election and at many future elections.  It would break their career.  No English majority dare vote for an exceedingly bad treaty; it would rather desert its own leader than ensure its own ruin.  And an English minority, inheriting a long experience of Parliamentary affairs, would not be exceedingly ready to reject a treaty made with a foreign Government.  The leaders of an English Opposition are very conversant with the school-boy maxim, “Two can play at that fun”.  They know that the next time they are in office the same sort of sharp practice may be used against them, and therefore they will not use it.  So strong is this predisposition, that not long since a subordinate member of the Opposition declared that the “front benches” of the two sides of the House—­that is, the leaders of the Government and the leaders of the Opposition—­were in constant tacit league to suppress the objections of independent members.  And what he said is often quite true.  There are often seeming objections which are not real objections; at least, which are, in the particular cases, outweighed by counter-considerations; and these “independent members,” having no real responsibility, not being likely to be hurt themselves if they make a mistake, are sure to blurt out, and to want to act upon.  But the responsible heads of the party who may have to decide similar things, or even the same things themselves, will not permit it.  They refuse, out of interest as well as out of patriotism, to engage the country in a permanent foreign scrape, to secure for themselves and their party a momentary home advantage.  Accordingly, a Government which negotiated a treaty would feel that its treaty would be subject certainly to a scrutiny, but still to a candid and lenient scrutiny; that it would go before judges, of whom the majority were favourable, and among whom the most influential part of the minority were in this case much opposed to excessive antagonism.  And this seems to be the best position in which negotiators can be placed, namely, that they should be sure to have to account to considerate and fair persons, but not to have to account to inconsiderate and unfair ones.  At present the Government which negotiates a treaty can hardly be said to be accountable to any one.  It is sure to be subjected to vague censure.  Benjamin Franklin said, “I have never known a peace made, even the most advantageous, that was not censured as inadequate, and the makers condemned as injudicious or corrupt.  ‘Blessed are the peace-makers’ is, I suppose, to be understood in the other world, for in this they are frequently cursed.”  And this is very often the view taken now in England of treaties.  There being nothing practical in the Opposition—­nothing likely to hamper them hereafter—­the leaders of Opposition are nearly sure to suggest every objection.  The thing is done and cannot be undone, and the most natural wish of the Opposition leaders is to prove that if they had been in office, and it therefore