In an 1835 article entitled ‘State of the Nation’ for the London Review, the Scottish radical James Mill considered the progress of reform in Britain, and how society might be further improved. One of his objects was to illustrate how the ruling Few, throughout history, erected barriers to any reforms that might promote the interests of the Many. These barriers to reform, these shields of the ruling Few, combined force and fraud: the violent crushing of resistance; frightening the people with talk of foreign enemies; influencing men’s imaginations with pomp and ceremony; the employment of a state-supported religion to corrupt men’s minds; and the power of lawyers, friends of the Few who made the law obscure so that the community would depend upon them. Towards the end of the article, Mill gives advice to the reforming members of Parliament, and censures those dishonourable politicians who stand for nothing but their sinister interests.
‘The first class … are the small number. They are the ruling Few. The second class … are the great number. They are the subject Many.
‘It is obvious that, to enable the Few to carry on their appropriate work, a complicated system of devices was required, otherwise they would not succeed; the Many, who are the stronger party, would not submit to the operation. The system they have contrived is a curious compound of force and fraud:—force in sufficient quantity to put down partial risings of the people, and, by punishments inflicted, to strike terror into the rest; fraud, to make them believe that the results of the process were all for their good.
‘First, the Many were frightened with the danger of invasion and ravage, by foreign enemies; that so they might believe a large military force in the hands of the Few to be necessary for their protection; while it was ready to be employed in their coercion, and to silence their complaints of anything by which they might find themselves aggrieved.
‘Next, the use of all the circumstances calculated to dazzle the eyes, and work upon the imaginations of men, was artfully adopted by the class of whom we speak. They dwelt in great and splendid houses; they covered themselves with robes of a peculiar kind; they made themselves be called by names, all importing respect, which other men were not permitted to use; they were constantly followed and surrounded by numbers of people, whose interest they made it to treat them with a submission and a reverence approaching adoration; even their followers, and the horses on which they rode, were adorned with trappings which were gazed upon with admiration by all those who considered them as things placed beyond their reach.
‘And this was not all, nor nearly so. There were not only dangers from human foes; there were invisible powers from whom good or evil might proceed to an inconceivable amount. If the opinion could be generated, that there were men who had an influence over the occurrence of this good or evil, so as to bring on the good, or avert the evil, it is obvious that an advantage was gained of prodigious importance; an instrument was found, the power of which over the wills and actions of men was irresistible.
The Few ‘have in all ages understood well the importance of this instrument to the successful prosecution of their trade. Hence the Union of Church and State; and the huge applauses with which so useful a contrivance has been attended. Hence the complicated tissue of priestly formalities, artfully contrived to impose upon the senses and imaginations of men—the peculiar garb—the peculiar names—the peculiar gait and countenance of the performers—the enormous temples devoted to their ceremonies—the enormous revenues subservient to the temporal power and pleasures of the men who pretended to stand between their fellow-creatures and the evils to which they were perpetually exposed, by the will of him whom they called their perfectly good and wise and benevolent God.
‘If, besides the power which the priestly class were thus enabled to exercise over the minds of adult men, they were also permitted to engross the business of education—that is, to create such habits of mind in the rising generation, as were subservient to their purposes, and to prevent the formation of all such habits as were opposed to them—the chains they had placed on the human mind would appear to have been complete: the prostration of the understanding and the will—the perpetual object of their wishes and endeavours down to the present hour—to have been secured for ever.
‘The alliance of the men, who wielded the priestly power, was, in these circumstances, a matter of great importance to those who wielded the political power; and the confederacy of the two was of signal service to the general end of both—the maintenance of that old and valuable relation—the relation between Those qui pillent [who pillage], and Those qui sont pillés [who are pillaged].
‘There was another instrument—not, indeed, of so great, but of no mean potency. We allude to the lawyers. Men speedily discovered how much they were exposed to injury from one another, even in the state of social union, and found how greatly they were dependent on the protection which was afforded them against such injuries. They greatly valued that protection, and respected greatly the men who were its more immediate instruments. These men naturally thought of serving themselves by the advantageous situation in which they were placed. They wished to make the dependence upon them of the other members of the community as great as possible. This was to be done mainly by rendering the mode in which they yielded that protection mysterious and obscure. Obscurity, especially in the less instructed states of the human mind, is a powerful cause of that kind of reverence which is mixed with fear. Nobody knows what may be in a thing which is obscurely seen. It is almost always swelled into something of vast dimensions and pregnant with good or evil according to the frame in which the imagination of the half-observer may be at the time. More than this: when law was obscure, nobody could obtain the benefit of it but by means of the lawyers, because by them alone was it understood. This created a state of profound dependence on the part of all the rest of the community. It proved, of course, to the lawyers, a fertile source both of riches and power. The alliance of the men of law with the men of the state and the men of the altar, became thence a matter of importance to the trade of all; and the union of Law and State has not been less real, though less talked about, than the union of Church and State. It is unfortunate that it never obtained a name, and therefore is more frequently overlooked.
‘A threefold cord is not easily broken. The doom of mankind might now have appeared to be sealed. The shackles on the mind secured the shackles on the body; and the division of mankind into ceux qui pillent, et ceux qui sont pillés, might have been thought to be established for ever.’
Radical Demands
‘The representatives are the watchmen of the people; and two things only are wanting to make the people very perfect watchmen of the representatives; First, the perfect power of choice, which implies the power of speedy removal; Secondly, the full benefit of the press, which gives them the necessary knowledge of the behaviour of the representative. So circumstanced, the representatives will have a paramount interest in consulting the interest of the people, and in resisting every exercise of power which would trench upon it. And we reformers, till we have brought the state of the representation to this state of perfection, will not cease to have a grievance, which our best exertions will be strenuously and incessantly employed to remove.
‘So much as to an instance of what we deem an abuse. Now for a specimen of our remedies. The power of taking away from the people the choice of their representatives is all derived from two sources,—the publicity of the vote—and the want of power to displace a representative whose conduct does not give satisfaction. We desire, therefore, two things—we desire secret voting, and we desire short parliaments.’
Parliament’s Failures
Radicals in parliament should be ‘the champions of the philosophical principles of government.’
‘The absence of men in parliament who thought themselves worthy, to stand up, as Ricardo appositely expressed it, for principle, has been so complete, that a fashion has been created against it. So far is it from being the custom in that place to measure anything by its accordance with principle, that the man is reckoned fine, who professes to hold it in derision or abhorrence. It has come to this pass, in that assembly, that the appeal to reason is discreditable,—the renunciation of it a thing to parade, and be vain of. The tone of the place,—not casual, not by fits and starts, but habitual, steady, is,—that the use of reason is to be discarded in the conduct of a nation’s affairs. We believe it would be impossible to assemble an equal number of tolerably educated men, in any other part of the civilized world, among whom it would be fashionable to set reason at defiance, and to profess to act in contempt of her dictates.
‘This remarkable characteristic of the legislative council in England is a declaration, clear and not to be mistaken, of the interests which are there pursued. Truly was it said by Hobbes, that “when reason is against a man, a man will be against reason;” and with equal truth and certainty may we reverse the proposition, and say, “whenever a body of men are found to be steadily and tenaciously against reason, we may safely conclude they have interests, to the gratification of which the exercise of reason would be fatal.”
‘The instruments which are chiefly made use of, in parliament, to cover the renunciation of reason, and render it somewhat less palpable, are a set of hack phrases, serving each of them as a wrapper for a little parcel of sophistry. Thus we have, “Not speculation, but practice,”—as much to say, act like a beast, and not one of the best of beasts, a blind horse in a mill; “Wisdom of ancestors,”—as if ancientness of error were better than truth, or the everlasting repetition of evil converted it into good. Of late, the word “Institutions” has been industriously employed to preclude the use of reason. “Institutions,” in the talk of the anti-reformers, is made synonymous with government and religion; “change,” is made synonymous with destruction. By force of this new nomenclature, therefore, he who desires to reform anything goes to the destruction of government and religion; as if government were no longer government when it is rendered good,—religion were no longer religion when it is rendered pure. What these people mean is, that government is then destroyed, when they are no longer permitted to abuse its powers, for their own aggrandizement, at the expense of the rest of the community; religion is then destroyed, when they cannot make use of it as an instrument for the accomplishment of the same design. In other words, the mischievous tendency which has been given to each by the perfidious artifices of men, is, in their sense, the essence of each. The essence of government, the essence of religion, is the mischief which can be done with them. Let mischief no longer be done with them, they no longer exist.’
Colonies
‘We point to colonies, as an object of attention to the genuine reformers, because the importance of the subject is seldom understood. We consider the English colonies as one grand cause of the oppression of the English people. It is not disputed, that of the distressing burdens they bear a great proportion is the work of the colonies: that a very small number of troops is required for the service of England and Scotland; that the army is rendered the most galling of our burdens, because misgovernment cannot be supported in Ireland but with the bayonet, and because every insignificant spot, called a colony, creates a pretext for a military establishment. It has been frequently said, but evidence of it has not been sufficiently displayed and enforced, that no colony is other than hurtful to the mother country, which does not defray its own expenses. The proposition, indeed, is next to self-evident; for what does a country get by a colony, for which it is obliged to pay, and from which it receives nothing?’
Notes in the Margins of the Days 