Abraham Lincoln, realising his ignorance of the principles of war, used to spend his nights in studying Clausewitz. It is probably too much to hope that our statesmen will ever burn the midnight oil in this manner. Indeed, it Indeed, it may be doubted whether any of them have even heard of that author. But, at least, if responsible organs of the press do their duty, and cease to make the nation ridiculous in the eyes of Europe by magnifying every paltry rearguard action and affair of outposts into a great battle, and with the aid of the few statesmen worthy of the name yet left to us, it may be hoped that the British public, which has up to the present been faintly stirred by the thought of danger to its own hearths and homes, may realise that it possesses besides these an empire containing some 400,000,000 souls for whom it is responsible. That, further, it is the plain duty of Great Britain to preserve the independence of nations which it has guaranteed by the most solemn pledges, and the balance of power in Europe which is necessary to its national existence; that in order to do so it will have to fight on its old battlegrounds on the Continent. And if this is not enough to stir the spirit of the race to organise its resources for war, it can only be said that as Prussia was in 1806, so are we now, and the result will be another Jena-either on land or on sea-followed by wholesale surrenders and capitulations of fortresses without firing a shot. And if we do at some distant date emerge from that degradation, it will be by passing through a period of shame and dishonour such as the Prussians endured, and learning, as they have learned, the lesson of affliction which has made them the nation in arms and the dominant Power in Europe.

ALAN PERCY.

PARTY GOVERNMENT AND THE EMPIRE

It would have been interesting to hear a discourse from the famous Swedish Chancellor Oxenstiern-who exhorted his son to observe with how little wisdom the world was governed-on the relations existing between the Parliament of England and the Government of India, as revealed in recent legislation. I am not referring to the particular provisions of the Indian Councils Bill, which may prove, for anything I am concerned to show to the contrary, models of sagacious statecraft. I mean that I should like to have heard what the Chancellor had to say about a constitutional system under which a sovereign House of Commons, chosen by a mere majority of electors, ninety-nine hundredths of whom probably do not know between what degrees of latitude lies the country that extends from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, prescribes the government to be applied to 300,000,000 human beings, radically divided among themselves by race, character, language, religion, and custom. Not only has the United Kingdom managed its own affairs under various forms of this parliamentary system for more than two centuries, during which its population, wealth, and influence in the Councils of Europe, have vastly increased, but for over fifty years it has continued under it to conduct the government of India in peace and good order. The question therefore naturally arises whether a success so striking is to be ascribed to the "wisdom" inherent in the system itself, which ought to make it deserving of universal application, or to peculiar circumstances, including good fortune, the genius of individuals, and a certain capacity for empire in the dominant race, all of which may have combined to overcome the difficulties actually created by the constitutional machinery. In other words, how far is the system of English party government com

patible with the consolidation, or even the continued existence of the British Empire ?

De Tocqueville maintained that there was no such thing as the English "Constitution." He used the word as applying to Constitutions defined by written documents and limited by fixed outlines, as if none other existed; but it is evident that, to go back to what would generally be called pre-Constitutional times, a Constitution of some sort must have been required in England to afford even a primâ facie justification for the impeachment and execution of Strafford. As there has been (with the short exception of the Commonwealth) no real break in the continuity of our history, our existing constitutional arrangements are plainly the growth of elementary conditions existing before the parliamentary régime was evolved out of the Revolution of 1688; and the ingenuity of political philosophers has been perplexed to discover what is the true theory of a Constitution, of great antiquity, but the nature of which can be gathered only from modern practice. The most opposite opinions have been advanced upon this point. Montesquieu held-and his reasoning was generally accepted through the eighteenth century—that, in England, sovereignty was rightly divided between the legislative, executive, and judicial powers.* In the middle of the nineteenth century, it was argued on the contrary by Bagehot that the essential character of the English Constitution lay in the practical fusion of the Legislative with the Executive. This conclusion has now been enforced, illustrated, and extended by a political philosopher of great learning and acuteness, observing, like Montesquieu, the working of the English Constitution from the outside. Mr. A. Lawrence Lowell is an American, bred in the atmosphere of democratic selfgovernment, and admirably qualified by temper and training to reason accurately on the political facts that come under his notice. Starting from the principles that Bagehot established, rather by shrewd mother-wit than by scientific reflection, he has worked out a theory of the English Constitution which may be said to hinge on the following points:

* Montesquieu says, in so many words, that he derives his universal principles of what is necessary for a constitution which has political liberty for its object solely from observation of the English Constitution. Esprit des Lois, Libre xi. chap. v.

1. It is based upon party and by the law of its nature tends to accentuate party.*

2. The successful working of the party system depends on the unity of the Cabinet-in other words on "a Committee of the party that has a majority in the House of Commons."†

Finally, Mr. Lowell's reasoning has had the good fortune to win the approval of an English philosopher, eminent among his contemporaries and countrymen for his calm and balanced judgments on political affairs, Mr. Albert Dicey, author of The Law of the Constitution. Hence it will be seen that the view of the English Constitution held by Montesquieu is directly opposed to that held by Mr. Bagehot, Mr. Lowell, and Mr. Dicey.

Equally distinct and equally characteristic is the temper of mind in which each of these distinguished observers passes judgment on the merits of the English parliamentary system as a mode of government. Montesquieu, contemplating it from outside, and in a purely purely philosophical mood, regards it as a system approaching perfection as nearly as is possible in human affairs, but says confidently that it will come to an end "when the Legislature becomes more corrupt than the Executive." Bagehot does not profess to write as a philosopher, but looks on the Constitution at work, with an amused and cynical air, as a form of government suitable to the intelligence of his rather stupid countrymen. Mr. Lowell, like Montesquieu, judging the system from without, while admitting that it is as yet "too early to strike a final balance between the merits and defects of the party system in England," § almost invariably eulogises its operation, especially when contrasted with the effects of the American Constitution. Mr. Dicey's attitude towards it is peculiar, and may be described as an inversion of the experience of the prophet Balaam. While, at the outset of his article on the subject in the April number of the Quarterly Review, he bestows an almost unqualified blessing on Mr. Lowell's theoretical reasoning, his own conclusion on the practical working of party government in England more nearly resembles a hearty curse: "It is a system which, as Mr. Lowell shows, has its merits; but political art, however great, will never

* Lowell's Government of England, vol. i. p. 443.

† Ibid. vol. i. p. 54.

Esprit des Lois, Libre xi. chap. v. § The Government of England, vol. i. p. 447.

be able to transform party conflicts, however subtly conducted, into a device for making partisanship perform the functions of patriotism."*

All four observers, beginning with Montesquieu, assume that the machinery of the Constitution, as each understands it, is practically identical with the life of the Constitution itself. Now to the lay mind it appears that this assumption involves a fallacy, which, when fully understood, goes far to explain the contradiction in their views as to the nature of the Constitution, and, while it largely undermines the optimism of Mr. Lowell's reasoning, does something at the same time to relieve the depression created by Mr. Dicey's just but rather despondent account of the evils inherent in the party system. The latter says that Bagehot's reasoning "put an end to the literary theory of the Constitution; it freed the world, in other words, from the doctrine propounded by Montesquieu and popularised with us by Blackstone, that English freedom and English prosperity depended on a subtle, and in truth almost inconceivable, balance and separation of powers, under which the executive authority of the Crown, the legislative authority of the Houses of Parliament, and the judicial authority of the Courts were played off against one another, and somehow secured to each citizen his individual freedom."† Is this the right way of stating the problem? I think not. Montesquieu's view of the effect of the English Constitution, as it existed in his day, seems to me perfectly correct. The Parliamentary system in the eighteenth century was the product of the Civil War of the seventeenth century and the Revolution of 1688, and in it there was a perpetual struggle between the legislative and executive powers, with an occasional intervention on the part of the judiciary, for the exclusive exercise of the prerogative. In a House of Commons elected by a very limited popular franchise, George III., as the legitimated wielder of the powers of the Crown, was always at odds with the Whig aristocracy, the chief representatives of the Parliament which had entrusted the employment of the prerogative to the Hanoverian dynasty. No one was quite certain where the sovereign authority lay; but at any rate, in such a conflict of powers, there was no question that the liberty of the individual was secured according to the principle defined by + Ibid. p. 606.

Quarterly Review for April 1909, p. 627.