Principles of western civilisation

x THE MODERN WORLD-CONFLICT 351

community at the point of the narrowest majority, and yet expect that their successors on acceding to power should not attempt to reverse the law they have made; that they should be, as has sometimes been the case in the United States, divided by a principle scarcely visible to outsiders, and yet proceed to call out all the strength of their adherents on the assumption that the opposing party is in all its proposals the representative of absolute error; that they should, even after the most bitterly contested struggles, accept the result as conclusive for the time being, and with that immediate subsidence of excitement which has been characteristic of the great historic party struggles in the United States ;? nay, that they should in their organs of opinion even go out of their way, as has sometimes happened in England, to regret the lack of organisation or strength in their opponents as being bad for their own side ;—are all matters which appear from time to time to a large class of critics as utterly irreconcilable with standards of right conduct as they prevail elsewhere in our civilisation. They present themselves either, at the best, as bewildering absurdities, or, at the worst, as conclusive evidence of the consistent and organised hypocrisy of the public life of the peoples amongst whom they are found. At first sight, in short, no more illogical, anarchic, or impossible principle of government could be conceived. Yet no more elemental condition of progress has ever existed in the world. It is the first fundamental working principle in public life

1 Cf. The Lesson of Popular Government, by Gamaliel Bradford, vol. i, é. xix. 2 A History of the Presidency, by Edward Stanwood, c. xxxi.