MILL: John Stuart Mill, Representative Government

Mill wrote:
“…The people for whole the form of government is intended must be willing to accept it; {snip}... They must be willing and able to do what is necessary to keep it standing. And they must be willing and able to do what it requires of them to enable it to fulfil its purposes.”
John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, p 329


Mill wrote:
“Thus a people may prefer a free government, but if, from indolence, or carelessness or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it; if they will not fight for it when it is directly attacked; if they can be deluded… {snip}… by momentary discouragement, or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual, they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet even of a great man, or trust him with powers,…{snip}…in all these cases they are more or less unfit for liberty: and though it may be for their good to have had it even for a short time, they are unlikely long to enjoy it.”
John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, p 329

Mill wrote:
“Again, a people must be considered unfit for more than a limited and qualified freedom who will not co-operate actively with the law and the public authorities in the repression of evil-doers. A people who are more disposed to shelter a criminal than to apprehend him; … {snip} … rather that take the trouble to expose themselves to vindictiveness by giving evidence against him…”
John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, p 329


Mill wrote:
“Familiarity is a great help, but such dwelling on an idea will make it familiar, even when strange at first.”
John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, p 330


Mill wrote:
“One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.”
John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, p 332


Mill wrote:
“They who can succeed in creating a general persuasion that a certain form of government or social fact of any kind, deserves to be preferred, have made nearly the most important step which can possibly be taken towards ranging the powers of society on its side.”
John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, p 332



Mill wrote:
“The first element of good government… {snip} … the most important point of excellence which any form of government can posses is to promote the virtue and intelligence of the people themselves. The first question in respect to any political institutions is, how far they tend to foster the members of the community the various desirable qualities, or moral and intellectual, or rather, … {snip] … moral intellectual and active. The government which does this the best, has every likehood of being the best in all other respects…”
John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, p 337


Mill wrote:
“…a people in a state of savage independence, in which every one lives for himself, exempt, unless by fits, from any external control, is practically incapable of making any progress in civilization until it has learnt to obey. The indispensable virtue, therefore, in a government which establishes itself over a people of this sort is, that is, make itself obeyed. To enable it to do this, the constitution of the government must be nearly, or quite, despotic.”
John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, p 339


Mill wrote:
“...whenever, it ceases to be true that mankind, as a rule, prefer themselves to other, and those nearest to them to those more remote, from that moment Communism is not only practicable, but the only defensible form of society…{snip}… and will be carried into effect. [snip]…Communism would even now be practicable among the elite of mankind, and may become so among the rest.”
John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, p 345


Mill wrote:
Satrapies
John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, p 346


Mill wrote:
We have recognized in representative government the ideal type of the most perfect polity for which, in consequence, any portion of mankind are better adapted in [porportion] to their degree of general improvement.
John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, p 350


Mill wrote:
Let us examine at what point in the descending series representative government ceases altogether to be admissible…{snip}…1 That the people should be willing to receive it. 2 That they should be willing and able to do what is necessary for its preservation. 3 That they should be willing and able to [fulfil] the duties and discharge the functions which is imposes on them.
John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, p 350


Mill wrote:
When opinion is really adverse, its hostility is usually to the fact of change, rather than to representative government in itself.
John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, p 350


Mill wrote:
…when the people, in order to advance in [civilisation] have some lesson to learn, some habit not yet acquired, to the acquisition of which representative government is likely to be an impediment.
John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, p 351


Mill wrote:
…in which the people have still to learn the first lesson of [civilisation], that of obedience.
John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, p 351


Mill wrote:
One of the strongest hindrances to improvement, up to a rather advanced stage, is an inveterate spirit of locality. Portions of mankind, in many other respects capable to and prepared for, freedom, may be unqualified for amalgamating into even the smallest nation.
John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, p 352


Mill wrote:
Such examples however are so [unfrequent] that they can only be classed with the happy accidents which have so often decided at a critical moment whether some leading portion of humanity should make a sudden start, or sink back towards barbarism; {Charlemagne, Peter the great}
John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, p 353


Mill wrote:
The commander of an army could not direct its movements effectually if he himself fought in the ranks, or led an assault.
John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, p 356


Mill wrote:
Thus it is when no interested motives intervene; but when they do, the result is jobbery more unblushing and audacious than the worst corruption which can well take place in a public office under a government of publicity. It is not necessary that the interested bias should extend to the majority of the assembly. In any particular case it is often enough that I affects two or three of their number. Those two or three will have a greater interest in misleading the body, than any other of its members are likely to have in putting it right.”
John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, p 357


Mill wrote:
There is no act which more imperatively requires to be performed under a strong sense of individual responsibility than the nomination to employments.
John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, p 358


Mill wrote:
There is scarcely an act respecting which the conscience of an average man is less sensitive; scarcely any case in which less consideration is paid to qualifications, partly because men do not know, and partly because they do not care of, the difference in qualifications between one person and another.
John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, p 358


Mill wrote:
When these conscientious obligations are so little regarded by great public officers who can be made responsible for their appointments, how must if be with assemblies who cannot?
John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, p 358


Mill wrote:
Unless a man is fit for the gallows, he is thought to be about as fit as other people for almost anything for which he can offer himself as a candidate.
John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, p 358


Mill wrote:
One of the greatest dangers, therefore, of democracy, as of all other forms of government, lies in the sinister interests of the holders of power: it is the danger of class legislation of government intended for, (whether really effecting it or not), the immediate benefit of the dominate class, to the lasting detriment of the whole. And one of the most important questions demanding consideration in determining the best constitution of a representative government is how to provide efficacious securities against this evil.
John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, p 369



The inequality of the sexes has deprived society of a vast pool of talent. If women had the free use of their faculties along with the same prizes and encouragements as men, there would be a doubling of the mass of mental faculties available for the higher service of humanity. Every restraint on freedom of conduct of any of their human fellow creatures dries up pro tanto the principal fountain of human happiness, and leaves the species less rich, to an inappreciable degree, in all that makes life valuable to the individual human being.

John Stuart Mill (no reference)



BIOGRAPHY
Homeschooler, John Stuart Mill, 1806 – 1873, by the time he was thirteen he had the equivalent of a thorough university education. The father acted as the boy’s tutor and constant companion, allowing Mill to work in the same room with him and even to interrupt him as he was writing his History of India or his articles for the Encyclopedia Britannica.
The education began with Greek and arithmetic at the age of three. By the time he was eight Mill had read through the whole Herodotus, six dialogues of Palo and considerable history. Before he was twelve he had studied Euclid and algebra, the Greek, and Latin poets, and some English poetry. His interest in history continued, and he even attempted writing an account of Roman government.
At twelve he was introduced to logic in Aristotle’s Organon and the Latin scholastic manuals on the subject. The last year under his father’s direct supervision, his thirteenth, was devoted to political economy; the son’s notes later served the elder Mill in his Elements of Political Economy.
He furthered his education by a period of studies with his father’s friends, reading law with Austin and economics with Ricardo, and completed it by himself with Bentham’s treatise on legislation.
From the time he was seventeen, Mill supported himself by working for the East India Company, where his father was an official. Although he began nominally as a clerk, he was soon promoted to an assistant examiner.
John Stuart Mill, author of the following works: On Liberty, Representative Government, Utilitarianism