Considerations on Representative GovernmentMill, John Stuart
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Considerations on Representative Government
Mill, John Stuart
Representative government and representation
In a sense somewhat more enlarged, Order means the preservation of
peace by the cessation of private violence. Order is said to exist
where the people of the country have, as a general rule, ceased to
prosecute their quarrels by private force, and acquired the habit of
referring the decision of their disputes and the redress of their
injuries to the public authorities. But in this larger use of the
term, as well as in the former narrow one, Order expresses rather one
of the conditions of government, than either its purpose or the
criterion of its excellence; for the habit may be well established of
submitting to the government, and referring all disputed matters to
its authority, and yet the manner in which the government deals with
those disputed matters, and with the other things about which it
concerns itself, may differ by the whole interval which divides the
best from the worst possible.
If we intend to comprise in the idea of Order all that society
requires from its government which is not included in the idea of
Progress, we must define Order as the preservation of all kinds and
amounts of good which already exist, and Progress as consisting in the
increase of them. This distinction does comprehend in one or the other
section every thing which a government can be required to promote.
But, thus understood, it affords no basis for a philosophy of
government. We can not say that, in constituting a polity, certain
provisions ought to be made for Order and certain others for Progress,
since the conditions of Order, in the sense now indicated, and those
of Progress, are not opposite, but the same. The agencies which tend
to preserve the social good which already exists are the very same
which promote the increase of it, and _vice versâ_, the sole
difference being, that a greater degree of those agencies is required
for the latter purpose than for the former.
What, for example, are the qualities in the citizens individually
which conduce most to keep up the amount of good conduct, of good
management, of success and prosperity, which already exist in society?
Every body will agree that those qualities are industry, integrity,
justice, and prudence. But are not these, of all qualities, the most
conducive to improvement? and is not any growth of these virtues in
the community in itself the greatest of improvements? If so, whatever
qualities in the government are promotive of industry, integrity,
justice, and prudence, conduce alike to permanence and to progression,
only there is needed more of those qualities to make the society
decidedly progressive than merely to keep it permanent.
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