influence of heightened spiritual and emotional tensions which
lasted till near the end of his life. It is indeed largely because of its
influence on the career of Gladstone that it influenced the history
of the Liberal party, for the fortunes of both are at this period
inseparable; and it is because it affected both that the anti-Turk
agitation may have a particular interest. For the course taken by
the development of either of the great historic parties is of the
greatest significance in British history in the nineteenth century.
It was through the agency of these parties that powerful social and
economic forces were able to influence politics. The condition of
either of these parties, or of both of them, at any given moment,
may explain the way things at that time worked, or failed to work.
The development of the party system which they operated played a
considerable part in determining the lines along which the con-
stitution developed.

The problems which their development presented may however
be easily missed owing to a rather common tendency to take too
much for granted in these matters. The party system seems to
most people so essential to the British polity, and the two parties
which operated it before the intervention of the Labour party seem
to have so continuous a past, going far back into English history,
bound together in unceasing factious opposition to one another
and forever presenting permanent factors in political discussion,
that it is tempting to believe that here are phenomena whose
development needs no explanation, or comment, because they
are firmly grounded on the basic and permanent realities of
English life. However, this sense of continuity is to a large extent
a delusion. The issue of politics and the social and spiritual forces
which activated politics changed drastically as history went for-
ward, and as these changes took place so the parties which com-
peted for power necessarily changed also, as did the terms and
method of their competition and the prizes for which they com-
peted. In fact the party system as we understand it is of compara-
tively recent growth. The conception or party, rather than of royal,
governments in the form that we know them, does not go back
before 1830. The first opposition party to be organised with the
comphrehensiveness of modern party in opposition was probably
Conservative party that came into existence between 1835 and
1841. Even so, its leader, Sir Robert Peel, when he came into

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