by John Stuart Mill
Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of representative government, cannot exist. The influences which form opinions and decide political acts are different in the different sections of the country. An altogether different set of leaders have the confidence of one part of the country and of another. The same books, newspapers, pamphlets, speeches, do not reach them. One section does not know what opinions, or what instigations, are circulating in another. The same incidents, the same acts, the same system of government, affect them in different ways; and each fears more injury to itself from the other nationalities than from the common arbiter, the state. Their mutual antipathies are generally much stronger than jealousy of the government. That any one of them feels aggrieved by the policy of the common ruler is sufficient to determine another to support that policy. Even if all are aggrieved, none feel that they can rely on the others for fidelity in a joint resistance; the strength of none is sufficient to resist alone, and each may reasonably think that it consults its own advantage most by bidding for the favour of the government against the rest.
(Representative Government, 1861, Chapter 16 “Of Nationality, as connected with Representative Government”)
Discover more from The Libertarian Alliance
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Related posts:
Powered by YARPP.
you only have to live in England today to see the full proof of J S Mill’s comments on this,….
Thank you much for this post! I’ve reposted it and linked back to you here:
http://ex-army.blogspot.com/2012/03/john-stuart-mill-on-diversity.html
I’d go a bit further and state that, wherever one observes party politics at all, it can safely be assumed that the constituency is made up of district sub-national groups that do not really like each other. Liberalism seems to be made for cities, not even nations.
I had never considered the weakening effect that rapid immigration has on the general will or how it might play into the progressives hands. Great post.
If you have ever served in the military or worked closely with others in a multicultural group you realize that individuals are not racist, they do not discriminate based on color, discrimination and racism have always been the products of governments never people. Governments use racism to gain power, activist use it to gain fame, political parties use it to gain votes, and the most evil use it as an excuse to carry out otherwise unacceptable and sometimes horrific acts. We must be ever suspicious of terms like “those people” or “that kind,” because they are the swords of tyrants and they will enslave us. Be fearful of your right to a bus seat over someone different because tomorrow it will be your seat that is taken, Government will always sacrifice whomever it needs to achieve power and control.
Once again great blog I am going to repost it.
[…] via Liberalism: For Nations, not Empires? | The Libertarian Alliance: BLOG. […]
Switzerland seems to get along OK
Tony
Allister Heath of City AM insists on mass immigration as part of his libertarianism, but it is clear that there is a cultural basis to a free society, and it is not one where different identity groups jostle with each other – or even have cultures hostile to each other. Maybe the Swiss all feel Swiss, as they have been ruled together for many centuries. But that is not the same thing as importing cultural conflict into the UK today.
Excellent post. I agree with your comment djwebb2010 that we have imported cultural conflicts into the UK.
[…] Liberalism: For Nations, not Empires? Nigel Farage on Drug Prohibition Sandy Ezekiel – Banged up for 18 Months! […]
[…] Nigel Farage on Drug Prohibition […]
Yes Tony – and the example of Switzerland (a land of different languages and so on – but a functioning country) was presented even in the time of J.S. Mill (as an argument against his position). but it may be a case of “the exception proves the rule” with the special circumstances of Switzerland not being applicable to Britain.
And even in Switzerland there are (for example) “Protestant Cantons” and “Catholic Cantons” (and for a long period of 1847 Catholic Cantons were persecuted in Switzerland – with some Catholic orders banned, elections rigged [because the “ignorant” Catholics might vote the wrong way] and so on) – and it has been ruled (by majority vote of the people – whether they are right or wrong is a another matter) that such things as tall towers marking Islamic places of worship are not acceptable.
So the multicultural nature of Switzerland should not be overstessed.
Even the United States (Isreal Zangwill’s famous “Melting Pot”) has its limits.
It is true that people from many nations came to America to become Americans and people who hated each other “back home” learned to get along in the United States (although not perfectly – for example the Catholic Irish in Boston, under Mayor Curley, followed a policy of trying to drive out the original Bostonians because of the latter’s Englishness), with Englishmen, Scotsmen, Irishmen, Italians, Germans, Eastern Europeans all (eventually) learning to become one nation.
However, the effort at making blacks and hispanics part of that nation seems to have stalled since the 1950s. The vast majority of blacks vote as a block (not as individuals) and have been taught (often by white leftists) that all their problems are the result of oppression, and hispanics are taught (often again by “Anglo” leftists) that the United States is not legitimate – that much of the land should be part of Mexico and (again) that all their problems are the result of oppression…..
It might be that this (the poisoning of so many blacks and hispanics against the United States) would not have happened without the propaganda of the left (after all as late as the 1950s most blacks were conservative Church goers who were no more likely to vote for leftist candidates than anyone else) – but things are as they are (and it is no good pretending that things are better than they are).
One must also remember “liberal Empire”.
Even in J.S. Mills’ day the British Empire could be seen as the liberal alternative in the actual circumstances of time and place.
Whatever the crimes of Empire – by the mid 19th century it was the British Empire that stood AGAINST slavery, AGAINST the murder of women (and on and on).
From Raffles to Kipling and Luguard to Cowperthwait – the liberal cause was (in the actual circumstances of time and place – i.e. compared to the alternative) the Imperial cause.