number to the
greater, is a familiar idea; and accordingly, men think there is no
necessity for using their minds any further, and it does not occur to
them that there is any medium between allowing the smaller number to
be equally powerful with the greater, and blotting out the smaller
number altogether. In a representative body actually deliberating, the
minority must of course be overruled; and in an equal democracy (since
the opinions of the constituents, when they insist on them, determine
those of the representative body), the majority of the people, through
their representatives, will outvote and prevail over the minority and
their representatives. But does it follow that the minority should
have no representatives at all? Because the majority ought to prevail
over the minority, must the majority have all the votes, the minority
none? Is it necessary that the minority should not even be heard?
Nothing but habit and old association can reconcile any reasonable
being to the needless injustice. In a really equal democracy, every or
any section would be represented, not disproportionately, but
proportionately. A majority of the electors would always have a
majority of the representatives, but a minority of the electors would
always have a minority of the representatives. Man for man, they would
be as fully represented as the majority. Unless they are, there is not
equal government, but a government of inequality and privilege: one
part of the people rule over the rest: there is a part whose fair and
equal share of influence in the representation is withheld from them,
contrary to all just government, but, above all, contrary to the
principle of democracy, which professes equality as its very root and
foundation.
The injustice and violation of principle are not less flagrant because
those who suffer by them are a minority, for there is not equal
suffrage where every single individual does not count for as much as
any other single individual in the community. But it is not only a
minority who suffer. Democracy, thus constituted, does not even attain
its ostensible object, that of giving the powers of government in all
cases to the numerical majority. It does something very different; it
gives them to a majority of the majority, who may be, and often are,
but a minority of the whole. All principles are most effectually
tested by extreme cases. Suppose, then, that, in a country governed by
equal and universal suffrage, there is a contested election in every
constituency, and every election is carried by a small majority. The
Parliament thus brought together represents little more than a bare
majority of the people. This Parliament proceeds to legislate, and
adopts important measures by a bare majority of itself. What guaranty
is there that these measures accord with the wishes of a majority of
the people? Nearly half the electors, having been outvoted at the
hustings, have had no influence at all in the decision; and the whole
of these may be, a majority of them probably are, hostile to the
measures, having voted against those by whom they have been carried.
Of the remaining electors, nearly half have chosen representatives
who, by supposition, have voted against the measures. It is possible,
therefore, and even probable, that the opinion which has prevailed was
agreeable only to a minority of the nation, though a majority of that
portion of it whom the institutions of the country have erected into a
ruling class. If democracy means the certain ascendancy of the
majority, there are no means of insuring that, but by allowing every
individual figure to tell equally in the summing up. Any minority left
out, either purposely or by the play of the machinery, gives the power
not to the majority, but to a minority in some other part of the
scale.
The only answer which can possibly be made to this reasoning is, that
as different opinions predominate in different localities, the opinion
which is in a minority in some places has a majority in others, and on
the whole every opinion which exists in the constituencies obtains its
fair share of voices in the representation. And this is roughly true
in the present state of the constituency; if it were not, the
discordance of the House with the general sentiment of the country
would soon become evident. But it would be no longer true if the
present constituency were much enlarged, still less if made
co-extensive with the whole population; for in that case the majority
in every locality would consist of manual laborers; and when there was
any question pending on which these classes were at issue with the
rest of the community, no other class could succeed in getting
represented any where. Even now, is it not a great grievance that in
every Parliament a very numerous portion of the electors, willing and
anxious to be represented, have no member in the House for whom they
have voted? Is it just that every elector of Marylebone is obliged to
be represented by two nominees of the vestries, every elector of
Finsbury or Lambeth by those (as is generally believed) of the
publicans? The constituencies to which most of the highly educated and
public spirited persons in the country belong, those of the large
towns, are now, in great part, either unrepresented or misrepresented.
The electors who are on a different side in party politics from the
local majority are unrepresented. Of those who are on the same side, a
large proportion are misrepresented; having been obliged to accept the
man who had the greatest number of supporters in their political
party, though his opinions may differ from theirs on every other
point. The state of things is, in some respects, even worse than if
the minority were not allowed to vote at all; for then, at least, the
majority might have a member who would represent their own best mind;
while now, the necessity of not dividing the party, for fear of
letting in its opponents, induces all to vote either for the first
person who presents himself wearing their colors, or for the one
brought forward by their local leaders; and these, if we pay them the
compliment, which they very seldom deserve, of supposing their choice
to be unbiassed by their personal interests, are compelled, that they
may be sure of mustering their whole strength, to bring forward a
candidate whom none of the party will strongly object to--that is, a
man without any distinctive peculiarity, any known opinions except the
shibboleth of the party. This is strikingly exemplified in the United
States; where, at the election of President, the strongest party never
dares put forward any of its strongest men, because every one of
these, from the mere fact that he has been long in the public eye, has
made himself objectionable to some portion or other of the party, and
is therefore not so sure a card for rallying all their votes as a
person who has never been heard of by the public at all until he is
produced as the candidate. Thus, the man who is chosen, even by the
strongest party, represents perhaps the real wishes only of the narrow
margin by which that party outnumbers the other. Any section whose
support is necessary to success possesses a veto on the candidate. Any
section which holds out more obstinately than the rest can compel all
the others to adopt its nominee; and this superior pertinacity is
unhappily more likely to be found among those who are holding out for
their own interest than for that of the public. Speaking generally,
the choice of the majority is determined by that portion of the body
who are the most timid, the most narrow-minded and prejudiced, or who
cling most tenaciously to the exclusive class-interest; and the
electoral rights of the minority, while useless for the purposes for
which votes are given, serve only for compelling the majority to
accept the candidate of the weakest or worst portion of themselves.
That, while recognizing these evils, many should consider them as the
necessary price paid for a free government, is in no way surprising;
it was the opinion of all the friends of freedom up to a recent
period. But the habit of passing them over as irremediable has become
so inveterate, that many persons seem to have lost the capacity of
looking at them as things which they would be glad to remedy if they
could. From despairing of a cure, there is too often but one step to
denying the disease; and from this follows dislike to having a remedy
proposed, as if the proposer were creating a mischief instead of
offering relief from one. People are so inured to the evils that they
feel as if it were unreasonable, if not wrong, to complain of them.
Yet, avoidable or not, he must be a purblind lover of liberty on whose
mind they do not weigh; who would not rejoice at the discovery that
they could be dispensed with. Now, nothing is more certain than that
the virtual blotting out of the minority is no necessary or natural
consequence of freedom; that, far from having any connection with
democracy, it is diametrically opposed to the first principle of
democracy, representation in proportion to numbers. It is an essential
part of democracy that minorities should be adequately represented. No
real democracy, nothing but a false show of democracy, is possible
without it.
Those who have seen and felt, in some degree, the force of these
considerations, have proposed various expedients by which the evil may
be, in a greater or less degree, mitigated. Lord John Russell, in one
of his Reform Bills, introduced a provision that certain
constituencies should return three members, and that in these each
elector should be allowed to vote only for two; and Mr. Disraeli, in
the recent debates, revived the memory of the fact by reproaching him
for it, being of opinion, apparently, that it befits a Conservative
statesman to regard only means, and to disown scornfully all
fellow-feeling with any one who is betrayed, even once, into thinking
of ends. [3] Others have proposed that each elector should be
allowed to vote only for one. By either of these plans, a minority
equalling or exceeding a third of the local constituency, would be
able, if it attempted no more, to return one out of three members. The
same result might be attained in a still better way if, as proposed in
an able pamphlet by Mr. James Garth Marshall, the elector retained his
three votes, but was at liberty to bestow them all upon the same
candidate. These schemes, though infinitely better than none at all,
are yet but makeshifts, and attain the end in a very imperfect manner,
since all local minorities of less than a third, and all minorities,
however numerous, which are made up from several constituencies, would
remain unrepresented. It is much to be lamented, however, that none of
these plans have been carried into effect, as any of them would have
recognized the right principle, and prepared the way for its more
complete application. But real equality of representation is not
obtained unless any set of electors amounting to the average number of
a constituency, wherever in the country they happen to reside, have
the power of combining with one another to return a representative.
This degree of perfection in representation appeared impracticable
until a man of great capacity, fitted alike for large general views
and for the contrivance of practical details--Mr. Thomas Hare--had
proved its possibility by drawing up a scheme for its accomplishment,
embodied in a Draft of an Act of Parliament; a scheme which has the
almost unparalleled merit of carrying out a great principle of
government in a manner approaching to ideal perfection as regards the
special object in view, while it attains incidentally several other
ends of scarcely inferior importance.
According to this plan, the unit of representation, the quota of
electors who would be entitled to have a member to themselves, would
be ascertained by the ordinary process of taking averages, the number
of voters being divided by the number of seats in the House; and every
candidate who obtained that quota would be returned, from however
great a number of local constituencies it might be gathered. The votes
would, as at present, be given locally; but any elector would be at
liberty to vote for any candidate, in whatever part of the country he
might offer himself. Those electors, therefore, who did not wish to be
represented by any of the local candidates, might aid by their vote in
the return of the person they liked best among all those throughout
the country who had expressed a willingness to be chosen. This would
so far give reality to the electoral rights of the otherwise virtually
disfranchised minority. But it is important that not those alone who
refuse to vote for any of the local candidates, but those also who
vote for one of them and are defeated, should be enabled to find
elsewhere the representation which they have not succeeded in
obtaining in their own district. It is therefore provided that an
elector may deliver a voting paper containing other names in addition
to the one which stands foremost in his preference. His vote would
only be counted for one candidate; but if the object of his first
choice failed to be returned, from not having obtained the quota, his
second perhaps might be more fortunate. He may extend his list to a
greater number in the order of his preference, so that if the names
which stand near the top of the list either can not make up the quota,
or are able to make it up without his vote, the vote may still be used
for some one whom it may assist in returning. To obtain the full
number of members required to complete the House, as well as to
prevent very popular candidates from engrossing nearly all the
suffrages, it is necessary, however many votes a candidate may obtain,
that no more of them than the quota should be counted for his return;
the remainder of those who voted for him would have their votes
counted for the next person on their respective lists who needed them,
and could by their aid complete the quota. To determine which of a
candidate's votes should be used for his return, and which set free
for others, several methods are proposed, into which we shall not here
enter. He would, of course, retain the votes of all those who would
not otherwise be represented; and for the remainder, drawing lots, in
default of better, would be an unobjectionable expedient. The voting
papers would be conveyed to a central office, where the votes would be
counted, the number of first, second, third, and other votes given for
each candidate ascertained, and the quota would be allotted to every
one who could make it up, until the number of the House was complete;
first votes being preferred to second, second to third, and so forth.
The voting papers, and all the elements of the calculation, would be
placed in public repositories, accessible to all whom they concerned;
and if any one who had obtained the quota was not duly returned, it
would be in his power easily to prove it.
These are the main provisions of the scheme. For a more minute
knowledge of its very simple machinery, I must refer to Mr. Hare's
"Treatise on the Election of Representatives" (a small volume
Published in 1859), and to a pamphlet by Mr. Henry Fawcett, published
in 1860, and entitled "Mr. Hare's Reform Bill simplified and
explained." This last is a very clear and concise exposition of the
plan, reduced to its simplest elements by the omission of some of Mr.
Hare's original provisions, which, though in themselves beneficial,
we're thought to take more from the simplicity of the scheme than they
added to its practical advantages. The more these works are studied,
the stronger, I venture to predict, will be the impression of the
perfect feasibility of the scheme and its transcendant advantages.
Such and so numerous are these, that, in my conviction, they place Mr.
Hare's plan among the very greatest improvements yet made in the
theory and practice of government.
In the first place, it secures a representation, in proportion to
numbers, of every division of the electoral body: not two great
parties alone, with perhaps a few large sectional minorities in
particular places, but every minority in the whole nation, consisting
of a sufficiently large number to be, on principles of equal justice,
entitled to a representative. Secondly, no elector would, as at
present, be nominally represented by some one whom he had not chosen.
Every member of the House would be the representative of a unanimous
constituency. He would represent a thousand electors, or two thousand,
or five thousand, or ten thousand, as the quota might be, every one of
whom would have not only voted for him, but selected him from the
whole country; not merely from the assortment of two or three perhaps
rotten oranges, which may be the only choice offered to him in his
local market. Under this relation the tie between the elector and the
representative would be of a strength and a value of which at present
we have no experience. Every one of the electors would be personally
identified with his representative, and the representative with his
constituents. Every elector who voted for him would have done so
either because he is the person, in the whole list of candidates for
Parliament, who best expresses the voter's own opinions, or because he
is one of those whose abilities and character the voter most respects,
and whom he most willingly trusts to think for him. The member would
represent persons, not the mere bricks and mortar of the town--the
voters themselves, not a few vestrymen or parish notabilities merely.
All, however, that is worth preserving in the representation of places
would be preserved. Though the Parliament of the nation ought to have
as little as possible to do with purely local affairs, yet, while it
has to do with them, there ought to be members specially commissioned
to look after the interests of every important locality; and these
there would still be. In every locality which contained many more
voters than the quota (and there probably ought to be no local
consitituency which does not), the majority would generally prefer to
be represented by one of themselves; by a person of local knowledge,
and residing in the locality, if there is any such person to be found
among the candidates, who is otherwise eligible as their
representative. It would be the minorities chiefly, who, being unable
to return the local member, would look out elsewhere for a candidate
likely to obtain other votes in addition to their own.
Of all modes in which a national representation can possibly be
constituted, this one affords the best security for the intellectual
qualifications desirable in the representatives. At present, by
universal admission, it is becoming more and more difficult for any
one who has only talents and character to gain admission into the
House of Commons. The only persons who can get elected are those who
possess local influence, or make their way by lavish expenditure, or
who, on the invitation of three or four tradesmen or attorneys, are
sent down by one of the two great parties from their London clubs, as
men whose votes the party can depend on under all circumstances. On
Mr. Hare's system, those who did not like the local candidates would
fill up their voting papers by a selection from all the persons of
national reputation on the list of candidates with whose general
political principles they were in sympathy. Almost every person,
therefore, who had made himself in any way honorably distinguished,
though devoid of local influence, and having sworn allegiance to no
political party, would have a fair chance of making up the quota, and
with this encouragement such persons might be expected to offer
themselves in numbers hitherto undreamed of. Hundreds of able men of
independent thought, who would have no chance whatever of being chosen
by the majority of any existing constituency, have by their writings,
or their exertions in some field of public usefulness, made themselves
known and approved by a few persons in almost every district of the
kingdom; and if every vote that would be given for them in every place
could be counted for their election, they might be able to complete
the number of the quota. In no other way which it seems possible to
suggest would Parliament be so certain of containing the very _élite_
of the country.
And it is not solely through the votes of minorities that this system
of election would raise the intellectual standard of the House of
Commons. Majorities would be compelled to look out for members of a
much higher calibre. When the individuals composing the majority would
no longer be reduced to Hobson's choice, of either voting for the
person brought forward by their local leaders, or not voting at all;
when the nominee of the leaders would have to encounter the
competition not solely of the candidate of the minority, but of all
the men of established reputation in the country who were willing to
serve, it would be impossible any longer to foist upon the electors
the first person who presents himself with the catchwords of the party
in his mouth, and three or four thousand pounds in his pocket. The
majority would insist on having a candidate worthy of their choice, or
they would carry their votes somewhere else, and the minority would
prevail. The slavery of the majority to the least estimable portion of
their numbers would be at an end; the very best and most capable of
the local notabilities would be put forward by preference; if
possible, such as were known in some advantageous way beyond the
locality, that their local strength might have a chance of being
fortified by stray votes from elsewhere. Constituencies would become
competitors for the best candidates, and would vie with one another in
selecting from among the men of local knowledge and connections those
who were most distinguished in every other respect.
The natural tendency of representative government, as of modern
civilization, is towards collective mediocrity: and this tendency is
increased by all reductions and extensions of the franchise, their
effect being to place the principal power in the hands of classes more
and more below the highest level of instruction in the community. But,
though the superior intellects and characters will necessarily be
outnumbered, it makes a great difference whether or not they are
heard. In the false democracy which, instead of giving representation
to all, gives it only to the local majorities, the voice of the
instructed minority may have no organs at all in the representative
body. It is an admitted fact that in the American democracy, which is
constructed on this faulty model, the highly-cultivated members of the
community, except such of them as are willing to sacrifice their own
opinions and modes of judgment, and become the servile mouthpieces of
their inferiors in knowledge, do not even offer themselves for
Congress or the State Legislatures, so certain is it that they would
have no chance of being returned. Had a plan like Mr. Hare's by good
fortune suggested itself to the enlightened and disinterested founders
of the American Republic, the federal and state assemblies would have
contained many of these distinguished men, and democracy would have
been spared its greatest reproach and one of its most formidable
evils. Against this evil the system of personal representation
proposed by Mr. Hare is almost a specific. The minority of instructed
minds scattered through the local constituencies would unite to return
a number, proportioned to their own numbers, of the very ablest men
the country contains. They would be under the strongest inducement to
choose such men, since in no other mode could they make their small
numerical strength tell for any thing considerable. The
representatives of the majority, besides that they would themselves be
improved in quality by the operation of the system, would no longer
have the whole field to themselves. They would indeed outnumber the
others, as much as the one class of electors outnumbers the other in
the country: they could always outvote them, but they would speak and
vote in their presence, and subject to their criticism. When any
difference arose, they would have to meet the arguments of the
instructed few by reasons, at least apparently, as cogent; and since
they could not, as those do who are speaking to persons already
unanimous, simply assume that they are in the right, it would
occasionally happen to them to become convinced that they were in the
wrong. As they would in general be well-meaning (for thus much may
reasonably be expected from a fairly-chosen national representation),
their own minds would be insensibly raised by the influence of the
minds with which they were in contact, or even in conflict. The
champions of unpopular doctrines would not put forth their arguments
merely in books and periodicals, read only by their own side; the
opposing ranks would meet face to face and hand to hand, and there
would be a fair comparison of their intellectual strength in the
presence of the country. It would then be found out whether the
opinion which prevailed by counting votes would also prevail if the
votes were weighed as well as counted. The multitude have often a true
instinct for distinguishing an able man when he has the means of
displaying his ability in a fair field before them. If such a man
fails to obtain any portion of his just weight, it is through
institutions or usages which keep him out of sight. In the old
democracies there were no means of keeping out of sight any able man:
the bema was open to him; he needed nobody's consent to become a
public adviser. It is not so in a representative government; and the
best friends of representative democracy can hardly be without
misgivings that the Themistocles or Demosthenes whose councils would
have saved the nation, might be unable during his whole life ever to
obtain a seat. But if the presence in the representative assembly can
be insured of even a few of the first minds in the country, though the
remainder consist only of average minds, the influence of these
leading spirits is sure to make itself insensibly felt in the general
deliberations, even though they be known to be, in many respects,
opposed to the tone of popular opinion and feeling. I am unable to
conceive any mode by which the presence of such minds can be so
positively insured as by that proposed by Mr. Hare.
This portion of the assembly would also be the appropriate organ of a
great social function, for which there is no provision in any existing
democracy, but which in no government can remain permanently
unfulfilled without condemning that government to infallible
degeneracy and decay. This may be called the function of Antagonism.
In every government there is some power stronger than all the rest;
and the power which is strongest tends perpetually to become the sole
power. Partly by intention and partly unconsciously, it is ever
striving to make all other things bend to itself, and is not content
while there is any thing which makes permanent head against it, any
influence not in agreement with its spirit. Yet, if it succeeds in
suppressing all rival influences, and moulding every thing after its
own model, improvement, in that country, is at an end, and decline
commences. Human improvement is a product of many factors, and no
power ever yet constituted among mankind includes them all: even the
most beneficent power only contains in itself some of the requisites
of good, and the remainder, if progress is to continue, must be
derived from some other source. No community has ever long continued
progressive but while a conflict was going on between the strongest
power in the community and some rival power; between the spiritual and
temporal authorities; the military or territorial and the industrious
classes; the king and the people; the orthodox and religious
reformers. When the victory on either side was so complete as to put
an end to the strife, and no other conflict took its place, first
stagnation followed, and then decay. The ascendancy of the numerical
majority is less unjust, and, on the whole, less mischievous than many
others, but it is attended with the very same kind of dangers, and
even more certainly; for when the government is in the hands of One or
a Few, the Many are always existent as a rival power, which may not be
strong enough ever to control the other, but whose opinion and
sentiment are a moral, and even a social support to all who, either
from conviction or contrariety of interest, are opposed to any of the
tendencies of the ruling authority. But when the democracy is supreme,
there is no One or Few strong enough for dissentient opinions and
injured or menaced interests to lean upon. The great difficulty of
democratic government has hitherto seemed to be, how to provide in a
democratic society--what circumstances have provided hitherto in all
the societies which have maintained themselves ahead of others--a
social support, a _point d'appui_, for individual resistance to the
tendencies of the ruling power; a protection, a rallying-point, for
opinions and interests which the ascendant public opinion views with
disfavor. For want of such a _point d'appui_, the older societies, and
all but a few modern ones, either fell into dissolution or became
stationary (which means slow deterioration) through the exclusive
predominance of a part only of the conditions of social and mental
well-being.
Now, this great want the system of Personal Representation is fitted
to supply in the most perfect manner which the circumstances of modern
society admit of. The only quarter in which to look for a supplement,
or completing corrective to the instincts of a democratic majority, is
the instructed minority; but, in the ordinary mode of constituting
democracy, this minority has no organ: Mr. Hare's system provides one.
The representatives who would be returned to Parliament by the
aggregate of minorities would afford that organ in its greatest
perfection. A separate organization of the instructed classes, even if
practicable, would be invidious, and could only escape from being
offensive by being totally without influence. But if the _élite_ of
these classes formed part of the Parliament, by the same title as any
other of its members--by representing the same number of citizens, the
same numerical fraction of the national will--their presence could
give umbrage to nobody, while they would be in the position of highest
vantage, both for making their opinions and councils heard on all
important subjects, and for taking an active part in public business.
Their abilities would probably draw to them more than their numerical
share of the actual administration of government; as the Athenians did
not confide responsible public functions to Cleon or Hyperbolus (the
employment of Cleon at Pylos and Amphipolis was purely exceptional),
but Nicias, and Theramenes, and Alcibiades were in constant employment
both at home and abroad, though known to sympathize more with
oligarchy than with democracy. The instructed minority would, in the
actual voting, count only for their numbers, but as a moral power they
would count for much more, in virtue of their knowledge, and of the
influence it would give them over the rest. An arrangement better
adapted to keep popular opinion within reason and justice, and to
guard it from the various deteriorating influences which assail the
weak side of democracy, could scarcely by human ingenuity be devised.
A democratic people would in this way be provided with what in any
other way it would almost certainly miss--leaders of a higher grade of
intellect and character than itself. Modern democracy would have its
occasional Pericles, and its habitual group of superior and guiding
minds.
With all this array of reasons, of the most fundamental character, on
the affirmative side of the question, what is there on the negative?
Nothing that will sustain examination, when people can once be induced
to bestow any real examination upon a new thing. Those indeed, if any
such there be, who, under pretense of equal justice, aim only at
substituting the class ascendancy of the poor for that of the rich,
will of course be unfavorable to a scheme which places both on a
level. But I do not believe that any such wish exists at present among
the working classes of this country, though I would not answer for the
effect which opportunity and demagogic artifices may hereafter have in
exciting it. In the United States, where the numerical majority have
long been in full possession of collective despotism, they would
probably be as unwilling to part with it as a single despot or an
aristocracy. But I believe that the English democracy would as yet be
content with protection against the class legislation of others,
without claiming the power to exercise it in their turn.
Among the ostensible objectors to Mr. Hare's scheme, some profess to
think the plan unworkable; but these, it will be found, are generally
people who have barely heard of it, or have given it a very slight and
cursory examination. Others are unable to reconcile themselves to the
loss of what they term the local character of the representation. A
nation does not seem to them to consist of persons, but of artificial
units, the creation of geography and statistics. Parliament must
represent towns and counties, not human beings. But no one seeks to
annihilate towns and counties. Towns and counties, it may be presumed,
are represented when the human beings who inhabit them are
represented. Local feelings can not exist without somebody who feels
them, nor local interests without somebody interested in them. If the
human beings whose feelings and interests these are have their proper
share of representation, these feelings and interests are represented
in common with all other feelings and interests of those persons. But
I can not see why the feelings and interests which arrange mankind
according to localities should be the only one thought worthy of being
represented; or why people who have other feelings and interests,
which they value more than they do their geographical ones, should be
restricted to these as the sole principle of their political
classification. The notion that Yorkshire and Middlesex have rights
apart from those of their inhabitants, or that Liverpool and Exeter
are the proper objects of the legislator's care, in contradistinction
the population of those places, is a curious specimen of delusion
produced by words.
In general, however, objectors cut the matter short by affirming that
the people of England will never consent to such a system. What the
people of England are likely to think of those who pass such a summary
sentence on their capacity of understanding and judgment, deeming it
superfluous to consider whether a thing is right or wrong before
affirming that they are certain to reject it, I will not undertake to
say. For my own part, I do not think that the people of England have
deserved to be, without trial, stigmatized as insurmountably
prejudiced against any thing which can be proved to be good either for
themselves or for others. It also appears to me that when prejudices
persist obstinately, it is the fault of nobody so much as of those who
make a point of proclaiming them insuperable, as an excuse to
themselves for never joining in an attempt to remove them. Any
prejudice whatever will be insurmountable if those who do not share it
themselves truckle to it, and flatter it, and accept it as a law of
nature. I believe, however, that of prejudice, properly speaking,
there is in this case none except on the lips of those who talk about
it, and that there is in general, among those who have yet heard of
the proposition, no other hostility to it than the natural and healthy
distrust attaching to all novelties which have not been sufficiently
canvassed to make generally manifest all the pros and cons of the
question. The only serious obstacle is the unfamiliarity: this,
indeed, is a formidable one, for the imagination much more easily
reconciles itself to a great alteration in substance than to a very
small one in names and forms. But unfamiliarity is a disadvantage
which, when there is any real value in an idea, it only requires time
to remove; and in these days of discussion and generally awakened
interest in improvement, what formerly was the work of centuries often
requires only years.