A Study Of Carsun-Chang's Earlier Constitutional Thought

The traditional governance could not meet the challenge of the new world conditions any more, since modern China faced the change which had never appeared in the past three thousand years. So, reconstructing governance has become a theme in the thinking of Chinese intellectual. They observed western countries and got the strongest belief that western affluence and strength lie in their constitutional politics and their culture. The more puissant tide of westernization in the wake of the May Fourth New Culture Movement, the reflection on western value prompted by the First World War and the Second World War and the more and more serious national crisis set the great historical background for the constitutional ethos, and Carsun-Chang, the later headmaster of Nation-Society Party who was called"metaphysical Satan", advanced his own constitutional thought based on his unique philosophy and acted in the realistic political stage. In this paper, Carsun-Chang's constitutional thought of research on John Stuart Mill's Considerations on Representative Government is what we are trying to investigate and grasp.The full paper is divided into three parts:The first part, the forming and background of Carsun-Chang's constitutional thought.The second part, the containing of Carsun-Chang's research on John Stuart Mill's Considerations on Representative Government.The third part, the value and impact of Carsun-Chang's research on John Stuart Mill's Considerations on Representative Government.The first part of this article introduced Carsun-Chang's constitutional thought before research on John Stuart Mill's Considerations on Representative Government was published. With brief introduce of himself, the accumulation of his constitutional thought, and the enlightenment he got during his teaching career in China and Japan, and also Liang Qichao's influence to his constitutional thought were the reason why he supported constitutional party so much.In the second part of this article, most of paragraph were used to indicate the obtaining of research on John Stuart Mill's Considerations on Representative Government in order to compare to"representative government", so we translated directly to make it work. The seven summarized analysis is divided into four parts, including the conditions for political reform the advantages and disadvantages of a constitutional government, and the relationship between the nation and the constitution, also the glance for the politics of US and UK. This article explained the premise of political reform and discussed the representative government from the perspect of people and politics. Incidentally, representative political of the United States and the subsidiary country's freedom of United Kingdom were also discussed.The third part,we discuss the value and impact of Stuart Mill's Considerations on Representative Government just from three aspect. For one, we talk about the reason and value of Carsun-Chang's abstraction from Stuart Mill's Considerations on Representative Government. In order to oppose the proposals from the revolutionary people, and try to provide a theoretical basis for the constitutional party, Carsun-Chang's abstraction works a lot. This article is Carsun-Chang's most valuable work in his lifetime, and also a milestone in his political Consideration. For another, after this article he kept on introducing constitutional references which was taken from western ideology to china for decades. He made a lot contribution to the drafting of the "Republic of China" but his belief in the constitution, and his advocates in constitution lasted long in his lifetime. Finally, we talk about the impact of Stuart Mill's Considerations on Representative Government to Carsun-Chang. Chang spares his life time in supporting constitutional democracy. And he against the tyranny that happened in China. He thought that constitutional democracy not only can release people's potential but also can level up people's moral standards. So the country can benefit a lot from it. But the disadvantage was caused by malfunctioning of the separation of powers, and the sovereignty was not unified either. So he did a lot of work in reconciling democracy and the dictatorship. He choose the third way, he opposed both the conservation and the revolution, and called for a gradual reform in the system that could raise the national intelligence reform. But the revolution can only cut off the link between reality and history, lead to social unrest and damagement.