ble
leaders and issues were wanting, but as soon as a strong man came
forward to take the reins the ranks closed up and the work of
mutual competition again went on. On the other hand, the curse and
the cause of failure of representative government on the Continent
of Europe is the formation within the legislature of unstable and
dissolving groups. In France the Extreme Eight, the Eight, the
Eight Centre, the Left Centre, the Left, and the Extreme Left are
names of differing factions which unite only for temporary purposes
and to accomplish a victory over some other unit, but which are
fatal to stable and firm government. The same is true of Italy,
Spain, and Austria, and if not of Germany it is because military
despotism holds all alike in subjection.

Mr. Bodley has come to the same conclusion in his work on "France." He
writes:--

There is no restraining power in the French parliamentary system to
arrest a member on his easy descent, and he knows that if he
escapes penal condemnation he will enjoy relative impunity. Many
deputies are men of high integrity; but virtue in a large assembly
is of small force without organization, and, moreover, a group of
legislators leagued together as a vigilance committee would have
neither consistency nor durability, which the discipline of party
can alone effect. Corruption of this kind, which has undermined the
republic, could not co-exist with party government. A party whose
ministers or supporters had incurred as much suspicion as fell on
the politicians acquitted in the Panama affair would under it be
swept out of existence for a period. When the first denunciations
appeared, the leaders of the party, to avert that fate, would have
said to their implicated colleagues--"In spite of your abilities
and of the manifest exaggeration of these charges we must part
company, for though you may have been culpable only of
indiscretion, we cannot afford to be identified with doubtful
transactions;" and the Opposition, eager not to lose its vantage,
would scan with equal keenness the acts of its own members. With
party government the electorate would not have appeared to condone
those scandals. But as it was, when a deputy involved in them went
down before his constituents, whose local interest he had well
served, wit