or not, is closed, a vote is taken, and a majority adopts that portion of the bill upon which the guillotine has fallen. In recent years this device has been regularly employed when an important Government bill is reserved for consideration in Committee of the Whole. Its advantage is economy of time, and also assurance that by a given date final action upon a measure shall have been taken. Prior to the middle of the nineteenth century liberty of discussion in the Commons was unrestrained, save by what an able authority on English parliamentary practice has termed “the self-imposed parliamentary discipline of the parties." The enormous change that has come about is attributable to two principal causes: congestion of business and the rise of obstructionism. The effect has been, among other things, to accentuate party differences and to involve occasional disregard of the rights of minorities.

Votes and Divisions. When debate upon the whole or a portion of a measure ends a vote is taken. It may or may not involve, technically, a "division." The Speaker or Chairman states the question to be voted on and calls for the ayes and noes. He announces the apparent result and, if his decision is not challenged, the vote is so recorded. If, however, any member objects, strangers are asked to withdraw (save from the places reserved for them), electric bells are rung throughout the building, the two-minute sandglass is turned, and at the expiration of the time the doors are locked. The question is then repeated and another oral vote is taken. If any one still refuses to accept the result as announced, the Speaker orders a division. The ayes pass into the lobby at the Speaker's right and the noes into that at his left, and all are counted by four tellers designated by the Speaker, two from each side, as the members return to their places in the chamber. This method of taking a division has undergone but little change since 1836. Under a standing order of 1888 the Speaker is empowered, in the event that he considers a demand for a division dilatory or irresponsible, to call upon the ayes and noes to rise in their places and be counted; but there is rarely need to resort to this variation from the established practice. "Pairing" is not unknown; and when the question is one of political moment the fact is made obvious by the activity of the party "whips."

Procedure in the House of Lords. The rules of procedure of the House of Lords are in theory simple, and in practice yet more so. Nominally, all measures of importance, after being read twice, are considered in Committee of the Whole, referred to a standing committee for textual revision, reported, and finally adopted or rejected. In practice the process is likely to be abbreviated. Few bills, for example, are actually referred to the revision committee. For the examination of such measures as seem to require it committees are constituted for the session, and others are created from time to time as need of them appears; but the comparative leisure of the chamber permits debate within the Committee of the Whole upon any measure which the members really want to discuss. Willful obstruction is almost unknown, so that there has never been occasion for the adoption of any form of closure. Important questions are decided, as a rule, by a division. When the question is put those members who desire to register an affirmative vote repair to the lobby at the right of the woolsack, those who are opposed to the proposal take their places in the corresponding lobby at the left, and both groups are counted by tellers appointed by the presiding officer. A member may abstain from voting by taking his station on "the steps of the throne," technically considered outside the chamber. Prior to 1868 absent members were allowed to vote by proxy, but this indefensible privilege was abolished by standing order in the year mentioned and is likely never to be revived.

SELECTED REFERENCES

A. L. Lowell, The Government of England (New York, 1909), I, Chaps. xiixvi; S. Low, Governance of England (new ed., New York, 1914), Chaps. iv-v, vii; T. F. Moran, Theory and Practice of the English Government (rev. ed., New York, 1908), Chaps. xiii-xv; E. Jenks, Government of the British Empire (New York, 1918), Chap. vii; C. Ilbert, Parliament (New York, 1911), Chaps. iii, v-vii; W. R. Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution (4th ed., London, 1909-1911), I, Chaps. iii-vi; J. Redlich, Procedure of the House of Commons; a Study of Its History and Present Form, 3 vols. (London, 1908); A. I. Dasent, The Speakers of the House of Commons from the Earliest Times (New York, 1911); M. MacDonaugh, The Book of Parliament (London, 1897); H. Graham, The Mother of Parliaments (London, 1910).

CHAPTER XIV

POLITICAL PARTIES: CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES

I. THE PARTY SYSTEM

Importance and Uses of Party. It may be set down as an axiom that political parties are not only an inevitable but a necessary and proper adjunct of any scheme of popular government. The moment the people set about deciding upon public policy, or electing representatives to formulate and execute such policy, differences of view appear; and out of these differences of view political parties arise. There is, of course, hardly anything that has been more abused than party organization and spirit. Party principles, party programs, party committees and managers, party treasuries, party propaganda all have been brought into a certain disrepute; so that, as a writer has wittily remarked, while men may be willing to die for party, they seldom praise it.1 None the less, political parties afford perhaps a clearer index than anything else of the political capacity and advancement of a nation. "The most gifted and freest nations politically are those that have the most sharply defined parties. . . . Wherever political parties are non-existent, one finds either a passive indifference to all public concerns, born of ignorance and incapacity, or else one finds the presence of a tyrannical and despotic form of government, suppressing the common manifestations of opinion and aspiration on the part of the people. Organized, drilled, and disciplined parties are the only means we have yet discovered by which to secure responsible government, and thus to execute the will of the people."

2

The uses of political parties in a democracy are fivefold. First, they enable men who think alike on public questions to unite

1 Low, Governance of England (new ed.), 119.

2 Ray, Introduction to Political Parties and Practical Politics, 9–10.

in support of a common body of principles and policies and to work together to bring these principles and policies into actual application. Second, they afford a useful, if not indispensable, means by which men who have the same objects in view may agree in advance upon the candidates whom they will support for office, and recommend them to the general electorate. Third, parties educate and organize public opinion and stimulate public interest, by keeping the public informed upon the issues of the day through the press, platform, and other party agencies. Fourth, they furnish a certain social and political cement by which the more or less independent and scattered parts of the government (in so far as they are under the control of a single party) are bound together in an effective working mechanism. Fifth, the party system insures that the government at any given time will be subject to steady and organized criticism whose effect will usually be wholesome.

Government by Party in England. In these and other ways parties contribute greatly to the carrying on of government in all democratic nations. Nowhere, however, does "government by party " prevail in the same degree as in England. To understand why this is so it is necessary merely to bring together certain facts, some of which are already familiar. The most important single feature of the English government as it now operates is the cabinet system; and the essentials of this system include (1) the appointment of the ministers from the party which at the given time controls the House of Commons, and (2) the retirement of these ministers whenever they cease to have the support of a parliamentary majority. This system arose out of the warfare of parties; it is inconceivable that it should ever have arisen without parties and party conflict. It is not, however, a matter merely of historical origins; parties are indispensable to the successful operation, and even to the continuance, of the system. The only kind of majority that has sufficient coherence and stability to make it dependable is a majority held together by the powerful ties of party. In the absence of parties the situation would be either that ministries would rise and fall with lightning rapidity because no organized force would be interested in keeping them in power, or that they would go on ruling indefinitely after they had got entirely out of

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harmony with the popular chamber. There would be no point to the retirement of a ministry, did not an opposing party stand ready to set up a ministry of a different sort and assume full power and responsibility.

are

The cabinet system and the party system are, therefore, intimately bound up together; indeed, they are but different aspects of the same working arrangement. In the United States parties stand outside the formal governmental system; until within recent decades their activities were not even subject to regulation by law. Many of the great party leaders and managers for example, the chairmen of the national committees are not public officials at all, and platforms are made by conventions whose members are usually drawn mainly from private life. In England, however, party works inside rather than outside the governmental system; the machinery of party and the machinery of government are one and the same thing. The ministers at all events those who sit in the cabinet at the same time the working executive, the leaders in legislation, and the chiefs of the party in power. The majority in the House of Commons, which legislates, appropriates money, supervises and controls administration, and upholds the ministers as long as it is able, is for all practical purposes the party itself; while over against the ministry and its parliamentary majority stands the Opposition, consisting of influential exponents of the contrary political faith, who, in turn, lead the rank and file of their party organization, and are ready to take the helm whenever their rivals fall out of favor in the popular chamber. Two-Party Organization. Not only is it true that a responsible ministry involves government by party; in order to work smoothly such a ministerial system requires the existence of two great parties and no more each, in the words of Bryce, "strong enough to restrain the violence of the other, yet one of them steadily preponderant in any given House of Commons." 1 Considerations of unity and responsibility demand that the party in power shall be strong enough to govern alone, or substantially so. Similarly, when it goes out of power, a party of at least equal strength ought to come in. Obviously, this must mean two great parties, practically dividing the electorate

1 American Commonwealth, I, 287.