The great legal reforms of the past half-century have removed most of these abuses, and have at the same time introduced a wider and juster spirit into the practical administration of the law. Yet even now different judges sometimes differ widely in the importance they attach to substantial justice and to legal technicalities; and even now one of the advantages of trial by jury is that it brings the masculine common sense and the unsophisticated sense of justice of unprofessional men into fields that would otherwise be often distorted by ingenious subtleties. It is, however, far less in the position of the judge than in the position of an advocate that the most difficult moral questions of the legal profession arise. The difference between an unscrupulous advocate and an advocate who is governed by a high sense of honour and morality is very manifest, but at best there must be many things in the profession from which a very sensitive conscience would recoil, and things must be said and done which can hardly be justified except on the ground that the existence of this profession and the prescribed methods of its action are in the long run indispensable to the honest administration of justice. The same method of reasoning applies to other great departments of life. In politics it is especially needed. In free countries party government is the best if not the only way of conducting public affairs, but it is impossible to conduct it without a large amount of moral compromise; without a frequent surrender of private judgment and will. A good man will choose his party through disinterested motives, and with a firm and honest conviction that it represents the cast of policy most beneficial to the country. He will on grave occasions assert his independence of party, but in the large majority of cases he must act with his party even if they are pursuing courses in some degree contrary to his own judgment.