THE DECLINE OF PARTY GOVERNMENT. 741 



arrangement of the leaders and wire-pullers, irrespective of all per- 

 sonal connections, would be practically out of the question. Two 

 alternatives will present themselves to the people : either a new mode 

 of working constitutional government and maintaining the proper 

 check on the executive must be found, or the President must be allowed 

 to become something very like an elective dictator for a term of years. 



The practice of setting up the offices of the executive as the prize 

 of victory in a legislative contest ^carried on by the agency of party 

 appears to be injurious alike to legislation and to executive govern- 

 ment. It is injurious to legislation, because public men are constantly 

 tempted to deal with legislative questions in the interest of their own 

 ambition, for the purpose of paving their way to office, or strengthen- 

 ing their position there, not with a view to the proper objects of legis- 

 lation; whence a number of unnecessary, premature, and dishonest 

 measures. All the members of the Conservative party, before 18G7, 

 had recorded their opinions against a large extension of the franchise 

 as tending to place political power in ignorant and irresponsible hands. 

 They, then, to keep their party in office, and at the bidding of lead- 

 ers who they knew had no other motive, themselves extended the 

 franchise to the most ignorant and irresponsible part of the popula- 

 tion, the populace of the towns. The practice is injurioiis to executive 

 government, because it excludes or ejects from office the ablest and 

 most trusted administrators on account of opinions respecting legis- 

 lative questions which in no way affect administration. It wrongly 

 unites, in short, two political functions which are perfectly distinct 

 and which mutually suffer by being bound up with each other. 



It is needless to dilate upon the relations of party, its machinery, 

 its strategy, the press which serves it and expresses its passions, to 

 public morality and the general interests of the state ; the facts are 

 always before our eyes. But experience of a colony or of some new 

 covmtry is needed to make one thoroughly sensible of the effects of 

 this warfare upon the political character of the people, and of the ex- 

 tent to which it threatens to sap the very foundations of patriotism 

 and of respect for lawful authority in their minds. 



It is supposed that the hostile vigilance of party is the gi-eat safe- 

 guard against political corruption, and one which, if removed, it would 

 be impossible to replace. But there are some countries at least in 

 which the indiscriminate slander in which party constantly deals 

 forms really a cloak of darkness for all corruption rather than a lantern 

 for the detection of any ; while its effect on the character of public 

 men is to produce general lowness of tone and brazen indifference to 

 accusations of every kind. The experiment has not yet been tried of 

 legislating definitely against the corrupt use of legislative or executive 

 power, which is a perfectly tangible crime (at least it is difficult to see 

 why the sale of a vote in a legislative assembly, or of a government 

 contract, is not as tangible a crime as the fraudulent breach of an or- 



