Autobiography
Independent opinions will force their way into the council of the nation
and make themselves heard there, a thing which often cannot happen in
the existing forms of representative democracy; and the legislature,
instead of being weeded of individual peculiarities and entirely made up
of men who simply represent the creed of great political or religious
parties, will comprise a large proportion of the most eminent individual
minds in the country, placed there, without reference to party, by
voters who appreciate their individual eminence. I can understand that
persons, otherwise intelligent, should, for want of sufficient
examination, be repelled from Mr. Hare's plan by what they think the
complex nature of its machinery. But any one who does not feel the want
which the scheme is intended to supply; any one who throws it over as a
mere theoretical subtlety or crotchet, tending to no valuable purpose,
and unworthy of the attention of practical men, may be pronounced an
incompetent statesman, unequal to the politics of the future. I mean,
unless he is a minister or aspires to become one: for we are quite
accustomed to a minister continuing to profess unqualified hostility to
an improvement almost to the very day when his conscience or his
interest induces him to take it up as a public measure, and carry it.
Had I met with Mr. Hare's system before the publication of my pamphlet,
I should have given an account of it there. Not having done so, I wrote
an article in _Fraser's Magazine_ (reprinted in my miscellaneous
writings) principally for that purpose, though I included in it, along
with Mr. Hare's book, a review of two other productions on the question
of the day; one of them a pamphlet by my early friend, Mr. John Austin,
who had in his old age become an enemy to all further Parliamentary
reform; the other an able and vigourous, though partially erroneous,
work by Mr. Lorimer.
In the course of the same summer I fulfilled a duty particularly
incumbent upon me, that of helping (by an article in the _Edinburgh
Review_) to make known Mr. Bain's profound treatise on the Mind, just
then completed by the publication of its second volume. And I carried
through the press a selection of my minor writings, forming the first
two volumes of _Dissertations and Discussions_. The selection had been
made during my wife's lifetime, but the revision, in concert with her,
with a view to republication, had been barely commenced; and when I had
no longer the guidance of her judgment I despaired of pursuing it
further, and republished the papers as they were, with the exception of
striking out such passages as were no longer in accordance with my
opinions. My literary work of the year was terminated with an essay in
_Fraser's Magazine_ (afterwards republished in the third volume of
_Dissertations and Discussions_), entitled "A Few Words on
Non-Intervention." I was prompted to write this paper by a desire, while
vindicating England from the imputations commonly brought against her on
the Continent, of a peculiar selfishness in matters of foreign policy to
warn Englishmen of the colour given to this imputation by the low tone
in which English statesmen are accustomed to speak of English policy as
concerned only with English interests, and by the conduct of Lord
Palmerston at that particular time in opposing the Suez Canal; and I
took the opportunity of expressing ideas which had long been in my mind
(some of them generated by my Indian experience, and others by the
international questions which then greatly occupied the European
public), respecting the true principles of international morality, and
the legitimate modifications made in it by difference of times and
circumstances; a subject I had already, to some extent, discussed in the
vindication of the French Provisional Government of 1848 against the
attacks of Lord Brougham and others, which I published at the time in
the _Westminster Review_, and which is reprinted in the _Dissertations_.
I had now settled, as I believed, for the remainder of my existence into
a purely literary life; if that can be called literary which continued
to be occupied in a pre-eminent degree with politics, and not merely
with theoretical, but practical politics, although a great part of the
year was spent at a distance of many hundred miles from the chief seat
of the politics of my own country, to which, and primarily for which, I
wrote. But, in truth, the modern facilities of communication have not
only removed all the disadvantages, to a political writer in tolerably
easy circumstances, of distance from the scene of political action, but
have converted them into advantages. The immediate and regular receipt
of newspapers and periodicals keeps him _au courant_ of even the most
temporary politics, and gives him a much more correct view of the state
and progress of opinion than he could acquire by personal contact with
individuals: for every one's social intercourse is more or less limited
to particular sets or classes, whose impressions and no others reach him
through that channel; and experience has taught me that those who give
their time to the absorbing claims of what is called society, not having
leisure to keep up a large acquaintance with the organs of opinion,
remain much more ignorant of the general state either of the public
mind, or of the active and instructed part of it, than a recluse who
reads the newspapers need be. There are, no doubt, disadvantages in too
long a separation from one's country--in not occasionally renewing
one's impressions of the light in which men and things appear when seen
from a position in the midst of them; but the deliberate judgment formed
at a distance, and undisturbed by inequalities of perspective, is the
most to be depended on, even for application to practice. Alternating
between the two positions, I combined the advantages of both. And,
though the inspirer of my best thoughts was no longer with me, I was not
alone: she had left a daughter, my stepdaughter, [Miss Helen Taylor, the
inheritor of much of her wisdom, and of all her nobleness of character,]
whose ever growing and ripening talents from that day to this have been
devoted to the same great purposes [and have already made her name
better and more widely known than was that of her mother, though far
less so than I predict, that if she lives it is destined to become. Of
the value of her direct cooperation with me, something will be said
hereafter, of what I owe in the way of instruction to her great powers
of original thought and soundness of practical judgment, it would be a
vain attempt to give an adequate idea]. Surely no one ever before was so
fortunate, as, after such a loss as mine, to draw another prize in the
lottery of life [--another companion, stimulator, adviser, and
instructor of the rarest quality]. Whoever, either now or hereafter, may
think of me and of the work I have done, must never forget that it is
the product not of one intellect and conscience, but of three[, the
least considerable of whom, and above all the least original, is the one
whose name is attached to it].
The work of the years 1860 and 1861 consisted chiefly of two treatises,
only one of which was intended for immediate publication. This was the
_Considerations on Representative Government_; a connected exposition of
what, by the thoughts of many years, I had come to regard as the best
form of a popular constitution. Along with as much of the general theory
of government as is necessary to support this particular portion of its
practice, the volume contains many matured views of the principal
questions which occupy the present age, within the province of purely
organic institutions, and raises, by anticipation, some other questions
to which growing necessities will sooner or later compel the attention
both of theoretical and of practical politicians. The chief of these
last, is the distinction between the function of making laws, for which
a numerous popular assembly is radically unfit, and that of getting good
laws made, which is its proper duty and cannot be satisfactorily
fulfilled by any other authority: and the consequent need of a
Legislative Commission, as a permanent part of the constitution of a
free country; consisting of a small number of highly trained political
minds, on whom, when Parliament has determined that a law shall be made,
the task of making it should be devolved: Parliament retaining the power
of passing or rejecting the bill when drawn up, but not of altering it
otherwise than by sending proposed amendments to be dealt with by the
Commission. The question here raised respecting the most important of
all public functions, that of legislation, is a particular case of the
great problem of modern political organization, stated, I believe, for
the first time in its full extent by Bentham, though in my opinion not
always satisfactorily resolved by him; the combination of complete
popular control over public affairs, with the greatest attainable
perfection of skilled agency.
The other treatise written at this time is the one which was published
some years[7] later under the title of _The Subjection of Women._ It was
written [at my daughter's suggestion] that there might, in any event, be
in existence a written exposition of my opinions on that great question,
as full and conclusive as I could make it. The intention was to keep
this among other unpublished papers, improving it from time to time if I
was able, and to publish it at the time when it should seem likely to be
most useful. As ultimately published [it was enriched with some
important ideas of my daughter's, and passages of her writing. But] in
what was of my own composition, all that is most striking and profound
belongs to my wife; coming from the fund of thought which had been made
common to us both, by our innumerable conversations and discussions on a
topic which filled so large a place in our minds.
Soon after this time I took from their repository a portion of the
unpublished papers which I had written during the last years of our
married life, and shaped them, with some additional matter, into the
little work entitled _Utilitarianism_; which was first published, in
three parts, in successive numbers of _Fraser's Magazine_, and
afterwards reprinted in a volume.
Before this, however, the state of public affairs had become extremely
critical, by the commencement of the American civil war. My strongest
feelings were engaged in this struggle, which, I felt from the
beginning, was destined to be a turning point, for good or evil, of the
course of human affairs for an indefinite duration. Having been a deeply
interested observer of the slavery quarrel in America, during the many
years that preceded the open breach, I knew that it was in all its
stages an aggressive enterprise of the slave-owners to extend the
territory of slavery; under the combined influences of pecuniary
interest, domineering temper, and the fanaticism of a class for its
class privileges, influences so fully and powerfully depicted in the
admirable work of my friend Professor Cairnes, _The Slave Power_. Their
success, if they succeeded, would be a victory of the powers of evil
which would give courage to the enemies of progress and damp the spirits
of its friends all over the civilized world, while it would create a
formidable military power, grounded on the worst and most anti-social
form of the tyranny of men over men, and, by destroying for a long time
the prestige of the great democratic republic, would give to all the
privileged classes of Europe a false confidence, probably only to be
extinguished in blood. On the other hand, if the spirit of the North was
sufficiently roused to carry the war to a successful termination, and if