"Parliament ought to represent the opinion of the country as a whole,
and each of the great parties ought to represent the diversities of
opinion which incline to one side or the other of a dividing line
which, however practically convenient, does not itself represent any
hard and immutable frontier. Now the variety and elasticity of
representation, which are the secret of the permanence of our
institutions, are directly injured by any attempt to narrow the basis of
a party. If such attempts were to succeed upon any considerable scale we
should have a couple of machine-made parties confronting one another in
Parliament, with no golden bridges between their irreconcilable
programmes. There is some danger at the present day of an approximation
to a state of things in every way to be deprecated, and it is surely not
for the Unionist party to promote any movement tending in that
direction."[9]

This process of excluding valuable elements from our representative
chamber is equally at work within the Liberal party. At the General
Election of 1906 Sir William Butler, a Liberal of very high attainments,
was compelled to withdraw his candidature for East Leeds on the ground
that he could not fully support the Education policy of the Government.
Mr. Harold Cox, during the Parliament of 1906, criticised the work of
the Liberal Government from the point of view of a Liberal of the
Manchester school, and the Preston Liberal Council withdrew its support.
Nor does the Labour Party escape the same charge. Originally each member
was required to accept in writing the constitution of the party, and
this condition was rigorously enforced. In January 1911 it was decided
at the Party Conference held at Leicester to dispense with the written
pledge, but it would appear that a cast-iron conformity to party
decisions is still insisted upon. On 10 February 1911 the party moved an