John Stuart Mill
Considerations on Representative Government
Footnotes
- I limit the expression to past time, because I would say nothing
derogatory of a great, and now at last a free, people, who are
entering into the general movement of European progress with a vigor
which bids fair to make up rapidly the ground they have lost. No one
can doubt what Spanish intellect and energy are capable of; and their
faults as a people are chiefly those for which freedom and industrial
ardor are a real specific.
- Italy, which alone can be quoted as an exception, is only so in
regard to the final stage of its transformation. The more difficult
previous advance from the city isolation of Florence, Pisa, or Milan,
to the provincial unity of Tuscany or Lombardy, took place in the
usual manner.
- This blunder of Mr. Disraeli (from which, greatly to his credit,
Sir John Pakington took an opportunity soon after of separating
himself) is a speaking instance, among many, how little the
Conservative leaders understand Conservative principles. Without
presuming to require from political parties such an amount of virtue
and discernment as that they should comprehend, and know when to
apply, the principles of their opponents, we may yet say that it would
be a great improvement if each party understood and acted upon its
own. Well would it be for England if Conservatives voted consistently
for every thing conservative, and Liberals for every thing liberal. We
should not then have to wait long for things which, like the present
and many other great measures, are eminently both the one and the
other. The Conservatives, as being by the law of their existence the
stupidest party, have much the greatest sins of this description to
answer for; and it is a melancholy truth, that if any measure were
proposed on any subject truly, largely, and far-sightedly
conservative, even if Liberals were willing to vote for it, the great
bulk of the Conservative party would rush blindly in and prevent it
from being carried.
- "Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform," 2nd ed. p. 32-36.
- "This expedient has been recommended both on the score of saving
expense and on that of obtaining the votes of many electors who
otherwise would not vote, and who are regarded by the advocates of the
plan as a particularly desirable class of voters. The scheme has been
carried into practice in the election of poor-law guardians, and its
success in that instance is appealed to in favor of adopting it in the
more important case of voting for a member of the Legislature. But the
two cases appear to me to differ in the point on which the benefits of
the expedient depend. In a local election for a special kind of
administrative business, which consists mainly in the dispensation of
a public fund, it is an object to prevent the choice from being
exclusively in the hands of those who actively concern themselves
about it; for the public interest which attaches to the election being
of a limited kind, and in most cases not very great in degree, the
disposition to make themselves busy in the matter is apt to be in a
great measure confined to persons who hope to turn their activity to
their own private advantage; and it may be very desirable to render
the intervention of other people as little onerous to them as
possible, if only for the purpose of swamping these private interests.
But when the matter in hand is the great business of national
government, in which every one must take an interest who cares for any
thing out of himself, or who cares even for himself intelligently, it
is much rather an object to prevent those from voting who are
indifferent to the subject, than to induce them to vote by any other
means than that of awakening their dormant minds. The voter who does
not care enough about the election to go to the poll is the very man
who, if he can vote without that small trouble, will give his vote to
the first person who asks for it, or on the most trifling or frivolous
inducement. A man who does not care whether he votes is not likely to
care much which way he votes; and he who is in that state of mind has
no moral right to vote at all; since, if he does so, a vote which is
not the expression of a conviction, counts for as much, and goes as
far in determining the result as one which represents the thoughts and
purposes of a life." - Thoughts, etc., p. 39.
- Several of the witnesses before the Committee of the House of
Commons in 1860, on the operation of the Corrupt Practices Prevention
Act, some of them of great practical experience in election matters,
were favorable (either absolutely or as a last resort) to the
principle of requiring a declaration from members of Parliament, and
were of opinion that, if supported by penalties, it would be, to a
great degree, effectual. (Evidence, pp. 46, 54-7, 67, 123, 198-202,
208.) The chief commissioner of the Wakefield Inquiry said (in
reference certainly to a different proposal), "If they see that the
Legislature is earnest upon the subject, the machinery will work.... I
am quite sure that if some personal stigma were applied upon
conviction of bribery, it would change the current of public opinion"
(pp. 26 and 32). A distinguished member of the committee (and of the
present cabinet) seemed to think it very objectionable to attach the
penalties of perjury to a merely promissory as distinguished from an
assertory oath; but he was reminded that the oath taken by a witness
in a court of justice is a promissory oath; and the rejoinder (that
the witness's promise relates to an act to be done at once, while the
member's would be a promise for all future time) would only be to the
purpose if it could be supposed that the swearer might forget the
obligation he had entered into, or could possibly violate it unawares:
contingencies which, in a case like the present, are out of the
question.
A more substantial difficulty is, that one of the forms most
frequently assumed by election expenditure is that of subscriptions to
local charities or other local objects; and it would be a strong
measure to enact that money should not be given in charity within a
place by the member for it. When such subscriptions are _bonā fide_,
the popularity which may be derived from them is an advantage which it
seems hardly possible to deny to superior riches. But the greatest
part of the mischief consists in the fact that money so contributed is
employed in bribery, under the euphonious name of keeping up the
member's interest. To guard against this, it should be part of the
member's promissory declaration that all sums expended by him in the
place, or for any purpose connected with it or with any of its
inhabitants (with the exception perhaps of his own hotel expenses)
should pass through the hands of the election auditor, and be by him
(and not by the member himself or his friends) applied to its declared
purpose.
The principle of making all lawful expenses of a charge, not upon the
candidate, but upon the locality, was upheld by two of the best
witnesses (pp. 20, 65-70, 277).
- "As Mr. Lorimer remarks, by creating a pecuniary inducement to
persons of the lowest class to devote themselves to public affairs,
the calling of the demagogue would be formally inaugurated. Nothing is
more to be deprecated than making it the private interest of a number
of active persons to urge the form of government in the direction of
its natural perversion. The indications which either a multitude or an
individual can give when merely left to their own weaknesses, afford
but a faint idea of what those weaknesses would become when played
upon by a thousand flatterers. If there were 658 places of certain,
however moderate emolument, to be gained by persuading the multitude
that ignorance is as good as knowledge, and better, it is terrible
odds that they would believe and act upon the lesson." - (Article in
Fraser's Magazine for April, 1859, headed "Recent Writers on
Reform.")
- Not always, however, the most recondite; for one of the latest
denouncers of competitive examination in the House of Commons had the
näiveté to produce a set of almost elementary questions in algebra,
history, and geography, as a proof of the exorbitant amount of high
scientific attainment which the Commissioners were so wild as to
exact.
- On Liberty, concluding chapter; and, at greater length, in the
final chapter of "Principles of Political Economy."
- Mr. Calhoun.
- I am speaking here of the _adoption_ of this improved policy, not,
of course, of its original suggestion. The honor of having been its
earliest champion belongs unquestionably to Mr. Roebuck.
Considerations on Representative Government by John Stuart Mill
