by Bart Schultz
locality,” suffers from any number of problems. First, there “is a danger
of losing a valuable protection against demagogy, if we remove the natural
inducements which local divisions give for the more instructed part of the
community to exercise their powers of persuasion on the less instructed.”
In local divisions, “the wiser few” can exploit their position, and “the nat-
ural sociability springing from neighbourhood tends to become a channel
of political education.” (EP ) Also, if “the citizens are left to aggregate
themselves into constituencies by free combination they are likely to form
electoral bodies of a more uniform character, whether the combination
is based upon identity of interests or similarity of opinions,” losing the
breadth of view and variety of ideas that locality fosters. Sidgwick wor-
ries that the simplicity of Hare’s and similar schemes “is artificial, and
involves the disadvantage of breaking up for electoral purposes portions
of the community, – such as towns generally are, – which tend to have
an intimate internal coherence in their economic and social life, and con-
sequently important common interests.” (EP ) Any national political
figure ought to be able to find some local basis of support.
And there are more specific problems with Hare’s notion of preferential
voting, according to which “each elector only gives one vote, but he is
allowed to deliver a voting-paper on which the names of candidates may
be written in any number not exceeding the number of places to be filled
up.” The names are to be in order of preference, so that “if a vote for the
name first on the list turns out to be superfluous, because the candidate’s
quota of votes is already made up, the vote is counted for the name second
on the list; and similarly, if need be, for the third, and so on.” The “weak
point of this scheme is that no thoroughly satisfactory method has been
devised for selecting the particular votes that are to count for any candidate
P: IJD
cA.xml
CY/Schultz
February ,
:
Colors
who has votes in excess of the required quota” – consequently, the results
could be juggled, depending on which “winning votes” were counted, and
so on. (EP )
At any rate, Sidgwick bestows no great favor on any concrete plan for
legislative districting, and contents himself with the general conclusion
that “it is important to provide for a rectification of the division from
time to time, to meet changes in population.” This rectification, how-
ever, should not be regarded as a constitutional change, but “should be
performed regularly, as a natural consequence of a periodical census; and
where party government prevails, it will be better that it should not be
performed by the legislature but by a permanent commission – in order
to avoid or reduce the danger of ‘gerrymandering.’ ” (EP )
When it comes not to the right to elect but to the eligibility to be
elected, Sidgwick, not surprisingly, reveals many of the same concerns,
so that “crime, infamous trade, loss of economic independence, extreme
poverty and ignorance, should disqualify equally in both cases: and if a
minimum of age higher than that of ordinary legal maturity be adopted for
electors, it will be reasonable to put the same restriction on candidates”
(EP ). Naturally, the same problems of arbitrariness would plague
direct attempts to make riches or intelligence the criterion of holding
office. Thus, “in order to obtain the varied empirical knowledge and the
sympathetic insight into the needs of all sections of society, which we say
to be the characteristic merit of this form of government, it is necessary
that every class of electors should be free to choose its own members.”
Limitations “must have a tendency to diminish the interest taken by the
poorer classes in the election of legislators, and to weaken their confidence
in the legislators elected.” (EP ) However,
These arguments seem to me very strong against any formal limitation of eli-
gibility by the requirement of definite pecuniary or educational qualifications:
but they do not apply with anything like equal force to an arrangement which
without excluding any class would yet operate very decidedly in favour of candi-
dates possessing such qualifications. And this result, I conceive, may be simply
attained by attaching no salary to the post of legislator. In this case, it will still be possible for any class in the community to select representatives from its own
ranks: only if they have no independent means they will require to be supported
by voluntary contributions: and the electors are hardly likely to tax themselves
for this purpose unless they have a very decided preference for such candidates.
(EP )
P: IJD
cA.xml
CY/Schultz
February ,
:
Henry Sidgwick: Eye of the Universe
Sidgwick admits that “it may be necessary to provide public remunera-
tion for the work of legislation in poor communities.” Still, he thinks that
“in societies as wealthy as modern states generally are, it cannot be difficult
to find an adequate number of persons, qualified by nature and training
and enjoying pecuniary independence, to devote themselves to this im-
portant and interesting work: which, if public opinion is in a healthy state,
they will regard as at once a duty and an honour.” This principle would
establish a high standard of “pecuniary incorruptibility.” Moreover,
If it be said that an assembly in which comparatively rich men preponderate will
tend, in framing legislative measures, to have special regard to the class-interests
of the rich, I should reply that this tendency, in a country where the suffrage is
widely extended, may reasonably be regarded not as a drawback, but as a valuable
security for just legislation; in view of the grave danger already noticed that the
apparent interests of the poor, who form the numerical majority, will be preferred
to the real ultimate interests of the whole community. (EP )
This is not to mention the arguments to be made on behalf of some form
of upper chamber, exercising a further check on the democratic tendencies
of the lower. With an eye to the comparison of the U.S. Senate and the
British House of Lords, Sidgwick argues at length that
assuming that a Senate is desirable, I should reject as generally inexpedient modes
of appointing senators – under the social and political conditions of a modern
state – co-optation, inheritance, and those modes of election which manifestly
render the elected chamber representative of a section of the whole body of citizens.
Among the acceptable modes of appointment I should distinguish () those that
a
im at securing personal weight in the senators; and () those that aim at securing representative weight. I should place in the former class nomination on the ground of eminence by the executive, and appointment as a consequence of holding or
having held for a certain time certain high offices. In the latter class I should include all modes of election which would render the persons elected representative in
some way of the whole body of citizens. The methods included in the first class
appear to me well adapted for the purpose of providing a chamber that is only
designed to have the power of delaying, and not that of permanently resisting,
the legislative measures approved by the primary representative assembly: but
if a chamber with really co-ordinate powers is wanted, I think that the weight
required for the conflicts it must be prepared to face is most likely to be secured
by some method that will render it undeniably representative, though perhaps in
an indirect way, of the nation at large. (EP )
P: IJD
cA.xml
CY/Schultz
February ,
:
Colors
The former is the method “adapted to Parliamentary government,” while
the latter requires “some such careful separation of legislature from ex-
ecutive as is realised in the ‘presidential’ system of the United States of
America.”
Now, the foregoing remarks should make it tolerably plain how and why
Sidgwick favors the account of democracy as resting on the active consent
of the governed rather than on the idea of the omnicompetent citizen.
The latter notion perhaps really did find an application in ancient Athens,
but Sidgwick has a host of reservations about its modern applicability and
favors instead an adaptation of Aristotle, when it comes to the forms of
government. Thus, he notes that there has been an unfortunate obliteration
in recent times of the distinction between oligarchy and aristocracy. The
former connotes rule by the wealthy few in their own interests, but the
latter involves rule by the “best” and still carries at least a more neutral
sense. Thus,
[T]he ‘aristocratic’ element of a modern community is vaguely understood to
be not merely rich, but to have acquired, on the average, through hereditary
wealth, leisure, and social position, a cultivation of mind above that of the ‘masses’
and also certain valuable traditions of political experience: so that its claim to a
share in government disproportionate to its numbers is based on a belief in its
superior intellectual qualifications. It therefore seems to me possible, without
doing too much violence to current usage, to give the term a signification akin
to the Aristotelian; accordingly I shall mean by ‘aristocracy’ the government of
persons specially qualified by abilities, training, and experience for the work of
government. (EP )
With this understanding, which simply criss-crosses notions of liberal
culture and professional expertise, Sidgwick is perfectly happy to have his
political theoretical efforts understood as an attempt to marry the virtues
of democracy with those of aristocracy. As he sums it up:
[I]t is generally admitted by theoretical advocates of democracy in modern times
that the part of governmental work which is entrusted to particular individuals or
elected assemblies should be entrusted to persons specially qualified. And so far
as this is admitted, the principle of aristocracy . . . that the work of government is a form of skilled labour which should be in the hands of those who possess
the requisite skill – is implicitly accepted. Hence, I do not consider representative government – even when the suffrage is universal – as merely a mode of organising
democracy, but rather as a combination or fusion of democracy and aristocracy.
P: IJD
cA.xml
CY/Schultz
February ,
:
Henry Sidgwick: Eye of the Universe
This fusion or combination may become less or more aristocratic in character
through various minor modifications. Thus, it may be made less aristocratic by
increasing the intervention of the people at large in legislation – through mea-
sures like the ‘referendum’ and ‘initiative’ . . . – by shortening the time for which the legislature or the executive is appointed, by the habit of demanding elaborate pledges at elections, or even imposing ‘mandates’ at other times to which
the representative submit, and by the practice of appointing executive officials on
grounds other than their qualifications for office. Correspondingly it tends to be
made more aristocratic by lengthening the duration of parliaments, by the habit
of choosing representatives for proved ability, and abstaining from the exaction of
pledges and the imposition of mandates, and by the practice of giving executive
appointments to the persons best qualified to fill them. But these latter modifica-
tions can hardly be said to make it less democratic, in the sense in which I first
defined – and in which alone I accept – the democratic principles: at least so long
as the consciousness of active consent remains vigorous in the citizens generally.
(EP –)
Even with all of these safeguards, however, precipitous pressure on
legislators to promote sectional interests, or the equalization of happiness
at the expense of the truly utilitarian end, remains a worry. Sidgwick
simply concludes that he is “inclined to hope” that the danger
may be materially reduced if the legislators receive no salary; since they will then
be more independent, and being drawn in the main from the minority of persons
of wealth and leisure, will be generally disposed, from training and habit, and also
from regard to the sentiment of their class, to do justice to the reasonable claims
of the rich in any disputed question on which rich and poor are opposed.
This policy measure is, Sidgwick enthusiastically proposes, easier to main-
tain “against a strong drift towards democracy than other oligarchical
expedients – limited suffrage, plural vote, etc. – because it has the advan-
tage, which the poor are likely to appreciate, of saving money.” And again,
the measure can in some degree be neutralized by “combinations of the
poor to elect members of their own class and pay them a salary.” (EP )
On other points, Sidgwick is generally open to the constitutional and
parliamentary solutions that he sees around him. As for the monarchy, he
simply takes it that
the monarch in the most monarchical modern State must normally govern along
with a legislature independently elected, and judges whom he cannot of his
own sole will dismiss. . . . it seems to me not inconsistent with the principle of
P: IJD
cA.xml
CY/Schultz
February ,
:
Colo
rs
democracy . . . that a power of this latter kind should be held for life, and even transmitted by inheritance, instead of being obtained for a short period by election.
(EP )
Such mixed systems of the Western European type will conduce to stabil-
ity, avoiding the swings between democracy and despotism that marked
ancient Greece.
Much of the charming innocence of Sidgwick’s vision no doubt stems
from his truly heroic effort to come to terms with the forms and func-
tions of the modern state, while holding onto the dream of avoiding party
politics, the strife of “faction.” He writes most movingly of the prin-
ciples of the Federalist Papers, and of Justice Story’s Constitution of the United States, in which there is scant recognition of the emerging two-party system as a permanent fixture of the political world. “And even
J. S. Mill,” he exclaims, “hardly seems to contemplate a dual organisation
of parties as a normal feature of representative institutions” (EP ).
Like Mill’s, Sidgwick’s sympathies for socialism were in inverse ratio to
his enthusiasm for radical democratization, given the state of popular
morality.
The evils of party are vast: corruption, bribery, and the general intel-
lectual perversion of being pressured to go with a platform and a slate
rather than make up one’s mind independently on each issue and each
candidate. Despite what might seem to be the obvious permanent party
division – that between rich and poor, over such issues as taxation – there
are, Sidgwick urges, any number of issues, from protectionism to war, on
which there may be considerable internal class division. Thus, party for-
mations ought, in any natural form, to be “of a complicated and shifting
kind” and “almost certainly have a multiple and not a dual character”
(EP ). Which leads, obviously, to the question of just why they do tend
toward a dual character.
Here Sidgwick’s analysis is unsparing. In electoral systems where in-
adequate provision is made for the representation of minorities,
if the vacancies are filled up by the candidates of one party, the candidates of
any other party can only be elected accidentally, unless the parties have formed
an alliance, and agreed upon a common list of candidates. Hence arises an im-
