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WorkJohn Stuart Mill

Considerations on Representative Government

Mill's case for democracy, with the safeguards he thought it needed: votes cast in public, extra votes for the educated, a seat for every sizeable minority.

by John Stuart Mill352 passages held

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First published
(aged 55)
Original language
English

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Overview

The secret ballot became law in Britain on 18 July 1872, eleven years after Mill had argued against it in this book. His reasoning shows what kind of democrat he was. A vote, he held, is power over other people and therefore a trust, like a juror's verdict, and a trust should be exercised where the public can see it. Considerations on Representative Government, published in 1861, argues that government by elected representatives is the best form for any people able to work it, and gives two reasons: people guard their own interests better than anyone will guard them on their behalf, and taking part in public business educates those who take part. The second reason carries the book. It is why Mill wants the vote extended to nearly every adult, women included. But Mill also shared a fear with Alexis de Tocqueville, the French analyst of American democracy: that a numerical majority, once in power, would legislate for its own class and shut out everyone else. Two devices were to prevent that. One was plural voting, meaning extra votes for those who could show more education. The other came from Thomas Hare, an English lawyer whose Treatise on the Election of Representatives had appeared in 1859. Under Hare's scheme electors rank the candidates, and a vote that a candidate does not need passes to the elector's next choice, so that any sufficiently large minority wins a seat. Mill reviewed the Treatise in Fraser's Magazine and later called the scheme the greatest improvement of which representative government is capable. The book also holds that a parliament is unfit to draft laws or to administer, and should confine itself to debating, to voicing grievances and to watching those who govern. Open voting was abolished. As for plural voting by education, the nearest Britain came to it was the second vote that its university graduates kept until 1950. Hare's method, now called the single transferable vote, is how Ireland and Malta elect their parliaments.

Key concepts

What are Mill's two tests of a good government?

A government is good so far as it promotes the virtue and intelligence of its people, and so far as its machinery makes use of the good qualities they already have. Mill puts these two tests in place of the older pair of Order and Progress. The first matters more to him: institutions are to be judged as a national education, by the kind of people they tend to produce.

What is class legislation?

Class legislation is government in the immediate interest of the dominant class, to the lasting harm of the whole. For the motives behind it Mill borrows Bentham's phrase 'sinister interests', meaning interests that conflict with the general good. He thinks the risk is the same whether the ruling class is a king, an aristocracy or a majority of manual labourers, and that a democracy needs safeguards so that no single class can carry its measures by numbers alone.

What is plural voting?

Plural voting gives some electors more than one vote. Mill proposes it on the ground of education, never of property: everyone should have a voice, but the opinion of a person who knows more deserves more weight. Occupation or an examination could serve as the test. He sets a limit: the extra votes must never be so many that the educated can outvote everyone else as a class.

How does Thomas Hare's scheme of personal representation work?

Every elector lists candidates in order of preference, and may choose them from anywhere in the country. A candidate is elected on reaching a fixed quota of votes. Votes beyond the quota are not wasted: they pass to the next name on those voters' lists. In this way any group of electors as numerous as the quota gets a member of its own, wherever its supporters happen to live.

What does Mill mean by collective mediocrity?

It is his name for the tendency of representative government, and of modern society in general, to hand power to classes below the highest level of instruction, so that average opinion rules without opposition. Mill does not expect to reverse the tendency. His remedy is to make sure that the instructed minority is at least heard in parliament, where it can argue with the majority, and Hare's scheme is his means of getting it there.

What makes a nationality, according to Mill?

A nationality is a portion of mankind united by common sympathies that make them want to live under one government of their own. Language, descent, religion and geography can all produce the feeling. The strongest cause, Mill says, is a shared political history: common memories of pride and humiliation, pleasure and regret. Where the feeling exists, he sees a strong case for uniting all who share it under one government.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

A government judged by the people it makes

Would the rule of a perfectly wise and benevolent despot be the best government, if one could be found? Mill's answer settles what he asks of every institution in the book.

Mill gives two tests of a government: how well it uses the good qualities its people already have, and how far it improves them. By the second test even a good despot fails, because subjects who are managed have nothing to think about and sink into passivity. Taking part teaches. The Athenian who sat in the assembly and the popular courts was raised above anything a modern mass of people has reached, and Mill hopes for as much from jury service and parish offices. He adds a limit: representative government suits only a people willing to accept it and able to do what it requires.

  • representative government
  • despotism
  • political participation
  • civic education
  • self-government
  • political development
  • social progress
  • education

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A vote for everyone, and a check on the majority

How can every adult have a voice without all power passing to the largest class? Mill wants nearly universal suffrage and then hedges it with devices that still divide his readers.

The danger Mill sees in democracy is class legislation by a numerical majority, and a parliament of low intelligence. He would give the vote to nearly every adult, women on the same terms as men, but only to those who can read, write and do sums, who pay some tax and do not live on parish relief. Thomas Hare's scheme of transferable votes would give every sizeable minority its seat. Educated electors would have more than one vote, though never enough to outvote the rest as a class. And voting should be open, because the vote is a trust held for the public.

  • political representation
  • suffrage
  • majority rule
  • minority representation
  • electoral systems
  • political equality
  • democracy
  • meritocracy
  • public opinion

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What a parliament is for

Should the people's representatives govern, or watch those who do? Mill separates control from skill and gives each to a different body.

A numerous assembly, Mill argues, is unfit to administer or even to draft a law. Its work is to watch and check the government, to be the nation's Committee of Grievances and its Congress of Opinions. Laws should be written by a small Commission of Legislation, whose drafts parliament may pass or reject. Skilled officials must do the administering, though a bureaucracy left to itself hardens into routine. The later chapters carry the principle outward: to local bodies as a school of public spirit, to federations, to countries of several nationalities, where he thinks free institutions next to impossible, and to the rule of dependencies such as India.

  • public administration
  • expertise
  • political accountability
  • accountability
  • local government
  • federalism
  • institutional design
  • political institutions
  • bicameralism
  • nationality
  • political power
  • political judgment
  • rule of law

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Within this work

passages held
352
distinct concepts
509
by passages held, corpus-wide
#213

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “local government” and “public administration”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 16 pairings. 92 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
local governmentpublic administration6
local governmentrepresentative government6
local governmentpolitical representation5
political accountabilitypublic opinion5
public opinionrepresentative government5
democracypolitical representation3
political representationrepresentative government3
public administrationrepresentative government3
democracypolitical accountability2
democracyrepresentative government2
federalismpolitical representation2
political accountabilitypublic administration2
political accountabilityrepresentative government2
political representationpublic opinion2
democracypublic opinion1
political accountabilitypolitical representation1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 1843 A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive

    It was the first book of his own, and it made his name in 1843. Its claim that every belief must answer to experience is the ground on which the later books on morals and politics stand.

     EN
  2. 1844 Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy (Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy)

    Written at twenty-three and twenty-four, these five essays waited until the System of Logic had found him readers. Their argument on trade returns, four years later, in the Principles of Political Economy.

     EN
  3. 1848 Principles of Political Economy

    Seven editions carried this treatise from 1848 to 1871, revised as his view of socialism moved. It is read here in the text of the seventh, the last Mill revised himself.

     EN
  4. 1859 On Liberty

    One of the two books Mill expected to outlast the rest, the other being the System of Logic. Its defence of individuality against majority opinion runs on into Considerations on Representative Government and The Subjection of Women.

     EN
  5. 1861 Considerations on Representative Government you are here EN
  6. 1861 Utilitarianism

    A defence of the ethics he inherited from Bentham and from his father, assembled from papers of the 1850s. Short as it is, it supplies the standard of right and wrong that his political books take for granted.

     EN
  7. 1862 The Contest in America

    Occasional journalism from Fraser's Magazine, written in haste before a journey to Greece. It shows Mill as a polemicist, arguing against the prevailing opinion of his own class.

     EN
  8. 1865 Auguste Comte and Positivism

    Two essays from the Westminster Review of 1865, written eight years after Comte's death. They close a relationship that began with admiring letters in 1841 and left its mark on the System of Logic.

     EN
  9. 1869 The Subjection of Women

    The most contested of his books in its day, published in 1869 after his one term in Parliament. It carries the reasoning of On Liberty into marriage and the household.

     EN
  10. 1879 Socialism

    Left unfinished at his death, these are the posthumous "Chapters on Socialism", first drafts for a book planned in 1869. They return to a question that the Principles of Political Economy had reopened from one edition to the next.

     EN
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