Considerations on Representative Government
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~100,000 words · 482 passages
Cite this work
- APAJohn Stuart Mill. (n.d.). Considerations on Representative Government. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/john-stuart-mill/considerations-on-representative-government
- MLAJohn Stuart Mill. "Considerations on Representative Government." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/john-stuart-mill/considerations-on-representative-government.
- ChicagoJohn Stuart Mill. Considerations on Representative Government. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/john-stuart-mill/considerations-on-representative-government.
What it is about
The 1861 book in which Mill sets out how a democracy would have to work if it were not to end as a tyranny of the majority.
Context and history
He holds that the best form of government is the representative, and then devotes the book to saying why electing is not enough. His problems are ours: how to keep the majority from imposing its interests on minorities, how to get parliament to control the executive without trying to administer itself, how to have informed people voting. Some proposals have aged and others have not: he defends Hare's proportional representation, the extension of the vote to women — in 1861 — and, at the same time, plural voting according to education, which makes uncomfortable reading today. His most quoted page is the one holding that a government is as good as what it makes of its citizens, and that a people not exercised in governing will never learn.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
Author Of "A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive" [Redactor's note: Italics are indicated by underscores surrounding the _italicized text_.] [Footnotes initially found throughout the text have been numbered and placed at the end of the text.] Preface Those who have done me the honor of reading my previous writings will probably receive no strong impression of novelty from the present volume; for the principles are those to which I 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. There is novelty, however, in the fact of bringing them together, and exhibiting them in their connection, and also, I believe, in much that is brought forward in their support. Several of the opinions at all events, if not new, are for the present as little likely to meet with general acceptance as if they were. It seems to me, however, from various indications, and from none more than the recent debates on Reform of Parliament, that both Conservatives and Liberals (if I may continue to call them what they still call themselves) have lost confidence in the political creeds which they nominally profess, while neither side appears to have made any progress in providing itself with a better. Yet such a better doctrine must be possible; not a mere compromise, by splitting the difference between the two, but something wider than either, which, in virtue of its superior comprehensiveness, might be adopted by either Liberal or Conservative without renouncing any thing which he really feels to be valuable in his own creed. When so many feel obscurely the want of such a doctrine, and so few even flatter themselves that they have attained it, any one may without presumption, offer what his own thoughts, and the best that he knows of those of others, are able to contribute towards its formation. LIST OF CON