remarkable institution which we call government by party. As everybody knows, party government is not very old in England. It grew up under Charles II., before whose time the sovereign had himself chosen his ministers instead of having them forced on him by Parliament; and it became settled under Anne and George I. Its essence lies in the existence in a country of two sets of views and tendencies, which divide the nation into two sections, each section believing in its own views, and influenced by its peculiar tendencies and associations to deal in its own particular way with every new question as it comes up. The particular dogmas may change; doctrines once held by Whigs alone may now be held by Tories also; doctrines which Whigs would have rejected a century ago may now be part of the orthodox creed of the Liberal party. But the tendencies are permanent, and have always so worked upon the several new great questions and problems which have during the last two centuries presented themselves, that each party has had not only a concrete life in its members, but an intellectual and moral life in its principles. Even when its leaders have been least worthy and their aims least pure, it has felt itself ennobled and inspirited by the sense that it had great objects to fight for, a history and traditions which imposed upon it the duty of carrying on the contest for its distinctive principles. It is because practical questions have never been lacking which brought these respective principles into play, forcing the one party to maintain the cause of order and authority, the other that of progress and freedom, that our two great parties have not degenerated into mere factions. Their struggles for office have been redeemed from selfishness by the feeling that office was a means of giving effect to those principles in practice.

But if the principles which called a party into being have ceased to exist, if its characteristic doctrines have no longer any bearing on the present state of things, or, in other words, if there are no questions to which those principles can be applied so that the one party will naturally, in pursuance of its hereditary tendency, propose one solution and the other party another, what becomes

of the party? Clearly it ought to die. Its function is exhausted. It has no longer an intellectual and moral raison d'étre. The soul is gone; so the life ought to expire and the body be buried. But parties are seldom content so to die. They live on and fight as fiercely as ever, as did the Guelfs and Ghibellines long after the power of the Emperor had vanished, and that of the Pope had ceased to oppose it. Suppose that in England all the questions which divide Whigs from Tories were suddenly settled. We should be in a difficulty. Our free constitution has been so long worked by the action and reaction of Ministerialists and Opposition that, for a time at least, there would probably continue to be two parties. But they would no longer be Whigs and Tories; they would be merely Ins and Outs. Their combats would be waged not even nominally for principles, but for place. For the government of the country, with the honor, power, and emoluments attached to it, would still remain as a prize to be contended for; and not only the leaders, but those who expected something from the leaders, would continue to register voters, and form political clubs, and fight elections just as they do now. The difference would be that there would no longer be great and noble principles to appeal to, so that men quiet or fastidious, or otherwise occupied, would not join in the struggle, while those who did would no longer feel stimulated by the sense that they were battling for something ideal, something which involved the welfare of their country. Loyalty to a leader whom it was sought to make Prime Minister would be a poor substitute, and not a safe substitute, for loyalty to a faith. If there were no conspicuous leader, the only motive left would be party spirit, and a desire that one's friends should have the good things. Something like this has happened in America. Since the resettlement of the Southern States after the civil war there have been no questions dividing the old great parties (such questions as do exist, the tariff and civil service reform, are questions on which Democrats and Republicans have not taken sides). The old principles which made the parties have been worked out, and the parties,

having no longer any distinctive programme to carry out, might with advantage have been dissolved. But the government of the country has to be carried on, and therefore the parties must be kept alive for that purpose. They have, therefore, become mere Ins and Outs; and it cannot be expected that the best citizens should feel the same desire to join in a combat of office-seekers as men in France or in England, where the interests of religion or freedom are held to be at stake. This state of matters exists in Canada also-indeed in most of our self-governing colonies-and the results are similar to those in the American Republic.

But here comes in another feature, peculiar to the United States. All administrative federal offices, from the top to the bottom, from the presidency down to a postmastership in a western village or the keeping of a lighthouse on the Pacific coast, are party offices, held at the pleasure of the executive. Custom as well as law allows the holder to be dismissed at any moment without cause; and custom prescribes that he shall be dismissed whenever the party opposed to his own comes into power. The new administration is not only permitted but bound to reward its supporters by put ting them into the offices whence those of the losing party have been expelled. This is what is called the spoils system, from the famous phrase of President Jackson, "The spoils belong to the victors." Its most immediate evil result is to injure the civil service of the country by discouraging able and steady men from entering it, since they can have no security that they will keep their places, and by making the nation. lose the benefit of such skill as its employés have acquired by practice, since the most devoted and experienced official may be turned out at short notice for no fault of his own, but merely because the place is wanted for some importunate applicant. There is, however, another consequence less obvious to the English reader. It creates a large class of persons who have a direct personal interest in political warfare. The absence of great public questions may make the ordinary citizen indifferent to the triumph of one or other party. But the private and selfish

interest of every man who holds a salaried place, or who desires to get one, raises up a set of people full of zeal for their party, eagerly and restlessly active in promoting its triumph by every means in their power. It is they who work politics, or, to use the Transatlantic expression, run the machine." To these men the success of their party means their own livelihood, and the opportunity of providing for their relatives and friends; and although the posts are not highly paid, the income is a fair one for persons who themselves mostly belong to the poorer class. If Federal offices alone were involved, the number of places to be had would be too small to make the office-seeking class a large one. But in every State and every city the two great parties exist, and possess a complete organization. Every State and every city has a large number of salaried offices whose occupants are changed according as the one party or the other is in the majority. Some of these offices are elective, and the party runs its candidates for them. To this category there unfortunately belong, in most States, the judgeships. Other offices lie in the gift of the governor or the mayor, as the case may be, but to these he is expected to appoint adherents of the party to which he belongs, which has put him in power, and in whose hand his own fortunes lie. side, the membership of Congress or of a State Legislature is itself also a salaried place, not indeed lucrative, yet to many people quite worth having. The party organization of course looks after all elections and all appointments, to State offices and local offices as well as to Federal offices. And as elections are frequent, members of the Federal House of Representatives being chosen every two years, and there being many other elections for the State offices and municipal offices, the machine is not allowed to rust. allowed to rust. It is kept constantly going, it needs the attention and occupies the energies of a tolerably large number of persons. They are of course the persons to whom it means place, profit, and power. trict the office-holders are the Ministerialists, who keep the party together, conduct the registrations, bring out the candidates, get up and address the pub

Be

Hence in every dis

lic meetings, work the elections, and (in extreme cases) falsify the polling books. The office-seekers, who can only get in themselves by turning out the present occupants, are the Opposition, and perform similar work for their own side, though of course under the disadvantage of not having the control of the election machinery. If they had only one set of places to look to, the Federal offices, or the State offices, or the local offices, they might be disheartened by repeated failures-such as the Democratic party has had to suffer since the first election of President Lincoln in 1860. But as there are two other sets of places to stimulate their desires and reward their efforts, there is no danger of apathy. A beaten party comes up fresh to the fight every time, and generally before long gets hold of one set at least of the coveted emoluments. So distinctly is the duty of the civil service to work for their own side recognized, that the party managers sometimes impose a sort of tax, informally of course and secretly, upon their officials, who have then to contribute a percentage of their salaries toward the party fund, out of which the expenses of canvassing and electioneering are defrayed.

"Is then, it will be asked, "the business of electioneering left to these personally interested politicians? Do other citizens, those active, keen, bright Americans of whom we hear so much, not take part in it, if for no other reason, yet at least to see that the affairs of the community are intrusted to competent hands? It is easy to see why office-holders and office-seekers should exert themselves; less easy to understand why other people do not join, do not keep such an important matter from falling into these professional hands? Why do not public-spirited men, whose motives are above suspicion, become candidates for the various offices and for the membership of the legislatures? They would naturally be preferred by their fellow-citizens.

Party organization has been brought to a rare perfection in America. Nothing can be fairer in theory, nothing more conformable to the principles of self-government. The unit is a small local area-in a city one of the wards. The voters belonging to the party in this

local area are convoked to a meeting for the purpose of choosing their delegates to the convention of the larger local area in which these wards are included. This meeting is called a primary, and the delegates whom it chooses are a species of ward committee for the ward. Together with the delegates from all the other wards, they form the convention for the district. Either directly or through other delegates whom they in turn choose to proceed to a higher convention, they select the candidates for office. The details of the system are complex; it may be enough to note that the highest of all party assemblies is that which meets once in every four years to choose the party candidate for the Presidency of the United States. This council is called the National Nominating Convention; and the similar bodies which meet to choose in each State the candidates for its chief offices are called State Conventions. The main duty of every convention is to choose the party candidates, both for the elective offices and for the membership of the State Legislatures and of Congress (as the case may be), the object of course being to secure that the undivided vote of the party shall be cast for the candidates who are most likely to succeed, because most in favor with the party as a whole. And the system seems excellently calculated to attain this end, because it is the rank and file of the party, in their several primaries, who choose the delegates, and these delegates who in turn choose those with whom the selection of candidates rests. The people have every opportunity of expressing their will, and it is their own fault if they do not get the best candidates. Clearly the primary is the key of the whole. Everything depends on the delegates it chooses, for once chosen, they can bring out any candidate they like. He is, through their nomination, the candidate of the party, who has a claim on the votes of the party, even of those who would not have themselves chosen him. The duty, therefore, of every good citizen who desires the best candidates is to go to the party primary of the ward or district he belongs to, and there give his vote for delegates he can trust. But unfortunately the good citizen often does not

care enough about the matter. He has an engagement to dinner, or it is a wet night, or he forgets all about the meeting. The professional politician, however, does not forget. He goes, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred he has it all his own way. He has usually a number of acquaintances whom he takes with him (the men whom, in American phrase, he owns"), so that the primary may consist almost entirely of the professionals and their creatures. In such cases the business is despatched quickly and easily. A list of delegates, which has of course been prepared beforehand by the leading professionals, is proposed to the meeting and carried without a division. These delegates are the professionals themselves, or persons on whom they can rely. The meeting is then dissolved; and in a day or two, when all the primaries are over, the Republicans or Democrats (as the case may be) of the city learn that they have left themselves in the hands of this clique, who have settled the whole thing in secret conclave, and merely gone through the form of obtaining a popular sanction. Sometimes, however, things do not proceed so smoothly. If the local party managers have abused their power by putting into office bad men, who have wasted or misappropriated the city revenues, the better citizens now and then combine to attend, and if possible to "capture" the primaries. They come in large numbers, and when the managers' list of delegates is submitted, they oppose it and propose another list of their own. A struggle follows. The chairman, who is usually in the confidence of the managers, probably tries to rule the speakers of the independent section out of order, and may sometimes go so far as to declare the list of his own friends carried when it has not been so, or even to dissolve the meeting rather than accept a defeat. Possibly, but rarely, the independents succeed in getting their delegates chosen. Generally the victory remains in one way or another with the professional clique. And it must be understood that such a contest is altogether an uncommon occurrence, only to be looked for in places where the ruling party has grossly abused its power and driven the better sort of citizens to exert themselves for

the protection of the community. This has happened only in a few of the great cities, and most conspicuously in New York, a place so exceptional owing to its vast population of poor and ignorant people, mostly recent immigrants from Europe, that it must not be taken as a type of American city politics. The more usual way of resisting the domination of the party managers is for good citizens, after meetings and combinations among themselves, either to abstain from voting, or to vote for the candidates of the opposite party, or to bring out a rival set of candidates of their own party, and run these both against the opposite party and against what may be called the authorized list of their own party managers. This is called, in the technical language of politics, bolting," and is sometimes resorted to by moderate and patriotic men of both parties. In Philadelphia, a city which has groaned under the tyranny of its "Ring as long as New York, it was successfully employed a year ago, to put several trustworthy men into office. But in general these tactics, when used by an independent section in either party, result in the victory of the opposite party, because the parties are so nearly balanced that any serious defection from one gives the other the majority. The immediate gain may not be great, because the candidates of the other party are probably men of the same kind as those whom the independents refused to accept from their own clique. But the warning given to the Ring against which the independents have revolted is not lost. They are made to feel that they have gone too far, and are disposed next time to bring forward better candidates, and so endeavor to win back the "bolters" to their former party allegiance. Thus the evil is by no means without a remedy. Only that remedy is not, as one might have expected, found to be most easily applied by an attack on the primaries.

Through the last few pages I have been describing extreme cases. It must not be supposed that over the length and breadth of the Union, in the rural districts and in the smaller cities, these evils prevail. They are confined to some few great cities, such as those of

the Alantic coast. Only there does one find full-grown Rings, only there have the better citizens been driven to organize themselves against the tyranny of bad men, perverting a system which was intended to be truly popular and representative. The management of the affairs of the ordinary towns and cities may not be the best possibleneither is that of our own municipalities--but it is, taking one place with another, tolerably honest and competent, as good as can be looked for in such a world as the present. I have dealt with the extreme cases because it is from those extreme cases that English assailants of American institutions have drawn their examples, and in particular their illustrations of the working of what they call the Caucus system; and have, therefore, sketched that system as it exists in New York, the darkest instance that can be adduced.

The so-called Birmingham Caucus is supposed to be a copy of this American original, and to be likely to reproduce its faults. The different scheme of our English Constitution prevents it from being carried out with the same completeness; it exists here, therefore, only in two grades, viz. the ward meeting (the American primary) and the council for the whole constituency, the Eight Hundred, or Four Hundred, or So forth, corresponding to the American nominating District Convention of delegates from the several primaries. The essence of the plan lies in its creating a representative committee, for each constituency, to which the members of the party in that constituency delegate the function of selecting candidates for Parliament. It has no other function but that of organizing the party in the locality, and enabling it to prevent those divisions, and consequent defeats, which arose from the appearance at elections of more candidates than there were seats for, each alleging that he was the favorite of the party. There were no means, except the rarely available one of a test ballot, of ascertaining which candidate the party really preferred; and this method was therefore invented of giving the majority of the party the means of protecting itself by saying beforehand whom it wished to support. It was the alternative to two

methods, both of which had proved bad nomination by an irresponsible and self-elected clique and the distraction of the party between a number of competitors, some of whom might be plainly out of the running, yet able to ruin the others and so give the victory to the other side.

I am not here concerned either to defend or attack the Birmingham system. My only personal experience of it has been so far unpleasing, that having been once a delegate from the primary of the ward I reside in, I was turned out when the primaries were captured by an inroad of persons belonging to another section of the party; we who fancied ourselves the "good citizens" having been culpably absent from our primary on the night of meeting. This instance taught us one of the weak points of the plan; and the London boroughs (in only two of which, so far as I know, does it exist) are obviously not the best places to try it in. However, I am not going to examine its working in England, but only the pertinence of arguments drawn from its working in America.

Two charges are brought against it. One is that it will destroy the independence of Members of Parliament by subjecting them to the dictation of a local committee. This is an objection never taken, a result never complained of, in the United States. The councils or conventions of delegates do not control members of Congress, not so much because they might not wish to do so if it were necessary, as because it is not necessary. The bonds of party allegiance are already so tight, it is so well understood that a member of Congress must vote with his party, that no local pressure is needed. This is due to the fact that, as already explained, politicians are largely professionals who must stick to their party for the sake of their prospects in life. The existence of a tight party organization is another symptom, so to speak, of the same tendency, but is not the cause of this want of personal independence. The phenomena of American politics are here too dissimilar from those of England to make a comparison instructive. Any one who has watched large English constituencies will think the fear of a member being en