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 built up and protected.

When our Constitution was framed responsible party government had not been established in

England. In theory the Constitution of Great Britain recognized three coördinate powers, the King, the Lords, and the Commons. But as a matter of fact the government of England was predominantly aristocratic. The landed interests exerted a controlling influence even in the House of Commons. The rapidly growing importance of capital had not yet seriously impaired the constitutional authority of the landlord class. Land had been until recently the only important form of wealth; and the right to a voice in the management of the government was still an incident of land ownership. Men as such were not entitled to representation. The property-owning classes made the laws and administered them, officered the army and navy, and controlled the policy of the government in every direction.

"According to a table prepared about 1815, the House of Commons contained 471 members who owed their seats to the goodwill and pleasure of 144 Peers and 123 Commoners, 16 government nominees, and only 171 members elected by popular suffrages."1

As the real power behind the government was the aristocracy of wealth, the English system, though nominally one of checks and balances, closely resembled in its practical working an unlimited aristocracy.

1 Ostrogorski, Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties, Vol. I, p. 20.

The framers of our Constitution, as shown in previous chapters, took the English government for their model and sought to establish the supremacy of the well-to-do classes. Like the English conservatives of that time they deplored the existence of political parties and consequently made no provision for them in the system which they established. Indeed, their chief purpose was to prevent the very thing which the responsible political party aimed to establish, viz., majority rule.

"Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed union," wrote Madison in defense of the Constitution, "none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. . . .

"By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.

But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest,

a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes actuated by different sentiments and views. . . .

"If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by a regular vote. It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution. When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens. To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed."

The very existence of political parties would endanger the system which they set up, since in their efforts to strengthen and perpetuate their rule they would inevitably advocate extensions of the suffrage, and thus in the end competition between parties for popular support would be destructive of all those property qualifications for voting and holding office which had up to that 1 Federalist, No. 10.

time excluded the propertyless classes from any participation in public affairs. Hence Washington though a staunch Federalist himself saw nothing inconsistent in trying to blend the extremes of political opinion by giving both Hamilton and Jefferson a place in his Cabinet.

In England the party by the Reform bill of 1832 accomplished its purpose, broke through the barriers erected against it, divested the Crown of all real authority, subordinated the House of Lords, and established the undisputed rule of the majority in the House of Commons. This accomplished, it was inevitable that the rivalry between political parties should result in extensions of the suffrage until the House should come to represent, as it does in practice to-day, the sentiment of the English people.

The framers of the American Constitution, however, succeeded in erecting barriers which democracy has found it more difficult to overcome. For more than a century the constitutional bulwarks which they raised against the rule of the numerical majority have obstructed and retarded the progress of the democratic movement. The force of public sentiment soon compelled, it is true, the adoption of the Twelfth Amendment, which in effect recognized the existence of political parties and made provision for the party candidate for President and Vice-President. At most, however, it merely allowed the party to name the