654 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



the United States, while these requirements are fulfilled in 

 the respect that the political head is elective, and cannot 

 compromize the nation in its actions towards other nations, 

 they are not fulfilled in the respect that far from being an 

 automatic centre, having actions restrained by a ministry 

 responsive to public opinion, he exercises, during his term of 

 office, much independent control. Possibly in the future, the 

 benefits of these two systems may be united and their evils 

 avoided. The strong party antagonisms which accompany 

 our state of transition having died away, and the place of 

 supreme State-officer having become one of honour rather 

 than one of power, it may happen that appointment to this 

 place, made during the closing years of a great career to 

 mark the nation s approbation, will be made without any 

 social perturbation, because without any effect on policy; 

 and that, meanwhile, such changes in the executive agency 

 as are needful to harmonize its actions with public opinion, 

 will be, as at present among ourselves, changes of minis 

 tries. 



Eightly to conceive the natures and workings of the central 

 political institutions appropriate to the industrial type, we 

 must assume that along with the establishment of them there 

 has gone that change just named in passing the decline of 

 party antagonisms. Looked at broadly, political parties are 

 seen to arise directly or indirectly out of the conflict between 

 militancy and industrialism. Either they stand respectively for 

 the coercive government of the one and the free government 

 of the other, or for particular institutions and laws belonging 

 to the one or the other, or for religious opinions and organiza 

 tions congruous with the one or the other, or for principles 

 and practices that have been bequeathed by the one or the 

 other, and survived under alien conditions. Habitually if we 

 trace party feeling to its sources, we find on the one side 

 maintenance of, and on the other opposition to, some form of 

 inequity. Wrong is habitually alleged by this side against 

 that ; and there must be injustice either in the thing done 01 



