274 SOCIAL REGULATION 



teenth century. The legitimacy of party as a factor in public life 

 is now fully admitted in all countries which have possessed popular 

 government for a considerable length of time, and it is admitted to 

 some extent in all countries that have a popular element in their 

 governments. The system is, however, based upon a number of 

 conditions. 



On the one side there must be a recognition that differences of 

 political opinion are legitimate and may be advocated by argument 

 and all the proper arts of persuasion. 



On the other side the opposition must not urge revolutionary 

 opinions. It must not be what is sometimes called irreconcilable, 

 that is, it must not aim at the destruction of the existing foundations 

 of government and of society. The limits of legitimate difference 

 in political opinions vary, of course, from place to place and from 

 time to time; but it is necessary that the limit should be generally 

 recognized at any given moment, and this is one of the most import- 

 ant functions of a constitution. 



Then again the means employed by each party for obtaining 

 power must be proper, and for this reason many laws have been 

 enacted in the nineteenth century against the bribery of voters, 

 and provisions have been made to prevent intimidation by the 

 device, for example, of the secret ballot. 



Finally, there must be a universally recognized means of deter- 

 mining which opinion ought to prevail. This is another function of 

 a constitution and of constitutional law. 



The party system is by no means without grave faults, but without 

 it popular government could not have endured. The system has 

 reconciled to a great extent liberty of political opinion and action 

 with the stability of popular institutions. 



One of the chief problems of the twentieth century will be the 

 regulation of other combinations of men, whether based upon race 

 or upon voluntary associations for industrial and other purposes; 

 and that problem will involve politics, jurisprudence, and social 

 science. The solution will not be the same as that adopted in the 

 case of political parties, but some hints may, nevertheless, be ob- 

 tained therefrom, such as the plan of leaving the right to organize 

 free, but regulating the ends and means of operation. In one point 

 certainly the example set in the case of political organizations must 

 be followed. It is that of accepting the natural tendencies of a 

 progressive age instead of trying to run counter to them. The 

 method of approaching the problem and the principles applied to it 

 will, no doubt, be different in different countries and under varying 

 conditions; but just as the nineteenth century showed an inclina- 

 tion to lay too much stress on the individual, we may perhaps 

 expect in the twentieth century a reactionary tendency to treat 



