Considerations of a Representative Government | Page 7

reforming emperor, or,
strangest of all, a liberal and reforming pope; the age of Frederic the
Great, of Catherine the Second, of Joseph the Second, of Peter Leopold,
of Benedict XIV., of Ganganelli, of Pombal, of D'Aranda; when the
very Bourbons of Naples were liberals and reformers, and all the active
minds among the noblesse of France were filled with the ideas which
were soon after to cost them so dear. Surely a conclusive example how
far mere physical and economic power is from being the whole of
social power. It was not by any change in the distribution of material
interests, but by the spread of moral convictions, that negro slavery has
been put an end to in the British Empire and elsewhere. The serfs in
Russia owe their emancipation, if not to a sentiment of duty, at least to
the growth of a more enlightened opinion respecting the true interest of
the state. It is what men think that determines how they act; and though
the persuasions and convictions of average men are in a much greater
degree determined by their personal position than by reason, no little
power is exercised over them by the persuasions and convictions of
those whose personal position is different, and by the united authority
of the instructed. When, therefore, the instructed in general can be
brought to recognize one social arrangement, or political or other
institution, as good, and another as bad--one as desirable, another as
condemnable, very much has been done towards giving to the one, or
withdrawing from the other, that preponderance of social force which

enables it to subsist. And the maxim, that the government of a country
is what the social forces in existence compel it to be, is true only in the
sense in which it favors, instead of discouraging, the attempt to
exercise, among all forms of government practicable in the existing
condition of society, a rational choice.

Chapter II
The Criterion of a Good Form of Government.
The form of government for any given country being (within certain
definite conditions) amenable to choice, it is now to be considered by
what test the choice should be directed; what are the distinctive
characteristics of the form of government best fitted to promote the
interests of any given society.
Before entering into this inquiry, it may seem necessary to decide what
are the proper functions of government; for, government altogether
being only a means, the eligibility of the means must depend on their
adaptation to the end. But this mode of stating the problem gives less
aid to its investigation than might be supposed, and does not even bring
the whole of the question into view. For, in the first place, the proper
functions of a government are not a fixed thing, but different in
different states of society; much more extensive in a backward than in
an advanced state. And, secondly, the character of a government or set
of political institutions can not be sufficiently estimated while we
confine our attention to the legitimate sphere of governmental functions;
for, though the goodness of a government is necessarily circumscribed
within that sphere, its badness unhappily is not. Every kind and degree
of evil of which mankind are susceptible may be inflicted on them by
their government, and none of the good which social existence is
capable of can be any further realized than as the constitution of the
government is compatible with, and allows scope for, its attainment.
Not to speak of indirect effects, the direct meddling of the public
authorities has no necessary limits but those of human life, and the
influence of government on the well-being of society can be considered

or estimated in reference to nothing less than the whole of the interests
of humanity.
Being thus obliged to place before ourselves, as the test of good and
bad government, so complex an object as the aggregate interests of
society, we would willingly attempt some kind of classification of
those interests, which, bringing them before the mind in definite groups,
might give indication of the qualities by which a form of government is
fitted to promote those various interests respectively. It would be a
great facility if we could say the good of society consists of such and
such elements; one of these elements requires such conditions, another
such others; the government, then, which unites in the greatest degree
all these conditions, must be the best. The theory of government would
thus be built up from the separate theorems of the elements which
compose a good state of society.
Unfortunately, to enumerate and classify the constituents of social
well-being, so as to admit of the formation of such theorems is no easy
task. Most of those who, in the last or present generation, have applied