States, however, constitute only one among many types of political entities.  As soon as any body of men have been grouped under a common political name, that name may acquire emotional associations as well as an intellectually analysable meaning.  For the convenience, for instance, of local government the suburbs of Birmingham are divided into separate boroughs.  Partly because these boroughs occupy the site of ancient villages, partly because football teams of Scotch professionals are named after them, partly because human emotions must have something to attach themselves to, they are said to be developing a fierce local patriotism, and West Bromwich is said to hate Aston as the Blues hated the Greens in the Byzantine theatre.  In London, largely under the influence of the Birmingham instance, twenty-nine new boroughs were created in 1899, with names—­at least in the case of the City of Westminster—­deliberately selected in order to revive half-forgotten emotional associations.  However, in spite of Mr. Chesterton’s prophecy in The Napoleon of Notting Hill, very few Londoners have learnt to feel or think primarily as citizens of their boroughs.  Town Halls are built which they never see, coats of arms are invented which they would not recognise; and their boroughs are mere electoral wards in which they vote for a list of unknown names grouped under the general title adopted by their political party.

The party is, in fact, the most effective political entity in the modern national State.  It has come into existence with the appearance of representative government on a large scale; its development has been unhampered by legal or constitutional traditions, and it represents the most vigorous attempt which has been made to adapt the form of our political institutions to the actual facts of human nature.  In a modern State there may be ten million or more voters.  Every one of them has an equal right to come forward as a candidate and to urge either as candidate or agitator the particular views which he may hold on any possible political question.  But to each citizen, living as he does in the infinite stream of things, only a few of his ten million fellow-citizens could exist as separate objects of political thought or feeling, even if each one of them held only one opinion on one subject without change during his life.  Something is required simpler and more permanent, something which can be loved and trusted, and which can be recognised at successive elections as being the same thing that was loved and trusted before; and a party is such a thing.

The origin of any particular party may be due to a deliberate intellectual process.  It may be formed, as Burke said, by ’a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed.’[17] But when a party has once come into existence its fortunes depend upon facts of human nature of which deliberate thought is only one.