Starting in Reason, Ending in Passion. Bryce, Lowell, Ostrogorski and the Problem of
Democracy
Author(s): Paolo Pombeni
Reviewed work(s):
Source: The Historical Journal, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Jun., 1994), pp. 319-341
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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pp. 3I9-34I
The HistoricalJ7ournal,
37, 2 (I994),
Copyright (C)I994 Cambridge University Press
STARTING IN REASON, ENDING IN
PASSION. BRYCE, LOWELL,
AND THE PROBLEM OF
OSTROGORSKI
DEMOCRACY*
PAOLO POMBENI
This essaydealswiththeproblemof therootsof Ostrogorski's
well-knownapproach
to theproblemof politicalparties,showingthat: (i) Ostrogorski's
is highlydependent
on
approach
thenineteenth-century
debateamongtheEnglishintelligentsia
abouta supposed'Americanmodel';
(2) James Brycewas at thecentreof an intellectual
networkassumingthat'modern
politics'could
becomethesubjectof a sortof 'scientificapproachtopolitics' moreup to datethanthe traditional
on Tocqueville's
onedepending
Bryce'sexpectation
school; (3) Ostrogorski
betrayed
of a balanced
onthetransformation
research
onan old-fashioned
liberal
of modern
politicsbecauseof his dependence
mind (as evidentfrom his correspondence)
; (4) this cleavagebetweenthe two interpretations
of
politicaldevelopment
was perceivedand led to a certaindiscussionamongEnglishand American
politicalscholars(andin thisframeworkLowell'scontribution
is peculiarlyworthyof attention).
A B ST R AC T.
Between July and October I905 The QuarterlyReview published a two-part
essay with the title: 'The study of popular government'.' The essay was
unsigned, as was customary for the Quarterly,and was opened by a quite long
list of I3 books (4 French, 3 English, 3 American, i German and i Italian,
with the addition of Ostrogorski's book, whose intellectual nationality is hard
to state). It was something very different from a review of the current political
literature on democracy; it was much more a large discussion of what the
author considered the central theme for political scientists and ended with
virtually an academic manifesto on the methodology of a new discipline, 'the
study of free governments, by far the most interesting branch and also the most
difficult of political science'.
The author of these essays (more than two were planned, but, despite the
usual words at the end of the second essay, 'to be continued', no more were
published) is James Bryce. No difficulty exists in this attribution, because
many works on Bryce list these articles,2 but apparently they have drawn no
* The author thanks ProfessorJohn Burrow for help in converting his barbaric English into a
more acceptable language.
1 'The study of popular government', Quarterly Review (I905), pp. I 70-9I,
387-4I0.
2 See now the list of Bryce publications in appendix to H. Tulloch, james Bryce'sAmerican
commonwealth. The Anglo-American background (London, The Royal Historical Society, I988). The
319
320
PAOLO
POMBENI
particular attention in the literature on Bryce, including the recent work by
Hugh Tulloch.
In my opinion this contribution is worth more attention, and not simply
because of its authorship, Bryce being at that time a recognized authority in
the fields of political science and political history. I am not concerned here
with the Bryce of the AmericanCommonwealth(first published i 888, but with two
important new editions in I889 and - completely revised - in I893-5), which
became a classic and highly prized all over the world.3 More relevant here is
to recall that Bryce was a member, perhaps the most important, of that group
of enlightened liberals engaged in the intellectual debate over the I867
Reform Act and going on to their strange encounter with 'democracy'.4
Between the 'plea for democracy' in the sixties, dominated by a
Tocquevillean view of the unavoidable decline of the respectable society
(welcomed by the intellectuals who dreamed of a society open to the
concurrence of intelligence), and the 'fear for democracy' which was the main
intellectual current not only of the eighties, but also of the turn of the century,
we can find a large amount of material to explain this quite obscure transition:
certainly facts and concrete experiences (the best known of which is the
disillusion with the supposed link between the middle class and moderately
radical liberalism) were important, but so were ideas and the lack of a proper
theory of democracy, which weakened British (but, much more, European)
liberalism in confronting the politics of mass society.5
My principal aim in this essay is to analyse this lack of theory, which
depended on a particular mentality, seen at a particular moment in the work
of a man who was well qualified to be the main character in such an analysis.
Bryce was a very complex figure: liberal in that liberal Oxford which formed
his political mind between the rise of various continental movements for
national independence and the struggle for a new franchise in Britain ;6
authorship is also confirmed by the reference to these essays made by A. L. Lowell in his letters
to Bryce quoted below.
3 For the British and American fortunes of Bryce see Tulloch,
Anierican commonweealth,
and also
E. Ions, James Bryce and Amnerican
democracy(Londoni, I968); for European fortunies, see the French
translation used also in Italy until a very late abridged translation by A. Brunialti in I9I3, and
the German attention, testified to, among others, by Max Weber: see L. A. Scaff, 'Max Weber
and Robert Michels', in AniericaniJournal of Sociology, LXXXIX (198I).
4 See C. Harvie,
The lights of liberalism, utniversityliberals and the challenigeof democracyi86o-86
(London, 1976), pp. I I6-40.
to democracy (especially in reference to political parties) is
5 The problem of'the approaches
dealt with in my Introduzione alla storia dei partiti politici (Bologna, I990),
where more complete
reference to other essays can be found; a summary is now available in 'Les pratiques de la
democratie' in Une histoire de la de'mocratieen Ewrope, ed. by A. De Baecque (Paris, i99i),
pp.
30-41.
Even Bryce shared the view that there was a certain lack of theory on democracy, as he
occasionally noted writing to Lowell 22 Nov. I9I6 (during the work for AModerndemocracies):
Bodleian Library Oxford, Bryce Papers, American Correspondents, vol. 23, fo. 63.
6 In addition, to the already quoted works of Ions and Tulloch, the 'Victorian biography' of
H. A. L. Fisher, James Bryce (2 vols., London, 1927) has to be quoted: 'To learn Italian from
THE
PROBLEM
OF
DEMOCRACY
321
scientist in the Oxford of the comparative method which he derived from his
master Freeman, which became a general basis for the humanities, and
especially for the history of institutions;' jurist at the moment of the great
European debate on constitutional doctrine between the classical English
approach (epitomized by Dicey, one of Bryce's closest friends) and the newly
established German hegemony based on the formalization of public law (i.e.
no longer related to public opinion).8
In addition to all this, Bryce was also a formidable organizer of public
opinion, not in the sense of a modern demagogue (he and his friends hated
such men), but in the sense of a maitre a'penser with a certain disposition to
instigate the indirect support for his theses through the work of other
intellectuals (it is too much to say pupils, because no one, as far as I know, was
directly an academic pupil of Bryce).
After Tocqueville Bryce was the chief discover of the new American model
of democracy: a mass democracy with a general franchise, a vast land and an
uncultivated people risen to political citizenship. In this discovery he found a
central, ambiguous, but unavoidable role for political parties. This raised the
problem of the suitability of this stage of political development for advanced
Europe (which is to say for England).9 Astonishingly, he refused to perform
this task directly and, on the assumption that the best place to observe a
political system was from outside (as he assumed he did with America),
sponsored two very different men, a Russian refugee coming from Paris with
the ambition to complete Bryce's work on the side of political parties (Moisei
Ostrogorski),10 and a well-born American political scientist (A. L. Lowell)
Aurelio Saffi, the poetic exile, became part of the iitual of cultured Liberalism in Oxford anid an
initiation into the spirit of the Risorgimento. Bryce went further in his Italian enthusiasm and was
only deterred from joining Garibaldi as a volunteer by learning from his tutor that military service
in a foreign country would be regarded as incompatible with a Trinity scholarship' (p. 5 I) . See
also on Bryce and Essays on reform, pp. I I0-I2.
7 There are, of course, many versions of this point: in addition to the works already mentionied,
see S. Collini, D. Winch, J. Burrow, That noble scienceof politics. A study in nineteenth-centuryintellectual
history (Cambridge, I983) pp. 209-46.
8 This seems to me a less explored field; it is however important with relation to the declining
fortunes in the European political thought of the English constitutional model: a crucial point that
Bryce missed in his late study of democracy. On the other hand something of this problein also
started to affect the English counterpart, e.g. the reference of Dicey to the French Droit adininistratif
in his Introduction to the study of the law of the constitution (London, i885); no reference is made,
however, even in the last I9 I 5 edition, to the German doctrine of public law which so powerfully
developed a 'theory' of public law parallel to that of civil law.
9 This general approach is largely present in his The AmericaniCommonwealth(I use the third
where there is a specific chapter on 'How far
'completely revised' edition (London, I893-5),
American experience is available for Europe' (pp. 607-I4).
10 Ostrogorski's story has been very little known until now; even the essay of R. Barker and X.
Haward-Johnston, 'The politics and political ideas of Moisei Ostrogorski', Political Studies, xxiii
(I974),
4I5-29,
which gives some fresh material, is not very precise on many points. Now the
introduction which Gaetano Quagliariello has written to the first Italian translation of
Ostrogorski's book tells the whole story of Ostrogorski's enterprise from his stage at the Ecole libre
des sciencespolitiques in Paris to the publication of his Democracy and the organisation of political parties
322
PAOLO
POMBENI
who, having written on the European political parties and their differences
from the Anglo-Saxon system,11 seemed now the natural candidate to write for
England the counterpart of the American Commonwealth.
Democracy, and to be more exact party-based democracy,12 was the subject
of this scientific inquiry into the new law of the constitution. Science, i.e.
impartial and non-political study, was seen as essential, even if the aspiration
had to be eventually dismissed when the scientific explorers realized that 'the
inductive method, the method of natural sciences', even when applied with all
possible caveats, ended in a duty to accept the experimental result as it was,
which did not much satisfy their own political inclinations. Bryce's life,
academically and literally, ended in I922 with the publication of his work on
Modern democracies,the attempt of a man in his eighties to systematize the
question of democracy as the central question for twentieth-century
constitutions, and there once more he avoided direct confrontation with
Britain as a problem.13
To come back to the essays we started with, they are at a chronological keypoint: they came after the waning of the big quarrel over the Birmingham
caucus, when everybody (except Ostrogorski) had realized how little the
English institutions were Americanized,14 and just when the emergence of the
Labour party would confront liberalism with a new form of political
allegiance, that he feared as class-based, which was intended as the enemy of
the unity of politics.15
Lowell, at that time already in close contact with Bryce, regarded the two
essays with the highest interest and wrote to his friend and master two letters,
See G. Quagliariello, 'Ostrogorski, gli anni di fine secolo e l'avvento della macchina
(I902).
politica', the introduction to M. Ostrogorski, Democrazia e partiti politici (Milano, I99I) pp. 5-96.
dellapoliticatra '800
e l'organizzazione
See also G. Quagliariello, La politicasenzai partiti. Ostrogorski
e 'goo (Bari, I993).
" A. L. Lowell, Governments
and parties in continentalEurope (London, I896). For Lowell's
biography, H. A. Yeomans, AbbotLawrenceLowelli856-i943 (Cambridge (Mass.), I948).
12 It was Bryce himself who pointed out this vital connection between democracy and partybased modern politics, which also marks the difference between ancient and modern democracy.
Review
See for instance, 'Political organizations in the United States and England', NorthAmerican
I893 Uanuary), pp. I05-i8 (but this opinion is repeated many times, in his works as well as in
(2 vols. London, 192I).
13 J. Bryce, Moderndemocracies
his letters).
written in
14 To realize this point it is enough to read the already quoted Politicalorganizations:
July I892 (p. io6) it gives a nearly idyllic picture of the English party system, explicitly rejecting
the idea that NLF may be similar to the American system: 'No conception could be more
absolutely wide of the truth' (p. I I 7).
15 This was combined with a new taste of an anti-Chamberlainian mood: see the
correspondencebetween Bryce and Goldwin Smith, I 905-6 (Bryce MSS, English Correspondents,
vol. I7). But along with the distaste for the 'ignorant demagogue', we find that on 23 Dec. 1905
Bryce saw in 'the rise of a so called "Labour Party", whose most active spirits are practically
Socialists... the most ominous cloud on our horizon' (fo. I93). A more relaxed approach, where
Labour is seen as a possible balance between the old parties as in Australia (of course composed
of 'a certain number of rather ignorant and rather irresponsible persons') is in another letter of
i 6 June I 906 (fo. I 94) .
THE
PROBLEM
OF DEMOCRACY
323
one dated 27 August I905, the second io December I905 (also immediately
after the articles were published), with comments worth quoting.16 In the first
he wrote:
I was struck by the keenness of some of your generalizations such as: that the persons
who like change come from those members of the educated class who have more
intelligence than prosperity; the way that traditions are destroyed; and the
motive power of the party.
Here however a comment occurred to me. Surely it is in the development and
functions of party, more than anything else, that the modern democracy differs from
that of ancient or medieval times. Formerly a party - according to Burke - was a body
of men united by a common sentiment or the desire to bring about a public policy. But
now - I fancy on account of the enormous size of modern democracies - parties seem
to be a necessary machinery for formulating public questions, or obtaining a popular
decision upon them. Formerly the issue made the parties; now the parties make the
issues and when those issues have passed away the parties show no sign of dying out.
An era of good feeling or a ministry of all the talents, would hardly be possible today.
Political parties and democracy: the core of the political problem is always
the same. When, aged 30, Bryce began his political writing in i868 in the
collection, Essays on reform (edited by another master of intellectual Oxford,
George Brodrick), the subject he was assigned was that of the historical aspects
of democracy.17 In the context of the intellectual struggle for the second reform
bill it was quite a crucial matter: nearly all the opponents of the reform drew
their arguments at least partly from history. The pupil of Freeman seemed
very suitable to counter this naive use of history, redeeming it as materials for
political science.18 Typically Bryce's essay opened with a quotation from
Tocqueville (labelled 'the founder of modern political science'), - his famous
call for une science politique nouvellepour un monde nouveau, which is also the
epigraph of Ostrogorski's book. The argument is developed as a rejection of
any kind of study of American democracy and so of modern democracy in
16
Bryce papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford. The second letter (io Dec. 1905) is in the American
Correspondentssection, VIII,30-3; the first (27 Aug. I905) was kindly supplied to me by the staff
of the Bodleian Library (especially Mr Colin Harris of the Modern Manuscripts section) as not
yet catalogued material during two visits in I988 and I989 when I was inquiring about the
relations between Bryce and Ostrogorski and the reaction to Ostrogorski's book among Bryce's
correspondents.
17 Intellectually Bryce was already established: his book The Holy RomanlEmpire (I864)
had a
second edition at that time. Also the initiative for the book of collected essays on Reform (London,
I867) seems to have been, according to C. Harvie, Thelightsof liberalism,in large part an initiative
of Bryce, with a very marginal participation by Brodrick (see pp. I29-40).
In his Memoriesand
impressions
(London, I900) George Brodrick seems to forget all this when he says he is proud to
have undertaken 'the arduous task of replying to them [the speeches of Robert Lowe]' without
any mention of Bryce (see pp. 222-4).
18 The relationship between history and politics is a crucial topic in this landscape: many
materials for this debate in J. Burrow, S. Collini and D. Winch, Thatnioblescienceofpolitics;I have
dealt with this subject in my 'La storia come scienza della politica. A proposito della forma
partito', in II partito politico nella Belle Epoque. n dibattito suillaforma partitofia '8oo e 'goo, ed. by G.
Quagliariello
(Milano, Giuffre
I990),
pp. 6I-84.
324
PAOLO
POMBENI
general as dependent on the models of the ancient republics, Athens and
Rome, because 'a political system or form of government by itself is nothing,
and acquires a meaning only when it is regarded as the result and efflux of
national life'."9 The misuse of history brought the enemies of the enlarged
franchise to a dead end. Stressing that 'there is nothing so misleading as an
historical analogy', the student brought up on the comparative method
denounced the unreasonable conclusions of his opponents: 'They have
gathered together all the vices of democratic governments in all ages - the
instability of Athens, the corruption of Rome, the ferocity of the French
revolution, the lobbyists, caucuses and wire pullers of America; and out of
these, all combined in one, they have constructed a monster, like the
Chimaera of the Iliad, terrible in every part.'
In this i868 collection of essays another contribution was also published: it
came from Goldwin Smith, the former regius professor of history at Oxford,
who wrote directly on American democracy with some sense of stress which
makes us aware of a crisis in the liberal tradition. Smith also had his place
among the masters of Bryce and of a whole generation of Oxonian
intellectuals :20 a liberal-radical, charged with atheism, who had propagandized for the North during the American civil war (when in England sympathy
for the South was common).21 But in this essay the traditional theme of the
naturalness of democracy in a country where neither feudality nor historical
stratification into classes had existed was combined with a complaint about
demagogy, the new threat facing the United States.
Demagogism ... is no doubt a great curse of America. We have noticed some special
circumstance, quiteseparable
from theessenceof Democracy,22
by which it is aggravated; the
payment of the representatives and the absence in a new country of that settled
superiority by which in old countries (in France for example) candidates are designed,
and for want of which needy or ambitious adventurers have to clear the field.
Here we find a true root of Bryce's thought: on the one hand he will decide
to go beyond the comparative method as a methodology dedicated to collating
ancient and modern institutions on the basis of an essentially evolutionary
idea.23 He will promote instead the idea of comparison as the confrontation of
19 See J. Bryce, The historicalaspectsof democracy,
in EssaysoniReform,pp. 239-45.
20 On 22 March I9IO Bryce wrote to G. Smith: 'It is now fifty years since I first went to you,
alone and diffident, in the hall of University and received from you niy earliest lessons in the study
of English history: and ever since then not only your words and counsels but also your attitude
in all public affairs have been a powerful and inspiring influence to me as to many others in
Oxford and all over England' (Bryce MSS, English Correspondents,vol. I 7, fo. 207). An opinion
shared by Dicey, who on I9 March I9IO wrote to Bryce a long letter exalting the former Oxford
professor: 'In regard to talent I have for many years placed him among the greatest - I suspect
he may be nearly the last - of the long line of Pamphleteers of whom in my judgment ... the
greatest was Burke' (ibid. vol. 3, fo. 78).
21 See E. Wallace,GoldwinSmith, Victorian
22 Italicsmine.
Liberal(Toronto,I957).
23 The obvious reference for the general frameworkof this is the classic,J. W. Burrow, Evoluition
andsociey. A studyin Victorian
socialtheory(Cambridge, I966) (especially the chapter on Maine). A
THE
PROBLEM
325
OF DEMOCRACY
the different modern responses to similar problems (a point which will not
escape the attention of Acton who acidly reviewed the AmericanCommonwealth
as a non-historical - so eventually non-political - work).24On the other hand
he began to consider, under the influence of men like Goldwin Smith, that
'democracy' and 'equality' were no longer synonyms, in the sense that
democracy failed to abolish the privileged access to ruling positions for
aristocraciesin favour of a natural right to political influence guaranteed to
the educated. Democracy, certainly in America and prospectively in England
and Europe, meant simply a form of government based on a general but
unqualified franchise.25
This was to reverse the highly praised lesson of Tocqueville, which had a
fundamental place in early Victorian liberalism: if the French political
scientist spoke, as Bryce himself remembered in an American lecture of I 887, 26
of American democracy as thedemocracy, now it was becoming clear through
the evidence given by Smith that America was already changed.27New York,
wrote Smith, was thought as the image of America, but it was 'politically an
Irish and German city', a city of ignorant immigrants, 'politically in a state
of barbarism'. All its people were enfranchised, even if its political education
did not practically exist, being unable to transcend the level of clanship, so
that 'the most worthless demagogues take the place of the clan chiefs'.
What could make possible the transformation of the American nightmare
into an English reality was the evolution of British politics between I876 and
I88o, at least according to the way of reading it by some distinguished
intellectuals.28After the defeat of the Liberal party at the I874 general election
(when it became quite clear that the alliance between the cultivated middle
class and liberalism was not to be taken for granted), the radical wing of
liberalism saw itself as deputed to write 'the next page of the liberal
programme' (to quote Chamberlain's famous statement). Starting from his
contemporary clear exposition of this view is E. A. Freeman, The lnityof history(which is a 'Rede
Lecture', 29 May I872), published in E. A. Freeman, Comparative
politics(London, I873) (see esp.
pp. 336-7)24 See H. Tulloch, Acton (London, I988) pp. 84-5. A larger discussion of this poinlt in the
context of the British attitude toward the American question is in J. W. Burrow, SomeBritishviews
in R. C. Simmons (ed.), The UnitedStatesconstitutioni.
of theUnitedStatesconstitution
Thefirst200years
(Manchester, I989), pp. II6-37.
25 In his Politicalorganizations,
Bryce stated that democracy was 'the rule of numbers as applied
to a large population', so that 'it is only in the United States that the problem of governing a great
state by the vote of large masses of men has been worked out with any approach to completeness,
and those who in the old world seek to forecast the course of their own popular governments must
look for light beyond the Atlantic' (p. I05).
26 Thepredictions
of Hamiltonandde Tocqueville(Baltimore,Johns Hopkins University Studies in
Historical and Political Science, 1887), pp. 329-8I.
27 'The experience of the American commonwealth' in Essays onlrefolm,pp. 2I 7-37.
28 Details and reference to both authors and literature on this topic in my 'Ritorno a
Birmingham. La "nuova organizzazione politica" di J. Chamberlainl e l'origine della forma
partito contemporanea
(I874-I880)',
Ricerche di Storia Politica, 3 (i988),
pp. 37-62.
326
PAOLO
POMBENI
success in Birmingham local politics, where Chamberlain and his group had
gained control over all the elective powers in the city, the Midlands politician
presented his victory over the old conservative ruling classes as the result not
of better ideas, but of better organization.
Chamberlain was opening many questions for contemporary liberalism,
whether it was aware of it or not. It seemed that in this new situation ideas
would no longer, to use a well-known statement of Acton, 'rule the world'; at
the same time the selection of a ruling class, intended as the people's
representative, was no longer reserved to the free struggle of ideas open to
enlightened spirits (i.e. the new intellectual high-middle class) but decided as
a strategy matter by party machines; last but not least, politics ceased to be
an open field for discussion in the search for mutual conversion, but was
presented as a field of conflicting platforms, among which the electorate could
choose, giving to the winner the right of a total implementation of his
proposals.
This turn of mind was determined less by any love of political machinery
than from the dissolution of the old restricted society and by the rising
demands on government born of this complexity.29 The fortunes of Comtism
in England let us see how the idea of strong government made progress. This
was grasped very early by Walter Bagehot in his Physics andpolitics (I867), but
which signals the
it was Frederic Harrison's Order and progress (I875)
intellectual climax of this approach to politics. And if Harrison was never
enrolled in Chamberlain's army,30 Birmingham's gospel found in its first stage
an apostle in John Morley, a leading figure in English Comtism and a key man
in his position as editor of the Fortnightly Review.31
Despite Morley's hesitancy it was this challenge of politics as government
which troubled British liberalism, pushed to consider the end of politics as an
intellectual mission. The charge of 'Americanizing our institutions' (though
Bagehot on that occasion had noted Harrison's inclination 'to Frenchify our
institutions' on the model of Napoleon 111)32 and the defamatory word
'caucus' became common at this point in a vigorous controversy in which
nearly all the English political press got involved.
The quarrel about the Birmingham model was at its height between I878
and i88o, and once more the leadership in this battle went to Goldwin Smith,
29 Today this interpretation is less eccentric than ten years ago, when I started this kinld of
research: see M. Bentley, Theclimaxof liberalpolitics.Britishliberalismin theoiyandpractice1868-1918
(London, I987) (esp. pp. 39-54; 74-95).
30
See M. S. Vogeler, Frederic Harrison. The vocations of a positivist (Oxford, I984),
pp.
II
3,
where relations with Chamberlain are dated I873 in the case of the Disestablishment question;
afterwardsthey became nearly inconsistent (eveniif Harrison remained the e'ninence
griseof many
radical quarters: pp. I96-200).
31 See D. A. Hamer, Joohn
inpolitics(Oxford, I 968). It was Morley who
Morley.Liberalintellectual
wrote to Harrison on I 7 July I873 that Chamberlain seemed 'decidedly a leader for an English
progressive party' (quoted ibid. p. 99).
32 Physics and politics in The collected
worksof WalterBagehot,ed. N. St. John-Stevas (Londoin,
I974)
VII, pp. 5s-I.
THE
PROBLEM
327
OF DEMOCRACY
who from his Canadian 'exile' (he left England in i 868 for a chair at the newly
founded Cornell University but abandoned it in I87I in opposition to the
admission of women) strongly attacked Chamberlain and his supposed
corruption of liberal ideas and practices. We see here the actual roots of
Ostrogorski's book, which simply brought up again this famous quarrel, now
in a rather sociological form.33 Goldwin Smith found in the Russian writer a
true admirer; the latter quotes as 'remarkable' even a guide for American
tourists written by Smith - of course a guide containing an attack on the
sovereign caucus'.34
Bryce stayed out of this political war, or at least had no public involvement.
But he maintained with his former teacher a close friendship which has its
testimonial in a massive correspondence which lasted until Smith's death in
19IO. In this large political correspondence the old liberal ideas had an
important place and the correspondents frequently made adverse reference to
the 'political gambler' of Birmingham. We cannot understand properly the
development of the Anglo-Saxon theory of political parties unless we bear in
mind the crucial episode of the debate of the eighties over Chamberlain and
the Birmingham caucus. When Bryce went to write his study of the American
political system at the end of the eighties he could not escape the mood of the
argument on the 'Americanization of our political institutions', which gave an
important stimulus to public interest in the American model and the question
of democracy.
With different national approaches this problem was common to all
European liberal thought.35 We can take just two examples of a Frenchspeaking counterpart, with a wide circulation in England. When in I885
Emile Boutmy, the founder of the Ecole libre des sciencespolitiques and also a
Bryce correspondent,36 published his Etudes de droits constitutionnelles,37his
conclusion was that the development of the political system toward democracy
To be more exact this was the reception of Ostrogorski'sbook. The author himself seemed
to dislike the term, because when he wrote I5 Aug. I909 to Graham Wallas to discuss remarksin
Human nature in politics about his work, he stated: 'Between biology and sociology (I do not like
this last term but I use it for brevity's sake) there is no analogy.' The letter is in the Wallas Papers
at the London School of Economics: a copy was supplied to me by Gaetano Quagliariello whom
I thank warmly.
34 And, more significantly, Ostrogorski affirms that Goldwin Smith's influence was nearly
similar to that of John Stuart Mill: see Democracy and the organisationlof political parties [the edition
consulted is the anastatic reprint of I902, New York, I970], I, 9I, and for the quotationl of the
tourist guide, p. 6i8n.
3
I have developed this subject in my essay, 'Sistema europeo dei partiti e partito americano
nella tradizione storico-politologica del liberalismo europeo', in Maurizio Vaudagna (ed.), M
Partito politico americano e l'Europa (Milano, i99i),
pp. 25-51.
36 On the 'Ecole libre des sciences politiques' and Boutmy see P. Favre, Naissances de la science
politique en France i87o-1914 (Paris, I 989) studying Ostrogorski'sexperience there, G. Quagliariello,
'Alla ricerca delle fonti francesi di Ostrogorski. I1 dibattito metodologico e gli studi partitici
allEcole
Libre des Sciences Politiques', Ricerche di Storia Politica
IV
(I989),
77-I
I2,
gives a picture
of this climate.
3
E. Boutmy, Etudesde droitconstitutionnel.
France-Angleterre-Etats Unis (Paris, I885). This book
was translated into English by E. M. Dicey (London, I89I).
328
PAOLO
POMBENI
was linked to the transformation of society and economy. Boutmy stressed that
France had already shown the way:
I1 est certain que tous les peuples, un peu plus t6t ou un peu plus tard, traverserontles
conditions d'oiuest sorti en I 789 notre systeme politique. C'est par l'action lente de ces
causes que l'on voit, en Angleterre comme en Amerique, l'egalit6 democratique et
l'homogeneite nationale s'accro'tre d'une mouvement connexe et preparer le jour
lointain, mais inevitable, oii ces deux pays auront une constitution politique simple,
fondee sur la loi, c'est a dire sur la volonte expresse de la majorite numerique oil la loi
pretendera ne plus se fonder que sur la raison, ou cette raison, demeuree maitrise du
terrain, par la retraite graduelle de la tradition et de la coutume, s'exprimera et se
satisfera par des conceptions systematiques.38
A change was foreseen for the major states so weighty that 'l'Angleterre
politique tend visiblement a cesser d'etre un simple gouvernement d'opinion
publique'. It was not an easy assumption for a moderate liberal such as
Boutmy, because all this portended the victory of radicalism over liberalism,
in the sense that democracy tended toward a form of abstract rationalism
devoid of any attention to the environment and to historical traditions.
Six years later Emile de Laveleye, another of the leading thinkers of
European liberalism, in his two-volume work on Le gouvernementdans la
democratie,39opens his argument by stating that the political landscape of
constitutionalism is changed in the face of the questionsociale (i.e. working-class
unrest), which destroys the national unity, and in the face of the question
religieuse, which has reached a point on which 'l'on entende se demander si, a
l'avenir, les nations en arriveront a vivre sans religion et sans culte'.
Everything leads to a bitter conclusion:
Le raisonnement et l'histoire nous apprennent que, pour fonder des institutions atla fois
democratique et libres, deux conditions sont necessaires: la concorde entre les classes
et mocurs; or ces deux conditions semblent devoir faire de plus en plus d6faut.40
It was in the attempt to study the founding rules of the institutions in a
context 'without history' and therefore at the same time without class struggle
and without settled social and political customs that European political
science turned to America. Bryce was entirely in this intellectual current.
Before the publication of his AmericanCommonwealthBryce gave a lecture in
the United States on the predictions of Hamilton and De Tocqueville, a
lecture I have already mentioned above. On this occasion the Oxford jurist
criticized the famous French political thinker for having taken no account of
the English roots of American democracy.41
38
Ibid. p.
3
E. de Laveleye, Le Gouvernementdans la de'mocratie(Paris, i 89
270.
I).
On the national context of this
thought see La politologie en Belgique avant 1914, special issue of Res publica,
4
Ibid. pp. viii-ix.
XXVII
(I985),
n. 4.
41 Which is not completely correct: see Tocqueville's notebooks on his English travels and
Mayer's remarks on these: A. Tocqueville, journeysto Englandand Ireland,ed. J. P. Mayer (New
Brunswick-Oxford, I988). But thisjudgement was largely shared in England: seeJ. Burrow, Some
British views.
THE
PROBLEM
OF
DEMOCRACY
329
Hence he had failed to grasp the substantial identity of the American people with the
English ... he has not grasped, as perhaps no one but an Englishman or an American
can grasp, the truth that the American people is the English people, modified in some
directions by the circumstancesof its colonial life and its more popular government, but
in essential the same. Hence much which is merely English appears to De Tocqueville
to be American.42
For many reasons this point is less emphasized in The AmericanCommonwealth,
but it remains an important assumption. More clearly in his big study the
more traditional approach was to play the central role: the states of the U.S.A.
are the model of a system which will become general in the future, they
'represent an experiment in the rule of the multitude, tried on a scale
unprecedentedly vast, and the result of which everyone is concerned to
watch'. They were also something more, 'for they are believed to disclose and
display the type of institutions towards which, as by a law of fate, the rest of
civilized mankind are forced to move, some with swifter, others with slower,
but all with unresting feet'.43
Bryce had the aim, openly declared, to produce a study developed oil lines
which were quite different from Tocqueville's: no longer 'a treatise ... upon
democracy, a treatise whose conclusions are illustrated from America',44 but
on the contrary a loyal and dispassionate description of the new institutions.
In this research a new pillar of political society will be found, the political
parties, in this context, the expression of the nation itself. So the parties
became for the first time in European political science the object not of an
abstract analysis on the best or most rational forms of dividing the public
opinion, but of a description starting from the consideration of their founding
role in building up national unity and in guaranteeing the working of the
constitutional machinery.45
Coming to this point Bryce could not avoid the attempt at a comparative
theory between the English (and to certain extent the European) and the
American party form, between the party based on liberalism and the party
based on democracy.
The essence of the English parties [Bryce wiites] has lain in the existence of two sets of
views and tendencies which divide the nation into two sections, the party ... of
movement and the party of standing still, the party of liberty and the party of order.
42
J. Bryce, Thepredictions,pp. 349-50. In another passage, Bryce stressed the point with more
tact: 'His [of Tocqueville] knowledge of England, while remarkable in a foreigner, was not
sufficient to show him how much in American institutions is really English, and explainable only
i, I.
from English sources' (p. 348).
4 J. Bryce, The Amnerican
conmmonwealth,
4
Ibid. p. 4.
4 The classical liberal European theory, i.e. J. C. Bluntschli, but he was not the only one to
place political parties in the field of public opinion and outside the constitutional working
machine: for a detailed analysis see my essays, 'Trasformismo e questione del partito. La politica
italiana e il suo rapporto con la vicenda costituzionale europea' in P. Pombeni (ed.), La
trasformazione
politicanell'Europa
liberale,i870-i890 (Bologna, I 986), pp. 2 I 5-54;' Teoria dei partiti
ed esperienza costituzionale nell'Europa liberale' in N. Matteucci, P. Pombeni (eds.), L'organizzazione della politica. Cultura, istituzioni, partiti nell'Euiropaliberale (Bologna, I 988), pp.
29I-3I
I.
330
PAOLO
POMBENI
[And he adds:] each party has had not only a brilliant concrete life in its famous leaders
and zealous members, but also an intellectual and moral life in its principles.46
This intellectual and moral life of political parties, or to put it in other
words, this philosophical origin of cohesion in political matters, was the liberal
approach to the question of party from Burke onwards. The famous
'honourable connections' will turn to factions if deprived of a substantial link
with political thought, and in this case around the corner there will lurk the
demagogue, the nightmare of liberal political science, steeped in the history of
demagogy in the ancient classics.47 It is typical of this tradition that the
chapter on parties in Bryce's last work of I92 I opened with a reference to
Italian divisions of the Middle Ages.
What to do with parties once they have lost their principles and therefore
their respectability? Bryce answers that 'loyalty to a leader whom it was
sought to make prime minister would be a poor substitute for loyalty to a
faith', but 'this which conceivably may happen in England under her new
political conditions,is what has happened with the American parties'. 48
The passage is worth attention. Despite all his criticism of Tocqueville's
approach, Bryce himself is led into the same temptation: the construction of
a theory of democracy drawn from America. In the American case the law of
the formation of political parties is no more a law of public opinion, nor a
constitutional fact. Of course it is recognized that the system of government in
modern times 'requires and implies parties', but what matters is the
'sociology' (this is a word introduced by me) and no longer the constitutional
or political thought which presides over the political aggregations.
Parties go on contending because their members have formed habits ofjoint action and
have contracted hatreds and prejudices, and also because the leaders find their
advantage in using these habits and playing on these prejudices. This negative
approach is in fact balanced by a 'realistic' note in paying attention to a political need:
a majority must be cohesive, gathered into a united and organized body: such body is
a party.49
What explains this peculiarity is, according to Bryce (but in this case he
reflects a largely shared opinion) the lack of a natural political community
after the great immigration had changed the landscape from Jacksonian times.
Less passionately than Goldwin Smith, he takes immigration (the German
and French immigration especially), as responsible for having introduced to a
country without class struggle what he labels as 'their Old World passions'.
46
Americancommonwealth,
III, 2 2.
For a view of the French roots of this in the great revolution's time, see the works of Lucien
et la de'nocratie
LesJacobinset l'etat(Paris,
Jaume, Le discoursjacobin
(Paris, I 989): Echecauilibdralisme.
I990). For the German environment of the link between political philosophy and political parties,
see Th. Schieder, 'Die Theorie der Partei im alteren deutschein Liberalismus' in Staat unld
im WandelunsererZeit (Munchen, I970), pp. I I0-32; K. von Beyme, 'Partei, Faktion'
Gesellschaft
in Geschichtliche
Grundbegriffe.
Historisches
Lexiconzir politisch-sozialeni
Sprachein Deutschland(Stuttgart,
I972),
IV, 677-733 (where there is also some reference to classical English thought).
48 American
commonwealth,
III, 23.
" Ibid. III, 24.
47
THE
PROBLEM
OF DEMOCRACY
331
In the I895 third edition, commenting on the big railway strikes of that July,
he judges that it was 'mainly the work of recent immigrants, whom American
institutions have not had time to educate, though the folly of abstract theory
has confided votes to them'."oIt is to face the folly which has enfranchisedmen
who are neither part of a real community nor educated and cultivated people
that the need for a certain system of political aggregation is inescapable.
Bryce was struck by a peculiarity of the American way of life which some
years later affected Max Weber in his visit to the States (and largely presented
in his speech to the I9IO sociological meeting in Frankfurt):51 the Americans
Caregregarious, each man more disposed to go with the multitude and do as
they do than to take a line of his own'; and also, 'they are extremely fond of
associating themselves and prone to cling to any organisation they have once
joined .52
The ultimate roots of the transformation of politics are of course in this
'fatalism of the multitude', a problem which forms the specific subject of an
entire chapter, which I cannot examine on this occasion. The conclusion is
that in a system founded on mass participation in political and constitutional
life without any respect for previous qualifications in terms of education, the
existence of some sort of organizing machinery for the general suffrage, either
in the matter of selecting candidates no longer linked to the natural chiefs of
communities, or in terms of collecting and shaping elementary political
feelings, is absolutely necessary. This admission is made by Bryce, I dare say,
malgre'lui: there is a strong complaint against political corruption, but above
all against professionalizationof politics, which means exclusion of cultivated
men from the duty of public affairs. 'Those who in great cities form the
committees and work the Machine are persons whose chief aim in life is to
make their living by office'.53 Incidentally, here may be the origin of the wellknown Weberian distinction between 'living for and living by politics': the
German thinker was a diligent reader of TheAmericanCommonwealth,
which he
recommended without any success to Michels.54
Bryce's work was very successful, not only in English-speaking countries,
but also through French and German translations. Not surprisingly a
graduate from the Ecolelibredessciences
politiquesof Boutmy, obviously sensitive
to this intellectual climate and the author of an essay on American parties in
the year of the Ecole,55went to the Oxford master in search of advice for his
5
Ibid. III, 6oo.
The text is now in M. Weber, GesammelteAuifsdtzezur Soziologie zinldSozialpolitik (Tuibingen,
I924),
pp. 43I-49
(see esp. pp. 442-3).
On Max Weber and America see W. Mommsen, 'Die
Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika' in Max Weber. Gesellschaft, Politik uniidGeschichlte(Frankfurt,
3
5 American commonwealth,III, 5I.
I982),
pp. 72-96.
Ibid. p. I07.
See L. A. Scaff, Max Weberand Robert Michels; the same correspondence is re-examined in W.
54
Mommsen, 'Roberts Michels und Max Weber. Gesinnungsetischer Fundamentalismus versus
verantwortungsetischen Pragmatismus'in W. J. Mommsen and W. Schwentker (eds.), Max IWVeber
und seine Zeitgenossen (Gottingen, I987), pp. I96-2 I 5.
5
Which J. R. Seeley in his celebrated The inmpartialstudy of politics defined as 'the best sketch
I have ever seen of the history of parties in the United States', as Ostrogorski himself made known,
51
332
PAOLO
POMBENI
future studies on political parties. The relationship between Ostrogorski and
Bryce was until recently completely unknown, like Ostrogorski's personal
story in general: Gaetano Quagliariello in his preface to the first Italian
translation of Ostrogorskigives a general account of tlheintellectual origins of
the Russian writer and the genesis of his book.56What we know is that the first
surviving letter from Ostrogorski to Bryce is dated 2I February i 889
(unfortunately we lack all the replies from Bryce to Ostrogorski).5 After
thanking Bryce for some bibliography about the United States, the young
Russian scholar writes: 'Vous voulez bien me demander si j'ai toujours
l'intention de faire la contrepartie anglaise de mon travail sur les Etats Unis.
Oui c'est precisement le but de mon sejour en Angleterre'.
Here is the beginning of an intellectual relationship from which seems to
emerge the creation of a classic of political science. Both Ostrogorski's and
Michels' work on parties grew out of an attempt to test their respective
masters' general theory of parties, but each in its own way would end up
producing unexpected results.58Ostrogorski's book ends too by twisting the
approach of Bryce, at least by considering the party question in a much less
scientific and much more passionate way than Bryce.
Ostrogorski took a long time to write his book: from the beginning of 1889
until the end of I902 (October for the English edition, December for the
parallel French edition, which was dated I903, probably for the publisher's
commercial reasons). Thirteen years passed, and it was certainly not the
publisher's fault. Macmillan kept pushing Ostrogorski to publish quickly.59
From Ostrogorski'sletter to Bryce dated 24 December i 898 we learn that
the English part of the work was nearly finished; at the same time we can guess
that the relationship of Bryce and Ostrogorski must have changed a little.
However [after his first letter Ostrogorskiwrites in English] I was fully prepared to the
charge that my picture is drawn with too dark colours. How many times I have said
to myself: 'You will be told that you have forged with your imagination a monster,
have labelled it caucus, and have put at his door all the sins of Israel'. Though I had
not the intention of pleading guilty, I was, I confess you, greatly oppressed by the very
possibility of the charge. I comforted myself with the hope that with the progressof the
work the judicial character (which I aimed at) of my analysis will gradually come out
and show, through my own assistance, that if there is to be taken off a liberal discount
from what I first claimed, the capital debt created by the phenomena I am describing,
subsists and mortgages all political life. At all events, the picture of the English
caucus ... will be brightened to an extraordinarydegree by the next picture I give of the
American system. The English caucus will then appear as an idyll.
together with the appreciation of von Holst, to Macmillan in presenting his candidature for
publishing his book: letter of io July I985, in Macmillan Papers, British Library.
56
G. Quagliariello,
Ostrogorski, gli anni di fine secolo.
The Ostrogorski-Bryce correspondence was in the officially uncatalogtied part of the Bryce
Papers at the Bodleian, when I first saw them in i 988. I was able to see them courtesy of the
Bodleian staff cataloguing them.
58 See my Introduzione alla storia dei partiti politici, pp. 208-2
I.
5 Quagliariello, Ostrogorski,
gli annidifinesecolo,pp. 42-68, which gives full details of this story.
5
THE
PROBLEM
OF DEMOCRACY
333
I have already stressed how much Ostrogorski's analysis depends on his
identification with the old liberal's side in the eighties debate on the
Birmingham caucus. At the end of the nineties Bryce was no longer prepared
to endorse the dark colours painted by his Russian pupil: maybe they were
appropriate for American politics, but no Americanization of English
institutions was visible in these years, either in the selection of candidates for
parliament or in the public spirit, which to some extent came back to
'philosophical' debate on new liberalism and new conservatism.60
Bryce did not simply confine himself to showing great caution toward
Ostrogorski's thesis on English politics in his preface to Democracy and the
organisationof political parties; he made no effort to promote it (he quotes it very
rarely and with all possible caution) and at the same time tried to promote a
more balanced presentation of the English constitution by pushing Lowell to
write an appropriate study.
But what seemed not so bad at the turn of the century changed in the
following years. Bryce changed his mind too, partly under the pressure of his
old liberal friends. Writing 29 March 1905 to Goldwin Smith, still actively
identifying what he saw as the decadence of English politics, Bryce said: 'Party
government is certainly showing its worst side. But how are we to change it?
What remedy is there? No free country except Switzerland gets on without it;
and we can't reproduce Swiss conditions.'61 So he realized that a 'political
scientist' was in an unhappy position: to be realistic he had to accept parties
as necessary for democracy, but to be loyal to his liberal approach to the law
of the constitution he had to admit that party politics was not a good road to
rational government.
The two 1905 essays in the Quarterly, with which we began, reveal a
transition, and in my opinion an interesting one, in Bryce's thought. There is
the quest for a method which can train a 'science of politics applicable to
modern phenomena': no longer an intellectual work arising from the
philosophical ideas of the eighteenth century, but a realistic approach to the
question of how the political field was to be organized. 'Our generation [he
states] now possesses material enough for drawing at least the outlines of a
science and for determining many permanent laws of political society which
it was impossible for men to conjecture, much less to establish by proof, a
century ago.'62
According to Bryce we must pass from 'a sort of psychology or psychological
politics' (which he finds also 'in our time in some of the books, ingenious and
60 I have already mentioned the change of mind by Bryce in his Political organizations in the United
Statesand Englandof I892; a more general assessment is now necessary, remembering the great
debate in cultivated opinion after the i886 crisis (in which A. V. Dicey and others had a relevant
part). This debate is examined in F. Cammarano, Strategie del conservatorismno
britanniconella crisi del
liberalismo. [' The National Party of Common Sense'] i885-i892 (Bari-Manduria,
For the
I99O).
changes in liberalism see the two classical works, P. Clarke, Liberalsandsocialdemocrats
(Cambridge,
I978) and M. Freeden, The new liberalism. An ideology of social reform (Oxford, I978).
61 Bryce MSS, English Correspondents, vol. xvii, fo. I9O.
62
The study of popular governments,p.
I72.
334
PAOLO
POMBENI
charming books, of Emile Boutmy') to 'the true, and only true, method of
political science ... the inductive method, the method of natural science, which
is also the method followed by Aristotle'.63 It was an approach apparently not
too distant from that proposed by Max Weber some years later; and we can
add that Bryce had stressed the necessity for taking due account of the
relativeness of political forms according 'to environing conditions'. But
another definition of method given by Bryce in this essay lets us see how strong
his roots in early liberalism were: his political method comes from 'experience
and observation, that is to say history readwith an ethicaleye' (italics mine).64
So we have a difficult balance between the statement that 'an exact science
politics certainly is not' and the statement according to which 'habits and
tendencies of individual men and of groups of men ... are the permanent data
given by Nature herself' even if it is admitted that there exist 'variations in
those habits and tendencies which are due to the diverse external conditions
under which men and groups of men exist in time and space'.65
The existence of political parties is presented by Bryce as a clear
demonstration of this historical and political law: the tendencies of the masses
to collect around a leader, the assumption that 'it is always rninorities that
rule', the problem of ancient and modern demagogy, emotion as the leading
factor for governing the masses, are all made to demonstrate how fruitful an
historical comparative approach can be for political science.66The conclusion
seemed unavoidable.
Modern democratic theory regards man as self-assertive and takes the sense of
individual independence as the basis of free government. But is that theory sound? Can
we assume that men have so changed from the tendency they have generally shown in
the time past??67
This was in many respects a realistic conclusion; how far it was ambiguous
was not immediately perceivable. On the one side it led to the recognition of
some positive reason in the political machinery quite in Bagehot's sense (had
not Bagehot at the end presented politics as a form of positive and necessary
manipulation?).68 But on the opposite side it was also an admission that the
old liberals were right in their criticism of popular government whose
discipline could come only from manipulation, i.e. a dangerous political tool
very near (if not identical) to demagogy.
In 1905 the first side seemed to prevail in Bryce's analysis, quite the opposite
of Ostrogorski'sdark-coloured picture.
The tendency for men to aggregate themselves in parties is a constant feature of human
nature which has a whole psychology of its own as well as the long history... The
feeling which party association produces is apt to outlive the causes which originated
Ibid. pp. I76-7.
Ibid. p. I82. We may recall once more that the idea of a strong connection between history
and political science was largely shared: Seeley and Acton pleaded for it.
6
6
6
Ibid. pp. i8o-i.
Ibid. pp. I84-6.
Ibid. pp. i86.
68 The question of the political manipulation between Bagehot and Maine is discussed in J. W.
Burrow, 'Maine e l'idea vittoriana del progresso', Ricerchedi StoriaPolitica,v (I989), 7-22.
63
64
THE
PROBLEM
OF
DEMOCRACY
335
it. Party usually begins in reason and ends in passion. Some rational ground impels
men to work together for a common aim; then, when the habit ofjoint action has been
formed, the original ground may be forgotten.69
When in the positive mood of the realistic approach, Bryce described the
aim of political science as the study of the influences which exercise a
transforming power on the laws of sociabilite'(to use this so evocative French
word), no matter if they are related to a nation, to a city, to a church, to a sect
or to party. Democracy in this context becomes nothing more than one of the
most modern forms of the 'environment'.
A popular government or democracy means simply that form of government which
assigns ultimate power to the numerical majority of the people.70The problems come
simply from its working condition. Popular governments look to and rest upon the
people as the source of power ... there is needed complicatedmachinery for the purpose of
enabling a great number of persons the vast bulk of whom have neither special
knowledge nor leisure, to control the government, and to ensure that its course
conforms to such views and wishes as the majority express.71
In an outburst of sincerity Bryce ventures even to analyse precisely the
causes of so many criticisms of political machinery at which at this moment he
looks positively. 'Hence, it is supposed, inferior men, if loud mouthed and
positive, are, under democracy, preferred to wise men, and the more refined
and cultivated among the citizens take little part in public affairs. As it is to
the educated class that historians and political philosophers belong, they have
dwelt much upon this phenomenon.'72
This was only, as I have pointed out before, one side of the coin, motivated
by a peculiar stage in the liberal 'environment', which was largely dominated
in these years by this new realistic approach to politics going back to the old
Gladstonian optimism: had not Gladstone in a famous 'modern symposium'73
claimed that an enlarged franchise had no evils for politics provided that the
people had a sound instinct in following the right leader? Taking Bagehot or
Gladstone as reference points, it must not be forgotten that there were some
quarters in old liberalism which had a positive view of political manipulation.
American political machines were, of course, feared and Bryce did well in
echoing these fears, but the American example showed also that political
machines at the end were not successful in destroying the constitutional
machinery built up by liberalism. Many contemporary observers (including
some of Bryce's more or less close friends) stressed a decline in party
dominance, and even the 'spoils system' was supposed to be substantially
reduced after the civil service reform of I883.
69 Ibid. p. i88.
70 Ibid. p. 394.
71 Ibid. p. 399. Italics mine.
Ibid. p. 404.
" See 'A Modern "Symposium ". Is the popular judgment in politics more just than that of
the higher orders?', The Nineteenth CentutryReview, iii Jan-Jun. I878), 797-822 (the discussants
were Lord Arthur Russell, R. H. Hutton, Grant Duff and Fredrick Harrison); iv July-Dec.
I878), 174-92
(this time the discussants were W. R. Gregg, R. Lowe and Gladstone). P. Clarke,
Liberalsand socialdemocrats,
has noted how in the quiartersof new liberalism Bryce was thought
'incorrigibly Gladstonian' (p. 42).
72
336
PAOLO
POMBENI
Our judgement must not be influenced by the glory conferred on
Ostrogorski by the consecration he received from Duverger in 195 I 7 and from
Lipset in I964.75 The contemporary reception of his book was largely
unsympathetic: Bryce was not alone in the criticism shown in his preface. The
obvious enthusiasm of the aged Goldwin Smith or the appreciation of the
French intellectuals who like Benoist opposed the 'Re'publique des partis', was
counterbalanced by the remarkable coolness of many academic quarters.76
Jessie Macy, who taught at Iowa College and was the author of an important
book on the English constitutional system,77 wrote to Bryce (24 September
1904) that Ostrogorski's book 'is to me a sad disappointment ... it is
disappointing that so much industry and intelligence as the volumes exhibit
should be used to so little purpose'. 78 Lowell in a letter to Bryce dated i7
September i902 was very negative: not only did he praise his Oxford master
for 'your caution in the preface' (and it is worth noting that he adds: 'it is the
same criticism that you made to me about the book a couple of years ago'),
but he went on in his harsh criticism: 'I confess I was a good deal disappointed
at his conclusions. They give me somewhat of the impression that von Holst's
history of the United States gave to a friend of mine who was reviewing it, that
they furnished an illustration of how a man might know all about a subject
without understanding it'. Lowell's charge is precise and has to be considered:
'Ostrogorski starts to investigate the organization of parties as a natural
growth and then appears to treat them in the end as something which is quite
capable of artificial and arbitrary change.'79
Here lay the core of the question. The political thought of liberalism had to
choose between two alternatives: either to consider realistically that a certain
degree of manipulation was unavoidable in constitutions (ancient and modern
under many aspects), concluding that the political machinery, parties
included, was the modern form of this manipulation, or to fight idealistically
against every form of manipulation as incompatible with personal liberty and
autonomy and with the choice of the better and more enlightened elements as
a ruling class. Of course Bryce lacked the 'vast naivete" of Ostrogorski80 so that
7 M. Duverger, Les partis politiques (Paris, I 95 I). This enthusiasm continues in French political
science: see P. Avril, Essais sur les partis (Paris, I986), p. 8.
M. Lipset, Introduction to the abridged edition of Ostrogorski'sbook (Chicago, I964): here
7
there are some real mistakes; apart from the question of the supposed influence on Max Weber,
Lipset claims a non-existent influence on Michels: in the preface to the first Italian edition of his
Thesociologyof thepoliticalpartyin moderndemocracy
(Torino, I9I2) the German writer complained
at being put in relation with what he calls 'a distinguished Polish scholar', openly declaring that
he did not know that book. See this preface, now repriintedin the appenidix to R. Michels, La
sociologia del partito politico (Bologna, I966), p. 54I.
76 A list of the principal reviews of Ostrogorski's book is in the appendix of G. Quagliariello,
Ostrogorski,
gli annidifine secolo.
7 J. Macy, The Englishconstituttion.A commentary
on its nature andgrowth(New York, I897). He
was then working on his book on party machinery in the United States, which was published in
7 Bryce MSS, American Correspondents, vii, fo. I85.
I9I8.
7 Ibid. fos. I5-I6.
80 So the Russian scholar was judged by Arthur MacMahon in I933 in the Encyclopedia
of social
sciences,who added: 'which indeed was the ardent spirit of the man himself': see vol. xi (New
York, 1933), s.v. Ostrogorski, Moisei, pp. 503-4.
THE
PROBLEM
OF DEMOCRACY
337
he was on each occasion cautious in choosing his side in the struggle, but he
was not able to escape it. In his private correspondence at the beginning of the
new century we find a lot of critical and sometimes bitter remarks on how
politics was now going. To the usual dislike for Chamberlain much criticism
against Balfour was added,81 and in general a fear of social changes together
with a lack of attention (and frequently a distaste) for the rising Labour party.
Lowell apparently agreed.
We may recall that this was the time when Maitland and Gierke pleaded
the cause of the 'body politic', when Duguit and Hauriou were working on the
theory of institutions, when Santi Romano wrote on juridical pluralism.82 All
this attention to the community, this link between law theory and sociology,
failed to engage with democracy as a system based on political communities
represented through political parties. Parties were not recognized as natural
communities (when, quite astonishingly, the unions were, without query) and
remained in the closed game of politics. Being an instrument to organize the
political ignorance on which democracy rested, party could be accepted as an
unpleasant need, not praised in itself. Realism was the sugar which made it
possible to swallow the bitter pill of the end of intellectual aristocracy in
politics. Hence all the cautions toward the ever-impending 'leap in the dark'
in a democratic contest.
How un-realistic this realism was did not escape the criticisms of new
liberalism: the Fabian Graham Wallas, professor at the London School of
Economics, put it in a famous and superb passage of his Human nature in
politics.83 He saw immediately that Ostrogorski was not at all a scientific
investigator of politics, but a man full of prejudices who read his data
according to the map of old liberalism. 'One [wrote Wallas] seems to be
reading a series of conscientious observations of the Copernican heavens by a
loyal but saddened believer in the Ptolemaic astronomy.' Wallas went on for
the first time to point out a precise responsibility for the Russian's failings in
the teaching from which Ostrogorski learned about 'ideal democracy': 'Mr.
Bryce means by those words the kind of democracy which might be possible
if human nature were as he himself would like it to be, and he was taught at
Oxford to think it was.'84 Despite some harshness of tone from a man who was
outside the academic environment, Wallas put the question of party in a truly
new form: if it is assumed that associating is a law of human nature, why not
in politics? And if it is assumed that this is natural, why expect for politics
something intellectually and morally higher than everyday experience?
It would be unfair to present the old liberal theory as insensible to this
criticism. If we take the case of Lowell (and also turn to a different stage in
Bryce's own opinion) we can see how fully the American political scientist had
81 See for instance the letter of Bryce to Lowell, I7 Jan. I904
(Bryce MSS, American
and the letter of Lowell to Bryce, I0 Dec. I905, with
Correspondents, xxii, fos. I03-5),
congratulations for the fall of Balfour (ibid. VII, fos. 30-3).
82 A sketch of this in Societae corpi,ed. P. Schiera (Napoli, I986). On this English context see
J. W. Burrow, Whigsand liberals.Continuityand changein Englishpolitical thought(Oxford, I988),
84 Ibid. pp. I24-9.
83 London, I908.
pp. I3I-53.
338
PAOLO
POMBENI
addressed the problem. After the I896 publication of his book on Government
and parties in ContinentalEurope85Lowell entered into a close friendship with
Bryce, and was asked by him to write a book on the English constitution which
could parallel The American Commonwealth.As always Bryce thought a view
from outside more respectable in political matter,86 even if he had no restraint
in influencing his pupil's views (but Lowell's context of referees was very much
larger than Ostrogorski's).87 The book came out in I908 and was welcomed
by the masters of liberal opinion (see the review of Albert Venn Dicey in The
Times). Bryce of course promoted the work, for instance by obtaining a French
translation88 (there exists also a successful German translation). Rather than
to this book, which puts the question of party in England in a new light
without alarmism about the end of liberal politics, I refer here to another book
by Lowell published in I9I3, Public opinion and popular government.89
Here the traditional question of how, confronted with the fatalism of the
multitude, it was possible to make a real public opinion was no longer viewed
as confined to the working of the political constitution, but put in the context
of the general question of social change. 'We live in an age of advertisement' ,90
Lowell declares, noting that 'society has lost its rigidity' and that 'with the
increase of opportunity the force of habit has declined'. The authority which
inspires Lowell here is Sir Henry Maine (explicitly quoted) :91 relatively
curious if we recall that Bryce had rather a poor opinion of his Cambridge
colleague.92 Just as, for the liberal-conservative jurist, the law of progress was
'from status to contract', also for Lowell there is a new law of progress which
destroys in politics anything which corresponds to social status and thus
creates a pressure for contracts in politics as well.
As society discovers 'a new profession whose function consists in bringing
buyer and seller together', so 'in a modern industrial democracy, where the
bulk of the voters are more absorbed in earning their bread than in affairs of
state' the action of political brokerage is required 'as needful for political as
for commercial life, as proper and as honourable'.93 This was a professional
role, but it is important to stress that for 'professional politicians' one means
'not the man who makes a living out of politics, but one who devotes a
85
London, I 896.
As he put it in The American commonwealth(i, 8): 'the stranger finds it easier to maintain a
position of detachment, not only from party prejudice, but from those prepossessions in favour of
persons, groups, constitutional dogmas, national pretensions, which a citizen can scarcely escape
except by falling into that attitude of impartial cynicism which sours and perverts the historical
mind as much as prejudice itself'.
87 Compare the numbers of persons mentioned in the introductions
by Ostrogorski and by
Lowell, The governmentof England (New York, I908).
88 See the letter of Lowell to Bryce, 27 Aug. I908, Bryce MSS, American Correspondents, viii,
90 Ibid. p. 58.
89 New York, Longmans-Green, I9I3.
fos. 42-59' Ibid. p. 62.
92 See the letter of Bryce to Sidgwick, I2 Sept. I887, Bryce MSS, English Correspondents, xvii,
where the only good found in Maine's Popular government was 'the charm of his
fos. II7-I8,
writing', which justified 'the popularity of the book'. This point is noted by Stephan Collini, That
noble science of politics, p. 24I, who enlarges consideration of it to an i885 polemic.
(italics mine).
93 Public opinion, pp. 60-4
86
THE
PROBLEM
OF DEMOCRACY
339
considerable part of his life to it' (here we meet again this proto-Weberian
formula already seen in Bryce).9
We must not infer from all this an exit from the old liberalism: Lowell is
anxious to distinguish between politicians and statesmen. 'It is by no means
always easy to distinguish the leader from the broker, the statesman who really
guides the nation from one who perceives and gives expression to a general
sentiment as yet inarticulate.'95 This is a clear difference in those figures, even
if the political broker is also respectable. 'In doing so he is performing a
service, not, indeed, of the highest grade in statesmanship, but one essential to
popular government - that of crystallizing a mass of shapeless ideas into the
general public opinion required for constructive legislation and political
action '96
The tools of the political broker are parties, which are defined by Lowell on
this occasion as 'rather agencies whereby public attention is brought to a focus
on certain questions that must be decided', able to reduce these questions to
a simple form answerable with 'yes' or 'no'.97
Are parties only and always such neutral machines, 'American' machines
if we may speak so? Lowell is pretty well aware of the other side of the coin.
On the Continental Europe a multiplicity of parliamentary groups has been the rule.
There the parties are based not so much on a difference of opinion on current political
questions, as on political, philosophical, religious, racial or social traditions. Sometimes
these produce irreconcilable divisions, sometimes they do not; but they always make
it very difficult for a man to transfer his allegiance from one party to another.98
The statement is quite important because it touches the heart of the matter:
it is the Weltanschauungparty (to use this classical German definition) which
creates a problem, because there institution and ideas come together and
create a situation of allegiance which is alternative to the state.99 Lowell did
not deal openly with this matter, limiting his opinion to praise of the AngloSaxon two-party system as the ripe fruit of modern constitutionalism. This
seems to me the borderline of liberalism: party is acceptable in its advanced
role as instrumental machinery for a working denmocracy; party is something
related to a modern form of uncultivated public opinion (which is of course a
contradiction in terms), but not to the production of statesmanship (the last
being reserved, in a sound context, to the enlightened intellectuals).100
96
Ibid. p. 63.
97 Ibid. p. 66.
Ibid. p. 62.
95 Ibid. p. 62.
Ibid. p. 8o.
99 The point here is relatively complicated: this was the classical lesson of Bluntschli, largely
shared in Europe, which opposed the 'pure form of party' as the party of opinion, to the parties
founded on social or constitutional cleavages. Bluntschli thought, nevertheless, that the rational
form of a party system was organized on four parties (radicals, liberals, moderate-conservatives
and reactionaries) and not on two. Maybe this is the reason why Lowell here (p. 8i) quotes
'continental writers' as 'generally convinced that a multiplicity of parties indicates greater
maturity' (elsewhere he quotes Bluntschli's Charakter und Geist der politischen Parteien, p. 65). He
pleaded instead for a two-party system, but he misunderstands the 'continental' theory (for details
see my two essays quoted at n. 45).
100 A trace of this can be found in a Bryce letter to Lowell, 4 Dec. I 9 I 3 (Bryce MSS, American
Correspondents, XXII, fo. 240), where the Oxford master interpreted Lowell's Puiblic opinion in the
94
98
340
PAOLO
POMBENI
If we look at the synthesis of Lowell's position given in a I9I8 book, Greater
European governments,101written as a political handbook for army cadres
fighting the European war, we can grasp the big intellectual design of this
generation. Political democracy implies parties as a necessary tool for the
working of the constitution; England and America prove that no real danger
comes from party-based politics, especially now that even the power of
controlling the representatives of the people is markedly declining; but parties
may have an acceptable development only where they are founded on
intellectual faith and reason, which are naturally given to a people. France
and Germany, which are founded on national and social cleavages, may not
have a true party system, because to guarantee political allegiance and
national union they use the administrative system and not a system based on
public opinion.102
All the terms of the question were now fixed. The last book ofJames Bryce,
that Modern democracieswhich aimed, as he wrote to Lowell on 22 November
I9I6,
to be the book which 'treats of Democracy generally, from a historical
or philosophic, in fact an Aristotelian point of view' repaints the old
landscape. Here and there Bryce accepts the lesson of the times, as when he
writes about aggregation that 'the same sort of passion as moves the crowd
watching a boat race between Oxford and Cambridge or a football match
between Yale and Harvard is the steam which works the great English and
American parties',103 but generally speaking the description of political
machinery is the one we already know. And at the end the right of existence
for political parties rested on the failure of alternatives.
Must there then always be parties? No one has yet shown how such governments could
get on without them. [And he adds in a note:] Political philosophers have incessantly
denounced parties, but none seems to have shown they can either be prevented from
arising or eliminated when they exist. I could never extract from MI Goldwin Smith,
old terms: 'The growth of opinion as a ruling force seems to me the only remedy for the
accentuations of party violence in Europe' (and in addition he spoke for England of 'the Tory
party... preaching Civil War').
101 (Cambridge (Mass.).) It was in fact an abridged version of Governmentof England arsd of
Governmentsand parties on continentalEurope, joined in one.
102 The Diceyan roots of this judgment are self-evident.
103 Modern democracies,p. I27.
Is Bryce here coming to Wallas' position? The question is not
easy. In a letter of Lowell to Bryce, 7 Feb. I907, the Harvard professor praised his master for the
essay 'Obedience' just published (in Studies in history andjurisprudence (2 vols Oxford, I9OI). The
whole letter is on what in a more modern terminology we would call 'political obligation' as
related to 'party allegiance', to conclude that, against 'the classical theory of parties', which
assumes only rational subjects, 'man is in very small part rational, and mainly a suggestible
animal; and the wider the extension of the suffrage, the smaller the proportion reason plays in the
In any case
adoption of political opinions' (Bryce MSS, American Correspondents, fos. 7-I4).
Lowell was in contact with Wallas and invited him for a seminar in Harvard in I9Io; see M. J.
Wiener, Between two worlds. The political thought of Graham Wallas (Oxford, Clarenidon, I97I, pp.
in his Public opinion, Lowell quotes also Tarde, the common reference for European
I67-70);
' political psychology'.
THE
PROBLEM
OF DEMOCRACY
34I
with all his mastery of history and political acumen, any answer to the question how
representative government could be carried on without them.104
Discussing with Lowell in a letter of 20 September
to the United States, Bryce explained:
I919
the part dedicated
What I wanted to do was to explain both the errorscommitted in deference to abstract
democratic principles and the way in which public opinion and the healthy tone of the
nation has been trying to secure reforms,especially I have tried to indicate that on the
whole things are going better, far better than they were in I870; so far as the U.S.
system of government is concerned. Of course those difficulties which are due to social
unrest and socialistic movements are not the fault of American democracy, but of
causes operative throughout the civilised world. May I take it that the optimistic view
I have tried to present in the conclusions is substantially right?105
What Bryce says for the U.S. case is more or less valid for his whole
approach to the question of democracy. It was a sort of honest realism which
lacked a sympathetic acceptance of that reality.
104
105
p. I38.
Moderndemocracies,
Bryce MSS, American Correspondents, xxiii, fo.
I8I.