Considerations on Representative GovernmentMill, John Stuart
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Considerations on Representative Government
Mill, John Stuart
Representative government and representation
that the manual laborer, whose employment is a routine, and whose way
of life brings him in contact with no variety of impressions,
circumstances, or ideas, is taught that remote causes, and events
which take place far off, have a most sensible effect even on his
personal interests; and it is from political discussion and collective
political action that one whose daily occupations concentrate his
interests in a small circle round himself, learns to feel for and with
his fellow-citizens, and becomes consciously a member of a great
community. But political discussions fly over the heads of those who
have no votes, and are not endeavouring to acquire them. Their
position, in comparison with the electors, is that of the audience in
a court of justice compared with the twelve men in the jury-box. It is
not _their_ suffrages that are asked, it is not their opinion that is
sought to be influenced; the appeals are made, the arguments
addressed, to others than them; nothing depends on the decision _they_
may arrive at, and there is no necessity and very little inducement to
them to come to any. Whoever, in an otherwise popular government, has
no vote, and no prospect of obtaining it, will either be a permanent
malcontent, or will feel as one whom the general affairs of society do
not concern; for whom they are to be managed by others; who "has no
business with the laws except to obey them," nor with public interests
and concerns except as a looker-on. What he will know or care about
them from this position may partly be measured by what an average
woman of the middle class knows and cares about politics compared with
her husband or brothers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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