interests are necessarily
coincident with those of the community at large. Hence there is of
course no difficulty in deducing the actual demands of reformers.
Without defining precise limits, he shows that representatives must be
elected for brief periods, and that the right to a vote must at least
be wide enough to prevent the electoral body from forming a class with
'sinister interests.' He makes some remarkable qualifications, with
the view apparently of not startling his readers too much by absolute
and impracticable claims. He thinks that the necessary identity of
interest would still be secured if classes were unrepresented whose
interests are 'indisputably included in those of others.' Children's
interests are involved in those of their parents, and the interests of
'almost all women' in those of their fathers or husbands.[95] Again,
all men under forty might be omitted without mischief, for 'the great
majority of old men have sons whose interests they regard as an
essential part of their own. This is a law of human nature.'[96] There
would, he observes, be no danger that men above forty would try to
reduce the 'rest of the community to the state of abject slaves.'
Mill, as his son tells us,[97] disowned any intention of positively
advocating these exclusions. He only meant to say that they were not
condemned by his general principle. The doctrine, however, about
women, even as thus understood, scandalised his younger followers.

Mill proceeds to argue at some length that a favourite scheme of some
moderate reformers, for the representation of classes, could only lead
to 'a motley aristocracy,' and then answers two objections. The first
is that his scheme would lead to the abolition of the monarchy and the
House of Lords. The reply is simple and significant. It would only
lead to that result if a monarchy or a House of Lords were favourable
to bad government. He does not inquire whether they are so in fact.
The second objection is that the people do not understand their own
interest, and to this his answer is more remarkable. If the doctrine
be true, he says, we are in 'deplorable' position: we have to choose
between evils which will be designedly produced by those who have both
the power to oppress and an interest in oppression; and the evils
which will be accidentally produced by men who would act well if they
recognised their own interests.[98] Now the first evil is in any case
the worst, for it supposes an 'i