Considerations on Representative GovernmentMill, John Stuart
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Considerations on Representative Government
Mill, John Stuart
Representative government and representation
has hitherto met with from the ruling authorities, it is impossible
that more or less of the spirit should not perpetually break out. The
government, itself free from this spirit, is never able sufficiently
to keep it down in the young and raw even of its own civil and
military officers, over whom it has so much more control than over the
independent residents. As it is with the English in India, so,
according to trustworthy testimony, it is with the French in Algiers;
so with the Americans in the countries conquered from Mexico; so it
seems to be with the Europeans in China, and already even in Japan:
there is no necessity to recall how it was with the Spaniards in South
America. In all these cases, the government to which these private
adventurers are subject is better than they, and does the most it can
to protect the natives against them. Even the Spanish government did
this, sincerely and earnestly, though ineffectually, as is known to
every reader of Mr. Helps' instructive history. Had the Spanish
government been directly accountable to Spanish opinion, we may
question if it would have made the attempt, for the Spaniards,
doubtless, would have taken part with their Christian friends and
relations rather than with pagans. The settlers, not the natives, have
the ear of the public at home; it is they whose representations are
likely to pass for truth, because they alone have both the means and
the motive to press them perseveringly upon the inattentive and
uninterested public mind. The distrustful criticism with which
Englishmen, more than any other people, are in the habit of scanning
the conduct of their country towards foreigners, they usually reserve
for the proceedings of the public authorities. In all questions
between a government and an individual, the presumption in every
Englishman's mind is that the government is in the wrong. And when the
resident English bring the batteries of English political action to
bear upon any of the bulwarks erected to protect the natives against
their encroachments, the executive, with their real but faint
velleities of something better, generally find it safer to their
Parliamentary interest, and, at any rate, less troublesome, to give up
the disputed position than to defend it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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