The moment, indeed, that we distinctly conceive that the House of Commons is mainly and above all things an elective assembly, we at once perceive that party is of its essence.  There never was an election without a party.  You cannot get a child into an asylum without a combination.  At such places you may see “Vote for orphan A.” upon a placard, and “Vote for orphan B. (also an idiot!!!)” upon a banner, and the party of each is busy about its placard and banner.  What is true at such minor and momentary elections must be much more true in a great and constant election of rulers.  The House of Commons lives in a state of perpetual potential choice; at any moment it can choose a ruler and dismiss a ruler.  And therefore party is inherent in it, is bone of its bone, and breath of its breath.

Secondly, though the leaders of party no longer have the vast patronage of the last century with which to bribe, they can coerce by a threat far more potent than any allurement—­they can dissolve.  This is the secret which keeps parties together.  Mr. Cobden most justly said:  “He had never been able to discover what was the proper moment, according to members of Parliament, for a dissolution.  He had heard them say they were ready to vote for everything else, but he had never heard them say they were ready to vote for that.”  Efficiency in an assembly requires a solid mass of steady votes; and these are collected by a deferential attachment to particular men, or by a belief in the principles those men represent, and they are maintained by fear of those men—­by the fear that if you vote against them, you may yourself soon not have a vote at all.

Thirdly, it may seem odd to say so, just after inculcating that party organisation is the vital principle of representative government, but that organisation is permanently efficient, because it is not composed of warm partisans.  The body is eager, but the atoms are cool.  If it were otherwise, Parliamentary government would become the worst of governments—­a sectarian government.  The party in power would go all the lengths their orators proposed—­all that their formulae enjoined, as far as they had ever said they would go.  But the partisans of the English Parliament are not of such a temper.  They are Whigs, or Radicals, or Tories, but they are much else too.  They are common Englishmen, and, as Father Newman complains, “hard to be worked up to the dogmatic level”.  They are not eager to press the tenets of their party to impossible conclusions.  On the contrary, the way to lead them—­the best and acknowledged way—­is to affect a studied and illogical moderation.  You may hear men say, “Without committing myself to the tenet that 3 + 2 make 5, though I am free to admit that the honourable member for Bradford has advanced very grave arguments in behalf of it, I think I may, with the permission of the Committee, assume that 2 + 3 do not make 4, which will be a sufficient basis for the important propositions which I shall