party objects is much diminished and a policy which is intended merely to keep a party in power should be severely condemned. Sometimes, however, it happens that a party has committed itself to a particular measure which its opponents believe to be in a high degree dangerous or even ruinous to the country. In that case it becomes a matter of supreme importance to keep this party out of office, or, if they are in office, to keep them in a position of permanent debility till this dangerous project is abandoned. Under such circumstances statesmen are justified in carrying party objects and purely party legislation much further than in other periods. To strengthen their own party; to gain for it the largest amount of popularity; to win the support of different factions of the House of Commons, become a great public object; and, in order to carry it out, sacrifices of policy and in some degree of principle, the acceptance of measures which the party had once opposed, and the adjournment or abandonment of measures to which it had been pledged, which would once have been very properly condemned, become justifiable. The supreme interest of the State is the end and the justification of their policy, and alliances are formed which under less pressing circumstances would have been impossible, and which, once established, sometimes profoundly change the permanent character of party politics. Here, as in nearly all political matters, an attention to proportion and degree, the sacrifice of the less for the attainment of the greater, mark the path both of wisdom and of duty.