CHAPTER XIV.

Their nature.

POLITICAL PARTIES.

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In treating of political parties we shall not go beyond those Political parties. movements of this kind in which thought and its expression are free, that is, beyond countries which are already self-governing, or where the seed is sown and is sprouting for self-government.* In fact, parties, in the modern sense of the term, cannot be said to exist where there is no diffusive power of opinion, and when those who have common opinions on political subjects cannot carry their points by combined action.† In countries where knowledge and co-operation in public measures are very imperfect, there may be local dissatisfaction, strife between great men for places at court, and even wider movements, having their ori

*A work written by Prof. Wachsmuth, of Leipzig, entitled "Geschichte der Politischer Parteiungen," in 3 vols. (1853-1856), devoted to this subject of parties, begins almost with the creation of man. He devotes four pages to the United States, out of his nearly sixteen hundred. Cooke's Hist. of Party in England (1836, 3 vols.) is a valuable collection of facts.

"Party," says Mr. Burke (Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents; Works, Bohn's ed., i., 375), "is a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavors the national interest upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed. For my part, I find it impossible to conceive that any one believes in his own politics, or thinks them to be of any weight, who refuses to adopt the means of having them reduced to practice. It is the business of the speculative philosopher to mark the proper ends of government. It is the business of the politician, who is the philosopher in action, to find out proper means towards those ends, and to employ them with effect," etc.

gin in disputed successions or in religious contentions. But here a few leaders do all the active work; the people follow their leaders without intelligence and independent judgment. Parties may be said to be divisible into two classes: the first, where, there is no especial foundation for them in the nature of the government, and which are due to temporal causes; the second, where the nature of the constitution of the state or the social condition is such, and the intelligence such, that dif ferences of opinion are inevitable, owing to the difference of interests or of political doctrine in a country. Party may lead to civil strife and revolution, but is far from aiming at violence in its first formation. The violence is the result of opposition.

We may exclude from our consideration the court factions of despotic governments, and indeed all political movements of the people in despotic governments, which are nothing but local or temporary acts of resistance to oppression. Nor would we allow that parties can appear save in a very imperfect way in feudal kingdoms, where the combinations of restless nobles appeal to force without using or having a place where they can use argument. But as soon as estates were called and deputies represented the leading interest in assemblies, whether separately or together, there was room for free debate; both in the kingdom and in the barony the estates might combine together against the suzerain, or form partial unions against one another. Nor could parties appear in a city democracy of a despotic type, for by the nature of such a polity it has overcome and destroyed all other classes in society except the people of the lower class. Here, then, if strife occurs, it will run into violence, it will be the attempt of one faction to overthrow another which at the time engrosses power. We may say further that there can be no such thing as party, where men of different minds are ready to resort to violence, if resisted; and that party implies a certain sway of reason, an appeal to argument in order to gain a public end.

Mr. Wachsmuth speaks of the division of the kingdom of

David and Solomon after the death of the latter, as an instance of a conflict of party. We are unable to accept of his classification. The oppressive taxes of Solomon undoubtedly gave birth to this dismemberment. It was dictated by no desire to effect constitutional change in the kingdom, nor was argument used to delay the issue; but as soon as the king's adverse answer to the petition or demand of the congregation was made known, the rebellion broke out. Possibly it would have been more acceptable to the northern tribes to have the political capital nearer to the centre of the land, as making the protection of all parts of the land more sure. But no such wish appears in the annals, and no demand is on record even of a council to control the sovereign. A word and a blow were all.

There was, however, in the later times of the Jewish monarchy, a party of some continuance and with distinct ideas, which they sought to carry by persuasion. The great question of the later monarchy was whether the Egyptian kings were strong enough to help the Jewish kingdom against the power of Assyria and of Babylon. The people, the kings, many of the princes, priests and prophets, clung to Egypt with a patriotic detestation, as they must have thought it, against the more terrible eastern powers. On the other hand, the prophet Jeremiah and some of the best men of the nation saw the hopelessness of the struggle with a kingdom possessed of such resources as Babylon, and while they were no friends to the new empire and were the truest patriots, they counselled submission. The result showed their wisdom. But we will not delay in order to speak of governments Party dependent and societies where parties are transient and not the necessary outgrowth of their constitutions. The operations of parties are best seen where the polity, if it do not require, at least encourages permanent divisions of opinion, and combinations to carry them out in peaceable ways, and where some diversity of interest necessarily gives rise to the desire to control the policy of the gov Such constitutions may not be as yet wholly free;

on constitutional ad

vance.

ernment.

the supreme executive may be able to cripple the plans of those whom it opposes; but still there is an amount of free opinion and a fearlessness in making it known that cannot wholly be repressed. Of the slow progress of parties in gaining their ends against the opposition of a court the history of England furnishes a fine example. For centuries the independent electors of England had not reached that degree of power that the court and its friends could not in a great degree counteract their measures. And yet the party opposed to free institutions was obliged from time to time to make concessions, until the middle class and a portion of the upper, the representatives of the liberties of the nation, felt themselves strong enough to oppose the king with arms. The death of Charles I. for a time threw the balance of power on the other side, until the vices of Charles II. and the follies of his brother rendered a revolution, which succeeded almost without bloodshed, necessary. This great event, with the improvements in administration, in the security of person, in the checks on the misuse of power, which belong to the same age, made it possible for parties representing the opinion of the educated and aristocratic class, however that might incline, to be predominant. There was a constitutional growth of elements forming the state, which conditioned the growth of parties; but the movements of the elements on the side of freedom could not be said to have reached their requisite state of free action until after the revolution.

party.

One phenomenon of parties that history reveals to us is Number of princi- that they vary greatly in regard to the number ples constituting a of leading principles, civil or religious or industrial, which enter into their profession of faith. In some of the ancient parties there was perhaps not more than one principle at issue, and that one self-defensive on the one or other side. In the little city aristocracies the question was how to cripple the democracies, so that numbers should not be too strong for old families and wealth. When the pope and emperor were at strife early in the thirteenth century, everything in the Italian towns turned on that contest. VOL. II.-35

Nobles and the class of capitalists and manufacturers were alike divided between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. In many other cases a political faith has consisted of quite a number of articles. Thus the tory party at its origin not only supported the established church and the monarchy, as of divine appointment, but gave to the monarch prerogatives which could not be resisted except by a passive refusal to obey commands which were thought to be contrary to the scriptures. The whigs, on the other hand, supported the state church-many of them, at least-on grounds of mere expediency; rejected the jus divinum of kings, defended the revolution of 1688 on the plea that the king had broken the original contract with the people, and in reality regarded the people as the only ultimate source of power.

gle principle.

Parties are sometimes broken up, and reorganized upon a Parties with a sin- single article of political faith, but it must be one of great importance, and which makes strong appeals to the feelings of multitudes. In modern times questions of humanity and of morals, which a whole people can understand, enlist minds of a fervid temper, and awaken in many an enthusiasm that breaks over all antecedent party ties. Such has been the movement for preventing the sale of spirituous liquors in several of the states of the American Union, which, however, after various legislative experiments, has done little besides dividing the better part of the community into two hostile factions, while the worse part was unaffected by the agitations. The abolition of slav ery on moral and religious grounds took a far deeper hold of a more widespread and an almost national party. This party taught nothing which Quakers and other philanthropists had not insisted upon since the middle of the eighteenth century. But it had not entered into politics until the South, by opposition to it, forced men to look at it and to take sides. Then it was that the power of a single opinion drawn into the arena of party conflict became manifest. The Southern states, dreading the opinion which gave birth to the anti-slavery party, both because they half admitted its truth, and because slavery