Mill Essay, Research Paper

John Stuart Mill on Proportional Representation

Two really different thoughts are normally confounded under the name democracy. The pure thought of democracy, harmonizing to its definition, is the authorities of the whole people by the whole people, every bit represented. Democracy as normally conceived and hitherto practiced, is the authorities of the whole people by a mere bulk of the people, entirely represented. The former is synonymous with the equality of all citizens ; the latter, queerly confounded with it, is a authorities of privilege, in favour of the numerical bulk, who entirely possess practically any voice in the State. This is the inevitable effect of the mode in which the ballots are now taken, the complete disenfranchisement of minorities.

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The confusion of thoughts here is great, but is so easy cleared up, that one would say the slightest indicant would be sufficient to put the affair in its true visible radiation before any head of mean intelligence. It would be so, but for the power of wont ; owing to which the simplest thought, if unfamiliar, has every bit great difficultly in doing its manner to the head as a far more complicated one. That the minority must give to the bulk, the smaller figure to the greater, is a familiar thought ; and consequently work forces think there is no necessity for utilizing their heads any farther, and it does non happen to them that there is any medium between leting the smaller figure to be every bit powerful with the greater, and blotting out the smaller figure wholly. In a representative organic structure really considering, the minority must of class be overruled ; and in an equal democracy ( since the sentiments of the components when they insist on them, find those of the representative organic structure ) the bulk of the people, through their representatives, will outvote and predominate over the minority and their representatives. But does it follow the minority should hold no representatives at all? Because the bulk ought to predominate over the minority, must the bulk have all the ballots, the minority none? Is it necessary that the minority should non even be heard? Nothing but wont and old association can accommodate any sensible being to the gratuitous unfairness. In a truly equal democracy, every or any subdivision would be represented, non disproportionately but proportionally. As bulk of the voters would ever hold a bulk of the representatives ; but a minority of the voters would ever hold a minority of the representatives.

Man for adult male, they would be as to the full represented as the bulk. Unless they are, there is non equal authorities, but a authorities of inequality and privilege ; one portion of the people regulation over the remainder ; there is a party whose just and equal portion of influence in the representation is withheld from them contrary to all merely authorities, but above all, contrary to the rule of democracy, which professes equality as its really root and foundation.

The unfairness and misdemeanor of rule are non less crying because those who suffer by them are a minority ; for there is non equal right to vote where every individual person does non number for every bit much as any other individual person in the community. But it is non merely a minority who suffer. Democracy, therefore constituted, does non even achieve its apparent object, that of giving the powers of authorities in all instances to the numerical bulk. It does something every different: it gives them to a bulk of the bulk ; who may be, and frequently are, but a minority of the whole. . . . If democracy means the certain dominance of the bulk, there are no agencies of sing that, but by leting every single figure to state every bit in the summing up. Any minority left out, either intentionally or by the drama of the machinery, gives the power non to the bulk, but to a minority in some other portion of the graduated table.

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And it is non entirely through the ballots of minorities that this system of election would raise the rational criterion of the House of Commons. Majorities would be compelled to look out for members of a much higher quality. When the persons composing the bulk would no longer be reduced to Hobson & # 8217 ; s pick, of either vote for the individual brought frontward by their local leaders, or non voting at all ; when the campaigners of the leaders would hold to meet the competition non entirely of the campaigner of the minority, but of all the work forces of established repute in the state who were willing to function ; it would be impossible any longer to foist upon the voters the first individual who presents himself with the mottos of the party in his oral cavity, and three or four thousand lbs in his pocket. The bulk would take a firm stand on holding a campaigner worthy of their pick, or they would transport their ballots someplace else.

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[ With relative representation ] the title-holders of unpopular philosophies would non set forth their statements simply in books and periodicals, read merely by their ain side ; the opposing ranks would run into face to f