Considerations on Representative GovernmentJohn Stuart Mill

Mill's Considerations on Representative Government asks a question that On Liberty left open: what form of government best serves a free people? His answer is representative democracy, but a carefully qualified one. Democracy is not valuable because the majority is wise. It is valuable because participation in government educates citizens, develops their faculties, and makes them active rather than passive.

The argument moves through several problems. Mill defends representative institutions against the claim that benevolent despotism would be more efficient, insisting that a people who delegate all judgment to a ruler become servile and stagnant. He then turns to the dangers internal to democracy itself. The tyranny of the majority, the dominance of class interest, the mediocrity of legislative bodies: these are not reasons to abandon democracy but to design it better. Mill proposes proportional representation to protect minorities, plural voting weighted by education, and open ballots to make citizens accountable for their choices.

The most contested sections address who should vote. Mill argues for broad suffrage, including women, but excludes those who cannot read or who pay no taxes, on the ground that political power without competence or stake is dangerous. These restrictions sit uneasily beside his democratic commitments, and the tension is deliberate. Mill wants democracy disciplined by intelligence, not replaced by aristocracy. The book remains the most sustained liberal attempt to reconcile popular government with the demands of competence.