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the predominance of the moral over the animal self. The lower powers and faculties of a self-governed man are brought into subjection, and kept in subordination, to the higher. And so he realises his proper end as a rational being. I may add that in such self-government resides the highest part of liberty, which is ethical; according to that admirable dictum of St. Basil: "Who is free? He that is his own master." This is the true account of self-government by the individual man. It is also the true account of self-government by a nation of men. For the State, in the words of Schiller, "is the objective, and, so to speak, normal form in which the manifoldness of the subjects seeks to combine itself into a unity 1;" or, as Browning puts it

1

"A people is but the attempt of many

To rise to the completer life of one."

The rule of that completer life, for a people as for one, is reason; not the individual reason, but the abstract reason. The man "who to himself is a law rational," alone realises the true idea of selfgovernment. We must say the same of a nation. Manifestly the man who is carried about by every storm of passion, by every wind of impulse, by every gust of emotion, is not self-governed. Nor is the State that is so swayed. But in every commonwealth numbers-the masses, as the phrase is-represent passion, impulse, emotion. And the

1 Ueber die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen. Vierter Brief.

country which is dominated arbitrio popularis auræ is no more self-governed than is a ship without rudder or steersman. The politics of the people is very like the justice of the people. Blinded by terror or maddened by hate, they seize a suspected person and hang him on the nearest telegraph post. Their lynch law dispenses with inquiry, evidence, proof. So in their politics, passion, impulse, emotion, take the place of ratiocination, knowledge, justice. Passion, impulse, emotion, no doubt have their proper office in the State, as in the individual man. But whether in the individual man or in the State; they must be subjected to the only rightful lawgiver and governor-Reason. It is one function of political parties to be the organs of passions, impulses, emotions; and I need not observe how important a part such parties play in the modern State. Of course, they are no new phenomena in history. They are, in one form or another, as old as human society. There is in man-we may see it exemplified in every schoolboy-an innate tendency to take sides. 'Party feeling," Sir Henry Maine well says, "is one of the strongest feelings acting on human nature." It is, he thinks, "probably far more a survival of the primitive combativeness of mankind, than a consequence of conscious intellectual differences between man and man." 1 However that may be, there can be no doubt that, as Popular Government, p. 31.

66

1

Bluntschli argues at length in a thoughtful work,' not, I believe, much known in England, political parties are indispensable to the working of representative institutions, as instruments of that mobility in persistence which is the condition of life for the political as for the physical organism.

2

It will be well, therefore, to say here a few words regarding political parties as they exist in this age, and of the party government in which they issue. The original home of party government is England, whence other countries have adopted it, with more or fewer changes. It is the product of a very peculiar set of circumstances in English history. North, in his Examen, gives a very amusing account of the origin of the terms "Whig" and "Tory." It seems that "Tory " was a nickname first applied to those who opposed the Bill for the exclusion of the Duke of York in the Parliament of 1679. According to North, the word originally denoted "the most despicable savages among the wild Irish,' and was applied to the Duke's partisans "because the Duke favoured Irishmen." "Being," North adds, "a vocal clever-sounding word, readily pronounced, it kept its hold," and "the anti-exclusionists were stigmatised, with execration and contempt, as a

1 Character und Geist der politischen Parteien.

9 Page 371. A pungent, but partisan account of the difference between Whigs and Tories is given by Swift in No. 35 of the Examiner.

parcel of damned Tories, for divers months together." Then, "according to the common laws of scolding, the Loyalists considered which way to make pay. ment for so much of Tory as they had been treated with, and to clear scores." After essaying various repartees, they at last hit upon "Whig," "which was very significative, as well as ready, being ver nacular in Scotland for corrupt and sour whey. And so the account of Tory was balanced, and soon began to run up a sharp score on the other side.” This," North affirms, " fell within my own personal knowledge and experience."

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The names thus originally used as invectives, were gradually adopted by those to whom they were applied. And from the close of the seventeenth century, the two great parties designated by them have been prominent factors in English public life. It was not, however, until the accession of the House of Hanover, that party government, in the proper sense of the word, was established. William III. and Anne both set themselves per sistently against it. William naturally relied chiefly upon the political leaders who had been most active in raising him to the throne. Yet he never renounced his preference for a mixed ministry, com posed of moderate Whigs and moderate Tories, between whom, probably, he saw no great difference1;

1 So Pope :

"In moderation placing all my glory;

While Tories call me Whig, and Whigs a Tory."

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and during almost the whole of his reign he suc ceeded, in some degree, in attaining it. Indeed, as Hallam quaintly puts it, he "was truly his own minister, and much better fitted for the office than most of those who served him." Anne, though her own personal leanings were to the Tories, by no means desired, as she expressed it, "to be their slave"; she wished them to predominate in her counsels, but not to monopolise power, and to reduce her authority to a shadow. "Her plan was, not to suffer the Tory interest to grow too strong, but to keep such a number of Whigs still in office as should be a constant check upon her ministers." After her death the conditions of government were greatly changed. It was inevitable, Hallam thinks, that the Whigs should come exclusively into office under the line of Hanover; and George I.'s ignorance of England and English disqualified him from presiding over the deliberations of his ministers, after the manner of his predecessors, and reduced the monarchy to the shadow of a great name. The Sovereign I was no longer the moderating power, holding the balance in a heterogeneous and divided Cabinet, able to dismiss a statesman of one policy and to employ a statesman of another, and thus in a great measure to determine the tendency of the Government. He could govern only through a political

1 Constitutional History of England, vol. iii., p. 292 (8th ed.). • Sheridan's Life of Swift, p. 124.

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