did the same on the ground of some other point. And after "the voice of the country had spoken," people did not know exactly what it had said, and very often were entitled to wrangle over the meaning of the vote; for, however paramount a particular question may have been in the public mind, considerations foreign to it constantly entered into the "popular verdict." As it was difficult to establish unanimity on the basis of the various problems which the party took up, the electors were made to rally round the firm of the party, round its sign and its ancient renown. To gain their adhesion more easily, an appeal was addressed rather to their feelings, not to say to their senses. The maxim of the Primrose League Do not argue, but take them in socially"

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became the rule "Do not argue,

in a somewhat more comprehensive form, but take them in sentimentally." Thus, to ensure the working of a régime supposed to be that of reason, the minimum of action was brought to bear on the intelligence. More or less consciously, but systematically, the parties discarded the analysis of the general will, on which the new régime rested, and tried to obtain the political synthesis through tradition and feelings, just as under the régime which democracy had replaced, but with this difference, that the synthesis of the old political society acted spontaneously. By reviving this method deliberately after the fall of the old régime, the system of stereotyped parties simply carried on the work of the counter-revolution, which, in the form of the Oxford Movement, of the Young England Movement, etc., tried to stem the current which emancipated the individual. The champions of the counter-revolution preached return to tradition, to discipline, appealed to the imagination, to popular emotion, and not to the reason of man. The party system put these precepts in practice and, unwittingly, undertook as it were to carry out the designs of the sworn enemies of democratic government, that government which it was its mission to perpetuate.

While applying the old method to democratic government, the party system introduced into it two modern practices popular election and free association. But the employment of these practices, far from mitigating the defects of the method, only aggravated them. In the first place, it disguised

its reactionary tendencies from the very persons who carried out the method. The champions of the counter-revolution, who inveighed against "the reason of man," fought without a mask; and they had only to enter the lists for people to know what to make of them, whereas the party system, clothed with the forms of popular election and association, appeared in all the glamour of democratic principles. In the second place, the extension of the election and association basis to extra-legal political relations imposed fresh efforts on the citizens, which did but increase the very difficulties which party organization was to obviate. Over and above the numerous elections prescribed by the law, which were quite enough to bewilder the citizen, there were elections for choosing the representatives of the party. Besides the acts of the constitutional representatives of the people, the electors had also to follow and weigh those of the several series of representatives of the parties. The citizens were not equal to this task, and the over-strained spring of elective government became further relaxed, proving once more, and still more decisively, that the efficacy of the elective principle is limited.

The practice of free association has in no way been able to remedy this defect, because the association principle also has its limits, which cannot be exceeded with impunity. The association which was made the basis of the party system had no fixed limits; it represented a sort of integral association, like that by means of which certain social reformers have endeavoured, and still endeavour, to organize economic life, with a view to abolishing pauperism. Whether the universal association which the individual enters with his whole economic personality, to attain all the objects of his material existence, is possible or not - I have not to discuss the point here; but in political life, founded on liberty, an analogous association, into which the citizen brings his whole political personality, to achieve his aims in the State, can never ensure its members this result. An association for political action, which is a combination of efforts aiming at a moral object, always implies the voluntary and conscious co-operation of its members. By joining the association they subordinate their freedom of initiative to the unity of management which constitutes the strength of the union, but they cannot part with the spon

taneity of their action, and of their energy, which alone makes the effort fruitful and gives the result obtained its value, if not its efficacy. However insignificant may be the personal share of a member in the work of the association, however nearly it approaches to a simple adhesion, this adhesion must be a continuous adhesion, which is unceasingly renewed in his mind, which is always present to it like the faith of the believer, and not a capital sunk in the association. It is therefore necessary that, while accepting the direction imparted to the whole, the member of the association should always be in a position to keep its object in view, and to discern the limits of the obligations which it lays upon him. Now, the intellectual vision and the power of attention of the average man are very limited, it is hardly possible for him to apply them to a large area or to a highly diversified prospect; he can only follow action confined to a restricted sphere, like that of the parish, or extending beyond it, but with a single object clearly visible to all and entailing only a temporary duty. Once these limits are exceeded, his sight becomes dazed, his attention is divided and wearied, and if he continues to follow the course prescribed, he does it in a passive manner. The members of a political association pursuing a variety of objects are, therefore, units simply placed side by side; and this form of association leads back to that social atomism for which the association principle was to be the grand remedy. Their spontaneous energy and their individual impulse being, as it were, smothered under the multiplicity of the aims proposed, they are obliged to trust to a few persons, to the first comers who take them in tow, that is to say, to submit to a moral monopoly which it was the very object of free co-operation to abolish. Reduced to a passive co-operation, they derive their strength not from the spirit of association, which elevates men's minds by making them one, but from esprit de corps, that base form of fellowship which unites by excluding, whose binding force is not so much mutual affection as contempt for, and hatred of, outsiders, or at least the pharisaic satisfaction. of not resembling them, which develops not so much a collective conscience as a collective pride or self-love, acting as sole inspirer of conduct, and taking precedence of all other considerations, including even those of truth and justice. Through

out the whole of our enquiry the party system has but supplied us, in a concrete form, with a continuous demonstration of all these effects of universal association applied to political action.

IV

The democratization of the party system was thus nothing. but a change of form and could not cure the original defect, either of its principle, or of the methods by which it was carried out. Thenceforth the system could only produce effects which were the negation of democracy. Incapable of realizing its essence, the system reduced political relations to an external conformity, which warped their moral spring and ended by enslaving the mind of the citizens and opening the door to corruption. In calling each individual to the dignity of citizen, democracy had laid upon him the duty, if he wished to enjoy his rights, of exercising his judgment and keeping his conscience on the alert. The system of stereotyped parties diverted him from the fulfilment of this duty. It offered him a criterion of political good and evil, the purely formal character of which made its application automatic and dispensed with the necessity of personal effort. The indolence natural to man, indolence of mind and indolence of conscience, makes him only too ready to abstain from displaying personal energy, whenever he finds plausible pretexts for so doing. In proportion as these pretexts are taken from him, or, on the contrary, are liberally supplied to him, by education, by the habits of his particular environment, or by special circumstances, the conduct of man, whether in private or in public life, will incline towards the independence or towards the subjection of his personality, will be guided by or screened from individual responsibility; in a word, will enhance human dignity or obscure it. The convention of party, embodied in stereotyped organizations, put before the citizen not only pretexts, but a sort of categorical imperative; "regularity" made personal remissness a virtue, and adhesion to the party a fetish-like worship, which reduced the duties of the citizen to ritual performances.

Stricken by political formalism in the independence of their thought, in the energy of their will, and in the autonomy of the

individual conscience, the citizens, too weak to counteract the failings inherent in democratic government and to bring out its innate strength, allowed the former to increase and the latter to diminish.

1

The first postulate of democratic government is the active participation of the great mass of the citizens. Now this great mass is naturally passive. The maxim of Montesquieu, who attributed virtue to democracy as a "principle" or a "spring," has no foundation in reality. In all democracies, small or great, virtue is only an ideal, the notion of which is more or less distinctly kept in view but which does not predominate anywhere in practice; and there is little sign that its reign is near at hand or even probable. Established, apparently, on a mechanical association of ideas, republic, antiquity, Plutarch, virtue, Montesquieu's maxim is not more true in the corrected definition which he gave of it when bringing it down from the heights of "moral virtue and Christian virtue" to "political virtue," or, as we should say in the language of to-day, public spirit. "Political virtue" is supposed to consist, according to Montesquieu's revised definition, in the "love of country, that is to say, the love of equality." Even if it attains a high degree of intensity, "love of country" cannot of itself "set going republican government." The vilest citizen can indulge in the luxury of professing love of country. Dr. Johnson had no need to live as late as the second half of the nineteenth century, when "patriotism" had become, according to Herr Nordau's expression, one of the "conventional lies of civilization," to define it as "the last refuge of a scoundrel." "The love of equality" is not sufficient either to furnish a substance to public spirit on which a democracy can live. A democracy cannot be saved, as in certain religions, by faith alone; works are what is all essential to it. Public spirit ought to be strenuous, nay, even militant; the citizen ought to be ever in the breach, his gaze fixed on the public weal, and ready to give it, with disinterestedness, his time and his energies. Now this public spirit is wanting to all the de

1 Montesquieu almost admits this when he indirectly defines virtue: "The love of country, the desire for true glory, self-renunciation, the sacrifice of one's dearest interests, and all those heroic virtues which we find in the ancients and of which we have only heard by report." (Esprit des Lois, Part. III, chap. V.)