are really opposed to their enactment. It is entirely
within the bounds of possibility that no important measure desired by
the people at large and which would be supported by a majority of the
House, can be passed, since any powerful private interest opposed to
such legislation may be able to have the measure in question quietly
killed in committee or otherwise prevented from coming to a final vote
in the House. But while legislation in the interest of the people
generally may be defeated through the silent but effective opposition of
powerful private interests, many other measures which ought to be
defeated are allowed to pass. A system which makes it possible to defeat
the will of the majority in the House by preventing on the one hand the
enactment of laws which that majority favors, and by permitting on the
other hand the enactment of laws to which it is opposed, certainly does
not allow public opinion to exercise an effective control over the
proceedings of the House.

As a foreign critic observes, "the House has ceased to be a debating
assembly: it is only an instrument for hasty voting on the proposals
which fifty small committees have prepared behind closed doors.... At
the present time it is very much farther from representing the people
than if, instead of going as far as universal suffrage, it had kept to
an infinitely narrower franchise, but had preserved at the same time the
freedom, fullness, and majesty of its debates."[154]

CHAPTER VIII

THE PARTY SYSTEM

The political party is a voluntary association which seeks to enlist a
majority of voters under its banner and thereby gain control of the
government. As the means employed by the majority to make its will
effective, it is irreconcilably opposed to all restraints upon its
authority. Party government in this sense is the outcome of the efforts
of the masses to establish their complete and untrammeled control of the
state.

This is the reason why conservative statesmen of the eighteenth century
regarded the tendency towards party government as the greatest political
evil of the time. Far-sighted men saw clearly that its purpose was
revolutionary; that if accomplished, monarchy and aristocracy would be
shorn of all power; that the checks upon the masses would be swept away
and the popular element made supreme. This would lead inevitably to the
overthrow of the entire system of special privilege which centuries of
class rule had carefully b