his control and approval, with that of their subordinates. But a far better system is that of competitive examinations, which has been recently introduced in England, and is understood to be already fully organized and in successful operation as to the civil service in India,—in fine, a system not unlike that which, in the graduates from West Point, has furnished our regular army with thoroughly educated officers. According to this plan, the inferior clerkships in the executive departments would be assigned, as fast as they became vacant, to the young men of good character who appeared on examination to be the best-trained scholars in such departments of learning as would qualify them at once to perform and to adorn official functions of a high grade. From this initial stage the way might lie open through one or two more successive examinations to charges of a more important character, while those who have passed the last examination should be eligible to the most elevated posts in the gift of the executive. While this plan would more effectually than any other insure the faithful performance of public business, the collateral benefits that would result from it would far exceed even the great national advantage. It would abate the intolerable nuisance of office-seeking, and would restore to and leave in the walks of productive industry the multitudes who are lured from them by the hope of living from the public chest. It would relieve citizens at large from the still greater nuisance of the interference of public functionaries in elections, the activity and success of that interference being now often the only condition on which they can hope that their own official incompetency, neglect, or malversation will be overlooked. At the same time, a healthful stimulus would be given to popular education; for the people would demand the means of educating their sons for public trusts, and the higher institutions under the charge of the state would be thus kept up to the standard required for furnishing successful competitors; while private schools and academies of the same nominal grade could justify and prolong their existence only by reaching and maintaining the same standard. It can hardly be needful to speak of the untold evil accruing to the public service, no less than to the best interests of society, from the brief and uncertain tenure of office in the subordinate departments of the executive administration. The worth of such a functionary grows with his years, and his ambition to excel can be sustained only by the assurance that his honorable endeavors will have their adequate and permanent recognition and reward. Of an elective judiciary, Mr. Mill expresses opinions similar to those which we put on record, a few months ago, under the venerable sanction of Mr. Binney. We take pleasure in quoting on this subject the following paragraph. "Of all officers of government, those in whose appointment any participation of popular suffrage is the most objectionable are judicial officers. While there are no functionaries whose special and professional qualifications the popular judgment is less fitted to estimate, there are none in whose case absolute impartiality, and freedom from connection with politicians or sections of politicians, are of anything like equal importance. Some thinkers, among others Mr. Bentham, have been of opinion that, although it is better that judges should not be appointed by popular election, the people of their district ought to have the power, after sufficient experience, of removing them from their trust. It cannot be denied that the irremovability of any public officer to whom great interests are intrusted is in itself an evil. It is far from desirable that there should be no means of getting rid of a bad or incompetent judge, unless for such misconduct as he can be made to answer for in a criminal court, and that a functionary on whom so much depends should have the feeling of being free from responsibility except to opinion and his own conscience. The question, however, is, whether, in the peculiar position of a judge, and supposing that all practicable securities had been taken for an honest appointment, irresponsibility, except to his own and the public conscience, has not, on the whole, less tendency to pervert his conduct, than responsibility to the government or to a popular vote. Experience has long decided this point in the affirmative as regards responsibility to the executive, and the case is quite equally strong when the responsibility sought to be enforced is to the suffrages of electors. Among the good qualities of a popular constituency, those peculiarly incumbent upon a judge, calmness and impartiality, are not numbered. Happily, in that intervention of popular suffrage which is essential to freedom they are not the qualities required. Even the quality of justice, though necessary to all human beings, and therefore to all electors, is not the inducement which decides any popular election. Justice and impar tiality are as little wanted for electing a member of Parliament as they can be in any transaction of men. The electors have not to award something which either candidate has a right to, nor to pass judgment on the general merits of the competitors, but to declare which of them has most of their personal confidence, or best represents their political convictions. A judge is bound to treat his political friend, or the person best known to him, exactly as he treats other people; but it would be a breach of duty, as well as an absurdity, if an elector did so. No argument can be grounded on the beneficial effect produced on judges, as on all other functionaries, by the moral jurisdiction of opinion; for even in this respect, that which really exercises a useful control over the proceedings of a judge, when fit for the judicial office, is not (except sometimes in political cases) the opinion of the community generally, but that of the only public by whom his conduct or qualifications can be duly estimated, the bar of his own court. I must not be understood to say that the participation of the general public in the administration of justice is of no importance; it is of the greatest; but in what manner? By the actual discharge of a part of the judicial office in the capacity of jurymen. This is one of the few cases in politics in which it is better that the people should act directly and personally than through their representatives, being almost the only case in which the errors that a person exercising authority may commit can be better borne than the consequences of making him responsible for them. If a judge could be removed from office by a popular vote, whoever was desirous of supplanting him would make capital for that purpose out of all his judicial decisions; would carry all of them, as far as he found practicable, by irregular appeal, before a public opinion wholly incompetent, for want of having heard the case, or from having heard it without either the precautions or the impartiality belonging to a judicial hearing; would play upon popular passion and prejudice where they existed, and take pains to arouse them where they did not. And in this, if the case were interesting, and he took sufficient trouble, he would infallibly be successful, unless the judge or his friends descended into the arena, and made equally powerful appeals on the other side. Judges would end by feeling that they risked their office upon every decision they gave in a case susceptible of general interest, and that it was less essential for them to consider what decision was just, than what would be most applauded by the public, or would least admit of insidious misrepresentation. The practice introduced by some of the new or revised State Constitutions in America, of submitting judicial officers to periodical popular re-election, will be found, I apprehend, to be one of the most dangerous errors ever yet committed by democracy; and, were it not that the practical good sense which never totally deserts the people of the United States is said to be producing a reaction, likely in no long time to lead to the retraction of the error, it might with reason be regarded as the first great downward step in the degeneration of modern democratic government." - pp. 273-277. In a chapter on "Federal Representative Governments," Mr. Mill reveals a singularly clear comprehension of the nature and working of our Federal Constitution. In his view, the Supreme Court of the United States is an anomalous feature of our system, and, writing before the present rebellion, he evidently thinks that here lies the weakest point of our body politic. He, in common with M. de Tocqueville, ascribes the deference which has thus far been paid to the decisions of that court to the fact that it has been wont, not to promulgate general dicta on constitutional or international law, but simply to deal with an actual case in hand, and to decide only such points in a general issue as apply to that particular case. He speaks of the Dred Scott decision as the first instance of marked and broad departure from this practice, and as on that score alone threatening peril to the Union; and he adds, with too just prescience, "The main pillar of the American Constitution is hardly strong enough to bear many more such shocks." The concluding chapter of this volume treats "Of the Government of Dependencies by a Free State." We have not time to give a full sketch of this chapter. Suffice it to say, that the author approves of granting the largest possible measure of self-government to dependencies occupying the same plane of intelligence and capacity with the mother country, and that he admits the almost inevitable danger of misgovernment when a less civilized race, like the Hindoos, depends for its laws on the legislation, and for its local rulers on the selection, of a government which has its seat on another continent. We close our too brief and cursory notice of the volume by an extract with reference to the administration of affairs in India. "It is not by attempting to rule directly a country like India, but by giving it good rulers, that the English people can do their duty to that VOL. XCV.- NO. 196. 22 country; and they can scarcely give it a worse one than an English cabinet minister, who is thinking of English, not Indian, politics; who does not remain long enough in office to acquire an intelligent interest in so complicated a subject; upon whom the factitious public opinion got up in Parliament, consisting of two or three fluent speakers, acts with as much force as if it were genuine; while he is under none of the influences of training and position which would lead or qualify him to form an honest opinion of his own. A free country which attempts to govern a distant dependency, inhabited by a dissimilar people, by means of a branch of its own executive, will almost inevitably fail. The only mode which has any chance of tolerable success is to govern through a delegated body of a comparatively permanent character, allowing only a right of inspection and a negative voice to the changeable administration of the state. Such a body did exist in the case of India; and I fear that both India and England will pay a severe penalty for the short-sighted policy by which this intermediate instrument of government was done away with. "It is of no avail to say that such a delegated body cannot have all the requisites of good government; above all, cannot have that complete and over-operative identity of interest with the governed which it is so difficult to obtain even where the people to be ruled are in some degree qualified to look after their own affairs. Real good government is not compatible with the conditions of the case. There is but a choice of imperfections. The problem is, so to construct the governing body that, under the difficulties of the position, it shall have as much interest as possible in good government, and as little in bad. Now these conditions are best found in an intermediate body. A delegated administration has always this advantage over a direct one, that it has, at all events, no duties to perform except to the governed. It has no interests to consider except theirs. Its own power of deriving profit from misgovernment may be reduced in the latest Constitution of the East India Company it was reduced -to a singularly small amount; and it can be kept entirely clear of bias from the individual or class interests of any one else. When the home government and Parliament are swayed by such partial influences in the exercise of the power reserved to them in the last resort, the intermediate body is the certain advocate and champion of the dependency before the imperial tribunal. The intermediate body, moreover, is, in the natural course of things, chiefly composed of persons who have acquired professional knowledge of this part of their country's concerns; who have been trained to it in the place itself, and have made its administration the main occupation of their lives. Furnished with these qualifications, and not being liable --- |
