of government is surprise—the power which a bold and brilliant leader possesses of committing his party by his own will to a new policy which had never been maturely considered or accepted. It is notorious that the most momentous new departure made by the Liberal party in our day—the adoption of the policy of Home Rule—was due to a single man, who acted without consultation with his colleagues.
At the same time, a great change has taken place in the relations of Government to the House of Commons. In order to guard against the dangers to be feared from an unrestrained House, opposite methods have been employed in the United States and in England. In the former, the ministers form no part of the representative Chamber, and the vote of that Chamber is incompetent to overthrow them. In England, on the other hand, the Ministry is the creature of the House of Commons; but the organised force of a united Cabinet is the most powerful restraint upon its proceedings. Most of the old power of the sovereign, as it has been truly said, has now passed to the Cabinet, and a solid body of the leaders of the majority, whose guidance is indispensable to the ascendency of their party, is able to exercise a strong controlling influence on all parliamentary proceedings. But the situation is much modified when Parliaments break up into small groups. All over the world this has been one of the most marked and significant tendencies of democratic Parliaments, and it will probably eventually lead to a profound change in the system of parliamentary government. In France, in Germany, and in Italy, as well as in many minor States, this disintegration may be shown to its full extent; in Great Britain it has made considerable progress. Not many years ago Belgium was said to be the only European country where the Legislature was still divided into only two distinct parties.6 One of the first results of her lowered suffrage has been the introduction into her Parliament of a new and powerful Socialist group.
The results of this disintegration are very manifest. Government in its relation to the House of Commons loses its old commanding and controlling authority. The Cabinet had already lost much of its initiating power by the growth of the caucus system, which dictates the policy of the party. In a Parliament divided into several groups its strength is still further diminished. A coalition may at any time overthrow it. It depends upon the concurrence of many distinct groups, governed by different motives, aiming at different objects, representing different shades of political feeling. It is obliged to conciliate by separate bribes these different sections, or to discover some cry that may rally them, some active and aggressive policy that may secure their support, and to which they will subordinate their special objects.
This evil is greatly accentuated by the modern discovery that the disintegration of parties is exceedingly conducive to the triumph of minor sectional objects. A group of men representing opinions and aiming at objects which are only those of a small minority of the nation, may obtain a decisive influence if it keeps apart from the great party organisations, subordinates all other considerations to its own objects, and at times when parties are evenly balanced, and when a few votes can save or destroy a Government, makes the attainment of those objects the price of its adhesion. Where there are only two strongly organised parties these minor questions fall into their natural place; but in a Parliament broken into many fractions, each fraction can exercise a power utterly disproportionate to its numbers and to its real hold upon the country. The action of the independent Irish Home Rule party in the parliamentary system has been the most remarkable instance of this truth, and other groups are evidently constituting themselves in the same way, and are likely to pursue their objects by the same parliamentary methods.
The consequences of all this are very far-reaching. If my forecast is not erroneous, it must end in the destruction of that ascendency of the House of Commons which was built up in the days of middle-class supremacy and of strong party organisation. It produces also a weakness and an instability in the executive power which is often very injurious to the interests of the nation. On the whole, however, this weakness seems likely to be greater under Liberal than under Conservative Governments, as the Conservative party is far more homogeneous than its rival. The great revolt of the nation against Radical policy in 1895 has created one of the most powerful ministries of the century, resting upon an enormous and substantially homogeneous majority in both Houses. But, with the fluctuations to which parliamentary government is now so liable, no one can suppose that such a majority can be permanent. All the signs of the times point to the probability in England, as elsewhere, of many ministries resting on precarious majorities formed out of independent or heterogeneous groups. There are few conditions less favourable to the healthy working of parliamentary institutions, or in which the danger of an uncontrolled House of Commons is more evident.
One consequence of this disintegration of Parliament is a greatly increased probability that policies which the nation does not really wish for may be carried into effect. The process which the Americans call ‘log-rolling’ becomes very easy. One minority will agree to support the objects of another minority on condition of receiving in return a similar assistance, and a number of small minorities aiming at different objects, no one of which is really desired by the majority of the nation, may attain their several ends by forming themselves into a political syndicate and mutually co-operating. The kind of politics which was notoriously adopted on the question of Home Rule illustrates both the nature and the danger of this system. The Home Rule Bill had been decisively condemned by the constituencies, and the Government which proposed it saw clearly that on that issue alone it was not likely to obtain a favourable verdict. It was argued, however, that if a Home Rule Government could win the support of the electors who desired local option, and the disestablishment of the Welsh and Scotch Churches, and the abolition of the hereditary element in the House of Lords, and legislation shortening the hours of labour, and other measures of a democratic character, these different parties would constitute a majority that would enable the ministers to carry Home Rule in spite of the wishes of the nation.
Probably still more dangerous is the necessity, which the existing state of parliamentary representation establishes, of seeking for a popular cry, which generally means some organic and destructive change in the Constitution. An appetite for organic change is one of the worst diseases that can affect a nation. All real progress, all sound national development, must grow out of a stable, persistent national character, deeply influenced by custom and precedent and old traditional reverence, habitually aiming at the removal of practical evils and the attainment of practical advantages, rather than speculative change. Institutions, like trees, can never attain their maturity or produce their proper fruits if their roots are perpetually tampered with. In no single point is the American Constitution more incontestably superior to our own than in the provisions by which it has so effectually barred the path of organic change that the appetite for such change has almost passed away. No one who observes English politics with care can fail to see how frequently, when a statesman is out of office and his party divided, his first step is to mark out some ancient institution for attack in order to rally his followers. Personal vanity here concurs powerfully with party interests, for men who are utterly destitute of real constructive ability are capable of attacking an existing institution; and there is no other form of politics in which a noisy reputation can be so easily acquired. Instead of wisely using the machinery of government for the benefit of the whole nation, English politicians have of late years been perpetually tampering with it, and a spirit of feverish unrest has passed into English politics which, if it is not checked, bodes ill for the permanence of parliamentary government.
Both parties have in this respect much to answer for. A weak Conservative Government is often tempted to outbid its rival and win the support of some discontented fragment of the Opposition; and there is no Radicalism so dangerous as this, for it finds no external body to restrain it, and the Opposition is bound by its position to aggravate it. Few pages in our modern political history are more discreditable than the story of the ‘Conservative’ Reform Bill of 1867. A weak Liberal Government, on the other hand, depends for its support on the concurrence of many semi-detached groups, among which extreme politicians often exercise a disproportionate power. The Home Rule schism, by depriving the party of the greater part of its restraining and moderating element, has much increased the danger.
There are few things, also, more disheartening in English politics than what may be called the unintelligent conservatism of English Radicalism. It moves persistently in a few old, well-worn grooves. The withdrawal of the control of affairs from the hands of the minority who,