Though it is impossible to assign causes to these effects with certitude, yet it is safe to say that this failure was the {128} fruit of the party system. We have seen how the play of political parties one against the other devastated the countryside. The party politicians think primarily of votes, and anything that would cost them votes is banned. They knew in what peril the nation stood before the war, but they did not summon the nation to prepare for war and endure hardness. That would have been unpopular--and would have cost votes. They kept the nation in ignorance of its peril, and cowered before the people whom they kept in the dark, terrified to use firmness lest the firm hand on the reins should mean their unseating. They went further: when Lord Roberts warned the State in prophetic terms, they held him up to derision. The greatest calamity that ever befell the human race we owe to the party politicians. Behind the party politician there is the caucus, and behind the caucus the party funds. The power of money is proverbial, and behind the party politician {129} is the exchequer supplied by his supporters. That exchequer is replenished by the sale of honours. When Oleander, a Phrygian and erstwhile slave, was the minister of the Emperor Commodus, Rome saw the woeful spectacle of the rank of Consul, of Patrician and of Senator exposed to public sale. We hold the decencies of life in too high regard to do that. Secretly and decorously our senatorships and the ancient orders of our knighthood are assigned. At one end of the social scale national degeneracy makes the trader in alcohol a plutocrat; at the other end the same national degeneracy makes him a legislator and a pseudo-aristocrat. The alcoholic trade was too wise to be on terms of friendship with one party alone; it sought relationship with all. Nobody can object to the man who pays the piper calling the tune. In Ireland the publican is even a greater power in politics than he is in England. And the power behind the politicians brought all its forces into play. When, in 1887, Lord Iddesleigh, {130} superseded at last, fell dead in Lord Salisbury's waiting-room, the latter, writing to Lord Randolph Churchill, exclaimed, 'As I looked upon the dead man before me I felt that politics was a cursed profession.' And Lord Salisbury knew.