The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Introduction
• Textual Introduction
• Essays On Politics and Society
• Use and Abuse of Political Terms 1832
• Rationale of Representation 1835
• De Tocqueville On Democracy In America [i] 1835
• State of Society In America 1836
• Civilization 1836
• Essays On Government 1840
• De Tocqueville On Democracy In America [ii] 1840
• Reform of the Civil Service 1854
• On Liberty 1859
• Editor’s Note
• Chapter I: Introductory
• Chapter II: Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion
• Chapter III: Of Individuality, As One of the Elements of Well-being
• Chapter IV: Of the Limits to the Authority of Society Over the Individual
• Chapter V: Applications

Essays on Politics and Society

USE AND ABUSE OF POLITICAL TERMS

1832

EDITOR’S NOTE

Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine, I (May, 1832), 164-72. Unsigned. Not republished. The title is footnoted: “Use and Abuse of Political Terms. By George Cornwall [sic] Lewis, Esq. Student of Christ Church, Oxford. London: Fellowes, 1832.” Identified in JSM’s bibliography as “A review of Geo. Cornewall Lewis’s Remarks on the Use and Abuse of Political Terms, in the second number of Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine (May, 1832.)” (MacMinn, 21.) The copy in Somerville College, on which JSM has written “From Tait’s Magazine for May 1832”, has no corrections or emendations. For JSM’s contemporary attitude to the essay, see the Textual Introduction, lxx-lxxii above.

JSM quotes part of this review (see 9-10 below) in his Logic, producing variant readings, which are footnoted. In the variant notes the editions of the Logic are indicated by the last two figures of their dates of publication: e.g., “51—72” means that the reading given is that of the 3rd (1851) to 8th (1872) editions; “MS—72” means that the reading is that from the manuscript through the 8th edition.

Use and Abuse of Political Terms

mr. lewis is known in society as the son of the Right Hon. T. Frankland Lewis, and in literature, as the translator, jointly with Mr. Henry Tufnell, of two erudite and interesting works on classical antiquity, Muller’s Dorians, and Bockh’s Public Economy of Athens.^[*] Mr. Lewis is also the author of a little work on logic;^[†] to which subject, stimulated like many others of the Oxford youth, by the precepts and example of Dr. Whately, he has devoted more than common attention, and was so far peculiarly qualified for writing such a work as the volume before us professes to be. This alone should entitle him to no slight praise; for such is the present state of the human mind, in some important departments, that it is often highly meritorious to have written a book, in itself of no extraordinary merit, if the work afford proof that any one of the requisites for writing a good book on the same subject is possessed in an eminent degree.

Certain it is, that there scarcely ever was a period when logic was so little studied, systematically, and in a scientific manner, as of late years; while, perhaps, no generation ever had less to plead in extenuation of neglecting it. For if, in order to reason well, it were only necessary to be destitute of every spark of fancy and poetic imagination, the world of letters and thought might boast, just now, of containing few besides good reasoners; people to whom, one would imagine, that logic must be all in all, if we did not, to our astonishment, find that they despise it. But the most prosaic matter-of-fact person in the world must not flatter himself that he is able to reason because he is fit for nothing else. Reasoning, like all other mental excellencies, comes by appropriate culture: not by exterminating the opposite good quality, the other half of a perfect character. Perhaps the mere reasoners, with whom the world abounds, would be considerably less numerous, if men really took the pains to learn to reason. It is a sign of a weak judgment, as of a weak virtue, to take to flight at the approach of every thing which can, by any remote possibility, lead it astray. Men who, for want of cultivation, have the intellects of dwarfs, are of course the slaves of their imagination, if they have any, as they are the slaves of their sensations, if they have not; and it is partly, perhaps, because the systematic culture of the thinking faculty is in little repute, that imagination also is in such bad odour; there being no solidity and vigour of intellect to resist it where it tends to mislead. The sublimest of English poets composed an elementary book of logic for the schools;^[*] but our puny rhymsters think logic, forsooth, too dry for them;^* and our logicians, from that and other causes, very commonly say with M. Casimir Perier, A quoi un poëte est-il bon?

In undertaking to treat of the use and abuse of the leading terms of political philosophy, Mr. Lewis has set before himself a task to which no one but a logician could be competent, and one of the most important to which logic could be applied. If, however, we were disposed for minute criticism, we might find some scope for it in the very title-page. We might ask, what is meant by an abuse of terms; and whether a man is not at liberty to employ terms in any way which enables him to deliver himself of his own ideas the most intelligibly; to bring home to the minds of others, in the greatest completeness, the impression which exists in his own? This question, though it has a considerable bearing upon many parts of Mr. Lewis’s book, throws, however, no doubt upon the importance of the object he aims at. His end is, to prevent things essentially different, from being confounded, because they happen to be called by the same name. It is past doubt that this, like all other modes of false and slovenly thinking, might be copiously exemplified from the field of politics; and Mr. Lewis has not been unhappy in his choice of examples. The instances, in which the confusion of language is the consequence, and not the cause, of the erroneous train of thought (which we believe to be generally the more common case,) are equally worthy of Mr. Lewis’s attention, and will, no doubt, in time receive an equal share of it.

Some notion of the extent of ground over which our author travels may be gathered from his table of contents; which, with that view, we transcribe:

To explain thoroughly the various senses of any one of these terms, would require, possibly, as much space, as Mr. Lewis has devoted to them all. His observations, however, are those of an instructed and intelligent mind. They contain, perhaps, not much that is absolutely new; except that ideas, which the mind has made completely its own, always come out in a form more or less different from that in which they went in, and are, in that sense, always original. Moreover, any one who can look straight into a thing itself, and not merely at its image mirrored in another man’s mind, can also look at things, upon occasion, when there is no other man to point them out.^*

Yet, highly as we think of this work, and still more highly of the author’s capabilities, we will not pretend that he has realized all our conceptions of what such a work ought to be. We do not think he is fully conscious of what his subject requires of him. The most that he ever seems to accomplish, is to make out that something is wrong, but not how that which is wrong may be made right. He may say, that this is all he aimed at; and so, indeed, it is. But it may always be questioned, whether one has indeed cut down to the very root of an error, who leaves no truth planted in its stead. Mr. Lewis, at least, continually leaves the mind under the unsatisfactory impression, that the matter has not been probed to the bottom, and that underneath almost every thing which he sees, there lies something deeper which he does not see. If in this we should be deemed hypercritical, we would say in our defence, that we should never think of ranging Mr. Lewis in the class of those, from whom we take thankfully and without asking questions, any trifling matter, which is all they have to bestow. The author of such a work as the present, is entitled to be tried by the same standard as the highest order of intellect; to be compared not with the small productions of small minds, but with ideal perfection.

Mankind have many ideas, and but few words. This truth should never be absent from the mind of one who takes upon him to decide if another man’s language is philosophical or the reverse. Two consequences follow from it; one, that a certain laxity in the use of language must be borne with, if a writer makes himself understood; the other, that, to understand a writer who is obliged to use the same words as a vehicle for different ideas, requires a vigorous effort of co-operation on the part of the reader. These unavoidable ambiguities render it easier, we admit, for confusion of ideas to pass undetected: but they also render it more difficult for any man’s ideas to be so expressed that they shall not appear confused; particularly when viewed with that habitual contempt with which men of clear ideas generally regard those, any of whose ideas are not clear, and with that disposition which contempt, like every other passion, commonly carries with it, to presume the existence of its object. It should be recollected, too, that many a man has a mind teeming with important thoughts, who is quite incapable of putting them into words which shall not be liable to any metaphysical objection; that when this is the case, the logical incoherence or incongruity of the expression, is commonly the very first thing which strikes the mind, and that which there is least merit in perceiving. The man of superior intellect, in that case, is not he who can only see that the proposition precisely as stated, is not true; but he who, not overlooking the incorrectness at the surface, does, nevertheless, discern that there is truth at the bottom. The logical defect, on the other hand, is the only thing which strikes the eye of the mere logician. The proper office, we should have conceived, of a clear thinker, would be to make other men’s thoughts clear for them, if they cannot do it for themselves, and to give words to the man of genius, fitted to express his ideas with philosophical accuracy. Socrates, in the beautiful dialogue called the Phædrus, describes his own vocation as that of a mental midwife:^[*] not so Mr. A. or B., who, perhaps, owes the advantage of clear ideas to the fact of his having no ideas which it is at all difficult to make clear. The use of logic, it would seem, to such a person, is not to help others, but to privilege himself against being required to listen to them. He will not think it worth his while to examine what a man has to say, unless it is put to him in such a manner that it shall cost him no trouble at all to make it out. If you come to him needing help, you may learn from him that you are a fool; but you certainly will not be made wise.

It would be grossly unjust to Mr. Lewis to accuse him of any thing approaching to this; but we could have wished that his work could have been more decidedly cited as an example of the opposite quality. We desiderate in it somewhat more of what becomes all men, but, most of all, a young man, to whom the struggles of life are only in their commencement, and whose spirit cannot yet have been wounded, or his temper embittered by hostile collision with the world, but which, in young men more especially, is apt to be wanting—a slowness to condemn. A man must now learn, by experience, what once came almost by nature to those who had any faculty of seeing; to look upon all things with a benevolent, but upon great men and their works with a reverential spirit, rather to seek in them for what he may learn from them, than for opportunities of shewing what they might have learned from him; to give such men the benefit of every possibility of their having spoken with a rational meaning; not easily or hastily to persuade himself that men like Plato, and Locke, and Rousseau, and Bentham, gave themselves a world of trouble in running after something which they thought was a reality, but which he Mr. A. B. can clearly see to be an unsubstantial phantom; to exhaust every other hypothesis, before supposing himself wiser than they; and even then to examine, with good will and without prejudice, if their error do not contain some germ of truth; and if any conclusion, such as a philosopher can adopt, may even yet be built upon the foundation on which they, it may be, have reared nothing but an edifice of sand.

Such men are not refuted because they are convicted of using words occasionally with no very definite meaning, or even of founding an argument upon an ambiguity. The substance of correct reasoning may still be there, although there be a deficiency in the forms. A vague term, which they may never have given themselves the trouble to define, may yet, on each particular occasion, have excited in their minds precisely the ideas it should excite. The leading word in an argument may be ambiguous; but between its two meanings there is often a secret link of connexion, unobserved by the critic but felt by the author, though perhaps he may not have given himself a strictly logical account of it; and the conclusion may turn not upon what is different in the two meanings, but upon what they have in common, or at least analogous.

Until logicians know these things, and act as if they knew them, they must not expect that a logician and a captious man will cease to be, in common apprehension, nearly synonymous. How, in fact, can it be otherwise in the mind of a person, who knows not very clearly what logic is, but who finds that he can in no way give utterance to his conviction without infringing logical rules, while he is conscious all the time that the real grounds of the conviction have not been touched in the slightest degree?

It is only in a very qualified sense that these admonitions can be applied to Mr. Lewis; but there are so few persons of our time to whom they do not apply more or less, (and perhaps there have been but few at any time,) that we are not surprised to find them even in his case far from superfluous. It remains for us to establish this by particular instances.

Mr. Lewis, under the word right, gives a definition of legal rights, and then lays it down that all rights are the creatures of law, that is, of the will of the sovereign; that the sovereign himself has no rights, nor can any one have rights as against the sovereign; because, being sovereign, he is by that supposition exempt from legal obligation, or legal responsibility. So far, so good Mr. Lewis then says, that to call any thing a right which cannot be enforced by law, is an abuse of language. We answer,—Not until mankind have consented to be bound by Mr. Lewis’s definition. For example, when Dr. Johnson says^[*] that a man has not a moral right to think as he pleases, “because he ought to inform himself, and think justly,” Mr. Lewis says [p. 21] he must mean legal right; and adds other observations, proving that he has not even caught a glimpse of Johnson’s drift. Again, according to him, whoever asserts that no man can have a right to do that which is wrong, founds an argument upon a mere ambiguity, confounding a right with the adjective right: and this ambiguity is “mischievous, because it serves as an inducement to error, and confounds things as well as words.” [P. xv.]

Now, we contend that Mr. Lewis is here censuring what he does not thoroughly understand, and that the use of the word right, in both these cases, is as good logic and as good English as his own. Right is the correlative of duty, or obligation; and (with some limitations) is co-extensive with those terms. Whatever any man is under an obligation to give you, or to do for you, to that you have a right. There are legal obligations, and there are consequently legal rights. There are also moral obligations; and no one, that we know of considers this phrase an abuse of language, or proposes that it should be dispensed with. It seems, therefore, but an adherence to the established usage of our language, to speak of moral rights; which stand in the same relation to moral obligations as legal rights do to legal obligations. All that is necessary is to settle distinctly with ourselves, and make it intelligible to those whom we are addressing, which kind of rights it is that we mean; if we fail in which, we become justly liable to Mr. Lewis’s censure. It has not totally escaped Mr. Lewis that there may be some meaning in the phrase, moral rights; but he has, by no means, correctly hit that meaning. He expounds it thus, “claims recommended by views of justice or public policy;” the sort of claim a man may be said to have to anything which you think it desirable that he should possess. [P. 8.] No such thing. No man in his sound senses considers himself to be wronged every time he does not get what he desires; every man distinguishes between what he thinks another man morally bound to do, and what he merely would like to see him do; between what is morally criminal, a fit subject for complaint or reproach, and what excites only regrets, and a wish that the act had been abstained from. No system of moral philosophy or metaphysics that we ever heard of, denies this distinction; though several have undertaken to account for it, and to place it upon the right footing.

If you may say that it is the moral duty of subjects to obey their government, you may also express this by saying that government has a moral right to their obedience. If you may say that it is the moral duty of sovereigns to govern well, or else to abdicate, you may say that subjects have a right to be well governed. If you may say, that it is morally culpable in a government to attempt to retain its authority, contrary to the inclinations of its subjects; you may say, that the people have a right to change their government. All this, without any logical inaccuracy, or “abuse of language.” We are not defending this phraseology as the best that can be employed; the language of right and the language of duty, are logically equivalent, and the latter has, in many respects, the advantage. We are only contending, that, whoever uses the word right shall not be adjudged guilty of nonsense, until it has been tried whether this mode of interpreting his meaning will make it sense. And this we complain that Mr. Lewis has not done.

To explain what we meant by saying that almost everything which Mr. Lewis sees has something lying under it which he does not see, we have now to shew, that, in catching at an imaginary ambiguity near the surface, he has missed the deeper and less obvious ambiguities by which men are really misled. Two of these we shall briefly set forth.

^aSpeaking morally, you are said to have a right to do a thing, if all persons are morally bound not to hinder you from doing it. But, in another sense, to have a right to do a thing, is the opposite of having no right to do it,—^bviz.^b of being under a moral obligation to forbear ^cfrom^c doing it. In this sense, to say that you have a right to do a thing, means that you may do it without any breach of duty on your part, that other persons not only ought not to hinder you, but have no cause to think ^dthe^d worse of you for doing it. This is a perfectly distinct proposition from the preceding. The ^eright^e which you have by virtue of a duty incumbent upon other persons, is obviously quite a different thing from a right consisting in the absence of any duty incumbent upon yourself. Yet the two things are perpetually confounded. Thus a man will say he has a right to publish his opinions; which may be true in this sense, that it would be a breach of duty in any other person to interfere and prevent the publication:—but he assumes thereupon, that in publishing his opinions, he himself violates no duty; which may either be true or false, depending, as it does, upon his having taken due pains to satisfy himself, first, that the opinions are true, and next, that their publication in this manner, and at this particular juncture, will probably be beneficial to the interests of truth, on the whole. ^fIn this sense of the word, a man has no right to do that which is wrong, though it may often happen that nobody has a right to prevent him from doing it.^f

The second ambiguity is that of confounding a right, of any kind, with a right to enforce that right by resisting or punishing a violation of it. ^gMen^g will say, for example, that they have a right to ^ha^h good government; which is undeniably true, it being the moral duty of their governors to govern them well. But in granting this, you are supposed to have admitted their right or liberty to turn out their governors, and perhaps to punish them, for having failed in the performance of this duty; which, far from being the same thing, is by no means universally true, but depends upon an immense number of varying circumstances,^a and is, perhaps, altogether the knottiest question in practical ethics. This example involves both the ambiguities which we have mentioned.

We have dwelt longer on this one topic than the reader perhaps will approve. We shall pass more slightly over the remainder.

Our author treats with unqualified contempt all that has been written by Locke and others, concerning a state of nature and the social compact. [Pp. 185ff.] In this we cannot altogether agree with him. The state of society contemplated by Rousseau, in which mankind lived together without government, may never have existed, and it is of no consequence whether it did so or not. The question is not whether it ever existed, but whether there is any advantage in supposing it hypothetically; as we assume in argument all kinds of cases which never occur, in order to illustrate those which do. All discussions respecting a state of nature are inquiries what morality would be if there were no law. This is the real scope of Locke’s Essay on Government,^[*] rightly understood: whatever is objectionable in the details did not arise from the nature of the inquiry, but from a certain wavering and obscurity in his notion of the grounds of morality itself. Nor is this mode of viewing the subject, we conceive, without its advantages, in an enlarged view, either of morality or law. Not to mention that, as is observed by Locke himself, all independent governments, in relation to one another, are actually in a state of nature, subject to moral duties but obeying no common superior;^[*] so that the speculations which Mr. Lewis despises, tend, in international morality at least, to a direct practical application.

Even the social compact, (though a pure fiction, upon which no valid argument can consequently be founded,) and the doctrine connected with it, of the inalienable and imprescriptible rights of man, had this good in them, that they were suggested by a sense, that the power of the sovereign, although, of course, incapable of any legal limitation, has a moral limit, since a government ought not to take from any of its subjects more than it gives. Whatever obligation any man would lie under in a state of nature, not to inflict evil upon another for the sake of good to himself, that same obligation lies upon society towards every one of its members. If he injure or molest any of his fellow-citizens, the consequences of whatever they may be obliged to do in self-defence, must fall upon himself; but otherwise, the government fails of its duty, if on any plea of doing good to the community in the aggregate, it reduces him to such a state, that he is on the whole a loser by living in a state of government, and would have been better off if it did not exist. This is the truth which was dimly shadowed forth, in howsoever rude and unskilful a manner, in the theories of the social compact and of the rights of man. It was felt, that a man’s voluntary consent to live under a government, was the surest proof he could give of his feeling it to be beneficial to him: and so great was the importance attached to this sort of assurance, that where an express consent was out of the question, some circumstance was fixed upon, from which, by stretching a few points, a consent might be presumed. But the test is real, where, as in imperfectly settled countries, the forest is open to the man who is not contented with his lot.

Notwithstanding the length to which our remarks have extended, we cannot overlook one or two passages, less remarkable for their importance, than as proofs of the haste with which Mr. Lewis must have examined the authors and even the passages he has criticised.

Thus, where Mr. Bentham recommends natural procedure in the administration of justice, in opposition to technical, Mr. Lewis observes, that as it is impossible to suppose that any mode of judicial procedure should be left to the discretion of the judge guided by no rules, the word natural, in this case, “seems to be a vague term of praise, signifying that system which, to the writer, seems most expedient.” [Pp. 182-3.] It shews but little knowledge of Mr. Bentham’s habits of mind, to account in this way, of all others, for any phraseology he may think proper to adopt. The fact is, as has been explained a hundred times by Mr. Bentham himself,—that by natural procedure, he means what he also calls domestic procedure; viz. the simple and direct mode of getting at the truth which suggests itself naturally,—that is, readily and invariably, to all men who are inquiring in good earnest into any matter which, happening to concern themselves, they are really desirous to ascertain. That the technical methods of our own, and all other systems of law, are bad in proportion as they deviate from this, is what Mr. Bentham affirms, and, we will add, proves.

Again, when Mr. Mill speaks of the corruptive operation^[*] of what are called the advantages of fortune, Mr. Lewis comments [pp. 184n-185n] upon the strangeness of this sentiment from the writer of a treatise on Political Economy;^[†] that is, on the production and accumulation of wealth; and hints, that the work in question must have been composed with an object similar to that of a treatise on poisons. Did it never occur to Mr. Lewis, that Mr. Mill’s meaning might be, not that a people are corrupted by the amount of the wealth which they possess in the aggregate, but that the inequalities in the distribution of it have a tendency to corrupt those who obtain the large masses, especially when these come to them by descent, and not by merit, or any kind of exertion employed in earning them?

To add one instance more. Mr. Lewis falls foul of the often quoted sentence of Tacitus, “that the most degenerate states have the greatest number of laws; in corruptissimâ republicâ plurimæ leges;^[‡] a position not only not true, but the very reverse of the truth, as the effect of the progress of civilization is to multiply enactments, in order to suit the extended relations, and the more refined and diversified forms of property, introduced by the improvement of society.” [P. 205.] Mr. Lewis is a scholar, and understands the words of Tacitus, but, in this case, it is clear, he has not understood the ideas. He has committed what he himself would call an ignoratio elenchi. By a corrupt society. Tacitus (we will take upon ourselves to assert) did not mean a rude society. The author was speaking of the decline of a nation’s morality, and the critic talks to you of the improvement of its industry. Tacitus meant, that, in the most immoral society, there is the most frequent occasion for the interposition of the legislator; and we venture to agree with him, thinking it very clear, that the less you are able to rely upon conscience and opinion, the more you are obliged to do by means of the law—a truth which is not only not the opposite of Mr. Lewis’s position, but stands in no logical relation to it at all, more than to the binomial theorem.

These are the blemishes of Mr. Lewis’s work. Yet they do not induce us to qualify our high opinion, both of the book and of its author. It is an able, and a useful publication; only, it is not a sufficient dissertation on the use and abuse of the leading political terms.

We have often thought, that a really philosophical Treatise on the Ambiguities of the Moral Sciences would be one of the most valuable scientific contributions which a man of first-rate intellectual ability could confer upon his age, and upon posterity. But it would not be so much a book of criticism as of inquiry. Its main end would be, not to set people right in their use of words, which you never can be qualified to do, so long as their thoughts, on the subject treated of, are in any way different from yours; but to get at their thoughts through their words, and to see what sort of a view of truth can be got, by looking at it in their way. It would then be seen, how multifarious are the properties and distinctions to be marked, and how few the words to mark them with, so that one word is sometimes all we have to denote a dozen different ideas, and that men go wrong less often than Mr. Lewis supposes, from using a word in many senses, but more frequently from using it only in one, the distinctions which it serves to mark in its other acceptations not being adverted to at all. Such a book would enable all kinds of thinkers, who are now at daggers-drawn, because they are speaking different dialects and know it not, to understand one another, and to perceive that, with the proper explanations, their doctrines are reconcilable: and would unite all the exclusive and one-sided systems, so long the bane of true philosophy, by placing before each man a more comprehensive view, in which the whole of what is affirmative in his own view would be included.

This is the larger and nobler design which Mr. Lewis should set before himself, and which, we believe, his abilities to be equal to, did he but feel that this is the only task worthy of them. He might thus contribute a large part to what is probably destined to be the great philosophical achievement of the era, of which many signs already announce the commencement; viz. to unite all half-truths, which have been fighting against one another ever since the creation, and blend them in one harmonious whole.

RATIONALE OF REPRESENTATION

1835

EDITOR’S NOTE

London Review, I (July, 1835), 341-71 (equivalent to Westminster Review, XXX); headed: “Art IV. The Rationale of Political Representation. By the Author of ‘Essays on the Formation of Opinions,’ &c. &c. [Samuel Bailey.] London, 1835. Hunter, 8vo., pp. 436.” Signed “A”; republished in part as first section of “Appendix,” Dissertations and Discussions, I, 467-70. Running title: “Rationale of Representation.” Identified in JSM’s bibliography as “A review of Bailey’s ‘Rationale of Political Representation’ in the second number of the London Review (July 1835.)” (MacMinn, 44.) The copy of this article in the Somerville College Library has no corrections or emendations. Also in Somerville is a sewn, uncut offprint, without title, numbered 1-31, and signed “A”. (In the offprint, parts of which are reset, there are no corrections; some accidental variants appear [these are not accepted in the present text], the typographical error at 25.38 is retained, and two more are introduced.) The review is not mentioned in the Autobiography. For comment on the circumstances of its publication, see the Textual Introduction, lxxii-lxxiii above.

In selecting a portion of this review for republication in “Appendix,” D&D, I, JSM made a few revisions (see 22-4 below). In the variant notes, “59” indicates D&D. 1st ed., 1859, “67” indicates ibid., 2nd ed., 1867. JSM also quotes from his “Remarks on Bentham’s Philosophy” (see 42-3 below); the changes are shown as variants, in which “33” indicates “Remarks on Bentham’s Philosophy.”

Rationale of Representation

this is the work of a writer who, in the difficult art of making philosophy popular, has excelled most of his contemporaries; and his present is not inferior to the best of his former productions.

The theoretical grounds of Representative Government, and the solutions of the more momentous of its practical problems, are laid down by our author, in the spirit which is now nearly universal among the more advanced thinkers on the subject, but with a felicity of adaptation to the wants of the most numerous class of readers, which is peculiarly his own. In addition to this, several popular fallacies, of most extensive prevalence, and infecting the very elements of political speculation, are refuted, conclusively and forcibly, and with as much depth of philosophy as the purpose required. The thoughts succeed one another in the most lucid order. The style is perspicuity itself. To a practised student in abstract speculation, it will appear diffuse; but this, in a book intended for popularity, is far from being a defect. To common readers a condensed style is always cramped and obscure: they want a manner of writing which shall detain them long enough upon each thought to give it time to sink into their minds. Our author is not, indeed, entitled to the transcendant praise due to those who, like Hobbes or Bacon, employ at pleasure either the power of condensation or that of enlargement; dwelling on the idea until it has made its way into the understanding, and then clenching it by one of those striking images, or of those pregnant and apophthegmatic expressions, which sum up whole paragraphs in a line, and engrave the meaning as with a burning steel upon the imagination. But if our author’s style does not come up to this exalted standard, it is easy, flowing, always unaffected, and has the greatest of merits, that to which all other excellencies of manner are merely subsidiary—that of perfectly expressing whatever he has occasion to express by it.

The work consists of an Introduction, and six Chapters: “On the proper Object and Province of Government;” “On the Grounds of Preference for a Representative Government;” “On the Representative Body;” “On the Electoral Body;” “On Elections;” and “On the Introduction of Changes in Political Institutions;” with two supplementary essays “On Political Equality,” and “On Rights.”

This programme gives a correct indication of the scope and purpose of the book. It is rightly termed “The Rationale of Political Representation,” not “The Rationale of Government.” It attempts an outline of a part only of the philosophy of government, not the whole. The philosophy of government, a most extensive and complicated science, would comprise a complete view of the influences of political institutions; not only their direct, but what are in general so little attended to, their indirect and remote influences: how they affect the national character, and all the social relations of a people; and reciprocally, how the state of society, and of the human mind, aids, counteracts, or modifies the effects of a form of government, and promotes or impairs its stability. Such is not the design of this work; and, considered in this comprehensive sense, the science itself is in its infancy.^* But the advantages of a representative government, and the principles on which it must be constructed in order to realise those advantages, form a branch of the subject, the theory of which, so far as one branch can be considered separately from the rest, may be regarded as nearly perfect; and to the exposition of this, the work before us is dedicated.

It must be admitted also, that this one branch of the inquiry runs parallel, for a considerable distance, to the main trunk. The reasons for having a representative government, and the reasons for having a government at all, are, to a very considerable extent, identical. The ends or uses of government are indeed multifarious, since we may include among them all benefits, of whatever kind, to the existence of which government is indispensable; but the first and most fundamental of all, the only one the importance of which literally amounts to necessity, is to enable mankind to live in society without oppressing and injuring one another. And the need of a representative government rests upon precisely the same basis. As mankind, in a state of society, have need of government, because, without it, every strong man would oppress his weaker neighbour; so mankind, in a state of government, have need of popular representation, because, without it, those who wielded the powers of government would oppress the rest.

Of this fundamental truth an acute sense is manifested by our author. He rests the necessity of a popular government upon one primary axiom: “That men will, in the majority of cases, prefer their own interest to that of others, when the two are placed in competition.” (P. 68.) Whoever denies this, denies the principle on which, it is most certain, he himself habitually acts, when the interest at stake happens to be his own. It is the principle which all persons, when at liberty to follow their inclinations, uniformly observe in the guardianship of their own property. They do not appoint an agent, with liberty to do as he pleases, and without reserving the power of instantaneous dismissal. If they did, they would expect that the obligations of his trust would be disregarded, when in competition either with the interest of his pocket or with that of his ease.

“From this principle,” says our author, “that men will prefer their own interest to that of others, when the two are placed in competition, it follows, that the interest of the community at large will be uniformly consulted only when they have the regulation of their own affairs.” [P. 69.]

But since government cannot be performed by the community en masse; since “it is implied in the very notion of government, that a few are invested with authority over the rest; since, from the nature of the case, the legislative power must be lodged in the hands of a few; and as the few possessing it will be tempted in a thousand ways to sacrifice the public good to their own private interest;” [pp. 69, 70-1] here is but one resource:

One might have imagined, that if any propositions on public affairs deserved the character of maxims of common sense, these did. Views of human affairs more practical and business-like, more in accordance with the received rules of prudence in private life, it would be difficult to find. These doctrines, nevertheless, or at least the possibility of drawing any conclusions from them, have met with questioners. That human beings will commonly prefer their own interests to those of other people, and that the way to secure fidelity to a trust is to make the trustee’s interest coincide with his duty, have been classed among propositions which are either not true, or, if true at all, only in a sense in which they are insignificant and unmeaning. Nor has the assertion been made of these doctrines alone, but of all propositions relating to the motives of human actions. “When we pass,” it has been said, “beyond maxims which it is impossible to deny without a contradiction in terms, and which therefore do not enable us to advance a single step in practical knowledge, it is not possible to lay down a single general rule respecting the motives which influence human actions.”^[*] Such was the doctrine maintained in a memorable article in the Edinburgh Review, by a writer, all whose ingenuity and brilliancy would not have made his subsequent fortunes what they have been, but for the grateful acceptance which this doctrine found in influential quarters.

Our author has no great difficulty in disposing of this theory:

He then shows, by copious examples, what it is strange should require to be exemplified in order to be understood—that a general proposition may be of the greatest practical moment, although not absolutely true without a single exception; and that in managing the affairs of great aggregations of human beings, we must adapt our rules to the nine hundred and ninety-nine cases, and not to the thousandth extraordinary case, “ ’Tis certain,” says Hume (in a remarkable passage quoted by our author), “that general principles, however intricate they may seem, must always, if they are just and sound, prevail in the general course of things, though they may fail in particular cases; and it is the chief business of philosophers to regard the general course of things. I may add, that it is also the chief business of politicians, especially in the domestic government of the state, when the public good, which is or ought to be their object, depends on the concurrence of a multitude of causes—not as in foreign politics, upon accidents and chances, and the caprices of a few persons.”^[*]

“The views of political reasoning here advocated,” continues our author, “might be confirmed by an appeal to some of our ablest writers;” and among other apt quotations, he adds two from Burke, whom Conservatives of all denominations glorify as an oracle, because on one great occasion his prejudices coincided with theirs, but for whose authority they have not a shadow of respect when it tells against their vulgar errors.

If principles of politics cannot be founded, as Burke says, “on the nature of man,” on what can they be founded? On history? But is there a single fact in history which can be interpreted but by means of principles drawn from human nature? We will suppose your fact made out: the thing happened (we will admit) as you affirm it did; but who shall tell what produced it?—the only question you want answered. On this subject our author has some instructive remarks, which we regret that our limits do not permit us to quote, as well as to corroborate by some others which we think necessary to complete the analysis of the subject. It is well worthy to be treated in a separate article.

It may be interesting to collate with our author’s refutation of the Edinburgh Reviewer, what the writer, who was the principal object of the reviewer’s attack, has deemed it needful to say in his defence. This is to be found in pp. 277 to 292 of a recent volume, entitled A Fragment on Mackintosh,^[†] where it is shown that the necessity of identification of interest between the rulers and the ruled, and the probability (amounting practically to certainty) that, in so far as that identification is incomplete, the rulers will pursue their separate interest, to the detriment of the ruled, has been recognised as the foundation of political wisdom by almost all its greatest masters, ancient and modern. Well may the writer exclaim—“It is mortifying to find one’s self under the necessity of vindicating the wisdom of ages” against what he calls (not too severely) “pitiful objections.”^[‡]

^aFrom^bthis^b principle, of the necessity of identifying the interest of the government with that of the people, most of the practical maxims of a representative government are corollaries. All popular institutions are means towards rendering the identity of interest more complete. We say more complete, because (and this it is important to remark) perfectly complete it can never be. An approximation is all that is, in the nature of things, possible. By pushing to its utmost extent the accountability of governments to the people, you indeed take away from them the power of prosecuting their own interests at the expense of the people by force, but you leave to them the whole range and compass of fraud. An attorney is accountable to his client, and removable at his client’s pleasure; but we should scarcely say that his interest is identical with that of his client. When the accountability is perfect, the interest of rulers approximates more and more to identity with that of the people, in proportion as the people are more enlightened. The identity would be perfect, only if the people were so wise, that it should no longer be practicable to employ deceit as an instrument of government: a point of advancement only one stage below that at which they could do without government altogether; at least, without force, and penal sanctions, not (of course) without guidance, and organized co-operation.

Identification of interest between the rulers and the ruled, being, therefore, in a literal sense, impossible to be realized, ^cmust not^c be spoken of as a condition which a government must absolutely fulfil; but as an end to be incessantly aimed at, and approximated to as nearly as circumstances render possible, and as is compatible with the regard due to other ends. For ^dthe^d identity of interest, even if it were wholly attainable, not being the sole requisite of good government, expediency may require that we should sacrifice some portion of it, or (to speak more precisely) content ourselves with a somewhat less approximation to it than might possibly be attainable, for the sake of some other end.

The only end, liable occasionally to conflict with that which we have been insisting on, and at all comparable to it in importance—the only other condition essential to good government—is this: That it be government by a select body, not by the ^epeople^e collectively: That political questions be not decided by an appeal, either direct or indirect, to the judgment or will of an uninstructed mass, whether of gentlemen or of clowns; but by the deliberately-formed opinions of a comparatively few, specially educated for the task. This is an element of good government which has existed, in a greater or less degree, in some aristocracies, though unhappily not in our own; and has been the cause of whatever reputation for prudent and skilful administration those governments have enjoyed. It has seldom been found in any aristocracies but those which were avowedly such. Aristocracies in the guise of monarchies (such as those of England and France) have very generally been aristocracies of idlers; while the others (such as Rome, Venice, and Holland) might partially be considered as aristocracies of experienced and laborious men. ^fBut of all governments, ancient or modern^f , the one by which this excellence is possessed in the most eminent degree is the government of Prussia—a ^gmost^g powerfully and ^hskilfully organized aristocracy of all^h the most highly educated men in the kingdom. The British government in India partakes (with considerable modifications) of the same character.

ⁱWhereⁱ this principle has been combined with other fortunate circumstances, and particularly (as in Prussia) with circumstances rendering the popularity of the government almost a necessary condition of its security, a very considerable degree of good government has occasionally been produced, ^jeven^j without any express accountability to the people. Such fortunate circumstances, however, are seldom to be reckoned upon. But though the principle of government by persons specially brought up to it will not suffice to produce good government, good government cannot be had without it; and the grand difficulty in politics will for a long time be, how best to conciliate the two great elements on which good government depends; to combine the greatest amount of the advantage derived from the independent judgment of a specially instructed ^kFew, with the greatest degree of the security for rectitude of purpose derived from rendering those Few responsible to the Many.

What is necessary, however, to make the two ends perfectly reconcilable, is a smaller matter than might at first sight be supposed. It is not necessary that the Many^k should themselves be perfectly wise; it is sufficient, if they be duly sensible of the value of superior wisdom. It is sufficient if they be aware, that the majority of political questions turn upon considerations of which they, and all persons not trained for the purpose, must necessarily be very imperfect judges; and that their judgment must in general be exercised rather upon the characters and talents of the persons whom they appoint to decide these questions for them, than upon the questions themselves. They would then select as their representatives those whom the general voice of the instructed pointed out as the most instructed; and would retain them, so long as no symptom was manifested in their conduct of being under the influence of interests or of feelings at variance with the public welfare. This implies no greater wisdom in the people than the very ordinary wisdom, of knowing what things they are and are not sufficient judges of. If the bulk of any nation possess a fair share of this wisdom, the argument for universal suffrage, so far as respects that people, is irresistible: for, the experience of ages, and especially of all great national emergencies, bears out the assertion, that whenever the multitude are really alive to the necessity of superior intellect, they rarely fail to distinguish those who possess it.^a

The opinions which we have been stating are substantially those of our author: from whose pages we now proceed to exemplify their application.

From the principle that the interest of the ruling body should be as closely as possible identified with that of the people, follow most of the conclusions respecting the constitution of the supreme legislature, which are commonly contended for by the thorough reformers. Such are—first, that the utmost possible publicity should be given to the proceedings of parliament: secondly, that its members should be elected at stated periods: thirdly, that these periods should be short; sufficiently so, to render the sense of responsibility a perpetual, not an occasional feeling. Our author thinks, with most of the complete reformers, that three years are “the longest period consistent with a salutary sense of accountableness.” (P. 203.) Fourthly, the votes at elections must be so taken, as to express the real sentiments of the electors, and not the sentiments merely of some person who has the means of bribing or of coercing them. This, where there are great inequalities of fortune, and where the majority of all classes but the richest are more or less in a dependent condition, requires that the votes be taken in secret. All these topics are handled in our author’s best manner. We shall quote one passage from near the end of the discussion on the ballot; and should have extended our quotation, had not the subject been so recently and so fully treated by ourselves.^[*] After replying to some of the common objections on the ballot, our author says—

We believe this to be a true picture of the feelings of at least the most powerful class among the enemies of popular institutions. Experience proves but too truly, that “to men accustomed to domineer over the wills of their fellow-creatures, it is intolerably irksome to be reduced to the necessity of appealing to their understandings.” The hands which have ruled by force will not submit to rule by persuasion. A generation at least must elapse, before an aristocracy will consent to seek by fair means the power they have been used to exercise by foul. And yet, their portion of importance under popular institutions is no niggardly one, unless made so by their own perverseness. In every country where there are rich and poor, the administration of public affairs would, even under the most democratic constitution, be mainly in the hands of the rich; as has been the case in all the republics of the old world, ancient and modern. Not only have the wealthy and leisured classes ten times the means of acquiring personal influence, ten times the means of acquiring intellectual cultivation, which any other person can bring into competition with them; but the very jealousies, supposed to be characteristic of democracy, conspire to the same result. Men are more jealous of being commanded by their equals in fortune and condition, than by their superiors. Political power will generally be the rich man’s privilege, as heretofore; but it will no longer be born with him, nor come to him, as heretofore, while he is asleep. He must not only resign all corrupt advantage from its possession, but he must pay the price for it of a life of labour. More than this: he must consent to associate with his poorer fellow-citizens, as if there existed between him and them something like human feelings, and must give over treating them as if they were a race to be kept coldly at a distance—a sort of beings connected with him by a less tie of sympathy than the brute animals of his household. Under really popular institutions, the higher classes must give up either this anti-social and inhuman feeling, or their political influence. Surely no good, hardly even any rational person, to whom the alternative was offered, would hesitate about the choice.

Is it not, then, a melancholy reflection, that in England (and in England, we believe, alone, among the great European nations) the youth of the aristocratic classes are even more intensely aristocratic than their fathers—more wedded to all that is most noxious in the privileges of their class—animated by a more violent hostility to those tendencies of their age, in accommodating themselves to which lies their sole chance of either being at ease in it, or exercising any beneficial influence over it? And how deeply ought this thought to impress upon us the necessity, the pressing and immediate necessity, of a radical reform in those institutions of education, which mould these youthful minds, and cherish, when they ought to counteract, the baneful influences exercised over them by the accident of their social position?

The question, Who should compose the constituency? is the next which presents itself. This is rather a more complicated question than any of the preceding, having to be decided by a compromise between conflicting considerations.

By making the members of the sovereign legislature elective, by sending them back to their constituents at short intervals, and by taking the votes in secret, we provide for the identity of their interest with that of the electors. But what if the interest of the electors differs from that of the community? We have then only an oligarchy of electors, instead of an oligarchy of senators. There is not the slightest reason for supposing that the former oligarchy will be less tenacious of its separate interest than the other, or less ready to sacrifice the public interest to it. Not only must the interest of the representatives be made, so far as possible, coincident with that of the electors, but the interest of the electors must be made coincident with the interest of the whole people.

If this principle were to be followed out, without limitation from any other principle, it would, we conceive, lead to universal suffrage. Imposing authorities, it is true, have held that a portion of the people may be found, much less than the whole, whose interest, so far as government is concerned, is identical with that of the whole. A portion might undoubtedly be found, less than the whole, whose interest would generally lie in good government, and only occasionally in bad. But complete identity of interest appears to us to be unattainable: (we are speaking, of course, as our argument requires, of selfish interest.)^* The identity which is contended for cannot be identity in all things, but only in those which properly fall within the province of government. The payers of wages, for instance, and the receivers, have opposite interests on the question of high or low wages; but as this is a question in which the interference of government cannot be really beneficial to either, the interest of both, so far as relates to the purposes of government, is (it may be contended) the same. Admitting, however (which is more than we are prepared to admit), that there exists no mode in which the middle classes could really benefit their selfish interests at the expense of the poorer class, by means of their exclusive possession of the government; still, when there is a real diversity of interest between two parties, although confined to matters with which law cannot beneficially interfere, and the powers of law are in the hands of one party, it is rarely that we do not witness some attempt, well or ill advised, to make those powers instrumental to the peculiar purposes of the one party; and if these purposes are not thereby compassed, yet the interests of the other party often suffer exceedingly by the means used to compass them. Such, for example, were the laws against combinations of workmen;^[*] and the laws which have existed at some periods of our history, fixing a maximum of wages. Nor is the evil annihilated although the excluded be a minority: the small number of the oppressed diminishes the profits of oppression, but does not always weaken the feelings which lead to it. Is the interest of the free blacks in the northern states of America the same with that of the whites? If so, why are they a kind of outcasts? So long, therefore, as any person capable of an independent will is excluded from the elective franchise, we cannot think that the evils of misgovernment, in so far as liable to arise from a diversity of interest between the ruling body and the community, are entirely guarded against.

There are, however, other evils to be contended with, besides those arising from diversity of interest; and granting, that, by the exclusion of one class from the suffrage, something must be given up of the identity of interest between the constituency and the entire community, yet if some purpose of more than equivalent utility be attained by the sacrifice, it may still be advisable. And this, in our author’s opinion, is the case. He proposes that a certain portion of identity of interest should be sacrificed, for the sake of obtaining a higher average degree of intelligence. That this is an object worth attaining at some cost, nobody will deny. A certain measure of intelligence in the electors is manifestly indispensable: a much larger measure would be eminently desirable; and if any test, even an approximative one, could be obtained of its existence, without trenching too much upon the identity of interest, the exclusion from the franchise of all who could not pass that test would add to the securities for good government. But when our author contends that such an approximative test may be found in the possession of a certain amount of property, we can only partially agree with him. It is but fair to quote the passage.

These propositions must, we think, be greatly qualified. They are true until we rise above the class which cannot read, or which never does read, and consequently takes no interest in political affairs; for though the intelligence of many people does not come to them by reading, the habit of applying that intelligence to public matters commonly does. But when, ascending in the scale, we reach a class which habitually reads, especially which reads newspapers, we suspect that we attain as high an average of intelligence as is to be found in any class not expressly bred and educated for some intellectual profession. We are speaking, of course, of England: in any country possessing a really national education, both for rich and poor, the case, we allow, would be different. But in this country, and at this time, between an average Birmingham gun-maker, an average London shopkeeper, and an average country gentleman, we suspect the differences of intelligence are more apparent than real. The land-holder, we find, has just as little foresight of the consequences of his actions; miscalculates as egregiously in his own conduct, both public and private; hates just as intensely all who, from however patriotic motives, set themselves against any of the things which he likes; despises as sincerely, under the name of theorists and visionaries, all who see farther than himself; is as incapable of feeling the force of any arguments which conflict with his own opinion of his immediate and direct interest. These are the tests of intelligence, and not the being able to repeat Propria quœ maribus.^[*] If the bulk of our operative manufacturers are to be excluded from the suffrage, it must be, we suspect, on quite other grounds than inferiority of intelligence to those who are permitted to exercise it.

We have never been able to understand why, if the real object in excluding poverty were to exclude ignorance and vice, the test should not be applied to ignorance and vice directly, and not to something which is a mere presumption of their existence. It would be easy to exclude all who cannot read, write, and cipher. If a higher test be desirable, there would be no great difficulty in contriving it. If there were here (as there are in Prussia, and as there would be in every country where the good of the people was cared for) schools for all, under the superintendence of the state, the test might be a certificate from the teacher at the public or some other school, of having passed creditably through it. A test of morality would, in the present state of society, be not so easy to devise; something, however, might be done towards it. To have been seen drunk, during the year previous, might be a disqualification at the annual registry. To have received parish relief during the same time, might be equally so. Conviction for any criminal offence might disqualify for a longer period, or for ever.

The most rational argument which we can conceive, for the exclusion of those who are called persons of no property, would be founded, not on inferiority of intellect, but on difference in apparent interest. All classes (it might be said) are in a most imperfect state of intelligence and knowledge; so much so, that they cannot be expected to be, and, as experience shows, hardly ever are, accessible to any views of their own ultimate interest which rest upon a train of reasoning. Since, then, it is certain that those who enjoy the franchise will exercise it in the manner dictated, not by their real and distant, but by their apparent and immediate interest, let us at least select, as the depositaries of power, those whose apparent and immediate interest is allied with the great principles on which society rests, the security of property, and the maintenance of the authority of law. These, we are sure, are safe in the hands of the possessors of property: an equal regard for them on the part of those without property would suppose a much higher degree of intelligence, since the latter benefit by them so much less obviously and directly, though not less really, than the former.

This places the question on a distinct and tangible issue; namely, whether the body of the operatives, or that portion of the body whom the rest follow, do in fact entertain opinions or feelings at variance with any of the primary principles of good government. This is a question not of argument, but of fact; and as such we think the question of universal suffrage ought always to be considered. That the prevalence of such mischievous opinions and feelings, and the difficulty of eradicating them where they exist, are vastly exaggerated, we have good reason to be assured: to what extent they really are entertained, we have no means of accurately knowing; and our belief is, that almost all persons of what are called the educated classes, if they have any opinion on the point, have it without evidence.

Happily there is no necessity for a speedy decision of the question. Many important things are yet to be done, before universal suffrage can even be brought seriously into discussion: and it will probably never be introduced, unless preceded by such improvements in popular education as will greatly weaken the apprehensions at present entertained of it. The middle classes, too, if freed from the coercive power of the rich, have an interest absolutely identical with that of the community on all the questions likely to engage much of the attention of parliament for many years to come; and no one is disposed to deny that we ought cautiously to feel our way, and watch well the consequences of each extension of the suffrage before venturing upon another. With a people like the English, whose feelings are not apt to be kindled by an abstract principle, but only by a practical grievance, very ordinary prudence would enable us to stop short at the point where good government is practically attained.

We return to the volume before us, from which we shall not again permit ourselves to stray so far.

Our author brings forward, with the prominence which justly belongs to them, several of the requisites of a well-constituted representative government, the importance of which is still far from being adequately felt. One is, that the supreme legislature should be relieved from the weight of purely local business which now oppresses it, by the establishment of subordinate representative assemblies.

On this question, which has already occupied ourselves, and to which we shall return again and again, this is not the place to enlarge.

Another change for which our author earnestly contends, is a large reduction in the numbers of the House of Commons. This had already been advocated by Mr. Bulwer, in his England and the English,^[*] and was one of the many points in which that valuable work was in advance of the public mind. “Large assemblies,” our author justly observes [p. 161], “are unfit for deliberation;” and the immense consumption of the time of parliament, and neglect of the real business of the nation, which arises from the struggles of several hundred men, of few ideas and many words, to give their vocabulary an airing, is gradually forcing upon thinking persons the conviction, that, as our author proposes, the House should be reduced to one-half or one-third of its present numbers. A step, though but a small one, was made towards this important improvement by the first Reform Bill,^[†] which broke in upon the magical number, 658; and it is to be regretted that the principle was given up, in deference to the most hypocritical clamour ever raised by Tories under the false pretence of zeal for popular rights. To diminish the number of the members of the House of Commons was treated as diminishing the amount of popular representation! As well might it be said, that the Spartans had twice as much government as we have, because they had two kings, while we have but one. Popular government does not consist in having the work done by more hands than are necessary to do it, but in having those hands, whether few or many, subject to popular control.

To the other strong reasons for reducing the numbers of the House, will sooner or later be added one of economy. We mean, of course, when the members are paid—a change to which we shall certainly come, and of which our author is a warm advocate:

In nearly all ages and countries, popular governments have found it for their interest that all the functionaries whom they employ should be paid. The unpaid is apt to become the self-paid, and to cost dearest of all: his work, at the best, is dilettante work, and is put aside from the smallest call of business or pleasure. Moreover, an unpaid legislature and an unpaid magistracy are institutions essentially aristocratic: contrivances for keeping legislation and judicature in the hands exclusively of those who can afford to serve without pay. This in itself may seem but a small consideration: the important matter is not by whom we are governed, but how:—with due securities for their being properly qualified, we should not complain, although the whole legislature were composed of millionnaires. But those securities are themselves weakened, by narrowing the range of the people’s choice. It is matter of general remark, how few able men have appeared of late years in parliament. What wonder? when, of the able men whom the country produces, nine-tenths at least are of the class who cannot serve without pay; and, for the first time since the constitution assumed its modern form, the members of the House of Commons are now practically unpaid. The rich have advantages in their leisure, and command of the means of instruction, which will render it easy for them, whenever they exert themselves, to be the ablest men in the community. That they do not take this trouble, is precisely because they are not exposed to the competition of the non-rich. Let in that competition upon them, if you would have them improve. In political, as in all other occupations, if you would stimulate exertion, you must throw open all monopolies.

If the members of the legislature were paid, legislation would become—what, to be well discharged, it must become—a profession: the study and the occupation of a laborious life. On this point our author’s remarks are well worthy of an attentive perusal:

Our author carries the practical application of this doctrine so far, as to propose (though, as he says, with some diffidence) that freedom from other business or professional avocation should be an indispensable qualification for being chosen a member of parliament. There is no doubt that it ought to be a strong recommendation, but we would not exact it by express law. It will occasionally happen, though, under a better system, much less often than at present, that half the time of one competitor is of more value than the whole time of another; and when the electoral body is rightly constituted, we know not why its choice should be fettered. We would not give power by handfuls with one hand, and take it back in spoonfuls with the other. If the people can be trusted at all, it is not in the estimation of these obvious grounds of disqualification that they are likely to be found deficient.^* In the present state of society, the effect of the provision which our author desires to introduce would, we fear, be seriously mischievous: it would throw the whole business of legislation, and of control over the executive, into the hands of the idlers; excluding from parliament almost the only persons who bring habits of application and capacity for business into it. This objection, no doubt, would not exist, or at least not in the same degree, under the increased responsibility to the people which our author’s argument contemplates.

Neither would we, with our author [p. 181], require as a legal qualification “maturity of years,” beyond that which is now required. It will not, we suppose, be denied that a young man may render good service in Parliament; and if so, it may be that you have no other person who will render it as well. It might be proper enough to treat youth as a disqualification, if we were sure of finding old men suitable to our purpose: but considering the scarcity of fit men at any age, and the abundance of unfit men at all ages, we would not risk depriving ourselves of even one of the former for the sake of shutting out myriads of the latter. If your electors are likely persons to choose an unfit man, no sweeping rule of exclusion will prevent them from finding one. Nor do we see in so strong a light as our author the danger to be guarded against. It is not probable that, under any system but one of private nomination, very young men would ever compose any considerable proportion of the legislature: already the Reform Bill is understood to have excluded from the House most of the idle young men of family who formerly composed so large a portion of it: when, too, provincial assemblies, properly representative of the people, shall have been established, young men will serve their apprenticeship to public business there rather than in parliament. Those who are chosen in spite of so strong a ground of just prejudice, are likely to be among the ablest of their years; and, at least in an age of movement, it is not among young men that the greatest measure of political incapacity is usually found. It is true, as our author says, that “in legislation, as in other arts, there is a tact, a nicety of judgment, an intuitive apprehension of the relations of things, a wisdom which age, indeed, does not always bring, but which age alone can bestow.” [P. 180.] But the young members will not be called upon to be the actual framers of laws: they will only assist in judging of them. The general spirit and direction of the proceedings of the House will be determined by that immense majority of its members who will always be persons of mature years; and it would not be altogether useless to counteract the apathy and prejudice of age by a small infusion even of the conceit and dogmatism of youth. Age is naturally conservative, and unless some weight be placed in the other scale, there will be danger lest the timid and sluggish should give too much of their character to the entire mass.

Our author strongly condemns the degrading practice of canvassing. In a healthy state of moral feeling, to solicit an elector would be deemed an exactly similar insult to that of soliciting a juror.

We can add nothing to this masterly exposure.

Our author is no less decided in his condemnation of the practice of giving instructions to representatives, and of requiring pledges from candidates. We fully concur in his sentiments. The business of the constituency is to select as their representative the person best qualified, morally and intellectually, to form a sound judgment of his own on political questions; and having done this, they are not to require him to act according to their judgment, any more than they require a physician to prescribe for them according to their own notions of medicine.

We consider this point, as we have intimated in a former passage, to be fundamental; and to constitute, in reality, the test whether a people be ripe for the sound exercise of the power of complete control over their governors, or not. The parallel holds exactly between the legislator and the physician. The people themselves, whether of the high or the low classes, are, or might be, sufficiently qualified to judge, by the evidence which might be brought before them, of the merits of different physicians, whether for the body politic or natural; but it is utterly impossible that they should be competent judges of different modes of treatment. They can tell that they are ill; and that is as much as can rationally be expected from them. Intellects specially educated for the task are necessary to discover and apply the remedy.

But though the principle that electors are to judge of men, and representatives of measures (as a king or a minister appoints a general, but does not instruct him when and how to fight) is of the very essence of a representative government, we cannot dissemble the fact, that it is a principle almost entirely inapplicable to the peculiar situation of this kingdom at the present moment. How can electors be required to repose in their representatives any trust which they can possibly withhold, when, for the purpose of purifying a political system which swarms with abuses, the circumstances of society oblige them to employ as their agents men of the very classes for whose benefit all abuses exist, and of whose disposition to reform any one particle of those abuses which it is possible to preserve they feel the most well-grounded doubts? Who can blame the exaction of pledges from such a man as the honorable member for St. Andrew’s,^[*] under the circumstances in which those pledges were exacted?^* We assume, of course, that the constituency had not the option of electing a better man. If they had, they have themselves to blame for not making use of it. For, in the words of a passage quoted by our author from Roscommon’s Letters for the Press—“When we have to employ our fellow-creatures in any office, we should in general act more wisely were we to choose those who possess qualities adapted to it, than were we to attempt to bend unsuitable qualities to our purposes, by the force of motives applied for the occasion.”^[*]