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The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay. Vol 2

E >> Edinburgh Review >> The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay. Vol 2




In the course of the examination to which we propose to subject
the speculations of Mr Mill we shall have to notice many other
curious instances of that turn of mind which the passage above
quoted indicates.

The first chapter of his Essay relates to the ends of government.
The conception on this subject, he tells us, which exists in the
minds of most men is vague and undistinguishing. He first
assumes, justly enough, that the end of government is "to
increase to the utmost the pleasures, and diminish to the utmost
the pains, which men derive from each other." He then proceeds
to show, with great form, that "the greatest possible happiness
of society is attained by insuring to every man the greatest
possible quantity of the produce of his labour." To effect this
is, in his opinion, the end of government. It is remarkable that
Mr Mill, with all his affected display of precision, has here
given a description of the ends of government far less precise
than that which is in the mouths of the vulgar. The first man
with whom Mr Mill may travel in a stage coach will tell him that
government exists for the protection of the PERSONS and property
of men. But Mr Mill seems to think that the preservation of
property is the first and only object. It is true, doubtless,
that many of the injuries which are offered to the persons of men
proceed from a desire to possess their property. But the
practice of vindictive assassination as it has existed in some
parts of Europe--the practice of fighting wanton and sanguinary
duels, like those of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in
which bands of seconds risked their lives as well as the
principals;--these practices, and many others which might be
named, are evidently injurious to society; and we do not see how
a government which tolerated them could be said "to diminish to
the utmost the pains which men derive from each other."
Therefore, according to Mr Mill's very correct assumption, such a
government would not perfectly accomplish the end of its
institution. Yet such a government might, as far as we can
perceive, "insure to every man the greatest possible quantity of
the produce of his labour." Therefore such a government might,
according to Mr Mill's subsequent doctrine, perfectly accomplish
the end of its institution. The matter is not of much
consequence, except as an instance of that slovenliness of
thinking which is often concealed beneath a peculiar ostentation
of logical neatness.

Having determined the ends, Mr Mill proceeds to consider the
means. For the preservation of property some portion of the
community must be intrusted with power. This is government; and
the question is, how are those to whom the necessary power is
intrusted to be prevented from abusing it?

Mr Mill first passes in review the simple forms of government.
He allows that it would be inconvenient, if not physically
impossible, that the whole community should meet in a mass; it
follows, therefore, that the powers of government cannot be
directly exercised by the people. But he sees no objection to
pure and direct Democracy, except the difficulty which we have
mentioned.

"The community," says he, "cannot have an interest opposite to
its interests. To affirm this would be a contradiction in terms.
The community within itself, and with respect to itself, can have
no sinister interest. One community may intend the evil of
another; never its own. This is an indubitable proposition, and
one of great importance."

Mr Mill then proceeds to demonstrate that a purely aristocratical
form of government is necessarily bad.

"The reason for which government exists is, that one man, if
stronger than another, will take from him whatever that other
possesses and he desires. But if one man will do this, so will
several. And if powers are put into the hands of a comparatively
small number, called an aristocracy,--powers which make them
stronger than the rest of the community, they will take from the
rest of the community as much as they please of the objects of
desire. They will thus defeat the very end for which government
was instituted. The unfitness, therefore, of an aristocracy to
be intrusted with the powers of government, rests on
demonstration.

In exactly the same manner Mr Mill proves absolute monarchy to be
a bad form of government.

"If government is founded upon this as a law of human nature,
that a man, if able, will take from others anything which they
have and he desires, it is sufficiently evident, that when a man
is called a king he does not change his nature; so that when he
has got power to enable him to take from every man what he
pleases, he will take whatever he pleases. To suppose that he
will not, is to affirm that government is unnecessary, and that
human beings will abstain from injuring one another of their own
accord.

"It is very evident that this reasoning extends to every
modification of the smaller number. Whenever the powers of
government are placed in any hands other than those of the
community, whether those of one man, of a few, or of several,
those principles of human nature which imply that government is
at all necessary, imply that those persons will make use of them
to defeat the very end for which government exists."

But is it not possible that a king or an aristocracy may soon be
saturated with the objects of their desires, and may then protect
the community in the enjoyment of the rest? Mr Mill answers in
the negative. He proves, with great pomp, that every man desires
to have the actions of every other correspondent to his will.
Others can be induced to conform to our will only by motives
derived from pleasure or from pain. The infliction of pain is of
course direct injury; and, even if it take the milder course, in
order to produce obedience by motives derived from pleasure, the
government must confer favours. But, as there is no limit to its
desire of obedience, there will be no limit to its disposition to
confer favours; and, as it can confer favours only by plundering
the people, there will be no limit to its disposition to plunder
the people. It is therefore not true that there is in the mind
of a king, or in the minds of an aristocracy, any point of
saturation with the objects of desire.

Mr Mill then proceeds to show that, as monarchical and
oligarchical governments can influence men by motives drawn from
pain, as well as by motives drawn from pleasure, they will carry
their cruelty, as well as their rapacity, to a frightful extent.
As he seems greatly to admire his own reasonings on this subject,
we think it but fair to let him speak for himself.

"The chain of inference in this case is close and strong to a
most unusual degree. A man desires that the actions of other men
shall be instantly and accurately correspondent to his will. He
desires that the actions of the greatest possible number shall be
so. Terror is the grand instrument. Terror can work only
through assurance that evil will follow any failure of conformity
between the will and the actions willed. Every failure must
therefore be punished. As there are no bounds to the mind's
desire of its pleasure, there are, of course, no bounds to its
desire of perfection in the instruments of that pleasure. There
are, therefore, no bounds to its desire of exactness in the
conformity between its will and the actions willed; and by
consequence to the strength of that terror which is its procuring
cause. Even the most minute failure must be visited with the
heaviest infliction; and as failure in extreme exactness must
frequently happen, the occasions of cruelty must be incessant.

"We have thus arrived at several conclusions of the highest
possible importance. We have seen that the principle of human
nature, upon which the necessity of government is founded, the
propensity of one man to possess himself of the objects of desire
at the cost of another, leads on, by infallible sequence, where
power over a community is attained, and nothing checks, not only
to that degree of plunder which leaves the members (excepting
always the recipients and instruments of the plunder) the bare
means of subsistence, but to that degree of cruelty which is
necessary to keep in existence the most intense terrors."

Now, no man who has the least knowledge of the real state of the
world, either in former ages or at the present moment, can
possibly be convinced, though he may perhaps be bewildered, by
arguments like these. During the last two centuries, some
hundreds of absolute princes have reigned in Europe. Is it true,
that their cruelty has kept in existence the most intense degree
of terror; that their rapacity has left no more than the bare
means of subsistence to any of their subjects, their ministers
and soldiers excepted? Is this true of all of them? Of one half
of them? Of one tenth part of them? Of a single one? Is it
true, in the full extent, even of Philip the Second, of Louis the
Fifteenth, or of the Emperor Paul? But it is scarcely necessary
to quote history. No man of common sense, however ignorant he
may be of books, can be imposed on by Mr Mill's argument; because
no man of common sense can live among his fellow-creatures for a
day without seeing innumerable facts which contradict it. It is
our business, however, to point out its fallacy; and happily the
fallacy is not very recondite.

We grant that rulers will take as much as they can of the objects
of their desires; and that, when the agency of other men is
necessary to that end, they will attempt by all means in their
power to enforce the prompt obedience of such men. But what are
the objects of human desire? Physical pleasure, no doubt, in
part. But the mere appetites which we have in common with the
animals would be gratified almost as cheaply and easily as those
of the animals are gratified, if nothing were given to taste, to
ostentation, or to the affections. How small a portion of the
income of a gentleman in easy circumstances is laid out merely in
giving pleasurable sensations to the body of the possessor! The
greater part even of what is spent on his kitchen and his cellar
goes, not to titillate his palate, but to keep up his character
for hospitality, to save him from the reproach of meanness in
housekeeping, and to cement the ties of good neighbourhood. It
is clear that a king or an aristocracy may be supplied to satiety
with mere corporal pleasures, at an expense which the rudest and
poorest community would scarcely feel.

Those tastes and propensities which belong to us as reasoning and
imaginative beings are not indeed so easily gratified. There is,
we admit, no point of saturation with objects of desire which
come under this head. And therefore the argument of Mr Mill will
be just, unless there be something in the nature of the objects
of desire themselves which is inconsistent with it. Now, of
these objects there is none which men in general seem to desire
more than the good opinion of others. The hatred and contempt of
the public are generally felt to be intolerable. It is probable
that our regard for the sentiments of our fellow-creatures
springs, by association, from a sense of their ability to hurt or
to serve us. But, be this as it may, it is notorious that, when
the habit of mind of which we speak has once been formed, men
feel extremely solicitous about the opinions of those by whom it
is most improbable, nay, absolutely impossible, that they should
ever be in the slightest degree injured or benefited. The desire
of posthumous fame and the dread of posthumous reproach and
execration are feelings from the influence of which scarcely any
man is perfectly free, and which in many men are powerful and
constant motives of action. As we are afraid that, if we handle
this part of the argument after our own manner, we shall incur
the reproach of sentimentality, a word which, in the sacred
language of the Benthamites, is synonymous with idiocy, we will
quote what Mr Mill himself says on the subject, in his Treatise
on Jurisprudence.

"Pains from the moral source are the pains derived from the
unfavourable sentiments of mankind...These pains are capable of
rising to a height with which hardly any other pains incident to
our nature can be compared. There is a certain degree of
unfavourableness in the sentiments of his fellow-creatures, under
which hardly any man, not below the standard of humanity, can
endure to live.

"The importance of this powerful agency, for the prevention of
injurious acts, is too obvious to need to be illustrated. If
sufficiently at command, it would almost supersede the use of
other means...

"To know how to direct the unfavourable sentiments of mankind, it
is necessary to know in as complete, that is, in as
comprehensive, a way as possible, what it is which gives them
birth. Without entering into the metaphysics of the question, it
is a sufficient practical answer, for the present purpose, to say
that the unfavourable sentiments of man are excited by everything
which hurts them."

It is strange that a writer who considers the pain derived from
the unfavourable sentiments of others as so acute that, if
sufficiently at command, it would supersede the use of the
gallows and the tread-mill, should take no notice of this most
important restraint when discussing the question of government.
We will attempt to deduce a theory of politics in the
mathematical form, in which Mr Mill delights, from the premises
with which he has himself furnished us.

PROPOSITION I. THEOREM.

No rulers will do anything which may hurt the people.

This is the thesis to be maintained; and the following we humbly
offer to Mr Mill, as its syllogistic demonstration.

No rulers will do that which produces pain to themselves.

But the unfavourable sentiments of the people will give pain to
them.

Therefore no rulers will do anything which may excite the
unfavourable sentiments of the people.

But the unfavourable sentiments of the people are excited by
everything which hurts them.

Therefore no rulers will do anything which may hurt the people.
Which was the thing to be proved.

Having thus, as we think, not unsuccessfully imitated Mr Mill's
logic, we do not see why we should not imitate, what is at least
equally perfect in its kind, its self-complacency, and proclaim
our Eureka in his own words: "The chain of inference, in this
case, is close and strong to a most unusual degree."

The fact is, that, when men, in treating of things which cannot
be circumscribed by precise definitions, adopt this mode of
reasoning, when once they begin to talk of power, happiness,
misery, pain, pleasure, motives, objects of desire, as they talk
of lines and numbers, there is no end to the contradictions and
absurdities into which they fall. There is no proposition so
monstrously untrue in morals or politics that we will not
undertake to prove it, by something which shall sound like a
logical demonstration from admitted principles.

Mr Mill argues that, if men are not inclined to plunder each
other, government is unnecessary; and that, if they are so
inclined, the powers of government, when entrusted to a small
number of them, will necessarily be abused. Surely it is not by
propounding dilemmas of this sort that we are likely to arrive at
sound conclusions in any moral science. The whole question is a
question of degree. If all men preferred the moderate
approbation of their neighbours to any degree of wealth or
grandeur, or sensual pleasure, government would be unnecessary.
If all men desired wealth so intensely as to be willing to brave
the hatred of their fellow-creatures for sixpence, Mr Mill's
argument against monarchies and aristocracies would be true to
the full extent. But the fact is, that all men have some desires
which impel them to injure their neighbours, and some desires
which impel them to benefit their neighbours. Now, if there were
a community consisting of two classes of men, one of which should
be principally influenced by the one set of motives and the other
by the other, government would clearly be necessary to restrain
the class which was eager for plunder and careless of reputation:
and yet the powers of government might be safely intrusted to the
class which was chiefly actuated by the love of approbation.
Now, it might with no small plausibility be maintained that, in
many countries, THERE ARE two classes which, in some degree,
answer to this description; that the poor compose the class which
government is established to restrain, and the people of some
property the class to which the powers of government may without
danger be confided. It might be said that a man who can barely
earn a livelihood by severe labour is under stronger temptations
to pillage others than a man who enjoys many luxuries. It might
be said that a man who is lost in the crowd is less likely to
have the fear of public opinion before his eyes than a man whose
station and mode of living render him conspicuous. We do not
assert all this. We only say that it was Mr Mill's business to
prove the contrary; and that, not having proved the contrary, he
is not entitled to say, "that those principles which imply that
government is at all necessary, imply that an aristocracy will
make use of its power to defeat the end for which governments
exist." This is not true, unless it be true that a rich man is
as likely to covet the goods of his neighbours as a poor man, and
that a poor man is as likely to be solicitous about the opinions
of his neighbours as a rich man.

But we do not see that, by reasoning a priori on such subjects as
these, it is possible to advance one single step. We know that
every man has some desires which he can gratify only by hurting
his neighbours, and some which he can gratify only by pleasing
them. Mr Mill has chosen to look only at one-half of human
nature, and to reason on the motives which impel men to oppress
and despoil others, as if they were the only motives by which men
could possibly be influenced. We have already shown that, by
taking the other half of the human character, and reasoning on it
as if it were the whole, we can bring out a result diametrically
opposite to that at which Mr Mill has arrived. We can, by such a
process, easily prove that any form of government is good, or
that all government is superfluous.

We must now accompany Mr Mill on the next stage of his argument.

Does any combination of the three simple forms of government
afford the requisite securities against the abuse of power? Mr
Mill complains that those who maintain the affirmative generally
beg the question; and proceeds to settle the point by proving,
after his fashion, that no combination of the three simple forms,
or of any two of them, can possibly exist.

"From the principles which we have already laid down it follows
that, of the objects of human desire, and, speaking more
definitely, of the means to the ends of human desire, namely,
wealth and power, each party will endeavour to obtain as much as
possible.

"If any expedient presents itself to any of the supposed parties
effectual to this end, and not opposed to any preferred object of
pursuit, we may infer with certainty that it will be adopted.
One effectual expedient is not more effectual than obvious. Any
two of the parties, by combining, may swallow up the third. That
such combination will take place appears to be as certain as
anything which depends upon human will; because there are strong
motives in favour of it, and none that can be conceived in
opposition to it...The mixture of three of the kinds of
government, it is thus evident, cannot possibly exist...It may be
proper to enquire whether an union may not be possible of two of
them...

"Let us first suppose, that monarchy is united with aristocracy.
Their power is equal or not equal. If it is not equal, it
follows, as a necessary consequence, from the principles which we
have already established, that the stronger will take from the
weaker till it engrosses the whole. The only question therefore
is, What will happen when the power is equal?

"In the first place, it seems impossible that such equality
should ever exist. How is it to be established? or, by what
criterion is it to be ascertained? If there is no such
criterion, it must, in all cases, be the result of chance. If
so, the chances against it are as infinity to one. The idea,
therefore, is wholly chimerical and absurd...

"In this doctrine of the mixture of the simple forms of
government is included the celebrated theory of the balance among
the component parts of a government. By this it is supposed
that, when a government is composed of monarchy, aristocracy, and
democracy, they balance one another, and by mutual checks produce
good government. A few words will suffice to show that, if any
theory deserves the epithets of 'wild, visionary, and
chimerical,' it is that of the balance. If there are three
powers, how is it possible to prevent two of them from combining
to swallow up the third?

"The analysis which we have already performed will enable us to
trace rapidly the concatenation of causes and effects in this
imagined case.

"We have already seen that the interests of the community,
considered in the aggregate, or in the democratical point of
view, is, that each individual should receive protection; and
that the powers which are constituted for that purpose should be
employed exclusively for that purpose...We have also seen that
the interest of the king and of the governing aristocracy is
directly the reverse. It is to have unlimited power over the
rest of the community, and to use it for their own advantage. In
the supposed case of the balance of the monarchical,
aristocratical, and democratical powers, it cannot be for the
interest of either the monarchy or the aristocracy to combine
with the democracy; because it is the interest of the democracy,
or community at large, that neither the king nor the aristocracy
should have one particle of power, or one particle of the wealth
of the community, for their own advantage.

"The democracy or community have all possible motives to
endeavour to prevent the monarchy and aristocracy from exercising
power, or obtaining the wealth of the community for their own
advantage. The monarchy and aristocracy have all possible
motives for endeavouring to obtain unlimited power over the
persons and property of the community. The consequence is
inevitable: they have all possible motives for combining to
obtain that power."

If any part of this passage be more eminently absurd than
another, it is, we think, the argument by which Mr Mill proves
that there cannot be an union of monarchy and aristocracy. Their
power, he says, must be equal or not equal. But of equality
there is no criterion. Therefore the chances against its
existence are as infinity to one. If the power be not equal,
then it follows, from the principles of human nature, that the
stronger will take from the weaker, till it has engrossed the
whole.

Now, if there be no criterion of equality between two portions of
power there can be no common measure of portions of power.
Therefore it is utterly impossible to compare them together. But
where two portions of power are of the same kind, there is no
difficulty in ascertaining, sufficiently for all practical
purposes, whether they are equal or unequal. It is easy to judge
whether two men run equally fast, or can lift equal weights. Two
arbitrators, whose joint decision is to be final, and neither of
whom can do anything without the assent of the other, possess
equal power. Two electors, each of whom has a vote for a
borough, possess, in that respect, equal power. If not, all Mr
Mill's political theories fall to the ground at once. For, if it
be impossible to ascertain whether two portions of power are
equal, he never can show that even under a system of universal
suffrage, a minority might not carry every thing their own way,
against the wishes and interests of the majority.

Where there are two portions of power differing in kind, there
is, we admit, no criterion of equality. But then, in such a
case, it is absurd to talk, as Mr Mill does, about the stronger
and the weaker. Popularly, indeed, and with reference to some
particular objects, these words may very fairly be used. But to
use them mathematically is altogether improper. If we are
speaking of a boxing-match, we may say that some famous bruiser
has greater bodily power than any man in England. If we are
speaking of a pantomime, we may say the same of some very agile
harlequin. But it would be talking nonsense to say, in general,
that the power of Harlequin either exceeded that of the pugilist
or fell short of it.

If Mr Mill's argument be good as between different branches of a
legislature, it is equally good as between sovereign powers.
Every government, it may be said, will, if it can, take the
objects of its desires from every other. If the French
government can subdue England it will do so. If the English
government can subdue France it will do so. But the power of
England and France is either equal or not equal. The chance that
it is not exactly equal is as infinity to one, and may safely be
left out of the account; and then the stronger will infallibly
take from the weaker till the weaker is altogether enslaved.

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