THE FORM of government for any given country being (within certain 
definite conditions) amenable to choice, it is now to be considered by 
what test the choice should be directed; what are the distinctive 
characteristics of the form of government best fitted to promote the 
interests of any given society. 

  Before entering into this inquiry, it may seem necessary to decide 
what are the proper functions of government; for, government 
altogether being only a means, the eligibility of the means must 
depend on their adaptation to the end. But this mode of stating the 
problem gives less aid to its investigation than might be supposed, 
and does not even bring the whole of the question into view. For, in 
the first place, the proper functions of a government are not a 
fixed thing, but different in different states of society; much more 
extensive in a backward than in an advanced state. And, secondly, 
the character of a government or set of political institutions 
cannot be sufficiently estimated while we confine our attention to the 
legitimate sphere of governmental functions. For though the goodness 
of a government is necessarily circumscribed within that sphere, its 
badness unhappily is not. Every kind and degree of evil of which 
mankind are susceptible may be inflicted on them by their 
government; and none of the good which social existence is capable 
of can be any further realised than as the constitution of the 
government is compatible with, and allows scope for, its attainment. 
Not to speak of indirect effects, the direct meddling of the public 
authorities has no necessary limits but those of human existence; 
and the influence of government on the well-being of society can be 
considered or estimated in reference to nothing less than the whole of 
the interests of humanity. 

  Being thus obliged to place before ourselves, as the test of good 
and bad government, so complex an object as the aggregate interests of 
society, we would willingly attempt some kind of classification of 
those interests, which, bringing them before the mind in definite 
groups, might give indication of the qualities by which a form of 
government is fitted to promote those various interests 
respectively. It would be a great facility if we could say the good of 
society consists of such and such elements; one of these elements 
requires such conditions, another such others; the government, then, 
which unites in the greatest degree all these conditions, must be 
the best. The theory of government would thus be built up from the 
separate theorems of the elements which compose a good state of 
society. 

  Unfortunately, to enumerate and classify the constituents of 
social well-being, so as to admit of the formation of such theorems, 
is no easy task. Most of those who, in the last or present generation, 
have applied themselves to the philosophy of politics in any 
comprehensive spirit, have felt the importance of such a 
classification; but the attempts which have been made towards it are 
as yet limited, so far as I am aware, to a single step. The 
classification begins and ends with a partition of the exigencies of 
society between the two heads of Order and Progress (in the 
phraseology of French thinkers); Permanence and Progression in the 
words of Coleridge. This division is plausible and seductive, from the 
apparently clean-cut opposition between its two members, and the 
remarkable difference between the sentiments to which they appeal. But 
I apprehend that (however admissible for purposes of popular 
discourse) the distinction between Order, or Permanence, and Progress, 
employed to define the qualities necessary in a government, is 
unscientific and incorrect. 

  For, first, what are Order and Progress? Concerning Progress there 
is no difficulty, or none which is apparent at first sight. When 
Progress is spoken of as one of the wants of human society, it may 
be supposed to mean Improvement. That is a tolerably distinct idea. 
But what is Order? Sometimes it means more, sometimes less, but hardly 
ever the whole of what human society needs except improvement. 

  In its narrowest acceptation Order means Obedience. A government 
is said to preserve order if it succeeds in getting itself obeyed. But 
there are different degrees of obedience, and it is not every degree 
that is commendable. Only an unmitigated despotism demands that the 
individual citizen shall obey unconditionally every mandate of persons 
in authority. We must at least limit the definition to such mandates 
as are general and issued in the deliberate form of laws. Order, 
thus understood, expresses, doubtless, an indispensable attribute of 
government. Those who are unable to make their ordinances obeyed, 
cannot be said to govern. But though a necessary condition, this is 
not the object of government. That it should make itself obeyed is 
requisite, in order that it may accomplish some other purpose. We 
are still to seek what is this other purpose, which government ought 
to fulfil, abstractedly from the idea of improvement, and which has to 
be fulfilled in every society, whether stationary or progressive. 

  In a sense somewhat more enlarged, Order means the preservation of 
peace by the cessation of private violence. Order is said to exist 
where the people of the country have, as a general rule, ceased to 
prosecute their quarrels by private force, and acquired the habit of 
referring the decision of their disputes and the redress of their 
injuries to the public authorities. But in this larger use of the 
term, as well as in the former narrow one, Order expresses rather 
one of the conditions of government, than either its purpose or the 
criterion of its excellence. For the habit may be well established 
of submitting to the government, and referring all disputed matters to 
its authority, and yet the manner in which the government deals with 
those disputed matters, and with the other things about which it 
concerns itself, may differ by the whole interval which divides the 
best from the worst possible. 

  If we intend to comprise in the idea of Order all that society 
requires from its government which is not included in the idea of 
Progress, we must define Order as the preservation of all kinds and 
amounts of good which already exist, and Progress as consisting in the 
increase of them. This distinction does comprehend in one or the other 
section everything which a government can be required to promote. But, 
thus understood, it affords no basis for a philosophy of government. 
We cannot say that, in constituting a polity, certain provisions ought 
to be made for Order and certain others for Progress; since the 
conditions of Order, in the sense now indicated, and those of 
Progress, are not opposite, but the same. The agencies which tend to 
preserve the social good which already exists are the very same 
which promote the increase of it, and vice versa: the sole 
difference being, that a greater degree of those agencies is 
required for the latter purpose than for the former. 

  What, for example, are the qualities in the citizens individually 
which conduce most to keep up the amount of good conduct, of good 
management, of success and prosperity, which already exist in society? 
Everybody will agree that those qualities are industry, integrity, 
justice, and prudence. But are not these, of all qualities, the most 
conducive to improvement? and is not any growth of these virtues in 
the community in itself the greatest of improvements? If so, 
whatever qualities in the government are promotive of industry, 
integrity, justice, and prudence, conduce alike to permanence and to 
progression; only there is needed more of those qualities to make 
the society decidedly progressive than merely to keep it permanent. 

  What, again, are the particular attributes in human beings which 
seem to have a more especial reference to Progress, and do not so 
directly suggest the ideas of Order and Preservation? They are chiefly 
the qualities of mental activity, enterprise, and courage. But are not 
all these qualities fully as much required for preserving the good 
we have, as for adding to it? If there is anything certain in human 
affairs, it is that valuable acquisitions are only to be retained by 
the continuation of the same energies which gained them. Things left 
to take care of themselves inevitably decay. Those whom success 
induces to relax their habits of care and thoughtfulness, and their 
willingness to encounter disagreeables, seldom long retain their 
good fortune at its height. The mental attribute which seems 
exclusively dedicated to Progress, and is the culmination of the 
tendencies to it, is Originality, or Invention. Yet this is no less 
necessary for Permanence; since, in the inevitable changes of human 
affairs, new inconveniences and dangers continually grow up, which 
must be encountered by new resources and contrivances, in order to 
keep things going on even only as well as they did before. Whatever 
qualities, therefore, in a government, tend to encourage activity, 
energy, courage, originality, are requisites of Permanence as well 
as of Progress; only a somewhat less degree of them will on the 
average suffice for the former purpose than for the latter. 

  To pass now from the mental to the outward and objective 
requisites of society; it is impossible to point out any contrivance 
in politics, or arrangement of social affairs, which conduces to Order 
only, or to Progress only; whatever tends to either promotes both. 
Take, for instance, the common institution of a police. Order is the 
object which seems most immediately interested in the efficiency of 
this part of the social organisation. Yet if it is effectual to 
promote Order, that is, if it represses crime, and enables every one 
to feel his person and property secure, can any state of things be 
more conducive to Progress? The greater security of property is one of 
the main conditions and causes of greater production, which is 
Progress in its most familiar and vulgarest aspect. The better 
repression of crime represses the dispositions which tend to crime, 
and this is Progress in a somewhat higher sense. The release of the 
individual from the cares and anxieties of a state of imperfect 
protection, sets his faculties free to be employed in any new effort 
for improving his own state and that of others: while the same 
cause, by attaching him to social existence, and making him no 
longer see present or prospective enemies in his fellow creatures, 
fosters all those feelings of kindness and fellowship towards 
others, and interest in the general well-being of the community, which 
are such important parts of social improvement. 

  Take, again, such a familiar case as that of a good system of 
taxation and finance. This would generally be classed as belonging 
to the province of Order. Yet what can be more conducive to 
Progress? A financial system which promotes the one, conduces, by 
the very same excellences, to the other. Economy, for example, equally 
preserves the existing stock of national wealth, and favours the 
creation of more. A just distribution of burthens, by holding up to 
every citizen an example of morality and good conscience applied to 
difficult adjustments, and an evidence of the value which the 
highest authorities attach to them, tends in an eminent degree to 
educate the moral sentiments of the community, both in respect of 
strength and of discrimination. Such a mode of levying the taxes as 
does not impede the industry, or unnecessarily interfere with the 
liberty, of the citizen, promotes, not the preservation only, but 
the increase of the national wealth, and encourages a more active 
use of the individual faculties. And vice versa, all errors in finance 
and taxation which obstruct the improvement of the people in wealth 
and morals tend also, if of sufficiently serious amount, positively to 
impoverish and demoralise them. It holds, in short, universally, 
that when Order and Permanence are taken in their widest sense, for 
the stability of existing advantages, the requisites of Progress are 
but the requisites of Order in a greater degree; those of Permanence 
merely those of Progress in a somewhat smaller measure. 

  In support of the position that Order is intrinsically different 
from Progress, and that preservation of existing and acquisition of 
additional good are sufficiently distinct to afford the basis of a 
fundamental classification, we shall perhaps be reminded that Progress 
may be at the expense of Order; that while we are acquiring, or 
striving to acquire, good of one kind, we may be losing ground in 
respect to others: thus there may be progress in wealth, while there 
is deterioration in virtue. Granting this, what it proves is not 
that Progress is generically a different thing from Permanence, but 
that wealth is a different thing from virtue. Progress is permanence 
and something more; and it is no answer to this to say that Progress 
in one thing does not imply Permanence in everything. No more does 
Progress in one thing imply Progress in everything. Progress of any 
kind includes Permanence in that same kind; whenever Permanence is 
sacrificed to some particular kind of Progress, other Progress is 
still more sacrificed to it; and if it be not worth the sacrifice, not 
the interest of Permanence alone has been disregarded, but the general 
interest of Progress has been mistaken. 

  If these improperly contrasted ideas are to be used at all in the 
attempt to give a first commencement of scientific precision to the 
notion of good government, it would be more philosophically correct to 
leave out of the definition the word Order, and to say that the best 
government is that which is most conducive to Progress. For Progress 
includes Order, but Order does not include Progress. Progress is a 
greater degree of that of which Order is a less. Order, in any other 
sense, stands only for a part of the pre-requisites of good 
government, not for its idea and essence. Order would find a more 
suitable place among the conditions of Progress; since, if we would 
increase our sum of good, nothing is more indispensable than to take 
due care of what we already have. If we are endeavouring after more 
riches, our very first rule should be not to squander uselessly our 
existing means. Order, thus considered, is not an additional end to be 
reconciled with Progress, but a part and means of Progress itself. 
If a gain in one respect is purchased by a more than equivalent loss 
in the same or in any other, there is not Progress. Conduciveness to 
Progress, thus understood, includes the whole excellence of a 
government. 

  But, though metaphysically defensible, this definition of the 
criterion of good government is not appropriate, because, though it 
contains the whole of the truth, it recalls only a part. What is 
suggested by the term Progress is the idea of moving onward, whereas 
the meaning of it here is quite as much the prevention of falling 
back. The very same social causes- the same beliefs, feelings, 
institutions, and practices- are as much required to prevent society 
from retrograding, as to produce a further advance. Were there no 
improvement to be hoped for, life would not be the less an unceasing 
struggle against causes of deterioration; as it even now is. Politics, 
as conceived by the ancients, consisted wholly in this. The natural 
tendency of men and their works was to degenerate, which tendency, 
however, by good institutions virtuously administered, it might be 
possible for an indefinite length of time to counteract. Though we 
no longer hold this opinion; though most men in the present age 
profess the contrary creed, believing that the tendency of things, 
on the whole, is towards improvement; we ought not to forget that 
there is an incessant and ever-flowing current of human affairs 
towards the worse, consisting of all the follies, all the vices, all 
the negligences, indolences, and supinenesses of mankind; which is 
only controlled, and kept from sweeping all before it, by the 
exertions which some persons constantly, and others by fits, put forth 
in the direction of good and worthy objects. It gives a very 
insufficient idea of the importance of the strivings which take 
place to improve and elevate human nature and life, to suppose that 
their chief value consists in the amount of actual improvement 
realised by their means, and that the consequence of their cessation 
would merely be that we should remain as we are. A very small 
diminution of those exertions would not only put a stop to 
improvement, but would turn the general tendency of things towards 
deterioration; which, once begun, would proceed with increasingly 
rapidity, and become more and more difficult to check, until it 
reached a state often seen in history, and in which many large 
portions of mankind even now grovel; when hardly anything short of 
superhuman power seems sufficient to turn the tide, and give a fresh 
commencement to the upward movement. 

  These reasons make the word Progress as unapt as the terms Order and 
Permanence to become the basis for a classification of the 
requisites of a form of government. The fundamental antithesis which 
these words express does not lie in the things themselves, so much 
as in the types of human character which answer to them. There are, we 
know, some minds in which caution, and others in which boldness, 
predominates: in some, the desire to avoid imperilling what is already 
possessed is a stronger sentiment than that which prompts to improve 
the old and acquire new advantages; while there are others who lean 
the contrary way, and are more eager for future than careful of 
present good. The road to the ends of both is the same; but they are 
liable to wander from it in opposite directions. This consideration is 
of importance in composing the personnel of any political body: 
persons of both types ought to be included in it, that the 
tendencies of each may be tempered, in so far as they are excessive, 
by a due proportion of the other. There needs no express provision 
to ensure this object, provided care is taken to admit nothing 
inconsistent with it. The natural and spontaneous admixture of the old 
and the young, of those whose position and reputation are made and 
those who have them still to make, will in general sufficiently answer 
the purpose, if only this natural balance is not disturbed by 
artificial regulation. 

  Since the distinction most commonly adopted for the classification 
of social exigencies does not possess the properties needful for 
that use, we have to seek for some other leading distinction better 
adapted to the purpose. Such a distinction would seem to be 
indicated by the considerations to which I now proceed. 

  If we ask ourselves on what causes and conditions good government in 
all its senses, from the humblest to the most exalted, depends, we 
find that the principal of them, the one which transcends all 
others, is the qualities of the human beings composing the society 
over which the government is exercised. 

  We may take, as a first instance, the administration of justice; 
with the more propriety, since there is no part of public business 
in which the mere machinery, the rules and contrivances for conducting 
the details of the operation, are of such vital consequence. Yet 
even these yield in importance to the qualities of the human agents 
employed. Of what efficacy are rules of procedure in securing the ends 
of justice, if the moral condition of the people is such that the 
witnesses generally lie, and the judges and their subordinates take 
bribes? Again, how can institutions provide a good municipal 
administration if there exists such indifference to the subject that 
those who would administer honestly and capably cannot be induced to 
serve, and the duties are left to those who undertake them because 
they have some private interest to be promoted? Of what avail is the 
most broadly popular representative system if the electors do not care 
to choose the best member of parliament, but choose him who will spend 
most money to be elected? How can a representative assembly work for 
good if its members can be bought, or if their excitability of 
temperament, uncorrected by public discipline or private self-control, 
makes them incapable of calm deliberation, and they resort to manual 
violence on the floor of the House, or shoot at one another with 
rifles? How, again, can government, or any joint concern, be carried 
on in a tolerable manner by people so envious that, if one among 
them seems likely to succeed in anything, those who ought to cooperate 
with him form a tacit combination to make him fail? Whenever the 
general disposition of the people is such that each individual regards 
those only of his interests which are selfish, and does not dwell 
on, or concern himself for, his share of the general interest, in such 
a state of things good government is impossible. The influence of 
defects of intelligence in obstructing all the elements of good 
government requires no illustration. Government consists of acts 
done by human beings; and if the agents, or those who choose the 
agents, or those to whom the agents are responsible, or the lookers-on 
whose opinion ought to influence and check all these, are mere 
masses of ignorance, stupidity, and baleful prejudice, every operation 
of government will go wrong; while, in proportion as the men rise 
above this standard, so will the government improve in quality; up 
to the point of excellence, attainable but nowhere attained, where the 
officers of government, themselves persons of superior virtue and 
intellect, are surrounded by the atmosphere of a virtuous and 
enlightened public opinion. 

  The first element of good government, therefore, being the virtue 
and intelligence of the human beings composing the community, the most 
important point of excellence which any form of government can possess 
is to promote the virtue and intelligence of the people themselves. 
The first question in respect to any political institutions is, how 
far they tend to foster in the members of the community the various 
desirable qualities, moral and intellectual; or rather (following 
Bentham's more complete classification) moral, intellectual, and 
active. The government which does this the best has every likelihood 
of being the best in all other respects, since it is on these 
qualities, so far as they exist in the people, that all possibility of 
goodness in the practical operations of the government depends. 

  We may consider, then, as one criterion of the goodness of a 
government, the degree in which it tends to increase the sum of good 
qualities in the governed, collectively and individually; since, 
besides that their well-being is the sole object of government, 
their good qualities supply the moving force which works the 
machinery. This leaves, as the other constituent element of the 
merit of a government, the quality of the machinery itself; that is, 
the degree in which it is adapted to take advantage of the amount of 
good qualities which may at any time exist, and make them instrumental 
to the right purposes. Let us again take the subject of judicature 
as an example and illustration. The judicial system being given, the 
goodness of the administration of justice is in the compound ratio 
of the worth of the men composing the tribunals, and the worth of 
the public opinion which influences or controls them. But all the 
difference between a good and a bad system of judicature lies in the 
contrivances adopted for bringing whatever moral and intellectual 
worth exists in the community to bear upon the administration of 
justice, and making it duly operative on the result. The 
arrangements for rendering the choice of the judges such as to 
obtain the highest average of virtue and intelligence; the salutary 
forms of procedure; the publicity which allows observation and 
criticism of whatever is amiss; the liberty of discussion and 
censure through the press; the mode of taking evidence, according as 
it is well or ill adapted to elicit truth; the facilities, whatever be 
their amount, for obtaining access to the tribunals; the 
arrangements for detecting crimes and apprehending offenders;- all 
these things are not the power, but the machinery for bringing the 
power into contact with the obstacle: and the machinery has no 
action of itself, but without it the power, let it be ever so ample, 
would be wasted and of no effect. 

  A similar distinction exists in regard to the constitution of the 
executive departments of administration. Their machinery is good, when 
the proper tests are prescribed for the qualifications of officers, 
the proper rules for their promotion; when the business is 
conveniently distributed among those who are to transact it, a 
convenient and methodical order established for its transaction, a 
correct and intelligible record kept of it after being transacted; 
when each individual knows for what he is responsible, and is known to 
others as responsible for it; when the best-contrived checks are 
provided against negligence, favouritism, or jobbery, in any of the 
acts of the department. But political checks will no more act of 
themselves than a bridle will direct a horse without a rider. If the 
checking functionaries are as corrupt or as negligent as those whom 
they ought to check, and if the public, the mainspring of the whole 
checking machinery, are too ignorant, too passive, or too careless and 
inattentive, to do their part, little benefit will be derived from the 
best administrative apparatus. Yet a good apparatus is always 
preferable to a bad. It enables such insufficient moving or checking 
power as exists to act at the greatest advantage; and without it, no 
amount of moving or checking power would be sufficient. Publicity, for 
instance, is no impediment to evil nor stimulus to good if the 
public will not look at what is done; but without publicity, how could 
they either check or encourage what they were not permitted to see? 
The ideally perfect constitution of a public office is that in which 
the interest of the functionary is entirely coincident with his 
duty. No mere system will make it so, but still less can it be made so 
without a system, aptly devised for the purpose. 

  What we have said of the arrangements for the detailed 
administration of the government is still more evidently true of its 
general constitution. All government which aims at being good is an 
organisation of some part of the good qualities existing in the 
individual members of the community for the conduct of its 
collective affairs. A representative constitution is a means of 
bringing the general standard of intelligence and honesty existing 
in the community, and the individual intellect and virtue of its 
wisest members, more directly to bear upon the government, and 
investing them with greater influence in it, than they would in 
general have under any other mode of organisation; though, under 
any, such influence as they do have is the source of all good that 
there is in the government, and the hindrance of every evil that there 
is not. The greater the amount of these good qualities which the 
institutions of a country succeed in organising, and the better the 
mode of organisation, the better will be the government. 

  We have now, therefore, obtained a foundation for a twofold division 
of the merit which any set of political institutions can possess. It 
consists partly of the degree in which they promote the general mental 
advancement of the community, including under that phrase 
advancement in intellect, in virtue, and in practical activity and 
efficiency; and partly of the degree of perfection with which they 
organise the moral, intellectual, and active worth already existing, 
so as to operate with the greatest effect on public affairs. A 
government is to be judged by its action upon men, and by its action 
upon things; by what it makes of the citizens, and what it does with 
them; its tendency to improve or deteriorate the people themselves, 
and the goodness or badness of the work it performs for them, and by 
means of them. Government is at once a great influence acting on the 
human mind, and a set of organised arrangements for public business: 
in the first capacity its beneficial action is chiefly indirect, but 
not therefore less vital, while its mischievous action may be direct. 

  The difference between these two functions of a government is not, 
like that between Order and Progress, a difference merely in degree, 
but in kind. We must not, however, suppose that they have no 
intimate connection with one another. The institutions which ensure 
the best management of public affairs practicable in the existing 
state of cultivation tend by this alone to the further improvement 
of that state. A people which had the most just laws, the purest and 
most efficient judicature, the most enlightened administration, the 
most equitable and least onerous system of finance, compatible with 
the stage it had attained in moral and intellectual advancement, would 
be in a fair way to pass rapidly into a higher stage. Nor is there any 
mode in which political institutions can contribute more effectually 
to the improvement of the people than by doing their more direct 
work well. And, reversely, if their machinery is so badly 
constructed that they do their own particular business ill, the effect 
is felt in a thousand ways in lowering the morality and deadening 
the intelligence and activity of the people. But the distinction is 
nevertheless real, because this is only one of the means by which 
political institutions improve or deteriorate the human mind, and 
the causes and modes of that beneficial or injurious influence 
remain a distinct and much wider subject of study. 

  Of the two modes of operation by which a form of government or set 
of political institutions affects the welfare of the community- its 
operation as an agency of national education, and its arrangements for 
conducting the collective affairs of the community in the state of 
education in which they already are; the last evidently varies much 
less, from difference of country and state of civilisation, than the 
first. It has also much less to do with the fundamental constitution 
of the government. The mode of conducting the practical business of 
government, which is best under a free constitution, would generally 
be best also in an absolute monarchy: only an absolute monarchy is not 
so likely to practise it. The laws of property, for example; the
principles of evidence and judicial procedure; the system of 
taxation and of financial administration, need not necessarily be 
different in different forms of government. Each of these matters 
has principles and rules of its own, which are a subject of separate 
study. General jurisprudence, civil and penal legislation, financial 
and commercial policy, are sciences in themselves, or rather, separate 
members of the comprehensive science or art of government: and the 
most enlightened doctrines on all these subjects, though not equally 
likely to be understood, or acted on under all forms of government, 
yet, if understood and acted on, would in general be equally 
beneficial under them all. It is true that these doctrines could not 
be applied without some modifications to all states of society and 
of the human mind: nevertheless, by far the greater number of them 
would require modifications solely of details, to adapt them to any 
state of society sufficiently advanced to possess rulers capable of 
understanding them. A government to which they would be wholly 
unsuitable must be one so bad in itself, or so opposed to public 
feeling, as to be unable to maintain itself in existence by honest 
means. 

  It is otherwise with that portion of the interests of the 
community which relate to the better or worse training of the people 
themselves. Considered as instrumental to this, institutions need to 
be radically different, according to the stage of advancement 
already reached. The recognition of this truth, though for the most 
part empirically rather than philosophically, may be regarded as the 
main point of superiority in the political theories of the present 
above those of the last age; in which it customary to claim 
representative democracy for England or France by arguments which 
would equally have proved it the only fit form of government for 
Bedouins or Malays. The state of different communities, in point of 
culture and development, ranges downwards to a condition very little 
above the highest of the beasts. The upward range, too, is 
considerable, and the future possible extension vastly greater. A 
community can only be developed out of one of these states into a 
higher by a concourse of influences, among the principal of which is 
the government to which they are subject. In all states of human 
improvement ever yet attained, the nature and degree of authority 
exercised over individuals, the distribution of power, and the 
conditions of command and obedience, are the most powerful of the 
influences, except their religious belief, which make them what they 
are, and enable them to become what they can be. They may be stopped 
short at any point in their progress by defective adaptation of 
their government to that particular stage of advancement. And the 
one indispensable merit of a government, in favour of which it may 
be forgiven almost any amount of other demerit compatible with 
progress, is that its operation on the people is favourable, or not 
unfavourable, to the next step which it is necessary for them to take, 
in order to raise themselves to a higher level. 

  Thus (to repeat a former example), a people in a state of savage 
independence, in which every one lives for himself, exempt, unless 
by fits, from any external control, is practically incapable of making 
any progress in civilisation until it has learnt to obey. The 
indispensable virtue, therefore, in a government which establishes 
itself over a people of this sort is, that it make itself obeyed. To 
enable it to do this, the constitution of the government must be 
nearly, or quite, despotic. A constitution in any degree popular, 
dependent on the voluntary surrender by the different members of the 
community of their individual freedom of action, would fail to enforce 
the first lesson which the pupils, in this stage of their progress, 
require. Accordingly, the civilisation of such tribes, when not the 
result of juxtaposition with others already civilised, is almost 
always the work of an absolute ruler, deriving his power either from 
religion or military prowess; very often from foreign arms. 

  Again, uncivilised races, and the bravest and most energetic still 
more than the rest, are averse to continuous labour of an unexciting 
kind. Yet all real civilisation is at this price; without such labour, 
neither can the mind be disciplined into the habits required by 
civilised society, nor the material world prepared to receive it. 
There needs a rare concurrence of circumstances, and for that reason 
often a vast length of time, to reconcile such a people to industry, 
unless they are for a while compelled to it. Hence even personal 
slavery, by giving a commencement to industrial life, and enforcing it 
as the exclusive occupation of the most numerous portion of the 
community, may accelerate the transition to a better freedom than that 
of fighting and rapine. It is almost needless to say that this 
excuse for slavery is only available in a very early state of society. 
A civilised people have far other means of imparting civilisation to 
those under their influence; and slavery is, in all its details, so 
repugnant to that government of law, which is the foundation of all 
modern life, and so corrupting to the master-class when they have once 
come under civilised influences, that its adoption under any 
circumstances whatever in modern society is a relapse into worse 
than barbarism. 

  At some period, however, of their history, almost every people, 
now civilised, have consisted, in majority, of slaves. A people in 
that condition require to raise them out of it a very different polity 
from a nation of savages. If they are energetic by nature, and 
especially if there be associated with them in. the same community 
an industrious class who are neither slaves nor slave-owners (as was 
the case in Greece), they need, probably, no more to ensure their 
improvement than to make them free: when freed, they may often be fit, 
like Roman freedmen, to be admitted at once to the full rights of 
citizenship. This, however, is not the normal condition of slavery, 
and is generally a sign that it is becoming obsolete. A slave, 
properly so called, is a being who has not learnt to help himself. 
He is, no doubt, one step in advance of a savage. He has not the first 
lesson of political society still to acquire. He has learnt to obey. 
But what he obeys is only a direct command. It is the characteristic 
of born slaves to be incapable of conforming their conduct to a 
rule, or law. They can only do what they are ordered, and only when 
they are ordered to do it. If a man whom they fear is standing over 
them and threatening them with punishment, they obey; but when his 
back is turned, the work remains undone. The motive determining them 
must appeal not to their interests, but to their instincts; 
immediate hope or immediate terror. A despotism, which may tame the 
savage, will, in so far as it is a despotism, only confirm the 
slaves in their incapacities. Yet a government under their own control 
would be entirely unmanageable by them. Their improvement cannot 
come from themselves, but must be superinduced from without. The 
step which they have to take, and their only path to improvement, is 
to be raised from a government of will to one of law. They have to 
be taught self-government, and this, in its initial stage, means the 
capacity to act on general instructions. What they require is not a 
government of force, but one of guidance. Being, however, in too low a 
state to yield to the guidance of any but those to whom they look up 
as the possessors of force, the sort of government fittest for them is 
one which possesses force, but seldom uses it: a parental despotism or 
aristocracy, resembling the St. Simonian form of Socialism; 
maintaining a general superintendence over all the operations of 
society, so as to keep before each the sense of a present force 
sufficient to compel his obedience to the rule laid down, but which, 
owing to the impossibility of descending to regulate all the minutae 
of industry and life, necessarily leaves and induces individuals to do 
much of themselves. This, which may be termed the government of 
leading-strings, seems to be the one required to carry such a people 
the most rapidly through the next necessary step in social progress. 
Such appears to have been the idea of the government of the Incas of 
Peru; and such was that of the Jesuits of Paraguay. I need scarcely 
remark that leading-strings are only admissible as a means of 
gradually training the people to walk alone. 

  It would be out of place to carry the illustration further. To 
attempt to investigate what kind of government is suited to every 
known state of society would be to compose a treatise, not on 
representative government, but on political science at large. For 
our more limited purpose we borrow from political philosophy only 
its general principles. To determine the form of government most 
suited to any particular people, we must be able, among the defects 
and shortcomings which belong to that people, to distinguish those 
that are the immediate impediment to progress; to discover what it 
is which (as it were) stops the way. The best government for them is 
the one which tends most to give them that for want of which they 
cannot advance, or advance only in a lame and lopsided manner. We must 
not, however, forget the reservation necessary in all things which 
have for their object improvement, or Progress; namely, that in 
seeking the good which is needed, no damage, or as little as possible, 
be done to that already possessed. A people of savages should be 
taught obedience but not in such a manner as to convert them into a 
people of slaves. And (to give the observation a higher generality) 
the form of government which is most effectual for carrying a people 
through the next stage of progress will still be very improper for 
them if it does this in such a manner as to obstruct, or positively 
unfit them for, the step next beyond. Such cases are frequent, and are 
among the most melancholy facts in history. The Egyptian hierarchy, 
the paternal despotism of China, were very fit instruments for 
carrying those nations up to the point of civilisation which they 
attained. But having reached that point, they were brought to a 
permanent halt for want of mental liberty and individuality; 
requisites of improvement which the institutions that had carried them 
thus far entirely incapacitated them from acquiring; and as the 
institutions did not break down and give place to others, further 
improvement stopped. 

  In contrast with these nations, let us consider the example of an 
opposite character afforded by another and a comparatively 
insignificant Oriental people- the Jews. They, too, had an absolute 
monarchy and a hierarchy, their organised institutions were as 
obviously of sacerdotal origin as those of the Hindoos. These did 
for them what was done for other Oriental races by their 
institutions- subdued them to industry and order, and gave them a 
national life. But neither their kings nor their priests ever 
obtained, as in those other countries, the exclusive moulding of their 
character. Their religion, which enabled persons of genius and a 
high religious tone to be regarded and to regard themselves as 
inspired from heaven, gave existence to an inestimably precious 
unorganised institution- the Order (if it may be so termed) of 
Prophets. Under the protection, generally though not always effectual, 
of their sacred character, the Prophets were a power in the nation, 
often more than a match for kings and priests, and kept up, in that 
little corner of the earth, the antagonism of influences which is 
the only real security for continued progress. Religion consequently 
was not there what it has been in so many other places- a 
consecration of all that was once established, and a barrier against 
further improvement. The remark of a distinguished Hebrew, M. 
Salvador, that the Prophets were, in Church and State, the 
equivalent of the modern liberty of the press, gives a just but not an 
adequate conception of the part fulfilled in national and universal 
history by this great element of Jewish life; by means of which, the 
canon of inspiration never being complete, the persons most eminent in 
genius and moral feeling could not only denounce and reprobate, with 
the direct authority of the Almighty, whatever appeared to them 
deserving of such treatment, but could give forth better and higher 
interpretations of the national religion, which thenceforth became 
part of the religion. Accordingly, whoever can divest himself of the 
habit of reading the Bible as if it was one book, which until lately 
was equally inveterate in Christians and in unbelievers, sees with 
admiration the vast interval between the morality and religion of 
the Pentateuch, or even of the historical books (the unmistakable work 
of Hebrew Conservatives of the sacerdotal order), and the morality and 
religion of the Prophecies: a distance as wide as between these last 
and the Gospels. Conditions more favourable to Progress could not 
easily exist: accordingly, the Jews, instead of being stationary 
like other Asiatics, were, next to the Greeks, the most progressive 
people of antiquity, and, jointly with them, have been the 
starting-point and main propelling agency of modern cultivation. 

  It is, then, impossible to understand the question of the adaptation 
of forms of government to states of society without taking into 
account not only the next step, but all the steps which society has 
yet to make; both those which can be foreseen, and the far wider 
indefinite range which is at present out of sight. It follows, that to 
judge of the merits of forms of government, an ideal must be 
constructed of the form of government most eligible in itself, that 
is, which, if the necessary conditions existed for giving effect to 
its beneficial tendencies, would, more than all others, favour and 
promote not some one improvement, but all forms and degrees of it. 
This having been done, we must consider what are the mental conditions 
of all sorts, necessary to enable this government to realise its 
tendencies, and what, therefore, are the various defects by which a 
people is made incapable of reaping its benefits. It would then be 
possible to construct a theorem of the circumstances in which that 
form of government may wisely be introduced; and also to judge, in 
cases in which it had better not be introduced, what inferior forms of 
polity will best carry those communities through the intermediate 
stages which they must traverse before they can become fit for the 
best form of government. 

  Of these inquiries, the last does not concern us here; but the first 
is an essential part of our subject: for we may, without rashness, 
at once enunciate a proposition, the proofs and illustrations of which 
will present themselves in the ensuing pages; that this ideally best 
form of government will be found in some one or other variety of the 
Representative System.