plant it, and the energies which should be devoted to administration are largely consumed in mere defence.

You can no longer keep the people within the party lines; they break away for their particular objects and fancies, such as Local Option or the abolition of Vaccination. Then the isolated section plays with its crotchety vote on the balance of party, and a minority, perhaps a small minority, coerces the nation. What special fancies do in England, special interests as well as fancies do in the United States. This malady of party government is on the increase, and no cure for it appears.

That, I beg Mr. Kebbel to observe, to which I call attention is not natural and spontaneous union and co-operation for the attainment of a particular political object, about which all of those who take part are sincerely agreed. It is the permanent division of the nation into two political organisations, to one of which each citizen is bound through life on pain of being regarded as an apostate to adhere, and which are to carry on a perpetual struggle for the offices of State, each of them assailing and traducing the other with much of the moral bitterness of a civil war, though the theory is that both of them are equally necessary to the operation of the political machine. Such a system appears to me neither rational nor moral, nor do I believe that it can for ever endure.

National interests are put out of sight. Patriotism gives way to party. The main question is what effect the particular course will have upon the balance of parties or the possession of power. Fundamental questions are raised, and political revolutions are set on foot, not from a conviction of their necessity, but because a party needs wind in its sails. Of this the history of the franchise question is an example. Trace it through, and see how much you can find of a paramount desire to improve the national polity, not to dish the Whigs.' Read, if you have patience for it, any set of election speeches, and see whether the paramount object is the good of the nation or the victory of party.

An incidental evil of the system is that it ties and sacrifices administration, which is the ordinary function of government, to legislative change, which is only an occasional function. You have to discard your great administrator, your Peel, because he happens to be in a minority on a question of legislative change.

The British system of party government unquestionably had its origin in the struggle between the Constitutional Whigs and the Jacobites, which was morally a civil war, and justified the submission of political conscience on all secondary questions to the necessities of the conflict. Between 1745 and the outbreak of the French Revolution there was not party government, but a kaleidoscopic series of Whig family combinations, disputing ascendency, under George the Third, with the personal influence of the Crown. Chatham was

distinctly opposed to party, and formed his Ministry in defiance of it. Burke, who was in favour of it, is a conclusive witness to its absence. Pitt was a Whig, and, like his father, a Parliamentary reformer. I doubt whether he ever called himself a Tory. The party lines were not drawn again till they were drawn by the outbreak of the French Revolution, and even then Pitt was willing to form a Government of National Defence irrespective of party.

Constitutional Europe is strewn with the wreck of parties which have split into sections and produced total instability of government, a sufficient proof surely that the party system is not a dictate of Nature or the normal and necessary foundation of free government. Mr. Balfour seems to have been looking at England alone.

In England one of the parties has been completely shattered, and its attempt to reorganise itself and combine its discordant sections for an attack on the Government, under the make-shift leadership of a Parliamentary tactician, has not hitherto appeared very successful. On two fundamental questions, that of the House of Lords and that of the Church Establishment, it is already divided against itself. On no one present question of importance-so far as one can see-is the group of sections which has chosen Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman as its leader really one. To find a bond of combination and a ground for moving against the Government it may have to resort to some proposal of demagogic bribery in the shape of socialistic confiscation, thereby once more illustrating the liabilities of the party system. Liberal principle, we are assured, still prevails in the constituencies. It may be so, but what is liberal principle? Where is the dividing line?

Mr. Kebbel thinks that the difficulty has arisen from the attempt to work as two parties which are practically three. But how is the third party to be extinguished? How is the indispensable bisection to be restored? The fact is that already there are not three parties but at least five--the Conservatives, the Liberal Unionists, whose liberalism has already caused one Conservative bolt, the Old Liberals, the Radicals, and the Irish Nationalists, not one of which seems likely to accommodate you by its extinction.

In the United States the system has assumed the form of two great machines, under bosses, struggling for the Government with its patronage, and shifting their principles and platforms according to the necessities of the fray. The result, as wailing patriotism declares, is enormous misgovernment and corruption.

Strong men, men with generous qualities, the party conflict may have produced. It could not produce impartial counsellors of the nation. The best statesmen-Chatham, Pitt in his earlier days, Canning in his later days, Peel-have not been the product of party. Canning and Peel were its martyrs.

As I said before, nobody looks for an immediate change. But if

the party system of government, the world over, shows signs of decay, the time has surely come for examining its foundations and considering how, in the event of its final collapse, it may be replaced by government which shall be national, not partisan, and, while duly responsible for its actions, shall command the attachment and support not only of the half but of the whole of the nation.

GOLDWIN SMITH.

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND AS

BY LAW ESTABLISHED

I HAVE seen no more fair and temperate statement of the case of the 'advanced' clerical party, in the pending controversy, than the article contributed by Sir George Arthur to the last number of this Review. I am tempted to follow him, because in the main he professes to rely upon arguments of a constitutional or juridical character, which may be answered without reference to the questions of doctrine and ritual involved in the controversy. It is encouraging to find Lord Halifax quoting Austin, and Sir George Arthur relying on Maine.

The gist of the article may be stated thus. The writer admits but does not defend the unlawful practices of a certain small section of the clergy, which, following his example, I dismiss from further notice. He appears to admit and to defend 'lawlessness' of a different kind on the part of a very large section of the clergy and laity. The essence of this lawlessness' is a repudiation of the authority of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. This was, as Lord Halifax has truly said, the crucial point in the debate on Mr. Gedge's motion in the House of Commons a few days ago.

The extent to which this repudiation goes is left somewhat obscure both in Sir George Arthur's paper and in the recent memorial of the English Church Union. Do the objectors maintain that the decisions of the Judicial Committee are not law at all, or merely that the Committee is not a suitable tribunal for the decision of ecclesiastical causes? Their intentions are equally obscure. Do they intend to refuse obedience to those decisions, or merely to agitate for an alteration of the law and a reform of the judicature? The language of the Memorial hovers between two entirely separate lines of thought and actionbetween the demand for change and the determination to disobey. Lord Halifax, however, the recognised leader of the party, appears to have committed himself to downright disobedience. He tells us that the authority of the Privy Council and of courts subject to its jurisdiction is dead, as any who should be imprudent enough to invoke their authority again on matters of doctrine and ritual would soon be made aware. Again, 'As spiritual rulers governing

the Church according to her own rules and canons, every obedience is due to the Bishops; as State officials enforcing the decisions of the Judicial Committee, they can claim none.' And he declares, in words attributed to Mr. Keble, that it is the duty of the clergy, so long as the Church courts consider themselves bound by the decisions of the Judicial Committee, to treat them as the Dissenters treated certain Acts of Parliament-i.e. to disregard them and to take the consequences.

Now it would be mere waste of time to argue the question that the decisions of the Judicial Committee are the law of the land-binding on all courts and persons within their jurisdiction. It is the duty of the Executive Government to enforce its decisions as it would enforce the decisions of any other court. The practice of Governments and Parliaments hitherto has been to abstain from any word or action calculated to disparage the authority of any branch of the judicature, and the present rules of the House of Commons carry the principle even to an inconvenient extreme. The language used by Mr. Balfour in the debate on Mr. Gedge's motion, and his attempt to discriminate between the Episcopate and the Judicial Committee, were, I venture to think, a lapse from this high tradition. He treats the Judicial Committee-the most illustrious tribunal in the land, save one-with less respect than he used to demand for a Removable Magistrate in Ireland; and by discriminating between the Episcopate and the Judical Committee, as regards the obedience to be expected from Crown presentees, he takes up a position not far removed from that of Lord Halifax and the English Church Union.

But, of course, mere disobedience to the law is not necessarily culpable. When the disobedience is justified on conscientious grounds, we must accept the plea as a fact alike in the case of the recalcitrant clergymen, the conscientious objectors to vaccination, and the 'Peculiar People.' The Legislature cannot penetrate into the conscience of the offender, but it may well consider, and often has considered, whether the law which he refuses to obey should not be altered or repealed. There is, however, one material difference between the clerical and all other conscientious objectors. The law of England may be regarded as one book with many chapters, but only one author-the sovereign Parliament. The chapter relating to the Church of England contains many statutes. Some prescribe the rights of the clergyman and the mode of enforcing them; others define his duties and the mode of enforcing them. The clerical objector cleaves to the one set of laws and rejects the other. He seeks to approbate and reprobate. I do not press the point about ordination vows, or think it necessary to resort to the theory of a contract between the clergyman and the State. He is bound to obey the law, not because he contracted to do so, but because it is the law. It is enough to make the conscientious objection of the