FOOTNOTES:

Its Benefits.

Frequent public addresses by the men in whom the whole responsibility for the conduct of national affairs is concentrated, and by those who will be responsible when the next change of ministry occurs, cannot fail to educate the voters, and quicken their interest in all the political issues of the day. Moreover, the process is not confined to the intermittent periods of election, but goes on all the time; and although the practice, brought into vogue by the Anti-Corn-Law League, of joint debates at public meetings has not taken permanent root in England, the same result is reached in another way, because the party leaders answer one another's speeches from different platforms, and if the listeners are not identical, the public reads both arguments. Sir Henry Maine spoke of the tendency to look upon politics as a "deeply interesting game, a never-ending cricket-match between Blue and Yellow";[433:1]and the fact that this aspect of the matter is more marked in England than anywhere else makes English politics the most interesting, and the most easy to follow, in the world. The rulers of the country, and those who both have been and will be her rulers, fight at close range across a table for six months of the year, and during the rest of the time they carry on the ceaseless war by public speaking. As in the Athenian democracy, the citizens witness a constant struggle among rival statesmen for supremacy, but in England they are merely spectators until a general election summons them to give their verdict. One can hardly conceive of a system better calculated to stimulate interest in politics without instability in the government.

Its Perils.

But if the platform educates the voter, it has its dangers also. Bismarck is reported to have said that the qualities of the orator are not only unlike, but incompatible with, those of the statesman; and certainly the continual need of taking the public into one's confidence is hard to reconcile with the execution of far-reaching plans for the national welfare, for until the results are in sight, these cannot be made intelligible to the mass of the people. The English statesman is called upon at all times to show his hand, at the risk of seeming disingenuous or secretive if he does not do so. His whole policy is analysed and criticised; the seeds he plants are dug up prematurely to see if they are sprouting. Hence he is under a strong temptation to take a stand that will win immediately popular approval. In short, he lives in a glass house, which is likely to mean a very respectable but rather superficial life.

Moreover, in the custom of speaking from the platform there lurks a danger to the system of cabinet government; for that system is based upon the principle that the initiative in public policy rests with the ministers, and the main issue decided at a general election is whether the cabinet shall remain in power. Now ministers have not always been in the habit of arranging what shall be said upon the platform with the same care as what measures shall be brought before Parliament. But in view of the present importance of the platform it is obvious that if the cabinet system is to continue, the ministers must present a unanimous front to the public as well as to Parliament; and this consideration leads to a study of the function of party in the English political system.

[425:1]The six points were: universal suffrage, annual Parliaments, equal electoral districts, abolition of property qualification, vote by ballot, and payment of members. Of all these demands annual Parliaments and payment of members alone have not been substantially attained.

[425:2]"Latter Day Pamphlets: The Stump Orator," No. 5.

[426:1]E.g.Hans. 4 Ser. CXXXII., 1013-15; CXLI., 162.

[426:2]Ibid., CXXXI., 679; CXLVI., 987-89.

[426:3]Ibid., CXLI., 163; CXLV., 622, 627; CXLVI., 496.

[426:4]Ibid., CXXXII., 1005, 1019; CXLI., 122-23, 180-82.

[427:1]Cabinet ministers and the leaders of the Opposition are reported in full in the Parliamentary Debates, and other members usually at about two-thirds length. Macdonagh's "Book of Parliament" contains an interesting chapter on "The Reporters' Gallery."

[427:2]Macdonagh, 315. And see an article by Alfred Kinnear, and an answer by A. P. Nicholson in theContemporary Reviewfor March and April, 1905, LXXXVII., 369, 577.

[428:1]The best work on this subject is Jephson's "The Platform: Its Rise and Progress."

[429:1]Jephson, II., 65.

[430:1]Walpole, "Life of Lord John Russell," I., 248.

[430:2]Morley, "Life of Gladstone," III., 344.

[430:3]Mr. Lecky expressed a common opinion in the introduction to the second edition of his "Democracy and Liberty" (p. liii.), where he spoke of Mr. Gladstone as "the first English minister who was accustomed, on a large scale, to bring his policy in great meetings directly before the people," adding that he "completely discarded the old tradition that a leading minister or ex-minister should confine himself almost exclusively to Parliamentary utterances and should only on rare occasions address the public outside." Mr. Gladstone's power was, indeed, due quite as much to the effect of his public speeches as to his influence over the House of Commons.

[430:4]Quoted by Jephson, II., 391.

[432:1]Mr. Kinnear in theContemporary Reviewfor March, 1905, says that the demand by newspapers for public speeches by leading statesmen has declined. They would probably have more readers, though less hearers, if they were neither so long nor so frequent.

[433:1]"Popular Government," 149.

Lack of a Psychology of Political Parties.

The last generation has made great strides in the study of psychology. The workings of the individual mind, and its reaction to every stimulus or impression, especially under morbid conditions, have been examined with far more care than ever before. Social psychology has also come into view, and attempts have been made to explain the psychology of national traits, and of abnormal or unhealthy popular movements, notably mobs. But the normal forces that govern the ordinary conduct of men in their public relations have scarcely received any scientific treatment at all. In short, we are almost wholly lacking in a psychology of political parties, the few scattered remarks in Maine's "Popular Government" being, perhaps, still the nearest approach to such a thing that we possess.[435:1]

Although Parties are Universal.

The absence of treatises on the subject is all the more remarkable because the phenomena to be studied are almost universal in modern governments that contain a popular element. Experience has, indeed, shown that democracy in a great country, where the number of voters is necessarily large, involves the permanent existence of political parties; and it would not be hard to demonstrate that this must in the nature of things be the case. Thatparties exist, and are likely to continue to do so, has provoked general attention. By all statesmen they are recognised as a factor to be reckoned with in public life; and, indeed, efforts have been made in various places to deal with them by law. In the United States, for example, the local caucuses, or conventions of the parties, and their methods of nominating candidates, have of late years been regulated by statute; while in Switzerland and Belgium, elaborate schemes of proportional representation have been put into operation to insure a fair share of seats to the groups in the minority.

Modern View of Parties.

But if political parties have become well-nigh universal at the present time, they are comparatively new in their modern form. No one in the eighteenth century foresaw party government as it exists to-day, enfolding the whole surface of public life in its constant ebb and flow. An occasional man like Burke could speak of party without condemnation;[436:1]but with most writers on political philosophy parties were commonly called factions, and were assumed to be subversive of good order and the public welfare. Men looked at the history with which they were familiar; the struggles for supremacy at Athens and at Rome; the Guelphs and Ghibelines exiling one another in the Italian republics; the riots in the Netherlands; the civil war and the political strife of the seventeenth century in England. It was not unnatural that with such examples before their eyes they should have regarded parties as fatal to the prosperity of the state. To them the idea of a party opposed to the government was associated with a band of selfish intriguers, or a movement that endangered the public peace and the security of political institutions.

Foreign observers, indeed, point out that for nearly three hundred years political parties have existed in England, as they have not in continental countries; and that theprocedure of the House of Commons has consistently protected the Opposition in its attacks upon the government.[437:1]This is true, and there is no doubt that even in the seventeenth century party struggles were carried on both in Parliament and by pamphlets and public speeches, with a freedom unknown in most other nations; but still they were a very different thing from what they are now. They were never far removed from violence. When the Opposition of those days did not actually lead to bloodshed, it was perilously near to plots and insurrection; and the fallen minister, who was driven from power by popular feeling or the hostility of Parliament, passed under the shadow at least of the scaffold. Danby was impeached, and Shaftesbury, his rival, died a refugee in Holland. With the accession of the House of Hanover, and the vanishing of the old issues, political violence subsided. The parties degenerated into personal factions among the ruling class; and true parties were evolved slowly by the new problems of a later generation.

"His Majesty's Opposition."

The expression, "His Majesty's Opposition," said to have been coined by John Cam Hobhouse before the Reform Bill,[437:2]would not have been understood at an earlier period; and it embodies the greatest contribution of the nineteenth century to the art of government—that of a party out of power which is recognised as perfectly loyal to the institutions of the state, and ready at any moment to come into office without a shock to the political traditions of the nation. In countries where popular control of public affairs has endured long enough to be firmly established, an Opposition is not regarded as in its nature unpatriotic. On the contrary, the party in power has no desire to see the Opposition disappear. It wants to remain in power itself, and for that reason it wants to keep a majority of the people on its side; but it knows well that if the Opposition were to become so enfeebled as to be no longer formidable, rifts would soon appear in itsown ranks. In the newer democracies, such as France and Italy, there are large bodies of men whose aims are revolutionary, whose object is to change the existing form of government, although not necessarily by violent means. These men are termed "irreconcilables," and so long as they maintain that attitude, quiet political life with a peaceful alternation of parties in power is an impossibility.

Conditions of Good Party Government.

The recognition of the Opposition as a legitimate body, entitled to attain to power by persuasion, is a primary condition of the success of the party system, and therefore of popular government on a large scale. Other conditions of success follow from this.

Opposition must not be Revolutionary.

If the Opposition is not to be regarded as revolutionary, its objects must not be of that character, either in the eyes of its own adherents, or in those of other people. As Professor Dicey has put it, parties must be divided upon real differences, which are important, but not fundamental. There is, of course, no self-evident line to mark off those things that are revolutionary or fundamental; and herein lies an incidental advantage of a written constitution restricting the competence of the legislature, for it draws just such a line, and goes far to confine the immediate energies of the parties to questions that are admitted not to be revolutionary.[438:1]In the absence of a constitution of that kind, party activity must be limited to a conventional field, which is regarded by the public opinion of the day as fairly within the range of practical politics. Clearly the issues must not involve vital matters, such as life or confiscation. When, during the progress of the French Revolution, an orator argued in favour of the responsibility of the ministers, and added "By responsibility we mean death," he advocated a principle inconsistent with the peaceful alternation of parties in power.

Lines of Cleavage must not be Social.

For the same reason there is grave danger when the lines of cleavage of the parties coincide with those between the different social classes in the community, because one side is likely to believe that the other is shaking the foundations of society, and passions are kindled like those that blaze in civil war. This is true whenever the parties are separated by any of the deeper feelings that divide mankind sharply into groups; and especially when two or three such feelings follow the same channel. The chief difficulty with Irish Nationalism, as a factor in English politics, lies in the fact that to a great extent the line of cleavage is at once racial, religious, social, and economic.

Issues must be Based on Public Matters.

In order that the warfare of parties may be not only safe, but healthy, it must be based upon a real difference of opinion about the needs of the community as a whole. In so far as it is waged, not for public objects, but for the private gain, whether of individuals, or of classes, or of collective interests, rich or poor, to that extent politics will degenerate into a scramble of self-seekers.

Relation of Parties to Political Institutions.

Before inquiring how far these conditions have been fulfilled in England we must consider the form that party has assumed there, and the institutions to which it has given birth. England is, in fact, the only large country in which the political institutions and the party system are thoroughly in harmony.

In America.

The framers of the Constitution of the United States did not foresee the rôle that party was to play in popular government,[439:1]and they made no provision for it in their plan; yet they established a system in which parties were a necessity. It was from the first inevitable, and soon became clear, that the real selection of the President would not be left to the judgment of the electoral college—a result made the more certain, first, by providing that the members should assemble by States, and hence should not meet together as a whole for deliberation; and second, byexcluding from the college all congressmen and holders of federal offices, that is, all the leading men in national public life.[440:1]If the electoral college was not really to select the President, it must become a mere machine for registering the results of a popular vote throughout the nation, and the candidates for the presidency must be designated beforehand in some way.

In a small district where the voters are few, and an interchange of opinions naturally takes place by informal conference, public officers may be elected by popular vote without the existence of any machinery for nomination; but in a large constituency, where the voters are not personally acquainted with each other, men who have the same objects in view must get together, agree upon a candidate, and recommend him to the public. Otherwise votes will be thrown away by scattering them, and it will be mere chance whether the result corresponds with the real wishes of the voters or not. In short, there must be some process for nominating candidates; that is, some party organisation; and the larger the electorate the more imperative the need of it. Now the electorate that practically chooses the President of the United States is by far the largest single constituency that has ever existed in the world. It is, in fact, noteworthy that democracy throughout Europe adheres to the custom of dividing the country for political purposes into comparatively small electorates; while in the United States it is the habit to make whole communities single constituencies for the choice of their chief magistrates—state governors or national president—a condition of things thatinvolves elaborate party machinery for nomination, and hence the creation of huge party organisations on a popular basis.

The form of government in the United States has thus made parties inevitable; and yet they were furnished with no opportunity for the exercise of their functions by the regular organs of the state. There were no means provided whereby a party could formulate and carry through its policy, select its candidates for high office, or insure that they should be treated as the real leaders of the party and able to control its action.[441:1]The machinery of party, therefore, from the national convention to the legislative caucus, has perforce been created outside the framework of the government, and cannot be nicely adjusted thereto.

In Continental Europe.

The European countries, on the other hand, that have adopted the English parliamentary system, have usually copied those features, like the responsibility of the ministers, which were most readily perceived, without acquiring at the same time the substructure on which the system rests, the procedure which prevents friction, or the national traditions which supply the motive power. The result has been that a form of government well fitted to the great English parties has proved very imperfectly suited to the numerous political groups that exist in most of the continental legislatures.[441:2]In France the conditions have indeed changed much in the last few years, the procedure has been gradually better adapted to the parliamentary system, andthe ministries have gained in stability; but as yet the difficulties are by no means overcome. In some of the smaller countries, such as Belgium and Switzerland, the organs of government and the system of parties are less inconsistent; in Belgium because she followed British precedents more faithfully; in Switzerland because she was enabled by her small size, coupled with a federal structure, to create a novel polity of her own, in which parties are given no constitutional sphere of action, and play an unusually subordinate part. In none of these countries, however, is the form of government so fully consonant with the party system as it is in Great Britain.

English Parliamentary System Grew out of Parties.

In England the party system is no more in accord with the strictly legal institutions, with King, Lords and Commons, than it is elsewhere; but it is in absolute harmony with those conventions, which, although quite unknown to the law, make up the actual working constitution of the state. It is in harmony with them because they were created by the warfare of parties, were evolved out of party life. Government by a responsible ministry was not the inevitable consequence of the long struggle between the House of Commons and the Crown. Some other means might very well have been devised for taking the executive power out of the personal control of the King. It was rather the result of the condition of the House itself; for it is inconceivable that this form of government should have appeared if Parliament had not been divided into Whigs and Tories. In fact the whole plan would be senseless if parties did not exist. The reason for the resignation of a ministry upon the rejection of a measure it has proposed is that the defeat indicates a general loss of confidence in the policy of the party in power, and the preference for another body of leaders with a different policy. If this were not so, the Swiss practice of remaining in office, but yielding on the point at issue, would be far more sensible. The parliamentary system is thus a rational expression of the division of the ruling chamber into two parties.

It has Made Parties Stronger.

Neither the parliamentary system nor the party system, neither the responsibility of ministers to the House of Commons nor the permanent division into two parties, grew up in a day. Throughout the eighteenth century the principle of cabinet responsibility was but dimly recognised; while parties at times disintegrated, and the wheels of government were kept going by means of corruption, which has served in all ages as a lubricant for ill-adjusted political machinery. But little by little, with halting steps, the rivalry of parties built up the responsibility of ministers, and this in turn helped to perpetuate the party divisions; for the parliamentary system, like every rational form of government, reacts upon and strengthens the conditions of its own existence. It is based upon party, and by the law of its nature tends to accentuate party. Ministers perceived that their security depended upon standing together, presenting a united front, and prevailing upon their friends to do the same. The leaders of the Opposition learned also that their chance of attaining to power was improved by pursuing a similar course. In this way two parties are arrayed against one another continually, while every member of Parliament finds himself powerfully drawn to enlist under one banner or the other, and follow it on all occasions. He cannot consider measures simply on their merits, but must take into account the ultimate effect of his vote. As soon as men recognise that the defeat of a government bill means a change of ministry, the pressure is great to sacrifice personal opinions on that bill to the greater principles for which the party stands; and the more fully the system develops, the clearer becomes the incompatibility between voting as the member of Parliament pleases on particular measures, and maintaining in power the party he approves. In short, the action of the House of Commons has tended to become more and more party action, with the ministers, as we have already seen, gradually drawing the initiative in legislation, and the control over procedure, more and more into their own hands.

It is Government by Party.

The English government is builded as a city that is in unity with itself, and party is an integral part of the fabric. Party works, therefore, inside, instead of outside, the regular political institutions. In fact, so far as Parliament is concerned, the machinery of party and of government are not merely in accord; they are one and the same thing. The party cabal has become the Treasury Bench. The ministers are the party chiefs, selected not artificially but by natural prominence, and the majority in the House of Commons, which legislates, appropriates money, supervises and controls the administration, and sustains or discards ministers, is the party itself acting under the guidance of those chiefs. The parliamentary system, as it has grown up spontaneously in England, is in its origin and nature government by party, sanctioned and refined by custom. In that respect it differs, not only from national political systems elsewhere, but also from British local government. This last is not an outgrowth of party, but, like most of the existing popular institutions in other countries, was designed, not evolved. In it, as we shall see hereafter, party has no organic connection with the ruling bodies, and has not the same controlling authority as in national affairs.

It can Thrive only with Two Parties.

If the existence of a responsible ministry normally involves government by party, it also requires as a condition of success that there shall be only two parties. The ills that have flowed from the subdivision of the French, the Italian and other parliaments, into a number of groups are now an oft-told tale. The consequences there are very different from those that occur where the executive is not responsible to the legislature. In this last case the presence of several groups may result in the election of a president, a council or an assembly, representing a minority of the voters, and if so the popular will may not be truly expressed. Yet the government will go on unshaken until the next periodic election. But with similar conditions under the parliamentary system the administration itself will be weak, its position unstable, its tenure of office dependent uponthe pleasure of a group that may be ready to sacrifice everything else for a single object. Parnell was quite right in his reckoning that if he could keep the Home Rulers together until they held the balance of power in the House, one or other of the great parties must make terms with them, or parliamentary government would be unworkable.

Opposition not Entirely Genuine.

In the English system the initiative in most matters of importance has come into the hands of the cabinet ministers, as the representatives and leaders of the predominant party. It is their business to propose, and it is the business of the Opposition to oppose. But the attitude of the latter is not quite spontaneous. On rare occasions it congratulates the government upon some action, which it supports heartily. More commonly it seeks to criticise everything, to find all imaginable faults. Impotent to legislate, it tries to prevent the majority from doing so; not content with expressing its views and registering a protest, it raises the same objections at every stage in the passage of a bill; and sometimes strives to delay and even to destroy measures which it would itself enact if in power. Its immediate object is, in fact, to discredit the cabinet. Now this sounds mischievous, and would be so were Parliament the ultimate political authority. But the parties are really in the position of barristers arguing a case before a jury, that jury being the national electorate; and experience has shown, contrary to the prepossessions of non-professional legal reformers in all ages, that the best method of attaining justice is to have a strong advocate argue on each side before an impartial umpire. Unfortunately the jurymen in this case are not impartial, and the arguments are largely addressed to their interests, but that is a difficulty inseparable from democracy, or, indeed, from any form of government.

Waste of Capacity.

Another result of party government that is constantly decried is the waste of capacity it involves. Why, it is asked, should an excellent administrator leave his post, because some measure quite unconnected with hisdepartment—a measure, it may be, that he has himself opposed in the cabinet—is rejected by the House of Commons? Such a system interferes with that continuity of policy which is often essential to success both in foreign and internal affairs, and this is, no doubt, an evil; but owing to the presence of a highly trained body of permanent officials, who carry on the traditions and largely control the policy of the departments, it is not so important in England as one might suppose. The system also debars one half of the talent in public life from the service of the state; but this misfortune is one that, for one reason or another, has existed to some extent in all countries at all times. The idea of a state where all the ablest men in the land join, without regard to political opinions, to devote the best of their talents to the public service, is enchanting, but it has never been permanently realised anywhere.

Issues not Decided solely on their Merits.

Another criticism levelled at party government in England arises from the impossibility of supporting the party in power on one issue and opposing it on another. A voter at the last election who objected strongly to any change in fiscal policy, and equally strongly to any concessions on the subject of Home Rule, found himself on the horns of a dilemma. He was compelled to make up his mind which issue he thought most important, and trust to Providence about the other. In a party government, where the cabinet must resign if any of its vital measures are rejected, those measures cannot be considered by individuals on their merits. The policy of one party or the other must be supported as a whole. This is certainly a limitation on personal freedom of action, and it acts as a restraint just to the extent that the government is conducted strictly on party lines. The party system certainly involves compromise of opinion; but then there is some compromise required for the enactment of every public measure, whether parties exist or not, for it never happens that the legislators who vote for any bill are all perfectly satisfied with every one of its clauses.

Government by party is not an ideal regimen. Like everything else it contains both good and evil. A political organisation, indeed, that avoided all strife and all waste would certainly be impossible, and would probably, by relaxing effort and sapping the springs of human nature, prove undesirable. As yet it is too early to strike a final balance between the merits and the defects of the party system in England, and it would be hopeless to attempt it here. Both good and evil will appear more fully as we proceed.

[435:1]Rohmer'sLehre von den politischen Parteien, which attempts to explain the division into parties by natural differences of temperament corresponding to the four periods of man's life, is highly suggestive, but is rather philosophic than psychological; and like most philosophical treatises on political subjects it is based upon the writer's own time and place rather than upon a study of human nature under different conditions.

[436:1]In his oft-quoted, but very brief, remarks in the "Observations on 'The Present State of the Nation,'" and "Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents." But twenty-five years later in a letter to Richard Burke he falls into the current talk about the evils of domination by a faction.

[437:1]E.g.Redlich,Recht und Technik, 74-79.

[437:2]Cf.Review of his unpublished "Recollections of a Long Life," in theEdinburgh Review, April, 1871, p. 301.

[438:1]Neither in France nor in Italy does the constitution really perform that service; because in each case it does little more than fix the framework of the government, without placing an effective restraint upon legislative action; and because the constitution itself is not felt to be morally binding by the irreconcilables.

[439:1]For the views of these men on the relation of parties or "factions" to public life see "The Federalist," No. 10, written by Madison.

[440:1]Professor Max Farrand has pointed out to me that the question of having the electors for the whole country meet in one place was discussed in the Constitutional Convention, and was rejected in favour of the present plan, because under the latter, "As the Electors would vote at the same time throughout the U.S. and at so great a distance from each other, the great evil of cabal was avoided." G. Hunt's "Writings of Madison," IV., 365-66. Cabal had a vague and spectral meaning, but covered anything in the nature of party. The exclusion from the electoral college of members of Congress and federal office-holders was defended on the same ground.Cf."The Federalist," No. 68.

[441:1]In his "Rise and Growth of American Politics," a book full of penetrating suggestions, Mr. Henry Jones Ford has argued that party exists in America in order to bring about an accord among public bodies that were made independent by the Constitution; to force into harmonious action the various representatives of the people. Professor Goodnow develops the same idea from a different standpoint in his "Politics and Administration." But, especially in view of the comparatively small accord among public bodies, or harmonious action of the public representatives, and the enormous influence of parties in elections, it seems to the writer more correct to say that parties in America exist mainly for the selection of candidates.

[441:2]This subject is treated in Dupriez's admirable workLes Ministres, in Bodley's "France," and in the writer's "Governments and Parties in Continental Europe."

The Need of Whips.

In every legislative body a vote is supposed to express the sense of the House, and there is a universal fiction that all the members are constantly present; but this is often far from being the fact; and it always behooves any one interested in a particular matter to expend no small amount of labour in making sure that those persons who agree with him are on hand when the decisive moment comes. All this applies with peculiar force to the House of Commons; for not only the fate of the particular measure under consideration, but the very life of the ministry itself, may depend upon a single division; and it is the more true because the average attendance, while a debate is going on, is unusually small. When the division bell rings, two minutes are, indeed, given for the members to rush in from the lobbies, the library, the smoking and dining rooms, and the terrace, yet the government cannot trust to luck for the presence of enough of its followers in the precincts of the House to make up a majority. There must be someone whose duty it is to see that they are within call.

Who They Are.

The duty of keeping the members of a party on hand is performed by the whips, whose name is abbreviated from the men who act as whippers-in at a fox-hunt. They are all members of the House, and those on the government side receive salaries from the public purse on the theory that it is their business to "keep a house" during supply; that is, to insure the presence of a quorum, so that the appropriations may be voted. The chief government whip holds the office of Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury, with a salary of £2000. Formerly he was often calledsimply the Secretary of the Treasury—an expression occasionally confusing to the readers of books written a generation ago. He is sometimes called, also, Patronage Secretary of the Treasury; and in old times no small part of his functions consisted in distributing patronage, in the days when it was freely employed to secure the support of members of Parliament. In fact he is still a channel for the disposition of such minor patronage as remains in the gift of the Prime Minister, including the creation of lesser titles. He is assisted by three other members, who hold the office of Junior Lords of the Treasury, with the salary of £1000 apiece.[449:1]As has already been explained, the Treasury Board never meets, so that the duties of the Junior Lords are to-day almost entirely confined to acting as whips; and, to enable them to do that more effectively, one of them is always a Scotch member. The position of whip is one of great importance, but it entails some sacrifices, for by custom the whips take no part in debate, and although their work is felt throughout the House, it is little seen by the public. The chief whip, however, is often given afterwards a position in the ministry, or otherwise rewarded.

The Opposition also has its whips, usually three in number, whose position is important; though not so important as that of the government whips, because while a failure to have the full strength of the party present may be unfortunate, it cannot, as in the case of the government, be disastrous. Naturally the Opposition whips have no salaries, but they are sustained by the hope that their turn will come.

Duties of the Whips.

The government whips act as the aides-de-camp, and intelligence department, of the leader of the House. In the former capacity they arrange for him with the whips on the other side those matters in which it is a convenience to have an understanding. The membership of selectcommittees, for example, is generally settled between the chief whips on the two sides of the House; and the time when the test vote on some great measure will take place is usually arranged beforehand in the same way.

They bring in the Members.

When an important division is likely to occur, each side musters its whole force for a great trial of strength; and not only the majority, but the size of the majority, is a matter of importance to the ministers, for it shows how completely they can depend upon the support of their followers. But it is not on vital questions alone that the government must avoid being beaten, because a defeat, even though not such a one as would cause resignation, nevertheless weakens to some extent the credit of the cabinet. It gives the public the impression that the ministers are losing popularity; either that their followers are becoming rebellious and voting against them, or, at least, that they are so far indifferent or disaffected as to stay away. Nothing succeeds like success; and it is a maxim in politics as well as in war that one must maintain a reputation for being invincible. Any defeat of the government always causes cheers of triumph among the Opposition; and especially of late years, when defeats have become more rare, it is a thing that requires explanation.

The whips must, therefore, always keep a majority within sound of the division bell whenever any business that may affect the government is under consideration. For this purpose they are in the habit of sending out almost every day to all their supporters lithographed notices stating that a vote on such and such a matter is likely to come on, and requesting the attendance of the member. These notices are underscored, in accordance with the importance of attendance, from a single line, meaning that the whip desires the member's attendance, to four lines, or a couple of very thick lines, which mean "come on pain of being thought a deserter." In fact the receipt of messages of this kind is the test of party membership. In 1844 a correspondence on the subject took place between Peel andDisraeli shortly before the final breach occurred. Disraeli, who had been criticising the policy of the government in Ireland and Servia, was not sent the usual whips, and protested on the ground that he had not ceased to be a member of the party.[451:1]

All this is not so important in the case of the Opposition; for, the consequences of being caught napping are not so serious. It is enough for them to summon their full force from time to time, when a good chance for a large vote occurs. The proceedings of their whips, therefore, though generally the same, are somewhat less systematic.

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