NOTES 131 



for under any other form of rule a minority always rules the 

 majority. 



The will of the people is therefore divided into a greater and 

 a less — which seems at first sight destructive of the theory of a 

 common will. But the fact that a Coalition Government was 

 formed in time of war, and that party distinctions were then 

 submerged, indicates that the common will may always have 

 a real existence, but that it only functions occasionally. It 

 becomes active when the State is directly threatened ; when it 

 is not so threatened, it lapses. The truth of this is obscured 

 for us because the security of the State is not often directly 

 threatened ; in other words, peace is normal, war is abnormal. 

 If the position were reversed — as it sometimes was in earlier 

 conditions of society — the common will would be more con- 

 tinuously operative. And this seems to be true of every form 

 of State. The will of the people is united for defence or 

 aggression ; it is divided on questions of internal organisation 

 or development. 



It follows necessarily that political parties are agreed on 

 fundamentals and divided on secondary issues. The truth of 

 this is again obscured by the smoke and thunder of party strife, 

 the exaggeration of party oratory, and the sheer love of a fight ; 

 but as a general proposition it is not in doubt. For if parties 

 are divided on fundamentals, civil war ensues and parliamentary 

 government is destroyed. The last division on fundamental 

 issues in English history was in the contest between Royalist 

 and Roundhead, which led to the execution of the King, the 

 temporary abolition of the House of Lords, and the purge of 

 the House of Commons. 



Our present parties derive their origin from that conflict ; 

 Conservative and Radical are the pale shadow of Royalist and 

 Roundhead. But it was not until sixty years after the Com- 

 monwealth that the two-party system divided the control of 

 the State, and even then there was no such thing as " the swing 

 of the pendulum.." From 1714 to 1770 the Whigs held office 

 without a break ; from 1770 to 1830 — ^with the exception of a 

 few months' Coalition in the disastrous year 1782, and a short- 

 lived Whig Ministry in 1806 — the Tories ruled the State. No 

 serious student of the times will suggest that the " will of the 

 people " had much to do with these alternations of power. The 

 fact that the first two Georges were more Hanoverian than 

 English favoured the long Whig domination ; the character of 

 George III and the circumstances of the times established their 

 Tory successors. 



In 1832 the electorate was enlarged by the Reform Bill, and 

 from that time the alternation of Conservative and Liberal is 

 steady and regular — so regular, indeed, is the change that at 



