The gap is not so wide nor so deep as he seems to think. quite true, as he says, that It is 'the present excellent Public School, although it has inherited the name and succeeded to most of the material possessions of the old College, has a history of its own, and memorials of its own, which are wholly and radically distinct from those of its namesake, and must always remain so.' 6 But over and above these, there is a continuous tradition which has bridged the gap, and which it has been the wise policy of the Haileybury authorities to encourage from the very first. The old Indian civilian, returning to the place, would find the memory of the East India College continuously and sedulously preserved everywhere round him. All the six houses' or blocks of building in the great Quadrangle are named after great Indian civilians, while the three in the new quadrangle bear the names of three Principals, -Batten, Le Bas, and Melvill. In the Library he would find one bookcase, 'Presented by the Secretary of State for India,' containing books from the old College library, while another is a memorial to Stephen Austin, a familiar figure in both the old and the new institutions. At the 'Speech-day' of 1876, Lord Lawrence, speaking from the high table' in the hall, remarked that fortyseven years before he had come up to that very table to receive the medal for Law. Sir Bartle Frere, the guest of the Speechday of 1881, was equally surprised and pleased to be shown by the Master of Bartle Frere House' a small brass plate marking the site of his old study. Haileybury School has, indeed, history and memorials of its own to make, but it has also assimilated those which it found. The Hailey burian' * was right in dwelling upon the fact that Haileyburians of the younger generation 'assuredly feel that they have a genius loci to be proud of-that they tread on ground consecrated by bright examples, and that they have succeeded to noble associations.' ART. X.-1. Charakter und Geist der politischen Parteien. Dargestellt von J. C. Bluntschli. Nördlingen, 1869. 2. Deutsche Kern- und Zeitfragen. Berlin, 1894. Von Albert Schäffle. 3. Die nationale Rechtsidee von den Ständen und das preussische Dreiklassenwahlsystem. Eine social-historische Studie von Rudolph von Gneist. Berlin, 1894. 4. De la Liberté politique dans l'État moderne. Par Arthur Desjardins. Paris, 1894. IT T is an observation of Sir Henry Maine, 'No force acting on mankind has been less carefully considered than Party, and yet none better deserves examination.' That examination we propose to make in the present article. We shall first consider party government in theory; we shall next examine its past history and present condition; and then we shall inquire what are its apparent prospects in the civilized world. We begin with the theory: not, of course, because party government is the result of a theory-it is the outcome of circumstances; but because we can know the nature of a thing only by knowing the idea which it is to realize. Perhaps the first apologist for party government-certainly the first considerable apologist-is Burke. Party he defines as 'a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed.' He argues that such connexions in politics are essentially necessary for the full performance of our public duty' because where men : are not acquainted with each other's principles, nor experienced in each other's talents, nor at all practised in their mutual habitudes and dispositions by joint efforts in business, no personal confidence, no friendship, no common interest subsisting among them, it is evidently impossible that they can act a public part with uniformity, perseverance, or efficacy.' He continues: "Therefore every honourable connexion will avow it is their first purpose, to pursue every just method to put the men who hold their opinions into such a condition as may enable them to carry their common plans into execution, with all the power and authority of the State. As this power is attached to certain situations, it is their duty to contend for these situations. Without a proscription of others, they are bound to give to their own party the preference in all things; and by no means, for private considerations, to accept any offers of power in which the whole body is not included; nor to suffer themselves to be led, or to be controlled, or to be overbalanced, *Popular Government,' p. 98. in office or in council, by those who contradict the very fundamental principles on which their party is formed, and even those upon which every fair connexion must stand. Such a generous contention for power, on such manly and honourable maxims, will easily be distinguished from the mean and interested struggle for place and emolument. The very style of such persons will serve to discriminate them from those numberless impostors, who have deluded the ignorant with professions incompatible with human practice, and have afterwards incensed them by practices below the level of vulgar rectitude.' * 6 Let us turn from this fine rhetoric of the most accomplished political thinker that ever adorned English political life, to a publicist of a different school and age and nation-the illustrious Bluntschli, who, whatever deductions must be made for the theological prejudices which sometimes cloud his judgment, is certainly among the most eminent masters of what the Germans call Staatswissenschaft. His little work, The Character and Spirit of Political Parties,' is the best reasoned exposition of the subject with which we are acquainted, and may, in some sort, serve, according to his design, as the physiological key' to it. Moreover, the fact that the treatise was published a quarter of a century ago gives it a peculiar value. Events have moved fast in those two and a half decades, and it will be interesting and instructive to survey, by and by, political parties as they actually exist, in the light radiated upon them from so far. Herr Bluntschli begins by laying down the proposition that, wherever there is free movement of political life in a State, political parties appear; and that the richer and freer such life is, the more sharply and clearly defined are the lines of party. Political parties, he insists, are not, as so many narrow and timid spirits suppose, a perilous evil, a disease of the body politic, but are, on the contrary, a condition and a token of sound public health: the necessary and natural manifestation and outcome of the mighty inward springs (Triebe) of national existence. Herr Bluntschli next goes on to consider the true nature of a political party. In the first place, he reminds us that it is, as its name (pars) implies, only a portion of a greater whole. It contains the consciousness of merely a part of the nation, and must not be identified with the totality, with the people, with the State. Again, parties are not limbs (Glieder) in the political organism: they are free and voluntary associations of individuals, who, by reason of a common feeling and judgment, associate themselves for common public action. * Works, vol. ii. p. 335. But But how distinguish, scientifically, parties from factions? Our author owns that this is not so easy as could be wished, owing to the looseness and uncertainty of ordinary language.* He tells us, however, in effect, that a faction is a degenerate party, and is as salt which has lost its savour. A political party should be animated by a political principle, and follow a political object. But the wordpolitical,' in its full sense, means resting on the State, in unison with, not opposed to, the State, and serving the common welfare. Political parties may display unwisdom both as to the ends they follow and the means they employ, without ceasing to be, properly, parties. But when they place themselves above the State, and subordinate public interests to their own interests, then they cease to be parties, in the true significance of the word, and become factions. The distinctive mark of a faction is that, instead of seeking to serve the State, it seeks to make the State serve it; that it follows, not political-that is, commonly beneficial (gemeinnützliche)—but selfish ends. And it is easy enough, Herr Bluntschli admonishes us, for a political party to sink down and degenerate into a faction, although it is hard for a mere faction to be raised and ennobled into a party. If,' our author further insists, in an emphatic passage, which concludes his discussion of this point, if party zeal and party passion become so overmastering that parties would rather tear the country to pieces than join hands for its delivery and welfare, if a party abuses the public authority of which it has gained possession, unjustly to oppress and persecute them who do not hold with it, if parties combine with foreign enemies against their own country and the nation to which they belong, then so unpatriotic a course expels the essential idea of a political party, and the party becomes a faction.' † Of political parties, properly so considered-' natural political parties,' he sometimes terms them-Herr Bluntschli allows four, Radicals, Liberals, Conservatives, and Absolutists or UltraConservatives; and he considers, at some length, the characteristics and functions of each of them. We need not follow him in detail through this interesting discussion, but we may observe that, founding himself upon an ingenious speculation of Friedrich Rohmer, he finds in the psychological law, ruling the stages of human life, the key to the spirit and character of political connexions. In Radicalism we see the love of ideals, often unreal and unpracticable, the delight in abstractions, the thirst for novelty, the disdain of experience, which characterize Charakter und Geist der politischen Parteien,' p. 9. youth. youth. Liberalism corresponds with the period of early manhood which has put away childish things and the illusions of fancy, when the more developed understanding (Verstand) discerns facts as they are and traces their connexion; and which, desiring and striving for their amelioration, avoids 'raw haste, half-sister to delay.' 'The love of freedom is most eminently seen in the young man, who, having outgrown the authority of tutors and governors, now, for the first time, thinks and acts independently, proving things for himself, and doing freely what is suited and fitted to him. That is also the most forcible characteristic of all true Liberalism. But,' adds Herr Bluntschli, ‘the Liberal knows well that freedom is not a coin which circulates from hand to hand; that it is the revelation and development of a personal faculty.' Conservatism he describes as less sparkling (weniger glänzend) than Liberalism, but as making a firmer, more durable, and more solid impression; as like the fully developed man of from thirty to forty, not so intent upon the acquisition of new possessions as upon the preservation and improvement of things already gained. The specially characteristic ideas of Conservatism, our author tells us, are Piety (pietas), Loyalty, and Right (das Recht). But its starting point is the real; it goes on from the reality to the idea. The true Conservative does not shut his eyes to the claims, the advance, of all innovating time; he merely insists that the movement towards the future shall respect the preconditions of the past.' Absolutism, or UltraConservatism, is the political counterpart of unproductive and unreceptive old age. The ideas proper to it have neither the splendour of youth, nor the fulness of wisdom, the depth of feeling characteristic of perfect manhood. They are lacking in virility. They are of a somewhat feminine type. Peace and stability are wont to appear to it the highest good. Such, in briefest abstract, is Herr Bluntschli's account of the four'natural political parties.' He points out that in practice they tend to coalesce into two, Radicals and Liberals forming one, and the two schools of Conservatism the other. They all express tendencies and faculties of the body politic; they all have their proper function in the State and in the Parliament which, we suppose, he would agree with M. Fouillée in considering (although he does not use the expression) a sort of national brain ('une sorte de cerveau national'). Constitutional governments he regards as depending upon their proper working and due balancing according to the exigencies of the age; and * Charakter und Geist der politischen Parteien ' p. 138. the |