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.  The party system prevents this.  It obliges each member on every important occasion to vote with his leaders and to follow the instruction of the whips.  In this way the division of opinion produced by some particular question or measure is, as far as possible, made permanent and dominant, and the freedom of thought and of deliberation is confined within narrow limits.

Thus there creeps into the system an element of insincerity which has been enormously increased since the extension of the franchise and the consequent organisation of parties in the country.  Thirty or forty years ago the caucus was established in all the constituencies, in each of which was formed a party club, association, or committee, for the purpose of securing at parliamentary elections the success of the party candidate.  The association, club, or committee consists, as regards its active or working portion, of a very small percentage of the voters even of its own party, but it is affiliated to the central organisation and in practice it controls the choice of candidates.

What is the result?  That the affairs of the nation are entirely given over to be disputed between the two organised parties, whose leaders are compelled, in shaping their policy and in thinking about public affairs, to consider first and foremost the probable effect of what they will do and of what they will say upon the active members of the caucus of their own party in the constituencies.  The frame of mind of the members of the caucus is that of men who regard the opposite caucus as the adversary.  But the adversary of a nation can only be another nation.