"According to you fellows," I grumbled, as I passed the port, "there is practically no difference between one political party and another."
"None whatever," said Champion cheerfully—"not between the backbones of the parties, that is. Of course excrescences don't count. Tell me, Adrian, what bill, barring one or two contentious semi-religious measures, has ultimately reached the Statute Book during the last twenty years that might not have been put there by either party without any violent departure from its principles? Not one! Foreign policy, again. Does it make any difference to our position in the world which party is in office nowadays? Not a scrap. The difference between the two sides is immaterial. There is often a far deeper line of cleavage between two sections of the same party than between party and party. We make faces at each other, it is true; and one side plumes itself on the moral support of Royalty and the aristocracy, while the other always bawls out that it has the inviolable will of the people at its back,—I daresay one assertion is about as true as the other—but I don't think there is a pennyworth of difference, really. There used to be a lot, mind you, when the Plebs were really struggling for a footing in the scheme of things; but bless you! we are all more or less in the same crowd now. Just a difference of label, that's all."
"There was a story my dominie used to tell," said Robin, who had been listening to this diatribe with rapt attention, "about a visitor to a seaside hotel, who ordered a bottle of wine. The boy brought up the wrong kind, so the visitor sent for the landlord and pointed out the mistake, adducing the label on the bottle as evidence. 'I'm very sorry, sir, I'm sure,' said the landlord, 'but I'll soon put it right. Boy, bring another label!' An old story, I am afraid, but it seems to me to put Party goverment into a nutshell."
I rose, and began to replace the stoppers in the decanters. I was feeling rather cross. I hate having my settled convictions tampered with. They are not elastic, and this makes them brittle, and I always feel nervous about their stability when the intellectual pressure of an argument grows intense.
"When you two have abolished the British Constitution," I remarked tartly, "what do you propose to substitute for the present régime?"
"'There,'" said Champion, "as the charwoman replied when asked for a character, 'you 'ave me.' Let us join the ladies."
But I was still angry.
"It always seems best to me," I persisted doggedly, "to take up a good sound line of action and stick to it, and to choose a good sound party and stick to that. Half a glass of sherry before we go upstairs?"
"No, thanks. That is why I envy you, Adrian," said Champion. "It's a wearing business for us, being so—so—what shall we call it, Mr Fordyce?"
"Detached?" suggested Robin.