the chances are that no single party will have a majority in the legislature; hence any majority that may be temporarily formed from a combination of parties is likely to lack internal coherence; its elements-and similarly the elements of the opposing minority-will be easily separated, and easily made to recombine into a differently composed majority and minority. In this way the instability, which we have been led to regard as in any case a defect of English Parliamentary government, is likely to be on the average much more marked if there is not a firm dual organisation of parties. This advantage of the dual system is mainly important when the executive is dismissible at any time by a Parliamentary majority. The next that I shall notice applies to a great extent to almost any mode of organising representative institutions. It consists in the more regular, systematic, and sober criticism of governmental measures to which the dual party system leads. The object of the "outs as a party being to get "in," it becomes the business of the leaders to scrutinise the measures of the ministry continually and closely, and bring to light all their weak points in order if possible to overthrow the ministry, or, at least, to inflict on it a loss of prestige. At the same time there are strong inducements-apart from patriotism-to make the leaders of an opposition, who naturally look forward to becoming ministers, abstain from attacking measures that are wisely chosen and framed. For if they do not defeat the ministers, the blow they have tried to deliver is likely to recoil on themselves; while, if they succeed, and bring their party into power, they may find themselves seriously hampered in the management of affairs if circumstances should arise in which a similar measure to that which they have attacked may appear obviously expedient. In short, under the dual party system, the leaders of the opposition tend to criticise keenly, from desire to oust the holders of power, and yet circumspectly, being aware of the responsibilities and difficulties which success, bringing power, must entail. A more doubtful argument sometimes urged for the dual party system is that it is required to maintain a permanent and comprehensive interest in political struggles. With the multiple party system, it is said, the centres of political influence would be chiefly leaders or organisers of more or less narrow combinations on behalf of avowedly sectional interests, or of more or less fanatical combinations to promote certain measures of a violent change. From such parties, it is said, the quiet steady-going citizens—who form the best element of any electorate-would mostly stand aloof, and consequently they would take comparatively little interest in the elections and gradually lose the habit of fulfilling their constitutional duties. It is, I think, likely that this result would happen to some extent from the substitution of the multiple for the dual party system; ie. I think that the latter tends to make party feeling more general, and that strong party feeling is, in average men, a more powerful impulse to action than a mere sense of civic duty. But I do not feel sure that serious loss would result to the community if such of the citizens as can only be induced to perform their electoral duties by the tie of party should withdraw altogether from political functions. For it is, on the other hand, a fundamental objection to the dual party system that it tends to make party-spirit, if perhaps less narrow and fanatical, at any rate more comprehensive and absorbing. Where parties are numerous and limited in their scope, there are likely to be many crossdivisions, so that persons who are opposed on some questions will be allied on others, and there is less probability that they will regard all questions habitually and systematically from a party point of view. Whereas, where the system of two permanently opposed parties is firmly established, the sentiment of "loyalty to party" becomes almost as tenacious and exacting as patriotism, and sometimes almost equally independent of intellectual convictions; so that a man remains attached to his party from old habit and sentiment, or from fear of being called a renegade, when he can no longer even imagine that he holds its "fundamental principles." As sentiment and habit are thus semi unconsciously substituted in many cases for intellectual agreement as the bond of party-union, the fundamental principles of either party become obscure;-a result which each party keenly perceives in the case of the other, though remaining partially unconscious of it in its own case. One consequence of this is, that while the two-party system diminishes in some respects the defects of parliamentary government, it intensifies them in other respects. The attack on governmental measures by the party in opposition tends, as I have said, to be less rash and fanatical than it might otherwise be; but, on the other hand, it tends to be more systematically factious and disingenuous. Good legislation has to be avoided by the party in power, not only when it is such as would be naturally unpopular, but when it can be successfully discredited by partisan ingenuity; and the same cause is liable to hamper the operation, or impair the effect of, necessary or highly expedient measures of administration. Again, the tendency before noted in parliamentary government of the English type, to entrust executive power to parliamentary leaders who are not specially qualified for their administrative functions, is aggravated by the permanent division into two competing parties. Even if there were no such division, a parliamentary executive would be always liable to include orators and parliamentary tacticians devoid of administrative skill; but it might be possible to retain in office an administrator of conspicuous merit, even though his political opinions, in matters outside his department, were opposed to those of the majority for the time. being; and this becomes impossible when the dual division is thoroughly established. Further, the dual system seems to have a dangerous tendency to degrade the profession of politics partly from the inevitable insincerity of the relation of a party leader to the members of his own party, partly from the insincerity of his relation to the party opposed to him. To keep up the vigour and zeal of his own side, he has to maintain the fiction that under the heterogeneous medley of opinions and sectional interests represented by the "ins" or the "outs" at any particular time there is a fundamental underlying agreement in sound political principles; and he has to attribute to the other side a similar agreement in unsound doctrines. Thus the best political talent and energy of the country acquires a fatal bias in the direction of insincere advocacy; indeed the old objection against forensic advocacy as a means of obtaining right judicial conclusions that one section of the experts employed are professionally required to make the worse seem the better reason applies with much more real force here than in the case of the law-courts. For in the case of the forensic advocate this attitude is frankly avowed and recognised by all concerned every plain man knows that a lawyer in court is exempt from the ordinary rule that binds an honest man only to use arguments which he believes to be sound; and that it is the duty of every member of a jury to consider only the value of an advocate's arguments, and disregard, as far as possible, the air of conviction with which they are uttered. The political advocate or party leader tends to acquire a similar professional habit of using bad arguments with an air of conviction where he cannot get good ones, or when bad ones are more likely to be popularly effective; but, unlike the forensic advocate, he is understood, in so doing, to imply his personal belief in the validity of his arguments and the truth of the conclusions to which he desires to lead up. And the case is made worse by the fact that political advocacy is not controlled by expert and responsible judges, whose business it is to sift out and scatter to the winds whatever chaff the pleader may mingle with such grains of sound argument as his brief affords; the position of the political advocate is like what that of a forensic advocate would be, if it was his business to address a jury not presided over by a judge, and largely composed of persons who only heard the pleadings on the other side in an imperfect and partial way.1 1 The demoralising effect of politics under the party system seems to me an argument of weight for keeping the business of statesmanship as far as What has just been said applies primarily to the leading members of a party who undertake the task of advocacy. But the artificiality of combination which the dual system involves has to some extent a demoralising effect on other members of the legislature; they acquire a habit either of voting frankly without conviction at the summons of the "whip," or of feigning convictions which they do not really hold in order to justify their votes. And the same cause impairs the security for good legislation, apparently furnished by the fact that a measure can only be passed if it has the approval of a majority of the legislators; since it increases the danger that measures may be passed which are only desired and really approved by a minority-it may even be a small minority if sufficiently fanatical or selfish ;-such measures being acquiesced in by the rest, under the guidance of their leaders, in order to maintain the party majority. § 4. Of the gravity of these disadvantages it is difficult to form a general estimate, as it depends largely on the condition of political morality, which is influenced by many causes more or less independent of the form of government: but we may reasonably regard the disadvantages as sufficiently grave to justify a serious consideration of the means of removing or mitigating them. The available remedies are partly political, partly moral: the former will naturally vary much according to the precise form of government adopted. If the Supreme Executive is practically dismissible at any time by a Parliamentary majority-even with the possibility of appealing to the country- the danger of transient and shifting Parliamentary majorities is so great and obvious, that a nation in which the two-party system is firmly established is hardly likely to abandon it. But the case is different with other forms of Representative Government. For instance, where there is a supreme executive appointed possible unremunerated by money; the work itself is liable to be so degrading, when carried on under the conditions above described, that its dignity can only be maintained by its being performed gratuitously if the business of keeping a party together and leading it on to victory becomes a trade, it becomes a vile trade. : |