reflect on its condition in our own day, and, taken in conjunction with what Mr. Gladstone said to Queen Victoria three years afterwards, suggests some interesting speculations.

It is true that, in spite of the above, we find Sir James Graham less than a week afterwards writing the same correspondent, Lord Dunfermline, to the following effect:

On the overthrow of Lord Derby's Government an Anti-Reform Administration may be formed of some Whigs who are enemies to disfranchisement; of Palmerston, who always hated reform; possibly of some Peelites who may partake of these views; and probably of many Derbyites, who dread 'the deluge.' There will also be formed an effective Opposition, whose watchword will be Progress and Reform; and we shall arrive at new combinations and a legitimate division into two parties by the natural course of events, which ebb and flow like the tide between the extremes of oligarchy and of democracy.

But he seems to have thought that such a reconstruction of the party system could only be temporary, and that after that democracy would flood the Constitution.

Let us now look at the present situation of parties in the light thrown upon it by the reflections of these eminent men at a crisis not wholly unlike it. It must not be forgotten that the unsettled state of parties between 1846 and 1860 was not nearly so threatening as it is at present. After the General Election of 1852 the Conservative Opposition formed a united and homogeneous party at least three hundred strong, embodying, as Mr. Gladstone said, one of the great fundamental elements of English society.' Thus one of the two conditions on which, by the terms of our argument, Parliamentary government is dependent was fully restored, while the absence of the other was due rather to the personal jealousies of rival statesmen than to the presence in the ranks of organised groups, each a little party in itself, and bent on the furtherance of its own particular theories, regardless how they may affect the general principles which the whole body is supposed to represent.

There is, further, this wide difference between the divisions which seemed so ominous to the Peelite leaders and those which at the present day confront the Unionists. I say nothing at this moment of the internal dissensions of the party now in Opposition. But on the Ministerial side the cleavage is far deeper and far more difficult to be reconciled with the essential requirements of the party system than anything which existed sixty years ago. The rival sections of sixty years ago had not lost their hold on great principles. The Labour party and the Socialist party, the Temperance party and the Secular Education party, the Irish party and the Welsh party, are so devoted to their own special objects that the great constitutional question which is involved in the maintenance or the abandonment of party government, the great questions which belong to the domain of

political philosophy, are, if not unknown to them, at least despised by them. What chance is there of all these various parties falling into line and consenting to bear the harness and submit to the discipline of party government?

Some diseases, however, work their own cure, and we may, perhaps, find something to reassure us if we look back to another period of our history, when the situation of parties for a short time resembled more closely than the Coalition period what it is at present. After 1832 the balance of parties was completely overthrown, and Lord Grey's enormous majority contained almost as many unruly elements as Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's. The Whig Government introduced measures which seemed to the country, not then ripe for such a policy, to savour of sacrilege and confiscation. Both the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel predicted the ruin of the Constitution if the Whigs remained in power. These predictions have been ridiculed because they were not fulfilled. But why were they not fulfilled? Because they helped to rouse the people of England to a sense of the wrath to come. Then was seen what I cannot help thinking will be seen again: the silent conservatism of the English nature, tolerant of reform, but impatient of revolution, rose to the occasion and rolled back the wave which threatened it. The Conservatives were joined by many who had at first supported Lord Grey, and in the five test divisions which preceded Peel's resignation in 1835 the minority several times exceeded three hundred, and this in a House where the nominal strength of the Conservatives was only 260. Once the Whig majority was only seven; another time only ten. And the highest point it reached was only thirty-eight. The balance was restored and the party system re-established.

The disintegration of parties, which to Gladstone and Graham seemed to cut away the ground from under Parliamentary government, was not permanent. The old system settled down again under Lord Palmerston, and though the adoption of Home Rule by Mr. Gladstone shattered the Liberal party for the time, it soon recovered from the blow, and in 1892 that statesman was again in office at the head of a small majority. From that time to this the approaching termination of the party system has been frequently predicted. But down to the last General Election it maintained its ground, for the Liberal Opposition was still a substantial party-had not, that is, been practically effaced, as the Tories were in 1832 and the Unionists in 1906. But in this last-mentioned year, as we have already said, the system was shaken to its centre on both sides of the House. One party was prostrated; the other composed of so many discordant sections that it ceased to present even the outward semblance of unity. Will this third and last crisis in the fortunes of party end as the others have done, or will it really turn out to be the final chapter in the history of a political institution to which, with all its defects,

England owes so much, and with which many of her ablest sons have declared that Parliamentary government itself is inextricably bound up.

I scarcely think this. The issue of the last General Election was the result of a surprise. The Labour party and the Socialist party had been carefully working underground, and though many Unionists believed that their party would be defeated, neither Unionists nor Liberals anticipated such a complete bouleversement as actually occurred. The assailants scored a great victory. But the very extent of their victory has shown their strength, and the frankness with which their objects are avowed makes it impossible to pooh-pooh as a mere idle panic the danger which many men foresee from their prolonged tenure of power. The people know now what they did not know two years ago-with whom, that is, and with what, they have to contend. They had no idea that the Socialism and Radicalism, of which they saw and heard so much, would ever be seriously taken up by any possible Government and form part of its programme; still less, perhaps, had they any idea that Home Rule would again be recognised by his Majesty's Ministers. It matters nothing to the purpose of this article whether these avowed objects are laudable or otherwise. Those who believe in them have as much right to try to give effect to them as those who disagree with them have to try to prevent them. The question is, what the majority of the people of Great Britain think about them at the present moment, now that they understand them and the support which they command in high quarters.

The law of reaction referred to by Sir James Graham in the extract already given is just as certain as the ebb and flow of the tide, but the length of time required to set it in motion depends on the violence of the shock from which it is the recoil. Now it will hardly be denied that the alarm excited in the public mind by the policy and attitude of the present Government, extending as it does far beyond the limits of the Unionist or Conservative party, is scarcely, if at all, inferior to the alarm created by the earlier measures of Lord Grey. The reaction after 1832 was speedy and permanent. Men who had supported the Reform Bill and believed in its principles were not prepared for the policy to which it gave birth. The dissentients both in and out of Parliament gradually drew together, till a powerful Opposition was formed, capable of coping with the Government. We should be quite justified in calculating on a similar result whenever this Parliament is dissolved, provided only that public opinion has fair play. But if false issues or secondary issues are carefully trailed before the public eye, hiding from view the principles of paramount importance which are really at stake, the conservative instincts on which Unionists should rely will be distracted, and we cannot be surprised if they fail to show their full strength.

I shall be told, no doubt, that in comparing the reconstruction of the

party system by Sir Robert Peel at one time and by Mr. Disraeli and Lord Derby at another with the task that now awaits Mr. Balfour I am forgetting the difference between the present constituencies and those to which the elder statesmen addressed themselves. I think, however, that too much is made of this difference. We are told that it is no use preaching to the working man about constitutional questions. What he wants is some immediate benefit for himself. I think some injustice is done to the working man in supposing that he looks no higher than his own immediate material interests. These must necessarily occupy a large space in the mind of every man who has to earn his livelihood by daily toil, and can only just keep himself above actual want. But the working man has ideas. He is not indifferent to the greatness of his country or the glory of her Empire. He is not indifferent to the religious education of his children; and a very large section of his class-I will not invite controversy by saying how large a one-are sincerely attached to the Church of England. Speaking for the peasantry, we may be quite sure that the man who is eager to become the owner of a small farm can have no objection to the principle of private property. Since the enfranchisement of the working classes was commenced in 1867, and completed in 1885, there have been eight General Elections. In four of them large Conservative majorities were returned; and in one of the others, when the Liberals had a small majority on the whole electorate the English majority was Unionist. It would be difficult to prove, I think, that in any one of these cases the working man was actuated solely by considerations of material advantage. Whether we approve or disapprove of Imperialism and Jingoism, of religious or secular education, of Home Rule in Ireland or disestablishment of the Church in England, it is clear that the voter who is influenced by any one of these questions is not guided solely by the pressure of his physical wants.

Mr. Goldwin Smith grounded his belief in the coming subsidence of the party system on the absence of fundamental questions,' without which, he said, 'party becomes faction.' I ground my own belief in its speedy reconstruction on the presence of fundamental questions, questions reaching down to first principles and lying at the root of all our national institutions, political, social and religious. The approach of such questions was predicted by Lord Beaconsfield in 1873, questions, he said, of far greater importance than fiscal ones, and now they are knocking at the door. The system then is not likely to languish, as Mr. Goldwin Smith thought, for lack of food to keep it alive. The Liberals themselves have furnished us with an abundant supply of such provender. If there were none such before the country eight years ago, there are plenty now, questions on which it would be ridiculous to assert that public opinion is truthfully reflected by the present division of parties in the House of Commons. If such questions as these become the watchwords of the Unionist party,

it may be hoped that all who still have faith in the principles on which English society is constructed will approach each other with a view to common action. Then that consummation will be reached which so many great statesmen have desired at critical periods of our history, when we shall once more see two well-balanced parties in Parliament, capable between them of conducting the business of the country to the satisfaction of all moderate men. It is remarkable that in 1856 both Sidney Herbert and Mr. Gladstone thought, as Mr. Goldwin Smith thought forty years later, that all the great questions' had been settled, and that the old party system must collapse in consequence. But uno avulso non deficit alter. As the conditions of society and Government pass from one phase into another, so will other great questions' as important as the old ones, continue to arise out of them, and to this process one can assign no limit.

What would follow if the party system really collapsed has often been pointed out. 'You can have no Parliamentary government if you have no party government.' Such has been the burden of the song in the mouths of eminent British statesmen during the last half century. Such has been the warning addressed to the people of this country as often as the present system seemed threatened. The end of it, according to this view of the case, would be some form of personal government, to which, indeed, it is quite possible that the country would soon become reconciled. But it would be a hazardous experiment, and as the two-party system seems apparently to be the only thing which stands between ourselves and the trial of it, public men should think twice before they do anything calculated to prevent its restoration.

To sum up, both Sir George Cornewall Lewis and Lord Beaconsfield,' than whom no two better judges of such a question could easily be found, have assured us that without the party system Parliamentary government is impossible. Many writers and speakers at the present day entitled to our respect assure us that the party system is doomed. The direct conclusion is one from which those who are foremost in predicting its extinction would be the first to shrink. No doubt as long as Parliament existed any method of government might be called Parliamentary. What kind of government it would be in the absence of two well-defined parties is what I endeavoured to show in the article of 1899. On the merits of personal government different opinions may be held. But party government, the two-party method, is all that stands between us and the transfer to individuals of a much larger share of power than they possess now, a transfer which, if passively acquiesced in, would probably be the precursor of some organic change in the Constitution.' I am, however, relieved from the necessity of going over the ground again because I believe that, so far from being on the verge of extinction, the two-party system is

'Speech on Maynooth Bill, April 15, 1845.