text:  Lastly men who rightly understand that good government is the result of popular and anti-popular principles blended together rather than of the mere ascendancy of either; whose aim therefore is to prevent either from going too far and to throw their weight into the lighter scale: wise men and most useful up to the moment when the two parties are engaged in actual civil war and the question is--which shall conquer? For no man can pretend to limit the success of a party when the sword is the arbitrator: he who wins in that game does not win by halves: and therefore the only question then is which party is on the whole the best or rather perhaps the least evil; for as one must crush the other it is at least desirable that the party so crushed should be the worse