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Show PARTY DOMINATION OF CONGRESS V HE independents in the next congress are meditating an organization of C J their own, with the object, as their spokesman says, of secui'ing changes in the rules which will permit a larger freedom of action among the representatives. rep-resentatives. The size of the group is problematical. It is doubtless large enough to carry control to one side or the other, if all the independents shifted en bloc. The chances are that the next congress will more nearly approximate conditions in most European parliaments than we have ever had. In Europe, there is scarcely a chamber of deputies where any one party can command a majority. The German Reichstag has existed for years with the socialists as the largest single group in its membership, and the government govern-ment has had to depend upon a coalition to maintain its measures; so, too, in England, the Asquith ministry, and now the Lloyd-George cabinet, have had no majority granted to it with the mandate of a general election; while in France the center, the left, the right, and the other groups of deputies have always been the despair of foreigners and of prime ministers alike. Many European Eur-opean publicists have looked for a new condition in the United States, which has remained steadfastly a two-party country. It may be that that day is past and that we, too, shall have the block system in politics. |