Considerations on Representative GovernmentMill, John Stuart
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Considerations on Representative Government
Mill, John Stuart
Representative government and representation
Take, again, such a familiar case as that of a good system of taxation
and finance. This would generally be classed as belonging to the
province of Order. Yet what can be more conducive to Progress? A
financial system which promotes the one, conduces, by the very same
excellences, to the other. Economy, for example, equally preserves the
existing stock of national wealth, and favors the creation of more. A
just distribution of burdens, by holding up to every citizen an
example of morality and good conscience applied to difficult
adjustments, and an evidence of the value which the highest
authorities attach to them, tends in an eminent degree to educate the
moral sentiments of the community, both in respect of strength and of
discrimination. Such a mode of levying the taxes as does not impede
the industry, or unnecessarily interfere with the liberty of the
citizen, promotes, not the preservation only, but the increase of the
national wealth, and encourages a more active use of the individual
faculties. And _vice versâ_, all errors in finance and taxation which
obstruct the improvement of the people in wealth and morals, tend
also, if of sufficiently serious amount, positively to impoverish and
demoralize them. It holds, in short, universally, that when Order and
Permanence are taken in their widest sense for the stability of
existing advantages, the requisites of Progress are but the requisites
of Order in a greater degree; those of Permanence merely those of
Progress in a somewhat smaller measure.
In support of the position that Order is intrinsically different from
Progress, and that preservation of existing and acquisition of
additional good are sufficiently distinct to afford the basis of a
fundamental classification, we shall perhaps be reminded that Progress
may be at the expense of Order; that while we are acquiring, or
striving to acquire, good of one kind, we may be losing ground in
respect to others; thus there may be progress in wealth, while there
is deterioration in virtue. Granting this, what it proves is, not that
Progress is generically a different thing from Permanence, but that
wealth is a different thing from virtue. Progress is permanence and
something more; and it is no answer to this to say that Progress in
one thing does not imply Permanence in every thing. No more does
Progress in one thing imply Progress in every thing. Progress of any
kind includes Permanence in that same kind: whenever Permanence is
sacrificed to some particular kind of Progress, other Progress is
still more sacrificed to it; and if it be not worth the sacrifice, not
the interest of Permanence alone has been disregarded, but the general
interest of Progress has been mistaken.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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