democracy of England down the incline which leads to the surrender of the conscience and the mind of the citizen; for, once more, "there is no magic in the English nature," no more than in any other.

It is the general characteristic of conformism to lead to the enslavement of the mind, and political formalism has not been alone in producing this result. Social convention and religious convention have also always tended in this direction, and, in degrees which differ according to the special environments, are still influencing societies. But it is political formalism that is the protagonist in public life at the present day. The democratic movement has, in a way, left it in possession of the field, by driving social and religious conformism from public life into the seclusion of private life; and it has rejuvenated, or modernized political formalism, by providing it with a new stock of conventions, in the front rank of which is party convention. Installed in the very heart of the democratic system, formalism by its action completely justifies the saying that there is nothing new under the sun. It is the never-ending war on the liberty of the human mind and on the dignity of the human being that it wages. It is only a new aspect which it presents of the old tyranny that fastens on humanity and that does but vary its forms, but reappear in different shapes, tyranny of priests, tyranny of rulers, tyranny of nobles, tyranny of caste, of nationality, of race, etc. In vain is it supposed at certain moments to have been overthrown, the heads of the hydra are ever ready to spring up again. And there is no possibility, it would appear, of cutting off all of them at once: the general idea of liberty has infinite difficulty in gaining acceptance; it is of no avail to bring home to the universal conscience that there is but one justice, one equity, one humanity; as soon as a new application of the principle presents itself, the lesson is forgotten, and the demonstration has to be begun over again. It may be that this will be so for all time, and that, on pain of moral suicide, the time-honoured struggle for the defence of the liberty of the mind and the dignity of man will have to be unceasingly renewed.

This struggle, which is becoming more easy, from a certain point of view, owing to the spread of enlightenment, is, on

the other hand, more difficult to carry on than formerly: the enemy of liberty has donned its armour, and its champions often find it hard to recognize him and to recognize one another, whereas in the old days, when he proclaimed as his sole motto credo quia absurdum, no confusion was possible, and all those who took their stand on reason and liberty ranged themselves against him to a man. Besides, the economy of the forces of the combatants has changed, as in real war, since the introduction of large masses of men on the battlefield. Formerly, when the public mind was embodied in a caste or a privileged class, one could set up against its corruption the virgin social strata, which constituted an untilled moral soil capable of yielding a more generous crop. The "people," denied access to social and political influence, were, to some extent, looked on as the Germans of Tacitus, rude, but full of native vigour, in contrast to the refined and effeminate Romans. This popular reserve is no longer intact; it is contaminated as well, owing to the democratic régime, which has taken it into the political machinery, and to the progress of that surface civilization which gives a wide currency to all conventions, from those of the toilette down to those of the moral sphere. True, the masses are not less accessible to reason than the so-called upper classes; but, pending their submission to it, they increase the active force of ignorance and of prejudice which liberty has to combat, and provide those who control that force with positions of all the greater strength that the popular adhesion appears to be conscious and almost deliberate.

Political formalism, which relies more than any other, in the modern State, on liberty and on the power of the masses, is, consequently, the most difficult to combat, and the most pregnant with dangers for democracy. Party formalism brings these difficulties and these dangers to their highest pitch because to the moral constraint wielded by party convention, under the mask of liberty, it adds the strength of organization. Organization gives substance to convention, brings out its latent power, intensifies it, and makes it produce the maximum of its effect. It introduces discipline, which thrusts back conscience and private judgment, stifles the spirit of criticism, independence of thought, and the citizen's spontaneity of action. Its fixed cadres confine opinion as within

a prison. The play of its machinery, which is necessarily uniform and rigid, reduces opinion to a dead level. It starts opinion in a factitious way, and perverts its movements or, what comes to the same thing, represents them in a false light. Blended with the party, the permanent organization from a means becomes an end. The integrity of its cadres, the apparent unity of the party, becomes the supreme preoccupation to which everything is, in the long run, subordinated, principles, personal convictions, dictates of public morality, and even those of private morality. The up-keep of the complicated machinery of the organization, which demands daily care, compels the acceptance of the more or less interested services of the professionals; and as the success of the party depends on their "work," they acquire an important or even predominant position in it, which, sooner or later, delivers the party into their hands and enables them to exploit it in one way or another, and, under cover of it, to lay hand even on the public interest. The more perfect the organization at the disposal of party convention is, the better it accomplishes these results, that is to say, the more it demoralizes the party and lowers public life. But, on the other hand, to maintain themselves, the parties have more and more need of a strong organization, which alone can make up for the nullity of the convention on which they rest. The upshot, then, is a vicious circle. What is the issue from it? Is nothing left, then, but to give up forming parties? By no

means.

IX

The growing complexity of social life has rendered more necessary than ever the union of individual efforts. The development of political life, by calling on every citizen to share in the government, obliges him to come to an understanding with his fellow-citizens in order to discharge his civic duty. In a word, the realization by each man of his objects in society and in the State implies co-operation, and this is not possible without organization. But because organization is necessary to attain an object by means of common efforts, it does not follow that it justifies the moral servitude of man and the degradation of public life. Der Gott der Eisen wachsen

liess der wollte keine Knechte.1 Organization must serve, not to lower the individual, but to enhance his strength, not to absorb his personality, but to enable him to assert himself more effectively. The combinations of citizens for a political end, which are called "parties," are indispensable wherever the citizen has the right and the duty to speak his mind and to act; but party must cease to be an instrument of tyranny and corruption, and must be restored to its proper function.

According to Burke's well-known formula, a party is "a body of men united for promoting, by their joint endeavours, the national interest upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed." However elastic may be this definition given by the great champion of the party system, it assigns to party very precise limits: party is a special combination, its basis is agreement on a particular principle, and its end is the realization of an object or objects of public interest. These limits have been exceeded in practice. The struggles which had to be carried on in England for liberty before representative government became a reality, as well as the rivalries of the great families, gave rise to the formation of parties, and led them to make the possession of power their objective. The exercise of power by the victorious party was not intended only to gratify ambition and greed, but was necessary as the sole means of ensuring the triumph in practical life of the conception of public policy represented by that party. The antagonism which existed between the conceptions embodied by the parties affected the very foundations of political society, it was so profound, and the passions of the parties were, consequently, so violent and so irreconcilable, that even after the victory, in time of peace so to speak, the conquest had to be defended as in time of war; one or other of the two parties had to hold the citadel of the State in order to overawe the opponent and secure the untrammelled application of the fundamental principles of the public policy which it supported. But soon these principles were recognized by every one; they no longer were in danger from any party, for they had sunk into the national conscience and were protected by a new power which had arisen in the meantime and which all parties thenceforth humbly invoked the power of opinion. While guaran

1 The God who created iron did not mean men to be slaves. — ARNDT.

teeing to every citizen the enjoyment of liberty, the new constitutional order placed at his disposal the means of pursuing political aims and of attaining them without having to seize on power for this purpose: it was enough to appeal to public opinion and to win it over to his cause.

However, the parties which had tasted power had little notion of giving it up, and by a tacit agreement they wielded it alternately, according to the changing fortunes of their contests. The confusion, at first unavoidable, between party conceived as a combination of free citizens pursuing a political object, and party as a troop storming the heights of power in order to divide the spoils, was perpetuated. "Party government" became a regular institution. Its legitimacy and its necessity were accepted as a political dogma owing to the very human tendency to cloak selfish aspirations under considerations of the general interest, and to that common philosophy which always professed, even before Hegel, that everything which is real is rational. On the Continent, where English institutions and the real springs of the régime of liberty enjoyed by the English have never been clearly understood, people hastened, on the introduction of the representative system, to borrow from England the mould in which an accident had cast liberty, and it was adopted as the very essence of free institutions. The mistake was all the more natural that in almost every continental country the struggles for liberty were far from being at an end, and that things were still in that transitional phase when the old régime had fallen without the new one having taken firm root, and when a fresh attack from the conquered reactionary forces was still to be apprehended. But in countries such as England or the United States, where the democratic régime is established beyond dispute, and liberty occupies an unassailable position, the tenure of power by a party which entrenches itself in it as in a fortress has become an anachronism, and the pretended necessity of this domination of the party, in order to make the political principles of the majority prevail in the government, is no longer aught but a pure convention, not to say an imposition. That there are still countries in which democratic institutions are as yet imperfectly consolidated, are even only a make-believe, and where, consequently, the seizure of power is the condition of