630 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the great questions are virtually decided, parliamentary speeches being 

 little more than reproductions of arguments already used outside the 

 House, and parliamentary divisions little more than registrations of 

 public opinion. It is not easy to say how far, with the spread of pub- 

 lic education, this process may go, or what value the parliamentary 

 debate and division list will in the end retain. If monarchy is pri- 

 meval, parliaments are the offspring of the middle ages, and for them 

 too the sand in the hour-glass of history runs. But this is a problem 

 which belongs to the future. 



At present party it is that governs, though under different sets of 

 forms. In England it governs under the forms of King, Lords, and 

 Commons ; in the United States under the forms of President, Senate, 

 and House of Representatives, together with the State Executives and 

 Legislatures. In England and the United States alike it is supreme. 

 It elects the members of all the Legislatures, since it controls the nom- 

 inations, without which no candidate can go with a chance of success 

 to the poll. It appoints the executive, which is a committee of its 

 leaders, and the composition of which always depends on the fortunes 

 of the party conflict ; it supplies the working organization of the Leg- 

 islature, a reorganization of which in England or elsewhere will be 

 attempted in vain without a solution of this preliminary question. 

 Why is it that the work of De Tocqueville, with all its philosophy and 

 its literary beauty, is practically so little instructive and so seldom 

 quoted in the United States ? Because he studied the forms, not the 

 forces, which are the parties. Why is it that the Senate of the United 

 States, designed specially to embody the federal principle, while the 

 House of Representatives embodied the federal and natioual principle, 

 has not corresponded in action to that design ? Because the same par- 

 ties control both Houses and the State government at the same time. 

 Congress, in truth, is now little more than a place for formally ratify- 

 ing and recording the decisions at which the party having the major- 

 ity has arrived in caucus, where the only real deliberation takes place. 

 As the minority in caucus is bound by party law to vote with the 

 majority in the legislative hall, it often happens that a small minority 

 of the whole Legislature passes a law or carries an election. Take 

 away party, and we see that the whole of the present system of par- 

 liamentary government would crumble. We have, then, at once to 

 ask what party is ; upon what basis of reason or public morality it 

 rests, and whether it can last. Burke says : 



Party is a body united for promoting by their joint endeavors the national 

 interest upon some particular principle on which they are all agreed. For my 

 part I find it impossible to conceive that any one believes in his own politics or 

 thinks them to be of any weight who refuses to adopt the means of having them 

 reduced into practice. It is the business of the speculative philosopher to mark 

 the proper ends of government. It is the business of the politician, who is the 

 philosopher in action, to find out proper means toward those ends, and to employ 



