"Others who fall off from a popular party in its triumph, are of a different character; ambitious men, who think that they become necessary to their opponents and who crave the glory of being able to undo their own work as easily as they had done it: passionate men, who, quarrelling with their old associates on some personal question, join the adversary in search of revenge; vain men, who think their place unequal to their merits, and hope to gain a higher on the opposite side: timid men, who are frightened as it were at the noise of their own guns, and the stir of actual battle--who had liked to dally with popular principles in the parade service of debating or writing in quiet times, but who shrink alarmed when both sides are become thoroughly in earnest: and again, quiet and honest men, who never having fully comprehended the general principles at issue, and judging only by what they see before them, are shocked at the violence of their party, and think that the opposite party is now become innocent and just, because it is now suffering wrong rather than doing it. Lastly, men who rightly understand that good government is the result of popular and anti-popular principles blended together, rather than of the mere ascendancy of either; whose aim, therefore, is to prevent either from going too far, and to throw their weight into the lighter scale: wise men and most useful, up to the moment when the two parties are engaged in actual civil war, and the question is--which shall conquer? For no man can pretend to limit the success of a party, when the sword is the arbitrator: he who wins in that game does not win by halves: and therefore the only question then is, which party is on the whole the best, or rather perhaps the least evil; for as one must crush the other, it is at least desirable that the party so crushed should be the worse."