THE DECLINE OF PARTY GOVERNMENT. 735 



Peel, should fail, his attempt, like that of Peel, will have a signifi- 

 cance which no momentary failure can annul. It announces the de- 

 cline of the party system, and the advent, not immediate, perhaps, but 

 still certain, of national government. 



It is curious with what implicit faith Ave have all reposed upon 

 party, as the normal, permanent, and only possible mode of carrying 

 on a free constitution, disregarding not only the objections which 

 reason obviously suggests to the system and the general evidences of 

 its bad effects on politics and political character, but the facts which 

 showed plainly enough that its foundations were giving way, and that, 

 if this was tlie only basis of government, government was likely to be 

 soon left without a basis. 



Burke, in his " Thoucjhts on the Cause of the Present Discontent," 

 has given at once his definition and his defense of party : 



" Party is a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavors the 

 national interest upon some particular principle in 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 philos- 

 opher to mark the proper ends of government. It is the business of the poli- 

 tician, who is the philosopher in action, to find out proper means toward those 

 ends, and to employ these with effect. . Therefore every honorable connection 

 will avow it as their first purpose to pursue every just method to put the men 

 wlio hold their opinions into such a condition as may enable them to carry their 

 common plans into execution with all the power and authority of the state. As 

 this power is attached to certain situations, it is their duty to contend for these 

 situations. Without a proscription of others they are bound to give to their 

 own party the preference in all things ; and by no means, for private considera- 

 tions, to accept any offer of power in which the whole body is not included ; 

 nor to suffer themselves to be led or to be controlled or to be overbalanced, in 

 office or in council, by those who contradict the very fundamental principles on 

 which their party is formed, and even those upon which every fair connection 

 must stand. Such a generous contention for power, on such manly and honor- 

 able maxims, will easily be distinguished from the mean and interested struggle 

 for place and emolument. The very style of such persons will serve to discrimi- 

 nate them from those numberless impostors who have deluded the ignorant with 

 professions incompatible with human practice, and have afterward incensed 

 them by practices below the level of vulgar rectitude." 



To form a rational and moral basis for party, to prevent party 

 from sinking into faction, the party leader from becoming an "im- 

 postor," and the " generous contention for power " from degenerating 

 into a " mean and interested struggle for place and emolument," there 

 must be, as Burke says, a particular principle on which the members 

 of the connection are agreed in desiring that government should be 

 carried on. Failing such a principle, party, and the golden haze with 

 which Burke, according to his manner, has surrounded it, vanish, and 

 leave a faction or a void. 



