Five-minute digest
Considerations on Representative Government
Summary
Considerations on Representative Government, published in London in 1861, is John Stuart Mill's full treatment of how a free people should be governed. Written in the years of debate over a second Reform Act, it gathers ideas Mill had developed in Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform (1859) and in his reading of Thomas Hare's scheme of proportional representation. The library text is the complete work from Project Gutenberg, with Mill's preface and eighteen chapters. The first three chapters lay the foundation. Chapter I argues that forms of government are matters of choice, but only within limits: a people must be willing to accept a constitution, willing and able to keep it going, and able to do what it requires. Chapter II judges every government by two tests: how far it promotes the virtue and intelligence of the people, and how well it uses the good qualities they already have. Chapter III concludes that the ideally best government is representative, in which sovereignty rests with the whole community and citizens take an occasional part in public duties. Such government protects each person's rights by giving him a voice, and it forms an active, self-helping character instead of a passive one. Chapter IV admits that some peoples are not yet suited to it. Chapter V separates controlling the government from doing its work: a large assembly is unfit to draft laws or administer, but it should watch and check the executive, serve as the nation's Committee of Grievances and Congress of Opinions, and leave detailed lawmaking to a small commission of skilled drafters. Chapter VI names two dangers, a low level of ability in the representative body and legislation in the interest of a single class. The middle chapters are Mill's practical programme. Chapter VII argues for representing minorities in proportion to their numbers by Hare's system of personal representation. Chapter VIII asks for a very wide suffrage, with literacy and arithmetic required of voters, plural votes for the better educated, and votes for women, since sex is as irrelevant to political rights as height or hair colour. Later chapters prefer direct to indirect election, defend open voting as a public trust, examine the length of parliaments and pledges from members, and discuss second chambers. Chapters XIV and XV treat the executive, which should be appointed for skill and held responsible, and local government as a school of public spirit. Chapter XVI argues that free institutions require a shared national feeling; Chapter XVII examines federal unions such as the United States and Switzerland. Chapter XVIII discusses how a free state should govern its dependencies, distinguishing settled territories ripe for self-government from India, where Mill, a long-serving official of the East India Company, defended rule by an experienced administration accountable to Parliament.
Top Lessons
Institutions should make citizens better
Mill's test of a government is not only whether it keeps order but whether it raises the virtue and intelligence of its people. Self-government is valuable because it draws citizens out of private concerns, gives them public duties, and forms an active rather than a passive character.
Control is different from administration
Chapter V argues that a large elected assembly is good at watching, questioning and removing a government and at airing every opinion, but bad at drafting laws or managing affairs. Each body should do the work it is fitted for.
Majorities and minorities
Mill holds that a democracy which gives every seat to the majority leaves part of the people without a voice. His support for Hare's system and his worry about class legislation both aim at a government in which no single group, rich or poor, rules alone.
Voting as a public trust
Mill treats the vote as a power over others that must be used for the public good. That is why he asks that voters be able to read, write and reckon, proposes extra votes for proven education, and argues that voting should be open to public view.
Verified Quotes
“the most important point of excellence which any form of government can possess is to promote the virtue and intelligence of the people themselves.”
“the ideally best form of government is that in which the sovereignty, or supreme controlling power in the last resort, is vested in the entire aggregate of the community”
“Instead of the function of governing, for which it is radically unfit, the proper office of a representative assembly is to watch and control the government”
“to be at once the nation's Committee of Grievances and its Congress of Opinions”
“In a really equal democracy, every or any section would be represented, not disproportionately, but proportionately.”
“I regard it as wholly inadmissible that any person should participate in the suffrage without being able to read, write, and, I will add, perform the common operations of arithmetic.”
“I consider it to be as entirely irrelevant to political rights as difference in height or in the color of the hair.”
“Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities.”
Medical Lens
A treatise on political institutions with no medical content. Mill's account of his own early depression appears in his Autobiography, not in this book.