When the syllabus of this course of lectures was drawn up, those who were responsible for it suggested as the first subheading of this paper, the well worn phrase, “The disappearance of the Whig.” It is a happy expression, and one from the contemplation of which much comfort may be derived by an optimistic and unanalytical temperament. Printed are at this disadvantage compared with spoken words, they fail to convey the nicer _nuances_ of meaning bestowed by tone and emphasis; and thus the word “disappearance” meets the eye, carrying with it no slightest suggestion of irony. Yet the phrase is pointless, if not “meant surcarstic”; for so far is the Whig from “disappearing,” that he is the greatest political fact of the day. To persons deafened by the daily democratic shouting of the Radical newspapers this assertion may require some confirmation and support. Let us look at the facts then. The first thing which strikes us in connexion with the present Parliament is that it no longer consists of two distinct parties, _i.e._, of two bodies of men differentiated from each other by the holding of _fundamentally_ different principles. Home Rule left out,[97] there remains no reason whatever, except the quite minor question of Disestablishment, why even the simulacrum of party organisation should be maintained, or why the structural arrangements of the House of Commons should not be so altered as to resemble those of a town hall, in which all the seats face the chair. But fifty years ago the floor of the House was a frontier of genuine significance; and the titles “Whig” and “Tory” were word-symbols of real inward and spiritual facts. The Tory party was mostly made up of men who were conscientiously opposed to popular representation, and prepared to stand or fall by their opposition. They held, as a living political creed, that the government of men was the eternal heritage of the rich, and especially of those whose riches spelt rent. The Whigs, on the other hand, believed, or said they believed, in the aphorism “_Vox populi, vox Dei_”; and they, on the whole, consistently advocated measures designed to give that voice a distincter and louder utterance. Here, then, was one of those fundamental differences in the absence of which party nomenclature is a sham. But there was another. In the first half of this century the Tories, hidebound in historic traditions and deaf to the knell of the old _régime_ tolling in the thud, thud, of the piston rods of the new steam engines, clung pathetically to the old idea of the functions of the State and to territorial rights. The Whigs went for _laisser faire_ and the consequent supremacy of the business man. I am making a perfectly provable proposition when I say that all the political disputes[98] which arose between the Revolution of 1688 and the enfranchisement of the £10 householder by Disraeli had their common cause in one of these two root differences. But the battle has long ago been lost and won.