The Making of the Democratic Party in

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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN POLITICAL HISTORY

The Making of the

Democratic Party in
Europe, 1860–1890

Anne Heyer
 Palgrave Studies in Political History

Series Editors
Henk te Velde, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands
Maartje Janse, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands
Hagen Schulz-Forberg, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
The contested nature of legitimacy lies at the heart of modern politics.
A continuous tension can be found between the public, demanding to
be properly represented, and their representatives, who have their own
responsibilities along with their own rules and culture. Political history
needs to address this contestation by looking at politics as a broad
and yet entangled field rather than as something confined to institu-
tions and politicians only. As political history thus widens into a more
integrated study of politics in general, historians are investigating democ-
racy, ideology, civil society, the welfare state, the diverse expressions of
opposition, and many other key elements of modern political legitimacy
from fresh perspectives. Parliamentary history has begun to study the
way rhetoric, culture and media shape representation, while a new social
history of politics is uncovering the strategies of popular meetings and
political organizations to influence the political system.
Palgrave Studies in Political History analyzes the changing forms and
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normative orders within which they navigate. Its ambition is to publish
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tions and political life at large, and the interaction between the two. The
premise of the series is that the two mutually define each other on local,
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https://link.springer.com/bookseries/15603
 Anne Heyer

The Making
of the Democratic
Party in Europe,
1860–1890
Anne Heyer
Institute for History
Leiden University
Leiden, The Netherlands

Palgrave Studies in Political History

ISBN 978-3-030-87747-7 ISBN 978-3-030-87748-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87748-4

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 Acknowledgements

Why do we think of parties as democratic institutions? This question has

puzzled me since I read Robert Michels as a student in the National
Library of Scotland in Edinburgh in 2010. Back then I focused on the
crisis of parties of the present. For this monograph, I have kept the general
interest but moved to a historical approach: the book takes parties to the
past. The scholarly reasons for writing this book are explained in the intro-
duction that also explains the, perhaps to some extent, unusual setup of
this book. This monograph is not only meant as a conventional histor-
ical study; it tries to speak to historians and social scientists alike. For this
purpose, Chapter 2 brings together the theoretical literature about party
formation of several disciplines and relates them to the parties discussed
in the rest of the book. This might look less like the familiar outline
of conventional historical monographs, but I have taken great care to
develop a narrative that should speak to those who are no experts in
nineteenth-century German, Dutch or British history. Accordingly, the
remaining Chapters 3 until 6 tell about the struggles and hopes of the
main figures of this book: party founders—the agents that navigated the
unruly times of the nineteenth century to accomplish something that was
recognized as truly exceptional already in their time.
Finishing a book is a laborious and strangely joyous experience. This
particular manuscript has been in the “making” for a long time. An
earlier account constituted my doctoral dissertation, which I defended
in January 2019. The book would have not been possible with the

v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

meticulous reading, thoughtful comments, precise feedback and always

encouraging supervision of Maartje Janse and Henk te Velde who acted as
excellent doctoral supervisors and, together with Hagen Schulz-Forberg,
are the editors of this exceptional book series Palgrave Studies in Polit-
ical History. The Dutch Research Council (Nederlandse Organisatie voor
Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek) funded the doctoral research. My sincere
gratitude goes to Peter Stamatov for supporting the project with so many
comments and additional time to rewrite the manuscript in Madrid. I am
grateful for the detailed and encouraging review of my reading committee
that helped developing the manuscript into a real book: Bernhard Rieger,
Ingrid van Biezen, Stefan Berger, Peter Stamatov and Hanneke Hoek-
stra. I am grateful for the two anonymous reviewers who have taken
so much time to carefully read the final manuscript book and provide
encouraging feedback. The Institute for History at Leiden University has
provided me with research time, plenty of teaching experiences and a
community of colleagues and friends. My appreciation goes to the staff
members of the numerous archives (Bundesarchiv, Archiv der Sozialen
Demokratie, Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, Stadtbib-
liothek Braunschweig, Special Collection of Bristol University, Cadbury
Research Library of Birmingham University and the Historische Docu-
mentatie Centrum voor het Nederlandse Protestantisme of the Free
University Amsterdam) whose knowledge of collections and kind advice
made this book possible and research so much more enjoyable. Ela
Chauhan has done a magnificent job polishing the language of the final
manuscript. Willem van Rooijen and René Nijman patiently have helped
me finish the layout of the graphs.
It often seems like the type of research we do is a lonely exercise. For
this book, the opposite is true. I could not have done any of the work
without the numerous colleagues from so many disciplines and institu-
tions. The project was shaped with the feedback from the listeners and
commentators of many conferences and workshops. It benefitted from the
numerous times that colleagues in Leiden and Madrid attentively listened
and generously responded to my ideas. The work could not have been
finished with the careful reviewing by many excellent scholars who helped
me develop and improve the text that is in front of you. Many parts of
the manuscript were written in long evenings for which my friends and
family have given me support and more importantly patience and under-
standing. The list is too long for these pages, but you know who you are
and that this is also your achievement.
 Contents

1 Introduction 1
2 A New Perspective on Party Emergence 27
3 The Issue of Education: How the Association Became
Party 61
4 Making the Party 111
5 Mobilizing and Disciplining: The Relationship Between
Leaders and the Masses 149
6 The Role of Elections 189

Conclusion 231
Bibliography 247
Index 279

vii
 List of Figures

Graph 2.1 Party organizations and suffrage rights 43

Graph 2.2 Dissemination of Anti-Corn Law League
in the Netherlands, Britain and Germany 55
Graph 3.1 Overview of organizational development of Dutch
Anti-Revolutionaries 74
Graph 3.2 Overview organizational development of German Social
Democrats 83
Graph 3.3 Overview of organizational development of British
Radical Liberals 101
Graph 4.1 Organizational structure of the German SDAP 121
Graph 4.2 Organizational structure of the British NLF 134
Graph 4.3 Organizational structure of the Dutch ARP 143
Graph 5.1 SDAP membership numbers 175

ix
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

1.1 Parties and Democracy

The history of political parties is closely connected to the history of
democracy. Modern parties emerging in the second half of the nineteenth
century established a close relationship with the slowly manifesting insti-
tutions of democracy, including national parliaments. This close connec-
tion between party and democracy was neither foreseen nor inevitable. It
was established by the founders of the first modern parties who presented
themselves as representatives of the people. Their agenda was one that
we could call democratic in essence: the political elite was to include the
interests of the masses in decision-making. How did party founders bring
about democratization in their community and the nation as a whole?
Mass organization, their tool to achieve social and political change, may
appear trivial in retrospect but it was powerful in the eyes of contempo-
raries. Previously, parties were loose alliances of parliamentarians with a
common political ideology. Mass organization allowed party founders to
achieve democratization in two ways: internally in the structure of the
party and externally in the political institutions of the country. Although
the number of supporters was initially small, the new parties developed
an organizational structure that was geared to mass mobilization, partic-
ipation and representation: in formalized procedures members in local
chapters elected national leaders who in turn were elected to parliament.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
A. Heyer, The Making of the Democratic Party in Europe, 1860-1890,
Palgrave Studies in Political History,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87748-4_6
2 A. HEYER

Mass organization gave the modern party a new form of political legit-
imacy that justified its existence in the emerging democratic age: the
quality of leaders was replaced with the quantity of followers.1 As the
party became modern, it also became democratic.
Lately, the relationship between party and democracy has come under
scrutiny. The once so powerful promise of the democratic party has lost
its appeal. In the last three decades, we have witnessed the demise of the
democratic party as we know it. From a functional perspective parties are
still conducive in facilitating democracies. Parties help organize elections
and provide voters with policy alternatives and candidates. At the same
time, parties face increasing criticism for being elitist and too distant from
citizens. The statistics appear to support this perception. In particular,
declining membership numbers suggest that parties are becoming less
appealing to the general population; they have lost their grounding in civil
society. For most party scholars this is a dangerous trend that contributes
to the “hollowing out” of Western democracies.2 Concerns about the
crisis of the party are so acute that scholars have suggested alternative
democratic institutions that can contribute to, or replace, parties.3 Even
the mass media has taken up the scholarly discussion of the end of the
Volkspartei (people’s party). Many Western countries, if not all of them,
have been affected by the decline of the conventional model of the demo-
cratic party. Take Britain, where the once-powerful parties of Labour
and Conservatives have lost a considerable proportion of members and
voters and British Prime Ministers are forced to rely on smaller parties as
coalition partners or face the radicalization of their party.4 In the Nether-
lands, where coalition governments are the rule rather than the exception,

1 Richard S. Katz and Peter Mair, ‘Changing Models of Party Organization and Party
Democracy’, Party Politics 1, no. 1 (1 January 1995): 5–28.
2 Peter Mair, Ruling the Void: The Hollowing of Western Democracy (London: Verso,
2013), title.
3 Colin Crouch, Post-Democracy (Oxford: Polity Press, 2004); Klaus von Beyme,
Die politische Klasse im Parteienstaat (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1993). Pierre
Rosanvallon, Counter-Democracy: Politics in an Age of Distrust, trans. Arthur Gold-
hammer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); David Van Reybrouck, Tegen
Verkiezingen, 8th ed. (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 2015); Tom van der Meer, Niet de
Kiezer is Gek (Houten: Spectrum, 2017).
4 While Labour had to rely on the support of the Liberal Democrats for its 2010
government, Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May depended on the Democratic
Unionist Party in 2017. For a general discussion of the decline of party membership in
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

public concerns about the “the future of political parties” are growing.5
Here, the volkspartijen (people’s parties) of the Labour Party (Partij van
de Arbeid) and the Christian Democratic Appeal (Christen-Democratisch
Appèl) have so far been unable to prevent their loss of significance.6
As alarming as these reports sound, they need to be treated with
scholarly caution. An increasingly relevant literature doubts whether the
current crisis of the party is truly a crisis and a danger to democracy.7
In particular, the connection between mass organization and democ-
racy requires analytical precision and historical contextualization. Ever
since the nineteenth century, mass organization has been the most visible
and most discussed feature of political parties. Yet the concept of mass
organization should not be exclusively operationalized by the often-cited
membership numbers.8 As a historian with a social-science background,
I argue that there is a problematic simplification in the way we take the
democratic function of parties for granted; mass organization was both an
idea and practice that was, from the beginning, arbitrary to some extent.
Indeed, recent research on party history has questioned the validity of
declining membership numbers and suggested that in most countries mass
membership might be a historical exception, rather than a rule.9

the UK see e.g. Paul Whiteley, ‘Where Have All the Members Gone? The Dynamics of
Party Membership in Britain’, Parliamentary Affairs 62, no. 2 (1 April 2009): 242–57.
5 The quote is fom the title of a lecture series of the Dutch think tank Pro Demos—
House of Democracy in the fall of 2015. ‘Collegereeks “Hebben politieke partijen de
toekomst?”’, ProDemos (blog), accessed 10 January 2017, https://www.prodemos.nl/
leer/debatten-lezingen-colleges/collegereeks-politieke-partijen-toekomst/.
6 The PvdA won 53 seats in 1977. ‘Zetelverdeling Tweede Kamer 1946-Heden’,
https://www.parlement.com/id/vh8lnhronvx6/zetelverdeling_tweede_kamer_1946_h
eden, Parlement & Politiek, n.d., accessed 3 May 2018. The 2017 figure is from
Kiesraad, ‘Officiële uitslag Tweede Kamerverkiezing 15 maart 2017’, nieuwsbericht, 21
March 2017, https://www.kiesraad.nl/actueel/nieuws/2017/03/20/officiele-uitslag-twe
ede-kamerverkiezing-15-maart-2017.
7 Russell J. Dalton and Steven A. Weldon, ‘Public Images of Political Parties: A Neces-
sary Evil?’, West European Politics 28, no. 5 (November 2005): 931–51; Susan E. Scarrow
and Burcu Gezgor, ‘Declining Memberships, Changing Members? European Political Party
Members in a New Era’, Party Politics 16, no. 6 (November 2010): 823–43.
8 Ingrid van Biezen and Thomas Poguntke, ‘The Decline of Membership-Based
Politics’, Party Politics 20, no. 2 (1 March 2014): 205–16.
9 Susan E. Scarrow, ‘Parties without Members? Party Organizations in a Changing Elec-
toral Environment’, in Parties Without Partisans Political Change in Advanced Industrial
4 A. HEYER

Let us take a closer look at the discussion about the relationship

between party membership and democracy. Studies on the consequences
of membership decline have several focal points. While Dalton and
Weldon relate decreasing trust in parties to low voting turnout, others
such as Scarrow and Gezgor have compared the socio-economic back-
ground of party members and the general electorate. They conclude
that declining membership numbers are not a problem for representa-
tion because party members share more socio-economic characteristics
with their voters.10 In addition, it can be argued that although quantity is
often seen as an empirical indicator for the democratic function of parties,
there is little understanding about the exact scale of mass membership
that is needed to enable a well-functioning system of democratic repre-
sentation. Differences in national experiences show that the proportion of
party members in the general population varies from as high as 17.27%
in Austria to as low as 1.21% in Britain.11 This argument corresponds
to the observation in the literature that not only parties, but also other
non-political organizations such as trade unions and churches have lost
membership support.12 This might not be a crisis of parties, but a general
social trend where it has become increasingly difficult to convince poten-
tial members of the benefits of permanent membership. Finally, as political
theorists have convincingly argued, representation is constructed. Often
claim-making is more important than actual procedures.13 In this sense,
parties have always depended on the ability of their leaders to convince
the public of the legitimacy of their claims for representation.14

Democracies, ed. Russel J. Dalton, J. Russell and P. Martin, Wattenberg, 1st paperback,
vol. 5, Comparative Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 79–101.
10 Dalton and Weldon, ‘Public Images of Political Parties’; Scarrow and Gezgor,
‘Declining Memberships, Changing Members?’.
11 Figures are from 2008, van Biezen, Mair, and Poguntke, ‘Going, Going, …
Gone?’, 28.
12 Biezen and Poguntke, ‘The Decline of Membership-Based Politics’.
13 Michael Saward, The Representative Claim (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010);
Hanna Fenichel Pitkin, The Concept of Representation (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1967).
14 See especially Enroth’s argument that the problem with cartel parties is not their
failure to represent their constituencies, but rather that it is difficult to empirically deter-
mine whether they are representative or not. ‘Cartelization versus Representation? On a
Misconception in Contemporary Party Theory’, Party Politics 23, no. 2 (1 March 2017):
124–34.
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

This book responds to the discussions on the crisis of parties with

a critical analysis of the moment when the relationship between mass
organization and democracy was fostered. It does so by studying the func-
tion of democracy in the first modern parties and the nineteenth-century
circumstances that shaped the implementation of democratic ideas in
the specific practices of their organization. Many scholars have described
parties as crucial institutions for the functioning of democratic represen-
tation.15 Yet little attention has been paid to the original relationship
between party and democracy which was of a reciprocal nature: parties
not only contributed to processes of democratization, democratic ideas
and practices were also a decisive tool for party founders in creating the
first modern parties.16 The main research question of this book focuses
on this argument: why and how did the democratic party emerge? I
answer this question with a close analysis of the ideas and practices of
democracy among party founders—the first people in history to connect
party with democracy. The first generation of founders were committed
democrats (in the nineteenth-century context); they were also brilliant
political strategists. Hence, the modern party was the result of a merger
of democratic ideals and political calculation: party founders justified their
claim for political power by incorporating the theoretical construct of
democracy in the practices of mass organization.
The story that I tell in this book is a fascinating one. It is about
the difficult and yet hopeful foundation of three parties: the German
Social Democratic Workers’ Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei, SDAP,
1869), the Dutch Anti-Revolutionary Party (Anti-Revolutionaire Partij,
ARP, 1879) and the British National Liberal Federation (NLF, 1877).
In order to allow for a detailed study of the process of party formation,
I focus on the decades in which the three parties were founded. This
means that in each case the years before and after the founding assembly

15 For instance, Larry Jay Diamond and Richard Gunther, Political Parties and Democ-
racy (JHU Press, 2001). The most recent contribution to this discussion is probably
Giovanni Capoccia and Daniel Ziblatt, ‘The Historical Turn in Democratization Studies:
A New Research Agenda for Europe and Beyond’, Comparative Political Studies 43, no.
8–9 (2010): 931–68.
16 Sartori offers a similar observation when he argues that political science studies parties
as independent variables whereas sociology analyses them as dependent variables. Giovanni
Sartori, ‘The Sociology of Parties: A Critical Review’, in The West European Party System,
ed. Peter Mair, Oxford Readings in Politics and Government (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1990), 150–82.
6 A. HEYER

have been carefully studied on the basis of extensive primary sources and
secondary literature. These formative years provide a detailed insight into
the interplay between democratic ideas and practices before the demo-
cratic mass membership party became a widely accepted phenomenon.
The following chapters carve out commonalities and differences in devel-
oping a mass organization between the three parties to show why and
how organizing as a party became a possible and logical course of action
to various groups in Europe.17 Moreover, I incorporate a transnational
perspective by studying modern parties as an interrelated phenomenon
of political transition. Through this broad angle, this book contributes
to the historical writing on party emergence. It also offers a modest but
historically meaningful contribution to the debate on the crisis of parties
today.
The historical cases of the book are inspired by the empirical obser-
vation which the first modern parties share with parties of today: the
contested position on democracy in public discourse. Indeed, the first
democratic parties were seen as an indicator of the political crisis of their
time. For nineteenth-century contemporaries, the three parties were a
strange phenomenon. Take the Dutch Anti-Revolutionary Party that was
founded by the Protestant minister Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920) in
1879. The Dutch public agreed that this religious party was a one-of-a-
kind project. The ARP was considered novel because of its organizational
structure. Party founder Kuyper was an Orthodox Protestant minister
who had become a political activist, briefly served in parliament, and ran
an increasingly relevant newspaper De Standaard. Kuyper was known and
criticized for his populist rhetoric which made the ARP infamous and
powerful at the same time. For its nineteenth-century critics, the party
threatened political stability and provoked social unrest. Yet, supporters
praised the institutionalization of mass politics—the interests of ordinary
Orthodox Protestants were finally represented in formal political institu-
tions. Regardless of the specific perspective, the general perception in the
Netherlands was that the ARP was a new species in the political land-
scape: a strange animal that had never been seen before. Renowned until
today for its innovation in political organization, Kuyper’s party had the

17 Willibald Steinmetz and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, ‘The Political as Communicative

Space in History: The Bielefeld Approach’, in Writing Political History Today, ed. Willibald
Steinmetz, Ingrid Gilcher-Holtey, and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, vol. 21, History of Political
Communication (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2013), 11–33.
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

status of a newcomer. In the Dutch historiography, the party has gained

renewed attention, both as an iconic case in itself and as an important
example of nineteenth-century political history.18 Until today the ARP is
considered to be the first modern party in the Netherlands.19
Before introducing the other two protagonists of this study, let me
explain what I mean by the modern party. What made the modern party
modern? Modern parties differed from previous parliamentary groups
because of their mass organization. The three parties in this book shared
the combination of parliamentary and extra-parliamentary organization
which troubled and amazed contemporaries and generations of party
scholars. In the 1950s, political scientist Maurice Duverger incorpo-
rated this framework in his analysis with a momentous misconception:

18 See especially Rienk Janssens, De opbouw van de Antirevolutionaire Partij 1850–

1888 (Verloren, 2001). But also Roel Kuiper, Herenmuiterij: vernieuwing en sociaal
conflict in de antirevolutionaire beweging, 1871–1894 (Leiden: Groen, 1994); Arie van
Deursen, ‘Van antirevolutionaire richting naar antirevolutionaire partij 1829–1871’, in
De Antirevolutionaire Partij, 1829–1980, ed. George Harinck, Roel Kuiper, and Peter
Bak (Hilversum: Verloren, 2001), 11–52; Ron de Jong, ‘Antirevolutionaire partijvorming,
1848–1879: een afwijkende visie’, in Jaarboek Documentatiecentrum Nederlandse Politieke
Partijen 2001, ed. Gerrit Voerman, Jaarboek Documentatiecentrum Nederlandse Politieke
Partijen (Groningen: DNPP, 2003), 213–26; Ron de Jong, ‘Het antirevolutionaire volk
achter de kiezers. De mythe van een leuze. De electorale aanhang van de ARP rond
1885 en in 1918’, BMGN—Low Countries Historical Review 123, no. 2 (1 January
2008): 185–96. For an overview of the recent historiography see, D. F. J. Bosscher,
‘Een partij die niet ophoudt te fascineren: nieuwe literatuur over de Antirevolutionaire
Partij’, in Jaarboek Documentatiecentrum Nederlandse Politieke Partijen 2001, Jaarboek
Documentatiecentrum Nederlandse Politieke Partijen (Groningen: DNPP, 2003), 227–
36. The relationship of the ARP to earlier forms of political protest has been discussed
by Annemarie Houkes, Christelijke vaderlanders: godsdienst, burgerschap en de nederlandse
natie (1850–1900) (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 2009); Maartje Janse, De Afschaffers:
Publieke Opinie, Organisatie en Politiek in Nederland 1840–1880 (Amsterdam: Wereld-
bibliotheek, 2007). For recent references to the ARP’s general position in Dutch political
history, see, for instance, Henk te Velde, Stijlen van leiderschap: persoon en politiek van
Thorbecke tot Den Uyl (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 2002); Ido de Haan, Het beginsel
van leven en wasdom: de constitutie van de Nederlandse politiek in de negentiende eeuw,
De natiestaat (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 2003); Ron de Jong, Van standspolitiek
naar partijloyaliteit: verkiezingen voor de Tweede Kamer 1848–1887 (Hilversum: Uitgeverij
Verloren, 1999).
19 Herman de Liagre Böhl, ‘Hoofdlijnen in de politieke ontwikkeling van het moderne
Nederland’, in Maatschappij & Nederlandse politiek, ed. Uwe Becker (Het Spinhuis,
1998), 213; George Harinck and Arie van Deursen, ‘Woord vooraf’, in De Antirevolu-
tionaire Partij, 1829–1980, ed. Roel Kuiper, Peter Bak and George Harinck (Hilversum:
Verloren, 2001), 10; Jong, Van standspolitiek naar partijloyaliteit, 22.
8 A. HEYER

his seminal book Political Parties argued that early parties emerged
either out of parliamentary or extra-parliamentary origins. Yet, histor-
ical research has shown that this division is an inaccurate depiction of
the historical process. Although Duverger briefly mentioned the ARP,
he disregarded the parliamentary tradition of the party and overesti-
mated its extra-parliamentary roots. Indeed, the ARP was not created by
“the Churches and religious sects,” as Duverger has written.20 Rather,
as Dutch historians have demonstrated, the ARP had significant roots
within parliament where the aristocrat Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer
(1801–1876) led the Anti-Revolutionary faction more than two decades
before the foundation of the ARP.21 Informed by his own experience
with parties, Duverger perhaps applied twentieth-century conceptualisa-
tions to a period when mass politics was still in development. However, in
the nineteenth century, when formal institutions excluded many citizens,
the paths to engaging with politics were diverse and often informal.
Duverger’s distinction is problematic because it provides an overly
schematic interpretation of party formation and neglects the actual histor-
ical situation. It also develops an analytical framework that deflects
attention from the nineteenth-century causes of party emergence, making
this process look like an inevitable result of historical circumstances that
pays no attention to individual agency. In distancing myself from the
categories of Duverger, I follow historiographical approaches such as the
one taken by German historian Nipperdey, who referred to the union of
parliamentary and extra-parliamentary as the beginning of a “developed”
party system.22 Modern parties often had, simultaneously, an origin both
in their parliamentary faction and in their organizational structure with
national headquarters and local branches outside of parliament. Moreover,
what truly made the Dutch ARP novel in history, but also controversial
and fascinating in the eyes of contemporaries, was the immediate link
between religious groups and parliamentary representation. The political
elite was shocked by, and doubted, the promise to integrate the formerly

20 Maurice Duverger, Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern
State, trans. D. W. Brogan, Third edition (London: Barnes and Noble, 1967), xxxi.
21 For Groen van Prinsterer, see, among many other titles, Jan Willem Kirpestein,
‘Groen van Prinsterer als belijder van kerk en staat in de negentiende eeuw’ (Vrije
Universiteit Amsterdam, 1993).
22 Thomas Nipperdey, Die Organisation der deutschen Parteien vor 1918 (Düsseldorf:
Droste, 1961), 9.
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

excluded lower classes into parliament. The public controversy around

the ARP was not a coincidence: it was the result of the activism of party
founder Abraham Kuyper who translated democratic ideas and practices
into the mass organization of the party to strengthen his influence on
the parliamentary faction. Kuyper’s appeal to democracy was essential
in mobilizing followers and facilitating the foundation of the modern
party—an underestimated component in the general literature on party
emergence.
The focus on ordinary people was not a unique Dutch phenomenon.
Elsewhere, new parties likewise presented their organization as modern
and subscribed to the claim of speaking for the underrepresented masses.
Two parties were especially illustrative; they serve as additional cases in
this book. Criticized as an opportunistic demagogue, the industrialist and
Radical Liberal politician Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) created the
notorious National Liberal Federation in 1877 to enable the organiza-
tion of the masses. The parliamentary faction of British Liberalism was
stronger in numbers and parliamentary influence than Kuyper’s ARP in
the Netherlands, but in essence this was a similar process of creating
a mass organization with national headquarters and a broad political
agenda. Moreover, the involvement of activists who often did not hold
political office and had no link to the aristocratic elite gave the British
party a more democratic character than groups of parliamentary repre-
sentatives in the House of Commons had achieved before. Known as
the “source of modern popular party organization” in the British party
historiography, the NLF became the prominent case of early party scholar
Mosei Ostrogroski’s influential book Democracy and Organization after
the turn of the century.23 Despite the large international impact of Ostro-
gorski’s study, research on the early years of the NLF has been confined
to a number of articles and book chapters that are accompanied by more
general studies of the parliamentary Liberal Party.24

23 Francis H. Herrick, ‘The Origins of the National Liberal Federation’, Journal of

Modern History 17, no. 2 (1 June 1945): 116.
24 Herrick, ‘The Origins’; Trygve R. Tholfsen, ‘The Origins of the Birmingham
Caucus’, The Historical Journal 2, no. 2 (1 January 1959): 161–84; Griffiths, P. C, ‘The
Origins and Development of the National Liberal Federation to 1886’ (Oxford, Oxford,
1973); P. C Griffiths, ‘The Caucus and the Liberal Party in 1886’, History 61, no. 202
(1 June 1976): 183–97; Harold John Hanham, Elections and Party Management: Politics
in the Time of Disraeli and Gladstone (Hassocks: Harvester Press, 1978); Patricia Auspos,
‘Radicalism, Pressure Groups, and Party Politics: From the National Education League
10 A. HEYER

The British NLF shared the institutional innovation of focusing on

ordinary people, both in rhetoric and organizational structure with
its Dutch counterpart, the ARP. The young party owed its contested
position to the public debate on the democratic nature of its mass
organization. On the one hand, Chamberlain used the NLF to change
the balance of power within the loosely organized parliamentary Liberal
Party: challenging the traditional Whigs in favour of the progressive Radi-
cals was a strategic move to support his own political career. On the other
hand, NLF can be interpreted as a factor in the democratization of British
politics. In Britain, too, the new phenomenon of the party became the
institutional vehicle for the age of mass politics—a beloved and feared
herald of modern democracy.
In Germany, modern parties also became key players in the struggle
for the implementation of democracy. In the German states, it was
Socialists and Radical Democrats that used mass organization to find
the first modern party. The founders of the Social Democratic Workers’
Party, August Bebel (1840–1913) and Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–
1900), participated in a similarly promising and contested project of
establishing the democratic party. As parliamentarians, they constituted
a very small faction of Social Democrats in the German Reichstag . Need-
less to say, the SDAP also became the object of heated controversies
in political circles and with the general public with its revolutionary
political programme. Members believed that the party truly represented
ordinary people—they were the main focus of its ideology and partici-
pated in its organizational structure. Opponents criticised the democratic
rhetoric as an empty promise without practical implications. At the same
time, the political authorities soon became concerned about the party.
In particular, through Liebknecht’s personal network, the new party was

to the National Liberal Federation’, Journal of British Studies 20, no. 1 (1 October
1980): 184–204; Eugenio F. Biagini, British Democracy and Irish Nationalism, 1876–906
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), Chapter 4; James Owen, Labour and
the Caucus: Working-Class Radicalism and Organised Liberalism in England, 1868–1888
(Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2014). For the parliamentary Liberal Party, see for
instance John Russell Vincent, The Formation of the Liberal Party, 1857–1868 (London:
Constable, 1966); John P. Rossi, The Transformation of the British Liberal Party: A Study
of the Tactics of the Liberal Opposition, 1874–1880 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical
Society, 1978); Jonathan Parry, The Rise and Fall of Liberal Government in Victorian
Britain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); Terence Andrew Jenkins, The Liberal
Ascendancy, 1830–1886 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994).
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

in close contact with Karl Marx whose political ideology was adopted
in the party programme. In the context of the German Empire this
resulted in the suppression and persecution of Social Democrats. This
contested history is also reflected in the significant number of detailed
studies that have been published for the early phase of Social Democratic
history.25 The German SDAP, which is probably the first party to be well-
known outside of the specialized literature, has a long history. After being
renamed Socialist Workers’ Party (Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei) in 1875,
and later Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei), it became

25 Most recently and influential to this study is Thomas Welskopp, Das Banner der
Brüderlichkeit: die deutsche Sozialdemokratie vom Vormärz bis zum Sozialistengesetz (Bonn:
J. H. W. Dietz, 2000). See also, Shlomo Na’aman, Die Konstituierung der Deutschen
Arbeiterbewegung 1862/63 (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1975); Ilse Fischer, August Bebel und
der Verband Deutscher Arbeitervereine 1867/68: Brieftagebuch und Dokumente, Archiv für
Sozialgeschichte, Beiheft 14 (Bonn: J. H. W. Dietz Nachf., 1994); Ursula Herrmann,
‘Zur Vorgeschichte des Geraer Vereinstags 1867: Eine Dokumentation’, Internationale
wissenschaftliche Korrespondenz der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung 27, no. 2 (1991): 182–
208; Ernst Schraepler, ‘Der Zwölfer-Ausschuss des Vereinstages Deutscher Arbeitervereine
und die Ereignisse von 1866’, Jahrbuch für die Geschichte Mittel- und Ostdeutschlands
16–17 (1968): 210–53; Toni Offermann, Die erste deutsche Arbeiterpartei: Materialien
zur Organisation, Verbreitung und Sozialstruktur von ADAV und LADAV, 1863–1871
(Bonn: J. H. W. Dietz, 2002). In addition, there are numerous studies on the local
and regional levels that have influenced this book, for example, Georg Eckert, Aus den
Anfängen der Braunschweiger Arbeiterbewegung: unveröffentlichte Bracke-Briefe (Braun-
schweig: Limbach, 1955); Georg Eckert, ‘Aus der Korrespondenz des Braunschweiger
Ausschusses der Sozialdemokratischen Arbeiter-Partei’, in Braunschweigisches Jahrbuch, 45
(Wolfenbüttel: Waisenhaus-Buchdruckerei und Verlag, 1664), 107–49; Stephan Resch
and Karl Borromäus Murr, Lassalles ‘südliche Avantgarde’: Protokollbuch des Allgemeinen
Deutschen Arbeitervereins der Gemeinde Augsburg (Bonn: J. H. Dietz, 2013); Gerlinde
Runge, Die Volkspartei in Württemberg von 1864 bis 1871: Die Erben der 48er Revolution
im Kampf gegen die preussisch-klein-deutsche Lösung der nationalen Frage, vol. 62, Veröf-
fentlichungen der Kommission für geschichtliche Landeskunde in Baden-Württemberg
(Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1970); Torsten Kupfer, ‘Die organisatorische Entwicklung der
Sozialdemokratie in Preußen nach dem Sozialistengesetz 1889–1898’, Moving the Social
18 (1997): 61–82; Toni Offermann, ‘Die regionale Ausbreitung der frühen deutschen
Arbeiterbewegung 1848/49–1860/64’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft 13, no. 4 (1987):
419–47. See also the edited volumes of Hans Mommsen, ed., Sozialdemokratie zwischen
Klassenbewegung und Volkspartei: Verhandungen der Sektion Geschichte der Arbeiterbe-
wegung des Deutschen Historikertages in Regensburg, Okt. 1972 (Frankfurt am Main:
Athenäum Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1974); Gerhard Ritter, Arbeiterbewegung, Parteien
und Parlamentarismus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1976); Gerhard Ritter,
Der Aufstieg der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung: Sozialdemokratie und freie Gewerkschaften im
Parteiensystem und Sozialmilieu des Kaiserreiches (München: Oldenbourg Verlag, 1990).
An excellent English-language overview is provided by Stefan Berger, Social Democracy
12 A. HEYER

the “model party” of Marxist Socialism.26 At the beginning of the twen-

tieth century, Michels described German Social Democracy in his Zur
Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der Modernen Demokratie (On the Soci-
ology of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy), making it
the most cited example of a modern party and a valuable case for this
study.27

1.2 Party Emergence

in an Interdisciplinary Perspective
Inspired by the party scholarship in history and the social sciences,
this book bridges the divide between the two disciplines with an inter-
disciplinary theoretical framework and a comparative research design.
Historians as well as political scientists have studied early parties, but there
is surprisingly little exchange between the scholars of the two disciplines.
This is the more surprising as there is a rich literature in the social sciences
that relates to the recent focus on the less formalized nature of polit-
ical institutions by political historians. In particular, although developed
for the twentieth century, a useful theoretical framework for research on
nineteenth-century parties can be found in the social movement litera-
ture. Firstly, there is a strong empirical basis for applying social movement
theory to early party formation. Not only can we detect commonalities
between the social movements of the nineteenth and twentieth century,

and the Working Class in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Germany, Themes in Modern
German History Series (Harlow: Longman, 2000). Older English-language contributions
are Douglas A. Chalmers, The Social Democratic Party of Germany, from Working-Class
Movement to Modern Political Party (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964); Roger
Pearce Morgan, The German Social Democrats and the First International, 1864–1872
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965); Vernon L. Lidtke, Outlawed Party:
Social Democracy in Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966); Richard W.
Reichard, Crippled from Birth: German Social Democracy, 1844–1870 (Ames: The Iowa
State University Press, 1969); David E. Barclay and Eric D. Weitz, Between Reform and
Revolution: German Socialism and Communism from 1840 to 1990 (New York: Berghahn
Books, 1998).
26 Barclay and Weitz, Between Reform and Revolution, 2.
27 Robert Michels, Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der modernen Demokratie: Unter-
suchungen über die oligarchischen Tendenzen des Gruppenlebens (Leipzig: Klinkhardt, 1911)
https://archive.org/details/zursoziologiede00michgoog. For a more recent application
of Michel’s theoretical framework, see Charlie Jeffery, Social Democracy in the Austrian
Provinces, 1918–1934: Beyond Red Vienna (London: Leicester University Press, 1995).
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

but social movements of later decades also share a rhetoric of urgency

and the instability of organizational structure with early parties.28 During
the early phase of party consolidation, the membership structure of parties
was flexible and open, similar to the social movements of later decades. As
with the social movements of the twentieth century, the new parties were
formed in opposition to the political elite; party leaders emphasized the
opposition between their community of ordinary people and the political
establishment.29
Secondly, social movement research provides a valuable contribution
to the study of early party formation because it shares the conceptualiza-
tion of social and political change as a transnational phenomenon with
historical research. The historical sociologist Charles Tilly, for example,
combined the two disciplines and showed that historical modes of collec-
tive action became globally available as they were modified to their specific
context by local activists.30 Likewise, the historian Bayly argued that “sys-
tems of ideas (…) began to converge across the world” in the nineteenth
century.31 An example that plays an important role in this book are the
contested concepts of democracy and representation that contributed to
the legitimation of modern parties.32 Historians share the interest of

28 Historical sociologists have argued that the social movements of the twentieth
century can be compared with the movements of previous centuries. Charles Tilly, Social
Movements, 1768–2004 (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2004); Craig Calhoun, ‘“New
Social Movements” of the Early Nineteenth Century’, Social Science History 17, no. 3
(1993): 385–427; Paul D’Anieri, Claire Ernst, and Elizabeth Kier, ‘New Social Movements
in Historical Perspective’, Comparative Politics 22, no. 4 (1 July 1990): 445–58.
29 For the anti-establishment rhetoric of social movements see Charles Tilly and Sidney
Tarrow, Contentious Politics, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
30 Tilly, Social Movements. See also Sidney Tarrow The New Transnational Activism
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Historians have made a similar argu-
ment, showing that violent uprisings were inspired by an internationally available script
for revolution: Keith Michael Baker and Dan Edelstein, Scripting Revolution: A Historical
Approach to the Comparative Study of Revolutions (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
2015); Dennis Bos, Bloed en barricaden: de Parijse Commune herdacht (Amsterdam:
Wereldbibliotheek, 2014).
31 Christopher Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World: 1780–1914, 8th ed. (Malden:
Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 19. See also Jürgen Osterhammel, The Transformation of the
World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2014).
32 See chapters three and four in this book. The changing ideas of democracy and
representation are discussed by Joanna Innes and Mark Philp, Re-imagining Democracy in
the Age of Revolutions: America, France, Britain, Ireland 1750–1850 (Oxford: Oxford
14 A. HEYER

social movement scholars in understanding how individuals developed

new “ideas and practices” to make sense of social change. A rich histori-
ography is dedicated to explaining the spread of revolutions in Europe,
the influence of the American Revolution in the history of the United
States and the paramount status of elections in the current conceptions of
democracy to name only a few crucial developments in political history.33
In this literature of social change, ideas play a prominent role. Ideas
are mouldable intellectual entities; they can be adjusted and applied to
new purposes to create an opportunity where previously there was none.
Ideas also contribute to the emergence of specific institutional designs
in times where actors perceive high levels of uncertainty, for example
in times of economic crisis.34 Sociologists have analysed the practice of
storytelling within social movements to show how shared narratives can
change the dynamics within a movement. Members of the movement take
an active role in strengthening the internal cohesion of protest organiza-
tions and consolidate solidarity among activists.35 Of special importance
in this process are the new organizing techniques that function as a cata-
lyst for collective action. Developing new forms of protest such as the
modern party is one way to change the balance of power; it can help
activists to overcome the boundaries of existing structure.
In particular, the theory of “framing” provides a conceptual frame-
work for the role of individuals in developing and adjusting ideas.36
Social scientists who study what instigates people to protest together share
the interest of political historians in the processes of the construction of

University Press, 2013); Bernard Manin, The Principles of Representative Government

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); John Dunn, Setting the People Free:
The Story of Democracy (Atlantic, 2005).
33 Baker and Edelstein, Scripting Revolution; Gordon S. Wood, The Idea of America:
Reflections on the Birth of the United States (London: Penguin Books, 2011); Dunn,
Setting the People Free.
34 Mark Blyth, Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the
Twentieth Century (New York, Cambrigde: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
35 Francesca Polletta, Freedom Is an Endless Meeting: Democracy in American Social
Movements (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
36 David A. Snow and Robert D. Benford, ‘Master Frames and Cycles of Protest’, in
Frontiers in Social Movement Theory, ed. Aldon D. Morris and Carol McClurg Mueller
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 136. Frame analysts refer to Goffman’s work as
their source of inspiration. Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization
of Experience (New York: Harper & Row, 1974).
 1 INTRODUCTION 15

meaning. Previously, the literature emphasized the role of “opportunity

structure,” which is the social-economic structure, and political institu-
tions “in which grievances can be translated into collective actions.”37
Opportunity structure, however, only resolves one part of the puzzle.
External circumstances are not sufficient for understanding the timing and
strategy of protest, as social movement scholars argue.38 Social structure
and political institutions are complex and multi-layered. Activists have
many options of response when circumstances change. Sociologists have
shown that most organizations claim rationality for their organizational
structure; in reality their leaders might copy existing models without
critically evaluating whether they fit their goals.39 A cultural approach
critically questions narratives of efficiency and evaluates its origins and
consequences for organizational development.40 The process of creating
new (or already prevailing) meaning to an existing structure is not self-
explanatory or automatized. What looks in hindsight like an obvious
decision for protest required a thorough process of reinterpretation. In
these processes it is the individuals, such as party founders, who identi-
fied ways to make activists confident enough that they could handle the

37 Herbert Kitschelt, ‘Resource Mobilization Theory: A Critique’, in Research on Social

Movements: The State of the Art in Western Europe and the USA, ed. Dieter Rucht (Frank-
furt am Main: Campus Verlag, 1991), 272. Likewise, Meyer argued that “activists do not
choose goals, strategies, and tactics in a vacuum” in ‘Protest and Political Opportunities’,
Annual Review of Sociology 30, no. 1 (13 July 2004): 127. Although it is disputed what
opportunity structure specifically entails, the concept was broadly defined as the “specific
configurations of resources, institutional arrangements and historical precedents for social
mobilization.” Herbert Kitschelt, ‘Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest:
Anti-Nuclear Movements in Four Democracies’, British Journal of Political Science 16,
no. 01 (January 1986): 58.
38 Meyer, ‘Protest and Political Opportunities’, 127.
39 Walter W. Powell and Paul DiMaggio, ‘The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional
Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields’, in The New Insti-
tutionalism in Organizational Analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991),
63–83.
40 Frank R. Dobbin, ‘Cultural Models of Organization: The Social Construction of
Rational Organizing Principles’, in The Sociology of Culture: Emerging Theoretical Perspec-
tives, ed. Diana Crane (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1994), 117–41; John W. Meyer and
Brian Rowan, ‘Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony’,
American Journal of Sociology 83, no. 2 (1 September 1977): 340–63.
16 A. HEYER

risk of protest.41 Party founders determined which techniques and goals

were selected; they convinced their followers that the new repertoire of
protest made intervention in the course of history a sensible course of
action.42
This study hence argues that the role of democracy as an idea and
practice has been insufficiently incorporated in the general understanding
of party emergence in the literature so far. Many accounts still refer to
the “logical” choice of party founders in developing the modern party
in response to the changing environment of the nineteenth century. The
historical situation was more complex. Party founders had numerous sets
of action available to respond to their changing socio-economic status and
newly acquired political rights. Explaining why and how they chose the
modern party as their preferred institutional design, above other possi-
bilities, requires careful historical analysis. Instead of taking ideas and
practices as static and exogenous variables, the book shows how they
evolve over time to make new behaviour possible.

1.3 Comparing Party Emergence

The book’s approach to studying ideas and practices of democracy as a
factor of party emergence is inspired by the party scholarship of the social
sciences and history. For most social scientists, early parties are not the
primary research object but rather serve as a starting point to explain
current political developments. Typically, scholars studying the relation-
ship between parties and democracy employ a relatively large sample of
cases.43 Party scholars such as Duverger and Sartori are the exception to
this rule: they concentrated on a smaller number of well-known historical

41 Kitschelt, ‘Resource Mobilization Theory’; David A. Snow et al., ‘Frame Alignment

Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation’, American Sociological Review
51, no. 4 (1 August 1986): 464–81.
42 Snow et al., ‘Frame Alignment Processes’; Jürgen Gerhards and Dieter Rucht, ‘Meso-
mobilization: Organizing and Framing in Two Protest Campaigns in West Germany’,
American Journal of Sociology 98, no. 3 (1 November 1992): 555–96.
43 For instance, Joseph G. LaPalombara and Myron Weiner, ‘The Origin and Devel-
opment of Political Parties’, in Political Parties and Political Development, ed. Joseph G.
LaPalombara and Myron Weiner, 6 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), 3–42;
Hans Daalder, ‘Parties, Elites, and Political Developments in Western Europe’, in Political
Parties and Political Development, ed. Joseph La Palombra and Myron Weiner, Studies in
Political Development 6 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), 43–77.
 1 INTRODUCTION 17

cases in the first part of their monographs.44 Their systematic approach

demonstrates the applicability and relevance of general research designs in
studying early parties. The social scientists who dare to venture into the
still largely unchartered territory of early party history choose comparison
to develop multiple types of categorization, for example, by suggesting
Weberian ideal types.45 The downside of such a broad focus is limita-
tions in the depth of the analysis of primary sources. In addition, there is
little integration of the recent work and discussions of political historians.
An exception to this is the eminent political scientist Scarrow who has
relied on primary sources and historiography to place parties’ membership
numbers in their historical context. Her work on the difference between
the myth and realities of membership numbers is an inspiration to this
study of the ideas and practices of democracy in the first modern parties.46
While inspired by the social-science approach of detecting general
processes of party formation, this book also stands in the research tradi-
tion of historians who assign epistemological value to individual cases in
their own right. In fact, I combine the approaches of the two disciplines
to develop a better understanding of the formation of the democratic
party as a general process. Party formation was a European phenomenon
that occurred under different ideological banners and in different coun-
tries. Yet, in the conventional historiography the history of parties is
told from a national perspective. While most social scientists compare
several parties, historians usually choose to study a single case study of
party emergence.47 As a consequence, there is a tendency among party
historians to avoid generalized conclusions. Sometimes this means that
historical party studies offer very few insights outside the specific case.
At the same time, the party historiography excels in helping us to better
comprehend societies of the past; the historiography is full of detailed

44 See the classic work of Duverger, Political Parties; Giovanni Sartori, Parties and
Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis (ECPR Press, 2005).
45 See Angelo Panebianco, Political Parties: Organization and Power (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988), 17; Ingrid van Biezen, ‘Building Party Organisa-
tions and the Relevance of Past Models: The Communist and Socialist Parties in Spain
and Portugal’, West European Politics 21, no. 2 (1 April 1998): 32–62.
46 Susan E. Scarrow, Beyond Party Members: Changing Approaches to Partisan Mobiliza-
tion, Comparative Politics (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
47 Of special importance are Rossi, The Transformation of the British Liberal Party;
Vincent, The Formation of the Liberal Party; Janssens, opbouw; Na’aman, Die Konstitu-
ierung; Welskopp, Das Banner der Brüderlichkeit.
18 A. HEYER

analyses of primary sources that are carefully interpreted in their specific

historical context.
There are a few notable exceptions to the single case study in party
history which have contributed to the understanding of the relationship
between parties and democracy. Based on a small number of cases, these
comparative studies have overcome methodological problems such as
different languages and historiographies.48 Tracing the transfer between
German and British Socialist parties, Berger, for example, has shown how
successful models of party organization in two countries influence each
other and inspire further institutionalization.49 Another notable contri-
bution is the work of historian Pombeni who has analysed the history of
British, French, German and Italian party systems to engage with early
twentieth-century criticism of party organization.50 This book is inspired
by Pombeni’s approach, but will look at three specific cases in more detail,
enabling a closer analysis of the emergence of the first parties.
In conclusion, the interdisciplinary approach of the book connects
the social sciences and history to provide a new research approach to
early party organization. Political scientist Sartori has used the metaphor
of the “ladder of abstraction” to explain the limits of comparison.

48 Jürgen Kocka, ‘Comparison and Beyond’, History and Theory 42, no. 1 (2003):
39–44. On a general level Baldwin has argued that historians should work more often
with comparisons to study causality. Peter Baldwin, ‘Comparing and Generalizing: Why
All History Is Comparative, yet No History Is Sociology.’, in Comparison and History:
Europe in Cross-National Perspective, ed. Maura O’Connor and Deborah Cohen (New
York: Routledge, 2004), 1–22. For example, specializing in a single ideological orienta-
tion, Åberg compared the Liberal Party in Germany and its counterpart in Sweden. Martin
Åberg, Swedish and German Liberalism from Factions to Parties 1860–1920 (Lund: Nordic
Academic Press, 2011). Another possibility is the comparison within a single national
context such as Mittmann’s comprehensive study of the Social Democrats and the Centre
Party in Germany. Ursula Mittmann, Fraktion und Partei (Droste, 1976). Other authors,
most prominently the influential historians Nipperdey and Hanham and recently, de Jong,
analysed entire national party systems to demonstrate the importance of party competi-
tion for the political developments of Germany, Britain and the Netherlands, respectively.
Nipperdey, Die Organisation der deutschen Parteien vor 1918; Hanham, Elections and
Party Management; Jong, Van standspolitiek naar partijloyaliteit.
49 Stefan Berger, ‘Herbert Morrison’s London Labour Party in the Interwar Years and
the SPD: Problems of Transferring German Socialist Practices to Britain’, European Review
of History: Revue Europeenne d’histoire 12, no. 2 (2005); Stefan Berger, The British Labour
Party and the German Social Democrats, 1900–1931 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002).
50 Paolo Pombeni, Introduction à l’histoire des partis politiques (Paris: Presses Universi-
taires de France, 1992).
 1 INTRODUCTION 19

Climbing up the ladder, thus creating increasing abstraction, scholars

cannot avoid missing some of the details of the case-specific context. Like-
wise, descending the ladder means that general observations will remain
limited.51 In analysing three parties, I stand somewhere on the middle
steps of Sartori’s ladder. The study is based on primary sources, it also uses
the specialized secondary literature and theoretical approaches of both
disciplines to provide in-depth analysis of the creation of an important
political institution.

1.4 Case Selection: Three Democratic Parties

In response to the scholarly discussions on the current decline of parties,
the book has followed three analytical considerations for case selection.
It is important to understand that, although inspired by the discussion
on the current crisis of the party, this study does not follow the rigid
analytical considerations that characterize many social-science studies. The
aim of comparing three parties in this book is to provide a careful analysis
of the phenomenon of party emergence from a historical perspective.52
For this purpose, the book relies on an exploratory approach that is not
based on hypotheses. Rather the research approach is similar to the work
of historians that build their analysis inductively on the basis of archival
material and specialized knowledge of the historical situation.
The three parties have, firstly, been purposely selected for their vari-
ance in ideology because the emergence of modern parties is usually
compared using the same party families. Early generations of party
scholars, both in history and the social sciences, attributed early mass
organization to Socialist parties as in the case of the Social Demo-
cratic Workers’ Party in Germany whose ideology contained the most
obvious affinity with mobilizing ordinary people.53 However, the British
National Liberal Federation shows that bourgeoisie-dominated Radical

51 Giovanni Sartori, ‘Comparing and Miscomparing’, Journal of Theoretical Politics 3,

no. 3 (1991): 254.
52 See, for instance, Dimiter Toshkov, Political Analysis: Research Design in Political
Science (New York: Palgrave, 2016). B. Guy Peters, Comparative Politics: Theory and
Methods (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 1998).
53 Most famously and influentially is Duverger, Political Parties, 1. A similar argu-
ment is also brought forward by Otto Kirchheimer, ‘Der Wandel des Westeuropäischen
Parteisystems’, Politische Vierteljahresschrift 6, no. 1 (1965): 25.
20 A. HEYER

Liberals also adhered to the mass character of early parties.54 Moreover,

the Dutch Anti-Revolutionary Party is a case where religion was trans-
lated into a party. Founded by Orthodox Protestant minister Abraham
Kuyper, the party opposed the individualistic values of the French Revo-
lution. Nevertheless, despite his hostility towards the values of Liberalism
and Social Democracy, party founder Kuyper based his political mission
on the promise to improve the parliamentary representation of ordinary
people.55
Secondly, the cases have been selected to identify commonalities of
party emergence in different political and socio-economic circumstances.
The political institutions of the three countries differed considerably espe-
cially with regard to voting rights, the influence of parliament, but also the
degree of industrialization. Take the German Social Democratic Workers’
Party that was founded two years before German unification in 1869.
While the Reichstag only had limited influence, universal male suffrage
had been established in the states of the North German Confederation
in 1867.56 In contrast to Germany, voting rights in Britain were limited
but a powerful House of Commons enabled a much more liberal polit-
ical landscape.57 With regard to socio-economic development, Britain was

54 Most well-known is Ostrogorski, Democracy. Ostrogorski, Democracy and the

Organization.
55 J. H. Prins, ‘Kuyper als Partijleider’, in Abraham Kuyper: zijn volksdeel, zijn invloed,
ed. C. Augustijn, J. H. Prins, and H.E.S. Woldring (Delft: Meinema, 1987), 95–122;
Roel Kuiper, ‘De Weg van het volk. Mobilisering en activiering van de Antirevolutionaire
beweging, 1878–1888’, in De eenheid & de delen: zuilvorming, onderwijs en natievorming
in Nederland, 1850–1900, ed. Henk te Velde and Hans Verhage (Amsterdam: Het Spin-
huis, 1996), 99–119; Henk te Velde, ‘Ervaring en zingeving in de politiek: het politieke
charisma in de tijd van Abraham Kuyper’, Theoretische Geschiedenis 23, no. 4 (1996):
519–38; Henk te Velde, ‘Kappeyne tegen Kuyper of de principes van het politieke spel’,
in De eenheid & de delen: zuilvorming, onderwijs en natievorming in Nederland, 1850–
1900, ed. Henk te Velde and Hans Verhage (Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, 1996), 121–33;
Velde, Stijlen van leiderschap, Chapter 2; Hoekstra, ‘De kracht van het gesproken woord’;
Arko van Helden, ‘De “kleine luyden” van Abraham Kuyper—een vorm van populistische
retoriek?’, Negentiende Eeuw 35, no. 3 (2011): 139–53.
56 Margaret Lavinia Anderson, Practicing Democracy: Elections and Political Culture
in Imperial Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); Marcus Kreuzer,
‘Parliamentarization and the Question of German Exceptionalism: 1867–1918’, Central
European History 36, no. 3 (2003): 327–57.
57 Patrick Joyce, The State of Freedom: A Social History of the British State Since 1800
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
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domestic affairs to regulate, half-a-dozen hungry children to feed,
and a couple of poor relations or so to assist with sympathy, counsel,
and occasional aid, finds no time to dwell upon any one difficulty, no
especial inconvenience from any one burden, because each has its
fellow and its counterpoise elsewhere. It is not only in pharmacy that
the principle of counter-irritation produces beneficial results. A man
with two grievances never pities himself so much as a man with one;
and a man with half-a-dozen treats them all with a good-humoured
indifference little removed from positive satisfaction.
Some people even appear to glory in the multitude of their
afflictions, as though the power to sustain so much ill-luck shed a
certain reflected lustre on themselves. I recollect, long ago, meeting
an old comrade hanging about the recruiting taverns in Westminster.
The man was a clean, smart, active, efficient non-commissioned
officer enough, with the average courage and endurance of the
British dragoon. A year before I had parted with him, languid,
unhappy, and depressed, longing only to return to England but not
yet under orders for home. Now he looked cheerful, contented,
almost radiant. I stopped to inquire after his welfare.
“I landed a fortnight ago, sir,” said he, with something of triumph in
his voice, “and a happy home I found waiting for me! I haven’t a
friend or a relation left in the world. My father’s absconded, my
mother’s dead, my brother-in-law’s ruined, and my sister gone into a
mad-house!”
It sounded melancholy enough, yet I felt convinced the man
reaped some unaccountable consolation from his pre-eminence in
misfortune, admired his own endurance, and was proud of his power
to carry so heavy a weight.
Custom, no doubt, in these as in all other inflictions, will do much
to lighten the load. There is a training of the mind, as of the body, to
bear and to endure. With wear and tear the heart gets hardened like
the muscles, and the feelings become blunted by ill-usage, just as
the skin grows callous on an oarsman’s hands. There is some
shadow of truth in the fallacious story of him who carried a calf every
day till it became a cow. None of us know what we can do till we try;
and there are few but would follow the example of the patient camel,
and refuse to rise from the sand, if they knew how heavy a weight is
to be imposed on them ere they can reach the longed-for diamond of
the desert, gushing and glittering amongst the palms! It is fortunate
for us that the packages are not all piled up at once. Little by little we
accustom ourselves to the labour as we plod sullenly on with the
tinkling caravan, ignorant, till too late to turn back, of the coming
hardships, the endless journey, or the many times that cruel mirage
must disappoint our fainting, thirsting spirits ere we reach the
welcome resting-place where the cool spring bubbles through its
fringe of verdure—where we shall drink our fill of those life-bestowing
waters, and stretch ourselves out at last for long, unbroken slumbers
under the “shadow of a great rock in a weary land.”
But the worst method of all in which to carry our load is to build it
up on the pack-saddle so as to attract notice and commiseration
from those who travel alongside. The Turkish hamals, indeed, may
be seen staggering about Constantinople under enormous bales of
merchandise, twice the height and apparently three times the weight
of the herculean bearer; but a Turkish hamal, notwithstanding his
profession, ignores the meaning of a sore back, moral or physical.
Other jades may wince, but, under all circumstances, you may swear
his withers are unwrung. To be sure, the first article of his creed is
resignation. Fatalism lulls him like opium, though, kinder than that
pernicious drug, it leaves no torment of reaction to succeed its
soothing trance. Hard work, hard fare, hard bed, hard words, hard
lines in general, a tropical sun and the atmosphere of a jungle, it is
all in the day’s work with him! Backsheesh he will accept with a smile
if he can get it, or he will do without, consoling himself that it is
kismet, for “There is one God, and Mahomet is His prophet.” With
this philosopher, indeed, “a contented mind is a perpetual feast,”
otherwise how could he sustain his stalwart proportions on a morsel
of black bread and a slice of watermelon? His dissipations, too, are
mild as his daily meals. A screw of weak tobacco, folded in a paper
cigarette, wraps him in a foretaste of his anticipated paradise; a
mouthful of thick, black, bitter coffee stands him in lieu of beer,
porter, half-and-half, early purl, blue ruin, and dog’s-nose. Once a
week, or maybe once a month, he goes to the bath for two hours of
uninterrupted enjoyment, emerging healthy, happy, refreshed, and
clean as a new pin.
Perhaps it is his frugal, temperate life, perhaps it is his calm,
acquiescent disposition, that enables him thus to carry weight so
complacently. He never fights under it, not he! Through the narrow
lanes of Stamboul, across the vibrating wooden bridge of the Golden
Horn, up the filthy stairs, not streets, of Pera, he swings along with
regulated step and snorting groans, delivered in discordant cadence
at each laborious footfall; but he carries his weight, that is the great
point—he carries a great deal of it, and he carries it remarkably well
—an example of humility and patience to the Christian who employs
him, an object of comparison, not much in favour of the latter,
between the votaries of the Crescent and the Cross.
When I protest, however, against making a display and a
grievance of the load you have to bear, I am far from maintaining that
you are to keep it a profound secret, and hide it away in unsuitable
places under your clothes. A man can carry a hundred-weight on his
shoulders with less inconvenience than a few pounds about his
heart. If you doubt this, order cold plum-pudding for luncheon, and
you will be convinced! A secret, too, is always a heavy substance to
take abroad with you, and your own seems to incommode you more
than another’s, probably because you are less indifferent about
letting it fall. As for attempting to dance lightly along with the jaunty
air of an unweighted novice, be assured the effort is not only painful
but ridiculous. No, never be ashamed of your burden, not even
though your own folly should have clapped an additional half-
hundred on the top of it. Get your shoulders well under the heaviest
part, walk as upright as you may, but do not try to swagger; and if
you have a friend who likes you well enough to give his assistance,
let him catch hold at one end, and so between you move on with it
the best way you can.
Some packages grow all the lighter, like a contraband trunk at the
Douane, for being weighed and examined, or, as our neighbours call
it, “pierced and plumbed.” Some again gather increased proportions
when we enlarge upon them; but it is only those of which we dare
not speak, those which no friend must seem to see, for which no
brother must offer a hand, that sink our failing strength, that crush us
down humbled and helpless in the mire. There is but one place for
such burdens as these, and we never lay them there till we have
tried everything else in vain; just as we offer the remnants of a life
from which we expect no more pleasure, where we ought to have
given all the promise and vigour of our youth, or take an aching,
hopeless, worn-out heart back to our only friend, as the crying child
runs to its parent with a broken toy.

“The ox toils through the furrow,

Obedient to the goad;
The patient ass up flinty paths
Plods with its weary load,”

says Macaulay in his glorious Lays of Ancient Rome, and something

in the nature of both these animals fits them especially for the
endurance of labour and the imposition of weight. It is well for a man
when he has a little of the bovine repose of character, a good deal of
the asinine thickness of skin and insensibility to hard usage. Such a
disposition toils on contentedly enough, obedient indeed to the goad
so far as moderately to increase the staid solemnity of his gait,
taking the flinty path and the weary load as necessary conditions of
life, with a serene equanimity for which he has the philosophical
example of the ass! The ways are rough, you know, and the journey
long. Depend upon it these animals arrive at its termination with less
wear and tear, more safety, and even more despatch, than the
sensitive, high-spirited, and courageous horse, wincing from the
lash, springing to the voice, striving, panting, sweating, straining
every muscle to get home.
In the parable of the Ancient Mariner—for is it not indeed the
wildest, dreamiest, and most poetical of parables?—you remember
the hopelessness of the weight he carried when

“Instead of the cross the albatross

About his neck was hung.”
It was not his misfortune, you see, but his crime that bore him down.
Its consciousness lay far heavier on his spirit than did his after-
punishment, when, weary and desolate, he wailed that he was

“Alone, alone, all, all alone,

Alone on a wide, wide sea,
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.”

The saints, indeed, might not have heard him; how do we know
about that? but he was heard nevertheless, and thus he got rid of his
burden to raise his head once more in the face of heaven.
He looked upon beauty, nature, animate life, the wonders of the
deep, the creatures of his Maker, and “blessed them unaware!”
Enough. The hideous dream vanishes, the unholy spell is broken,
and he cries exulting—

“That self-same moment I could pray,

And from my neck so free
The albatross fell off, and sunk
Like lead into the sea.”

I sometimes think that women bear their burdens with less

apparent struggle, less toil or complaint than men; and this although
they own more of the horse’s anxious temperament than the
sluggish nature of the ox and the ass. If they have less “nerve” than
ourselves—less of the coolness which springs from constitutional
insensibility to danger—they have more of that mettlesome spirit
which is sometimes called “pluck,” that indomitable courage which
acknowledges no failure for defeat, which never sleeps upon its post,
which can bear up bravely even against the sickness and depression
of unremitting pain. It is proverbial that in all phases of mere bodily
suffering they show twice the patience and twice the fortitude of the
stronger sex; while who shall say how much of silent sorrow they can
cherish and conceal in troubled hearts while they go about their daily
business with smiles on their gentle faces, with a tranquil, staid
demeanour seeming to chant in soft, harmonious cadence the
watchword of “All’s Well!”
Do you not think they too keep their favourite skeletons (far less
perfect than yourself) hoarded, hidden away, locked up, but not to be
buried or forgotten for the worth of kingdoms? Do you suppose they
never bring them out to be hugged, and fondled, and worshipped,
and wept over?

“In the dead unhappy night, and when the rain is on the roof.”

Bah! It is a world of shams. If a woman is not a hypocrite she must

be a stone!
We should give them greater credit though could we learn more of
the weights they have to carry. But their training is known only to
themselves; their trials come off in secret; the saddles they wear are
jealously locked up, and they take care to keep the key! I think the
reason they run so kindly is that they apply themselves very
frequently to the last resource of the Ancient Mariner when he saw
no escape from his punishment, when he was overweighted with his
curse.
I know not: I only know that the quiet courage, the generous spirit,
the untiring endurance with which they perform the journey of life is
too generally ignored, unappreciated, and thrown away. How often
have we not seen a thorough-bred horse ridden by a butcher? a
being little lower than an angel submitting, gentle and patient, to a
creature little higher than a brute.
 CHAPTER XI
SHADOWS

“Coming events cast their shadows before,” says a favourite adage

of that proverbial philosophy which is often so quaint and truthful,
sometimes so contradictory and far-fetched. In the present instance
the maxim, I think, is contradicted by our individual convictions and
general experience. For my own part I protest I am no believer in
presentiments. That is a beautiful fiction of poetry, completely
unsubstantiated by the prosaic events of life, which represents the
predestined sufferer as one who

“Still treads the shadow of his foe,”

while the arm of the avenger, uplifted though unseen, intercepts the
light of heaven ere yet its blow descends. Poets, no doubt, lay their
foundations on a basis of truth, but, as befits their profession, do not
scruple to raise a superstructure in magnificent disproportion to the
limits of their ground-plan. I will appeal to nine people out of every
ten whose lot it has been to sustain severe affliction—and I think it is
nearly nine-tenths of the human race—whether they have not found
themselves staggered or prostrated by blows as sudden as they
were overwhelming; whether the dagger has not always been a
more deadly weapon than the sword, the marksman behind the
hedge a more fatal enemy than the battery on its eminence, the
hidden reef a worse disaster than the adverse gale, and whether
their hopes, their happiness, or their fortunes, have not failed them at
the very moment when the false waves smiled serenely at the calm
skies overhead—

“Like ships that on a summer sea

Have gone down sailing tranquilly.”
No; these forthcoming shadows need not disturb our repose. They
owe their origin neither to heart nor brain, but proceed from liver, and
I should think must be quite unknown to him who “lives on sixpence
a day and earns it!”
What a life we should lead if we could look an inch before our
noses! Of all curses to humanity the bitterest would be the gift of
foresight. I often think a man’s progress towards his grave is like that
of a sculler labouring up-stream, we will say from Richmond to
Teddington Lock. By taking the established and conventional course
he avoids collision with his kind and proceeds in comparative safety.
By certain side-glances and general knowledge of the river, which
we may compare to the warnings of experience and the reasonings
of analogy, he obtains an inkling, far removed from certainty, of much
approaching trouble to which his back is turned. By observing the
track of his own boat rippling the surface many a yard astern, he
learns to guide his course, just as he would correct his conduct by
the lessons of the past. Now the stream runs hard against him, and
he must work his way foot by foot with honest, unremitting toil. Now
he shoots along through slack water, much to his own content and
self-approval, but under no circumstances, however formidable,
must he completely relax his efforts, for the current would soon float
him back to the place from whence he came. Many a scene of
beauty, many a lovely nook, and sunny lawn, and fairy palace glides
by him as he goes—fading, vanishing, shut out by the intervening
point, to leave but a memory of their attractions, dispelled in turn by
ever-recurring beauties of meadow, wood, and water.
So he plods steadily on, accepting the labour, enjoying the
pleasures of his trip, and nearing with every stroke the haven he is to
reach at last.
However healthy and invigorating the toil, however varied and
delightful the passage, I think he will not be sorry to arrive at
Teddington Lock, there to ship his oars, moor his boat under the
willows, and so, lulled by the murmur of the ever-flowing waters, with
folded arms, upturned face, and eyes wandering drowsily
heavenwards, fall peacefully asleep.
 But the shadows which cross our path to our greatest deception
and detriment are those for which we so willingly abandon the
substances whereof they are but the fading phantoms as the dog in
the fable dropped a piece of meat out of his jaws to snatch a like
morsel from the other dog he saw reflected in the water. Every day
men grasp at clouds as did Ixion, bartering eagerly for that which
they know to be illusive, the solid joys and advantages of life. How
many people in the possession of sufficient incomes deprive
themselves of common comfort in an attempt to appear richer and
more liberal than they really are! How many forego the society of
friends in which they find honest pleasure for that of mere
acquaintances with whom they have scarce a thought in common,
because the latter, perhaps themselves sacrificed to the same
illusion, move in a higher and more ostentatious class of society!
With one the shadow is a reputation for wealth, with another for
taste. Here it is a house in Belgravia, there a villa on the Thames;
sometimes a position in the county, a seat in parliament, or a
peerage long dormant in a race of squires.
Whatever it may be, the pursuer follows it at the best speed he
can command, finding, usually, that the faster he goes the faster it
flies before him; and when he comes up with it at last to enfold the
phantom in his longing embrace, behold it crumbles away to
disappointment in his very arms.
I have seen Cerito dancing her famous shadow-dance; I have
watched a child following its own retreating figure, lengthened to
gigantic proportions in an afternoon sun, with shouts of wonder and
delight; I once observed, perhaps the prettiest sight of the three, a
thorough-bred foal gallop up to some park-palings, to wince and
scour away from the distorted representation of a race-horse it met
there, in the wild, graceful freedom of a yet unbridled youth; and I
have thought of the many shadows that lure us all, between the
cradle and the grave, only to impose on us in their fullest signification
the different sentiments of disbelief, dis-illusion, and disgust. When
Peter Schlemihl made his ill-advised bargain with the devil, that
shrewd purchaser quietly rolled up his victim’s shadow and put it in
his own pocket. When Michael Scott, in the completion of his
education at Padua, had mastered certain intricacies of the black art,
his fellow-students observed to their consternation that while they
walked in the college gardens with the wise north-countryman,

“His form no darkening shadow cast

Athwart the sunny wall.”

The first step in supernatural learning, the first condition for the
attainment of superhuman power, seems to have been the dismissal
of so inconvenient and unmeaning an appurtenance as a shadow.
How many people have I known, and these not the least
endearing and capable of their kind, over whose whole life the
shadow of a memory, though growing fainter day by day, has yet
been dark enough to throw a gloom that the warmest rays of
friendship and affection were powerless to dispel! Sometimes,
indeed, that darkness seems dearer to them than the glories of the
outer world; sometimes, and this is the hardest fate of all, they cling
to it the closer that they feel the illusion has been to them a more
reliable possession than the reality. There is a world of tender
longing, bitter experience, and sad, suggestive pathos in Owen
Meredith’s lament—

“How many a night ’neath her window have I walked in the wind and the
rain,
Only to look on her shadow fleet over the lighted pane!
Alas! ’twas the shadow that rested—’twas herself that fleeted, you see—
And now I am dying—I know it! Dying—and where is she?”

The shadow he had worshipped so fondly was not more fleeting than
the dream on which he had anchored a man’s honest hopes, and
wasted a man’s generous, unsuspecting heart.
Then we see our shadows at points of view so peculiar to
ourselves, in lights that so distort and disguise their proportions, it is
no wonder if for us they become phantoms of formidable magnitude
and overpowering aspect. The demon of the Hartz Mountains is said
to be nothing more than the reflection or shadow of the traveller’s
own person, as seen under certain abnormal conditions of refraction
against a morning or evening sky. Such demons most of us keep of
our own, and we take care never to look at them but at the angle
which magnifies them out of all reasonable proportions. When you
see mine and I yours, each of us is surprised at the importance
attached to his spectral illusion by the other. Yours seems to me a
diminutive and contemptible little devil enough; and doubtless,
although you never may have entertained a high opinion of my
mental powers or moral force of character, both are fallen fifty per
cent. in your estimation since you have been brought face to face
with the bugbear by which they are overridden and kept down. If we
could but change shadows we should both of us get back into the
sun. Alas! that all the magic art of Michael Scott himself would fail to
effect such a trick of legerdemain. Alas! that we must bear as best
we can, each for himself, the gloomy presence that makes us so dull
of cheer, so sad of countenance, and so cold about the heart.
Men adopt a great many different methods to get rid of their
respective shadows, approximating more or less to the conclusive
plan of Peter Schlemihl aforesaid, who sold his outright to the devil.
Some try to lose it amongst a crowd of fellow-creatures, all with the
same familiar attendants of their own; others struggle with it in
solitude, and find themselves halting and maimed after the conflict,
like him who wrestled of old with the angel at Penuel “until the
breaking of the day.” One thinks to stifle his tormentor in business,
another to lull him with pleasure, a third to drown him in wine. None
of these remedies seem to answer the purpose desired. Blue-books,
bankers’ books, betting-books are unable to break the spell; over the
pages of each he throws the all-pervading gloom. Neither is he to be
worsted by the gleam of many candles flashing only less brightly
than the sparkle of Beauty’s jewels and the lustre of her soft eyes in
“halls of dazzling light.” On the contrary, it is here that, maybe from
the force of contrast, he asserts his power with the greatest
determination, coming out, as is but natural, under the vivid glare
thrown on him in a stronger and more uncompromising relief. To
steep him in wine is often but to increase his dimensions out of all
reasonable proportions, and at best only gets rid of him for a night
that he may return in the morning refreshed and invigorated to
vindicate his sovereignty over the enfeebled rebel he controls. There
are means of dispelling the darkness, no doubt, but I fear they are
not to be found in the resources of study, certainly not in the
distractions of dissipation nor the feverish delirium of vice. It must be
a warm, genial, and unusually generous disposition which is not
warped and dwarfed by a shadow cast upon it in youth, or indeed at
any period of life; but for animate as for inanimate nature there are
black frosts as well as white. The latter evaporate with the morning
sun in light wreaths of vapour and perhaps a few tears sparkling like
diamonds, to be succeeded by brilliant sunshine, unclouded till the
close of its short winter’s day; the former, grim, grey, and lowering,
parch and wither up the life of every green thing, drawing her shroud,
as it were, over the cold dead face of earth ere she is buried in the
darkness of approaching night.
It is hard upon youth to see its rosy morning overcast by the
shadow; but it has many hours yet to look forward to before noon,
and can afford to wait for brighter weather. Far more cruelly does
age feel the withdrawal of that light it had trusted in to cheer its
declining day; a light it can never hope to welcome again, because
long ere the shadow shall be withdrawn from the chilled and weary
frame, its sun will have gone down for ever into the ocean of eternity.
People talk a great deal about that physical impossibility which
they are pleased to term “a broken heart”; and the sufferer who
claims their sympathy under such an abnormal affliction is invariably
a young person of the gentler sex. I have no doubt in my own mind,
nevertheless, that a severe blow to the fortunes, the self-esteem, the
health or the affections, is far more severely felt after forty than
before thirty; and yet who ever heard of an elderly gentleman
breaking his heart? Any thing else you please—his word, his head,
his waistcoat-strings, or even his neck, but his heart! Why, the
assumption is ludicrous. If you consult the statistics of suicide,
however, you will be surprised to find in how many instances this
most reckless of crimes is committed by persons of mature age,
though it is strange that those whose span in the course of nature is
likely to be so short should think it worth while to curtail it with their
own hand. There is another shadow, too, which, apart from all finer
feelings of the heart or intellect, has a pernicious effect on our
interests and welfare. It is cast by our own opaque substances when
we persist in an inconvenient attitude, commonly called “standing in
our own light.” Parents and guardians, those who have the care of
young people, generally are well aware of its irritating persistency
and disagreeable consequences. It is provoking to find all your
efforts thwarted by the very person on whose behalf they are made.
After much trouble, and the eating of more dirt than you can digest in
comfort, you obtain for a lad a high stool in a counting-house, an
appointment to the Indian army, or a berth in a Chinese
merchantman, fondly hoping that in one way or another he is
provided for, and off your hands at last. But after a while behold him
back again, like a consignment of damaged goods! He has been too
fast for the clerkship, too idle for the army, not sober enough for the
sea. With a fine chance and everything in his favour, he “stood in his
own light,” and must abide by the gloom he has himself made. Or
perhaps, though this is a rarer case, because women’s perceptions
of their own interest are usually very keen, it is your Blanche, or your
Rose, or your Violet who thus disappoints the magnificent
expectations you have founded on her beauty, her youth, her eyes,
her figure, and her general fascinations. The peer with his
unencumbered estate and his own personal advantages would have
proposed to a certainty, was only waiting for an opportunity—he told
his sister so—when that last ten minutes at croquet with Tom, those
half-dozen extra rounds in the cotillon with Harry, scared this shy bird
from the decoy, and he went off to Melton in disgust. Rose, Blanche,
or Violet “stood in her own light,” and must be content for the rest of
her career to burn tallow instead of wax.
The shadows, however, which ladies preserve for their own private
annoyance cast surprisingly little gloom over their pretty persons
while they are before the world. A new dress, a coming ball, a race-
meeting, or a picnic, are sufficient to dispel them at a moment’s
notice; and though doubtless when these palliatives are exhausted,
when they put their candles out at night, the darkness gathers all the
thicker for its lucid interval of distraction, it is always something to
have got rid of it even for an hour.
 That women feel very keenly, nobody who knows anything about
them can doubt. That they feel very deeply is a different question
altogether. In some rare instances they may indeed be found, when
the light they love is quenched, to sit by preference in darkness for
evermore; but as a general rule the feminine organisation is
thoroughly appreciative of the present, somewhat forgetful of the
past, and exceedingly reckless of the future.
For both sexes, however, there must in their course through life be
shadows deep in proportion to the brilliancy of the sunshine in which
they bask. “Shall we receive good at the hand of God,” says Job,
“and shall we not receive evil?” thereby condensing into one pithy
sentence perhaps the profoundest system of philosophy ever yet
submitted to mankind. The evil always seems to us greater than the
good, the shadows more universal than the sunshine; but with how
little reason we need only reflect for a moment to satisfy ourselves.
There is a gleam in which we often fondly hope to dispel our
shadows, delusive as the “will-o’-the-wisp,” a light “that never yet
was seen on sea or shore,” which is cruelly apt to lure us on reefs
and quicksands, to guide us only to eventual shipwreck; but there is
also a glimmer, faint and feeble here, yet capable of dispelling the
darkest shadows that ever cross our path, which if we will only follow
it truthfully and persistently for a very brief journey, shall cheer us
heartily and guide us steadfastly till it widens and brightens into the
glory of eternal day.
 CHAPTER XII
GUINEVERE

Amongst all the works of our great poet, works in which criticism,
searching diligently for flaws, discovers every day new beauties,
surely this noble poem is the very crown and masterpiece.
Compared even with the productions of his own genius, Guinevere
always seems to me like a statue in the midst of oil-paintings. So
lofty is it in conception, so grand in treatment, so fair, so noble, so
elevating, and yet so real. As the Californian digger in his “prospect”
washes, and sifts, and searches, till from a mass of rubbish and
impurities he separates the nugget of virgin ore, so from the lavish
confusion of rich material to be found in that collection of early
romance called La Morte d’Arthur, the Laureate has wrought out a
poem precious in its own intrinsic merit as the purest metal that was
ever beaten into a crown of gold. One other has been over the same
ground before him, the great magician who with a wave of his wand
has created for us gleaming blade and glittering hauberk, mail and
plate, and managed steeds caparisoned, lances shivered to the
grasp, sweet pale faces looking down on the mimic war beneath,
and all the pomp, panoply, and prestige of an ideal chivalry, when

“The champions, armed in martial sort,

Have thronged into the list,
And but three knights of Arthur’s court
Are from the tourney missed.
And still those lovers’ fame survives
For faith so constant shown;
There were two that loved their neighbours’ wives,
And one that loved his own.”

Alas! that the very first of these in arms, in courtesy, in personal

advantages, and, but for the one foul blot, in honourable fame,
should have been Lancelot de Lac, the ornament of chivalry. Alas!
that the lady of his guilty love should have been that

“Flower of all the west and all the world,”

whose rightful place was on the bosom of “the stainless king.”

Their fatal passion, that grew so insensibly in those fair May-days
long ago, when the pair

“Rode under groves that looked a paradise

Of blossom, over sheets of hyacinth,
That seemed the heavens upbreaking thro’ the earth,”

has struck root now, deep, deep in the hearts of both, and spreading
like the deadly upas-tree, has blighted every other sentiment and
affection beneath its shade. There is no happiness for Lancelot
without Guinevere, no sweetness in the breath of evening nor
speculation in the stars of night, no gladness in the summer, no
glamour in the greenwood, no glory in the day. Her whisper lurks in
the hollow of his helmet when he shouts his war-cry, her image
rouses his desire for fame, and points his trusty lance. But for the
keen, unholy stimulant his arm would be nerveless and his courage
dull, while all the time

“The great and guilty love he bare the queen,

In battle with the love he bare his lord,
Hath marred his face, and marked it ere his time.”

Yes, there is retribution even here for the sweet, seductive sin. “The
worm that dieth not, the fire that is not quenched,” begin their work
long ere the cup has been emptied of its tempting poison; and the
one gnaws fiercer, the other burns deeper, in proportion to the
capability of good from which the sinner has fallen—in proportion to
the truth and tenderness of the tortured heart that seems meant for
better things.
 And Guinevere. Who can fathom that woman’s anguish, her
shame, her self-reproach, her bitter, hopeless remorse, for whom the
holy plighted love that should have made her shield, her honour, and
her happiness through life, has been pierced, and shattered, and
defiled by that other love which drags her to perdition, and to which
she yet clings closer and closer with a warped instinct of womanly
fidelity for the very sorrow and suffering it entails? The sense of
personal degradation is perhaps the least of her punishment, for it is
her nature when she loves to merge her own identity in another; but
what of her children, if she have any? How can she bear the clear,
guileless faces, the little hands clasped in prayer on her knee, the
loving, trustful eyes of those simple believers to whom she, the
sinner, is in the place of God? Many a woman, hesitating and
hovering on the very brink of ruin, has been withheld by the tiny
clasp of an infant’s hand. If that last chance should have failed her,
such failure has been ever after the heaviest and least endurable of
the penalties she has brought on herself.
But she may be childless, she may be spared the bitter pain of
estrangement from those who are indeed part and parcel of her
being. What, then, of her husband? The man whom once she
believed she loved, who has cherished her, trusted her, given up for
her sake many of the realities and all the illusions of life, whose care
has surrounded her so constantly every day and all day long, that,
like the air she breathes, she can only be made sensible of its
existence when withdrawn, whose indulgence was perhaps so
unvaried as to escape notice, whose affection, expressed by deeds,
not words, she has forgotten because it has not been repeated, like
that other love, in burning whispers every hour. So she not only
strikes him a deadly blow, such as his bitterest enemy would scarce
deal in fair fight, but poisons her weapon besides, and leaves it
sticking in the wound to burn and rankle and fester, that every
passing hand in careless jest or wanton outrage may inflict on him
mortal agony at will. Once, perhaps, she was proud of that brave,
kind face, which she could not imagine blanched by fear nor clouded
with shame. Can she bear to think of it now, quivering at the chance
allusion of every idle tongue, warped into agony, like that of a man
shot through the lungs, when her own name is spoken, purposely or
otherwise, by some impertinent gossip or some rancorous,
ungenerous foe? His sorrow has become a jest; that offence will
soon pass away to make room for fresher scandal. His home is
broken up; he can make himself another. The woman he loved has
left him, yet there are plenty more as fond and fair ready to pity and
console; but his trust is broken, and not even in an angel from
heaven can he believe again. This is the worst injury of all. The
strongest, the purest, the noblest of earthly motives to well-doing has
failed him, and from henceforth the man is but a lamp without a light,
a watch without a mainspring, a body without a soul. It is well for him
now if he have some lofty aspiration, some great and generous
object, to lift him out of his depth of sorrow, to rouse him from his
apathy of despair. Thus only can he wrestle with the demon that has
entered into his heart, thus only cast him out and, trampling on him,
so rise to a higher sphere than that from which he has been dragged
down. In self-sacrifice and self-devotion he shall find the talisman to
set him free, not at once, but, like other permanent results, gradually
and in the lapse of time; so, mounting step by step and gaining
strength as he ascends, he shall look down from the unassailable
heights of forgiveness on the lesser souls that can never reach to
wound him now—forgiveness, free, complete, and unconditional as
that which he himself pleads for from his God.
And here it is that the character of Arthur, as drawn by Tennyson,
exemplifies the noblest type of Christianity, chivalry, and manhood
with which we are acquainted in the whole range of fiction. Poetry
has yet to disclose to us a more godlike, more elevating sentiment
than the king’s pardon to his guilty and repentant wife. It breathes
the very essence of all those qualities which humanity, at best “a little
lower than the angels,” is ever striving unsuccessfully to attain.
There is courage, abiding by the award of its own conscience, and
appealing to a higher tribunal than the verdict of its kind; there is
contempt for consequences; there is scrupulous, unswerving
persistence in the path of duty, such as constitutes the soldier and
the hero; there is large-hearted, far-seeing benevolence, that weighs
its own crushed happiness and blighted life but as dust in the
balance against the well-being of its fellows. Above all, there is that
grand trust in a better world and an immortal identity, without which
man, despite his strength of will and pride of intellect, were little
superior to the beasts of the field. Such is the diapason, so to speak,
of this mighty march of feeling—the march of an unconquered spirit
and a kingly soul; while through it all, ever present, though ever
modulated and kept down, runs the wild, mournful accompaniment,
the wail of a kindly, tortured heart, of a love that can never die—

“And in thy bowers of Camelot or of Usk

Thy shadow still would glide from room to room,
And I should evermore be vext with thee,
In hanging robe—or vacant ornament,
Or ghostly footfall echoing on the stair.
For think not, though thou wouldst not love thy lord,
Thy lord has wholly lost his love for thee.
I am not made of such slight elements.
Yet must I leave thee, woman, to thy shame.”

How wonderful, how exhaustive, and how practical seems the

familiarity of great poets with the niceties and workings of the human
heart! It has been said of them, prettily enough, that

“They learn in suffering what they teach in song.”

God forbid! If it were so, their lot would indeed be unenviable; and
what an eternity of torture would such a genius as Byron, or Shelley,
or Tennyson himself have condensed into a single life! No, theirs
must be rather the intuitive knowledge that springs from sympathy
with all things, animate and inanimate, in summer and winter, in light
and darkness, in sorrow and in joy—a sympathy receiving freely as it
gives, and thus cozening them out of nine-tenths of their own private
sorrows, which such finer temperaments as theirs would otherwise
be too sensitive to endure.
The wide scope of this sympathy, the facility with which genius can
handle extreme contrasts of the same passion with equal skill, is, I
think, finely exemplified in the two poems of “Maud” and “Guinevere.”
I have already compared the latter to an exquisite piece of sculpture.
The former seems to me like a wild, fanciful, highly-coloured
painting, in which some true artist has striven to embody the
unattainable conceptions of a dream. Was ever colouring mixed on
palette more vivid and glowing than this description of a lover waiting
for his mistress in her garden—

“There falls a splendid tear

From the passion-flower at the gate;
She is coming—my dove, my dear!
She is coming—my life, my fate!
The red rose cries, She is near—she is near!
The white rose weeps,—She is late!
The larkspur listens,—I hear—I hear!
And the lily whispers,—I wait!”

Is there not in these lines, besides grace, sentiment, pathos,

tenderness, a wealth of pictorial fancy, such as Landseer himself has
not outdone in his magical representation of clown and elves and
stars and flowers grouped round Titania in Fairyland?
As in “clear-faced Arthur” is rendered the ideal dignity of love, so in
Maud’s hapless suitor we find exemplified its mad enthusiasm and
passion. With both, self is unhesitatingly sacrificed to the welfare of
another. When the fatal shot has been fired, and the exile faces a
foreign shore in utter hopelessness that he shall ever look on the
face he loves again, the pity for himself that cannot but chill his
sorrowing heart merges in anxiety and tenderness for Maud. Even
now—perhaps now more than ever—in grief, danger, and privation,
his first thought flies to the idol for whom he has built his life into a
throne, that she may reign there unrivalled and supreme. May his be
the shame, the sorrow, and the suffering!—such is his wild, pathetic
prayer—and let the treasure of his heart go free. If there be danger,
let it lower round his unprotected head. If there be punishment, let
him bear it for both! Ay, though she may never reward him for it,
never even know it; for in this world these two are surely parted not
to meet again. What of that? She is still his queen—his goddess—
his love—the aim of his existence, the darling of his care.

“Comfort her, comfort her, all things good,