Fighting electoral corruption in the Victorian era: An overlooked dimension of John Stuart Mill’s political thought
| Author | William Selinger |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885116664018 |
| Published date | 01 July 2019 |
| Date | 01 July 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
European Journal of Political Theory
2019, Vol. 18(3) 415–436
!The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885116664018
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Article
Fighting electoral corruption
in the Victorian era:
An overlooked dimension
of John Stuart Mill’s
political thought
William Selinger
Harvard University Committee on Degrees in Social Studies, USA
Abstract
For nearly half a century John Stuart Mill was a major critic of the forms of electoral
corruption prevalent in Victorian England. Yet this political commitment has been largely
overlooked by scholars. This article offers the first synoptic account of Mill’s writings
against corruption. It argues that Mill’s opposition to corruption was not accidental or
temperamental, but sprung from fundamental principles of his political thought. It also
shows that Mill’s opposition to electoral corruption put him at odds with other leading
liberal thinkers of his era, who thought that the existing ways in which wealth influenced
elections had positive effects – or at the very least that they did not impede a healthy
electoral contest from taking place. Mill’s fervent intent to eliminate corruption also
distinguishes him from many liberal theorists today, who either do not write about
electoral corruption, or consider it an issue to be managed and lived-with. Reflecting
on Mill’s political thought alongside other liberal thinkers raises the question of whether
liberal states can draw a definitive line between prevalent forms of corruption and legit-
imate modes of political action, and eliminate the former, or whether we must regard
corruption as among the constitutive dilemmas of a liberal politics.
Keywords
John Stuart Mill, corruption, liberalism, elections, representative government, democracy
In Victorian England, no less than in the twenty-first century United States, elect-
oral corruption was among the most prominent topics of political discussion.
There were frequent debates over the politically motivated use of government
Corresponding author:
William Selinger, Harvard University Committee on Degrees in Social Studies, Third Floor, 33 Kirkland Street,
Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
Email: selingerw@gmail.com
patronage, over the role of aristocrats in the electoral system, and over candidates
making use of private money to sway voters. Each of these practices – government
patronage, aristocratic influence and private campaign finance – had its defenders.
But each was also labelled and attacked as a form of corruption. For these were
three of the most common ways that a voter or representative came to be depend-
ent during an election upon the wealth of another political actor, and dependent in
such a way that their ability to make judgments and decisions seemed, according to
critics, to be deeply compromised.
One of the most striking facts about John Stuart Mill is that he was uncom-
promisingly opposed to all three of these forms of corruption. Fighting corruption
was among Mill’s signature political commitments, and it was one that he held for
his entire life. Many of Mill’s earliest political speeches from the 1820s are about
the influence of landed aristocrats in England’s electoral system. Over the next
three decades, Mill would continue to attack the role of the aristocracy in
English elections, but he also wrote against government patronage, and the private
financing of campaigns. As a representative in the House of Commons in 1867,
Mill fought for the strictest possible campaign finance legislation: he sought to ban
nearly all private money from English elections.
Mill’s attempts to address electoral corruption have been occasionally noted by
scholars, but not in any proportion to their significance in his writings (Kelly, 2011:
204–210). Despite being among the major issues he reflected on, and wrote about,
corruption does not feature as an important theme in standard works on Mill’s
political thought (Ryan, 1970; Thompson, 1976; Urbinati, 2002). Indeed one of the
most perceptive commentators on Victorian liberalism has gone so far as to state
that Mill did not partake of the supposedly ‘eighteenth century’ concern with cor-
ruption at all (Burrow, 1988: 107). At present, there exists no thorough treatment
of Mill’s lifelong efforts against corruption. The aim of this article is threefold. It is
first, to provide such a treatment; second, to show that Mill’s opposition to cor-
ruption was not incidental, but rather was premised upon foundational principles
of his political theory; and third, to situate Mill’s writings against corruption within
the expansive nineteenth-century debate over that issue. A crucial fact about
Mill’s theory of representative government, I will argue, is that dependence
based on money, property and patronage has absolutely no legitimate role to
play in elections.
In the first two sections of this article, I examine Mill’s writings against aristo-
cratic electoral influence, government patronage and private campaign finance.
I connect Mill’s arguments to two of the most famous principles of his political
theory. First, that the ideal of good government is to maximise the greatest possible
amount of popular participation consistent with the most skilled and competent
leadership. Second, that representative government is fundamentally deliberative in
nature: the most important function of a representative assembly is to lead a wide-
ranging discussion about the ends and purposes of policy in which the entire nation
becomes involved. I will show that Mill saw government patronage, aristocratic
influence and private electoral spending as transgressing both principles.
These forms of corruption led to individuals arriving at positions of power on
416 European Journal of Political Theory 18(3)
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