Political Parties and City Government

T WAS the witty and urbane Marquess of Halifax who wrote that the best party is but a kind of conspiracy against the rest of the nation. A century later we find Washington warning his people the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally, and Madison charging faction with the chief if not the whole responsibility for many of our heaviest misfortunes. Yet by the time Madison died, John Cam Hobhouse had coined the phrase Majesty's Opposition, which Lowell regarded as the greatest contribution of the nineteenth century to the art of And less than a year ago the leader of His Majesty's Opposition was so far formally recognized as a responsible public official as to be provided with an annual salary of ?2,000.1 In little more than a century, parties, even opposition parties, have come to be regarded not only as respectable but even as necessary and valuable parts of the machinery of government. The history of modern politics is from many points of view summed up in this change of attitude. But the value of parties is not universally accepted even in modern times. It is unnecessary to repeat here the adverse judgments voiced by a host of students and public men, many of them as cynical as that of Halifax or as alarmist as those of Washington and Madison. But the condemnation of parties has been

Economic history · Government (linguistics · Majesty · Opposition (politics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Value (mathematics · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Canadian Identity and History · History · Law · Philosophy · Political Systems and Governance

• Exit the Boss

  Open Access•Ferdinand A Hermens•The Review of Politics•1940

  Add to list