ABSTRACT
Mistakes and failure of reason occur continually in the exercise of government, and are sometimes recognised afterwards by those who made them. The mistakes made in the programmes and theories of political parties are often pointed out by their opponents, but seldom acknowledged by the parties themselves, because the sources of their views are fixed and the tests to which those views are subjected in practice are never adequate or final, as may be the effect of a single measure or action. I assume that grounds exist, in the Will of certain men or in their education, for the choice that each party makes of its policy; these grounds cannot be rational fundamentally, but they may be consistent in their chosen aims; and irrationality in argument or in action will then appear only if the circumstances are ignored which, at that time and place, may render the execution of that policy impossible. Then any irrational attempt to carry out that policy would be due to ignorance.
