und that the existence of this profession and the prescribed methods
of its action are in the long run indispensable to the honest
administration of justice.

The same method of reasoning applies to other great departments of
life. In politics it is especially needed. In free countries party
government is the best if not the only way of conducting public affairs,
but it is impossible to conduct it without a large amount of moral
compromise; without a frequent surrender of private judgment and will. A
good man will choose his party through disinterested motives, and with a
firm and honest conviction that it represents the cast of policy most
beneficial to the country. He will on grave occasions assert his
independence of party, but in the large majority of cases he must act
with his party even if they are pursuing courses in some degree contrary
to his own judgment.

Every one who is actively engaged in politics--every one 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. At the same time,
if he is an honest man, he will not be a mere slave of party. Sometimes
a question arises which he considers so supremely important that he will
break away from his party and endeavour at all hazards to carry or to
defeat it. Much more frequently he will either abstain from voting, or
will vote against the Government on a particular question, but only when
he knows that by taking this course he is simply making a protest which
will produce no serious political complication. On most great measures
there is a dissentient minority in th