must be subjected to the only rightful law-giver PAGE 148 It is one function of political parties to be the organs of passions, impulses, emotions; and such parties play an important part in the modern State. It will be well, therefore, briefly to consider political parties as they exist in this age, and the party government in which they issue 148 The original home of party government is England, whence other countries have adopted it, with more or fewer changes. At the accession of the House of Hanover it was definitely established among us 149 Burke's apology for party government Bluntschli on The Character and Spirit of Political Parties . 153 154 . 158 The party system is unquestionably valuable as securing party interests, which are often private interests in . 160 It remains to speak of the function of the chief of the State in representative or self government, as existing at the present day . 161 A chief of some sort there must be, whether he hold the supreme magistracy for life or for a term of years. Limitations of his prerogative there must be, for the idea of self or representative government is incompatible with the idea of an autocratic ruler. A first function of constitutions, written or unwritten, is to prescribe those limitations Limited or constitutional monarchy is no more the creation of modern times than is representative or selfgovernment. For example, we find such monarchy at the very beginning of our history. The distinctively English idea of kingship, introduced by Cerdic and Cymric his son, is the corner-stone upon which the existing edifice of our political liberties rests PAGE 161 162 British monarchy has grown into its present form occulto velut arbor avo, ever manifesting that adaptation to environment which is a chief law of life. Perhaps it is among the chief achievements of England in practical politics to have realised the true idea of modern constitutional monarchy. 163 This type of kingship while it confers upon the Sovereign indefinite freedom for good, effectively minimises his power for evil. It leaves to the Royalty the pageantry and prestige of power, and keeps for the nation the substance of it € 163 The pageantry and prestige of a throne are of much utility in the mechanism of the State. Man can be governed only through his imagination 164 Perhaps the absence from the Third Republic of all that appeals to the imagination, in some degree explains the anarchical animalism now prevailing in France . 164 Imagination is a faculty absolutely necessary to human life. It is at the basis of civil society. Emotions are called forth by objects, not by our intellectual separation and combination of them. Mere abstractions and generalizations do not evoke feeling 164 Loyalty, which means devotion to persons, springs eternal in the human breast. And nowhere is it more eminently seen, more beautifully displayed, than in the Teutonic races PAGE 165 165 In Englishmen there is innate a veneration for the men and women in whom the institutions of the country seem-so to speak-embodied in visible form . 165 But that is not all. The moderating, controlling, restraining, guiding influence exercised by the British Sovereign is assuredly most real and most important, although, from the nature of things, it is usually most hidden The duties of limited monarchy are among the most difficult and delicate that can devolve upon any human being. They are also of singular complexity when the Monarch is, so to speak, the central principle of a vast and widely spread political mechanism, such as that united under the British Crown Of this unity the Crown is not merely the type and symbol, but also the efficient instrument 165 166 A cogent argument for the descent of the Crown in a princely family 166 But the British Crown is something more than the centre and instrument of national unity; it is the effective pledge of moderation and longanimity, of uprightness and honour in public life Two examples from other nations in illustration of this truth CHAPTER VI. THE CORRUPTION OF THE STATE. It is the constant peril of the State that its authority 167 167 should be misused for the exclusive or undue pro- If this happens, whatever be its form-whether prepon- PAGE . 169 169 169 When, in the place of that end, the advantage of the ruler, or ruling class, is solely or unduly pursued, it becomes a perversion (napénßao15). The Monarch is converted into a Tyrant, the Aristocracy into an Oligarchy, the Democracy into an Ochlocracy. But of these three varieties of the corruption of the State, the last is incomparably the worst. It is the final form of the degeneracy of all governments This degeneracy, or corruption, as existing in the present day, is the topic of the present chapter. It is the prevailing disease of the body politic in the most civilised nations . 170 First, an inquiry will be made into the genesis of this kind of Democracy; next, it will be judged in its principles and in its working; and lastly, the various remedies proposed for its evils will be considered Modern Democracy is the direct issue of the French Revolution. So much will be admitted on all hands 170 . 170 The French Revolution, whatever else it was, or was not-and it was much else—was the victory of a merely mechanical or arithmetical principle in the political organism, the principle of counting heads: the principle that the will of the greater number shall prevail, even if in error, over the will of the most intelligent of minorities. It is this characteristic of modern Democracy which differentiates it from all that the world has hitherto known by that name, and which led Mill to denounce it as "False Democracy:" a usurpation of the name of Democracy veiling exclusive government by class. But Mill is the voice of one crying in the wilderness. The chief—perhaps only-principle of the political party with which he was associated, now is the Jacobin sophism against which he so earnestly contended-that a country should be governed "by a mere majority of the people, exclusively represented," that is, by their hired mandatories; that the foundation of the public order is a sum in addition No one has done more than Mr. John Morley to indoctrinate that party with this sophism. For him the French Revolution is "a new gospel; Robespierre is "the great preacher of the Declaration of the Rights of Man ;" and the sophisms and sentimentalities of Rousseau are the Alpha and Omega of politics He proclaims it as a great truth" that a nation" con- PAGE 174 178 179 180 180 |