Political Science Of The State

POLITICAL PARTIES. • 543
gin in disputed successions or in religious contentions. But
here a few leaders do all the active work ; the people follow
their leaders without intelligence and independent judgment.
Parties may be said to be divisible into two classes : the first,
where there is no especial foundation for them in the nature
of the government, and which are due to temporal causes ; the
second, where the nature of the constitution of the state or the
social condition is such, and the intelligence such, that dif-
ferences of opinion are inevitable, owing to the difference of
interests or of political doctrine in a country. Party may
lead to civil strife and revolution, but is far from aiming at
violence in its first formation. The violence is the result of
opposition.
We may exclude from our consideration the court factions
of despotic governments, and indeed all political movements
of the people in despotic governments, which are nothing but
local or temporary acts of resistance to oppression. Nor
would we allow that parties can appear save in a very imper-
fect way in feudal kingdoms, where the combinations of rest-
less nobles appeal to force without using or having a place
where they can use argument. But as soon as estates were
called and deputies represented the leading interest in assem-
blies, whether separately or together, there was room for free
debate ; both in the kingdom and in the barony the estates
might combine together against the suzerain, or form par-
tial unions against one another. Nor could parties appear in
a city democracy of a despotic type, for by the nature of
such a polity it has overcome and destroyed all other classes
in society except the people of the lower class. Here, then,
if strife occurs, it will run into violence, it will be the attempt
of one faction to overthrow another which at the time en-
grosses power. We may say further that there can be no
such thing as party, where men of different minds are ready
to resort to violence, if resisted ; and that party: inipljes a
certain^ sway of reason, an appeal to argument in order to
.a.public end.
Mr. Wachsmuth speaks of the division of the kingdom of