대의제 정부 / Considerations on Representative Government (영문판)

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아이보리잉크 2026년 03월 16일 출간

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* 이 도서는 영어만으로 구성되어 있습니다.
아이보리잉크에서 영문판으로 선보이는 John Stuart Mill의 'Considerations on Representative Government'는 대의제의 이론과 실천을 통찰력 있게 분석한 고전적 저작입니다. 밀은 대표제의 정당화, 선거와 대표의 질, 시민 교육의 중요성, 중앙과 지방의 권한 분배 등 민주주의가 직면한 핵심 쟁점을 논리적으로 전개하며 개인의 자유와 공공선 사이의 균형을 모색합니다. 19세기 사상임에도 불구하고 현대 정치철학, 정치학 연구자와 시민에게 시사하는 바가 크며, 공공정책, 민주제도 개선을 고민하는 독자들에게 유용한 안내서가 될 것입니다. 영문판을 통해서, 원문 고유의 어휘와 문장 구성을 그대로 접함으로써 밀의 논지 전개와 수사적 힘을 정확히 이해할 수 있습니다.

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Chapter I—To What Extent Forms of Government are a Matter of Choice.
Chapter II—The Criterion of a Good Form of Government.
Chapter III—That the ideally best Form of Government is Representative Government.
Chapter IV—Under what Social Conditions Representative Government is Inapplicable.
Chapter V—Of the Proper Functions of Representative Bodies.
Chapter VI—Of the Infirmities and Dangers to which Representative Government is Liable.
Chapter VII—Of True and False Democracy; Representation of All, and Representation of the Majority only.
Chapter VIII—Of the Extension of the Suffrage.
Chapter IX—Should there be Two Stages of Election?
Chapter X—Of the Mode of Voting.
Chapter XI—Of the Duration of Parliaments.
Chapter XII—Ought Pledges to be Required from Members of Parliament?
Chapter XIII—Of a Second Chamber.
Chapter XIV—Of the Executive in a Representative Government.
Chapter XV—Of Local Representative Bodies.
Chapter XVI—Of Nationality, as connected with Representative Government.
Chapter XVII—Of Federal Representative Governments.
Chapter XVIII—Of the Government of Dependencies by a Free State.
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All speculations concerning forms of government bear the impress, more or less exclusive, of two conflicting theories respecting political institutions; or, to speak more properly, conflicting conceptions of what political institutions are.
By some minds, government is conceived as strictly a practical art, giving rise to no questions but those of means and an end. Forms of government are assimilated to any other expedients for the attainment of human objects. They are regarded as wholly an affair of invention and contrivance. Being made by man, it is assumed that man has the choice either to make them or not, and how or on what pattern they shall be made. Government, according to this conception, is a problem, to be worked like any other question of business. The first step is to define the purposes which governments are required to promote. The next, is to inquire what form of government is best fitted to fulfill those purposes. Having satisfied ourselves on these two points, and ascertained the form of government which combines the greatest amount of good with the least of evil, what further remains is to obtain the concurrence of our countrymen, or those for whom the institutions are intended, in the opinion which we have privately arrived at. To find the best form of government; to persuade others that it is the best; and, having done so, to stir them up to insist on having it, is the order of ideas in the minds of those who adopt this view of political philosophy. They look upon a constitution in the same light (difference of scale being allowed for) as they would upon a steam plow, or a threshing machine.
To these stand opposed another kind of political reasoners, who are so far from assimilating a form of government to a machine, that they regard it as a sort of spontaneous product, and the science of government as a branch (so to speak) of natural history. According to them, forms of government are not a matter of choice. We must take them, in the main, as we find them. Governments can not be constructed by premeditated design. They "are not made, but grow." Our business with them, as with the other facts of the universe, is to acquaint ourselves with their natural properties, and adapt ourselves to them. The fundamental political institutions of a people are considered by this school as a sort of organic growth from the nature and life of that people; a product of their habits, instincts, and unconscious wants and desires, scarcely at all of their deliberate purposes. Their will has had no part in the matter but that of meeting the necessities of the moment by the contrivances of the moment, which contrivances, if in sufficient conformity to the national feelings and character, commonly last, and, by successive aggregation, constitute a polity suited to the people who possess it, but which it would be vain to attempt to superinduce upon any people whose nature and circumstances had not spontaneously evolved it.
It is difficult to decide which of these doctrines would be the most absurd, if we could suppose either of them held as an exclusive theory. But the principles which men profess, on any controverted subject, are usually a very incomplete exponent of the opinions they really hold. No one believes that every people is capable of working every sort of institution. Carry the analogy of mechanical contrivances as far as we will, a man does not choose even an instrument of timber and iron on the sole ground that it is in itself the best. He considers whether he possesses the other requisites which must be combined with it to render its employment advantageous, and, in particular whether those by whom it will have to be worked possess the knowledge and skill necessary for its management. On the other hand, neither are those who speak of institutions as if they were a kind of living organisms really the political fatalists they give themselves out to be. They do not pretend that mankind have absolutely no range of choice as to the government they will live under, or that a consideration of the consequences which flow from different forms of polity is no element at all in deciding which of them should be preferred. But, though each side greatly exaggerates its own theory, out of opposition to the other, and no one holds without modification to either, the two doctrines correspond to a deep-seated difference between two modes of thought; and though it is evident that neither of these is entirely in the right, yet it being equally evident that neither is wholly in the wrong, we must endeavour to get down to what is at the root of each, and avail ourselves of the amount of truth which exists in either.
Let us remember, then, in the first place, that political institutions (however the proposition may be at times ignored) are the work of men—owe their origin and their whole existence to human will. Men did not wake on a summer morning and find them sprung up. Neither do they resemble trees, which, once planted, "are aye growing" while men "are sleeping." In every stage of their existence they are made what they are by human voluntary agency. Like all things, therefore, which are made by men, they may be either well or ill made; judgment and skill may have been exercised in their production, or the reverse of these. And again, if a people have omitted, or from outward pressure have not had it in their power to give themselves a constitution by the tentative process of applying a corrective to each evil as it arose, or as the sufferers gained strength to resist it, this retardation of political progress is no doubt a great disadvantage to them, but it does not prove that what has been found good for others would not have been good also for them, and will not be so still when they think fit to adopt it.

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저자(글) 존 스튜어트 밀

존 스튜어트 밀(1806–1873)은 영국의 철학자이자 정치경제학자로, 자유주의와 공리주의 전통에서 중요한 위치를 차지합니다. 아버지 제임스 밀과 제러미 벤담의 영향을 받아 계몽적 교육을 받았으며, 다수의 저작을 통해 개인의 자유, 공리주의적 윤리, 여성의 권리와 사회개혁을 강하게 옹호했습니다.