be found in political literature, and it still retains that position. It was first published in 1861, so the world's experience for over sixty turbulent years is now available for testing the value of his statements and the soundness of his principles. There is then a manifest advantage in using the scheme of his work as the basis for the present examination of the subject and such will be the method that will be pursued in the following chapters.

CHAPTER III

PREREQUISITES OF REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT

MACAULAY'S criticism of James Mill was particularly effective in showing by historical instances that what upon theory should have been bad government was actually good, while what ought to have been good was actually bad. Furthermore, Macaulay flatly asserted that "it is utterly impossible to deduce the science of government from the principles of human nature," so variable is human nature. On this ground he denied intrinsic excellence to any form of government. It was all a matter of practical convenience, the means of which might well vary in time and place.

The opening chapters of John Stuart Mill's treatise reflects his study of the points made by Macaulay, and in the main he concedes them. "Even personal slavery, by giving a commencement to industrial life, and enforcing it as the exclusive occupation of the most numerous portion of the community, may accelerate the transition to a better freedom than that of fighting and rapine." The institutions of a people should

be suitable to their stage of advancement. "The recognition of this truth," he remarked, "may be regarded as the main point of superiority in the political theories of the present above those of the last age; in which it was customary to claim representative democracy for England and France by arguments which would equally have proved it the only fit form of government for Bedouins or Malays." He observed that human society "in point of culture and development ranges downwards to a condition very little above the highest beasts." People who have been accustomed to a state of savage independence are practically incapable of making any progress in civilization until they have been taught obedience to authority, and in such case "the constitution of the government must be nearly, or quite, despotic."

These are large allowances, particularly as coming from a liberal leader, and in making them Mill seemed to have gone over to Macaulay's side, agreeing with him that government is a product of social forces and reflects their character and distribution. But Mill went on to argue that this does not wholly exclude the element of choice as regards form of government, if it is possible to alter the distribution of social forces by thought and effort. "Politically speaking," he said, "a great part of all power consists

in will," and he cited historical instances showing how far mere physical and economic power is from being the whole of social power.

He summed up his argument as follows:

"It is what men think that determines how they act; and though the persuasions and convictions of average men are in a much greater degree determined by their personal position than by reason, no little power is exercised over them by the persuasions and convictions of those whose personal position is different, and by the united authority of the instructed. When, therefore, the instructed in general can be brought to recognize one social arrangement, or political or other institution, as good, and another as bad, one as desirable, another as condemnable, very much has been done towards giving to the one, or withdrawing from the other, that preponderance of social force which enables it to subsist. And the maxim that the government of a country is what the social forces in existence compel it to be, is true only in the sense in which it favors, instead of discouraging, the attempt to exercise, among all the forms of government practicable in the existing condition of society, a rational choice."

The question which Mill considered is the same that Alexander Hamilton raised in 1787 in recommending the adoption of the constitution of the United States. As he put it, it is "whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and

choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force." It is generally considered that the most satisfactory answer to this question that history affords was given by what then happened, but when the matter is closely examined there seems to have been more in it of accident and force than is entirely agreeable to the notion of reflection and choice. For one thing, the electorate whose action decided the issue was closely limited by the property qualifications on the suffrage which then existed, and what was chiefly urged was the interest of this electorate in having additional security against spoliation. "The passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint." " "The safety and happiness of society are the objects at which all political institutions aim, and to which all such institutions must be sacrificed." Although reasonable grounds were set forth with great power and influence, yet it is now clear that the constitution was adopted, and the national government set up, through dexterous concentrations of interest. Selection of the site of the national capital was the pivot on which turned the financing of the government, without which the new constitution would have been as

2

1 Hamilton in No. 15 of The Federalist.

2 Madison in No. 43.