the assumption that there
must always be some measure or some principle in regard to which the
citizens of the same country will differ so strongly as to subordinate
their private convictions on other matters to their profound convictions
in regard to the one great question. It is a theory of permanent civil
war carried on through the forms of parliamentary debate and popular
election, and, indeed, the two traditional parties are the political
descendants of the two sides which in the seventeenth century were
actually engaged in civil war. For the ordinary purposes of the domestic
life of the country the system has its advantages, but they are coupled
with grave drawbacks. The party system destroys the sincerity of our
political life, and introduces a dangerous dilettantism into the
administration of public business.

A deliberative assembly like the House of Commons can reach a decision
only by there being put from the chair a question to which the answer
must be either Yes or No. It is evidently necessary to the sincerity of
such decisions that the answer given by each member shall in every case
be the expression of his conviction regarding the right answer to the
question put. If every member in every division were to vote according
to his own judgment and conscience upon the question put, there would be
a perpetual circulation of members between the Ayes to the right and the
Noes to the left. The party system prevents this. It obliges each member
on every important occasion to vote with his leaders and to follow the
instruction of the whips. In this way the division of opinion produced
by some particular question or measure is, as far as possible, made
permanent and dominant, and the freedom of thought and of deliberation
is confined within narrow limits.

Thus there creeps into the system an element of insincerity which has
been enormously increased since the extension of the franchise and the
consequent organisation of parties in the country. Thirty or forty years
ago the caucus was established in all the constituencies, in each of
which was formed a party club, association, or committee, for the
purpose of securing at parliamentary elections the success of the party
candidate. The association, club, or committee consists, as regards its
active or working portion, of a very small percentage of the voters even
of its own party, but it is affiliated to the central organisation and
in practice it controls the choic