If Mill really meant what Macaulay took him to mean, it would be superfluous to argue the question gravely. The reasoning is only fit, like the reasoning of all Macaulay's antagonists, for the proverbial schoolboy. Mill, according to Macaulay, proposes to discover what governments are good; and, finding that experience gives no clear answer, throws experience aside and appeals to absolute laws of human nature. One such 'law' asserts that the strong will plunder the weak. Therefore all governments except the representative must be oppressive, and rule by sheer terror. Mill's very reason for relying upon this argument is precisely that the facts contradict it. Some despotisms work well, and some democracies ill; therefore we must prove by logic that all despotisms are bad, and all democracies good. Is this really Mill's case?
An answer given by Mill's champion, to which Macaulay replies in his last article, suggests some explanation of Mill's position. Macaulay had paid no attention to one highly important phrase. The terrible consequences which Mill deduces from the selfishness of rulers will follow, he says, 'if nothing checks.'[109] Supplying this qualification, as implied throughout, we may give a better meaning to Mill's argument. A simple observation of experience is insufficient. The phenomena are too complex; governments of the most varying kinds have shown the same faults; and governments of the same kind have shown them in the most various degrees. Therefore the method which Macaulay suggests is inapplicable. We should reason about government, says Macaulay,[110] as Bacon told us to reason about heat. Find all the circumstances in which hot bodies agree, and you will determine the principle of heat. Find all the circumstances in which good governments agree, and you will find the principles of good government. Certainly; but the process, as Macaulay admits, would be a long one. Rather, it would be endless. What 'circumstances' can be the same in all good governments in all times and places? Mill held in substance, that we could lay down certain broad principles about human nature, the existence of which is of course known from 'experience', and by showing how they would work, if restrained by no distinct checks, obtain certain useful conclusions. Mill indicates this line of reply in his own attack upon Mackintosh.[111] There he explains that what he really meant was to set forth a principle recognised by Berkeley, Hume, Blackstone, and, especially, in Plato's Republic. Plato's treatise is a development of the principle that 'identity of interests affords the only security for good government.' Without such identity of interest, said Plato, the guardians of the flock become wolves. Hume[112] had given a pithy expression of the same view in the maxim 'established,' as he says, 'by political writers,' that in framing the 'checks and controls of the constitution, every man ought to be supposed a knave and to have no other end in his actions than private interest.' Mill points this by referring to the 'organs of aristocratical opinion' for the last fifty years. The incessant appeal has been for 'confidence in public men,' and confidence is another name for scope for misrule.[113] This, he explains, was what he meant by the statement (which Mackintosh considered to have been exploded by Macaulay) that every man pursued his own interest.[114] It referred to the class legislation of the great aristocratic ring: kings, nobles, church, law, and army. Utilitarianism, in its political relations, was one continuous warfare against these sinister 'interests,' The master-evil of the contemporary political state undoubtedly implied a want of responsibility. A political trust was habitually confounded with private property. Moreover, whatever else may be essential to good government, one essential is a strong sense of responsibility in the governors. That is a very sound principle, though not an axiom from which all political science can be deduced. If the essay on 'Government' was really meant as a kind of political Euclid—as a deduction of the best system of government from this single principle of responsibility—it was as grotesque as Macaulay asserted. Mill might perhaps have met the criticism by lowering his claims as his son suggests. He certainly managed to express his argument in such terms that it has an uncomfortable appearance of being intended for a scientific exposition.
This deserves notice because the position is characteristic of the Utilitarians' method. Their appeals to experience always end by absolute assertions. We shall find the same difficulty in their economic inquiries. When accused, for example, of laying down absolute principles in such cases, they reply that they are only speaking of 'tendencies,' and recognise the existence of 'checks.' They treat of what would be, if certain forces acted without limit, as a necessary step towards discovering what is when the limits exist. They appear to their opponents to forget the limits in their practical conclusions. This political argument is an instance of the same method. The genesis of his theory is plain. Mill's 'government,' like Bentham's, is simply the conception of legal 'sovereignty' transferred to the sphere of politics. Mill's exposition is only distinguished from his master's by the clearness with which he brings out the underlying assumptions. The legal sovereign is omnipotent, for what he declares to be the law is therefore the law. The law is his commands enforced by 'sanctions,' and therefore by organised force. The motives for obedience are the fear of the gallows on one side, and, on the other, the desire of protection for life and property. Law, again, is the ultimate social bond, and can be made at will by the sovereign. He thus becomes so omnipotent that it is virtually assumed that he can even create himself. Not only can the sovereign, once constituted, give commands enforced by coercive sanctions upon any kind of conduct, but he can determine his own constitution. He can at once, for example, create a representative system in practice, when it has been discovered in theory, and can by judicious regulations so distribute 'self-interest' as to produce philanthropy and public spirit. Macaulay's answer really makes a different assumption. He accepts the purely 'empirical' or 'rule of thumb' position. It is idle, he says, to ask what would happen if there were no 'checks.' It is like leaving out the effect of friction in a problem of mechanics. The logic may be correct, but the conclusions are false in practice.[115] Now this 'friction' was precisely the favourite expedient of the Utilitarians in political economy. To reason about facts, they say, you must analyse, and therefore provisionally disregard the 'checks,' which must be afterwards introduced in practical applications. Macaulay is really bidding us take 'experience' in the lump, and refrains from the only treatment which can lead to a scientific result. His argument, in fact, agrees with that of his famous essay on Bacon, where we learn that philosophy applied to moral questions is all nonsense, and that science is simply crude common-sense. He is really saying that all political reasoning is impossible, and that we must trust to unreasoned observation. Macaulay, indeed, has good grounds of criticism. He shows very forcibly the absurdity of transferring the legal to the political sovereignty. Parliament might, as he says, make a law that every gentleman with £2000 a year might flog a pauper with a cat-of-nine-tails whenever he pleased. But, as the first exercise of such a power would be the 'last day of the English aristocracy,' their power is strictly limited in fact.[116] That gives very clearly the difference between legal and political sovereignty. What parliament makes law is law, but is not therefore enforceable. We have to go behind the commands and sanctions before we understand what is the actual power of government. It is very far from omnipotent. Macaulay, seeing this, proceeds to throw aside Mill's argument against the possibility of a permanent division of power. The de facto limitation of the sovereign's power justifies the old theory about 'mixed forms of government.' 'Mixed governments' are not impossible, for they are real. All governments are, in fact, 'mixed.' Louis xiv. could not cut off the head of any one whom he happened to dislike. An oriental despot is strictly bound by the religious prejudices of his subjects. If 'sovereignty' means such power it is a chimera in practice, or only realised approximately when, as in the case of negro slavery, a class is actually ruled by force in the hands of a really external power. And yet the attack upon 'mixed governments,' which Bentham had expounded in the Fragment, has a real force which Macaulay seems to overlook. Mill's argument against a possible 'balance' of power was, as Macaulay asserted, equally applicable to the case of independent sovereigns; yet France might be stronger at Calais and England at Dover.[117] Mill might have replied that a state is a state precisely because, and in so far as, there is an agreement to recognise a common authority or sovereign. Government does not imply a 'mixture,' but a fusion of power. There is a unity, though not the abstract unity of the Utilitarian sovereign. The weakness of the Utilitarians is to speak as though the sovereign, being external to each individual, could therefore be regarded as external to the whole society. He rules as a strong nation may rule a weak dependency. When the sovereign becomes also the society, the power is regarded as equally absolute, though now applied to the desirable end of maximising happiness. The whole argument ignores the simple consideration that the sovereign is himself in all cases the product of the society over which he rules, and his whole action, even in the most despotic governments, determined throughout by organic instincts, explaining and not ultimately explicable by coercion. Macaulay's doctrine partially recognises this by falling back upon the Whig theory of checks and balances, and the mixture of three mysterious entities, monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. But, as Bentham had sufficiently shown in the Fragment, the theory becomes hopelessly unreal when we try to translate it into facts. There are not three separate forces, conflicting like three independent forces, but a complex set of social institutions bound together into a whole. It is impossible really to regard government as a permanent balance of antagonistic forces, confronting each other like the three duellists in Sheridan's Critic. The practical result of that theory is to substitute for the 'greatest happiness' principle the vague criterion of the preservation of an equilibrium between indefinable forces; and to make the ultimate end of government the maintenance as long as possible of a balance resting on no ulterior principle, but undoubtedly pleasant for the comfortable classes. Nothing is left but the rough guesswork, which, if a fine name be wanted, may be called Baconian induction. The 'matchless constitution,' as Bentham calls it, represents a convenient compromise, and the tendency is to attach exaggerated importance to its ostensible terms. When Macaulay asserted against Mill[118] that it was impossible to say which element—monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy—had gained strength in England in the last century, he is obviously looking at the formulæ and not at the social body behind.
This leads to considerations really more important than the argumentation about a priori and inductive methods. Mill in practice knew very well the qualifications necessary before his principles applied. He showed it in his Indian evidence; and Place could have told him, had it required telling, that the actual political machinery worked by very strange and tortuous methods. Yet he was content to override such considerations when he is expounding his theory, and laid himself open to Macaulay's broad common-sense retort. The nation at large cannot, he says, have a 'sinister interest.' It must desire legislation which is beneficial to the whole. This is to make the vast assumption that every individual will desire what is good for all, and will be a sufficient judge of what is good. But is it clear that a majority will even desire what is good for the whole? May they not wish to sacrifice both other classes and coming generations to their own instantaneous advantages? Is it plain that even enlightenment of mind would induce a poor man to see his own advantage in the policy which would in the long run be best for the whole society? You are bound, said Macaulay, to show that the poor man will not believe that he personally would benefit by direct plunder of the rich; and indeed that he would not be right in so believing. The nation, no doubt, would suffer, but in the immediate period which alone is contemplated by a selfish pauper, the mass of the poor might get more pleasure out of confiscation. Will they not, on your own principles, proceed to confiscation? Shall we not have such a catastrophe as the reign of terror?
The Westminster Reviewer retorted by saying that Macaulay prophesied a reign of terror as a necessary consequence of an extended franchise. Macaulay, skilfully enough, protested against this interpretation. 'We say again and again,' he declares, 'that we are on the defensive. We do not think it necessary to prove that a quack medicine is poison. Let the vendor prove it to be sanative. We do not pretend to show that universal suffrage is an evil. Let its advocates show it to be a good.'[119] Mill rests his whole case upon the selfishness of mankind. Will not the selfishness lead the actual majority at a given moment to plunder the rich and to disregard the interests of their own successors?
Macaulay's declaration that he was only 'upon the defensive' might be justifiable in an advocate. His real thought may be inferred from a speech on the charter made in 1842. The chartists' petition of that year had asked for universal suffrage. Universal suffrage, he replies, would be incompatible with the 'institution of property.'[120] If the chartists acted upon their avowed principles, they would enforce 'one vast spoliation.' Macaulay could not say, of course, what would actually result, but his 'guess' was that we should see 'something more horrible than can be imagined—something like the siege of Jerusalem on a far larger scale.' The very best event he could anticipate—'and what must the state of things be, if an Englishman and a Whig calls such an event the very best?'—would be a military despotism, giving a 'sort of protection to a miserable wreck of all that immense glory and prosperity.'[121] So in the criticism of Mill he had suggested that if his opponent's principles were correct, and his scheme adopted, 'literature, science, commerce, manufactures' would be swept away, and that a 'few half-naked fishermen would divide with the owls and foxes the ruins of the greatest of European cities.'[122]
Carefully as Macaulay guards himself in his articles upon Mill, the speech shows sufficiently what was his 'guess'; that is, his real expectation. This gives the vital difference. What Macaulay professes to deduce from Mill's principles he really holds himself, and he holds it because he argues, as indeed everybody has to argue, pretty much on Mill's method. He does not really remain in the purely sceptical position which would correspond to his version of 'Baconian induction.' He argues, just as Mill would have argued, from general rules about human nature. Selfish and ignorant people will, he thinks, be naturally inclined to plunder; therefore, if they have power, they will plunder. So Mill had argued that a selfish class would rule for its own sinister interests and therefore not for the happiness of the greatest number. The argument is the same, and it is the only line of argument which is possible till, if that should ever happen, a genuine science of politics shall have been constituted. The only question is whether it shall take the pomp of a priori speculation or conceal itself under a show of 'Baconian induction.'
On one point they agree. Both Mill and Macaulay profess unbounded confidence in the virtue and wisdom of the middle, that is, of their own class. Macaulay hopes for a reform bill which will make the votes of the House of Commons 'the express image of the opinion of the middle orders of Britain.'[123] Mill holds that the middle class will retain this moral authority, however widely the franchise be extended; while Macaulay fears that they will be swamped by its extension to the masses. The reform bill which they joined in supporting was regarded by the Radicals as a payment on account; while the Whig hoped that it would be a full and final discharge. The Radical held that no barriers against democracy were needed; he took for granted that a democracy would find its natural leaders in the educated and intelligent. The Whig, to whom such confidence appeared to be altogether misplaced, had to find some justification for the 'checks' and 'balances' which he thought essential.
II. WHIGGISM