have power and keep it, and if he does not accept them power is out of
the question; and, secondly, that if the new ideas are to prevail he
is the best man to direct them safely,--beliefs quite enough for a
minister. No wise minister should have more."

"Does he not believe that the motion he is to resist next week is a
bad one?"

"A bad one of course, in its consequences, for if it succeed it will
upset him; a good one in itself I am sure he must think it, for he
would bring it on himself if he were in opposition."

"I see that Pope's definition is still true, 'Party is the madness of
the many for the gain of the few.'"

"No, it is not true. Madness is a wrong word applied to the many: the
many are sane enough; they know their own objects, and they make use
of the intellect of the few in order to gain their objects. In each
party it is the many that control the few who nominally lead them. A
man becomes Prime Minister because he seems to the many of his party
the fittest person to carry out their views. If he presume to differ
from these views, they put him into a moral pillory, and pelt him with
their dirtiest stones and their rottenest eggs."

"Then the maxim should be reversed, and party is rather the madness of
the few for the gain of the many?

"Of the two, that is the more correct definition."

"Let me keep my senses and decline to be one of the few."