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Unit 14: John Stuart Mill and His Representative Government

14.1 Democracy and Representative Government Notes

Mill regarded representative democracy as necessary for progress, as it permitted citizens to use
and develop their faculties fully. It promoted virtue, intelligence and excellence (Mill 1976: 193-
195). It also allowed the education of the citizens, providing “an efficient forum for conducting the
collective affairs of the community” (Mill ibid: 196). Interaction between individuals in a democracy
ensured the possibility of the emergence of the wisest and recognition of the best leaders. It
encouraged free discussion, which was necessary for the emergence of the truth. He judged
representative democracy on the basis of how far it, “promotes the good management of the
affairs of the society by means of the existing faculties, moral, intellectual and active, of its various
members and by ‘improving’ those faculties” (Mill ibid: 208).
Mill tried to reconcile the principle of political equality with individual freedom (Hacker 1961:
573). He accepted that all citizens, regardless of their status, were equal and that only popular
sovereignty could give legitimacy to the government. Democracy was good because it made people
happier and better.
Mill laid down several conditions for representative government. First, such a government could
only function with citizens who were of an “active, self-helping character”. Backward civilizations,
where citizens were primarily passive, would hardly be able to run a representative democracy.
Second, citizens had to show their ability and willingness to preserve institutions of representative
democracy.
Influenced by de Tocqueville’s thesis on majority tyranny, Mill advocated a liberal democracy
which specified and limited the powers of legally elected majorities by cataloguing and protecting
individual rights against the majority. He pleaded for balancing the numerical majority in a
democracy by adjusting franchise. Even though he advocated universal adult franchise in 1859, he
remarked in 1861: “I regard it as wholly inadmissible that any person should participate in the
suffrage without being able to read, write, and I will add, perform the operations of arithmetic”.
Mill prescribed registration tests for checking performances, universal education for all children
and plurality of votes to the better educated, in order to balance the lack of voting rights to the
uneducated. “No one but a fool, and only a fool of a peculiar description, feels offended by the
acknowledgement that there are others whose opinion, and even whose wish, is entitled to a
greater amount of consideration than his”.
Mill also recommended the disqualification of three other categories of dependants : (1) those
unable to pay local taxes; (2) those dependent on public welfare would be excluded for five years
from the last day of receipt, for “by becoming dependent on the remaining members of the
community for actual subsistence, he abdicates his claim to equal rights with them in other respects”
(Mill ibid: 282) and (3) legal bankrupts and moral deviants like habitual drunkards. He, however,
championed equal voting rights for all irrespective of their sex or colour.
Mill looked upon equal voting rights, universal suffrage, democracy and liberty as conditionally
good. They had to be conferred only on those who had the character for self-control, and the
ability and interest in using them for the public good. The policy of a government in franchise
reform should be
to make participation in political rights the reward for mental improvement... . I do
not look upon equal voting as among the things which are good in themselves, provided
they can be guarded against inconveniences. I look upon it as only relatively good,
less objectionable than inequality of privilege.
Mill also recommended open rather than secret ballot, for voting was a public trust which “should
be performed under the eye and criticism of the public” (Mill ibid: 286). Open voting would be less
dangerous, for the individual voter would be less influenced by the “sinister interests and
discreditable feelings which belong to himself, either individually or as a member of a class” .

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