Everyone who is actively engaged in politics—­everyone especially who is a member of the House of Commons—­must soon learn that if the absolute independence of individual judgment were pushed to its extreme, political anarchy would ensue.  The complete concurrence of a large number of independent judgments in a complicated measure is impossible.  If party government is to be carried on there must be, both in the Cabinet and in Parliament, perpetual compromise.  The first condition of its success is that the Government should have a stable, permanent, disciplined support behind it, and in order that this should be attained the individual member must in most cases vote with his party.  Sometimes he must support a measure which he knows to be bad, because its rejection would involve a change of government, which he believes would be a still greater evil than its acceptance, and in order to prevent this evil he may have to vote a direct negative to some resolution containing a statement which he believes to be true, (p. 112.)

Mr. Lecky goes on to point out that “many things have to be done from which a very rigid and austere nature would recoil;” but he adds:—­“Those who refuse to accept the conditions of parliamentary life should abstain from entering into it.”  Moreover, he holds that “inconsistency is no necessary condemnation of a politician, and parties as well as individual statesmen have abundantly shown it.”  But still “all this curious and indispensable mechanism of party government is compatible with a high and genuine sense of public duty.”

The American theory of government is that checks must be placed on a democratic legislature by a fixed Constitution and a separate executive exercising a veto.  The late Professor Freeman Snow, of Harvard University, was a strong supporter of this school.  His objections to cabinet government are given in the “Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science” for July, 1892:—­

Cabinet government is the government of a party; and for its successful operation it must have at all times a majority at its back in Parliament.  If it were possible to direct the current of public opinion into exactly two channels, there would be but two parties, one of which would generally be in the ascendency; but in practice this is found to be a very difficult thing to accomplish, and it becomes the more difficult as the right of suffrage is extended to the mass of the people, with their ever-varying interests.  In the countries of continental Europe parties, if indeed they may be said to exist, are broken up into groups, no two or more of which ever act together for any considerable length of time; and ministries are without a moment’s notice confronted at brief intervals with opposing majorities, and must give place to others, whose tenure of office is, however, equally unstable and ephemeral.