PARTY FEELING 321 



Constantinople into Green and Blue, into Ortho- 

 dox or Arian. These were Mediterranean fruits 

 of the emulative impulse that in present day 

 England gives life to games, and makes football 

 matches so immensely attractive. Political 

 parties generally assume that their differences 

 represent some questions of importance: there 

 is, indeed, a natural rivalry between those who 

 possess and those who wish to possess ; and a 

 philosopher may distinguish Conservatives and 

 Liberals as actuated, respectively, by devotion to 

 habit and by the spirit of change. But party 

 feeling needs no solid nourishment. In Latin 

 countries the politicians who are in and who are 

 out of office have rarely represented anything but 

 themselves : it would distract most Americans 

 to define the difference between Republican and 

 Democrat : if Ireland secures Home Rule, the 

 Unionist party will change its name but not lose 

 its adherents. 



But party feeling is not hastily to be con- 

 demned because its energizing impulses are profit- 

 less in themselves. It is of advantage to the 

 State that the ministry in office should work in the 

 light of jealous criticism. Periodical oscillations 

 in the drift of policy keep alive a healthy spirit 

 of change, afford hopeful prospects for those who 

 are discontented, and are an invaluable safeguard 

 against violent revolutions. It may, moreover, 

 be held that the emulative spirit, as the driving 

 force of a nation's development, has less harmful 

 possibilities than the spirit of self-interest which 

 would take its place were the voters enrolled, not 

 in one or other of two large political parties, but 

 amongst a number of groups, each of which 

 represented a separate class of the community. 

 It must, however, be admitted that for the procur- 

 ing of changes in social or political conditions as 



