J. S. Mill and Democracy, 1829–61. I
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1957.tb00962.x |
| Published date | 01 June 1957 |
| Date | 01 June 1957 |
| Author | J. H. Burns |
| Subject Matter | Article |
J.
S.
MILL
AND
DEMOCRACY,
1829-61.l
I
J.
H.
BURNS
University
of
Aberdeen
IN
the preface to his
Considerations
on
Representative Government,
Mill
warns those who have read his earlier writings that they
will probably receive
no
strong impression
of
novelty from the present volume;
for
the principles are those
to
which
1
have been working
up
during
the
greater
part
of
my
life,
and most
of
the
practical suggestions have been anticipated by
others
or
by
myself?
It is proposed here to survey this lifelong process of ‘working up’, in which,
it is submitted, the nature of Mill’s political thought can be better appre-
ciated than in the
Representative Government
itself. Justice to Mill as a
political thinker cannot be done without close observation
of
the several
strands which he endeavoured
to
weave into a coherent theory of represen-
tative government.
The process to be studied falls into three main phases, roughly equal in
length, though unequal in importance and
in
abundance of evidence
for
Mill’s changing views. The first phase runs from
1829
(a point
of
departure
to be explained presently) to 1840, when
Mill
gave up his ownership
of
the
London and Westminster Review;
the second from 1840 to
1849,
when he
published his defence
of
the French Revolution
of
1848; and the third from
1849 to the publication of the
Considerations
in 1861.
I
have to thank the authorities
of
the following libraries for permission to quote from
MSS.
in their possession, and their librarians and staffs
for
the courteous assistance
I
have
received: National Library of Scotland;
King’s
College, Cambridge; British Library
of
Political and Economic Science. The following abbreviations are used in subsequent foot-
notes:
Considerations: Utilitarianism. Liberty, and Representative Government,
by John Stuart
DD: Dissertations and Discussions.
.
.
,
by John Stuart Mill
(4
vols.), 2nd edn., London,
ER: Edinburgh Review.
Elliot:
The Letters
of
John
Stuart
Mill,
ed.
Hugh
S.
R.
Elliot
(2
vols.), London,
1910.
Hayek:
John
Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor.
.
,
,
by
F.
A,
Hayek, London,
1951.
LR:
London
Review.
LWR: London and Westminster Review.
M-T Coll.: Mill-Taylor Collection in British Library
of
Political and Economic Science
OPC
vi
(1):
Eitvres. papiers
et
correspondances d’Alexis de Tocqueville,
ed. J.-P. Mayer,
WR: Westminsrer Review.
Mill (Everyman’s Library edn.).
1867,1875.
(Roman numerals refer to volumes, Arabic
to
items).
tome vi,
vol.
1,
Paris,
1954.
Considerations,
p.
173.
Political
Studies,
Vol.
V,
No.
2
(1957.
158-175).
J.
H.
BURNS
159
I
By 1829 Mill was emerging from the worst after-effects
of
the ‘mental
crisis’
of
1826. He was making new contacts and assimilating new ways of
thought. Coleridge, the St. Simonians, and even the despised Macaulay’s
attack on his father’s
Essay
on
Government
in the
Edinburgh
Review
conspired to induce a gradual revaluation of the political orthodoxy he
had taken for granted since boyhood. Only slowly, however, did he diverge
from accepted Radical principles and policies
so
far as representation was
concerned. In the debate on Montesquieu in which he opposed John
Sterling shortly before the latter’s resignation from the London Debating
Society, he defended as ‘a universal principle in politics’ the requirement
that that body which, like the
House
of
Commons
in
this country, holds substan-
tially in
its
own
hands
the
governing power
should
be
chosen
by,
and
accountable
to, some portion or other of the people
whose
interest
is
not materially different
from that of the whole,’
treating such matters as universal suffrage and short parliaments as being
dependent on varying circumstances. When the July Revolution of the
following year inaugurated
a
decade
of
intensive political activity for Mill,
his earliest appearances were in the role of a defender
of
the Radical posi-
tion. Thus in the
Examiner
in November and December 1830, he put for-
ward
a
straightforward defence of a central plank in the Radical platform
-the ballot. Both in his defence and in his discrimination between cases
(such
as
the election
of
representatives ‘under a really popular system’)
where ‘the ballot is indispensable’ and cases (such as voting by represen-
tatives in the assembly) where secrecy would destroy the essential respon-
sibility
of
elected to electors, Mill was following his father, whose
History
of
British India
he quotes at length in support.2
Only six weeks later, however, the first of a series
of
essays on ‘The Spirit
of the Age’ indicated the direction in which Mill’s mind was moving. One
sentence from the third of these will serve to suggest how Mill’s general
frame
of
mind at this time affected his attitude to politics:
Society may
be
said
to
be in its natural state, when worldly power, and moral
influence, are habitually and undisputably exercised by the fittest persons whom
the existing state
of
Society
afford^.^
For the rest of Mill’s life, it may be said, the central problem in politics was
’
Appendix
to Autobiography
by John Stuart Mill, World’s Classics edn., p. 308.
For
’
Cf.
Examiner,
28
Nov.
1830, pp.
754-5;
also
5
Dec. 1830, p. 769, and 12 Dec. 1830,
approximate date
of
this speech, cf. Elliot,
i.
1-3:
Mill to Sterling,
15
Apr. 1829.
pp.
786-7.
The Spirit
of
the Age,
ed.
F.
A. Hayek, Chicago, 1942, p. 35.
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