THE DECLINE OF PARTY GOVERNMENT. 737 



Some astronomers say that the moon once had an atmosphere, but 

 that she has exhausted it, and that she shows us what our planet will 

 be when, in the course of ages, its atmosphere also shall have been ex- 

 hausted. The colonies, in this matter of party government, may fur- 

 nish an indication of the same kind to the mother-country. In Canada, 

 for example, while New World society was struggling to repel the 

 intrusive elements of the old regime forced upon it by the imperial 

 country, and to extort self-government, the parties, though not alto- 

 gether edifying in their behavior or salutary in their influence upon 

 popular character, were at least formed upon real lines. But the 

 struggle ended with the abolition of the state Church and the secu- 

 larization of the clergy reserves. Since that time there has been no 

 real dividing line between the parties ; they have ceased to be truly 

 directed to public objects of any kind ; their very names have become 

 unintelligible. Politics under such a party system must inevitably 

 sink at last into an " interested contest for place and emolument " 

 carried on by " impostors who delude the ignorant with professions 

 incompatible with human practice, and afterward incense them by 

 practices below the level of vulgar rectitude." It is needless to say 

 what effects an incessant war of intrigue, calumny, and corruption, 

 carried on by such party leaders, with the aid of the sort of journal- 

 ists who are willing to take their pay, must produce on the political 

 character of a community, however naturally good, and well adapted 

 for self-government. Nobody is to blame. The blame rests entirely 

 on the system. Lord Elgin found fault with Canadian parties for 

 being formed with reference to petty objects, not to great questions. 

 It is singular that so acute a man should not have asked himself where 

 the great questions were to be found. Were they to be manufactured 

 or imported ? 



Nothing is more curious than the ingenuity with which new rea- 

 sons are invented for old institutions when the original reasons have 

 ceased to exist. The advocates of the party system in countries des- 

 titute of party questions, at a loss for rational grounds of defense, 

 take a desperate dive into psychology, and affirm that all men are 

 by natural tendency either Conservatives or Liberals, so that the di- 

 vision of every community into two parties is not merely a practical 

 exigency of politics but a general law of humanity. In that case 

 Nature must have been peculiarly kind to certain politicians who are 

 furnished with a double set of tendencies enabling theni to appear in 

 both the parties at different periods of their career. It is hardly 

 necessary to prove that the varieties of natural temperament are num- 

 berless, and are still further diversified by the influences of position, 

 age, and fortune ; and that to divide any nation into two organized 

 parties according to their temperaments would be an undertaking far 

 transcending in absurdity all the fancies of Laputa, Yet such phi- 

 losophy probably helps to cast a halo over a contest of "impostors," 

 VOL. XI. 47 



