The theory of party government is based on the assumption that there
must always be some measure or some principle in regard to which the
citizens of the same country will differ so strongly as to subordinate
their private convictions on other matters to their profound convictions
in regard to the one great question. It is a theory of permanent civil
war carried on through the forms of parliamentary debate and popular
election, and, indeed, the two traditional parties are the political
descendants of the two sides which in the seventeenth century were
actually engaged in civil war. For the ordinary purposes of the domestic
life of the country the system has its advantages, but they are coupled
with grave drawbacks. The party system destroys the sincerity of our
political life, and introduces a dangerous dilettantism into the
administration of public business.
A deliberative assembly like the House of Commons can reach a decision
only by there being put from the chair a question to which the answer
must be either Yes or No. It is evidently necessary to the sincerity of
such decisions that the answer given by each member shall in every case
be the expression of his conviction regarding the right answer to the
question put. If every member in every division were to vote according
to his own judgment and conscience upon the question put, there would be
a perpetual circulation of members between the Ayes to the right and the
Noes to the left.
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