PART II. THE PARTY SYSTEM CHAPTER XXIV PARTY AND THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM Psychology of Political THE last generation has made great strides in the study Lack of a of psychology. The workings of the individual mind, and its reaction to every stimulus or impression, especially under Parties. morbid conditions, have been examined with far more care than ever before. Social psychology has also come into view, and attempts have been made to explain the psychology of national traits, and of abnormal or unhealthy popular movements, notably mobs. But the normal forces that govern the ordinary conduct of men in their public relations have scarcely received any scientific treatment at all. In short, we are almost wholly lacking in a psychology of political parties, the few scattered remarks in Maine's "Popular Government" being, perhaps, still the nearest approach to such a thing that we possess. 1 Parties are The absence of treatises on the subject is all the more Although remarkable because the phenomena to be studied are almost universal in modern governments that contain a popular element. Experience has, indeed, shown that democracy in a great country, where the number of voters is necessarily large, involves the permanent existence of political parties; and it would not be hard to demonstrate that this must in the nature of things be the case. That 1 1 Rohmer's Lehre von den politischen Parteien, which attempts to explain the division into parties by natural differences of temperament corresponding to the four periods of man's life, is highly suggestive, but is rather philosophic than psychological; and like most philosophical treatises on political subjects it is based upon the writer's own time and place rather than upon a study of human nature under different conditions. Modern parties exist, and are likely to continue to do so, has provoked general attention. By all statesmen they are recognised as a factor to be reckoned with in public life; and, indeed, efforts have been made in various places to deal with them by law. In the United States, for example, the local caucuses, or conventions of the parties, and their methods of nominating candidates, have of late years been regulated by statute; while in Switzerland and Belgium, elaborate schemes of proportional representation have been put into operation to insure a fair share of seats to the groups in the minority. But if political parties have become well-nigh universal at the present time, they are comparatively new in their modern form. No one in the eighteenth century foresaw party government as it exists to-day, enfolding the whole surface of public life in its constant ebb and flow. An occasional man like Burke could speak of party without condemnation; but with most writers on political philosophy parties were commonly called factions, and were assumed to be subversive of good order and the public welfare. Men looked at the history with which they were familiar; the struggles for supremacy at Athens and at Rome; the Guelphs and Ghibelines exiling one another in the Italian republics; the riots in the Netherlands; the civil war and the political strife of the seventeenth century in England. It was not unnatural that with such examples before their eyes they should have regarded parties as fatal to the prosperity of the state. To them the idea of a party opposed to the government was associated with a band of selfish intriguers, or a movement that endangered the public peace and the security of political institutions. Foreign observers, indeed, point out that for nearly three hundred years political parties have existed in England, as they have not in continental countries; and that the pro 1 In his oft-quoted, but very brief, remarks in the "Observations on 'The Present State of the Nation,' " and "Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents." But twenty-five years later in a letter to Richard Burke he falls into the current talk about the evils of domination by a faction. cedure of the House of Commons has consistently protected the Opposition in its attacks upon the government.1 This is true, and there is no doubt that even in the seventeenth century party struggles were carried on both in Parliament and by pamphlets and public speeches, with a freedom unknown in most other nations; but still they were a very different thing from what they are now. They were never far removed from violence. When the Opposition of those days did not actually lead to bloodshed, it was perilously near to plots and insurrection; and the fallen minister, who was driven from power by popular feeling or the hostility of Parliament, passed under the shadow at least of the scaffold. Danby was impeached, and Shaftesbury, his rival, died a refugee in Holland. With the accession of the House of Hanover, and the vanishing of the old issues, political violence subsided. The parties degenerated into personal factions among the ruling class; and true parties were evolved slowly by the new problems of a later generation. The expression, "His Majesty's Opposition," said to have been coined by John Cam Hobhouse before the Reform Bill, would not have been understood at an earlier period; and it embodies the greatest contribution of the nineteenth century to the art of government—that of a party out of power which is recognised as perfectly loyal to the institutions of the state, and ready at any moment to come into office without a shock to the political traditions of the nation. In countries where popular control of public affairs has endured long enough to be firmly established, an Opposition is not regarded as in its nature unpatriotic. On the contrary, the party in power has no desire to see the Opposition disappear. It wants to remain in power itself, and for that reason it wants to keep a majority of the people on its side; but it knows well that if the Opposition were to become so enfeebled as to be no longer formidable, rifts would soon appear in its 1 E.g. Redlich, Recht und Technik, 74-79. 2 2 Cf. Review of his unpublished "Recollections of a Long Life," in the Edinburgh Review, April, 1871, p. 301. "His Majesty's Op position." Conditions of Good Party Gov ernment. Opposition must not be Revolutionary. own ranks. In the newer democracies, such as France and Italy, there are large bodies of men whose aims are revolutionary, whose object is to change the existing form of government, although not necessarily by violent means. These men are termed "irreconcilables," and so long as they maintain that attitude, quiet political life with a peaceful alternation of parties in power is an impossibility. The recognition of the Opposition as a legitimate body, entitled to attain to power by persuasion, is a primary condition of the success of the party system, and therefore of popular government on a large scale. Other conditions of success follow from this. If the Opposition is not to be regarded as revolutionary, its objects must not be of that character, either in the eyes of its own adherents, or in those of other people. As Professor Dicey has put it, parties must be divided upon real differences, which are important, but not fundamental. There is, of course, no self-evident line to mark off those things that are revolutionary or fundamental; and herein lies an incidental advantage of a written constitution restricting the competence of the legislature, for it draws just such a line, and goes far to confine the immediate energies of the parties to questions that are admitted not to be revolutionary. In the absence of a constitution of that kind, party activity must be limited to a conventional field, which is regarded by the public opinion of the day as fairly within the range of practical politics. Clearly the issues must not involve vital matters, such as life or confiscation. When, during the progress of the French Revolution, an orator argued in favour of the responsibility of the ministers, and added "By responsibility we mean death," he advocated a principle inconsistent with the peaceful alternation of parties in power. 1 Neither in France nor in Italy does the constitution really perform that service; because in each case it does little more than fix the framework of the government, without placing an effective restraint upon legislative action; and because the constitution itself is not felt to be morally binding by the irreconcilables. must not be Social. For the same reason there is grave danger when the lines Lines of of cleavage of the parties coincide with those between the Cleavage different social classes in the community, because one side is likely to believe that the other is shaking the foundations of society, and passions are kindled like those that blaze in civil war. This is true whenever the parties are separated by any of the deeper feelings that divide mankind sharply into groups; and especially when two or three such feelings follow the same channel. The chief difficulty with Irish Nationalism, as a factor in English politics, lies in the fact that to a great extent the line of cleavage is at once racial, religious, social, and economic. In order that the warfare of parties may be not only safe, Issues must but healthy, it must be based upon a real difference of be Based opinion about the needs of the community as a whole. on Public In Matters. so far as it is waged, not for public objects, but for the private gain, whether of individuals, or of classes, or of collective interests, rich or poor, to that extent politics will degenerate into a scramble of self-seekers. Relation of Parties to Political Before inquiring how far these conditions have been fulfilled in England we must consider the form that party has assumed there, and the institutions to which it has given Institutions. birth. England is, in fact, the only large country in which the political institutions and the party system are thoroughly in harmony. The framers of the Constitution of the United States In America. did not foresee the rôle that party was to play in popular government,1 and they made no provision for it in their plan; yet they established a system in which parties were a necessity. It was from the first inevitable, and soon became clear, that the real selection of the President would not be left to the judgment of the electoral college a result made the more certain, first, by providing that the members should assemble by States, and hence should not meet together as a whole for deliberation; and second, by ex 1 For the views of these men on the relation of parties or "factions" to public life see "The Federalist," No. 10, written by Madison. |