“Officers without Soldiers”: Henry Sidgwick on Representative Government in the Shadow of Liberal Unionism

This article provides an account of Henry Sidgwick’s theory of representative government as presented in The Elements of Politics . It explains the relationship between many of Sidgwick’s substantive commitments on the matter to the growing conflict within British liberalism that resulted in the foundation of the Liberal Unionist Party, the breakaway faction of liberals committed to keeping Ireland in the British Empire and under the rule of the Westminster parliament. Despite important internal divisions within Liberal Unionism, this article argues that Sidgwick presents something close to a Liberal Unionist political theory. His theory of representative government attempted to reconcile two competing ideals of liberal governance: the desire for intellectual and economic elites to govern without being too constrained by partisanship or the public on the one hand, and, on the other, the belief that the liberal cause required mass support to be successful. Managing these competing ideals would prove to be the main challenge for the Liberal Unionist Party.