in moulding its general policy, imposes on them
limitations and restrictions from which a mere private member is in a
great degree exempt. When a party comes into power its position is again
slightly altered. Its leaders are certainly not detached from the party
policy they had advocated in opposition. One of the main objects of
party is to incorporate certain political opinions and the interests of
certain sections of the community in an organised body which will be a
steady and permanent force in politics. It is by this means that
political opinions are most likely to triumph; that class interests are
most effectually protected. But a Government cannot govern merely in the
interests of a party. It is a trustee for the whole nation, and one of
its first duties is to ascertain and respect as far as possible the
wishes as well as the interests of all sections.

Concrete examples may perhaps show more clearly than abstract statements
the kind of difficulties that I am describing. Take, for example, the
large class of proposals for limiting the sale of strong drink by such
methods as local veto or Sunday closing of public-houses. One class of
politicians take up the position of uncompromising opponents of the
drink trade. They argue that strong drink is beyond all question in
England the chief source of the misery, the vice, the degradation of the
poor; that it not only directly ruins tens of thousands, body and soul,
but also brings a mass of wretchedness that it is difficult to overrate
on their innocent families; that the drunkard's craving for drink often
reproduces itself as an hereditary disease in his children; and that a
legislator can have no higher object and no plainer duty than by all
available means to put down the chief obstacle to the moral and material
well-being of the people. The principle of compulsion, as they truly
say, is more and more pervading all departments of industry. It is idle
to contend that the State which, while prohibiting other forms of Sunday
trading, gives a special privilege to the most pernicious of all, has
not the right to limit or to withdraw it, and the legislature which
levies vast sums upon the whole community for the maintenance of the
police as well as for poor-houses, prisons and criminal administration,
ought surely, in the interests of the whole community, to do all that is
in its power to suppress the main cause of pauperism, disorder and
crime.

Another class of politici