Considerations on Representative Government quotes

Let us remember, then, in the first place, that political institutions (however the proposition may be at times ignored) are the work of men—owe their origin and their whole existence to human will.

Men did not wake on a summer morning and find them sprung up.

Neither do they resemble trees, which, once planted, "are aye growing" while men "are sleeping." In every stage of their existence they are made what they are by human voluntary agency.

It can only act by wielding some one or more of the forces of nature. Forces, therefore, that can be applied to the desired use must exist; and will only act according to their own laws.

We can not make the river run backwards; but we do not therefore say that watermills "are not made, but grow."

In politics, as in mechanics, the power which is to keep the engine going must be sought for outside the machinery; and if it is not forthcoming, or is insufficient to surmount the obstacles which may reasonably be expected, the contrivance will fail.

… wield the power in society wield in the end that of government, therefore it is of no use to attempt to influence the constitution of the government by acting on opinion, is to forget that opinion is itself one of the greatest active social forces.

One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.

They who can succeed in creating a general persuasion that a certain form of government, or social fact of any kind, deserves to be preferred, have made nearly the most important step which can possibly be taken toward ranging the powers of society on its …

We must at least limit the definition to such mandates as are general, and issued in the deliberate form of laws. Order, thus understood, expresses, doubtless, an indispensable attribute of government.

Those who are unable to make their ordinances obeyed, can not be said to govern.

But, though a necessary condition, this is not the object of government. That it should make itself obeyed is requisite, in order that it may accomplish some other purpose.

If there is any thing certain in human affairs, it is that valuable acquisitions are only to be retained by the continuation of the same energies which gained them.

Things left to take care of themselves inevitably decay.

Those whom success induces to relax their habits of care and thoughtfulness, and their willingness to encounter disagreeables, seldom long retain their good fortune at its height.

when each individual knows for what he is responsible, and is known to others as responsible for it; when the best-contrived checks are provided against negligence, favoritism, or jobbery in any of the acts of the department.

But political checks will no more act of themselves than a bridle will direct a horse without a rider.

If the checking functionaries are as corrupt or as negligent as those whom they ought to check, and if the public, the mainspring of the whole checking machinery, are too ignorant, too passive, or too careless and inattentive to do their part, little benefit will …

by what it makes of the citizens, and what it does with them; its tendency to improve or deteriorate the people themselves, and the goodness or badness of the work it performs for them, and by means of them.

Government is at once a great influence acting on the human mind, and a set of organized arrangements for public business

: in the first capacity its beneficial action is chiefly indirect, but not therefore less vital, while its mischievous action may be direct.

Nor is it only in their intelligence that they suffer. Their moral capacities are equally stunted. Wherever the sphere of action of human beings is artificially circumscribed, their sentiments are narrowed and dwarfed in the same proportion.

The food of feeling is action; even domestic affection lives upon voluntary good offices.

Let a person have nothing to do for his country, and he will not care for it. It has been said of old that in a despotism there is at most but one patriot, the despot himself;

Their moral capacities are equally stunted. Wherever the sphere of action of human beings is artificially circumscribed, their sentiments are narrowed and dwarfed in the same proportion. The food of feeling is action; even domestic affection lives upon voluntary good offices.

Let a person have nothing to do for his country, and he will not care for it.

It has been said of old that in a despotism there is at most but one patriot, the despot himself; and the saying rests on a just appreciation of the effects of absolute subjection even to a good and wise master. Religion remains;

The food of feeling is action; even domestic affection lives upon voluntary good offices. Let a person have nothing to do for his country, and he will not care for it.

It has been said of old that in a despotism there is at most but one patriot, the despot himself

; and the saying rests on a just appreciation of the effects of absolute subjection even to a good and wise master. Religion remains;

… of state, but in which all the collective interests of the people are managed for them, all the thinking that has relation to collective interests done for them, and in which their minds are formed by, and consenting to, this abdication of their own energies.

Leaving things to the government, like leaving them to Providence, is synonymous with caring nothing about them, and accepting their results, when disagreeable, as visitations of Nature.

With the exception, therefore, of a few studious men who take an intellectual interest in speculation for its own sake, the intelligence and sentiments of the whole people are given up to the material interests, and when these are provided for, to the amusement and …

The leaders of French philosophy in the eighteenth century had been educated by the Jesuits. Even Jesuit education, it seems, was sufficiently real to call forth the appetite for freedom.

Whatever invigorates the faculties, in however small a measure, creates an increased desire for their more unimpeded exercise;

and a popular education is a failure if it educates the people for any state but that which it will certainly induce them to desire, and most probably to demand.

But its acceptance, even for a time strictly limited, can only be excused, if, like Solon or Pittacus, the dictator employs the whole power he assumes in removing the obstacles which debar the nation from the enjoyment of freedom.

A good despotism is an altogether false ideal, which practically (except as a means to some temporary purpose) becomes the most senseless and dangerous of chimeras.

Evil for evil, a good despotism, in a country at all advanced in civilization, is more noxious than a bad one, for it is far more relaxing and enervating to the thoughts, feelings, and energies of the people.

Evil for evil, a good despotism, in a country at all advanced in civilization, is more noxious than a bad one, for it is far more relaxing and enervating to the thoughts, feelings, and energies of the people.

The despotism of Augustus prepared the Romans for Tiberius.

If the whole tone of their character had not first been prostrated by nearly two generations of that mild slavery, they would probably have had spirit enough left to rebel against the more odious one.

The passiveness of our neighbors increases our sense of security, and plays into the hands of our wilfulness. Passive characters, if we do not happen to need their activity, seem an obstruction the less in our own path.

A contented character is not a dangerous rival.

Yet nothing is more certain than that improvement in human affairs is wholly the work of the uncontented characters;

Passive characters, if we do not happen to need their activity, seem an obstruction the less in our own path. A contented character is not a dangerous rival.

Yet nothing is more certain than that improvement in human affairs is wholly the work of the uncontented characters; and, moreover, that it is much easier for an active mind to acquire the virtues of patience, than for a passive one to assume those of energy.

Of the three varieties of mental excellence, intellectual, practical, and moral, there never could be any doubt in regard to the first two, which side had the advantage. All intellectual superiority is the fruit of active effort.

In itself it is the foundation of the best hopes for the general improvement of mankind.

It has been acutely remarked that whenever any thing goes amiss, the habitual impulse of French people is to say, "Il faut de la patience;" and of English people, "What a shame!"

The people who think it a shame when any thing goes wrong—who rush to the conclusion that the evil could and ought to have been prevented, are those who, in the long run, do most to make the world better.

It has been acutely remarked that whenever any thing goes amiss, the habitual impulse of French people is to say, "Il faut de la patience;" and of English people, "What a shame!"

The people who think it a shame when any thing goes wrong—who rush to the conclusion that the evil could and ought to have been prevented, are those who, in the long run, do most to make the world better.

If the desires are low placed, if they extend to little beyond physical comfort, and the show of riches, the immediate results of the energy will not be much more than the continual extension of man's power over material objects;

But the difference is in degree, not in principle; and the best despots often go the greatest lengths in chaining up the free agency of their subjects.

A bad despot, when his own personal indulgences have been provided for, may sometimes be willing to let the people alone; but a good despot insists on doing them good by making them do their own business in a better way than they themselves know of.

The regulations which restricted to fixed processes all the leading branches of French manufactures were the work of the great Colbert.

A neighbor, not being an ally or an associate, since he is never engaged in any common undertaking for joint benefit, is therefore only a rival. Thus even private morality suffers, while public is actually extinct.

Were this the universal and only possible state of things, the utmost aspirations of the lawgiver or the moralist could only stretch to make the bulk of the community a flock of sheep innocently nibbling the grass side by side.

From these accumulated considerations, it is evident that the only government which can fully satisfy all the exigencies of the social state is one in which the whole people participate; that any participation, even in the smallest public function, is useful;

The king's interest lay in encouraging all partial attempts on the part of the serfs to emancipate themselves from their masters, and place themselves in immediate subordination to himself. Under his protection numerous communities were formed which knew no one above them but the king.

Obedience to a distant monarch is liberty itself compared with the dominion of the lord of the neighboring castle;

and the monarch was long compelled by necessities of position to exert his authority as the ally rather than the master of the classes whom he had aided in affecting their liberation.

This is the portion of truth in the opinion of the ancients, revived by great authorities in our own time, that a balanced constitution is impossible.

There is almost always a balance, but the scales never hang exactly even.

Which of them preponderates is not always apparent on the face of the political institutions.

The same person or body may be able to control every thing, but can not possibly do every thing; and in many cases its control over every thing will be more perfect the less it personally attempts to do.

The commander of an army could not direct its movements effectually if he himself fought in the ranks or led an assault.

It is the same with bodies of men. Some things can not be done except by bodies; other things can not be well done by them. It is one question, therefore, what a popular assembly should control, another what it should itself do.

Even now, the worst appointments are those which are made for the sake of gaining support or disarming opposition in the representative body; what might we expect if they were made by the body itself? Numerous bodies never regard special qualifications at all.

Unless a man is fit for the gallows, he is thought to be about as fit as other people for almost any thing for which he can offer himself as a candidate.

When appointments made by a public body are not decided, as they almost always are, by party connection or private jobbing, a man is appointed either because he has a reputation, often quite undeserved, for general ability, or oftener for no better reason than that …

… by the immutability of their maxims, and, still more, by the universal law that whatever becomes a routine loses its vital principle, and, having no longer a mind acting within it, goes on revolving mechanically, though the work it is intended to do remains undone.

A bureaucracy always tends to become a pedantocracy.

When the bureaucracy is the real government, the spirit of the corps (as with the Jesuits) bears down the individuality of its more distinguished members.

… we talk of the interest of a body of men, or even of an individual man, as a principle determining their actions, the question what would be considered their interest by an unprejudiced observer is one of the least important parts of the whole matter.

As Coleridge observes, the man makes the motive, not the motive the man.

What it is the man's interest to do or refrain from depends less on any outward circumstances than upon what sort of man he is.

but of what use is it to preach this doctrine to a man who cares for nothing but his own ease or his own pocket? He can not care for other people if he would.

It is like preaching to the worm who crawls on the ground how much better it would be for him if he were an eagle.

Now it is a universally observed fact that the two evil dispositions in question, the disposition to prefer a man's selfish interests to those which he shares with other people, and his immediate and direct interests to those which are indirect and remote, are characteristics …

If you wish to know what is practically a man's interest, you must know the cast of his habitual feelings and thoughts. Every body has two kinds of interests—interests which he cares for and interests which he does not care for.

Every body has selfish and unselfish interests, and a selfish man has cultivated the habit of caring for the former and not caring for the latter.

Every one has present and distant interests, and the improvident man is he who cares for the present interests and does not care for the distant.

But the habit of passing them over as irremediable has become so inveterate, that many persons seem to have lost the capacity of looking at them as things which they would be glad to remedy if they could.

From despairing of a cure, there is too often but one step to denying the disease;

and from this follows dislike to having a remedy proposed, as if the proposer were creating a mischief instead of offering relief from one.

It also appears to me that when prejudices persist obstinately, it is the fault of nobody so much as of those who make a point of proclaiming them insuperable, as an excuse to themselves for never joining in an attempt to remove them.

Any prejudice whatever will be insurmountable if those who do not share it themselves truckle to it, and flatter it, and accept it as a law of nature.

I believe, however, that of prejudice, properly speaking, there is in this case none except on the lips of those who talk about it, and that there is in general, among those who have yet heard of the proposition, no other hostility to it than …

If checks of this description are sufficient, the philosophy of constitutional government is but solemn trifling.

All trust in constitutions is grounded on the assurance they may afford, not that the depositaries of power will not, but that they can not misemploy it.

Democracy is not the ideally best form of government unless this weak side of it can be strengthened;

to have his consent asked, and his opinion counted at its worth, though not at more than its worth.

There ought to be no pariahs in a full-grown and civilized nation; no persons disqualified except through their own default.

Every one is degraded, whether aware of it or not, when other people, without consulting him, take upon themselves unlimited power to regulate his destiny.

to have his consent asked, and his opinion counted at its worth, though not at more than its worth. There ought to be no pariahs in a full-grown and civilized nation; no persons disqualified except through their own default.

Every one is degraded, whether aware of it or not, when other people, without consulting him, take upon themselves unlimited power to regulate his destiny.

And even in a much more improved state than the human mind has ever yet reached, it is not in nature that they who are thus disposed of should meet with as fair play as those who have a voice.

When society has not performed its duty by rendering this amount of instruction accessible to all, there is some hardship in the case, but it is a hardship that ought to be borne.

If society has neglected to discharge two solemn obligations, the more important and more fundamental of the two must be fulfilled first; universal teaching must precede universal enfranchisement.

No one but those in whom an à priori theory has silenced common sense will maintain that power over others, over the whole community, should be imparted to people who have not acquired the commonest and most essential requisities for taking care of themselves—for pursuing …

the concession to others of a more potential voice, on the ground of greater capacity for the management of the joint interests, is another. The two things are not merely different, they are incommensurable.

Every one has a right to feel insulted by being made a nobody, and stamped as of no account at all.

No one but a fool, and only a fool of a peculiar description, feels offended by the acknowledgment that there are others whose opinion, and even whose wish, is entitled to a greater amount of consideration than his.

The two things are not merely different, they are incommensurable. Every one has a right to feel insulted by being made a nobody, and stamped as of no account at all.

No one but a fool, and only a fool of a peculiar description, feels offended by the acknowledgment that there are others whose opinion, and even whose wish, is entitled to a greater amount of consideration than his.

To have no voice in what are partly his own concerns is a thing which nobody willingly submits to;

I look upon it as only relatively good; less objectionable than inequality of privilege grounded on irrelevant or adventitious circumstances, but in principle wrong, because recognizing a wrong standard, and exercising a bad influence on the voter's mind.

It is not useful, but hurtful, that the constitution of the country should declare ignorance to be entitled to as much political power as knowledge.

The national institutions should place all things that they are concerned with before the mind of the citizen in the light in which it is for his good that he should regard them;

But theory and experience alike prove that a counter current sets in when they are made the possessors of all power.

Those who are supreme over every thing, whether they be One, or Few, or Many, have no longer need of the arms of reason; they can make their mere will prevail; and those who can not be resisted are usually far too well satisfied with their own opinions to be willing to change them, or listen without impatience to any one who tells them that they are in the wrong.

The position which gives the strongest stimulus to the growth of intelligence is that of rising into power, not that of having achieved it;

In the preceding argument for universal but graduated suffrage, I have taken no account of difference of sex.

I consider it to be as entirely irrelevant to political rights as difference in height or in the color of the hair.

All human beings have the same interest in good government; the welfare of all is alike affected by it, and they have equal need of a voice in it to secure their share of its benefits.

If there be any difference, women require it more than men, since, being physically weaker, they are more dependent on law and society for protection.

Mankind have long since abandoned the only premises which will support the conclusion that women ought not to have votes.

No one now holds that women should be in personal servitude; that they should have no thought, wish, or occupation but to be the domestic drudges of husbands, fathers, or brothers.

The worst that is said is that they would vote as mere dependents, the bidding of their male relations. If it be so, so let it be. If they think for themselves, great good will be done; and if they do not, no harm.

It is a benefit to human beings to take off their fetters, even if they do not desire to walk.

It would already be a great improvement in the moral position of women to be no longer declared by law incapable of an opinion, and not entitled to a preference, respecting the most important concerns of humanity.

Were it as right as it is wrong that they should be a subordinate class, confined to domestic occupations and subject to domestic authority, they would not the less require the protection of the suffrage to secure them from the abuse of that authority.

Men, as well as women, do not need political rights in order that they may govern, but in order that they may not be misgoverned.

The majority of the male sex are, and will be all their lives, nothing else than laborers in corn-fields or manufactories;

When this is the condition, in a high degree, of a large proportion of the voters, the ballot may be the smaller evil.

When the voters are slaves, any thing may be tolerated which enables them to throw off the yoke.

The strongest case for the ballot is when the mischievous power of the Few over the Many is increasing. In the decline of the Roman republic, the reasons for the ballot were irresistible.

To be under the eyes of others—to have to defend oneself to others—is never more important than to those who act in opposition to the opinion of others, for it obliges them to have sure ground of their own.

Nothing has so steadying an influence as working against pressure.

Unless when under the temporary sway of passionate excitement, no one will do that which he expects to be greatly blamed for, unless from a preconceived and fixed purpose of his own, which is always evidence of a thoughtful and deliberate character, and, except in …

A great number of the electors will have two sets of preferences—those on private and those on public grounds. The last are the only ones which the elector would like to avow.

The best side of their character is that which people are anxious to show, even to those who are no better than themselves.

People will give dishonest or mean votes from lucre, from malice, from pique, from personal rivalry, even from the interests or prejudices of class or sect, more readily in secret than in public.

Though the community, as a whole, can have (as the terms imply) no other interest than its collective interest, any or every individual in it may.

A man's interest consists of whatever he takes an interest in.

Every body has as many different interests as he has feelings; likings or dislikings, either of a selfish or of a better kind. It can not be said that any of these, taken by itself, constitutes 'his interest:'

When once this effect has been produced, there need be no doubt that the declaration on oath or honor would be considered binding. [6] "

Opinion tolerates a false disclaimer only when it already tolerates the thing disclaimed.

" This is notoriously the case with regard to electoral corruption. There has never yet been, among political men, any real and serious attempt to prevent bribery, because there has been no real desire that elections should not be costly.

[6] "Opinion tolerates a false disclaimer only when it already tolerates the thing disclaimed." This is notoriously the case with regard to electoral corruption.

There has never yet been, among political men, any real and serious attempt to prevent bribery, because there has been no real desire that elections should not be costly.

Their costliness is an advantage to those who can afford the expense by excluding a multitude of competitors; and any thing, however noxious, is cherished as having a conservative tendency, if it limits the access to Parliament to rich men.

… more morally mischievous—work greater evil through their spirit—than by representing political functions as a favor to be conferred, a thing which the depositary is to ask for as desiring it for himself, and even pay for as if it were designed for his pecuniary benefit.

Men are not fond of paying large sums for leave to perform a laborious duty.

Plato had a much juster view of the conditions of good government when he asserted that the persons who should be sought out to be invested with political power are those who are personally most averse to it, and that the only motive which can …

The auction between Cleon and the sausage-seller in Aristophanes is a fair caricature of what would be always going on.

Such an institution would be a perpetual blister applied to the most peccant parts of human nature.

It amounts to offering 658 prizes for the most successful flatterer, the most adroit misleader of a body of his fellow-countrymen. Under no despotism has there been such an organized system of tillage for raising a rich crop of vicious courtiership.

The auction between Cleon and the sausage-seller in Aristophanes is a fair caricature of what would be always going on. Such an institution would be a perpetual blister applied to the most peccant parts of human nature.

It amounts to offering 658 prizes for the most successful flatterer, the most adroit misleader of a body of his fellow-countrymen.

Under no despotism has there been such an organized system of tillage for raising a rich crop of vicious courtiership.

It can not be denied that a complete democracy has a strong tendency to cast the sentiments of the electors in this mould.

Democracy is not favorable to the reverential spirit.

That it destroys reverence for mere social position must be counted among the good, not the bad part of its influences, though by doing this it closes the principal school of reverence (as to merely human relations) which exists in society.

As a general rule, every executive function, whether superior or subordinate, should be the appointed duty of some given individual. It should be apparent to all the world who did every thing, and through whose default any thing was left undone.

Responsibility is null when nobody knows who is responsible; nor, even when real, can it be divided without being weakened.

To maintain it at its highest, there must be one person who receives the whole praise of what is well done, the whole blame of what is ill. There are, however, two modes of sharing responsibility;

Responsibility in this case is a mere name.

"Boards," it is happily said by Bentham, "are screens."

What "the Board" does is the act of nobody, and nobody can be made to answer for it. The Board suffers, even in reputation, only in its collective character;

… the routine of a grammar-school, or who make up for the smallness of their knowledge of what is there taught by greater knowledge of something else—allow marks to be gained by proficiency in any other subject of real utility, they are reproached for that too.

Nothing will satisfy the objectors but free admission of total ignorance.

We are triumphantly told that neither Clive nor Wellington could have passed the test which is prescribed for an aspirant to an engineer cadetship;

If it be only meant to inform us that it is possible to be a great general without these things, so it is without many other things which are very useful to great generals.

Alexander the Great had never heard of Vauban's rules, nor could Julius Cæsar speak French.

We are next informed that book-worms, a term which seems to be held applicable to whoever has the smallest tincture of book-knowledge, may not be good at bodily exercises, or have the habits of gentlemen.

They exist in England but very incompletely, and with great irregularity and want of system; in some other countries much less popularly governed, their constitution is far more rational.

In England there has always been more liberty but worse organization, while in other countries there is better organization but less liberty.

It is necessary, then, that, in addition to the national representation, there should be municipal and provisional representations; and the two questions which remain to be resolved are, how the local representative bodies should be constituted, and what should be the extent of their functions.

The principal business of the central authority should be to give instruction, of the local authority to apply it.

Power may be localized, but knowledge, to be most useful, must be centralized; there must be somewhere a focus at which all its scattered rays are collected, that the broken and colored lights which exist elsewhere may find there what is necessary to complete and purify them.

To every branch of local administration which affects the general interest there should be a corresponding central organ, either a minister, or some specially appointed functionary under him, even if that functionary does no more than collect information from all quarters, and bring the experience …

The practical conclusion from these premises is not difficult to draw.

The authority which is most conversant with principles should be supreme over principles, while that which is most competent in details should have the details left to it.

The principal business of the central authority should be to give instruction, of the local authority to apply it. Power may be localized, but knowledge, to be most useful, must be centralized;

The old remark, "As the schoolmaster is, so will be the school," is as true of the indirect schooling of grown people by public business as of the schooling of youth in academies and colleges.

A government which attempts to do every thing is aptly compared by M. Charles de Rémusat to a schoolmaster who does all the pupils' tasks for them; he may be very popular with the pupils, but he will teach them little.

A government, on the other hand, which neither does any thing itself that can possibly be done by any one else, nor shows any one else how to do any thing, is like a school in which there is no schoolmaster, but only pupil-teachers who …

government and administration do not exist for that alone, great as its importance is. But the objection shows a very imperfect understanding of the function of popular institutions as a means of political instruction.

It is but a poor education that associates ignorance with ignorance, and leaves them, if they care for knowledge, to grope their way to it without help, and to do without it if they do not.

What is wanted is the means of making ignorance aware of itself, and able to profit by knowledge; accustoming minds which know only routine to act upon, and feel the value of principles;

accustoming minds which know only routine to act upon, and feel the value of principles; teaching them to compare different modes of action, and learn, by the use of their reason, to distinguish the best.

When we desire to have a good school, we do not eliminate the teacher.

The old remark, "As the schoolmaster is, so will be the school," is as true of the indirect schooling of grown people by public business as of the schooling of youth in academies and colleges.

The same incidents, the same acts, the same system of government, affect them in different ways, and each fears more injury to itself from the other nationalities than from the common arbiter, the state.

Their mutual antipathies are generally much stronger than jealousy of the government.

That any one of them feels aggrieved by the policy of the common ruler is sufficient to determine another to support that policy. Even if all are aggrieved, none feel that they can rely on the others for fidelity in a joint resistance;

… whose feelings half or three fourths of the subjects of the same government are foreigners will have no more scruple in mowing them down, and no more desire to ask the reason why, than they would have in doing the same thing against declared enemies.

An army composed of various nationalities has no other patriotism than devotion to the flag.

Such armies have been the executioners of liberty through the whole duration of modern history.

An army composed of various nationalities has no other patriotism than devotion to the flag.

Such armies have been the executioners of liberty through the whole duration of modern history.

The sole bond which holds them together is their officers and the government which they serve, and their only idea, if they have any, of public duty, is obedience to orders.

But, when a people are ripe for free institutions, there is a still more vital consideration.

Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities.

Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion necessary to the working of representative government can not exist. The influences which form opinions and decide political acts are different in the different sections of the country.

The same remark applies to the Welshman or the Scottish Highlander as members of the British nation.

Whatever really tends to the admixture of nationalities, and the blending of their attributes and peculiarities in a common union, is a benefit to the human race.

Not by extinguishing types, of which, in these cases, sufficient examples are sure to remain, but by softening their extreme forms, and filling up the intervals between them.

We continued to torment them, not for any benefit to ourselves, but for that of a section or faction among the colonists; and this persistence in domineering cost us a Canadian rebellion before we had the happy thought of giving it up.

England was like an ill brought-up elder brother, who persists in tyrannizing over the younger ones from mere habit, till one of them, by a spirited resistance, though with unequal strength, gives him notice to desist.

We were wise enough not to require a second warning. A new era in the colonial policy of nations began with Lord Durham's Report;

Unfortunately this, though the simplest mode of attempting to govern a dependency, is about the worst, and betrays in its advocates a total want of comprehension of the conditions of good government.

To govern a country under responsibility to the people of that country, and to govern one country under responsibility to the people of another, are two very different things.

What makes the excellence of the first is, that freedom is preferable to despotism: but the last is despotism.

They are feared, suspected, probably disliked by the population; seldom sought by them except for interested purposes; and they are prone to think that the servilely submissive are the trustworthy.

Their danger is of despising the natives; that of the natives is, of disbelieving that any thing the strangers do can be intended for their good.

These are but a part of the difficulties that any rulers have to struggle with, who honestly attempt to govern well a country in which they are foreigners.

It is always under great difficulties, and very imperfectly, that a country can be governed by foreigners, even when there is no extreme disparity in habits and ideas between the rulers and the ruled.

Foreigners do not feel with the people.

They can not judge, by the light in which a thing appears to their own minds, or the manner in which it affects their feelings, how it will affect the feelings or appear to the minds of the subject population.

… an authority which has gone through none of the labor, acquired none of the capacity, and for the most part is not even aware that either, in any peculiar degree, is required, can not be regarded as a very effectual expedient for accomplishing these ends.

The government of a people by itself has a meaning and a reality, but such a thing as government of one people by another does not and can not exist.

One people may keep another as a warren or preserve for its own use, a place to make money in, a human-cattle farm to be worked for the profit of its own inhabitants;

The distrustful criticism with which Englishmen, more than any other people, are in the habit of scanning the conduct of their country towards foreigners, they usually reserve for the proceedings of the public authorities.

In all questions between a government and an individual, the presumption in every Englishman's mind is that the government is in the wrong.

And when the resident English bring the batteries of English political action to bear upon any of the bulwarks erected to protect the natives against their encroachments, the executive, with their real but faint velleities of something better, generally find it safer to their Parliamentary …

They are always one of the chief difficulties of the government.

Armed with the prestige and filled with the scornful overbearingness of the conquering nation, they have the feelings inspired by absolute power without its sense of responsibility.

Among a people like that of India, the utmost efforts of the public authorities are not enough for the effectual protection of the weak against the strong; and of all the strong, the European settlers are the strongest.

… the state should relinquish to them its reserved right to a rent from their lands, or who resent as a wrong any attempt to protect the masses from their extortion—these have no difficulty in procuring interested or sentimental advocacy in the British Parliament and press.

The silent myriads obtain none.

The preceding observations exemplify the operation of a principle—which might be called an obvious one, were it not that scarcely anybody seems to be aware of it—that, while responsibility to the governed is the greatest of all securities for good government, responsibility to somebody else …

above all, can not have that complete and over-operative identity of interest with the governed which it is so difficult to obtain even where the people to be ruled are in some degree qualified to look after their own affairs.

Real good government is not compatible with the conditions of the case. There is but a choice of imperfections.

The problem is, so to construct the governing body that, under the difficulties of the position, it shall have as much interest as possible in good government, and as little in bad. Now these conditions are best found in an intermediate body.

… day when it comes to be thought that the appointment of persons to situations of trust from motives of convenience, already so criminal in England, can be practiced with impunity in India, will be the beginning of the decline and fall of our empire there.

Even with a sincere intention of preferring the best candidate, it will not do to rely on chance for supplying fit persons. The system must be calculated to form them.

It has done this hitherto; and because it has done so, our rule in India has lasted, and been one of constant, if not very rapid improvement in prosperity and good administration.