No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Representation without Democracy: The Webbs' Constitution
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
Extract
Even before they had fully secured representative government with universal suffrage and frequent elections, the most ardent English democrats had already grown quite sensitive to the drawbacks of democracy. By the middle of the nineteenth century a number of them had become seriously disturbed about the difficulty of combining popular government with efficient government. They believed that ordinary men should rule but were learning that only extraordinary men could rule well. They opposed government by an aristocracy because it sacrificed the good of all to the interests of a few but they were discovering that the people could disregard or violate the common good as easily as the aristocracy. The defects of democracy became a heavier burden still for English socialists at the end of the century. Convinced that government should take over control of economic life, and persuaded by its achievements in other realms that modem science was the most efficient means of control, they wanted the real work of governing to be done by scientific experts; yet the democratic tendencies of both the English and the socialist traditions obliged them to favor constitutional forms that would preserve the principle, or at least the appearance, of government by the people.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1954
References
1 Cole, Margaret, Beatrice Webb (London: Longmans, Green, 1946), pp. 145, 190.Google Scholar
2 Carlyle, Thomas, “The Present Time,” Latter-Day Pamphlets (London: Chapman & Hall, 1850), p. 27.Google Scholar
3 Bagehot, Walter, The English Constitution (London: Kegan Paul, 1929), p. 159.Google Scholar
4 Finer, S. E., The Life and Times of Sir Edwin Chadwick (London: Methuen, 1952), p. 477.Google Scholar
5 Chadwick, E. to Gregg, W. R., 14th 10, 1852Google Scholar, quoted by Finer, , p. 478.Google Scholar
6 Richardson, B. W., The Health of Nations (London: Longmans, Green, 1887), I, 133f.Google Scholar
7 Letter on the Civil Service to the Prince Consort, 1855, quoted by Finer, , p. 479.Google Scholar
8 Cf. The Spirit of the Age (1831), pp. 19–21Google Scholar. Also in a letter to d'Eichtal, November 7, 1829, Mill wrote: “They [St. Simonians] have held out as the ultimate end towards which we are advancing, and which we shall one day attain, a state in which the body of the people, i.e., the uninstructed, shall entertain the same feeling of deference and submission to the authority of the instructed, in morals and politics, as they at present do in the physical sciences. This, I am persuaded is the wholesome state of the human mind. …”
9 Mill, John Stuart, Dissertations and Discussions (London: Longmans, Green, 1867), I, 469.Google Scholar
10 Ibid., p. 470.
11 Mill, J. S., Considerations on Representative Government (Oxford: Blackwell, 1947), pp. 173–4.Google Scholar
12 Mill, J. S., Autobiography (New York: Columbia University, 1924), pp. 185f.Google Scholar
13 Mill, , Representative Government, p. 174Google Scholar. It might be argued plausibly that in proposing a Commission of Legislation, Mill was suggesting nothing more radical than establishing a permanent body of experts to draft the laws. The passages in Representative Government describing the Commission, taken by themselves, do not preclude this interpretation; others, which express Mill's attachment to democracy and distrust of irresponsible power lend it support. But several further considerations give more weight to the contrary view. If Mill had meant to suggest merely that some expert be available to help in drafting bills, it is odd that he should have regarded his scheme as something altogether novel. Neither the idea nor the practice was new: a Parliamentary Counsel helped to write Pitt's financial bills, and in 1837 the Home Office, responsible for initiating most legislation, appointed an official counsel to aid in drawing up bills. But Mill did not mention this post, which would have been a forerunner of the commission he suggested, had he meant the Commission to be merely draftsmen. In 1869 there was established an Office of Parliamentary Counsel to the Treasury, with Thring as Parliamentary Counsel and an assistant and office staff to aid him. But Mill did not mention this Office in his Autobiography, where again he implied that the Commission he proposed was quite novel. It seems probable that he did not remark on the Office of Parliamentary Counsel because he did not consider its responsibilities similar to those he envisioned for his Legislative Commission. It is also quite unlikely that Mill was asking that Parliament call on eminent men in England, since it was especially common during Mill's lifetime, to establish various committees and commissions which would investigate particular subjects and make recommendations for legislation. Mill, as one of the Philosophical Radicals, must have been well aware of the practice, but he neither adopted nor rejected it as an indication of how his Legislative Commission would work. Moreover, Mill's sentiments in favor of democracy are offset by his other convictions and recommendations — his faith in the disinterestedness of the educated class, his optimism about discovering through the moral sciences indisputable answers to social problems, his willingness to abandon the secret ballot to insure more disinterested voting, his suggestion to give educated persons more votes than less qualified citizens. These convictions are very much in harmony with a proposal for a legislative commission that does more than simply draft bills.
It should, however, be emphasized that although in much of Representative Government Mill argued against democracy, he did think he had combined the most desirable features of democracy and the rule of the best, and neither admitted nor sanctioned those implications of his proposals that the Webbs developed. Cf. also Dissertations and Discussions (1867) I, 467Google Scholaret seq. and Tocqueville's comment on the essay, Oeuvres VI, 53et seq.Google Scholar
14 Sidney, and Webb, Beatrice, A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain (London: Longmans, Green, 1920), p. 49.Google Scholar
15 Ibid., p. 158.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid., p. 162.
18 Ibid., p. 181.
19 Ibid., fn. p. 178; cf. also p. 179.
20 Ibid., p. 181.
21 Ibid., pp. 185f.
22 Sidney, and Webb, Beatrice, Industrial Democracy (first published 1897), 1913, p. 830.Google Scholar
23 “The Social Parliament must, it will be clear, control but not administer; decide such great issues of policy as may present themselves, but not interfere with management; safeguard the interests of the community as a whole, but keep its hands off the actual working of the machine. … It will be the duty of the Department under the Standing Committee to keep itself constantly informed of what the National Board is doing; and to be always inspecting, costing, auditing and researching, in order that it may at all times be able to inform the Standing Committee how the policy prescribed by the Social Parliament is being carried out, and with what results. But this Department will have no right to interfere with the National Board or to give instructions. It will be for the Standing Committee itself, from time to time to confer with the National Board as to the results of its administration, but the Standing Committee will not be empowered to interfere with its discretion.” Constitution, pp. 189 ff.Google Scholar
24 Ibid., p. 197.
25 Industrial Democracy, p. 845.Google Scholar
26 Ibid., p. 843.
27 Ibid., p. 844.
28 Constitution, pp. 201fGoogle Scholar. In Industrial Democracy, the Webbs also stressed the necessity for accepting a complex political hierarchy, and repudiating any “neat formula for defining the rights and duties of the individual in society.” (p. 844) They quote with approval a remark by SirSeeley, John: “Liberty, in fact, means just so far as it is realised, the right man in the right place.” (p. 847 fn.)Google Scholar
28a Cf. Webb, S., “The Difficulties of Individualism,” Problems of Modern Industry, p. 250f.Google Scholar; Webb, S., “The Historic Basis of Socialism,” Fabian Essays (London, 1948), p. 53f.Google Scholar
29 Constitution, p. 196.Google Scholar
30 For the same reason they did not fear any expert's propensity to sacrifice the community's interest to his own. The discipline of science and the removal of a profit motive would, the Webbs felt, produce a race of perfectly disinterested experts seeking only the truth. The expert's personality “will find expression and his freedom will be exercised without limitation in the process of discovery and measurement, and in the fearless representation of whatever he finds. …” (Constitution, p. 198.)Google Scholar
31 Constitution, p. 90.Google Scholar
32 Ibid., p. 100.
33 Ibid., p. 354.
34 Cf. Webb, B., Our Partnership (London: Longmans, Green, 1948), p. 231.Google Scholar
35 Constitution, p. 145fn.Google Scholar
36 Ibid.
37 Bagehot, , The English Constitution, p. 170.Google Scholar
38 Ibid., p. 159.
39 Burke, Edmund, “Speech on the Duration of Parliaments,” Works (London; Nimmo, 1899), VII, 74.Google Scholar
40 Burke, , Works, II, 357.Google Scholar
41 Constitution, p. 89f.Google Scholar
42 , S. and Webb, B., Soviet Communism (London: Longmans, Green, 1947), p. 344f.Google Scholar
43 Ibid., p. 345–6.