the duty of the prince, in a constitutional monarchy, is, while himself keeping carefully aloof from them all, to watch narrowly their condition and to commit the administration of public affairs to the one which is numerically strongest, and can command a majority in the Legislature. Spurious party types, our author judges, are such as represent nationalities, or religious convictions, or class interests. And he accounts it great gain he wrote, it will be remembered, a quarter of a century ago that political parties have gradually shaken themselves loose from non-political objects, that they have become 'more true to principle, wiser, and freer.' †

Herr Bluntschli, although his book was written with especial reference to Germany, had constantly before him, when writing it, the facts and conditions of English public life. This was, of course, natural, since England is the original home of modern party government, whence other nations have adopted it, with more or fewer changes. Political parties are, indeed, as old as the human race. But party government, as it exists in these latter days, is the product of circumstances, and of a very peculiar set of circumstances, in English history. North, in his 'Examen,' § gives us an amusing account of the origin of the terms Whig and Tory. Tory, as is well known, 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 clever vocal sounding word, readily pronounced, it kept its hold,' and 'the anti-exclusionists were stigmatised, with execration and contempt, as a parcel of damned Tories, for divers months together.' Then, according to the common laws of scolding, the loyalists considered which way to make payment for so much of Tory as they had been treated with, and to clear scores.' After essaying divers repartees, they, at last, hit upon Whig, which was very significative, as well as ready, being vernacular in Scotch for 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.'

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 *Charakter und Geist der politischen Parteien,' pp. 16-20

† Ibid., p. 27.

Ibid., p. 95.

§ Ibid., p. 320.

by

by them are 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 persistently 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, composed of moderate Whigs and moderate Tories, between whom, probably, he saw no great difference; and during almost the whole of his reign he succeeded in attaining some degree of that moderation in which, like Pope, he placed his glory. 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 monopolize 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

'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 policy of the Government. He could govern only through a political body, which, in its complete union and in its command of the majority in Parliament, was usually able, by the threat of joint resignation, which would make government impossible, to dictate its own terms.' ‡

Such was the beginning of the system of party government which is with us to this day, and which has been so largely imitated throughout the civilized world. It is not necessary, for the present purpose, to trace in detail its vicissitudes during the well-nigh two centuries that it has existed in this country.

* Constitutional History of England,' vol. iii. p. 292 (8th ed.).

† Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century,' vol. i. p. 225.

+ Ibid., p. 227.

The

The broad fact is, that, through all that tract of years, England has been really ruled by successive juntos of politicians, whose title to office has been that they could command a majority in the House of Commons. The influence of the Crown has, of course, been more at one time and less at another. Had George III.'s ability been on a level with his character, he might, not improbably, have recovered much of his lost prerogative, and have vindicated for himself an authority similar to that now exercised by the Prussian monarch. He failed in the attempt; and succeeding British sovereigns have been content to reign without governing. The reputation of public measures,' wrote Junius in 1770, 'depends upon the minister who is responsible, not upon the king, whose private opinions are supposed not to have any weight against the advice of his council, and whose personal authority should therefore never be interposed in public affairs. This, I believe, is the true constitutional doctrine.' For a century that doctrine has been universally accepted, and the real governing power in England has been an informal Committee, not of the Legislature, as is sometimes said, but of the party able to command a majority in the Lower House of the Legislature.

Such is party government as a historical fact. Its history may be said to divide itself into two periods. Up to the passing of the Reform Bill in 1832, there were, practically, only two parties in Parliament-Tories and Whigs. Hume, in one of his Essays published in 1742, wrote: To determine the nature of these parties is, perhaps, one of the most difficult problems that can be met with, and is a proof that history may contain questions as uncertain as any to be found in the most abstract sciences.' * As a matter of fact, however, it would seem-and Hume goes on to recognize this, in some sort that, speaking broadly, each party roughly represented a principle very deep in human nature, and very necessary to human society: Toryism the principle of loyalty, and Whiggism the principle of liberty.† Lord Stanhope, in a well-known passage of his History, has gone so far as to assert that in Queen

* Essays,' vol. i. p. 137 (Green and Grose's ed.).

Herr von Gneist's account of the matter is he is speaking of the middle of the eighteenth century: Mit Unterordnung der Interessen formiren sich nunmehr die politischen Parteien, nach den beiden Grundanschauungen welche einerseits die nothwendigen Zwangsgewalten des Staats und der Kirche über der Gesellschaft (Tories), anderseits die Freiheit des Willens und der wirthschaftlichen Entwickelung in der Gesellschaft (Wighs) als ihr Parteiprogramm bekennen.' (Die nationale Rechtsidee von den Ständen und das preussische Dreiklassenwahlsystem,' p. 143.) A pungent, but partisan account of the difference between Whigs and Tories is given by Swift in No. 35 of the 'Examiner.'

Anne's

Anne's time the relative meaning of the terms Whig and Tory was not only different from, but opposite to, that which they bore at the accession of William the Fourth.' Mr. Lecky has had small difficulty in showing that this view is based upon the error of confounding the accidents of political life with the essence.†

'Who keeps a spirit wholly true

To that ideal which he bears?'

6

we may ask of parties as of the individuals composing them. But if we survey the history of England, as a whole, from the accession of George I. to the passing of the first Reform Bill, we cannot say that the two great political connexions which from time to time held power, were unfaithful, the one to the principle of Church and State, the other to the principle of civil and religious freedom. Nor, although bodies like the king's friends' at one period, and Mr. Canning's friends' at another, confuse the prospect, can we deny that, through all those hundred and fifteen years, the Tory party and the Whig party form homogeneous wholes; and both parties, we should remember, were essentially aristocratic. Mr. Goldwin Smith well puts it: Elective, in theory, the House of Commons no doubt was; but in fact only a small part of it was at that period elective, while the larger part, by far, consisted of actual nominees of the Crown, or of the proprietors of rotten boroughs, of members for constituencies so close that the election was a farce, or of men who owed their seats to the fiat of great landowners, or to some local influence not of a popular kind.' ‡

The Reform Act of 1832 introduced a new era in party government. It was the manifestation, in England, of the reaction against the political principles that had dominated Europe since the settlement made by the Congress of Vienna: a reaction which, two years before, had overturned in France the monarchy of Charles X. The authors of the Act professed to aim, and no doubt did aim, at making the House of Commons more truly representative of the nation. But their minds were dominated, perhaps unconsciously, by the inorganic, the atomistic, the materialistic conception of civil society, then so widely prevalent; and, as Coleridge expressed it, the gist of their measure was 'to raze out the sacred principle in politics of a representation of interests, and to introduce the mad and barbarising scheme of a representation of individuals.' § The

History of England in the Eighteenth Century,' vol. i. pp. 1-6.

North American Review,' vol. 154, p. 594.

§ Table Talk,' p. 144.

policy which it embodied was the direct outcome of the principles of the French Revolution, which had, more or less, infected the Whig party since the time of Fox, and against which Burke had hurled the thunderbolts of the fiery rhetoric wherein his profound political philosophy found expression.

The effect of the Reform Act upon political parties, which is our immediate point, was, in the first place, to introduce into the House of Commons two new sections: the Radicals, as they soon came to be called, who counted some fifty members; and those Irish representatives, of about the same numerical strength, who followed the leadership of O'Connell. It is noticeable that soon after the passing of the Act, the old historic parties changed their names, the Tories taking the designation of Conservative, and the Whigs of Liberal. It was, probably, an unconscious tribute to the fact that a change had begun in the parties themselves. Such unquestionably was the fact. The sixty odd years that have elapsed since the passing of the first Reform Act have witnessed a vast alteration in the actual working of our Parliamentary system. From the first the Radicals were a thorn in the side of Lord Grey's Government: 'Jealousies and distrust were apparent in every debate, and disagreement in every division,' Sir Erskine May tells us.* A further element of discord among the ministerial ranks, he goes on to observe, was found in the Irish clique. These men represented another country, and distinct interests, sympathies, and passions. They could not be reckoned upon as members of the Liberal party. Upon several measures affecting Ireland, they were hotly opposed to Government; on other questions they were in close alliance with Radicals. In the struggles of the English parties, they sometimes voted with the reformers; were often absent from divisions, or forthcoming only in answer to pressing solicitations: on some occasions, they even voted with the Tories. The attitude and tactics of this party were fraught with embarrassment to Earl Grey and succeeding ministers; and when parties became more evenly balanced, were a serious obstacle to Parliamentary government.' The Conservatives, under the pressure of the Reform Act, were, for some years, a tolerably compact body. But, gradually, one root of bitterness after another sprang up among them, producing 'diversities of opinion hardly less marked than those which characterized the ministerial ranks :' diversities

6

of opinion, the dissolvent influence of which was manifested

*The Constitutional History of England since the Accession of George III.,' vol. ii. P. 201.

† Ibid., p. 202.

Ibid., p. 208.

when