essays on government

Essay on Government

Students are often asked to write an essay on Government in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Government

What is government.

Government is a group of people who make decisions and laws for a country. They are responsible for providing services like education, healthcare, and security to the public.

Types of Government

There are different types of governments, such as democracy, monarchy, dictatorship, and communism. In a democracy, people choose their leaders through voting.

Roles of Government

Governments have many roles. They protect citizens, make laws, and manage the economy. They also provide public services like schools and hospitals.

Importance of Government

Government is important because it maintains order, protects citizens, and provides necessary services. Without it, society would be chaotic.

250 Words Essay on Government

Introduction.

The term ‘Government’ fundamentally signifies the governing body of a nation or state that exercises authority, controls, and administers public policy. It is the political direction and control exercised over the actions of the members, citizens, or inhabitants of communities, societies, and states.

The Role of Government

The government plays a crucial role in society by ensuring the smooth functioning of the nation. It is responsible for maintaining law and order, protecting citizens’ rights, and providing public services. The government also shapes the economy by implementing policies that either stimulate or slow down economic growth.

Governments can be categorized into several types based on their structure and the extent of power they exercise. These include democracy, where power is vested in the people; monarchy, where power is held by a single ruler; and autocracy, where a single person holds unlimited power.

Government and Democracy

In democratic governments, citizens have the right to elect their representatives who make decisions on their behalf. This system promotes accountability, transparency, and the protection of individual rights. However, democracy’s success hinges on an informed and active citizenry that can hold the government accountable.

In conclusion, the government is a fundamental institution in any society. It plays a pivotal role in maintaining societal order, ensuring the welfare of its citizens, and driving the nation’s growth and development. The efficiency of a government is largely determined by its structure, the extent of its powers, and the level of citizen participation.

500 Words Essay on Government

Introduction to government.

The government’s primary role is to safeguard the rights and freedoms of its citizens. This involves ensuring the security of the people, maintaining law and order, and providing public goods and services. A government has the responsibility to protect its citizens from internal and external threats, which is why it maintains law enforcement agencies and a military.

The government also plays a crucial role in economic regulation and stabilization. By controlling monetary and fiscal policies, it can influence the country’s economic trajectory, ensuring growth, stability, and equity. Furthermore, the government is responsible for the provision of public goods and services such as education, healthcare, infrastructure, and social welfare programs.

Forms of Government

In between these extremes, there are numerous variations, such as constitutional monarchies, where a monarch shares power with a constitutionally organized government, or oligarchies, where power rests with a small number of people.

The Importance of Good Governance

Good governance is integral to the effective functioning of a government. It is characterized by transparency, accountability, efficiency, and adherence to the rule of law. Good governance ensures that the government’s actions benefit the majority of the population and that public resources are used efficiently and ethically.

Conclusion: The Evolving Role of Government

In today’s rapidly changing world, the role of government is evolving. With the advent of technology and globalization, governments are not just confined to traditional roles but are increasingly involved in areas such as digital infrastructure, climate change, and global health crises.

As we move forward, the challenge for governments worldwide will be to adapt to these changes and continue to serve their citizens effectively. Understanding the nature, role, and complexities of government is crucial for us as we navigate the political landscape of the 21st century.

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25 Essay Topics for American Government Classes

Writing Ideas That Will Make Students Think

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If you are a teacher searching for essay topics to assign to your U.S. government or civics class or looking for ideas, do not fret. It is easy to integrate debates and discussions into the classroom environment. These topic suggestions provide a wealth of ideas for written assignments such as  position papers , compare-and-contrast essays , and  argumentative essays . Scan the following 25 question topics and ideas to find just the right one. You'll soon be reading interesting papers from your students after they grapple with these challenging and important issues.

• Compare and contrast what is a direct democracy versus representative democracy. 
• React to the following statement: Democratic decision-making should be extended to all areas of life including schools, the workplace, and the government. 
• Compare and contrast the Virginia and New Jersey plans. Explain how these led to the Great Compromise .
• Pick one thing about the U.S. Constitution including its amendments that you think should be changed. What modifications would you make? Explain your reasons for making this change.
• What did Thomas Jefferson mean when he said, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants?" Do you think that this statement still applies to today's world? 
• Compare and contrast mandates and conditions of aid regarding the federal government's relationship with states. For example, how has the Federal Emergency Management Agency delivered support to states and commonwealths that have experienced natural disasters?
• Should individual states have more or less power compared to the federal government when implementing laws dealing with topics such as the legalization of marijuana  and abortion ? 
• Outline a program that would get more people to vote in presidential elections or local elections.
• What are the dangers of gerrymandering when it comes to voting and presidential elections?
• Compare and contrast the major political parties in the United States. What policies are they preparing for upcoming elections?
• Why would voters choose to vote for a third party, even though they know that their candidate has virtually no chance of winning? 
• Describe the major sources of money that are donated to political campaigns. Check out the Federal Election Regulatory Commission's website for information.
• Should corporations be treated as individuals regarding being allowed to donate to political campaigns?  Look at the 2010 Citizens United v. FEC ruling on the issue. Defend your answer. 
• Explain the role of social media in connecting interest groups that have grown stronger as the major political parties have grown weaker. 
• Explain why the media has been called the fourth branch of government. Include your opinion on whether this is an accurate portrayal.
• Compare and contrast the campaigns of U.S. Senate and House of Representatives candidates.
• Should term limits be instituted for members of Congress? Explain your answer.
• Should members of Congress vote their conscience or follow the will of the people who elected them into office? Explain your answer.
• Explain how executive orders have been used by presidents throughout the history of the U.S. What is the number of executive orders issued by the current president?
• In your opinion, which of the three branches of the federal government has the most power? Defend your answer.
• Which of the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment do you consider the most important? Explain your answer. 
• Should a school be required to get a warrant before searching a student's property? Defend your answer. 
• Why did the Equal Rights Amendment fail? What kind of campaign could be run to see it passed?
• Explain how the 14th Amendment has affected civil liberties in the United States from the time of its passage at the end of the Civil War.
• Do you think that the federal government has enough, too much or just the right amount of power? Defend your answer.
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Introductory essay

Written by the educators who created Cyber-Influence and Power, a brief look at the key facts, tough questions and big ideas in their field. Begin this TED Study with a fascinating read that gives context and clarity to the material.

Each and every one of us has a vital part to play in building the kind of world in which government and technology serve the world’s people and not the other way around. Rebecca MacKinnon

Over the past 20 years, information and communication technologies (ICTs) have transformed the globe, facilitating the international economic, political, and cultural connections and exchanges that are at the heart of contemporary globalization processes. The term ICT is broad in scope, encompassing both the technological infrastructure and products that facilitate the collection, storage, manipulation, and distribution of information in a variety of formats.

While there are many definitions of globalization, most would agree that the term refers to a variety of complex social processes that facilitate worldwide economic, cultural, and political connections and exchanges. The kinds of global connections ICTs give rise to mark a dramatic departure from the face-to-face, time and place dependent interactions that characterized communication throughout most of human history. ICTs have extended human interaction and increased our interconnectedness, making it possible for geographically dispersed people not only to share information at an ever-faster rate but also to organize and to take action in response to events occurring in places far from where they are physically situated.

While these complex webs of connections can facilitate positive collective action, they can also put us at risk. As TED speaker Ian Goldin observes, the complexity of our global connections creates a built-in fragility: What happens in one part of the world can very quickly affect everyone, everywhere.

The proliferation of ICTs and the new webs of social connections they engender have had profound political implications for governments, citizens, and non-state actors alike. Each of the TEDTalks featured in this course explore some of these implications, highlighting the connections and tensions between technology and politics. Some speakers focus primarily on how anti-authoritarian protesters use technology to convene and organize supporters, while others expose how authoritarian governments use technology to manipulate and control individuals and groups. When viewed together as a unit, the contrasting voices reveal that technology is a contested site through which political power is both exercised and resisted.

Technology as liberator

The liberating potential of technology is a powerful theme taken up by several TED speakers in Cyber-Influence and Power . Journalist and Global Voices co-founder Rebecca MacKinnon, for example, begins her talk by playing the famous Orwell-inspired Apple advertisement from 1984. Apple created the ad to introduce Macintosh computers, but MacKinnon describes Apple's underlying narrative as follows: "technology created by innovative companies will set us all free." While MacKinnon examines this narrative with a critical eye, other TED speakers focus on the ways that ICTs can and do function positively as tools of social change, enabling citizens to challenge oppressive governments.

In a 2011 CNN interview, Egyptian protest leader, Google executive, and TED speaker Wael Ghonim claimed "if you want to free a society, just give them internet access. The young crowds are going to all go out and see and hear the unbiased media, see the truth about other nations and their own nation, and they are going to be able to communicate and collaborate together." (i). In this framework, the opportunities for global information sharing, borderless communication, and collaboration that ICTs make possible encourage the spread of democracy. As Ghonim argues, when citizens go online, they are likely to discover that their particular government's perspective is only one among many. Activists like Ghonim maintain that exposure to this online free exchange of ideas will make people less likely to accept government propaganda and more likely to challenge oppressive regimes.

A case in point is the controversy that erupted around Khaled Said, a young Egyptian man who died after being arrested by Egyptian police. The police claimed that Said suffocated when he attempted to swallow a bag of hashish; witnesses, however, reported that he was beaten to death by the police. Stories about the beating and photos of Said's disfigured body circulated widely in online communities, and Ghonim's Facebook group, titled "We are all Khaled Said," is widely credited with bringing attention to Said's death and fomenting the discontent that ultimately erupted in the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, or what Ghonim refers to as "revolution 2.0."

Ghonim's Facebook group also illustrates how ICTs enable citizens to produce and broadcast information themselves. Many people already take for granted the ability to capture images and video via handheld devices and then upload that footage to platforms like YouTube. As TED speaker Clay Shirky points out, our ability to produce and widely distribute information constitutes a revolutionary change in media production and consumption patterns. The production of media has typically been very expensive and thus out of reach for most individuals; the average person was therefore primarily a consumer of media, reading books, listening to the radio, watching TV, going to movies, etc. Very few could independently publish their own books or create and distribute their own radio programs, television shows, or movies. ICTs have disrupted this configuration, putting media production in the hands of individual amateurs on a budget — or what Shirky refers to as members of "the former audience" — alongside the professionals backed by multi-billion dollar corporations. This "democratization of media" allows individuals to create massive amounts of information in a variety of formats and to distribute it almost instantly to a potentially global audience.

Shirky is especially interested in the Internet as "the first medium in history that has native support for groups and conversations at the same time." This shift has important political implications. For example, in 2008 many Obama followers used Obama's own social networking site to express their unhappiness when the presidential candidate changed his position on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The outcry of his supporters did not force Obama to revert to his original position, but it did help him realize that he needed to address his supporters directly, acknowledging their disagreement on the issue and explaining his position. Shirky observes that this scenario was also notable because the Obama organization realized that "their role was to convene their supporters but not to control their supporters." This tension between the use of technology in the service of the democratic impulse to convene citizens vs. the authoritarian impulse to control them runs throughout many of the TEDTalks in Cyber-Influence and Power.

A number of TED speakers explicitly examine the ways that ICTs give individual citizens the ability to document governmental abuses they witness and to upload this information to the Internet for a global audience. Thus, ICTs can empower citizens by giving them tools that can help keep their governments accountable. The former head of Al Jazeera and TED speaker Wadah Khanfar provides some very clear examples of the political power of technology in the hands of citizens. He describes how the revolution in Tunisia was delivered to the world via cell phones, cameras, and social media outlets, with the mainstream media relying on "citizen reporters" for details.

Former British prime minister Gordon Brown's TEDTalk also highlights some of the ways citizens have used ICTs to keep their governments accountable. For example, Brown recounts how citizens in Zimbabwe used the cameras on their phones at polling places in order to discourage the Mugabe regime from engaging in electoral fraud. Similarly, Clay Shirky begins his TEDTalk with a discussion of how cameras on phones were used to combat voter suppression in the 2008 presidential election in the U.S. ICTs allowed citizens to be protectors of the democratic process, casting their individual votes but also, as Shirky observes, helping to "ensure the sanctity of the vote overall."

Technology as oppressor

While smart phones and social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook have arguably facilitated the overthrow of dictatorships in places like Tunisia and Egypt, lending credence to Gordon Brown's vision of technology as an engine of liberalism and pluralism, not everyone shares this view. As TED speaker and former religious extremist Maajid Nawaz points out, there is nothing inherently liberating about ICTs, given that they frequently are deployed to great effect by extremist organizations seeking social changes that are often inconsistent with democracy and human rights. Where once individual extremists might have felt isolated and alone, disconnected from like-minded people and thus unable to act in concert with others to pursue their agendas, ICTs allow them to connect with other extremists and to form communities around their ideas, narratives, and symbols.

Ian Goldin shares this concern, warning listeners about what he calls the "two Achilles heels of globalization": growing inequality and the fragility that is inherent in a complex integrated system. He points out that those who do not experience the benefits of globalization, who feel like they've been left out in one way or another, can potentially become incredibly dangerous. In a world where what happens in one place very quickly affects everyone else — and where technologies are getting ever smaller and more powerful — a single angry individual with access to technological resources has the potential to do more damage than ever before. The question becomes then, how do we manage the systemic risk inherent in today's technology-infused globalized world? According to Goldin, our current governance structures are "fossilized" and ill-equipped to deal with these issues.

Other critics of the notion that ICTs are inherently liberating point out that ICTs have been leveraged effectively by oppressive governments to solidify their own power and to manipulate, spy upon, and censor their citizens. Journalist and TED speaker Evgeny Morozov expresses scepticism about what he calls "iPod liberalism," or the belief that technology will necessarily lead to the fall of dictatorships and the emergence of democratic governments. Morozov uses the term "spinternet" to describe authoritarian governments' use of the Internet to provide their own "spin" on issues and events. Russia, China, and Iran, he argues, have all trained and paid bloggers to promote their ideological agendas in the online environment and/or or to attack people writing posts the government doesn't like in an effort to discredit them as spies or criminals who should not be trusted.

Morozov also points out that social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are tools not only of revolutionaries but also of authoritarian governments who use them to gather open-source intelligence. "In the past," Morozov maintains, "it would take you weeks, if not months, to identify how Iranian activists connect to each other. Now you know how they connect to each other by looking at their Facebook page. KGB...used to torture in order to get this data." Instead of focusing primarily on bringing Internet access and devices to the people in countries ruled by authoritarian regimes, Morozov argues that we need to abandon our cyber-utopian assumptions and do more to actually empower intellectuals, dissidents, NGOs and other members of society, making sure that the "spinternet" does not prevent their voices from being heard.

The ICT Empowered Individual vs. The Nation State

In her TEDTalk "Let's Take Back the Internet," Rebecca MacKinnon argues that "the only legitimate purpose of government is to serve citizens, and…the only legitimate purpose of technology is to improve our lives, not to manipulate or enslave us." It is clearly not a given, however, that governments, organizations, and individuals will use technology benevolently. Part of the responsibility of citizenship in the globalized information age then is to work to ensure that both governments and technologies "serve the world's peoples." However, there is considerable disagreement about what that might look like.

WikiLeaks spokesperson and TED speaker Julian Assange, for example, argues that government secrecy is inconsistent with democratic values and is ultimately about deceiving and manipulating rather than serving the world's people. Others maintain that governments need to be able to keep secrets about some topics in order to protect their citizens or to act effectively in response to crises, oppressive regimes, terrorist organizations, etc. While some view Assange's use of technology as a way to hold governments accountable and to increase transparency, others see this use of technology as a criminal act with the potential to both undermine stable democracies and put innocent lives in danger.

ICTs and global citizenship

While there are no easy answers to the global political questions raised by the proliferation of ICTs, there are relatively new approaches to the questions that look promising, including the emergence of individuals who see themselves as global citizens — people who participate in a global civil society that transcends national boundaries. Technology facilitates global citizens' ability to learn about global issues, to connect with others who care about similar issues, and to organize and act meaningfully in response. However, global citizens are also aware that technology in and of itself is no panacea, and that it can be used to manipulate and oppress.

Global citizens fight against oppressive uses of technology, often with technology. Technology helps them not only to participate in global conversations that affect us all but also to amplify the voices of those who have been marginalized or altogether missing from such conversations. Moreover, global citizens are those who are willing to grapple with large and complex issues that are truly global in scope and who attempt to chart a course forward that benefits all people, regardless of their locations around the globe.

Gordon Brown implicitly alludes to the importance of global citizenship when he states that we need a global ethic of fairness and responsibility to inform global problem-solving. Human rights, disease, development, security, terrorism, climate change, and poverty are among the issues that cannot be addressed successfully by any one nation alone. Individual actors (nation states, NGOs, etc.) can help, but a collective of actors, both state and non-state, is required. Brown suggests that we must combine the power of a global ethic with the power to communicate and organize globally in order for us to address effectively the world's most pressing issues.

Individuals and groups today are able to exert influence that is disproportionate to their numbers and the size of their arsenals through their use of "soft power" techniques, as TED speakers Joseph Nye and Shashi Tharoor observe. This is consistent with Maajid Nawaz's discussion of the power of symbols and narratives. Small groups can develop powerful narratives that help shape the views and actions of people around the world. While governments are far more accustomed to exerting power through military force, they might achieve their interests more effectively by implementing soft power strategies designed to convince others that they want the same things. According to Nye, replacing a "zero-sum" approach (you must lose in order for me to win) with a "positive-sum" one (we can both win) creates opportunities for collaboration, which is necessary if we are to begin to deal with problems that are global in scope.

Let's get started

Collectively, the TEDTalks in this course explore how ICTs are used by and against governments, citizens, activists, revolutionaries, extremists, and other political actors in efforts both to preserve and disrupt the status quo. They highlight the ways that ICTs have opened up new forms of communication and activism as well as how the much-hailed revolutionary power of ICTs can and has been co-opted by oppressive regimes to reassert their control.

By listening to the contrasting voices of this diverse group of TED speakers, which includes activists, journalists, professors, politicians, and a former member of an extremist organization, we can begin to develop a more nuanced understanding of the ways that technology can be used both to facilitate and contest a wide variety of political movements. Global citizens who champion democracy would do well to explore these intersections among politics and technology, as understanding these connections is a necessary first step toward MacKinnon's laudable goal of building a world in which "government and technology serve the world's people and not the other way around."

Let's begin our exploration of the intersections among politics and technology in today's globalized world with a TEDTalk from Ian Goldin, the first Director of the 21st Century School, Oxford University's think tank/research center. Goldin's talk will set the stage for us, exploring the integrated, complex, and technology rich global landscape upon which the political struggles for power examined by other TED speakers play out.

Navigating our global future

i. "Welcome to Revolution 2.0, Ghonim Says," CNN, February 9, 2011. http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2011/02/09/wael.ghonim.interview.cnn.

Relevant talks

Clay Shirky

How social media can make history.

Evgeny Morozov

How the net aids dictatorships.

Gordon Brown

Wiring a web for global good.

Global power shifts

Julian Assange

Why the world needs wikileaks.

Maajid Nawaz

A global culture to fight extremism.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Let's take back the internet.

Shashi Tharoor

Why nations should pursue soft power.

Wadah Khanfar

A historic moment in the arab world.

Wael Ghonim

Inside the egyptian revolution.

Essay: The Role of Government

Imagine for a moment living under a government that possessed unlimited and undefined powers, such as Communist China or Nazi Germany. What rights do you have now that you think you would lose? To whom, or to what, would you turn if you thought the government were treating you unfairly? How many of your own choices in life—what college to attend, what career options to pursue, whether to marry or have children—do you feel you would be free to make?

If contemplating life under such a government seems depressing, that is because it is. Individual liberty and personal happiness cannot coexist with unlimited government. At the same time, there would be little security for our rights without government or under a government that does not possess sufficient power to effectively promote the public good. Striking this delicate balance has been a centuries-long endeavor in Anglo-American history. Initial strides towards limited government came in the Magna Carta (1215), which embodied the principle that the king’s powers were limited and subject to English law. Nearly five hundred years later, the Petition of Right (1689), citing the Magna Carta, reminded the king that it was the law, not a king, that protected the rights of Englishmen. For most of human history it was accepted that the political legitimacy of a king was derived from God, not from man, and that both law and liberty were subject to God’s will. Focusing on the king’s violation of a half-century of accepted British common law and the traditionally respected rights of Englishmen, the Petition of Right supported the conviction that liberty required that government be limited. Furthermore, liberty interests might supersede kingly authority. It also inspired the English Bill of Rights (1689) which contained strict limits to the power of the monarchy and identified certain inalienable political and civil liberties enjoyed by all Englishmen, regardless of royal prerogative.

Together, these three British documents, Magna Carta, Petition of Right, and the English Bill of Rights, contained the basic tenets of limited government that would come to influence the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights.

A philosophical shift in thinking about the proper role and source of government itself was also underway in the late 1600s, and was given effective voice in John Locke’s Second Treatise of Civil Government (1690). Locke argued that governmental legitimacy was based on the consent of the governed and on a responsibility to protect natural rights. While the Petition of Right acquiesced to the notion of the divine right of kings and merely reminded the king that previous monarchs had respected traditionally accepted liberties, Locke’s argument was radically different: people not only voluntarily agree to be governed, but possess rights that flow from nature itself, not from kingly decree. Further, the very purpose of government is not to rule but to protect those rights.

“The great and chief end, therefore, of men uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their [lives, liberties and property]” (John Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government, 1690).

Locke also argued that when a government no longer had the consent of the people, or did not adhere to its proper role of protecting fundamental liberties, then the people have the right to change or overthrow it. Thomas Jefferson would echo these arguments in the Declaration of Independence (1776), asserting that “the history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations [wrongful seizure of power].” Therefore, according to Jefferson, the king was “unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”

In the Second Treatise of Civil Government (1690), John Locke argued that governmental legitimacy was based on the consent of the governed and on a responsibility to protect natural rights.

Once free of Great Britain and wary of living under a government that possessed too much authority, Americans set out to form a new nation. The first attempt came in the Articles of Confederation (1781), which adhered very closely to the principle of limited government; perhaps too closely. The Articles established a “firm league of friendship,” and was little more than a loose association of sovereign nation-states with a weak central government. It could not adequately tax or regulate foreign and interstate commerce. It had neither an executive nor judicial branch to enforce its laws or mediate disputes. Further, any alterations to the Articles that might address these weaknesses had to be unanimously approved by the states, making changes nearly impossible. By 1787, it became obvious to many that the Confederation government was too limited in its scope and authority, and a convention was called in Philadelphia to address its deficiencies.

What emerged from the Constitutional Convention elevated limited government from mere theory to a practical governing philosophy. Through a series of complex structures, innovations, and mechanisms, the U.S. Constitution both empowers and limits government, while providing the framework for each successive generation to regulate that balance.

One feature of the Constitution that both empowers and limits the national government’s reach is the enumeration of powers. Article 1, Section 8 sets out the specific and finite powers that the national government may exercise. Although Article 1, Section 8 only specifically addresses the legislative (or law-making) branch of the national government, its enumeration of powers also provides de facto [in fact] limits on the president (who enforces the law) and on judicial officials (who interpret and apply the law) as well.

What emerged from the Constitutional Convention elevated limited government from mere theory to a practical governing philosophy.

The Constitution’s deliberate separation of powers, enforced through a system of checks and balances, is another feature that serves to limit our government. Liberty is most threatened when any person or group accumulates too much power. The Founders, therefore, divided our national government into three distinct branches and gave to each not only specific powers, roles, and modes of election, but ways to prevent the other two branches from taking or accumulating power for themselves. The president, for example, is commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces. However, it is the legislative branch that can declare war, and raises and maintains the armed forces through funding. Congress may impeach the president if it believes he is abusing authority as his commander in chief. Likewise, the president may refuse attempts by Congress to micro-manage wartime decisions on the basis of his role as commander in chief.

This system serves to limit government by first lodging the various powers of government in different branches, then pitting those branches against one another in a jealous quest to preserve their power.

Perhaps the most definitive limitations on government are found in the Bill of Rights. A firewall protects a computer from outside attempts to harm it, so too does the Bill of Rights guard fundamental rights, natural and civil. In fact, far from most Americans’ popular understanding of the Bill of Rights as a “giver” of rights (ask most Americans where they get their right to free speech and the answer will almost always cite the First Amendment), it is actually the “limiter” of government authority. The First Amendment’s words, for example, that “Congress shall make no law…,” significantly constrain governmental action in the areas of speech, religion, press, assembly, and petition. In similar fashion, the Fourth Amendment limits the executive branch’s ability to invade one’s home without probable cause and a warrant, and the Eighth Amendment prevents the government from authorizing drawing and quartering as punishment for a crime.

The Bill of Rights does convey some rights. For example, the right to a jury trial. Unlike freedom of conscience, which James Madison understood to be a natural or pre-societal right, a jury trial is not a natural right. A decent and defensible civil society will convey protections ensuring fair trials. Liberty and anarchy are incompatible. Liberty and unlimited government are, too. The Constitution, through its unique approaches to balanced government, was designed to harmonize these positions by protecting rights while promoting competent government.

Related Content

The Role of Government

The Framers of the U.S. Constitution knew that the new government they crafted must be more powerful and effective than the government under the Articles of Confederation. They studied history and human nature to create a government strong enough to promote the public good, but not so strong that it would become a threat to individual liberties.

By the People: Essays on Democracy

Harvard Kennedy School faculty explore aspects of democracy in their own words—from increasing civic participation and decreasing extreme partisanship to strengthening democratic institutions and making them more fair.

Winter 2020

By Archon Fung , Nancy Gibbs , Tarek Masoud , Julia Minson , Cornell William Brooks , Jane Mansbridge , Arthur Brooks , Pippa Norris , Benjamin Schneer

The basic terms of democratic governance are shifting before our eyes, and we don’t know what the future holds. Some fear the rise of hateful populism and the collapse of democratic norms and practices. Others see opportunities for marginalized people and groups to exercise greater voice and influence. At the Kennedy School, we are striving to produce ideas and insights to meet these great uncertainties and to help make democratic governance successful in the future. In the pages that follow, you can read about the varied ways our faculty members think about facets of democracy and democratic institutions and making democracy better in practice.

Explore essays on democracy

Archon fung: we voted, nancy gibbs: truth and trust, tarek masoud: a fragile state, julia minson: just listen, cornell william brooks: democracy behind bars, jane mansbridge: a teachable skill, arthur brooks: healthy competition, pippa norris: kicking the sandcastle, benjamin schneer: drawing a line.

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Federalist Papers

By: History.com Editors

Updated: June 22, 2023 | Original: November 9, 2009

The Federalist Papers are a collection of essays written in the 1780s in support of the proposed U.S. Constitution and the strong federal government it advocated. In October 1787, the first in a series of 85 essays arguing for ratification of the Constitution appeared in the Independent Journal , under the pseudonym “Publius.” Addressed to “The People of the State of New York,” the essays were actually written by the statesmen Alexander Hamilton , James Madison and John Jay . They would be published serially from 1787-88 in several New York newspapers. The first 77 essays, including Madison’s famous Federalist 10 and Federalist 51 , appeared in book form in 1788. Titled The Federalist , it has been hailed as one of the most important political documents in U.S. history.

Articles of Confederation

As the first written constitution of the newly independent United States, the Articles of Confederation nominally granted Congress the power to conduct foreign policy, maintain armed forces and coin money.

But in practice, this centralized government body had little authority over the individual states, including no power to levy taxes or regulate commerce, which hampered the new nation’s ability to pay its outstanding debts from the Revolutionary War .

In May 1787, 55 delegates gathered in Philadelphia to address the deficiencies of the Articles of Confederation and the problems that had arisen from this weakened central government.

A New Constitution

The document that emerged from the Constitutional Convention went far beyond amending the Articles, however. Instead, it established an entirely new system, including a robust central government divided into legislative , executive and judicial branches.

As soon as 39 delegates signed the proposed Constitution in September 1787, the document went to the states for ratification, igniting a furious debate between “Federalists,” who favored ratification of the Constitution as written, and “Antifederalists,” who opposed the Constitution and resisted giving stronger powers to the national government.

How Did Magna Carta Influence the U.S. Constitution?

The 13th‑century pact inspired the U.S. Founding Fathers as they wrote the documents that would shape the nation.

The Founding Fathers Feared Political Factions Would Tear the Nation Apart

The Constitution's framers viewed political parties as a necessary evil.

Checks and Balances

Separation of Powers The idea that a just and fair government must divide power between various branches did not originate at the Constitutional Convention, but has deep philosophical and historical roots. In his analysis of the government of Ancient Rome, the Greek statesman and historian Polybius identified it as a “mixed” regime with three branches: […]

The Rise of Publius

In New York, opposition to the Constitution was particularly strong, and ratification was seen as particularly important. Immediately after the document was adopted, Antifederalists began publishing articles in the press criticizing it.

They argued that the document gave Congress excessive powers and that it could lead to the American people losing the hard-won liberties they had fought for and won in the Revolution.

In response to such critiques, the New York lawyer and statesman Alexander Hamilton, who had served as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, decided to write a comprehensive series of essays defending the Constitution, and promoting its ratification.

Who Wrote the Federalist Papers?

As a collaborator, Hamilton recruited his fellow New Yorker John Jay, who had helped negotiate the treaty ending the war with Britain and served as secretary of foreign affairs under the Articles of Confederation. The two later enlisted the help of James Madison, another delegate to the Constitutional Convention who was in New York at the time serving in the Confederation Congress.

To avoid opening himself and Madison to charges of betraying the Convention’s confidentiality, Hamilton chose the pen name “Publius,” after a general who had helped found the Roman Republic. He wrote the first essay, which appeared in the Independent Journal, on October 27, 1787.

In it, Hamilton argued that the debate facing the nation was not only over ratification of the proposed Constitution, but over the question of “whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.”

After writing the next four essays on the failures of the Articles of Confederation in the realm of foreign affairs, Jay had to drop out of the project due to an attack of rheumatism; he would write only one more essay in the series. Madison wrote a total of 29 essays, while Hamilton wrote a staggering 51.

Federalist Papers Summary

In the Federalist Papers, Hamilton, Jay and Madison argued that the decentralization of power that existed under the Articles of Confederation prevented the new nation from becoming strong enough to compete on the world stage or to quell internal insurrections such as Shays’s Rebellion .

In addition to laying out the many ways in which they believed the Articles of Confederation didn’t work, Hamilton, Jay and Madison used the Federalist essays to explain key provisions of the proposed Constitution, as well as the nature of the republican form of government.

'Federalist 10'

In Federalist 10 , which became the most influential of all the essays, Madison argued against the French political philosopher Montesquieu ’s assertion that true democracy—including Montesquieu’s concept of the separation of powers—was feasible only for small states.

A larger republic, Madison suggested, could more easily balance the competing interests of the different factions or groups (or political parties ) within it. “Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests,” he wrote. “[Y]ou make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens[.]”

After emphasizing the central government’s weakness in law enforcement under the Articles of Confederation in Federalist 21-22 , Hamilton dove into a comprehensive defense of the proposed Constitution in the next 14 essays, devoting seven of them to the importance of the government’s power of taxation.

Madison followed with 20 essays devoted to the structure of the new government, including the need for checks and balances between the different powers.

'Federalist 51'

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary,” Madison wrote memorably in Federalist 51 . “If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”

After Jay contributed one more essay on the powers of the Senate , Hamilton concluded the Federalist essays with 21 installments exploring the powers held by the three branches of government—legislative, executive and judiciary.

Impact of the Federalist Papers

Despite their outsized influence in the years to come, and their importance today as touchstones for understanding the Constitution and the founding principles of the U.S. government, the essays published as The Federalist in 1788 saw limited circulation outside of New York at the time they were written. They also fell short of convincing many New York voters, who sent far more Antifederalists than Federalists to the state ratification convention.

Still, in July 1788, a slim majority of New York delegates voted in favor of the Constitution, on the condition that amendments would be added securing certain additional rights. Though Hamilton had opposed this (writing in Federalist 84 that such a bill was unnecessary and could even be harmful) Madison himself would draft the Bill of Rights in 1789, while serving as a representative in the nation’s first Congress.

HISTORY Vault: The American Revolution

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Ron Chernow, Hamilton (Penguin, 2004). Pauline Maier, Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788 (Simon & Schuster, 2010). “If Men Were Angels: Teaching the Constitution with the Federalist Papers.” Constitutional Rights Foundation . Dan T. Coenen, “Fifteen Curious Facts About the Federalist Papers.” University of Georgia School of Law , April 1, 2007. 

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James Mill (1773–1836) was a Scots-born political philosopher, historian, psychologist, educational theorist, economist, and legal, political and penal reformer. Well-known and highly regarded in his day, he is now all but forgotten. Mill’s reputation now rests mainly on two biographical facts. The first is that his first-born son was John Stuart Mill, who became even more eminent than his father. The second is that the elder Mill was the collaborator and ally of Jeremy Bentham, whose subsequent reputation also eclipsed the elder Mill’s. Our aim here is to try, insofar as possible, to remove Mill from these two large shadows and to reconsider him as a formidable thinker in his own right.

Mill’s range of interests was remarkably wide, extending from education and psychology in his two-volume Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (1829a), to political economy (he persuaded his friend David Ricardo to write on that subject, as Mill himself did in his Elements of Political Economy , 1821), to penology and prison reform, to the law and history, and, not least, to political philosophy. On these and other subjects he wrote five books and more than a thousand essays and reviews. It is with Mill the political philosopher and educational theorist that the present article is principally concerned.

1. Biography

2. alliance with bentham, 3. mill’s writings, 4.1 mill on representation, 4.2 the meritocratic “middle rank”, 4.3 the reception of government, 4.4 macaulay’s “famous attack”, 5. other related writings, 6.1 mill on the “human mind”, 6.2 the formation of character, 6.3 education, power and liberty of the press, 6.4 education and happiness, 7. conclusion: mill’s legacy, primary sources, secondary sources, other internet resources, related entries.

Unlike his famous first-born son, James Mill never wrote an autobiography or even a sketch of his early life, the details of which remained unknown even to his children. What we do know is this. James Mill was born on 6 April 1773 at Northwater Bridge in the county of Forfarshire in the parish of Logie Pert in Scotland. His father, James Milne, was a shoemaker and small farmer of modest means who was quiet, mild-mannered, and devout. His mother, Isabel Fenton Milne, was a more forceful figure. Determined that her first-born son should get ahead in the world, she changed the family name from the Scottish “Milne” to the more English-sounding “Mill,” and kept young James away from other children, demanding that he spend most of his waking hours immersed in study. His “sole occupation,” as his biographer Alexander Bain remarks, “was study” (Bain 1882, 7). (A regimen rather like that imposed by his mother upon her eldest son was later to be imposed upon his first-born son, John Stuart Mill.) In this occupation young James clearly excelled. Before the age of seven he had shown a talent for elocution, composition, and arithmetic, as well as Latin and Greek. The local minister saw to it that James received special attention at the parish school. At age ten or eleven, he was sent to Montrose Academy, where his teachers “were always overflowing with the praises of Mill’s cleverness and perseverance” (Bain 1882, 8). Before leaving Montrose Academy at the age of seventeen, Mill was persuaded by the parish minister and his mother to study for the ministry. Mill’s decision evidently pleased Lady Jane Stuart, wife of Sir John Stuart of Fettercairn, who headed a local charity founded for the purpose of educating poor but bright boys for the Presbyterian ministry. Mill, eminently qualified in both respects, became the recipient of Lady Jane’s largesse. As it happened, she and Sir John were just then looking for a tutor for their fourteen-year old daughter Wilhelmina. They offered the job to James Mill; he accepted; and when the Stuart family moved to Edinburgh, he accompanied them.

In 1790, Mill enrolled in the University of Edinburgh, where by day he pursued a full course of studies and in the evenings tutored young Wilhelmina. Each experience left its mark. The Scottish universities at Edinburgh and Glasgow (and to a lesser extent Aberdeen and St. Andrews) had earlier been the hub of the Scottish Enlightenment and were still the premier universities in Britain. They had numbered among their faculty such luminaries as Francis Hutcheson, Thomas Reid, John Millar, Adam Ferguson, Adam Smith, and—had the orthodox town council of Edinburgh not forbade his admission—would have included David Hume as well. At Edinburgh Mill took particular delight in the tutelage of Dugald Stewart, who carried on the tradition of Scottish moral philosophy. In addition to moral philosophy, Mill’s course of studies included history, political economy, and the classics, including Mill’s favorite philosopher, Plato (Loizides 2013a, ch. 3; Loizides 2013b). Mill’s mind never lost the stamp of his Scottish education (Cumming 1962). As his eldest son was later to remark, James Mill was “the last survivor of this great school” (J.S. Mill 1843, 566).

From 1790 to 1794 Mill served young Wilhelmina Stuart not only as a teacher but as a companion and confidant. Her admiration for her tutor quite likely turned to love, and the feeling was apparently reciprocated. But, however promising his prospects, Mill was no aristocrat, a social fact which he was not allowed to forget. In 1797 Wilhelmina married a member of her own class, Sir William Forbes (to the disappointment of Walter Scott, not least). Wilhelmina died in 1810, soon after the birth of her second son. She was said to have called out Mill’s name “with her last breath.” Mill never forgot her; he spoke of her always with wistful affection and named his first-born daughter after her in 1809. But this was not the only incident worthy of note in the Mill-Forbes family affair. In July 1806, soon after the birth of John Stuart Mill (named in honor of Mill’s Scottish patron), the first of nine children, Mill challenged Forbes to “a fair race … in the education of a son.” The “contest” would be decided “twenty years hence.” Should Mill’s be “the most accomplished & virtuous young man” of the two first-born sons, the proud father confessed, “I shall not envy you that you can have yours the richest” (Mill to Forbes, 1806). Ironically, twenty years later, the virtuous son would fall in a state of dejection, forcing him to question the efficacy of the father’s scheme of education (see further, Loizides 2024).

After completing his first degree in 1794, Mill began studying for the ministry. For the next four years he supported himself by tutoring the sons and daughters of several noble families. One such family even set up a small pension which complemented Mill’s income for years (Lazenby 1972, 309). Yet, the experience was not a happy one. For repeatedly forgetting his “place” in “polite society” he suffered one insult after another. He harbored ever after an abiding hatred for an hereditary aristocracy.

By the time he was licensed to preach in 1798 Mill had apparently begun to lose his faith and had by the early 1800s become restless and disillusioned. In 1802, at age twenty-nine, he left for London in hopes of improving his situation. For some years thereafter he worked as an independent author, journalist and editor. From 1802 until his appointment as an assistant examiner of correspondence at the East India Company in 1819 Mill’s literary labors were prodigious. Besides some 1,400 editorials, he wrote hundreds of substantial articles and reviews, as well as several books, including his History of British India in three large volumes. Although some of these were doubtless labors of love, most were labors of necessity, for Mill had to support himself and his wife Harriet, whom he married in 1805, and a fast-growing family.

Sometime in 1808 James Mill met Jeremy Bentham (Bain 1882, 72) with whom he soon formed a political and philosophical alliance. The two were in some respects kindred spirits. Both wished and worked for religious toleration and legal reform; both favored freedom of speech and press; both feared that the failure to reform the British political system—by, among other things, eliminating rotten boroughs and extending the franchise—would give rise to reactionary intransigence on the one hand, and revolutionary excess on the other. But the two men were of vastly different temperaments and backgrounds. Bentham, a wealthy bachelor, was an eccentric genius and closet philosopher. The poor, harried and hard-working Mill was the more practical and worldly partner in that peculiar partnership. He was also a much clearer writer and more persuasive propagandist for the Utilitarian cause.

Bentham believed that the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain were the twin aims of all human action. His philosophy, Utilitarianism, held that self-interest—understood as pleasure or happiness—should be “maximized” and pain “minimized” (Bentham, incidentally, coined both terms). And, as with individual self-interest, so too with the public interest. According to Bentham, the aim of legislation and public policy was to promote “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.” Mill agreed, after a fashion. Formerly a dour Scots Presbyterian and still something of a Platonist, he took a dim view of unalloyed hedonism. Like Plato, he ranked the pleasures in a hierarchy, with the sensual pleasures subordinated to the intellectual ones.

Despite their differences, Mill proved to be Bentham’s most valuable ally. A better writer and abler advocate, Mill helped to make Bentham’s ideas and schemes more palatable and popular than they might otherwise have been. But he also influenced Bentham’s ideas in a number of ways. For one, Mill led Bentham to appreciate the importance of economic factors in explaining and changing social life and political institutions; for another, he turned Bentham away from advocating aristocratic “top-down” reform into a more popular or “democratic” direction. For a time their partnership proved fruitful. With Mill’s energy and Bentham’s ideas and financial backing, Utilitarian schemes for legal, political, penal, and educational reform gained an ever wider audience and circle of adherents. This circle included, among others, Francis Place (“the radical tailor of Charing Cross”), the Genevan Etienne Dumont, the historian George Grote, the stockbroker-turned-economist David Ricardo, and—certainly not least—the young John Stuart Mill. Each in his own way enlisted in the Utilitarian cause. The cause was furthered by the founding of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge and, later, by the launching of the Westminster Review and the founding of University College London (where Bentham’s body, stuffed and mounted in a glass case, can still be seen today). This small band of “philosophic radicals” worked tirelessly for political changes, several of which were later incorporated into the Reform Act of 1832. But Bentham and Mill became increasingly estranged. Bentham was irascible and difficult to work with, and Mill on more than one occasion swallowed his pride by accepting financial support and suffering personal rebuke from his senior partner.

In 1818, after twelve years’ work, Mill’s massive History of British India was published. Early in the following year he was appointed Assistant Examiner at the East India Company. His financial future finally secured, Mill no longer needed Bentham’s largesse. The two men saw less and less of each other. Their political alliance continued even as their personal relationship cooled. Their uneasy friendship effectively ended some years before Bentham’s death in 1832.

Besides being a tireless reformer and prolific writer, James Mill supplied his son John with one of the most strenuous educations ever recorded in the annals of pedagogy. The elder Mill gave young John daily lessons in Latin, Greek, French, history, philosophy, and political economy. Literature and poetry were also taught, although with less enthusiasm (James Mill, like Plato, distrusted poets and poetry). John was in turn expected to tutor his younger brothers and sisters in these subjects. Each was examined rigorously and regularly by their unforgiving father, and the nine children, like their mother, lived with in fear of his rebuke. As John Stuart Mill later wrote, “I … grew up in the absence of love and in the presence of fear” (J.S. Mill 1873, 612).

Mill’s strained relations with his wife and children stand in stark contrast with his warm and cordial relations with others, and most especially the young men who sought him out for the pleasure of his company and the vigor of his conversation. As John Black, the editor of the Morning Chronicle , recalled on the occasion of Mill’s death in 1836:

Mr. Mill was eloquent and impressive in conversation. He had a great command of language, which bore the stamp of his earnest and energetic character. Young men were particularly fond of his society … No man could enjoy his society without catching a portion of his elevated enthusiasm … His conversation was so energetic and complete in thought, so succinct, and exact … in expression, that, if reported as uttered, his colloquial observations or arguments would have been perfect compositions (quoted in Bain 1882, 457).

Unfortunately the same cannot be said of Mill’s writings, which tend to be both dry and didactic.

James Mill always attempted to write, he said, with “manly plainness,” and in that endeavor he certainly succeeded. The reader is never at a loss to know just what his views are or where his sympathies lie. Mill’s manly plainness is especially evident in his massive three-volume History of British India , which begins with a remarkable preface in which he asserts that his objectivity is guaranteed by the fact that he has never visited India. His is, he says, a “critical, or judging history,” and his judgments on Hindu customs and practices are particularly harsh (Mill 1818, I, x). He denounces their “rude” and “backward” culture for its cultivation of ignorance and its veneration of superstition, and leaves no doubt that he favors a strong dose of Utilitarian rationalism as an antidote. Although his History is in part a Utilitarian treatise and in part a defense of British intervention in Indian affairs, it is more than the sum of those two parts. Mill’s History shows, perhaps more clearly than any of his other works, the continuing influence of his Scottish education (Rendall 1982; Plassart 2015). The criteria according to which Mill judges and criticizes Indian practices and customs derive from the view of historical progress that he had learned from Dugald Stewart and John Millar, amongst others. According to this view “man is a progressive being” and education is the chief engine of progress. And this in turn helps to explain not only Mill’s harsh judgments on the Hindus but his continually reiterated emphasis on education (Mill 1992, 139–84).

Virtually everything that James Mill ever wrote had a pedagogical purpose. He was a relentlessly didactic writer whose most important essays— Government and Education , in particular—take the form of clipped, concise, deductive arguments (De Marchi 1983). It is a style which his contemporaries either admired or detested, as can be seen for instance in F. D. Maurice’s novel Eustace Conway . When the Benthamite Morton discovers Eustace reading Mill’s Essay on Government , he asks his opinion of Mill. Eustace replies:

“I think him nearly the most wonderful prose-writer in our language.” “That do not I,” says Morton. “I approve the matter of his treatises exceedingly, but the style seems to me detestable.” “Oh!,” says Eustace, “I cannot separate matter and style … My reason for delighting in this book is, that it gives such a fixedness and reality to all that was most vaguely brilliant in my speculations—it converts dreams into demonstrations” (quoted in Thomas 1969, 255–56).

Many of Mill’s readers were not so gentle. Thomas Babington Macaulay criticized Mill and his fellow Utilitarians for “affect[ing] a quakerly plainness, or rather a cynical negligence and impurity of style.” In so doing,

they surrender their understandings … to the meanest and most abject sophisms, provided those sophisms come before them disguised with the externals of demonstration. They do not seem to know that logic has its illusions as well as rhetoric,—that a fallacy may lurk in a syllogism as well as in a metaphor (Macaulay 1992, 272–73).

But if Mill’s style of reasoning and writing was plain and unadorned, it was at least clear and cogent. And that, surely, is a virtue too often lacking among political theorists.

And indeed James Mill regarded himself as a theorist, which was, for him, a title to be worn proudly. Theory, he wrote, gives a “commanding view” of its subject and serves as a guide for improving practice. Theory precedes practice or “experience” and is not simply derived from it. Amidst the often contradictory welter of appearance, theory functions a priori , serving as a reliable weather vane and guide (Mill 1992, 141). This view of theory is much in evidence in all his writings, and in his political essays in particular. The most important of these—and the most controversial—is Government .

4. The Essay on Government

Whether justly or not, Mill’s modern reputation as a political theorist rests on a single essay. The Essay on Government , Mill later wrote, was meant to serve as a “comprehensive outline” or “skeleton map” with whose aid one could find one’s way across the vast, varied, and ofttimes confusing and dangerous terrain of politics (Mill 1820). Government, Mill maintains, is merely a means to an end, viz. the happiness of the whole community and the individuals composing it. We should begin by assuming that every human being is motivated by a desire to experience pleasure and to avoid pain. Pleasures and pains come from two sources, our fellow human beings and nature. Government is concerned directly with the first and indirectly with the second: “Its business is to increase to the utmost the pleasures, and diminish to the utmost the pains, which men derive from one another.” Yet, “the primary cause of government” is to be found in nature itself, since humans must wrest from nature “the scanty materials of happiness” (Mill 1992, 4–5). Nature and human nature combine to make government necessary. It is man’s nature not only to desire happiness but to satisfy that desire by investing as little effort as possible. Labor being the means of obtaining happiness, and our own labor being painful to us, we will, if permitted, live off the labor of others. To the degree that others enjoy the fruits of my labor, my primary incentive for working—namely my own happiness—is diminished if not destroyed.

Therefore, Mill continues, the primary problem in designing workable political institutions is to maximize the happiness of the community by minimizing the extent to which some of its members may encroach upon, and enjoy, the fruits of other people’s labor. This cannot happen, Mill maintains, in a monarchy (wherein a single ruler exploits his subjects) or in an aristocracy (wherein a ruling elite exploits the common people). Nor can communal happiness be maximized in a direct democracy, since the time and effort required for ruling would be subtracted from that available for engaging in productive labor (Mill 1992, 7–9). The only system that serves as a means to the end of individual and communal happiness is representative democracy, wherein citizens elect representatives to deliberate and legislate on their behalf and in their interest. The problem immediately arises, however, as to how representatives can be made to rule on the people’s behalf rather than their own. Mill’s answer is that frequent elections and short terms in office make it unlikely that elected representatives will legislate only for their own benefit. After all, representatives are drawn from the ranks of the people to which they can, after their term in office ends, expect to return. Given what we might nowadays call the incentive structure of representative government, representatives have every reason to promote the people’s interests instead of their own. Indeed, in a properly structured system, there will be an “identity of interests” between representatives and the electorate (Mill 1992, 22).

Mill’s views on representation stand mid-way between two opposing views. On the one side are Jean-Jacques Rousseau and other “participatory” theorists who argue that to allow anyone to represent you or your interests is tantamount to forfeiting your liberty. On the other side are assorted Whig defenders of “virtual representation”—including Edmund Burke and, later, Mill’s contemporaries Sir James Mackintosh and T. B. Macaulay—who contend that representatives elected by the few may best represent the interests of the many. On their view, one need not have a voice—or a vote—to be well represented in Parliament.

Against Rousseau and other opponents of representation tout court Mill maintains that representative government is “the grand discovery of modern times,” inasmuch as it allows the interests of the many to be represented efficiently and expeditiously by the few—so long, that is, as the many have the vote in order to register their views and can moreover hold the few strictly accountable for their actions while in office. Properly structured, such a system serves to enhance liberty, since it frees most people from the burdensome and time-consuming business of governing, thereby allowing them to get on with their more productive individual pursuits and, most especially, their productive labors (Mill 1992, 21).

But it was against Tory and Whigs who defended “virtual representation” and advocated slow and piecemeal reform of the representative system that Mill’s main arguments were directed. He holds that the very idea of virtual representation is a recipe for misgovernment, corruption, and the triumph of the aristocratic or “sinister interests” of the few at the expense of the many. The public interest can be represented only in so far as the public, or a considerably enlarged portion thereof, has the vote. Mill is a radical individualist in that he insists that each person is the best, perhaps indeed the only, judge of what his own interests are. And if—as he also insists—the public interest is the sum of all individual non-sinister interests, it follows that the wider the franchise, the more truly representative the government. Mill deemed any defense of a greatly restricted franchise and virtual representation to be arguments against representative government itself. Pace Ricardo, Mill had not really managed to avoid giving Government “the appearance of an essay on Reform of Parliament” (Ricardo 1820, 211).

Mill’s view that each individual is the best judge of his own interests appears to stand in stark contrast with his praise and apparent privileging of one particular collectivity—the “middle rank, … that intelligent, that virtuous rank … which gives to science, to art, and to legislation itself, their most distinguished ornaments, and is the chief source of all that has exalted and refined human nature…” It is to this middle rank—the forerunner of the modern “meritocracy”—that common laborers look for advice and guidance, especially in moral and political matters (Mill 1992, 41–42). Although such remarks have struck many modern commentators as a militant defense of middle class power and privilege, it is, in fact, nothing of the sort. Mill rarely uses the phrase “middle class,” preferring instead the more archaic “middle rank.” And this, once again, underscores the continuing importance of Mill’s Scottish education. The notion of “ranks,” as analyzed at length in John Millar’s Origin of the Distinction of Ranks (1806), had left a deep impression. Millar’s (and Mill’s) “ranks” are not (quite) “classes” in our modern sense—that is, purely descriptive, fairly distinct, and normatively neutral socio-economic entities—but are instead meant to pick out people of particular intellectual merit and to mark gradations of moral and civic influence.

Mill is quite careful to distinguish between a “class” and a “rank.” The members of a “class” are united by shared (and usually selfish or “sinister”) interests. Members of the “middle rank,” by contrast, are marked more by their education, intellect, and public-spiritedness than by their wealth or any other social or economic characteristics. They are “universally described as both the most wise and the most virtuous part of the community which”—Mill adds acidulously—“is not the Aristocratical [class]” (Mill 1992, 41). Members of the middle rank owe their position not to accident of birth but to “the present state of education, and the diffusion of knowledge” among those anxious to acquire it. By these lights the “radical tailor” Francis Place, the stockbroker David Ricardo, the wealthy philanthropist Jeremy Bentham, the Quaker editor William Allen, and even James Mill himself—although not all “middle class” by modern standards—belonged to the esteemed middle rank. Clearly, then, the idea of a middle rank cuts across the kinds of class divisions with which we are familiar today. Hence any attempt to classify Mill as an apologist for “the middle-class” simpliciter is anachronistic and rather wide of the mark. He is instead an early defender, avant la lettre , of the idea of a meritocracy whose members are drawn from all classes and walks of life.

The idea that Mill was an apologist for middle-class interests was, of course, a later development. But what of his contemporaries’ views of the Essay on Government ? For so short an essay, Mill’s Government proved to be remarkably controversial in his own day. Tories and Whigs thought its message wildly and even dangerously democratic, while many of Mill’s fellow Utilitarians—including Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and William Thompson—believed that he did not go nearly far enough in advocating an extension of the franchise. Although more “democratic” in private discussion, Mill publicly advocated extending the franchise to include all male heads of household over the age of forty, leaving them to speak for and represent the interests of younger men and all women:

One thing is pretty clear, that all those individuals whose interests are indisputably included in those of other individuals, may be struck off without inconvenience. In this light may be viewed all children, up to a certain age, whose interests are involved in those of their parents. In this light, also, women may be regarded, the interest of almost all of whom is involved either in that of their fathers or in that of their husbands (Mill 1992, 27).

This, his eldest son later remarked, was “the worst [paragraph] he ever wrote” (J.S. Mill 1961, 98). Most of Mill’s critics were quick to seize upon it, if only because its conclusion contradicts two of Mill’s oft-stated premises, namely that each of us is the best judge of our own interests and that anyone having unchecked power is bound to abuse it. As William Thompson argued in Appeal of One Half the Human Race (1825), Mill’s premises pointed to the widest possible extension of the franchise, and not to the exclusion of “one half the human race,” viz. all women.

Always the critic, Mill was himself a frequent target of criticism, much of which came from quarters hostile to the kinds of sweeping reforms favored by Bentham and the philosophic radicals. Mill’s Essay on Government first appeared in 1820, and was subsequently reprinted in editions of his Essays in 1823, 1825, and 1828, which reached an ever wider audience, including (Mill boasted) “the young men of the Cambridge Union.” Fearing that the cause of moderate reform was in danger from Mill and the philosophic radicals, Whig polemicists weighed in against Mill. One of them, Sir James Mackintosh (1765–1832), was an old Whig stalwart with a plodding and ofttimes pompous prose style. The other, T. B. Macaulay (1800–1859), was a much younger and altogether more formidable foe.

Macaulay’s “Mill on Government,” published in the March 1829 issue of The Edinburgh Review , is a remarkable mixture of logical criticism, irony, mordant wit, and droll parody. That Mill’s Essay on Government is remembered at all today doubtless owes something to Macaulay’s memorable critique. The most remarkable feature of Macaulay’s critique is that it seems to be largely aloof from particular political issues, focusing instead on what we would nowadays call methodological matters. The twenty-eight-year-old Macaulay defends the “historical” or “inductive” approach to the study of politics against his older adversary’s abstract, ahistorical, and “deductive” method. Macaulay maintains that we learn more from “experience” than from “theory,” and had best beware of the simplifications and “sophisms” to be found in Mill’s Essay on Government . The most pernicious of these is the “law” that men act always on the basis of self-interest. This law, Macaulay counters, is either trivially true (because logically circular) or patently false; in either case it hardly suffices as a foundation upon which to erect an argument for radical reform, much less a comprehensive theory of politics. And if Mill’s deductive logic fails, the entire edifice—including his supposedly “scientific” arguments in favor of radical reform—collapses with it (Macaulay 1992).

That James Mill, fierce polemicist that he was, did not respond quickly and with no holds barred seems surprising, to say the least. His eldest son offers one possible explanation. In his Autobiography J. S. Mill remarks that “I was not at all satisfied with the mode in which my father met the criticisms of Macaulay. He did not, as I thought he ought to have done, justify himself by saying, ‘I was not writing a scientific treatise on politics. I was writing an article for parliamentary reform’. He treated Macaulay’s argument as simply irrational; an attack upon the reasoning faculty; an example of the saying of Hobbes, that when reason is against a man, a man will be against reason (J.S. Mill 1873, 165, 167).”

Yet the younger Mill’s account of his father’s reaction to Macaulay’s “famous attack” (as the son later described it) is misleading in at least two respects. In the first place, James Mill did not, and given his own premises could not, distinguish between a “scientific treatise on politics” and a coherent and compelling argument for “parliamentary reform.” For he believed that any reforms that were workable and worth having could be based only on an adequately scientific theory of politics. The Essay on Government was intended to be both, if only in brief outline. Moreover, the younger Mill leaves the impression that his father, although angered by the attack, never replied to Macaulay. But this is untrue.

For a time James Mill tried, without success, to persuade his friend and fellow Benthamite Etienne Dumont to reply to “the curly-headed coxcomb, who only abuses what he does not understand” (Mill to Dumont, 1829b). In the meantime there appeared Sir James Mackintosh’s Dissertation on Ethical Philosophy (1830) in which Mill’s Essay on Government was singled out for special censure. There was nothing new in this; but what caught Mill’s eye was that Mackintosh’s mode and manner of argument was borrowed, as the author acknowledged, from “the writer of a late criticism on Mr. Mill’s Essay.—See Edinburgh Review, No. 97, March 1829.” “This,” says Mill with evident relish, “is convenient; because the answer, which does for Sir James, will answer the same purpose with the Edinburgh Review” (Mill 1992, 305). Of course, the “writer of a late criticism” to whom Mackintosh refers was none other than Macaulay, whom the elder Mill then proceeds to answer in the guise of replying to Mackintosh.

In his reply Mill reiterates and defends the arguments advanced in his Essay on Government : all men—including rulers and representatives—are moved mainly if not exclusively by considerations of self-interest, and therefore the only security for good government is to be found in making the interests of representatives identical with those of their constituents. But, unlike the cool, detached, and ostensibly deductive Essay on Government , Mill’s reply contains a good deal of vitriol. He writes like a schoolmaster who, having lost all patience with a slow-witted pupil, is content to ridicule him before his cleverer classmates. The sight is not a pretty one, and shows James Mill at his polemical worst. Whether, or to what extent, such a splenetic rejoinder could suffice as a refutation is surely questionable.

Although none of Mill’s other essays—save, perhaps, “The Church, and Its Reform” (1835)—proved so controversial, each expands upon points made in passing in the Essay on Government . Jurisprudence deals extensively with rights—what they are, by whom they are defined, and how they are best protected. In a similar vein and in a way that anticipates (and arguably influenced) the younger Mill’s On Liberty (1859) Liberty of the Press defends the right of free speech and discussion against arguments in favor of restriction and censorship. Free government requires the free communication of ideas and opinions, and good government requires an informed and critical citizenry. For both, a free press is an indispensable instrument.

In the essay on Education Mill describes the conditions most conducive to creating good men and, more particularly, good citizens. Civic or “political education,” he says, is “the key-stone of the arch; the strength of the whole depends upon it” (Mill 1992, 193). Mill was fond of quoting Helvetius’s dictum l’éducation peut tout (“education makes everything possible”). And certainly no other political thinker, save perhaps Plato and Thomas Jefferson, set greater store by education than did James Mill. As we discuss in Section 6, by “education” Mill meant not only domestic education or formal schooling, but all the influences that go into forming one’s character and outlook, including the influence of social and political institutions.

In Prisons and Prison Discipline Mill applies his theory of education to penal reform. Just as one’s character can be well moulded by a good education, so too may one’s character be badly moulded through miseducation. The latter, Mill maintains, is especially evident in the criminal class. Criminals commit crimes and are sent to prison because they have been badly educated. Punishment, properly understood, is a kind of remedial education, and prison, properly structured, presents the opportunity to re-mould inmates’ misshapen characters. Prisons and Prison Discipline delineates the types of punishments likely to deter offenders or, failing that, to re-mould and re-educate criminals to be productive members of society. In these and other respects Mill’s theory of punishment mirrors Plato’s. Like Plato, Mill draws a sharp distinction between punishing someone and harming him. The purpose of punishment is to reform (literally re-form) the soul or character of the inmate so that he may be released into society without fear that he will harm others. But to harm someone is to make him worse, and an even greater danger to society (Ball 1995, ch. 7).

Mill envisaged a society inhabited by active citizens, always on their guard against rulers or representatives who would violate their rights and deprive them of their liberties. This, after all, is the central theme of the Essay on Government , and the thrust of the argument of Mill’s article The Ballot , published in 1830 as a contribution to the public debate preceding the passage of the 1832 Reform Act. Mixing logical acuity with withering ridicule, Mill restates and refutes arguments against extending the franchise and introducing the secret ballot. Only those with sinister interests could oppose such reform.

6. The Essay on Education

The early nineteenth century in Britain was an age increasingly preoccupied with education, especially the public, though not state, provision of education for the lower ranks. Mill’s educational activism in establishing schools for all commenced with his association with Bentham and Place (Burston 1973, ch. 3). For the next two decades, Mill and associates (including William Allen, Edward Wakefield, and Zachary Macaulay – the father of Mill’s famous critic – as well as James Mackintosh – the recipient of Mill’s 1835 harsh criticism) promoted the cause of public education at all levels, from Robert Owen’s infant school to the projected Chrestomathic School in Bentham’s garden and, famously, the University of London – that “godless school,” the “infidel College in Gower street” ( The Standard , 19 June 1828 (issue 340), p. 2). And though Mill kept a low public profile in all these endeavors, “it was always to him that recourse was had, when difficulties came” (Bain 1882, 86).

Mill had put his pen to good use in Edinburgh Review , the Philanthropist and the Eclectic Review throughout the 1810s in the debate over the monitorial systems of Joseph Lancaster (in London endorsed by Mill and associates) and Andrew Bell (backed by the Church of England). However, his Essay on Education (originally published in 1819) bears no mark of that bitter controversy. Not only was Education , like Government , written in a deductive or synthetic style. But also, the abstract, theoretical treatment had important concrete, practical implications for social policy – implications at which, like Government , Mill only hinted rather than explicitly draw. There are further similarities between Education and Government . For example, even though Mill aimed at a comprehensive view of education, he confined himself “to a skeleton” (Mill 1992, 141). He also began his analysis by defining the subject-matter in connection to the pursuit of happiness. The end of education, he asserted, “is to render the individual, as much as possible, an instrument of happiness, first to himself, and next to other beings” (Mill 1992, 139). What’s more, like Government , Education chose to underplay its Benthamite, radical or utilitarian pedigree. It was quite out of character, for a staunch Benthamite, to point out that wherein happiness “consists, [is] not yet determined” (Mill 1992, 156), especially since happiness was identified as the end to which education aims.

Education , like Government , however, fooled no one where its author’s loyalties lay. Twice Mill contrasted two “classes of philosophers”: “Hartley and his followers in England, Condillac and his followers in France” and “Dr Reid and his followers in this country, Kant and the German school of metaphysicians in general on the Continent.” The first disagreement between these two sets of philosophers involved the range of what Mill called “simple feelings.” The first thought impressions and ideas the only simple or original feelings. Though often difficult to analyze a “complex feeling” to its constituent simple feelings, for this class of philosophers, perception came in advance of conception. The second class of philosophers did not think impressions and ideas the only “original feelings,” incapable of further analysis. They added a third category: “those [feelings] which correspond to the words remember , believe , judge , space , time , &c.” For Mill, the third category of “original feelings” complicated analysis, and, consequently, education by blurring the lines (and order) between perception and conception (Mill 1992, 144). The second disagreement between these two sets of philosophers came up at the attempt to analyze the end of education. The first, Mill claimed, admitted a humble or corporeal origin of happiness, tracing happiness back to simple sensations and their transformation into ideas. For them, combinations of these simple feelings make up all the intellectual and moral phenomena of human nature. The second, Mill argued, go after happiness at a higher plane than “the grosser elements of sense.” For these philosophers, the mind recognizes truth and right and wrong independently of human experience, “without the aid of the senses” (Mill 1992, 157). It was clear that Mill sided with the former philosophical group. However, for his purposes in Education the “divide” between the a posteriori and a priori schools on this issue mattered little. It was sufficient that his readers assented to the link between happiness and education.

The Essay on Education outlines and anticipates the main themes of Mill’s Analysis , his most comprehensive inquiry into what his son would later call “ethology, or the science of character formation” ( A System of Logic , Book VI; Ball 2010). Since John Stuart Mill situated his father’s Analysis in the debate between the “a priori view of human knowledge, and of the knowing faculties” and its “opposite doctrine—that which derives all knowledge from experience, and all moral and intellectual qualities principally from the direction given to the associations,” let’s for a moment focus on this work. For the younger Mill, much like his own A System of Logic , his father’s Analysis tried to combat a philosophical theory which made “every inveterate belief and every intense feeling, of which the origin is not remembered, […] into its own all-sufficient voucher and justification” (J.S. Mill 1873, 233). In 1869, John Stuart Mill published a second edition of this essay with extended comments by himself, Alexander Bain, George Grote and Andrew Findlater, a noted philologist.

For James Mill, knowledge comes from sense experience. There are two kinds of sensations, he argued. The first kind is experienced when the object of sense is present. The sources of this kind of experience are the senses and the experience of those sensations which accompany muscle and digestive activity. The second kind is experienced when the object of sense is no longer present. Even after the sensation is gone, some sensory content, a “bare fact,” remains: “a copy, an image, of the sensation, sometimes a representation, or trace, of the sensation,” i.e. its idea (Mill 1829a, I, 40–41). “[D]uring the whole of our lives,” James Mill argued, “a series of those two states of consciousness, called sensations, and ideas, is constantly going on.” He highlighted that ideas do not derive from objects but from sensations. And as sensations are either synchronous or successive, “[o]ur ideas spring up, or exist, in the order in which the sensations existed,” in space (simultaneous existence) and/or in time (antecedent and consequent existence) (Mill 1829a, I, 52, 55–56).

Association Psychology, as thus expounded, examines the links between experience as registered by a conscious mind and the ideas, or trains of ideas, which registered experience springs up. The strength or weakness of associations between a sensation and an idea or between ideas varies, depending on how permanent or vivid they are. Some associations are so firm and constant that they become indissoluble or inseparable, fusing the different aspects of the complex experience into a single cluster of associations. The vividness of a part of the cluster might engross the attention of the conscious mind. Sometimes the cluster is dominated by a sensation, sometimes by an idea. Generally speaking, Mill noted, sensations are more vivid than ideas, the painful or pleasurable sensations or ideas are more vivid than indifferent ones, and the more recent are more vivid than less recent ones (Mill 1829a, I, 60–63). The perceiving mind attends only to a part of the sense experience, both at the moment of sensation and, consequently, in its copy, image or representation. In History of British India , Mill used this “law” of human nature to explain how a philosophic historian never had to set foot in a foreign country to write its history:

In a cursory survey, it is understood, that the mind, unable to attend to the whole of an infinite number of objects, attaches itself to a few; and overlooks the multitude that remain. But what, then, are the objects to which the mind, in such a situation, is in preference attracted? Those which fall in with the current of its own thoughts; those which accord with its former impressions; those which confirm its previous ideas.

Sifting through different testimonies of the same phenomenon, as a judge, one might thus compound a more comprehensive idea of it rather than by being an actual eye witness (Mill 1818, I, xii-xiv; Loizides 2019b).

For James Mill, the individual maintains some command over sensations (i.e. in a controlled environment) as they derive from sensible objects. However, one cannot recall ideas or trains of ideas at will, Mill pointed out: “Thoughts come into the mind unbidden.” But ideas can be linked with sensible objects, such as sounds, smells, sights, and so on. Language thus provides signs, e.g. audible and visible, which mark sensations and recall ideas (Mill 1829a, I, 86–89). This way knowledge acquired from the past can be used to guide the future. For example, certain words recall certain ideas and trains of ideas. These ideas or trains of ideas, with or without additional links, might lead to certain behavioral responses, e.g. thoughts, emotions, actions. Analyses of chains of associations identify the links between elicited responses (last step) and actual experience (first step). This is almost impossible to do in cases of indissoluble association, as sensations, ideas and trains of ideas are fused together indiscriminately. Hence, even though most children associate darkness with ghosts, Mill offered an example, “[i]n some this association is soon dissolved,” in others “it continues for life,” especially come the night (Mill 1829a, I, 60, 286–87). Even a mind like Bentham’s had failed to dissolve such an association.

Mill’s Education (and Analysis ) was criticized for blending together two different projects: epistemology and psychology. The confusion, Wyndham Hedley Burston argued, was due to Mill’s failure to acknowledge the synthetic/analytic or conceptual/empirical distinction (Burston 1973, chs. 5–6; Wilson 1990, ch. 4), a critique which was also levelled at his son’s A System of Logic . However, given that epistemology concerns itself, not only with what knowledge is, but also with questions such as how it can be attained and with which cognitive processes do actually allow the attainment of knowledge, James Mill’s enterprise in both Education and Analysis might not appear as suspect as on first glance from a philosophical point of view. Still, Mill’s interest laid indeed primarily in the shaping of the mind, the beliefs, and the behavior of the “knowing subject.” His fundamental doctrine in psychology, his son reported, “was the formation of all human character by circumstances, through the universal Principle of Association, and the consequent unlimited possibility of improving the moral and intellectual condition of mankind by education” (J.S. Mill 1873, 109, 111). For James Mill, education was all-powerful: “if education does not perform every thing, there is hardly anything which it does not perform” (Mill 1992, 160).

Mill’s argument was straightforward: both individual and social wellbeing depends upon individual action. Actions depend upon one’s feelings and thoughts (the last step in the chain of association prior to action). Education must thus be structured upon the “knowledge of the sequences which take place in the human feelings or thought.” Such knowledge enables the preceptor “to make certain feelings or thoughts take place instead of others” in the student. The kinds of mental succession, upon which education works, Mill urged, make “all the difference between the extreme of madness and of wickedness, and the greatest attainable heights of wisdom and virtue” (Mill 1992, 147; Mill 1813a, 98). As one’s bent of mind is revealed in the sequences of its ideas, the object of education is “to provide for the constant production of certain sequences, rather than others,” either through repetition and the inculcation of certain habits, or through association with ideas of pleasure or pain, including those of praise and blame (Mill 1992, 151).

The Essay on Education identified two sorts of circumstances that form character: physical and moral. Unlike moral circumstances, not all physical circumstances were amenable to human will. Still, Mill pointed out, the most important of them were: “all education is impotent” unless nutrition and labor (and, consequently, health) are of appropriate quality and quantity. He pressed on the point that “nature herself forbids that you shall make a wise and virtuous people, out of a starving” or an over-worked people (Mill 1992, 172–174). Especially as regards the latter, Mill painted a strikingly Platonic picture in 1813, discussing the influence of labor upon factory workers:

Shut up for almost the whole of that period of time which they pass without sleep, with their eyes and all their faculties exclusively fastened day after day upon one and the same narrow circle of objects and operations, their minds are accessible to a smaller number of ideas, and get less of any thing which can be called mental exercise, than any other set of human being, even than the savages in the forest (Mill 1813a, 94).

The “effects of their situation upon their minds are, if possible, still more deplorable” than upon their body, he argued. “[U]nless care is taken,” he highlighted in Education , “by means of the other instruments of education, to counteract” these dreadful effects of economic progress, the minds “of the great body of the people are in danger of really degenerating, while the other elements of civilization are advancing” (Mill 1992, 173).

As far as the moral circumstances were concerned, rather than waste time debating final ends, Mill focused on accepted middle principles. The stable production of those mental sequences which fulfil the ends of education, he argued, depends upon cultivating four virtues: intelligence, temperance, justice and generosity. The first two promote individual well-being. Intelligence referred to “bringing within our ken what is capable, and what is not capable of being used as means,” but also “seizing and combining, at the proper moment, whatever is the fittest as means to each particular end.” More generally, rational practice requires a collection of observations of past acts, with a justified expectation (i.e. that similar causes produce similar effects) for specific results. Temperance entailed the ability of controlling one’s appetites and desires, preventing them from leading to a “hurtful direction,” allowing the constant pursuit of what one “deliberately approves.” The latter two cardinal virtues, justice and generosity, promote social wellbeing, by avoiding doing harm and by doing positive good to others (i.e. acting supererogatorily) respectively. Of course, Mill insisted, that “[i]n reality, as the happiness of the individual is bound up with that of his species, that which affects the happiness of the one, must also, in general, affect that of the other” (Mill 1992, 154–156, 179; Loizides 2019c).

In short, Mill thought character depends on “the direction given to the desires and passions of men.” To this effect, the “business of good education” is to associate the “grand objects of desire” – e.g., wealth, power, dignity – with “admirable qualities” in individuals (e.g. “great intelligence, perfect self-command, and over-ruling benevolence”), not wicked ones (e.g. “flattery, back-biting, treachery”) (Mill 1992, 193; Mill 1829a, II, 245). Since the political (and legal) arrangements in a society are very powerful in solidifying such associations through various institutions and practices, “Political Education,” as we saw, is “the key-stone of the arch” (Mill 1992, 193). Not only is government responsible for fostering proper habits and associations with good laws, justice and the eradication of corruption, according to Mill; but also, government should be held accountable when it failed to do so.

Given that “our opinions are the fathers of our actions,” Mill argued amidst the debate on parliamentary representation, it is vital that individuals do not take the opinions of others upon trust or let others choose for them what is in their interest to pursue. It was thus quite an important educational task to foster habits of examining the evidence which grounds opinions (Mill 1826, 10–11, 13–14; Mill 1992, 122, 126–130). Inattention to evidence made the detection of fallacious thinking, lying underneath a host of prejudices, impossible. Especially since those “who stand on the vantage ground of power,” Mill warned, had made an art of defending power through, what he called, “the logic of power”: the misrepresentation of facts, suppression of evidence, begging the question, argument from authority, appealing to fear, and inter alia , ridicule (Mill 1824, 465). Due to the ever-present danger that political, legal and social institutions might foster “habits of servility and toleration of arbitrary power,” the “Liberty of the Press” is a vital counteracting social influence, and, for that reason, “an inestimable blessing” by securing good government (Mill 1813b, 211–212, Mill 1992, 117–123; Grint 2017). The press functions thus as a sort of “high and constant observer” of government acts (Mill 1992, 107) through apt diffusion of praise and blame to public functionaries.

James Mill thought that “of all the circumstances which affect the happiness, the beauty, and order, and well-being of society, by far the most important” is individual character (Mill 1813a, 97). The shaping of character was no simple matter. From the domestic to the political sphere, many institutions played a part in the “elevation of the people”: elevation “above ignorance, above swinishness, above prostitute servility, above oppression, above delusion religious or political, above grovelling vice, above subjection to the irrational passions” (Mill 1813c, 345; Plassart 2008 and 2019). To adapt a famous Stoic idea, as we move from the inner to the outer concentric circles of affection and concern for one’s self and for others, it becomes increasingly difficult (impossible even without conducive physical and moral circumstances), to abstain from doing harm or do positive good to others. As we saw, without strong associations, the knowing subject’s mind hardly takes cognizance of the interests or even the existence of others outside the narrow circle of one’s self, family, friends and associates.

The effects of misguided associations, Mill urged, require “the greatest attention in Education, and Morals”: the “love of our Fellow-creatures” is “completely impotent” against the “love of Wealth, or of Power.” Good education strengthens virtuous motives so that they do not “give way, habitually, whenever they are opposed by any other motive even of moderate strength” (Mill 1829a, II, 241). As he put it:

When the grand sources of felicity are formed into the leading and governing Ideas, each in its due and relative strength, Education has then performed its most perfect work; and thus the individual becomes, to the greatest degree, the source of utility to others, and of happiness to himself (Mill 1829a, II, 303).

Only when one cares enough to sacrifice that “part of the self which the good of our species requires” (Mill 1818, V, 527) can individual exertion be directed towards the pursuit of social happiness. But it was a pursuit neither for the narrow-minded nor for the faint-hearted. For this reason, Mill thought that no great public good could “rest with safety on any thing so precarious, as the chance of extraordinary virtue in particular men” (Mill 1816, 248). “Is it according to the experience of human nature, that men with the powers of government in their hands are angels and have never any propensity to oppress?”, he wondered (Mill 1813d, 464).

In 1822, James Mackintosh found much that was admirable in Mill’s essays on government and education. However, Mackintosh protested, they were founded on an erroneous method (Mackintosh to Napier, 1822). Less than a decade later, Macaulay devastatingly drew out the implications of that method for Mill’s “utilitarian logic and politics.” In reviewing the quarrel between Mill and Macaulay today, the modern reader may well experience a sense of déjà vu , not because the question of parliamentary reform remains relevant and timely, but because the epistemological and methodological questions raised by this debate are with us still. What is the nature of political knowledge, and how is it to be obtained? What sort of “science” can “political science” aspire to be? What is the connection between political theory and the practice of politics? Mill’s answers rather resemble those of modern “rational choice” theorists, and Macaulay’s those of their empirically minded critics. After all, Mill maintains that any scientific theory worthy of the name must proceed from a finite set of assumptions about human nature, with the self-interest axiom at their center. From these one can deduce conclusions about the ways in which rational political actors will (or at any rate ought to) behave. Macaulay, by contrast, claims that people act for all sorts of reasons, including—but by no means limited to—considerations of self-interest.

Mill’s Essay on Government —and Macaulay’s attack—earned for its author an unenviable reputation as an egregious simplifier of complex matters. Yet Mill remained unrepentant since such simplification was, in his view, the very purpose and point of theorizing. After all, to theorize is to simplify. But, as his critics were quick to note, it is one thing to simplify and quite another to oversimplify. In a modern echo of Macaulay’s estimate, Joseph Schumpeter contrasts Mill’s “monumental, and indeed path-breaking, History of British India ” with the Essay on Government , which “can be described only as unrelieved nonsense” because of its simplistic assumptions and its equally simplistic conclusions (Schumpeter 1954, 254). A more charitable estimate is provided by Brian Barry. Barry observes:

The results [of Mill’s reasoning] may appear somewhat crude, and yet it seems to me a serious question whether James Mill’s political theory is any more of an oversimplification than, say, Ricardo’s economics. The difference is, of course, that Ricardo’s ideas were refined by subsequent theorists, whereas James Mill’s Essay on Government had no successors until the last decade or so (Barry 1970, 11).

These successors, on Barry’s telling, include such rational choice theorists as Mancur Olson and Anthony Downs, amongst others. Alan Ryan concurs. Although “an eminently dislikable document,” Ryan writes, Mill’s Essay on Government “has virtues that ought not to be neglected.” One of these is that it “stands at the head of a line of thought extending down to Joseph Schumpeter and Anthony Downs, a line of thought that provides many of the explicit or implicit assumptions with the aid of which we still practice political science” (Ryan 1972, 82–83).

Although right in one respect, Barry’s and Ryan’s reassessments are rather wide of the mark in another. It is true that there is, methodologically speaking, a family resemblance between Mill’s axiomatic deductive reasoning in Government and, say, Anthony Downs’s An Economic Theory of Democracy (1957). But it is important to note that Mill, unlike Downs and other ostensible successors of the rational choice school, was never content to interpret interests as wants, desires or “revealed preferences.” On the contrary, Mill was concerned with distinguishing between sinister and non-sinister interests, supplying causal explanations of their origins and development, rendering judgments about them, and attempting to alter the conditions that shape (or more often misshape) men’s and women’s characters. Hence his abiding interest in law, education, punishment, penology, psychology, and other avenues of “character-formation.” Mill’s aims were not only explanatory but critical, educative, and, by his lights, emancipatory. The point of almost everything he wrote—from his massive “critical, or judging” History of British India to the shortest essay—was, to borrow a phrase from Marx, not merely to understand the world but to change it. Not for Mill the vaunted “value-neutrality” of modern social and political science.

James Mill’s works

• (1806) Letter to William Forbes, 7 July 1806, in Anna J. Mill, 1976. ‘The Education of John—Further evidence’, Mill Newsletter , 11 (1): 10–14 at 10–11.
• (1813a) “Essays on the Formation of Human Character,” Philanthropist , 3 (10): 93–119.
• (1813b) “Education of the Poor,” Edinburgh Review , 21 (41): 207–19.
• (1813c) “Lancasterian Institutions,” Philanthropist , 3 (12): 344–58.
• (1813d) “Grant on the India Trade and Government,” Eclectic Review , 9 (May): 453–471.
• (1816) “Beggar,” in Macvey Napier (ed.), 1824. Supplement to the IV, V, and VI Editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica , 6 vols., Edinburgh: Archibald Constable and Co., vol. II (1): 231–248.
• (1818) The History of British India , 3 rd ed. 1826, 3 vols., London: Baldwin, Craddock and Joy.
• (1821) Elements of Political Economy , London: Baldwin, Craddock and Joy.
• (1824) “Periodical Literature: Quarterly Review ,” Westminster Review , 2 (4): 463–503.
• (1826) “Formation of Opinions,” Westminster Review , 6 (2): 1–23.

Government Jurisprudence Liberty of the Press Prisons and Prison Discipline Colonies Law of Nations Education

London: J. Innes [all except Colonies and Law of Nations are reprinted in Mill 1992]

• (1829a) Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind , 2 vols., London: Baldwin and Cradock.
• (1829b) James Mill to Etienne Dumont, 13 July 1829, MS Dumont, Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire, Geneva, MS 76, fos 30–31 at 31.
• (1835) A Fragment on Mackintosh , London: Baldwin and Cradock
• (1992) James Mill: Political Writings , Terence Ball (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Other primary sources

• Macaulay,Thomas Babington, 1829. “Mill on Government,” Edinburgh Review , 49 (97): 159–189, repr. in Mill 1992, 271–303.
• Mill, John Stuart, 1843. Letter to Auguste Comte, 28 January 1843, in John M. Robson (gen. ed.), 1963–91. Collected works of John Stuart Mill , 33 vols., Toronto: University of Toronto Press, vol. XIII, p. 566.
• –––, 1873. Autobiography , in Collected Works , vol. I.
• –––, 1961. The Early Draft of John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography , Jack Stillinger (ed.), Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
• Mackintosh, James, 1822. Letter to Macvey Napier, 8 January 1822, in M. Napier (ed.), 1879. Selection from the Correspondence of the Late Macvey Napier , London: Macmillan, 34.
• Ricardo, David, 1820. Letter to James Mill, 27 July 1820, in Piero Sraffa (ed.) 2004. The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo , 11 vols., Indianapolis: Liberty Fund (or. ed. 1951–1977), vol. 8, p. 2119.
• Bain, Alexander, 1882. James Mill: A Biography , London: Longmans Green & Co.
• Ball, Terence, 1995. Reappraising Political Theory: Revisionist Studies in the History of Political Thought , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2010. “Competing Theories of Character Formation: James vs. John Stuart Mill,” in Georgios Varouxakis and Paul Kelly (eds.), John Stuart Mill – Thought and Influence; The Saint of Rationalism . New York and London: Routledge: 35–56.
• Barry, Brian, 1970. Sociologists, Economists and Democracy , London: Collier-Macmillan.
• Burston, Wyndham Hedley, 1973. James Mill on Philosophy and Education , London: Athlone Press.
• Carr, Wendell Robert, 1971. “James Mill’s Politics Reconsidered: Parliamentary Reform and the Triumph of Truth,” Historical Journal , 14 (3): 553–580.
• Chen, Jeng-Guo, 2000. James Mill’s History of British India in its Intellectual Context , Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, PhD Thesis.
• Cumming, Ian, 1962. “The Scottish Education of James Mill,” History of Education Quarterly , 2 (3): 152–167.
• De Marchi, Neil, 1983. “The Case for James Mill,” in Coats, Alfred William (ed) Methodological Controversy in Economics: historical essays in honor of T.W. Hutchinson , London: Jai Press, 155–184.
• Fenn, Robert A., 1987. James Mill’s Political Thought , New York and London: Garland Publishing.
• Grint, Kristopher, 2013. James Mill’s Common Place Books and their Intellectual Context, 1773–1836 , Sussex: University of Sussex, PhD Thesis.
• –––, 2017. “The Freedom of the Press in James Mill’s Political Thought,” Historical Journal 60 (2): 363–383.
• Haakonsen, Knud, 1985. “James Mill and Scottish Moral Philosophy,” Political Studies , 33 (4): 628–636.
• Halévy, Elie, 1955. The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism , Boston: Beacon Press.
• Hamburger, Joseph, 1965. James Mill and the Art of Revolution , New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Lazenby, Arthur L., 1972. James Mill: The Formation of a Scottish Émigré Writer , Sussex: University of Sussex, PhD Thesis.
• Lively, Jack; Rees, John Collwyn (eds.), 1978. Utilitarian Logic and Politics: James Mill’s “Essay on government,” Macaulay’s critique, and the ensuing debate , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Loizides, Antis, 2013a. John Stuart Mill’s Platonic Heritage: Happiness through Character , Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
• –––, 2013b. “Taking their Cue from Plato: James and John Stuart Mill,” History of European Ideas , 39 (1): 121–40.
• –––, 2019a. James Mill’s Utilitarian Logic and Politics , London and New York: Routledge.
• –––, 2019b. “Utility, Reason and Rhetoric: James Mill’s Metaphor of the Historian as Judge,” Utilitas , 31 (4): 431–49.
• –––, 2019c. “James Mill on Happiness,” in G. Varouxakis and M. Philp (eds.) Happiness and Utility: Essays Presented to Frederick Rosen , London: UCL Press: 161–83.
• –––, 2024. “‘The Teacher of Teachers’: James Mill and the Education of John Stuart Mill,” The Review of Politics , 86 (1):47–69.
• Majeed, Javed, 1992. Ungoverned Imaginings, James Mill’s The History of British India and Orientalism , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• McInerney, David J., 2002. James Mill and the End of Civilization , Canberra: Australian National University, PhD Thesis.
• Plamenatz, John, 1966. The English Utilitarians , Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
• Plassart, Anna, 2008. “James Mill’s treatment of religion and the History of British India,” History of European Ideas , 34 (4): 526–37.
• –––, 2015. The Scottich Enlightenment and the French Revolution , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2019. “James Mill, the Scottish Enlightenment and the Problem of Civil Religion,” Modern Intellectual History , 16 (3): 679–711.
• Rendall, Jane, 1982. “Scottish Orientalism: From Robertson to James Mill,” Historical Journal , 25 (1): 43–69.
• Ripoli, Mariangela, 1998. “The Return of James Mill,” Utilitas , 10 (1): 105–21.
• Ryan, Alan, 1972. “Two Concepts of Politics and Democracy: James and John Stuart Mill,” in Martin Fleisher (ed.), Machiavelli and the Nature of Political Thought , pp. 76–113, New York: Atheneum.
• Schumpeter, Joseph, 1954. History of Economic Analysis , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Stimson, Shannon C., and Murray Milgate, 1993. “Utility, Property, and Political Participation: James Mill on Democratic Reform,” American Political Science Review , 87 (4): 901–911.
• Thomas, William, 1969. “James Mill’s Politics: The ‘Essay on Government’ and the Movement for Reform,” Historical Journal , 12 (2): 249–84.
• –––, 1979. The Philosophical Radicals , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Wilson, Fred, 1990. Psychological Analysis and the Philosophy of John Stuart Mill , Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
• Woodcock, Michael Bernard, 1980. “Educational Principles and Political Thought: The Case of James Mill,” History of Political Thought , 1 (3): 475–97.

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• Works of James Mill , available at Online Library of Liberty (oll.libertyfund.org).
• James Mill’s Commonplace Books , available at Intellectual History Archive of the University of St. Andrews
• Elements of Political Economy , 3rd edition, 1844.

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Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

The Man versus the State, with Six Essays on Government, Society and Freedom (LF ed.)

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This volume contains the four essays that Spencer published as The Man Versus the State in 1884 as well as five essays added by later publishers. In addition, it provides “The Proper Sphere of Government,” an important early essay by Spencer.

Spencer develops various specific disastrous ramifications of the wholesale substitution of the principle of compulsory cooperation - the statist principle - for the individualist principle of voluntary cooperation. His theme is that “there is in society … that beautiful self-adjusting principle which will keep all its elements in equilibrium… . The attempt to regulate all the actions of a community by legislation will entail little else but misery and compulsion.”

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The Man versus the State, with Six Essays on Government, Society and Freedom, ed. Eric Mack, introduction by Albert Jay Nock (Indianapolis: LibertyClassics, 1981).

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Mill and Spencer routinely criticized each other in their works, however both classical liberal thinkers greatly admired each other and respected their differences. Spencer would go on to write Mill’s biography.

Both Comte and Spencer are considered “fathers of sociology” who disagreed significantly, Spencer particularly disliked Comte’s positivism, but also built the groundwork for modern sociology.

Even though he cites Spencer very little, Hayek was a successor to Spencer’s form of liberalism, liberal evolutionism. The two thinkers share principles of spontaneous order and radical individualism.

Spencer and Darwin both were invested in the theory of evolution, Spencer accepted and extrapolated Darwin’s theory of natural selection to his individualistic philosophical and sociological views.

The Libertarian thinker was heavily influenced by Spencer’s writing. In Nozick’s most famous work: Anarchy, State, and Utopia he adapts Spencer’s thinking in The Man Versus The State.

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Patrick J. Deneen

Deenen heavily criticizes classical liberalism and its contradictions, such as valuing both equal rights and allowing for inequality, have led to the failure of liberal societies and large social discontent. Deenen argues against Spencer’s individualism and believes that individualism inherently…

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Classic at Law & Liberty) Mingardi explores the changing nature of the term “liberal,” and reminds us that, “At best, scholars often view Spencer as a magnificent dinosaur…this is a mistake.”

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Herbert Spencer

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Robert Nozick

Nozick discusses how any expansion of a minarchist state inherently violates rights, expanding on Spencer’s opposition to centralization.

Friedrich A. Hayek

Hayek’s most famous and impactful work seeks to verify the predictions made by Spencer’s The Man Versus the State through discussing the increasing central planning and statist corruption in democracies, inevitably leading to totalitarianism.

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Friedman demonstrates how Spencer’s warnings of the uncontrollable expansion of laws and regulations and the failures of government intervention have harmed personal freedom and economic prosperity in the United States.

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Bastiat examines the hypocrisy of the state in enforcing laws, emphasizing the predatory nature of an expansionary government Spencer is concerned with.

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Constitution Annotated: A Research Guide

Guide to constitution annotated essays.

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As a starting point to your constitutional research, you can begin to explore the Constitution Annotated by subject matter using the menu below or by inputting keywords in the search bar .

The links in the section below take you to the browse section for each constitutional provision's annotated essays. Individual essays can be accessed by clicking the serial numbers left of each essay title.

Introductory Essays

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The U.S. Constitution

The foundational legal document of the United States of America.

Legislative Power (Article I)

This section encompasses essays on Article I of the Constitution dealing specifically with the Legislative branch, its powers, and functions. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on the Historical Origin Limits on Federal Power .

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This section encompasses essays on Article II of the Constitution dealing specifically with the Executive branch, the Presidency, its powers, and functions. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on the Overview of Article II, Executive Branch .

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This section encompasses essays on Article III of the Constitution dealing specifically with the Judicial branch, its powers, and functions. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on Marbury v. Madison and Judicial Review .

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This section encompasses essays on Article IV of the Constitution dealing specifically with the relationships between states. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on the Purpose of Privileges and Immunities Clause.

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This section encompasses essays on Article V of the Constitution dealing specifically with the creation of constitutional amendments. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on Congressional Proposals of Amendments .

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This section encompasses essays on Article VI of the Constitution dealing specifically with the establishment of the Constitution as the Supreme Law of the Land. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on the Overview of the Supremacy Clause.

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This section encompasses essays on Article VII of the Constitution dealing specifically with the ratification of the Constitution.

Bill of Rights

The first ten amendments to the Constitution.

First Amendment: Fundamental Freedoms

This section encompasses essays on the First Amendment dealing specifically with fundamental freedoms. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on State Action Doctrine and Free Speech .

Second Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Second Amendment dealing specifically with the right to bear arms. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on Early Second Amendment Jurisprudence.

Third Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Third Amendment dealing specifically with the quartering of soldiers. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on Government Intrusion .

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This section encompasses essays on the Fourth Amendment dealing specifically with searches and seizures. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on the Amendment’s Historical Background .

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This section encompasses essays on the Fifth Amendment dealing specifically with the rights of persons. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay overviewing Due Process .

Sixth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Sixth Amendment dealing specifically with rights in criminal prosecutions. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on Prejudice and the Right to a Speedy Trial.

Seventh Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Seventh Amendment dealing specifically with civil trial rights. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay overviewing the Seventh Amendment.

Eighth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Eighth Amendment dealing specifically with cruel and unusual punishment. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on the standard of cruel and unusual punishment.

Ninth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Ninth Amendment dealing specifically with unenumerated rights. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on the Amendment’s modern doctrine.

Tenth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Tenth Amendment dealing specifically with rights reserved to states and the people. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on State Sovereignty .

Early Amendments

The two earliest amendments ratified after the Bill of Rights.

Eleventh Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Eleventh Amendment dealing specifically with suits against states. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on the Amendment’s historical background.

Twelfth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Twelfth Amendment dealing specifically with the election of the President.

Reconstruction Amendments

Also referred to as the Civil War Amendments, the 13th-15th Amendments were passed in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War to enshrine constitutional protections for newly-freed Black Americans.

Thirteenth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Thirteenth Amendment dealing specifically with the abolition of slavery. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on Defining Badges and Incidents of Slavery

Fourteenth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Fourteenth Amendment dealing specifically with equal protection and other rights. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay overviewing Substantive Due Process .

Fifteenth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Fifteenth Amendment dealing specifically with the right to vote. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on the right to vote generally .

Early Twentieth Century Amendments

The constitutional amendments ratified in the early twentieth century prior to the Second World War.

Sixteenth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Sixteenth Amendment dealing specifically with income tax. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on the historical background of the Amendment.

Seventeenth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Seventeenth Amendment dealing specifically with the popular election of senators. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on the historical background of the Amendment.

Eighteenth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Eighteenth Amendment dealing specifically with the prohibition of alcohol.

Nineteenth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Nineteenth Amendment dealing specifically with women’s suffrage. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay overviewing the amendment .

Twentieth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Twentieth Amendment dealing specifically with the presidential terms and succession.

Twenty-First Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Twenty-First Amendment dealing specifically with the repeal of prohibition. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay on interstate commerce .

Twenty-Second Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Twenty-Second Amendment dealing specifically with Presidential term limits.

Post-War Amendments

Constitutional amendments passed in the twentieth century after the conclusion of the Second World War.

Twenty-Third Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Twenty-Third Amendment dealing specifically with District of Columbia electors.

Twenty-Fourth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Twenty-Fourth Amendment dealing specifically with the abolition of poll tax.

Twenty-Fifth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Twenty-Fifth Amendment dealing specifically with Presidential vacancy.

Twenty-Sixth Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Twenty-Sixth Amendment dealing specifically with the reduction of voting age.

Twenty-Seventh Amendment

This section encompasses essays on the Twenty-Sixth Amendment dealing specifically with the congressional compensation. A recommended first stop is the annotated essay overviewing the amendment .

Six amendments have been proposed by Congress, but have not been ratified by the States.

• Proposed Amendments Not Ratified by the States This essay covers amendments proposed by Congress, but as of yet unratified by the States.
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Federalist papers

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Federalist papers , series of 85 essays on the proposed new Constitution of the United States and on the nature of republican government , published between 1787 and 1788 by Alexander Hamilton , James Madison , and John Jay in an effort to persuade New York state voters to support ratification. Seventy-seven of the essays first appeared serially in New York newspapers, were reprinted in most other states, and were published in book form as The Federalist on May 28, 1788; the remaining eight essays appeared in New York newspapers between June 14 and August 16, 1788.

All the papers appeared over the signature “Publius,” and the authorship of some of the papers was once a matter of scholarly dispute . However, computer analysis and historical evidence has led nearly all historians to assign authorship in the following manner: Hamilton wrote numbers 1, 6–9, 11–13, 15–17, 21–36, 59–61, and 65–85; Madison , numbers 10, 14, 18–20, 37–58, and 62–63; and Jay, numbers 2–5 and 64.

The authors of the Federalist papers presented a masterly defense of the new federal system and of the major departments in the proposed central government. They also argued that the existing government under the Articles of Confederation , the country’s first constitution, was defective and that the proposed Constitution would remedy its weaknesses without endangering the liberties of the people.

As a general treatise on republican government, the Federalist papers are distinguished for their comprehensive analysis of the means by which the ideals of justice , the general welfare , and the rights of individuals could be realized. The authors assumed that people’s primary political motive is self-interest and that people—whether acting individually or collectively—are selfish and only imperfectly rational. The establishment of a republican form of government would not of itself provide protection against such characteristics: the representatives of the people might betray their trust; one segment of the population might oppress another; and both the representatives and the public might give way to passion or caprice . The possibility of good government, they argued, lay in the crafting of political institutions that would compensate for deficiencies in both reason and virtue in the ordinary conduct of politics. This theme was predominant in late 18th-century political thought in America and accounts in part for the elaborate system of checks and balances that was devised in the Constitution.

The authors of the Federalist papers argued against the decentralization of political authority under the Articles of Confederation. They worried, for example, that national commercial interests suffered from intransigent economic conflicts between states and that federal weakness undermined American diplomatic efforts abroad. Broadly, they argued that the government’s impotence under the Articles of Confederation obstructed America’s emergence as a powerful commercial empire.

The authors were also critical of the power assumed by state legislatures under the Articles of Confederation—and of the characters of the people serving in those assemblies. In the authors’ view, the farmers and artisans who rose to power in postrevolutionary America were too beholden to narrow economic and regional interests to serve the broader public good. Of particular concern to the authors was the passage by state legislatures of pro-debtor legislation and paper money laws that threatened creditors’ property rights . Unlike most Americans of the period, who typically worried about the conspiracies of the elite few against the liberties of the people, the authors were concerned about tyrannical legislative majorities threatening the rights of propertied minorities. The Articles of Confederation, in their view, had provided no safeguards against the vices of the people themselves, and the American Revolution’s enthusiasm for liberty had diminished popular appreciation of the need for good governance. The Federalist papers presented the 1786–87 insurrection of debtor farmers in western Massachusetts— Shays’s Rebellion —as a symptom of this broader crisis.

The authors of the Federalist papers argued for an increase in the “energy” of the federal government to respond to this crisis. However, the national government’s increased power would have to be based in republican principles and retain a federal distribution of power; there would be no return to monarchical rule or consolidation of central authority.

In one of the most notable essays, “Federalist 10,” Madison rejected the then common belief that republican government was possible only for small states. He argued that stability, liberty, and justice were more likely to be achieved in a large area with a numerous and heterogeneous population. Although frequently interpreted as an attack on majority rule, the essay is in reality a defense of both social, economic, and cultural pluralism and of a composite majority formed by compromise and conciliation. Decision by such a majority, rather than by a monistic one, would be more likely to accord with the proper ends of government. This distinction between a proper and an improper majority typifies the fundamental philosophy of the Federalist papers; republican institutions, including the principle of majority rule, were not considered good in themselves but were good because they constituted the best means for the pursuit of justice and the preservation of liberty.

The Problem of Corruption in Government Essay

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Organized Political Corruption

Politician’s economic privileges and the participation of citizens.

Despite global policies aimed at eradicating corruption as an unacceptable phenomenon in the government sphere, acute issues still arise, and periodic high-profile court cases are made public. Some officials’ corruption manipulation cannot be regarded as a modern trend since the top administration of states tries to fight against bribery, extortion, and other manifestations of unethical practices. Nevertheless, problems exist, and one of the essential tasks is to change political courses to prevent economic crime among the highest ranks completely. In addition to officials, citizens are also partly responsible for the existence of corruption as a daily occurrence, therefore, not only senior staff but also the population may be involved in combating bribery.

Political corruption has no justification since it is the violation of all existing constitutional norms and presupposes severe criminal penalties. According to Kupatadze (2015), if financial machinations are encouraged at the highest level, all other spheres of life (business, industrial, agricultural, and others) are also based on corrupt activities. Bringing officials to justice is mandatory if relevant cases of violations are identified. However, sometimes it is not easy to determine which of the officials violates the law since the entire political system may be built on machinations and bribery. Kupatadze (2015) quotes the words of the former Prime Minister of Ukraine Mykola Azarov who called on to “have a conscience” and not to take too much out of the budget – “don’t steal 50 per cent” (p. 199). This approach proves that in case the highest administrative officials are aware of financial frauds and allow them, no order can be maintained.

Economic privileges that some politicians have significantly complicate the process of fighting corruption and other unethical practices. Moreover, obstacles arise for natural economic progress. As Hessami (2014) argues, “corruption also diminishes returns on investment” (even when ignoring the risk involved) because it acts as a tax” (p. 373). The author explains it by the fact that entrepreneurs are willing to bribe responsible officials who can help to open or promote a particular business (Hessami, 2014). Funds do not go to the treasury, and the state cannot make a profit. Therefore, from an economic point of view, corruption is a disastrous factor, and growth is impossible due to the privileges of some politicians who are able to control financial flows and the allocation of resources.

The participation of citizens in solving the problem of corruption can also be crucial. For instance, Rose-Ackerman and Palifka (2016) give the example of Sudan, where, according to the survey, “38% of citizens reported paying a bribe,” and “56% of them report having been asked for a bribe” (p. 47). Such statistics show that the population encourages corruption and promotes its strengthening among the ruling elites. If citizens stop any requests for bribery and signal any cases of officials’ unethical behavior promptly, it is likely that extortion will cease to be part of the governments’ modern work.

In addition to combating corruption and bribery at the state level, citizens’ participation can also be encouraged as the way to eradicate these unacceptable phenomena. In case the ruling elites do not have unhindered access to the budget, a higher level of control may be provided. Economic progress can be impossible if officials use their privileges as the way of personal enrichment at the expense of the population.

Hessami, Z. (2014). Political corruption, public procurement, and budget composition: Theory and evidence from OECD countries. European Journal of Political Economy , 34 , 372-389. Web.

Kupatadze, A. (2015). Political corruption in Eurasia: Understanding collusion between states, organized crime and business. Theoretical Criminology , 19 (2), 198-215. Web.

Rose-Ackerman, S., & Palifka, B. J. (2016). Corruption and government: Causes, consequences, and reform (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

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Brutus | 1787

“Brutus” was the pseudonym for one of the most forceful Anti-Federalist voices during the ratification debates over the U.S. Constitution.  While scholars still debate the author of the Brutus Essays , most believe that they were written by New York Anti-Federalist Robert Yates.  Yates was a New York state judge.  He was a close ally of powerful New York Governor George Clinton.  He represented New York at the Constitutional Convention, but he left early because he opposed the new Constitution emerging in secret in Philadelphia.  Later, he served as a leading Anti-Federalist delegate in the New York state ratifying convention.  Brutus published his essays during the debates over ratification the Constitution—expressing a range of doubts.  For Brutus, the ratification debates turned on one key question: do the American people want a system driven by the states or one organized around a powerful national government?  Echoing influential political theorists like Montesquieu, Brutus feared that a republican form of government could not succeed in a large nation like America.  As a result, he favored placing most key powers in the governments closest to the American people: their state and local governments.  Brutus’s essays were so incisive that they helped spur Alexander Hamilton to organize (and co-author) The Federalist Papers in response.

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Let us now proceed to enquire, as I at first proposed, whether it be best the thirteen United States should be reduced to one great republic, or not? It is here taken for granted, that all agree in this, that whatever government we adopt, it ought to be a free one; that it should be so framed as to secure the liberty of the citizens of America, and such a one as to admit of a full, fair, and equal representation of the people. The question then will be, whether a government thus constituted, and founded on such principles, is practicable, and can be exercised over the whole United States, reduced into one state?

If respect is to be paid to the opinion of the greatest and wisest men who have ever thought or wrote on the science of government, we shall be constrained to conclude, that a free republic cannot succeed over a country of such immense extent, containing such a number of inhabitants, and these increasing in such rapid progression as that of the whole United States. Among the many illustrious authorities which might be produced to this point, I shall content myself with quoting only two. The one is the baron de Montesquieu . . . . “It is natural to a republic to have only a small territory, otherwise it cannot long subsist. In a large republic there are men of large fortunes, and consequently of less moderation; there are trusts too great to be placed in any single subject; he has interest of his own; he soon begins to think that he may be happy, great and glorious, by oppressing his fellow citizens; and that he may raise himself to grandeur on the ruins of his country. In a large republic, the public good is sacrificed to a thousand views; it is subordinate to exceptions, and depends on accidents. In a small one, the interest of the public is easier perceived, better understood, and more within the reach of every citizen; abuses are of less extent, and of course are less protected.” Of the same opinion is the marquis Beccarari. . . .

In a free republic, although all laws are derived from the consent of the people, yet the people do not declare their consent by themselves in person, but by representatives, chosen by them, who are supposed to know the minds of their constituents, and to be possessed of integrity to declare this mind.

In every free government, the people must give their assent to the laws by which they are governed. This is the true criterion between a free government and an arbitrary one. The former are ruled by the will of the whole, expressed in any manner they may agree upon; the latter by the will of one, or a few. If the people are to give their assent to the laws, by persons chosen and appointed by them, the manner of the choice and the number chosen, must be such, as to possess, be disposed, and consequently qualified to declare the sentiments of the people; for if they do not know, or are not disposed to speak the sentiments of the people, the people do not govern, but the sovereignty is in a few. Now, in a large extended country, it is impossible to have a representation, possessing the sentiments, and of integrity, to declare the minds of the people, without having it so numerous and unwieldy, as to be subject in great measure to the inconveniency of a democratic government.

The territory of the United States is of vast extent; it now contains near three millions of souls, and is capable of containing much more than ten times that number. Is it practicable for a country, so large and so numerous as they will soon become, to elect a representation, that will speak their sentiments, without their becoming so numerous as to be incapable of transacting public business? It certainly is not.

In a republic, the manners, sentiments, and interests of the people should be similar. If this be not the case, there will be a constant clashing of opinions; and the representatives of one part will be continually striving, against those of the other. This will retard the operations of government, and prevent such conclusions as will promote the public good. If we apply this remark to the condition of the United States, we shall be convinced that it forbids that we should be one government. . . .

In despotic governments, as well as in all the monarchies of Europe, standing armies are kept up to execute the commands of the prince or the magistrate, and are employed for this purpose when occasion requires: But they have always proved the destruction of liberty, and [are] abhorrent to the spirit of a free republic. In England, where they depend upon the parliament for their annual support, they have always been complained of as oppressive and unconstitutional, and are seldom employed in executing of the laws; never except on extraordinary occasions, and then under the direction of a civil magistrate. . . .

The confidence which the people have in their rulers, in a free republic, arises from their knowing them, from their being responsible to them for their conduct, and from the power they have of displacing them when they misbehave: but in a republic of the extent of this continent, the people in general would be acquainted with very few of their rulers; the people at large would know little of their proceedings, and it would be extremely difficult to change them. . . In a republic of such vast extent as the United-States, the legislature cannot attend to the various concerns and wants of its different parts. It cannot be sufficiently numerous to be acquainted with the local condition and wants of the different districts, and if it could, it is impossible it should have sufficient time to attend to and provide for all the variety of cases of this nature, that would be continually arising.

In so extensive a republic, the great officers of government would soon become above the control of the people, and abuse their power to the purpose of aggrandizing themselves, and oppressing them. The trust committed to the executive offices, in a country of the extent of the United-States, must be various and of magnitude. The command of all the troops and navy of the republic, the appointment of officers, the power of pardoning offences, the collecting of all the public revenues, and the power of expending them, with a number of other powers, must be lodged and exercised in every state, in the hands of a few. When these are attended with great honor and emolument, as they always will be in large states, so as greatly to interest men to pursue them, and to be proper objects for ambitious and designing men, such men will be ever restless in their pursuit after them. They will use the power, when they have acquired it, to the purposes of gratifying their own interest and ambition, and it is scarcely possible, in a very large republic, to call them to account for their misconduct, or to prevent their abuse of power.

These are some of the reasons by which it appears that a free republic cannot long subsist over a country of the great extent of these states. If then this new constitution is calculated to consolidate the thirteen states into one, as it evidently is, it ought not to be adopted.

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Us Government and Politics

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Published: Aug 16, 2019

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