FOOTNOTES:

The Ministers must have Seats in Parliament.

As the continental practice whereby ministers are allowed to address the legislature, whether they have seats in it or not, is unknown in England, every member of the cabinet, and indeed of the ministry, must have a seat in one or other House of Parliament;[61:1]the last exception being that of Mr. Gladstone, who held the office of Secretary of State for the Colonies during the last few months of Sir Robert Peel's administration in 1846, although he had failed of reëlection to the House of Commons.[61:2]The reason commonly given for such a limitation in the selection of ministers is that otherwise they could not be made responsible to Parliament, where they must be present in order to answer questions, and give information relating to their departments. From the standpoint of Parliament this is perfectly true, but the converse is also true. The head of a department sits in the House of Commons quite as much in order to control the House, as in order that the House may control him. In his chapter on "Changes of Ministry," Bagehot has shown how defenceless against attack any department is sure to be without a spokesman in Parliament, and he cites as a forcible illustration the fate of the first Poor Law Commission.[61:3]All this applies, of course, only to the House of Commons, for although the presence of ministers in the House of Lords is a convenience in debate, and an appropriate recognition of the legal equality of the two chambers, there is no responsibility to be secured thereby, and it is not the essential means of controlling the action of the peers.

The Cabinet System and Administrative Efficiency.

The men who win places in the ministry have usually, although by no means invariably, made their mark in debate. It is a strange assumption that a good talker must be a good administrator, and that a strong government can be formed by parcelling out the offices among the leadingdebaters in the legislative body. At first sight it appears as irrational as the other corollary of the parliamentary system, that the public service is promoted by dismissing an excellent foreign minister, because the House of Commons does not like an unpopular clause in an education bill. Any one with a sense of humour can point out the incongruities in any human organisation, whether it works in practice well or ill. But there is, in fact, reason to expect that a leading debater will make a good head of a department. Influence is rarely acquired over a body so permanent as the House of Commons by mere showy eloquence. Real weight there must be based upon a knowledge of men, and a power to master facts and grasp the essential points in a situation. It must be based, in other words, upon the qualities most essential to a good head of a department in a government where, as in England, the technical knowledge, the traditions, and the orderly conduct of affairs, are secured by a corps of highly efficient permanent officials. No doubt all leading debaters do not make good administrators. Sometimes a minister is negligent or ineffective, and occasionally he is rash. There are men, also, who have outlived their usefulness, or who were once thought very promising, and have not fulfilled their promise, but who cannot be discarded and must be given a post of more or less importance. The system works, however, on the whole very well, and supplies to the government offices a few extraordinary, and many fairly efficient, chiefs, although it puts some departments under the control of poor administrators.

The power of creating peers would make it possible to select for the head of a department a tried administrator altogether outside of the parliamentary field. Something like this was attempted in the recent case of Lord Milner, who was offered, on Mr. Chamberlain's resignation, the post of Secretary of State for the Colonies. Lord Milner was, indeed, a peer at the time the place was tendered to him, but he had attended in the House of Lords only to take hisseat. He had never spoken or voted there, and in fact had had no parliamentary career, his nearest approach to St. Stephens having consisted in standing on one occasion as a candidate for the House of Commons without success.

Formerly a statesman regularly began his official life as a parliamentary under-secretary; and he did not become the head of a department, or win a seat in the cabinet, until he had in this way served his apprenticeship in public administration—a practice which furnished both a guarantee of experience and a test of executive capacity. Of late years there have been a number of exceptions to this rule. Mr. Chamberlain, Lord Randolph Churchill, Mr. Morley and Mr. Birrell, for example, were admitted to the cabinet, and put at the head of great departments without any previous training in the service of the government. As a rule, however, the old system is likely to prevail, because it is difficult for a man to make his mark in Parliament unless he begins his work there very young; and the exceptions occur only in cases of men of great ability.

The Need of Unity in the Cabinet.

In the earlier part of the century, before the party system had developed as fully as it has to-day, complete unity in the cabinet was much less necessary than it is now. At that time it was not uncommon to have matters, sometimes very important ones, treated as open questions in the cabinet, and a good deal of discussion has taken place upon the advantages and the evils of such a practice.[63:1]Members of the cabinet occasionally spoke and voted against government measures, although a difference carried to that length was always rare. One even finds colleagues in the ministry standing as opposing candidates at an election.[63:2]Such occurrences would be impossible to-day, because, as will appear more fully when we come to treat of the political parties, parliamentary government in its present highlydeveloped form requires a very strong cohesion among the members of the majority in the House of Commons, and, therefore, absolute harmony, or the appearance of harmony, among their leaders. It is necessary to present a united front to the Opposition, but if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself for the battle? Any one watching the course of events during the early summer of 1903 must have observed how rapidly the process of disintegration went on in the Conservative party while it was known that the ministers were at odds over the tariff. Party cohesion, both in the House and in the cabinet, is, indeed, an essential feature of the parliamentary system; but since men, however united on general principles, do not by nature think alike in all things, differences of opinion must constantly arise within the cabinet itself.[64:1]Sometimes they are pushed so far that they can be settled only by a division or vote, but this is exceptional, for the object of the members is, if possible, to agree, not to obtain a majority of voices and override the rest.[64:2]The work of every cabinet must, therefore, involve a series of compromises and concessions, the more so because the members represent the varying shades of opinion comprised in the party in power. A minister who belongs to one wing of the party may, in fact, be more nearly in accord with a member of the front Opposition Bench than with some colleague who stands at the other political pole of opinion, and yet he will stay in the cabinet unless the measures proposed are such that he feels conscientiously obliged to resign. So long as he remains in the government he will attempt to agree with his colleagues, but when he has finally left them his personal opinions will take full course, andhe may go off at a tangent. In this way the behaviour of an ex-minister towards his former colleagues, which is sometimes attributed to rancour, may very well be due to a natural expansion of opinions which were held in check while he clung to the cabinet.

Need of Secrecy.

Men engaged in a common cause who come together for the purpose of reaching an agreement usually succeed, provided their differences of opinion are not made public. But without secrecy harmony of views is well-nigh unattainable; for if the contradictory opinions held by members of the cabinet were once made public it would be impossible afterwards to make the concessions necessary to a compromise, without the loss of public reputation for consistency and force of character. Moreover a knowledge of the initial divergence of views among the ministers would vastly increase the difficulty of rallying the whole party in support of the policy finally adopted, and would offer vulnerable points to the attacks of the Opposition. Secrecy is, therefore, an essential part of the parliamentary system, and hence it is the habit, while making public the fact that a meeting of the cabinet has taken place, and the names of the members present, to give no statement of the business transacted. Not only is no official notice of the proceedings published, but it is no less important that they should not be in any way divulged. In fact, by a well-recognised custom, it is highly improper to refer in Parliament, or elsewhere, to what has been said or done at meetings of the cabinet, although reticence must at times place certain members in a very uncomfortable position.[65:1]Occasionallyit becomes well-nigh intolerable. This is true where a cabinet breaks up owing to dissensions over an issue that excites keen public interest, and in such cases the story of what happened may be told in a way that would be thought inexcusable under other circumstances.[66:1]

When we consider the great public interest that attaches to the decisions of the cabinet, and the great value that premature information would have for journalists and speculators, it is astonishing how little cabinet secrets have leaked out. In curious contrast with this are the reports of select committees of Parliament, the contents of which are often known before the report is made,[66:2]probably in most cases not from any deliberate disclosure, but as a result of the piecing together of small bits of information, no one of which alone would seem to be a betrayal of confidence. The reason this does not happen in the case of cabinets is no doubt to be sought in the complete reliance of the members upon one another, and their disbelief in the statements of any one who pretends to have obtained information from a colleague. The best proof of the real silence of ministers is found in the fact that although on two or three occasions the press has been remarkably shrewd in guessing at probable decisions, members of the cabinet have seldom been guilty of talking indiscreetly. The one or two instances where it is alleged to have occurred have, indeed, acquired the sort of notoriety of exceptions that prove the rule.[66:3]

At one time, it seems, before the reign of Queen Victoria, minutes of cabinet meetings were kept, showing the opinionsheld, with the reasons given therefor, and these were transmitted to the King.[67:1]Even as late as 1855 regular cabinet dinners took place, marked by the possible convenience that no reports of the topics of discussion were sent to the sovereign, as in the case of more formal meetings.[67:2]At the present day he receives only a general statement of the matters discussed, with formal minutes of decisions that require his approval; and it would be considered improper to inform him of the conflicting opinions held by the different ministers.[67:3]In fact no records of the cabinet are kept. This results in occasional differences of recollection on the question whether a definite conclusion was reached on certain matters or not; but possible difficulties of that kind are probably of far less consequence than the facility in compromising differences of opinion and reaching a harmonious conclusion that comes from the entire informality of the proceedings. So little formal, indeed, are the meetings that a person not a member of the cabinet is occasionally brought in for consultation. This occurred in 1848, for example, when the Duke of Wellington attended a Liberal cabinet to give advice upon measures to be taken in view of the danger of the Chartist riots.

Times of Meeting.

It is an old practice, and obviously a necessary one, to hold one or more meetings of the cabinet in the autumn to consider the measures to be presented to Parliament during the coming session; to arrange, as it were, the government's parliamentary programme. Other meetings are held from time to time whenever necessary; sometimes as often as once a week during the session; occasionally even more frequently when urgent and difficult matters are to bedecided. After the session of Parliament comes to an end in August, the ministers usually take their vacation in travel, sport, or public speaking; and cabinet meetings are suspended unless political questions of a pressing nature arise.

In the rare cases where the cabinet is obliged to settle its policy by the crude method of a division or vote, the voices of its members count alike; but questions are usually decided by preponderance of opinion, not by votes; and the weight of the opinions of the ministers is naturally very unequal. Such a difference must be particularly marked in the large cabinets of the present day; and some of the members must be perfectly well aware that they are expected to follow rather than to lead. The relative influence of the different ministers over their colleagues, both at the cabinet meetings and elsewhere, depends, of course, primarily upon their personal qualities; although the post occupied is, in some cases, not without importance. This is particularly true in the case of the Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister.

Until 1906 the Prime Minister, like the cabinet itself, was unknown to the law,[68:1]but the position has long been one of large though somewhat ill-defined authority. It has grown with the growth of the cabinet itself; and, indeed, the administrations of the great Prime Ministers, such as Walpole, Pitt and Peel, are landmarks in the evolution of the system.[68:2]We have, fortunately, from two of the chief Prime Ministers in the latter half of the nineteenth century, descriptions both of the cabinet and the premiership, which are authoritative;[68:3]and although they do not add a great deal to what is popularly known, they enable us to state it with greater confidence.

At the meetings of the cabinet the Prime Minister aschairman is no doubt merelyprimus inter pares. His opinion carries peculiar weight with his colleagues mainly by the force it derives from his character, ability, experience and reputation; but apart from cabinet meetings he has an authority that is real, though not always the same or easy to define.

In the first place the Prime Minister has a considerable patronage at his disposal. Subject to the limitations imposed by political exigencies, he virtually appoints all the members of the ministry. The ecclesiastical offices also, from the bishoprics to the larger livings in the gift of the Crown, are bestowed on his recommendation; and so as a rule are peerages and other honours; and he has a general presumptive right to nominate to any new office that is established under the Crown.[69:1]

His Supervision.

He is both an official channel of communication and an informal mediator. The duties of the Prime Minister, if one may use the expression, surround the cabinet. He stands in a sense between it and all the other forces in the state with which it may come into contact, and he even stands between it and its own members. Matters of exceptional importance ought to be brought to his attention before they are discussed in the cabinet; and any differences that may arise between any two ministers, or the departments over which they preside, should be submitted to him for decision, subject, of course, to a possible appeal to the cabinet. He is supposed to exercise a general supervision over all the departments. Nothing of moment that relates to the general policy of the government, or that may affect seriously the efficiency of the service, ought to be transacted without his advice. He has a right to expect, for example, to be consulted about the filling of the highest posts in the permanent civil service.[69:2]All this is true of every branch of the government, but the foreign relations of the country are subject to his oversight in a peculiardegree, for he is supposed to see all the important despatches before they are sent, and be kept constantly informed by the Foreign Secretary of the state of relations with other powers.

The extent to which a Prime Minister actually supervises and controls the several departments must, of course, vary in different cabinets. One cannot read the memoirs of Sir Robert Peel without seeing how closely he watched, and how much he guided, every department of the government.[70:1]A score of years later we find Lord Palmerston lamenting that when able men fill every post it is impossible for the Prime Minister to exercise the same decisive influence on public policy;[70:2]and recently Lord Rosebery has told us that owing to the widening of the activity of the government no Premier could, at the present day, exert the control that Peel had over the various branches of the public service.[70:3]It is certain that a Prime Minister cannot maintain such a control if his time is taken up by the conduct of a special department; and this, combined with some natural recklessness in speech, accounts for the strange ignorance that Lord Salisbury displayed at times about the details of administration, as in the case when he excused the lack of military preparation for the South African War on the ground that the Boers had misled the British War Office by smuggling guns into the country in locomotives and munitions of war in pianos.[70:4]It has been usual, therefore, for the Prime Minister to take the office of First Lord of the Treasury, which involves very little administrative work, and leaves its occupant free for his more general duties.[70:5]

He Represents the Cabinet.

The Prime Minister stands between the Crown and the cabinet; for although the King may, and sometimes does, communicate with a minister about the affairs relating to his own department, it is the Premier who acts as the connecting link with the cabinet as a whole, and communicates to him their collective opinion. To such an extent is he the representative of the cabinet in its relations to the Crown that whereas the resignation of any other minister creates only a vacancy, the resignation of a Premier dissolves the cabinet altogether; and even when his successor is selected from among his former colleagues, and not another change is made, yet the loss of the Premier involves technically the formation of a new cabinet.

Unless the Prime Minister is a peer he represents the cabinet as a whole in the House of Commons, making there any statements of a general nature, such as relate, for example, to the amount of time the government will need for its measures, or to the question of what bills it will proceed with, and how far the lack of time will compel it to abandon the rest. The other ministers usually speak only about matters in which they are directly concerned. They defend the appropriations, explain the measures, and answer the questions relating to their own departments; but they do not ordinarily take any active part in the discussion of other subjects, unless a debate lasts for two or three days, when one or more of them may be needed. They are, indeed, often so busy in their own rooms at the House that it is not uncommon, when a government measure of second-rate importance is in progress, to see the Treasury Bench entirely deserted except for the minister in charge of the bill. But the Prime Minister must keep a careful watch on the progress of all government measures; and he is expected to speak not only on all general questions, but on all the most important government bills. He can do this, of course, only in the House of which he happens to be a member; and the strength of his all-pervading influence upon the government depends to no slight extentupon the question whether he sits in the Lords or the Commons.

As the House of Commons is the place where the great battles of the parties are fought, a Prime Minister who is a peer is in something of the position of a commander-in-chief who is not present with the forces in the field. He must send his directions from afar, and trust a lieutenant to carry them out. In such a case the leader of the House of Commons stands in something of the position of a deputy premier. He is, of necessity, constantly consulted by his colleagues in the House, and he can, if so disposed, draw into his own hands a part of the authority belonging to the head of the cabinet. As Mr. Gladstone remarked, "The overweight, again, of the House of Commons is apt, other things being equal, to bring its Leader inconveniently near in power to a Prime Minister who is a peer. He can play off the House of Commons against his chief; and instances might be cited, though they are happily most rare, when he has served him very ugly tricks."[72:1]It is certainly true that the Prime Ministers who have most dominated their cabinets, and have had their administrations most fully under their control, have all been in the Commons. It may be added that a high authority has declared that "no administrations are so successful as those where the distance in parliamentary authority, party influence, and popular position, between the Prime Minister and his colleagues in the cabinet, is wide, recognised and decisive."[72:2]

Relation of the Ministers to One Another.

Not only does the Prime Minister stand above and apart from his colleagues, but they do not all stand upon one plane. The influence of a minister depends upon his personal force, but it may be affected by the office that he holds, and perhaps by his nearness to the Prime Minister himself; for although there is no formal interior junta, or cabinet within the cabinet, yet the Premier is apt to take counsel informallywith other leading ministers, and if he is a masterful man those who can command or win his confidence have the better chance of shaping the policy of the government while it is still formless and malleable. The cabinet, moreover, does not always act as a whole. It sometimes appoints committees to consider special subjects, and indeed it has an old and well-established practice of appointing committees to prepare important government bills.[73:1]

Joint and Several Responsibility.

It is commonly said that the ministers are severally responsible to Parliament for the conduct of their own departments, and jointly responsible for the general policy of the government. Like many other maxims of the British Constitution, this has the advantage of being sufficiently vague to be capable of different interpretations at different times. With the growth of the parliamentary system, and the more clearly marked opposition between the parties, the joint responsibility has in fact become greater and the several responsibility less. The last instances where a single minister resigned on an adverse vote of the House of Commons were those of Mr. Lowe, who retired from the vice-presidency of the Committee on Education in 1864 in consequence of a vote charging him with improper mutilation of the reports of inspectors, and Lord Chancellor Westbury, who resigned in 1866 on account of a vote censuring his grant of a pension to a registrar in bankruptcy charged with misconduct.[73:2]If at the present day the cause of complaint were a personal error on the part of the minister, he would probably be brought to resign voluntarily before there was a chance of his resignation being forced by a hostile vote in the House; and if the question were one ofpolicy, the government would, save in very exceptional cases, assume the responsibility for that policy, treating a hostile vote as showing a want of confidence in itself. The majority in the House of Commons, on the other hand, while it may question, criticise and blame a minister in debate, is reluctant to permit a vote of censure upon him which is liable to involve the fall of the ministry.[74:1]

Each minister is responsible to the cabinet for the conduct of his department. He is constantly meeting with problems which may involve criticism in Parliament, and where a mistake might entail serious consequences for the whole government. In such cases he must decide how far he can assume to settle the question in accordance with his own opinion, and what matters he ought to bring before the cabinet. He must not, on the one hand, take up its time in discussing trivialities, and he must not, on the other, commit his colleagues to a course of action which really involves general policy. If in doubt he can, of course, consult the Prime Minister; but in spite of this privilege annoying blunders must inevitably occur.

A minister naturally has charge in the cabinet of the business relating to his own department, but how far he takes an active part in other things will depend upon the interest that he feels in them. Lord Palmerston, for example, when Secretary for Foreign Affairs, took, as his letters show, little interest in anything else; but when he became Home Secretary he took not only an active but a leading part in directing the foreign relations of the country. This he was fully entitled to do, because the cabinet is both an assemblage of ministers at the head of the separate branches of the administration, and a council of state which must form a collective judgment upon the questions submitted to it. A minister is, therefore, justified in pressing his views on any subject, whether connected with his own department or not; and on no other basis could collective responsibility bemaintained. The practice is particularly marked in the case of foreign affairs, which usually form a large part of the business at the meetings.

The Treasury and Other Departments.

It is not only on questions of general policy, brought before the cabinet, that differences of opinion between ministers may arise, for there are many matters of current administration that affect more than one department. In such cases the ministers concerned confer together, and if they cannot agree their differences must be submitted to the Prime Minister, and ultimately to the cabinet. There is, indeed, one department which is continually brought into contact—one might almost say conflict—with all the others; that is the Treasury. Any vigorous branch of the public service always sees excellent reasons for increasing its expenditure, and proposes to do so without much regard for the needs of the other branches; while the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is obliged to find the money, must strive to restrict the aggregate outlay. If he did not, the expenditure of the government would certainly be extravagant. As a preliminary step to the preparation of the budget the Treasury issues in the autumn a circular to the other departments asking for estimates of their expenses during the coming fiscal year. These are made up in the first instance by the permanent officials, and then laid before the parliamentary head of the department, who revises and perhaps reduces them. When they reach the Treasury they are scrutinised by the permanent officials there, and if anything is not clear, an explanation is sought from the department concerned. The estimates are then submitted by the Treasury officials to their parliamentary chiefs, and if there is an objection to any item it is the duty of the Financial Secretary of the Treasury to confer with the head of the department whose estimates are in question.[75:1]If the parliamentary head of the department does not agree with the Financial Secretary he may go to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and if they cannot settle the matter theymust appeal to the Prime Minister and as a last resort to the cabinet. Being placed in such a relation to his colleagues, it is not unnatural that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should often differ with them. As Gladstone notes in his diary in 1865, "Estimates always settled at the dagger's point."[76:1]Like other differences in the cabinet, these occasionally come to light, especially when they have been so sharp as to cause the Chancellor's resignation. Lord Randolph Churchill resigned in 1886 because the cabinet insisted upon appropriations for the Army which he opposed; and Sir Michael Hicks-Beach has told us recently that had it not been for the fact that his protests against the growth of expenditure were received with indifference he might not have quitted the office.[76:2]One cause, moreover, of the final resignation of Mr. Gladstone—who although not then Chancellor of the Exchequer, always looked upon matters from the Treasury standpoint—was a difference of opinion between him and his colleagues on the question of the cost of national defence.[76:3]

Whatever the policy of the cabinet at any moment may be, the scale of expenditure is ultimately determined by the feeling in the House of Commons, and this in turn depends upon the state of public opinion. Except for a few short periods of extravagance, the seventy years that followed the close of the Napoleonic wars were marked by a decided tendency in favour of economy. People felt the pressure of taxation, worried little about the condition of the Army or the Navy, and had no strong desire to increase the expenses of the government in any direction. Latterly the tendency has been reversed. The country has felt rich; there have been a series of alarms about national defence, and at the same time the general growth of paternalism has brought in a desire for improvement and expenditure in many ways.

The Cabinet and the Ministry.

The ministry is composed, as has already been pointed out, of an inner part that formulates the policy of the government, and an outer part that follows the lines laid down; the inner part, or cabinet, containing the more prominent party leaders, who are also holders of the principal offices of state, while the outer part consists of the heads of the less important departments, the parliamentary under-secretaries, the whips and the officers of the royal household. All of these persons are strictly in the ministry, and resign with the cabinet; but the officers of the household have, as such, no political functions, and do not concern us here. The heads of departments without seats in the cabinet have become, with the increase in size of that body, very few. By far the greater part of the ministers outside of the cabinet are the parliamentary under-secretaries, who have two distinct sets of duties, one administrative and the other parliamentary. Their administrative duties vary very largely, mainly in accordance with personal considerations. Some of them are really active in their departments, doing work which might fall upon the parliamentary chief, or upon the permanent under-secretary, while others have little or no administrative business; but in any case the real object of their existence is to be found on the parliamentary side. Whatever duties, parliamentary or administrative, may be assigned to an under-secretary, he is strictly subordinate to his chief, who retains both the authority and the responsibility for the decision of all questions that arise in the department;[77:1]although an active under-secretary in the Commons may sometimes attract more public notice than his real chief in the Lords.

It is commonly said that as a minister can speak only in the House of which he is a member, there must be two parliamentary representatives for every department, one ineach House. This, however, is not strictly true. Going back, for example, over the period of a generation, we find that the Foreign, Colonial and Indian Offices have practically always been represented in both Houses.[78:1]The other great departments have, of course, always been represented in the Commons;[78:2]but the War Office and the Admiralty have not always been represented in the Lords. The Board of Trade has often, and the Local Government Board and Home Office have usually, had no spokesman of their own there;[78:3]while all the parliamentary officers of the Treasury invariably sit in the Commons. The system of under-secretaries, therefore, is by no means always used in order to give a representative to the department in both Houses. It not infrequently happens that both, or in the case of the War Office and the Admiralty all three, representatives sit in the House of Commons. An under-secretary, even when he sits with his chief in the Commons, is, however, a convenience for those departments which have a great deal of business to attend to, and many questions to answer. Moreover, the large number of under-secretaryships has the advantage already noticed of including within the ministry a considerable number of lesser party lights who have not achieved sufficient prominence to be included in the cabinet, and yet whose interest in the fortunes of the ministry it is wise to secure.

The Cabinet and the Privy Council.

One of the great changes in administrative machinery that has taken place in the civilised world within the last two hundred years is the substitution of an informal cabinet composed of the heads of departments, for a formal governing council of members who had themselves no direct administrative duties. The form of the old council has survived in England under the name of the Privy Council, butits functions have become a shadow. The Privy Council never meets as a whole now except for ceremonial purposes. Its action is, indeed, still legally necessary for the performance of many acts of state, such as the adoption of Orders in Council, and the like; but this is a formal matter, requiring the presence of only three persons, who follow the directions of a minister, for all cabinet ministers are members of the Privy Council. The Council does real work to-day only through its committees. Of these the most notable is the Judicial Committee, which sits as a court of appeal in ecclesiastical and colonial cases, and will be more fully described in a later chapter. Other committees, such as those on trade and on education, have at times rendered great service to the state, but the more important administrative committees have now been transformed into regular departments of the government. It is by no means certain, however, that the Privy Council may not, through its committees, become in the future an organ by means of which important political functions, especially in connection with the growth of the empire, will be evolved. At present it is mainly an honorary body. Its members are appointed for life, and bear the title of Right Honourable; and, indeed, of late years membership in the Council has been conferred as a sort of decoration for services in politics, literature, science, war, or administration.

Future of the Cabinet.

Mr. Gladstone was of opinion that the cabinet had "found its final shape, attributes, functions, and permanent ordering,"[79:1]and so far as its relation to Parliament alone is concerned, this may very well be true; but Parliament is gradually ceasing to be the one final arbiter in public life. The cabinet is daily coming into closer contact with the nation, and what modifications that may entail we cannot foresee. It may be observed, however, that while the members of the cabinet present a united front, and say the same thing in Parliament, they do not always say the same thing to the country. The ministers agree on a policy beforeannouncing it in Parliament, but they are not always in the habit of taking counsel together about the speeches that they make upon the platform. Mr. Chamberlain's sudden declaration of a policy of preferential tariffs in his speech at Birmingham in 1903 is only an extreme example of what sometimes occurs. Absolute unanimity may not, indeed, prove to be so necessary to the ministers in order to maintain their authority before the people as it is to hold their position in the House of Commons.[80:1]But no serious changes in the structure of the cabinet are probable so long as parliamentary government continues in its present form; and it is too early to speculate on the changes that may occur if the parliamentary system itself becomes modified under the pressure of political parties acting in a democratic country.

[53:1]Parker, "Sir Robert Peel," III., 496.

[56:1]This is the opinion of two of the most prominent Prime Ministers of the century. Ashley, "Life of Palmerston," II., 330; Morley, "Life of Walpole," 159; the latter representing, as has already been pointed out, the views of Mr. Gladstone.

[57:1]For an example of the difficulties that arise on this score,cf.Morley, "Life of Gladstone," II., 628-29. Lord Rosebery, who, after being Prime Minister in 1895, was left out of the next Liberal cabinet in 1905, had taken himself out of the field by saying that he could not serve in a ministry whose chief held the views on Home Rule that Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman had expressed.

[57:2]Cf.Parker, "Sir Robert Peel," II., 486-89; III., 347-48.

[58:1]Todd, "Parl. Govt. in England," 2 Ed., II., 189-90.

[60:1]If the post of Lord Privy Seal is not needed for this purpose, it is given, without salary, to the holder of some other office.

[60:2]The President of the Council had in the past a somewhat undefined authority in connection with the Committee of the Council on Education, but this committee has now been replaced by a Board.

[61:1]The Law Officers present occasional exceptions.

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