never been able to discover what was the proper moment, according
to members of Parliament, for a dissolution. He had heard them say they
were ready to vote for everything else, but he had never heard them say
they were ready to vote for that." Efficiency in an assembly requires a
solid mass of steady votes; and these are COLLECTED by a deferential
attachment to particular men, or by a belief in the principles those
men represent, and they are MAINTAINED by fear of those men--by the
fear that if you vote against them, you may yourself soon not have a
vote at all.

Thirdly, it may seem odd to say so, just after inculcating that party
organisation is the vital principle of representative government, but
that organisation is permanently efficient, because it is not composed
of warm partisans. The body is eager, but the atoms are cool. If it
were otherwise, Parliamentary government would become the worst of
governments--a sectarian government. The party in power would go all
the lengths their orators proposed--all that their formulae enjoined,
as far as they had ever said they would go. But the partisans of the
English Parliament are not of such a temper. They are Whigs, or
Radicals, or Tories, but they are much else too. They are common
Englishmen, and, as Father Newman complains, "hard to be worked up to
the dogmatic level". They are not eager to press the tenets of their
party to impossible conclusions. On the contrary, the way to lead
them--the best and acknowledged way--is to affect a studied and
illogical moderation. You may hear men say, "Without committing myself
to the tenet that 3 + 2 make 5, though I am free to admit that the
honourable member for Bradford has advanced very grave arguments in
behalf of it, I think I may, with the permission of the Committee,
assume that 2 + 3 do not make 4, which will be a sufficient basis for
the important propositions which I shall venture to submit on the
present occasion." This language is very suitable to the greater part
of the House of Commons. Most men of business love a sort of twilight.
They have lived all their lives in an atmosphere of probabilities and
of doubt, where nothing is very clear, where there are some chances for
many events, where there is much to be said for several courses, where
nevertheless one course must be determinedly chosen and fixedly adhered
to. They like to hear arguments suited to this intellectual haze. So
far from caution or hesitation in t