Mr. Lecky, too, holds out very little hope for the future:—
When the present evils infecting our parliamentary system have grown still graver; when a democratic House, more and more broken up into small groups, more and more governed by sectional and interested motives, shall have shown itself evidently incompetent to conduct the business of the country with honour, efficiency, and safety; when the public has learned more fully the enormous danger to national prosperity as well as individual happiness of dissociating power from property and giving the many an unlimited right of confiscating by taxation the possessions of the few—some great reconstruction of government is sure to be demanded. Fifty or even twenty-five years hence the current of political opinion in England will be as different from that of our own day as contemporary political tendencies are different from those in the generation of our fathers. Experience and arguments that are now dismissed may then revive, and play no small part in the politics of the future.
Why make democracy the scapegoat for all these evils, when they are simply due to the imperfect organization of democracy? In any case, the most that could rightly be urged would be that universal suffrage had come before its time. The conclusion that its time will never come is certainly not warranted. Universal suffrage cannot be condemned till it has had a fair trial under a rational system of election. Mr. Lecky appreciates so little the connection between the method of election and the splitting up into groups that he views without alarm the Hare system, which would still further develop groups.
But perhaps no one has caught the spirit of party government more truly than Mr. Lecky. Dealing with the motives which should actuate the statesman, in his latest work, "The Map of Life," he writes:—
In free countries party government is the best if not the only way of conducting public affairs, but it is impossible without a large amount of moral compromise; without a frequent surrender of private judgment and will. A good man will choose his party through disinterested motives, and with a firm and honest conviction that it represents the cast of policy most beneficial to the country. He will on grave occasions assert his independence of party, but in the large majority of cases he must act with his party, even if they are pursuing courses in some degree contrary to his own judgment.
Everyone who is actively engaged in politics—everyone especially who is a member of the House of Commons—must soon learn that if the absolute independence of individual judgment were pushed to its extreme, political anarchy would ensue. The complete concurrence of a large number of independent judgments in a complicated measure is impossible. If party government is to be carried on there must be, both in the Cabinet and in Parliament, perpetual compromise. The first condition of its success is that the Government should have a stable, permanent, disciplined support behind it, and in order that this should be attained the individual member must in most cases vote with his party. Sometimes he must support a measure which he knows to be bad, because its rejection would involve a change of government, which he believes would be a still greater evil than its acceptance, and in order to prevent this evil he may have to vote a direct negative to some resolution containing a statement which he believes to be true, (p. 112.)
Mr. Lecky goes on to point out that "many things have to be done from which a very rigid and austere nature would recoil;" but he adds:—"Those who refuse to accept the conditions of parliamentary life should abstain from entering into it." Moreover, he holds that "inconsistency is no necessary condemnation of a politician, and parties as well as individual statesmen have abundantly shown it." But still "all this curious and indispensable mechanism of party government is compatible with a high and genuine sense of public duty."
The American theory of government is that checks must be placed on a democratic legislature by a fixed Constitution and a separate executive exercising a veto. The late Professor Freeman Snow, of Harvard University, was a strong supporter of this school. His objections to cabinet government are given in the "Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science" for July, 1892:—
Cabinet government is the government of a party; and for its successful operation it must have at all times a majority at its back in Parliament. If it were possible to direct the current of public opinion into exactly two channels, there would be but two parties, one of which would generally be in the ascendency; but in practice this is found to be a very difficult thing to accomplish, and it becomes the more difficult as the right of suffrage is extended to the mass of the people, with their ever-varying interests. In the countries of continental Europe parties, if indeed they may be said to exist, are broken up into groups, no two or more of which ever act together for any considerable length of time; and ministries are without a moment's notice confronted at brief intervals with opposing majorities, and must give place to others, whose tenure of office is, however, equally unstable and ephemeral. There is no other alternative; one of the two great parties must yield to any faction which becomes strong enough to hold the balance of power between them, or suffer the inevitable consequences—instability and impotence of government.
Dr. Snow evidently thought that it is not possible to direct the current of public opinion into exactly two channels. He certainly had not the slightest idea that it might be a matter of electoral machinery.
Finally, we may quote the opinion of Mr. James Bryce, M.P., whose "American Commonwealth" is one of the most complete studies of the tendencies of democracy in existence. Comparing the English and American systems, he writes of the former:—