CHAPTER IX

POLITICAL FORCE

THE aptitude of politics to form a party of administration and a party of opposition, which is generally regarded as a normal characteristic, is really a tendency which has to be acquired. The natural tendency is towards a multiplication of parties to correspond with varieties of opinion and groupings of interests, so that instead of opposing parties contending for the management of public affairs, there would be shifting parliamentary groups, such as make French and German politics so perplexing to outsiders. The strong tendency of English politics to party division, rather than faction partition, is evidently not a race characteristic. A sectarian disposition is a conspicuous trait of religious opinion among Englishmen and Americans, and in politics also a sectarian disposition is exhibited by the frequent attempts to organize new parties. In politics, however, such movements are counteracted by other forces which tend to gather all varieties of political sentiment into two opposing party organizations.

The explanation of this curious phenomenon is probably to be found in the circumstances of Eng

lish political development. Royal authority in England was not built up gradually, as in France and Germany, by centuries of struggle against feudal privilege, but was attained at once by conquest. The prerogative of William the Conqueror, in the eleventh century, was as robust as that of Louis XIV in the seventeenth. The king of England had complete control of the national authority at a time when a French or a German king was merely the primate of a swarm of sovereigns. The royal prerogative was so powerful in England that it did not fear parliamentary institutions as a rival source of power, and instead of aiming to suppress them, as in Continental Europe, the disposition was to preserve them, as an useful means of communication with the people. Milton's reason for desiring to abolish the use of the word "parliament" to denote the English legislature was that it originally signified "the parley of our lords and commons with the Norman kings when he pleased to call them.”

The uniformity of jurisprudence, effected by the plenitude of royal authority, was a powerful nationalizing influence, small opportunity being afforded for the growth of the provincial rights and privileges which played such a great part in the politics of Continental Europe. The immense weight of royal prerogative rested upon the nation as a whole, compacting its elements. To make any stand against royal oppression, the nobles. had to act together and have the support of the

people. When bounds were set to royal prerogative, they were established, not as a class privilege, but as a general right, of which Parliament was the natural guardian. The influences of constitutional progress tended to fuse the various elements of the population, originally as diverse and antagonistic as anywhere else in Europe, into national unity. The process consumed centuries, but its heat and pressure formed English politics into a substance so homogeneous that, when public opinion became a factor in administration, the force generated by it exhibited the marked polarity which has been its characteristic, a positive phase and a negative phase, the government and the opposition.

After the overthrow of the Stuarts had practically transferred the executive authority from the crown to Parliament, the conditions which had brought about this unique phenomenon were continued by the rule of the nobility. The Whig oligarchy, which had successfully carried through the Revolution of 1689, resumed in its class control the authority of which royalty had been dispossessed. Without such restraints, the establishment of the authority of Parliament would have allowed such free play to divergent interests that politics would probably have become a chaos of turbulent opinion. Such had been the result of the victory of Parliament over Charles I. Parliamentary government became impossible with

the usual result the establishment of a military dictatorship. The nation was glad to escape by returning to the ancient constitution. The Revolution of 1689 was aristocratic in its inception and guidance, and did not disturb the forms of the constitution while radically transforming its character. Unity of administration was no longer secured by the king's prerogative, but by aristocratic control. The body of the aristocracy, united by their class interests, were at the same time divided into contending factions by rivalry for the possession of office and power. Their struggles developed party organization and discipline, and set party action in the grooves along which it has since moved. They were like a board of directors, who might quarrel among themselves and split into factions, each aiming to secure control of the affairs of the corporation; but to whose strife their common interests set bounds which they instinctively respected, so that their disputes were necessarily subject to some regulation, gradually finding expression in rules of procedure. In like manner, parliamentary usages have been established which give to the English government its true character. The cabinet system has no other foundation than a general agreement that the political junto which can secure a majority in the House of Commons is entitled to the administration.1

1 Boutmy's English Constitution, Part III., Chap. IV., gives a lucid account of the process of English party development.

Something like the same conditions of control and guidance were established in the United States by the rule of the gentry. This rule was, however, so artificial and factitious that it was always in a condition of extreme delicacy. Had it fulfilled the desire with which it was instituted, of setting a rigid barrier to democratic tendencies, it would have been crushed. The tutelage to which it was intended to subject the nation would not have been endured. Notwithstanding Washington's military renown and the popular veneration for his character, the spirit of insubordination was so strong that the government was a weak, shaky affair. John Adams says that, in the exciting times of 1794, "ten thousand people in the streets of Philadelphia, day after day, threatened to drag Washington out of his house and effect a revolution in the government, or compel it to declare war in favor of the French Revolution and against England." In Adams' opinion, the yellow fever, more than any strength in the government, prevented a revolution. The attempt made during Adams' administration to suppress popular agitation by means of the sedition laws might have caused an explosion of democratic force which would have blown up the government, had it not been for an event which at the time was regarded by the supporters of the government as a dire misfortune the formation among the gentry them1 Adams' Works, Vol. X., pp. 47, 48.

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