MR. MILL'S PLAN OF REFORM.
IT is always with the deepest regret that we find ourselves opposed on a question of political philosophy to Mr. John Stuart Mill. In the first place, to be quite frank, he is a very dangerous opponent, a man very likely to know much more of the question at issue than most of his critics, very apt to have thought out carefully the suggestion or the principle which he emits with such apparent carelessness and ease. In the very matter in hand he has, we can perceive, an argument in reserve which will perplex Tory speakers most sorely, perhaps if his idea ever comes to be matter of debate drive them finally out of their old position. In the second place, Mr. Mill is one of the few political thinkers in England who is at heart fair, who while seeking the Radical end, the eleva- tion of the mass, is willing to acknowledge that government by the mass may not be the wisest road, who distrusts the argument from numbers as much as the argument from authority, who is as ready to contend with the multitude as to resist any other despot, who believes in short that repre- sentative government, though incomparably the beat of governing agencies, is a means, and not an end. It is not pleasant to find ourselves at issue with such a man, but as the policy we advocate is as distinct as that of Mr. Mill, and as he has been at the pains to lay down a scheme utterly opposed to all the ideas we have endeavoured to advocate, nothing remains but to show in what that scheme differs from the one which the bulk of educated Liberals are en- deavouring to think out. The plan is contained in a letter addressed to the present member for Rochdale just before his .election, and repeated in an address to the electors of West- minster, thanking them for accepting him as a candidate.
Mr. Mill begins by declining to join in any movement intended to secure "what is called manhood suffrage." He objects both to the term and the thing, holding that no reason either of expediency or of right can be found for excluding women from the franchise, and declining to accept a phrase which involves a direct assent to their exclusion. He proposes as an alternative either adult suffrage or universal suffrage, and would regard that as the ideal, to be limited by three in- dispensable qualifications. First, that every voter should possess so much of educational qualification as is involved in the power to read, write, and—if possible in practice—to cipher, should in fact have enabled himself to become civilized if he pleases. Secondly, that minorities should be adequately represented, not only because such representation is required by justice and expediency, but because it is needful to the full working out of democratic principles. Democracy means in Eng- land the rule of the whole population, and the whole population is not represented when largo sections of opinion find—as, for example, the English Catholics now find—that they have absolutely no voice. Lastly, it is essential that "no one class, even though the most numerous, should be able to re- turn a decided majority of the Legislature." So far we believe all educated Liberals of every shade are heartily agreed. Setting apart the suggestion of female suffrage as a crotchet of Mr. Mill's, and of no practical moment till a few thousand women can be found to ask for the privilege, there is probably not a Liberal member whO does not in his heart cordially endorse those three propositions. They include all that has ever been asked by Liberals not bemused by an idea, the re- presentation of every class, the efficacious representation of every class, and a fair guarantee that the absolutely ignorant shall not be considered a class entitled to any share of rule. Add two more propositions, that every man has exactly the same right to the means of education that he has to food—the latter a right admitted in the United Kingdom alone among Christian countries—and that the Legislature once created shall be sovereign, bound by no paper limits, liable to no superior power save Heaven, competent to do aught except repeal a law of nature or establish a contradiction in terms, and we ask no more as the basis of honestly free government. Everything is conceded except one little practical point. What proportion of votes is the numerical majority to have, so as to give it an efficient representation, yet prevent it from returning "a decided majority of the whole Legislature ?" We have always suggested fifty as a number sufficient to enforce attention to opinions even when apparently wild, yet not large enough to enforce action unless supported by the opinion of other and less interested classes. Mr. Baines's Bill would secure, we believe, when the working-men were in earnest, rather more than that number, by giving them in the great boroughs not indeed the power of seating their own men— which is what we wish—but of placing a veto on the election of anybody not pledged to their leading ideas. The five-pound franchise would extend the number perhaps to one hundred, and the rate-paying suffrage would be even -wider, but no scheme involving any limit at all approaches in magnitude that suggested by Mr. Mill. He would re-arrange the consti- tuencies and extend the franchise until with all his restrictions and limits the "working classes should command half the votes in Parliament." Not half the votes for Parliament, be it under- stood, Mr. Mill perceives as clearly as we do that votes as votes are of little value, that to enable working-men to give to middle- class men a heavier majority is to waste political energy, that the class needs representatives in Parliament, and not merely representation. And yet seeing all that, really desiring that workmen's ideas should be effectively, but not despotically, ex- pressed, acknowledging that intelligence is a necessary quali- fication, and resisting on principle the dictation of numbers, he nevertheless hands us over to mere numerical power.
For that, and nothing less, is the effect of his proposition. Supposing all England educated and intelligent, the single and, to our minds, the unanswerable objection to universal suffrage would still remain the same. One class possessing all power would, whenever its interests as a class were directly menaced, infallibly use that power, just as the landowners used to do, and as the middle class very often indeed do now. Mr. Mill admits that danger, especially in regard to measures affecting the relations of labour and capital, and to avert it invents a plan which has the double demerit of ensuring the mischief to be avoided and of seeming just. A body equal to half the House drawn from a single class would rule the House rather more completely than if they formed the whole of it. Then they would split, if not upon principles, at least as followers of different leaders, but under Mr. Mill's proposal they would meet just that amount of resistance which would weld them into a coherent mass without creating a possibility of their ultimate defeat. Mr. Mill very adroitly puts the very strongest case he can think of. "The most important questions in practical politics are coming to be those in which the working classes as a body are arrayed on one aide and the employers as a body on the other; as in all questions of wages, hours of labour, and so on. If those whose partialities are on the side of the operatives bad half the representation, and those who lean to the side of the em- ployers had the other half, the side which was in the right would be almost sure to prevail, by the aid of an enlightened and disinterested minority of the other. But there would not be the same assurance of this if either the working classes or a combination of all other classes could command a decided majority in Parliament." There is no subject perhaps upon which the upper class would combine so readily as this, and the test selected is therefore the one which tells most heavily on Mr. Mill's side. Now how would it work ? On any question which interested them the working-men's repre- sentatives would undoubtedly pull together, and a concession made to any section among their opponents holding extreme opinions, say the Ultramontanes, would give them absolute power. While therefore the other sections could not by combining obtain any measure resisted from below, this one section could alone obtain its own will in all things. Suppose, for example, a very possible case, that the work- men chose to fix by law a minimum for wages. Their representatives would unquestionably be compelled either to vote together or to lose their seats, and one ad- herent from the other side would give them the victory. On the other hand, if the employers triel to fix a maximum of wages, which is just as fair and as possible, they would have to secure allies, such, for instance, as the lawyers, to whom the rate of wages is a matter of no importance, the philanthropists, who could not abandon their hope of an end- less progression, and the econorniso, who would never consent to legislate on the matter at all. A single and compact army would be fighting an army of heterogeneous allies, a state of affairs under which nothing but the leadership of a great genius could give the allies the victory. If the Crown swayed, as Crowns always do, towards the mass, and against the upper class, the result would be too certain to make a battle worth the exertion. There is, however, no need of arguing the question. There is no man acquainted with the working of Parliamentary institutions but knows that a homogeneous body of 325 members could permanently rule the House, seat and unseat Premiers at its pleasure, make any innovations it chose on the Constitution, and pass laws limited by nothing except the physical impossibility of obeying them. Liberals must decline to entrust such power to any class whatever. It would be simpler and less dangerous to concede universal suffrage at once, for that would end the question of bases, and leave the different classes to construct their organizations afresh, un- deterred by the fear lest their plans, or alliances, or proposals should disturb the internal balance of power.
Mr. Mill's proposal is the more dangerous because there is one powerful argument in its favour. The argument from num- bers is of course with the working-men and, as Mr. Mill pro- bably remembers, the argument from taxation is in favour of his suggestion. The most careful statists are, we believe, agreed that so long as the income-tax is not reduced below sixpence in the pound one-half the revenue is contributed by the income-tax payers, and the other half by those who are beneath the incidence of that impost. The first-named body does not include all who are now possessed of the suffrage, but the statement does in some brutal way define the relative position of the two classes towards the Imperial Treasury. The argument from taxation is therefore presumably on his side, but it is the only one which lie can fairly quote. He will hardly allege, we think, that a House so elected would be more competent to decide on the imperial interests of Great Britain, that is, to govern directly a fifth of the human race, than the present House would be if supplemented by fifty working-men. Nor can he fairly assert that it would be more exactly representative of the varied wants, and ideas, and fears which make up English political life. On the contrary, although it might be more reflective, it would be less representative, for no idea, or wish, or prejudice in conflict with the ideas, and wishes, and prejudices of the dominant class would have any effective representation at all. It is hard enough, Heaven knows ! to get certain ideas a representation even now, but what would it be then ? No intellect and hardly any reputation would obtain a fair hearing in the House of Commons for the advocates of the petite agriculture, and scarcely any for a deliberate argument in favour of the summary extinction of game. But those who uphold those ideas have at least this claim to audience, that they have the support of a mass outside, that resisting them in a tune of excitement on the subject would be resisting physi- cal force. That is not much of a check on a House which only laughed when reargue O'Connor produced his petition with its million of signatures, which defied the workmen when they seemed to have coalesced for the Charter, and would, we believe, face a revolt in the capital to-morrow sooner than yield to actual coercion. But even that feeble cheek is lost when the governing class besides manufacturing the law is possessed of all physical force. Mr. Mill would resist to the death .a plan for investing the Peers with the nomination of half the House, yet the Peers' throats could be cut, and he would invest the workmen with an equal power, though they are beyond even that dreadful liability. He would in fact invest a class which, as he admits, is on all questions of capital and labour at variance with every other with absolute power, that class being the only one beyond the threat of coercion or the reach of bribes, being in fact at once autocratic and invulnerable. Wecannot follow him.
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