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Starting in reason, ending in passion. Bryce, Lowell, Ostrogorski and the problem of democracy*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Abstract

This essay deals with the problem of the roots of Ostrogorski's well-known approach to the problem of political parties, showing that: (1) Ostrogorski's approach is highly dependent on the nineteenth-century debate among the English intelligentsia about a supposed ‘American model’; (2) James Bryce was at the centre of an intellectual network assuming that ‘modern politicsxyr could become the subject of a sort of ‘scientific approach to politics’ more up to date than the traditional one depending on Tocqueville's school; (3) Ostrogorski betrayed Bryce's expectation of a balanced research on the transformation of modern politics because of his dependence on an old-fashioned liberal mind (as evident from his correspondence); (4) this cleavage between the two interpretations of political development was perceived and led to a certain discussion among English and American political scholars (and in this framework Lowell's contribution is peculiarly worthy of attention).

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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

1 ‘The study of popular government’, Quarterly Review (1905), pp. 170–91, 387410.Google Scholar

2 See now the list of Bryce publications in appendix to Tulloch, H., James Bryce's American commonwealth. The Anglo-American background (London, The Royal Historical Society, 1988). The authorship is also confirmed by the reference to these essays made by A. L. Lowell in his letters to Bryce quoted below.Google Scholar

3 For the British and American fortunes of Bryce see Tulloch, American commonwealth, and also Ions, E., James Bryce and American democracy (London, 1968)Google Scholar; for European fortunes, see the French translation used also in Italy until a very late abridged translation by A. Brunialti in 1913, and the German attention, testified to, among others, by Max Weber: see Scaff, L. A., ‘Max Weber and Robert Michels’, in American Journal of Sociology, LXXXIX (1981).Google Scholar

4 See Harvie, C., The lights of liberalism, university liberals and the challenge of democracy 1860–86 (London, 1976), pp. 116–40.Google Scholar

5 The problem of the approaches to democracy (especially in reference to political parties) is dealt with in my Introduzione alia storia dei partiti politici (Bologna, 1990)Google Scholar, where more complete reference to other essays can be found; a summary is now available in ‘Les pratiques de la democratic’ in Une histoire de la démocratic en Europe, ed. by De Baecque, A. (Paris, 1991), pp. 3041Google Scholar. Even Bryce shared the view that there was a certain lack of theory on democracy, as he occasionally noted writing to Lowell 22 Nov. 1916 (during the work for Modem democracies): Bodleian Library Oxford, Bryce Papers, American Correspondents, vol. 23, fo. 63.

6 In addition, to the already quoted works of Ions and Tulloch, the ‘Victorian biography’ of Fisher, H. A. L., James Bryce (2 vols., London, 1927)Google Scholar has to be quoted: ‘To learn Italian from Aurelio Saffi, the poetic exile, became part of the ritual of cultured Liberalism in Oxford and an initiation into the spirit of the Risorgimento. Bryce went further in his Italian enthusiasm and was only deterred from joining Garibaldi as a volunteer by learning from his tutor that military service in a foreign country would be regarded as incompatible with a Trinity scholarship’ (p. 51). See also on Bryce and Essays on reform, pp. 110–12.

7 There are, of course, many versions of this point: in addition to the works already mentioned, see Collini, S., Winch, D., Burrow, J., That noble science of politics. A study in nineteenth-century intellectual history (Cambridge, 1983) pp. 209–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 This seems to me a less explored field; it is however important with relation to the declining fortunes in the European political thought of the English constitutional model: a crucial point that Bryce missed in his late study of democracy. On the other hand something of this problem also started to affect the English counterpart, e.g. the reference of Dicey to the French, Droit administratif in his Introduction to the study of the law of the constitution (London, 1885)Google Scholar; no reference is made, however, even in the last 1915 edition, to the German doctrine of public law which so powerfully developed a ‘theory’ of public law parallel to that of civil law.

9 This general approach is largely present in his The American Commonwealth (I use the third ‘completely revised’ edition (London, 18931895)Google Scholar, where there is a specific chapter on ‘How far American experience is available for Europe’ (pp. 607–14).Google Scholar

10 Ostrogorski's story has been very little known until now; even the essay of Barker, R. and Haward-Johnston, X., ‘The politics and political ideas of Moisei Ostrogorski’, Political Studies, XXIII (1974) 415–29Google Scholar, which gives some fresh material, is not very precise on many points. Now the introduction which Gaetano Quagliariello has written to the first Italian translation of Ostrogorski's book tells the whole story of Ostrogorski's enterprise from his stage at the École libre des sciences politiques in Paris to the publication of his Democracy and the organisation of political parties (1902)Google Scholar. See G. Quagliariello, ‘Ostrogorski, gli anni di fine secolo e l'avvento della macchina politica’, the introduction to Ostrogorski, M., Denwcrazia e partiti politici (Milano, 1991) pp. 596Google Scholar. See also Quagliariello, G., La politica senza i partiti. Ostrogorski e I'organizzazione della politica tra ’800 e ’900 (Bari, 1993).Google Scholar

11 Lowell, A. L., Governments and parties in continental Europe (London, 1896)Google Scholar. For Lowell's biography, Yeomans, H. A., Abbot Lawrence Lowell 1856–1943 (Cambridge (Mass.), 1948).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 It was Bryce himself who pointed out this vital connection between democracy and party-based modern politics, which also marks the difference between ancient and modern democracy. See for instance, ‘Political organizations in the United States and England’, North American Review 1893 (January), pp. 105–18Google Scholar (but this opinion is repeated many times, in his works as well as in his letters).

13 Bryce, J., Modern democracies (2 vols. London, 1921).Google Scholar

14 To realize this point it is enough to read the already quoted Political organizations: written in July 1892 (p. 106) it gives a nearly idyllic picture of the English party system, explicitly rejecting the idea that NLF may be similar to the American system: ‘No conception could be more absolutely wide of the truth’ (p. 117).

15 This was combined with a new taste of an anti-Chamberlainian mood: see the correspondence between Bryce and Goldwin Smith, 1905–6 (Bryce MSS, English Correspondents, vol. 17). But along with the distaste for the ‘ignorant demagogue’, we find that on 23 Dec. 1905 Bryce saw in ‘the rise of a so called “Labour Party”, whose most active spirits are practically Socialists… the most ominous cloud on our horizon‘ (fo. 193). A more relaxed approach, where Labour is seen as a possible balance between the old parties as in Australia (of course composed of ‘a certain number of rather ignorant and rather irresponsible persons’) is in another letter of 16 June 1906 (fo. 194).

16 Bryce papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford. The second letter (10 Dec. 1905) is in the American Correspondents section, VIII, 30–3; the first (27 Aug. 1905) was kindly supplied to me by the staff of the Bodleian Library (especially Mr Colin Harris of the Modern Manuscripts section) as not yet catalogued material during two visits in 1988 and 1989 when I was inquiring about the relations between Bryce and Ostrogorski and the reaction to Ostrogorski's book among Bryce's correspondents.

17 Intellectually Bryce was already established: his book The Holy Roman Empire (1864)Google Scholar had a second edition at that time. Also the initiative for the book of collected essays on Reform (London, 1867) seems to have been, according to Harvie, C., The lights of liberalismGoogle Scholar, in large part an initiative of Bryce, with a very marginal participation by Brodrick (see pp. 129–40). In his Memories and impressions (London, 1900)Google Scholar George Brodrick seems to forget all this when he says he is proud to have undertaken ‘the arduous task of replying to them [the speeches of Robert Lowe]’ without any mention of Bryce (see pp. 222–4).

18 The relationship between history and politics is a crucial topic in this landscape: many materials for this debate in Burrow, J., Collini, S. and Winch, D., That noble science of politicsGoogle Scholar; I have dealt with this subject in my ‘La storia come scienza della politica. A proposito della forma partito’, in Il partito politico nella Belle Epoque. II dibattito sulla formapartito fra '800 e '900, ed. by Quagliariello, G. (Milano, Giuffré 1990), pp. 6184.Google Scholar

19 See Bryce, J., The historical aspects of democracy, in Essays on Reform, pp. 239–45.Google Scholar

20 On 22 March 1910 Bryce wrote to Smith, G.: ‘It is now fifty years since I first went to you, alone and diffident, in the hall of University and received from you my earliest lessons in the study of English history: and ever since then not only your words and counsels but also your attitude in all public affairs have been a powerful and inspiring influence to me as to many others in Oxford and all over England’ (Bryce MSS, English Correspondents, vol. 17, fo. 207)Google Scholar. An opinion shared by Dicey, who on 19 March 1910 wrote to Bryce a long letter exalting the former Oxford professor: ‘In regard to talent I have for many years placed him among the greatest – I suspect he may be nearly the last – of the long line of Pamphleteers of whom in my judgment… the greatest was Burke’ (ibid. vol. 3, fo. 78).

21 See Wallace, E., Goldwin Smith, Victorian Liberal (Toronto, 1957).Google Scholar

22 Italics mine.

23 The obvious reference for the general framework of this is the classic, Burrow, J. W., Evolution and society. A study in Victorian social theory (Cambridge, 1966)Google Scholar (especially the chapter on Maine). A contemporary clear exposition of this view is Freeman, E. A., The unity of history (which is a ‘Rede Lecture’, 29 May 1872)Google Scholar, published in Freeman, E. A., Comparative politics (London, 1873) (see esp. pp. 336–7).Google Scholar

24 See Tulloch, H., Acton (London, 1988) pp. 84–5Google Scholar. A larger discussion of this point in the context of the British attitude toward the American question is in Burrow, J. W., Some British views of the United States constitution in Simmons, R. C. (ed.), The United States constitution. The first 200 years (Manchester, 1989), pp. 116–37.Google Scholar

25 In his Political organizations, Bryce stated that democracy was ‘the rule of numbers as applied to a large population’, so that ‘it is only in the United States that the problem of governing a great state by the vote of large masses of men has been worked out with any approach to completeness, and those who in the old world seek to forecast the course of their own popular governments must look for light beyond the Atlantic’ (p. 105).Google Scholar

26 The predictions of Hamilton and de Tocqueville (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, 1887), pp. 329–81.Google Scholar

27 ‘The experience of the American commonwealth’ in Essays on reform, pp. 217–37.Google Scholar

28 Details and reference to both authors and literature on this topic in my ‘Ritorno a Birmingham. La “nuova organizzazione politica” di J. Chamberlain e l'origine della forma partito contemporanea (1874–1880)’, Ricerche di Storia Politica, 3 (1988), pp. 3762.Google Scholar

29 Today this interpretation is less eccentric than ten years ago, when I started this kind of research: see Bentley, M., The climax of liberal politics. British liberalism in theory and practice 1868–1918 (London, 1987) (esp. pp. 3954; 7495).Google Scholar

30 See Vogeler, M. S., Frederic Harrison. The vocations of a positivist (Oxford, 1984), pp. III13Google Scholar, where relations with Chamberlain are dated 1873 in the case of the Disestablishment question; afterwards they became nearly inconsistent (even if Harrison remained the éminence grise of many radical quarters: pp. 196–200).

31 See Hamer, D. A., John Morley. Liberal intellectual in politics (Oxford, 1968)Google Scholar. It was Morley who wrote to Harrison on 17 July 1873 that Chamberlain seemed ‘decidedly a leader for an English progressive party’ (quoted ibid. p. 99).

32 Physics and politics in The collected works of Walter Bagehot, ed. John-Stevas, N. St. (London, 1974) VII, pp. 50–1.Google Scholar

33 To be more exact this was the reception of Ostrogorski's book. The author himself seemed to dislike the term, because when he wrote 15 Aug. 1909 to Graham Wallas to discuss remarks in Human nature in politics about his work, he stated: ‘Between biology and sociology (I do not like this last term but I use it for brevity's sake) there is no analogy.’ The letter is in the Wallas Papers at the London School of Economics: a copy was supplied to me by Gaetano Quagliariello whom I thank warmly.

34 And, more significantly, Ostrogorski affirms that Goldwin Smith's influence was nearly similar to that of John Stuart Mill: see Democracy and the organisation of political parties [the edition consulted is the anastatic reprint of 1902, New York, 1970], 1, 91Google Scholar, and for the quotation of the tourist guide, p. 618n.

35 I have developed this subject in my essay, ‘Sistema europeo dei partiti e partito americano nella tradizione storico-politologica del liberalismo europeo’, in Maurizio, Vaudagna (ed.), Il Partito politico americano e l'Europa (Milano, 1991), pp. 2551.Google Scholar

36 On the ‘École libre des sciences politiques’ and Boutmy see Favre, P., Naissances de la science politique en France 1870–1914 (Paris, 1989)Google Scholar studying Ostrogorski's experience there, Quagliariello, G., ‘Alia ricerca delle fonti francesi di Ostrogorski. Il dibattito metodologico e gli studi partitici all'École Libre des Sciences Politiques’, Ricerche di Storia Politica IV (1989), 77112, gives a picture of this climate.Google Scholar

37 Boutmy, E., Études de droit constitutionnel. France–Angleterre–États Unis (Paris, 1885). This book was translated into English by E. M. Dicey (London, 1891).Google Scholar

38 Ibid. p. 270.

39 de Laveleye, E., Le Gouvernement dans la démocratie (Paris, 1891)Google Scholar. On the national context of this thought see La politologie en Belgique avant 1914, special issue of Res publica, XXVII (1985), n. 4.

40 Ibid. pp. viii–ix.

41 Which is not completely correct: see Tocqueville's notebooks on his English travels and Mayer's remarks on these: Tocqueville, A., Journeys to England and Ireland, ed. Mayer, J. P. (New Brunswick-Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar. But this judgement was largely shared in England: see Burrow, J., Some British views.Google Scholar

42 Bryce, J., The predictions, pp. 349–50Google Scholar. In another passage, Bryce stressed the point with more tact: ‘His [of Tocqueville] knowledge of England, while remarkable in a foreigner, was not sufficient to show him how much in American institutions is really English, and explainable only from English sources’ (p. 348).Google Scholar

43 Bryce, J., The American commonwealth, 1, 1.Google Scholar

44 Ibid. p. 4.

45 The classical liberal European theory, i.e. J. C. Bluntschli, but he was not the only one to place political parties in the field of public opinion and outside the constitutional working machine: for a detailed analysis see my essays, ‘Trasformismo e questione del partito. La politica italiana e il suo rapporto con la vicenda costituzionale europea’ in Pombeni, P. (ed.), La trasformazione politica nell' Europa liberale, 1870–1890 (Bologna, 1986), pp. 215–54Google Scholar; ‘Teoria dei partiti ed esperienza costituzionale nell'Europa liberale’ in Matteucci, N., Pombeni, P. (eds.), L'organiz-zazione delta politica. Cultura, istituzioni, partiti nell'Europa liberale (Bologna, 1988), pp. 291311.Google Scholar

46 American commonwealth, III, 22.

47 For a view of the French roots of this in the great revolution's time, see the works of Jaume, Lucien, Le discoursjacobin el la démocratie (Paris, 1989)Google Scholar: Échec au libéralisme. Les Jacobins el l'etat (Paris, 1990)Google Scholar. For the German environment of the link between political philosophy and political parties, see Schieder, Th., ‘Die Theorie der Partei im älteren deutschen Liberalismus’ in Staat und Gesellschqft im Wandel unserer Zeit (München, 1970), pp. 110–32Google Scholar; von Beyme, K., ‘Partei, Faktion’ in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexicon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland (Stuttgart, 1972), IV, 677733 (where there is also some reference to classical English thought).Google Scholar

48 American commonwealth, III, 23.

49 Ibid, III, 24.

50 Ibid, III, 600.

51 The text is now in Weber, M., Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Soziologie und Sozialpolitik (Tübingen, 1924), pp. 431–49Google Scholar (see esp. pp. 442–3). On Max Weber and America see Mommsen, W., ‘Die Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika’ in Max Weber. Gesellschaft, Politik und Geschichte (Frankfurt, 1982), pp. 7296.Google Scholar

52 American commonwealth, III, 51.

53 Ibid. p. 107.

54 See Scaff, L. A., Max Weber and Robert MichelsGoogle Scholar; the same correspondence is re-examined in Mommsen, W., ‘Roberts Michels und Max Weber. Gesinnungsetischer Fundamentalismus versus verantwortungsetischen Pragmatismus’ in Mommsen, W. J. and Schwentker, W. (eds.), Max Weber und seine Zeilgenossen (Gottingen, 1987), pp. 196215.Google Scholar

55 Which J. R. Seeley in his celebrated The impartial study of politics defined as ‘the best sketch I have ever seen of the history of parties in the United States’, as Ostrogorski himself made known, together with the appreciation of von Hoist, to Macmillan in presenting his candidature for publishing his book: letter of 10 July 1985, in Macmillan Papers, British Library.

56 Quagliariello, G., Ostrogorski, gli anni di fine secolo.Google Scholar

57 The Ostrogorski–Bryce correspondence was in the officially uncatalogued part of the Bryce Papers at the Bodleian, when I first saw them in 1988. I was able to see them courtesy of the Bodleian staff cataloguing them.

58 See my Introduzione alia storia dei partiti politici, pp. 208–21.Google Scholar

59 Quagliariello, , Ostrogorski, gli anni di fine secolo, pp. 4268Google Scholar, which gives full details of this story.

60 I have already mentioned the change of mind by Bryce, in his Political organizations in the United States and England of 1892Google Scholar; a more general assessment is now necessary, remembering the great debate in cultivated opinion after the 1886 crisis (in which A. V. Dicey and others had a relevant part). This debate is examined in Cammarano, F., Strategie del conservatorismo brilannico nella crisi del liberalistmo. [‘The National Party of Common Sense’] 1885–1892 (Ban–Manduria, 1990)Google Scholar. For the changes in liberalism see the two classical works, Clarke, P., Liberals and social democrats (Cambridge, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Freeden, M., The new liberalism. An ideology of social reform (Oxford, 1978).Google Scholar

61 Bryce MSS, English Correspondents, vol. XVII, fo. 190.

62 The study of popular governments, p. 172.Google Scholar

63 Ibid. pp. 176–7.

64 Ibid. p. 182. We may recall once more that the idea of a strong connection between history and political science was largely shared: Seeley and Acton pleaded for it.

65 Ibid. pp. 180–1.

66 Ibid. pp. 184–6.

67 Ibid. pp. 186.

68 The question of the political manipulation between Bagehot and Maine is discussed in Burrow, J. W., ‘Maine e l'idea vittoriana del progresso’, Ricerche di Storia Politico, V (1989), 722.Google Scholar

69 Ibid. p. 188.

70 Ibid. p. 394.

71 Ibid. p. 399. Italics mine.

72 Ibid. p. 404.

73 See ‘A Modern “Symposium”. Is the popular judgment in politics more just than that of the higher orders?’, The Nineteenth Century Review, III (Jan–Jun. 1878), 797822Google Scholar (the discussants were Lord Arthur Russell, R. H. Hutton, Grant Duff and Fredrick Harrison); IV (July–Dec. 1878), 174–92 (this time the discussants were W. R. Gregg, R. Lowe and Gladstone). Clarke, P., Liberals and social democratsGoogle Scholar, has noted how in the quarters of new liberalism Bryce was thought ‘incorrigibly Gladstonian’ (p. 42).

74 Duverger, M., Lespartispolitiques (Paris, 1951)Google Scholar. This enthusiasm continues in French political science: see Avril, P., Essais sur les partis (Paris, 1986), p. 8.Google Scholar

76 Lipset, M., Introduction to the abridged edition of Ostrogorski's book (Chicago, 1964)Google Scholar: here there are some real mistakes; apart from the question of the supposed influence on Max Weber, Lipset claims a non-existent influence on Michels: in the preface to the first Italian edition of his The sociology of the political party in modem democracy (Torino, 1912)Google Scholar the German writer complained at being put in relation with what he calls ‘a distinguished Polish scholar’, openly declaring that he did not know that book. See this preface, now reprinted in the appendix to Michels, R., La sociologia del partito politico (Bologna, 1966), p. 541.Google Scholar

76 A list of the principal reviews of Ostrogorski's book is in the appendix of Quagliariello, G., Ostrogorski, gli anni di fine secolo.Google Scholar

77 Macy, J., The English constitution. A commentary on its nature and growth (New York, 1897)Google Scholar. He was then working on his book on party machinery in the United States, which was published in 1918.

78 Bryce MSS, American Correspondents, VII, fo. 185.

79 Ibid. fos. 15–16.

80 So the Russian scholar was judged by MacMahon, Arthur in 1933 in the Encyclopedia of social sciences, who added: ‘which indeed was the ardent spirit of the man himself’: see vol. XI (New York, 1933)Google Scholar, s.v. Ostrogorski, Moisei, pp. 503–4.

81 See for instance the letter of Bryce to Lowell, 17 Jan. 1904 (Bryce MSS, American Correspondents, XXII, fos. 103–5), and the letter of Lowell to Bryce, 10 Dec. 1905, with congratulations for the fall of Balfour (ibid, VII, fos. 30–3).

88 A sketch of this in Società e corpi, ed. Schiera, P. (Napoli, 1986)Google Scholar. On this English context see Burrow, J. W., Whigs and liberals. Continuity and change in English political thought (Oxford, 1988), pp. 131–53.Google Scholar

83 London, 1908.

84 Ibid. pp. 124–9.

85 London, 1896.

86 As he put it in The American commonwealth (I, 8): ‘the stranger finds it easier to maintain a position of detachment, not only from party prejudice, but from those prepossessions in favour of persons, groups, constitutional dogmas, national pretensions, which a citizen can scarcely escape except by falling into that attitude of impartial cynicism which sours and perverts the historical mind as much as prejudice itself’.

87 Compare the numbers of persons mentioned in the introductions by Ostrogorski, and by Lowell, , The government of England (New York, 1908).Google Scholar

88 See the letter of Lowell to Bryce, 27 Aug. 1908, Bryce MSS, American Correspondents, VIII, fos. 42–5.

89 New York, Longmans–Green, 1913.

90 Ibid. p. 58.

91 Ibid. p. 62.

92 See the letter of Bryce to Sidgwick, 12 Sept. 1887, Bryce MSS, English Correspondents, XVII, fos. 117–18, where the only good found in Maine's Popular government was ‘the charm of his writing’, which justified ‘the popularity of the book’. This point is noted by Stephan, Collini, That noble science of politics, p. 241, who enlarges consideration of it to an 1885 polemic.Google Scholar

93 Public opinion, pp. 60–4 (italics mine).

94 Ibid. p. 62.

95 Ibid. p. 62.

96 Ibid. p. 63.

97 Ibid. p. 66.

98 Ibid. p. 80.

99 The point here is relatively complicated: this was the classical lesson of Bluntschli, largely shared in Europe, which opposed the ‘pure form of party’ as the party of opinion, to the parties founded on social or constitutional cleavages. Bluntschli thought, nevertheless, that the rational form of a party system was organized on four parties (radicals, liberals, moderate-conservatives and reactionaries) and not on two. Maybe this is the reason why Lowell here (p. 81) quotes ‘continental writers’ as ‘generally convinced that a multiplicity of parties indicates greater maturity’ (elsewhere he quotes Bluntschli's, Charakter und Grist der politischen Parteien, p. 65)Google Scholar. He pleaded instead for a two-party system, but he misunderstands the ‘continental’ theory (for details see my two essays quoted at n. 45).

100 A trace of this can be found in a Bryce letter to Lowell, 4 Dec. 1913 (Bryce MSS, American Correspondents, XXII, fo. 240), where the Oxford master interpreted Lowell's Public opinion in the old terms: ‘The growth of opinion as a ruling force seems to me the only remedy for the accentuations of party violence in Europe’ (and in addition he spoke for England of ‘the Tory party… preaching Civil War’).

101 (Cambridge (Mass.).) It was in fact an abridged version of Government of England and of Governments and parties on continental Europe, joined in one.

102 The Diceyan roots of this judgment are self-evident.

103 Modern democracies, p. 127. Is Bryce here coming to Wallas' position? The question is not easy. In a letter of Lowell to Bryce, 7 Feb. 1907, the Harvard professor praised his master for the essay ‘Obedience’ just published (in Studies in history and jurisprudence (2 vols Oxford, 1901)Google Scholar. The whole letter is on what in a more modern terminology we would call ‘political obligation’ as related to ‘party allegiance’, to conclude that, against ‘the classical theory of parties’, which assumes only rational subjects, ‘man is in very small part rational, and mainly a suggestible animal; and the wider the extension of the suffrage, the smaller the proportion reason plays in the adoption of political opinions’ (Bryce MSS, American Correspondents, fos. 7–14). In any case Lowell was in contact with Wallas and invited him for a seminar in Harvard in 1910; see Wiener, M. J., Between two worlds. The political thought of Graham Wallas (Oxford, Clarendon, 1971, pp. 167–70)Google Scholar; in his Public opinion, Lowell quotes also Tarde, the common reference for European ‘political psychology’.

104 Modem democracies, p. 138.

105 Bryce MSS, American Correspondents, XXIII, fo. 181.