cal
issue. "It is this apparently unavoidable rupture in the party," he
declares, "which endangers its prospects and presents an opportunity to
the Conservative classes of either seizing or sharing an authority to
which they could not otherwise aspire." If this means that the "Liberal"
and Labour classes are entitled by reason of their numbers to a
perpetual lease of power in both domains, there can be no more dangerous
doctrine. Parties should be decided by questions of progress and
financial policy, and not on class lines; and since the State and
Federal legislatures have separate spheres of action, parties should be
separate also, unless, indeed, they are to be founded on corruption, as
in the United States, where the same two parties control not only
national and State politics, but city government also.

In the consolidation of public opinion into two definite lines of policy
based on the questions to be dealt with lies the only hope, then, of the
progress of the individual States within their own range; and in
promoting this desirable result the reform advocated in these pages
finds its true application.

CHAPTER XI.

THE CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS.

+The Agent of Progress.+--If the analysis made in the preceding pages of
the principles underlying political representation comes to be regarded
as correct, the science of sociology must be profoundly affected: for it
is a fact that not only the importance but the very existence of the
principles involved has been completely missed by speculators in that
field. The view we have taken is that representation is the most
important sociological invention which has been made in the whole
history of the human race; that the successive steps taken in the
evolution of the British Constitution mark a series of inventions
scarcely less important, and that the resulting institution of party and
responsible government is the indispensable agent of democratic
progress. We have traced throughout the electoral and parliamentary
machinery on which the institution is based the action of two great
principles--organization and responsible leadership--and we have shown
that these are the mainsprings of the whole mechanism. Yet we find even
such an authority as Mr. Herbert Spencer objecting to the party system,
on the ground that it lends itself to a one-man or a one-party
tyranny.[9] The fact is that it is only when representative government
is weak, and approaches direct