"Representative Government" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mill John Stuart)

1861

REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT

by John Stuart Mill
PREFACE

PREFACE.

THOSE who have done me the honour 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 anything 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.

Chapter 1

To what extent Forms of Government are a Matter of Choice.

ALL SPECULATIONS concerning forms of government bear the impress,
more or less exclusive, of two conflicting theories respecting
political institutions; or, to speak more properly, conflicting
conceptions of what political institutions are.

By some minds, government is conceived as strictly a practical
art, giving rise to no questions but those of means and an end.
Forms of government are assimilated to any other expedients for the
attainment of human objects. They are regarded as wholly an affair
of invention and contrivance. Being made by man, it is assumed that