The Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines

James Fitzjames Stephen-Critic of Democracy

Author(s): B. Lippincott
Source: Economica, No. 33 (Aug., 1931), pp. 296-307
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The London School of Economics and Political Science and The
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[AUGUST

James Fitzjames Stephen-Critic

Democracy

of

By B. LIPPINCOTT.
I
UNLIKEThomas Carlyle and MatthewArnold, Fitzjames Stephen

as a critic of democracywas not an uncompromisingopponent of

utilitarianism. Instead he was the champion of its earlier principles against the philosophy of its final expression. Reverting
to Bentham, he set his lance against the John Stuart Mill
who wrote Liberty, Subjection of Women and Utilitariarnism.
But his antipathy to Mill was not rooted in Bentham.
Bentham but furnished the weapons for a logical, and in part an
ethical, assault. His disagreement was based on a far more
profound difference; in essence it was what might be called metaphysical. Stephen pitted against Mill a view of life that drew
its strength from such elements as are to be found in Hobbes and
in Calvin, and from his experience as an Indian administrator.
The result of his attack was the most trenchant and elaborate
criticism of the democratictendencies of the utilitarian school of
his day.' Hardly less important, in the second place, was his
criticism of Positivism. Thirdly, he must be reckoned with as a
critic of English parliamentary government.
To appreciate Stephen's position, we may again contrast him
with Carlyle and Arnold. Different from both, he was not an
isolated critic, but within a tradition. The principles he expounded in his chief political work, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, establish him with conservatism. In this sense, which is
the most important, his spiritual father is Burke. And his close
relatives are those who followed Burke in the great reaction in
the early part of the nineteenth century; Coleridge and the
later Wordsworth in England, Eichhorn and Savigny in Germany, and De Maistre and Bonald in France.
Stephen initiated in England the second conservative intellectual reaction. Though Maine and Lecky were to come after
him, neither stated the case as forcefully nor as solidly as he.
'See L4eslie Stephen, English Utilitarians, p.

244n.

296

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Maine probably exerted more influence, but his criticism was less
Furthermore, of the three, Stephen gave the most
technical.
self-contained as well as the most complete view of a conservative
faith. But these qualities, indicative as they may be, fall short
of placing Stephen with exactness.
Before attempting to fix his position, let us glimpse how another has summarised it. Mr. Barker has said that he gave "the
finest exposition of conservative thought in the latter half of the
nineteenth century."2 This criticism is scarcely satisfactory.
It leaves us in the dark on basic questions; the individual nature
of his conservatism, and his place in the tradition.3 To answer
these Stephen must be considered in relation to Burke; for it is
obvious that Burke has set the standard and determined the
tradition.
As a preliminary it is necessary to call attention to two distinguishing characteristics of the conservative; his pattern of mentality, and the tenets that form the basis of his thought.4 In
regard to the former, it need only be said that the conservative
point of view has always been the product of emotion and temperament rather than reason. In respect of the latter, it is inherent in every conservative that the structure of his creed is built
upon the acceptance of at least two of three fundamental tenets.
First and foremost is religious belief; this is usually its cornerstone.
Second, there is the doctrine of the comparative fixity
of man's relation to man and to nature, with the first corollary,
perhaps its fountain-head, that human nature is a constant.
Third, there is what may be called the belief in an " over-evaluated," or consecrated past; it takes the form of either one or
both, but most always both, of two points of view, excessive
veneration of the past, and fear of change.
Anyone who is acquainted with conservative thought recognises
these ingredients. But what critics seem to have overlooked is
2 Barker, E., Political Thought in England from Herbert Spencer to Today, p. I72.
3 Furthermore,
the passage fails to satisfy the canons of sound criticism.
First, tho adjective " finest " is, in the above position, too subjective.
It does not tell us how good.
Second, the phrase " finest exposition,"
with its implications, is in its particular position vicarious criticism; the
rendering of a literary judgment where a political one is due.
If this
comment on the manner in which Stephen expounded his thought were
assigned its proper place, there would be no objection.
But to give us an
aesthetic rather than a political criticism in the only part of the study
where an estimate is attempted, implies impressionist criticism.
Such
criticism tends less to the elucidation of a work than to the exploiting
of personal reactions which the work evokes.
4 " Conservative"
in the above discussion is not used in the setse of
a party appellation.

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" how " these ingredients have combined.5 They have not, that
is, attempted to determiine what occurs when any two of the
tenets, if not all, have combined; or the effect of omitting any
one; or the result of one predominating; or the result of interaction. If order is to be approached in the tradition, these considerations must be met.
In attempting for our purposes an analysis of Burke by the
foregoing method, it must be noted that his religious conviction
forms the very bedrock on which his politics are built. The pervasive effect his religion had upon his ideas, and its influence in
accentuating his conservatism, has for the most part been either
pointed out or indicated.6 What we wish to note are two implications of his religion that not only pertaini to him in particular,
First, his
but have an especial bearing upon the tradition.
religion implied at bottom a consistent attitude, a single point of
view. Second, it was the reflection of an intense feeling in his
And this intense feeling was a constructive force
temperament.
that played a major part in making his creed capable of unusual
influence. Payne hints at it when he refers to the " solid bullion
It is our
value which makes it impossible to distil Burke."7
contention that only under the pressure of an intense feeling
similar to Burke's is it possible to attain to such coherence between tenets, between ideas, and between ideas and tenets, as he
did.8 That only under such conditions can they be welded into a
unified body of doctrine with philosophic significance. And when
this has been accomplished, as in the case of Burke, and as it
was in the case of men like Aristotle and Aquinas, it gives
added power to the creed which they advocate. It is a commonplace of experience that men find it far more convenient and far
less difficult to subscribe to a system of thought than to unThe singleness of attitude in a system gives
assembled units.
Perhaps more important, it
guidance and offers direction.
brings the satisfaction of definite conviction at a bargain price.
For the dangerous and exhausting demands of the open mind are
obviated; none of the hazards of scepticism are entailed; none of
the turmoil precipitated by the ceaseless questioning of first
5 Mr. J. MacCunn is to a large extent an exception in his study of Burke,
Yet he
where he shows the primordial significance of Burke's religion.
does not probe deep enough into the result of this, nor does he give us a
sufficiently clear synthesis of the relative value of other elements.
6 Cf. MacCunn, J., The Political Philosophy
of Edmund Burke; Laski,
H. J., English Political Thought from Locke to Bentham.
7 Payne, E. J., Burke Select Works (I874), p. xxvi.
8 Our distinction
between tenets and ideas is that which mnay be said
to exist between foundation and superstructure.

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principles. The history of Catholicism, of mechanistic interpretations of the universe, as well as of conservatism, bear witness
In regard to their formal
to the satisfaction found in systems.
appeal Mr. Aldous Huxley has well said that " man's passion
for logical coherence is even greater than his love of truth."
To epitomise the standard which Burke has set for our criticism, we may say that no one has so completely integrated the
three tenets of conservatism as he did. No one, that is, has combined all three, or so thoroughly fused any two. Furthermore,
it appears that the degree of fusion is proportional to the intensity of the religious emotion. If the expression of this emotion
is absent, it appears that fusion cannot be as comparatively comIn this circumstance the degree of fusion seems to be
plete.
proportional to the strength with which is held a particular philosophy of history, in its broadest sense.
By the above standard the exponents of the conservative
tradition in the second part of the century may, from one angle,
be ordered as follows: Lecky, standing at the end, which is
significant, only partially combined but never fused the three
tenets. Maine is distinguished from Lecky in that he attained
What
to a limited fusion, but not equally with Stephen.
distinguishes Stephen, then, from Maine and Lecky is the
religious element; it is the base on which his political thought
rests. He may therefore be denoted as the purest representative
of the conservative tradition in England in the nineteenth
century. It follows then that Stephen is nearest to Burke in
essentials.
But, unlike Burke, Stephen united but two of the conservative
tenets; the religious, and the fixed order concept. Moreover,
these tenets were of a different nature than Burke's, were
differently held, and were modified by intermingling strains of
thought largely alien to his. To take the first, religion, it was
impossible for Stephen to subscribe to theism; in his system
of thought religion could not claim the position of an absolute.
Similar to Carlyle, he was essentiallv a Calvinist; but for the
most part rejected redemption and had little use for theology.
Furthermore, his belief was held conditionally, to be acted
upon only as probably true. Because of these characteristics,
and the effect of Benthamite utilitarianism, to which he strongly
adhered, his religion did not consecrate the past, and was not
an ultimate prescription against change. It functioned rather
His
as an element that unduly favoured the existing order.
Puritanism tended, as it must inevitably tend, to the conclusion

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[AUGUST

that morality is the end of human endeavour; and that the

means of its realisation is through the medium of law. Lastly,
his Calvi.nism coloured his view of human nature; he apotheosized the strong, had no sympathy for the weak, and little but
contempt for the ignorant.
The second tenet, the fixed order concept, contains three
factors. The first deals with his conception of human nature,
which is after that of Hobbes. It consists, on, the one hand,
in the belief that life is inevitably a conflict. On the other,
it comprises the belief that the general run of mankind is, has
been, and always will be, ignorant and indifferent; that no
small number are mean if not vicious. This prompted Stephen
to maintain that the most successful way of acting upon men
is bv means of an appeal to fear, which is most always effected
through the sanction of force. Thus his view of human nature
led him, not unlike Hobbes, to posit force as the keystone of
the social arch. The second constant derives from an interpretation of history; it is that force never changes in amount, only
in form. As it shall appear later, this influenced Stephen to
scout the efficacy of one of the cardinal principles of democratic
of discussion. The third constant pertains
government-that
to the theory of progress; Stephen denied it, accepting a neutral
This, as well as the- foregoing constant,
interpretation.
constrained him to undervalue change and the possibilities of
human improvement.
If Puritanism and a Hobbian view of human nature were two
of the three leading strains of Stephen's thought, the third was
On the whole its effect was to augment his
utilitarianism.
conservatism. By itself and in its interaction with conservative
elements, it placed a disproportionate emphasis on sanctions, and
prevented him from seeing society in scarcely any terms but
force and utility.
II
The factors that largely determined Stephen's political ideas
were his early family training and his experiences at Eton.9
Born in London in I829, his father came to exert upon him the
strongest influelnce of his life. He impregnated Stepheni with
the Puritan faith of the Evangelical, from which was to develop
his singular variant of Calvinism. At Eton Stephen formulated
a view of life that, apart from religion, became the most
" This and the following
James Fitzjames Stephen.

analysis

is based on Leslie Stephen's

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Life of

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JAMES FITZJAMES STEPHEN-CRITIC

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30I

important influence in the moulding of his political philosophy.

Entering the school a strong-willed individualist, he rebelled
against the accepted tvpe. The price he paid for his nonconformity was constant strife. Eton, he says, taught him
forever " that to be weak is to be wretched, that the state of
nature is a state of war, and Vae Victis the great law of nature."
Thus was implanted the roots of his Hobbian view of human
nature.
The next event to leave its impress upon Stephen- was the
French Revolution of I848. Its effect was to crystallise rather
than to accentuate his conservatism. Writing in I867 of his
feelings towards the revolution, he says, they were then, as
always, " feelings of fierce, unqualified hatred for the revolution
and revolutionists; feelings of the most bitter contempt and
indignation against those who feared them, truckled to them,
or failed to fight them whensoever they could and as long as
they could; feelings of zeal against all popular aspirations and
in favour of all established institutions whatever their various
defects or harshnesses (which, however, I wish to alter slowly
and moderately); in a word, the feelings of a scandalised
policeman towards a mob breaking windows in the cause of
No remark better illustrates both the tenor of
humanity."
Stephen's political thought and its debt to a temperament.
The influences that gave final shape to Stephen's ideas were
In passing it
Carlyle and, in a still greater degree, India.
for -the law,
while
studying
be
mentioned
that
Stephen,
must
time
on his philoFrom
this
in
Bentham.
a
rich
response
found
and John
that
of
Bentham
was
substantially
sophic position
Stuart Mill (of the Logic and Political Economy); while the
superstructure of his belief was a modified but hardened
evangelicism.
As Stephen advanced in years, he found Carlyle's denunciation of the parliamentary system more and more congenial; espeThe prophet
cially was this so after his return from India.
strengthened his conviction for the necessity of strong government and increased his distrust of the democratic method. Taking Maine's place as legal member of the Viceroy's commission
in India in I869, Stephen was soon convinced that absolutism
was as legitimate a form of government as any other. He saw
No less
that the law of force was indisputably the law of life.
did he observe that a bureaucracy has its merits; and, finally,
that a government unhampered by a legislature and an electorate
was capable of an efficiency utterly unknown to a democracy.

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[AUGUST

ECONOMICA

302

III
Before turning to Stephen's criticism, it might be well to sum
up, under the head of ethics, society, and the state, the characHis ethics were similar to
teristic views that informed it.
Bentham's, but he superimposed upon the utilitarian system a
This, he would maintain, was indispenstheory of Calvinism.
able; for it put morality on a plane with law, providing for a
His view of
final and universal sanction for its enforcement.
society was at once utilitarian and Hobbian, not unmixed with a
Society, he would hold, is an aggregate
tincture of Calvinism.
of independent atoms that can only be bound together in the last
resort by force. Because of man's nature, his pervasive indifference, his tendency to eternal conflict, and the baseness of not a
few, he must be restrained and compelled in nearly every action
of his life.
Hence with Stephen force tends to identify itself
" Force," he says, " is always in the backwith morality.
bond which corresponds to the moral framethe
invisible
ground,
Corollaries to these principles are: the
work of society."lo
man
the wise minority are the rightful
always
rules;
strong
masters of the foolish majority; and society is less a problem of
social and economic relationships than of intelligence versus
ignorance.
In reference to the state, it follows from his Benthanism that
its sphere of action is as a rule little more than the maintenance of
the social bond. Under most conditions Stephen believes in orthoBut it is important to observe that in theory
dox laissez-faire.
and in special circumstances he would justify state interference
for moral and religious ends. For with Stephen the state in its
very essence is the great teacher of the moral law so far as its
Furthermore, since morality, as he says, dearm can reach.
pends on religion, the state should not shrink from exercising
authority here as well."1 Though he disclaims he advocates a
State-Church, his doctrines imply it.

Iv
This brings us to Stephen's criticism. His gravest objection,
in general, to Mill's theories is that they tend to loosen the social
bond, and therefore to unmoralise society. Mill's first doctrine,
liberty, states that there is no warrant for interfering with the
action of an individual except for self-protection. To the practical application made of this doctrine Stephen has little objec10

Stephen,

Fitzjames,

I' Ibid., p. 63.

Liberty,

Equality,

Fraternity,

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p.

31.

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tion. But as a principle claiming ultimate truth, he emphatically

repudiates it.
Not only is it based, he declares, upon an unsound distinction, the distinction between self-regardinig acts and
acts which regard others, but it goes counter to the most signifiMill's doctrine is contracant fact of man's experience-force.
dicted by and violates every system of religion, morals, and
For all of these are so many
means for changing government.
Thus
forms of coercion extending beyond self-protection.

Stephen insists that " force is the essence of life

"12;

that it

" permeates and underlies every institution."

This is the leading principle of his book.
In support of his doctrine of liberty, says Stephen, Mill
advances the principle that removal of restraints tends to inOn the contrary, the growth of liberty in
vigorate character.
the sense of democracy tends to diminish, not to increase originality. Make all men equal so far as laws can make them equal,
and each unit is rendered hopelessly feeble in the presence of an
overwhelming majority. " To tell them in such a condition to
be original anld independent is like plucking a bird's feathers in
order to put it on a level with beasts, and then telling it to fly."
Furthermore, Mill believes that invigoration will be accomplished
by free and equal discussion; and, security apart, this can supplant compulsion.
But such a belief is confuted by the fact
that from the most immature up to the most civilised societies
the lion's share of the results obtained is due to compulsion.
Secondly, how can mankind be improved by discussion when in
favourable cases it is just beginning to be conscious that it is
ignorant? Thirdly, there will always be in the world an enormous mass of bad and indifferent people. The only way to act
on them is by compulsion. The utmost liberty would not in the
least tend to improve them.
Positivism, which embodies the most definite expression of
Mill's doctrine of liberty, is based upon fallacious psychology.
It would split life into two spheres, spiritual and temporal, the
former corresponding to Mill's province of liberty. Such a distinction is impossible; life is one and indivisible, at the same
time spiritual and temporal."3 Secondly, as a substitute for
Positivists would have
religion, it must remain impotent.
a priesthood and a spiritual rule; but reject the conditions that
Yet without an appeal to
make this possible, they deny hell.
" Here and there a horse
the selfish a religion is powerless.
may be disposed to go by himself, but you can never drive a
12

Ibid., p. io8.

13

Ibid., p.

II5

f-

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coach without reins and whip." Positivists will never be anything more than a Ritualistic Social Science Association.
In advancing his own view of liberty, Stephen says that liberty
is a negative term. No general rules can be ascertained about
it. Liberty is good not as opposed to coercion in general, as Mill
would have it, but as opposed to coercion in certain cases. These
are to be ascertained by a Benthamite principle of " expediency ": force is good when the end is good, when the means
employed are efficient, and when cost of application is not
excessive.
Equality, Mill's second and most cherished doctrine, is a plea
for the equality of women. To Stephen it was " the most ignoble
He
and mischievous of all the popular feelings of the age."
denies Mill's proposition that justice requires that men live in
Justice, he insists, has no meaning outside
society as equals.
Above all it is
the utilitarian sense of judicial impartiality.
Woman is not man's
utterly false when applied to the sexes.
To establish
equal, in every test of strength she is inferior.
equality would subvert her welfare.
Apart from his legal conclusion that equality is merely a word
of relation, Stephen suggests that the utmost equality is to be
The
achieved through the maintenance of marked distinctions.
solution which he says would be ideal is that of the Indian caste
system."4
Stephen's most profound disagreement with Mill appears in
his essay on fraternity. Mill, he says, proposes that utilitarian
morality with the love of humanity as its final sanction is
capable of becoming a religion. This can never be. Utilitarian
It leaves morality too
morality stops short of self-sacrifice.
Its great weakness is
much to the caprice of individual taste.
that it fails to make it a duty to be virtuous. Aside from this,
You cannot love a
its claim as a religion is preposterous.
shadowy abstraction.
In his criticism of democracy proper Stephen holds, first, that
universal suffrage does not secure the rule of the good and wise;
secondly, that it makes for inefficient administration. The latter
is his bete noire. The necessary elements for good government,
he affirms, are some degree of permanence, discretionary authority, and continuity. Under the present system these are wanting. The Cabinet system is as ill-conceived an arrangement as
could be contrived. Each department is a little state with its
own little king, and the control of the whole is loose and vague
14

Ibid., P- 252-

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But the real difficulty why so

to the highest possible degree.
little business can be accomplished, he adds, lies in the system
of party government which makes every man out of office pick
holes in the work of every man in office. And every man in
office considers not what is the best thing to be done, but what is
most likely to carry in spite of the opposition.
Stephen admits, however, he sees no substitute for universal
suffrage. He believes that taxation must be subject to popular
consent.
His attitude toward democracy, as distinct from -his
criticism, may be summed up by his remark that though he
realises universal suffrage is irresistible, he does not see " why
as we go with the stream we nleed sing Hallelujah to the river
god."
The above arguments, however, do not fully represent
Stephen's criticism of democracy. In an article written for the
Nineteenth Century in I874, entitled " Parliamentary GovernIn
ment," Stephen both expands and adds to the foregoing.
criticising the party system, he says it prevents men from
being chosen Members of Parliament on the score of ability. It
involves great waste of talent; half the ablest men in the country
spend the greater part of their lives fighting the other half.
Furthermore, it induces exaggerated prominence in topics intrinsically unimportant, and establishes an arbitrary connection
between measures that ought to be considered on their own
merits. Lastly, it produces instability.
In regard to the Cabinet, Stephen objects to the extent and
nature of the principle of responsibility. It makes, he says, for a
weak executive; every act and thought of the Cabinet is dependent on the shifting currents of public and parliamentary opinion.
A king, he deplores, has been reduced to a cypher. Within the
Cabinet, he reiterates, there is no unity. But a greater evil still
is that a Parliamentary head may treat any member of his departAnd it is no small defect that Parliament as a mere clerk.
mentary heads are appointed upon party considerations rather
than upon grounds of special fitness. Finally, the great evil of
the administrative system in regard to the management of particular affairs is the way in which special knowledge is divorced
Stephen
from experience, and authority from responsibility.
assails the competency of Parliament to elaborate details of legisAnd he inveighs
lation because it lacks special knowledge.
against the rules of parliamentary procedure and the uncertainty
of office as impediments to legislative continuity.
As a remedy for these shortcomings, he would restore a con-

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siderable degree of power to the King, but regrets this is impossible. He would therefore mitigate conditions: first, by arranging that non-party questions be handled by an independent department, subject only to the general control of Parliament;
second, by reforming the Civil Service. The latter would be
accomplished by appointing the ablest men in the country as
permanent heads of departments, by conferring honour and
dignity upon the positions, and raising salaries. Permanent
heads, says Stephen, ought not to be clerks to Cabinet Ministers,
but councillors, whose opinion might be over-ruled if necessary,
but should be recordedso that Parliament and the public should
know how decisions were taken. Lastly, he would introduce
more change in the upper ranks of the Service; this would increase competence through enlarged experience and make the
men more receptive to new ideas.
V

No criticism of Stephen can fail to recognise that his exposure

of the fallacy in Mill's principle of liberty is not without merit.
Yet his criticism is hardly adequate; it reveals none of the basic
errors on which the utilitarian philosophy stood, and the greater
part rests on a theory of force for which there is no validity.
Stephen's conceptionof equality is a misconstructionof both the
term and its meaning. Equality, apart from the judiciary, has,
as Karl Marx showed and Matthew Arnold illustrated, no real
significance save in the economic interpretation. Nor can any
reasonable theory of equality presuppose identity of conditions,
which as the root of his conception leads him to recommend as
an ideal solution a social system that is the very epitome of inequality. His opposition to equality between the sexes is based
on the argument that brawn gives title to supremacy. This is
but a variant on his theory of force, which requires no comment.
But it is impossible to deny that Stephen did well to show important defects in Positivism and in the Religion of Humanity.
It goes without saying that Stephen's capital indictment of
democracy, his thesis of force as opposed to consent, however
acquiescent and implicit, is a misreading of man's nature, history, and institutions that is without parallel except in men like
Hobbes and De Maistre. His distorted view of human nature,
on which this theory is founded, is no less at fault. Likewise is
it so for his religion, which was described for most men when
Frederic Harrison termed it " Calvinism minus Christianity."
Politically his religion is deleterious, for it makes for a harsh

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individualism and involves ultimately a Church-State. In addition, he is open to most of the objections that can be lodged
against the Benthamite utilitarian.
Stephen's criticism of democracy as a mechanism shows him
unaware of the fundamental purpose of the franchise and the
Nor, apart perhaps from the relationship of
party system.
Cabinet to Civil Service, does he understand the import of the
And though he maintains that Parprinciple of responsibility.
liament should decide issues of policy, his plea for a stronger
Cabinet and his desire to restore power to the King imply the
bureaucrat. In a word he pre-eminently embodies the traits that
most often typify the Indian administrator of the nineteenth
No evidence gives him better title than his letters to
century.
the Times on the Home Rule dispute of i886. He recommended
for Ireland the methods of rule employed in India.
Yet no critic of democracy in the nineteenth century had a
more penetrative insight into the Civil Service; many of his
suggestions have since been carried out, and some have still to be
realised.

MINNESOTA.

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