e authority of the
Church, but with its nakedness not concealed by a mystic doctrine.
Nothing is more easy to demolish by the bare logical reason. But Burke
cared nothing about the bare logical reason, until it had been
clothed in convenience and custom, in the affections on one side, and
experience on the other. Not content with insisting that for some
special purpose of the hour, "when bad men combine, the good must
associate," he contended boldly for the merits of fidelity to party
combination in itself. Although Burke wrote these strong pages as a
reply to Bolingbroke, who had denounced party as an evil, they remain
as the best general apology that has ever been offered for that
principle of public action, against more philosophic attacks than
Bolingbroke's. Burke admitted that when he saw a man acting a
desultory and disconnected part in public life with detriment to his
fortune, he was ready to believe such a man to be in earnest, though
not ready to believe him to be right. In any case he lamented to
see rare and valuable qualities squandered away without any public
utility. He admitted, moreover, on the other hand, that people
frequently acquired in party confederacies a narrow, bigoted, and
proscriptive spirit. "But where duty renders a critical situation
a necessary one, it is our business to keep free from the evils
attendant upon it, and not to fly from the situation itself. It is
surely no very rational account of a man that he has always acted
right, but has taken special care to act in such a manner that his
endeavours could not possibly be productive of any consequence....
When men are not acquainted with each other's, principles, nor
experienced in each other's talents, nor at all practised in their
mutual habitudes and dispositions by joint efforts of business; no
personal confidence, no friendship, no common interest subsisting
among them; it is evidently impossible that they can act a public part
with uniformity, perseverance, or efficacy."

In terms of eloquent eulogy he praised the sacred reverence with which
the Romans used to regard the _necessitudo sortis_, or the relations
that grew up between men who had only held office together by the
casual fortune of the lot. He pointed out to emulation the Whig
junto who held so close together in the reign of Anne--Sunderland,
Godolphin, Somers, and Marlborough--who believed "that no men could
act with effect who did not act in concert; that no men could