Transcript
As Karuna Mantena puts it, “the sharp contrast between barbarism and civilization, when
grounded in [Mill’s] particular philosophy of history, appeared more and more like a permanent
barrier” (2010, 35)
we ought not to forget, that there is an incessant and ever-flowing current of
human affairs towards the worse, consisting of all the follies, all the vices, all
the negligences, indolences, and supineness of mankind; which is only
controlled and kept from sweeping all before it, by the exertions which some
persons constantly, and others by fits, put forth in the direction of good and
worthy objects.
John Robson puts it, for Mill “[h]uman nature... is both the efficient cause and final end of
improvement
the rhetoric of the moving average”
to be well educated is both necessary and sufficient to secure the moral virtues”
when the opinions of masses of merely average men are everywhere become or
becoming the dominant power, the counterpoise and corrective to that tendency
would be, the more and more pronounced individuality of those who stand on
the higher eminences of thought. It is in these circumstances especially, that
exceptional individuals, instead of being deterred, should be encouraged in
acting differentially from the mass.
Under a native despotism, a good despot is a rare and transitory accident: but
when the dominion they are under is that of a more civilized people, that people
ought to be able to supply it constantly. The ruling country ought to be able to
do for its subjects all that could be done by a succession of absolute monarchs,
guaranteed by irresistible force against the precariousness of tenure attendant
on barbarous despotisms, and qualified by their genius to anticipate all that
experience has taught to the more advanced nation. Such is the ideal rule of a
free people over a barbarous or semibarbarous one. We need not expect to see
that idea realized; but unless some approach to it is, the rulers are guilty of a
dereliction...
In treating of representative government, it is above all necessary to keep in view the distinction
between the idea or essence, and the particular forms in which the idea has been clothed by
accidental historical developments or by the notions current at some particular period”
that this is not what our rulers and politicians really mean. Their language is not a correct
exponent of their thoughts.... They do mean to disclaim interference for the sake of doing good
to foreign nations. They are quite sincere and in earnest in repudiating this. But the other half
of what their words express, a willingness to meddle if by doing so they can promote any
interest of England, they do not mean. The thought they have in their minds, is not the interest
of England, but her security. What they would say, is, that they are ready to act when England’s
safety is threatened, or any of her interests hostilely or unfairly endangered.
that when a country holds another in subjection, the individuals of the ruling
people who resort to the foreign country to make their fortunes, are of all others
those who most need to be held under powerful restraint. They are always one
of the chief difficulties of the government.... The Government, itself free from
this spirit, is never able sufficiently to keep it down in the young and raw even
of its own civil and military officers, over whom it has so much more control
than over the independent residents.... the government to which these private
adventurers are subject, is better than they, and does the most it can to protect
the natives against them.