Political Economy

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Political Parties are regular and standing organizations of voters found today in all countries where the government is not an absolute despotism. In all free countries, like the United States, England, or France, these organizations play so large a part that we speak properly of the government as "carried on by parties." This, however, is a very modern condition. If we pass by the irregular factional strife of the old Roman and Greek cities and of the medieval Italian cities (which resembled civil war rather than party government), then we may say that the history of party organization begins in England in the seventeenth century. But government by these organizations in England does not appear in the full sense of the phrase until about 1830,--some forty years after that system had arisen in the United States.

James I ascended the English throne in 1603. Almost immediately there began a struggle in Parliament between the advocates of greater popular liberty (known sometimes as the Country party) and the adherents of the monarch (or the Court party). This struggle lasted forty years before it merged into the great civil war between Parliament and king that resulted in the Commonwealth of 1649-1660. The division, however, did not result at any time during all that period in definite organizations with specific platforms. It was vague, changing, irregular. Almost at the close of the period, it is true, something more promised for a moment. In 1642, in the third year of the Long Parliament, Pym and the radical members of the Country party, after a long and bitter all-night debate, carried the famous "Pym Remonstrance,"--which was really an appeal to the country to support them in a definite program for taking from the king certain of his old powers. Upon this issue England might easily have divided into two true parties; but civil war came instead. The contest became one of armies, not parties; and party organization was postponed nearly forty years more. After the Restoration, in the latter part of the reign of Charles II, the more radical members of Parliament tried to pass a bill to exclude from the succession to the throne the king's brother and nearest heir, James, Duke of York. The contest raged in Parliament for many months, and spread over the whole country. The adherents of the bill were known as "Exclusionists," and monster petitions were sent up by their sympathizers in all parts of England to support their program. These "Petitioners," or "Exclusionists," were necessarily somewhat radical in political thought, since their program was in itself a denial of the divine right theory of kingship. The Catholics and conservative political factions sent up counter petitions expressing their "horror" at the proposal. These people became known as "Abhorrers."

This division marks the beginning of continuous party organization in England. The radical petitioners were called Whigs (whey-eaters) by their enemies, after a term that had been applied disrespectfully to the extreme Scotch Calvinists. The conservative "Abhorrers" were called "Tories" (bog-trotters), after a contumelious name applied to the Irish rebels (since that element now supported the royal and Catholic policy). These names were soon adopted as titles of honor, and they continued in general use for a hundred and fifty years, before they were replaced by the more aptly descriptive names, "Liberals" and "Conservatives," by which the leading English parties are still known. Until about the time of this change of name, however,--that is, until about 1830,--the parties on the whole were used by the government (by the king or by his ministers) to make the political machinery run smoothly. But after the Parliamentary Reform Bill of 1832, the House of Commons became clearly the real sovereign in England, and since that time the government has been "carried on by parties."

The original division in the times of Charles II, had not been wholly determined by inclination to royal or to parliamentary government. Religious connection had obscured this fundamental distinction to some degree. Nearly all Catholics, however liberal in other matters, "abhorred" the exclusion of the Catholic heir; and nearly all Scotch Presbyterians and English dissenters, however conservative on other questions, petitioned for that exclusion. Once organized, the make-up of each party continued largely a matter of tradition and inheritance. The great families who led the fight against the Duke of York and against James II, continued to dominate "Whig" politics for generations, although they were really no more liberal than the general run of their Tory opponents.

Such complications and obscurations of fundamental principles make the great weakness of party government. The more nearly party divisions correspond to real distinctions in the human mind and character, the more wholesome party government will be. On the whole, with all these original drawbacks, and with many later ones, the division in England has corresponded to such fundamental differences in human character, more nearly perhaps, than has been the case in any other country.

These distinctions in human character and the political divisions based upon them are admirably stated in a famous passage (condensed below) by the historian Lecky:

One man has more caution; another more confidence. One looks with reverence upon the past; the other sees brilliant vistas in the future. One perceives most clearly the advantages of existing institutions and the possible dangers of change; while the other sees most keenly the defects of existing institutions and the possible additions to well-being. In all large bodies of men these differences find expression in party divisions. The one side rests chiefly on the great truth that one of the first conditions of good government is essential stability, and on the danger of perpetually tampering with the main pillars of the state. The other side rests chiefly upon the no less certain truth that a government is organic, capable of growing, expanding, and adapting itself to new conditions of society. The one side represents the static, the other the dynamic element in politics. Each can claim a natural affinity to some of the highest qualities of character; and each owes quite as much of its strength to mental and moral disease. Stupidity is naturally Tory. Folly is naturally Liberal. The large classes blindly wedded to routine and simply incapable of understanding new ideas or the exigencies of changed conditions, find their place in the Tory ranks. To the Liberals belongs the cast of mind, which, without sense of the infinite complexity of political problems or of the part which habit and tradition play in every healthy political organism is ready, with light heart and reckless hand, to recast the whole structure of the Constitution in the interest of experiment.

In tone somewhat similar to this closing thought of Lecky's, Colonel Higginson writes of the division into parties in our country in Washington's day: "Some men became Federalists because they were high-minded, and some because they were narrow-minded; while the more far-seeing and also the less scrupulous became Republicans." In other words, when the young man chooses his party, he must expect it to have "the defects of its virtues," and not be repelled unduly by the manifestations of those defects.

In the United States, real political parties appear toward the close of Washington's first administration, about 1793. The earlier divisions in individual colonies between class and class or between proprietary interests and popular interests had not been true parties. The discussions over parliamentary taxation between 1765 and 1775 promised a division into national parties, but the embryo organizations were lost in the war for independence. After that struggle was over, in some individual states there were temporary divisions over such questions as paper money, but the lines of division had no permanence. In the convention at Philadelphia, which framed our Constitution there seems to have been absolutely no suspicion on the part of anyone that the government then devised was to be run by parties. The debates refer in great detail and with incessant repetition to the desirability of all sorts of checks and balances; but the real balance (between parties) which was to mark the new instrument of government was never even suggested. It is one of the marvels of history that a plan of government should have worked so well with a motive force wholly unthought of by the designers,--somewhat as if an engine designed for steam had been found to run better by electricity. The Fathers, so far as they dreamed at all of the possibility of regular party organization, feared and abhorred it. John Adams wrote in 1790: "There is nothing I dread so much as a division of the Republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our constitution." Indeed, up to that time, Burke in England was the only thinker who had even dimly foreseen and tried to state the function of parties, and he had been railed at for his insight.

When the Philadelphia Convention adjourned, national parties did appear for the adoption or rejection of the proposed constitution. But the division between Federalists and Anti-Federalists disappeared with the ratification of that instrument, and no American thinker seems to have suspected a revival of such parties as regular organizations.

When Washington became president there were no parties; but there were certain divergent interests and sympathies in American society which were soon to give rise to parties. The commercial interests (strongest in New England) wished close relations with our best customer, England. Consequently, the commercial classes inclined toward the aristocratic and conservative principles then popular in England, and took strong ground against the radical democracy of revolutionary France with which England was at war. Moreover, in order that the government might make advantageous commercial treaties and effectively protect commerce, this same group of interests was favorable to assumption of all doubtful powers by the central government,--that is, to a "loose construction" of the Constitution.

These aristocratic, commercial, loose-constructionist elements found themselves in possession of the government, and called themselves Federalists,--after the party which had established that government. In opposition to this party Jefferson succeeded in organizing the democratic agricultural interests, fearful of a strong central government and inclined therefore to a "strict construction" of the Constitution. This new party first appears in 1792. It had no name at first, and, being in opposition to the Federalists, it is sometimes called Anti-Federalist; but there is no connection in organization, make-up, or principle, between the new opposition party and the Anti-Federalists of 1787-88, and the name is an unfortunate misnomer. Jefferson from the first called the new party "Republican," and by that name it soon came to be known. Fairly continuous party organization in America dates from these divisions of 1792-1793 (for the brief "era of good feeling" can hardly be said to invalidate this statement). It was only by slow degrees, however, that even Jefferson recognized that such divisions as he had helped to create were to be permanent.

Jefferson seems to have believed that his opponents (Hamilton and Adams) wished a monarchy. He makes the statement frequently, and, many years later, referring to this original party division, he says: "The contests of that day were contests of principle between the adherents of republican and of kingly government." Allowing for much error and exaggeration in such statements, it remains true that the party division of that early period was more nearly the wholesome one between conservatives and radicals than has been the case at any subsequent time in our history. This natural division has been unhappily confused in our political development by sectional prejudices and by questions peculiar to our federal form of government. In the early years of the twentieth century it is clear that each of the American leading parties has its conservative and its liberal wing; and social reform is unquestionably delayed in the absence of a new alignment that shall bring the two conservative groups into one body and the two radical groups into one party. When this rearrangement occurs, our divisions on state and municipal issues will practically coincide with our divisions upon most national issues, and much of the talk about the evil of party government in these smaller units will disappear. In large measure it seems probable the evil of party government in our municipalities comes merely from the fact that our present traditional and illogical parties do not fit the issues of the city or state.

The countries of continental Europe west of Russia all adopted some measure of popular government during the nineteenth century, and party organizations at once appeared in every case. In none of these large continental states, however, did the organization go so far or attain so much importance as in England and the United States,--until toward the close of that century. In most such countries party government is still hampered, partly by the surviving monarchic power and partly by a multiplicity of parties,--as in Germany with its twelve or more "parties," some based on religious distinctions, some on local or race issues. A study of such conditions makes it clear that party government, if it is to be effective, presupposes a division into two main parties. "Third Parties" are of use only as a temporary protest or as a step toward a realignment of the old organizations.

Under a system of party government, the balance of power is really held by the intelligent independent voters who are willing to pass from one party to another for good reason. Sometimes this class brings about a change of party; and, more often, fear of losing the vote compels the party managers to modify an otherwise arbitrary policy. Party organization ought to be a means toward good government. Whenever it becomes an end in itself, it becomes an evil. It is proper to observe, too, that the growing movement toward direct legislation promises to reduce greatly the importance of standing party organization.--WILLIS MASON WEST, University of Minnesota.