第24章 Political Theory(2)

Moreover,as pain is a more powerful instrument for securing obedience than pleasure,a man will desire to possess 'unlimited power of inflicting pain upon others.'Will he also desire,it may be asked,to make use of it?The 'chain of inference,'he replies,in this case is close and strong 'to a most unusual degree.'A man desires the actions of others to be in correspondence with his own wishes.'Terror',will be the 'grand instrument.'10It thus follows that the very principle upon which government is founded leads,in the absence of checks,'not only to that degree of plunder which leaves the members (of a community).The bare means of subsistence,but to that degree of cruelty which is necessary to keep in existence the most intense terror.'An English gentleman,he says,is a favourable specimen of civilisation,and yet West Indian slavery shows of what cruelty he could be guilty when unchecked.If equal cruelty has not been exhibited elsewhere,it is,he seems to think,because men were not 'the same as sheep in respect to their shepherd,'11and may therefore resist if driven too far.The difficulty upon this showing is to understand how any government,except the most brutal tyranny,ever has been,or ever can be,possible.

What is the combining principle which can weld together such a mass of hostile and mutually repellent atoms?How they can even form the necessary compact is difficult to understand,and the view seems to clash with his own avowed purpose.It is Mill's aim,as it was Bentham's,to secure the greatest happiness of the greatest number;and yet he seems to set out by proving as a 'law of human nature'that nobody can desire the happiness of any one except himself.He quotes from Montesquieu the saying,which shows an 'acute sense of this important truth,''that every one who has power is led to abuse it.'12Rather it would seem,according to Mill,all power implies abuse in its very essence.The problem seems to be how to make universal cohesion out of universal repulsion.

Mill has his remedy for this deeply seated evil.He attacks,as Bentham had already done,the old-fashioned theory,according to which the British Constitution was an admirable mixture of the three 'simple forms.'Two of the powers,he argues,will always agree to 'swallow up the third.'13'The monarchy and aristocracy have all possible motives for endeavouring to obtain unlimited power over the persons and property of the community,'though the democracy,as he also says,has every possible motive for preventing them.And in England,as he no doubt meant his readers to understand,the monarchy and aristocracy had to a great extent succeeded.Where,then,are we to look?To the 'grand discovery of modern times,'namely,the representative system.If this does not solve all difficulties we shall be forced to the conclusion that good government is impossible.Fortunately,however,the representative system may be made perfectly effective.This follows easily.It would,as he has said,14be a 'contradiction in terms'to suppose that the community at large can 'have an interest opposite to its interest.'

In the Bentham formula,it can have 'no sinister interest.'It cannot desire its own misery.Though the community cannot act as a whole,it can act through representatives.It is necessary to intrust power to a governing body;but that body can be prevented by adequate checks from misusing its powers.Indeed,the common theory of the British Constitution was precisely that the House of Commons was 'the checking body.'15The whole problem is to secure a body which shall effectively discharge the function thus attributed in theory to the House of Commons.That will be done when the body is chose in such a way that its interests are necessarily coincident with those of the community at large.Hence there is of course no difficulty in deducing the actual demands of reformers.Without defining precise limits,he shows that representatives must be elected for brief periods,and that the right to a vote must at least be wide enough to prevent the electoral body from forming a class with 'sinister interests.'He makes some remarkable qualifications,with the view apparently of not startling his readers too much by absolute and impracticable claims.He thinks that the necessary identity of interest would still be secured if classes were unrepresented whose interests are 'indisputably included in those of others.'Children's interests are involved in those of their parents,and the interests of 'almost all women'in those of their fathers or husbands.16Again,all men under forty might be omitted without mischief,for 'the great majority of old men have sons whose interests they regard as all essential part of their own.This is a law of human nature.'17There would,he observes,be no danger that men above forty would try to reduce the 'rest of the community to the state of abject slaves.'Mill,as his son tells us,18disowned any intention of positively advocating these exclusions.He only meant to say that they were not condemned by his general principle.The doctrine,however,about women,even as thus understood,scandalised his younger followers.