And the reason of this blindness to the claims of justice is that the spirit of party combines within itself some of the best and some of the worst of human passions.

It often unites the self-sacrificing zealotry of religious fanaticism with the recklessness of the gambling table.

Let an assailant of the Contagious Diseases Act, a fanatic for temperance, a protectionist who believes that free trade is the ruin of the country, an anti-vivisectionist who holds that any painful experiment on live animals is the most heinous of sins; let any man who has come to believe that his own credit, no less than the salvation of the country, depends on the success of a particular party, know that the triumph of his cause depends upon his voting that a particular measure operates beyond Great Britain, and we know well enough in which way he will vote.

He will vote what he knows to be untrue rather than sacrifice a cause which he believes to be sacred.

He will think himself both a fool and a traitor if he sacrifices the victory which is within his grasp to the maintenance of technical legality, or rather to respect for a rule of constitutional procedure.
Suppose, however, that I have underrated the equity of human nature, and that no faction in the House of Commons ever attempts to violate the spirit of the Constitution.