ng which seems to be generally essential to success in political
life. He might, no doubt, have learnt to be more tolerant of the
necessary compromises and concessions to the feelings engendered by
party government. As it was, he had, during his early life, taken so
little interest in the political movements of the day, and, before he
was dragged for a time into the vortex, had acquired so many
prepossessions against the whole system, that I cannot but think that he
would have found a difficulty in allying himself closely with any party.
He considered the Tories to be not much, if at all, better than the
Radicals; and he would, I fancy, have discovered that both sides had, in
Lowell's phrase, an equal facility for extemporising lifelong
convictions. Upon this, however, I need not dwell. In any case, I think
that the Dundee defeat was a blessing in disguise; for, had he been
elected and found himself enlisted as a supporter of Mr. Gladstone, his
position would have been almost comically inappropriate. A breach would,
doubtless, have followed; and perhaps it would have been an awkward
business to manage the transition with delicacy.

Fitzjames, in fact, discovered at Dundee that he was not really a
'Liberal' in the sense used in modern politics. His 'liberalism,' as the
'Torch' said, meant something radically opposed to the ideas which were
becoming dominant with the party technically called by the name. His
growing recognition of a fact which, it may perhaps be thought, should
have already been sufficiently obvious, greatly influenced his future
career. Meanwhile, he went back to finish his duties as Commissioner at
the assizes, and to reflect upon the lessons which, as he said, he had
learnt at Dundee. He had fresh ideas, he said, as to politics and the
proper mode of treating them. He propounded some of his doctrines in a
couple of lectures upon 'Parliamentary Government,' delivered to the
Edinburgh Philosophical Society in the following November.[167] He
describes some of the familiar consequences; shows how our
administrative system has become an 'aggregate of isolated
institutions'; and how the reduction of the Royal power to a cipher has
led to the substitution of a set of ministers, each a little king in his
own department, and shifted backwards and forwards in obedience to
popular sentiment. One result is the subordination to party purposes of
important interests not essentially connected with them. At the present