V 
 
 I 
 
 i 
 
 'V Y I 
 
 CENTRAL 
 
 GOVERNMENT 
 
 m
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 SCHOOL OF LAW 
 LIBRARY
 
 Central <obmtment 
 
 THE ENGLISH CITIZEN: 
 
 HIS EIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES.
 
 CENTRAL 
 GOVERNMENT 
 
 BY 
 
 H. D. TKAILL, D.C.L. 
 M 
 
 LATE FELLOW OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 
 Pontoon 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1881 
 
 The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reservtd.
 
 T 4? ^ c
 
 PEEFACE. 
 
 IN order to explain the scheme and general char- 
 acter of this volume, it is necessary to say a few 
 words about the series of which it forms the com- 
 mencement. The English Citizen Series is intended 
 to meet the demand for accessible information on 
 the ordinary conditions and the current terms of 
 our political life. In this, its first volume, it deals 
 with the machinery whereby our Constitution works, 
 and the broad lines upon which it has been con- 
 structed : in subsequent volumes it will treat of 
 the course of legislation ; of the electoral body, its 
 functions, composition, and development; of the 
 great scheme of national income, and its disburse- 
 ment, and of various other matters ; but on the 
 present, as on every other subject, the aim has 
 been not to give mere compendia of technical infor- 
 mation, but to sum up as shortly and clearly as 
 possible the leading points, and to arrange these 
 so as to show their relation to one another, and 
 their general bearing on the life and the duties 
 of the citizen. 
 
 To apply these principles to the treatment of a sub- 
 ject of such dimensions as that of " Central Govern- 
 
 783156
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 ment " has not been easy. The task encounters em- 
 barrassments on two sides. The limits prescribed to 
 the work forbade its expansion into a historical treatise 
 on the development of our political institutions ; 
 the object proposed to the work forbade its con- 
 traction into a mere catalogue of administrative 
 details. To maintain, on the one hand, its explana- 
 tory character, it was necessary to be continually 
 referring to phases of constitutional history, and 
 sometimes to points of constitutional law; while, 
 on the other hand, to avoid the danger of discursive- 
 ness, it has been found equally necessary to treat 
 these matters with an almost stenographic brevity. 
 The necessity of conforming to these two conditions 
 will explain and justify the limitations of the 
 volume, both in the region of principle and in 
 that of detail. It cannot pretend to compete 
 with more copious and systematic treatises on the 
 English Constitution ; nor does it profess to enter 
 with the exhaustiveness of an official handbook into 
 the minutiae of departmental administration. The 
 writer's object has been to confine it as closely as 
 possible to the points of contact between constitu- 
 tional principle and administrative detail, and to give 
 rather the political rationale of the various processes 
 of government than to follow out their departmental 
 history to its ultimate facts. It is with constant 
 reference to this object that the present volume 
 should be consulted ; and it may thus, it is hoped, 
 be consulted with advantage.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 THE EXECUTIVE GOVERNMENT UNDER THE CONSTITU- 
 TIONAL SYSTEM . ... 1 
 
 CHAPTER IL 
 
 THE CABINET : ITS FORMATION, FUNCTIONS, AND 
 
 RESPONSIBILITY . . . .12 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 THE TREASURY . . . . .31 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE HOME OFFICE . . . . .55 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 THE FOREIGN OFFICE . . . .73 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 THE COLONIAL OFFICE . . . .84 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 THE WAR OFFICE . . . .95
 
 viii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE INDIA OFFICE . . . . .106 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 THE ADMIRALTY . . . . .115 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 THE BOARD OF TRADE . . . .123 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD . . .133 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE PRIVY COUNCIL AS A BRANCH OF THE EXECUTIVE 
 
 THE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT . .140 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 OTHER EXECUTIVE OFFICES . . .149 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE TENDENCIES OF CENTRAL GOVERNMENT IN ENG- 
 LAND . 154
 
 CENTEAL GOVEKNMENT. 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 THE EXECUTIVE GOVERNMENT UNDER THE 
 CONSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM. 
 
 THE meaning of the word " government " might at first 
 sight appear to be free from all ambiguity whatsoever ; 
 but a little reflection on its popular employment suffices 
 to show that it is used in at least two distinct senses. 
 When we speak of a nation being under " parh'amentary 
 government ;" and when we say that its " form of govern- 
 ment " is monarchical, we are in fact applying the same 
 word to two essentially different functions of its politi- 
 cal life ; as indeed is evident enough from the fact that 
 both of these two propositions can, with equal truth, 
 be affirmed of the country in which we live. In saying 
 that England is a nation under " parliamentary govern- 
 ment," we mean that the legislative authority including 
 therein the power not only of making laws, but of 
 supervising their administration and controlling their 
 administrators is vested in a parliamentary assembly ; 
 in saying that the English "form of government" is 
 monarchical, we mean that the executive authority 
 & B
 
 2 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 including therein the power not only of administering 
 the laws, but of performing all acts necessary to the 
 work of rule is entrusted not to an elective chief magis- 
 trate, but to an hereditary Sovereign. 
 
 The distinction which popular language thus ignores 
 is of course a real and an important one ; and though 
 it is more plainly visible in the case of a constitutional 
 government like our own, it is in reality a distinction 
 which must always and everywhere exist. The execu- 
 tive differs essentially from the legislative function ; and 
 the one can in theory be separated from the other, 
 even when in practice they are combined. The Oriental 
 despot who concentrates in his own person all the powers 
 of the State can do no more than associate the two 
 functions in question; he cannot confound them, or 
 merge the one in the other. He may be his own Legis- 
 lative and his own Executive, but the distinction between 
 the legislative and the executive function still remains. 
 The edict which he may issue to-day is a thing essentially 
 different from the order which he may give to his Vizier 
 to-morrow to see to its execution, or from the punish- 
 ment which he may inflict upon one of his subjects for 
 disobedience to it the day after. 
 
 The distinction, however, between the legislative and 
 the executive power is naturally more conspicuous in 
 these forms of government in which the two powers are, 
 as in England, committed to separate hands. Among 
 ourselves the legislative is sharply marked off from the 
 executive power. The former belongs to Parliament, or, 
 to speak with strict constitutional accuracy, is divided 
 between the Sovereign, the House of Lords, and the 
 House of Commons ; the latter is exercised by the Sove-
 
 I.] THE EXECUTIVE GOVERNMENT. 3 
 
 reign under the advice and through the instrumentality 
 of the ministers of the Crown. And although those 
 who make the laws of a nation, and who thus " have the 
 last word " as to what each citizen of that nation is per- 
 mitted or forbidden to do, may no doubt in a very 
 important sense be called its "Government," that title 
 is more generally and correctly reserved for the authority 
 which administers or enforces such laws as exist for the 
 executive authority in fact, or, in other words, for the 
 Crown acting under the advice of its ministers. 
 
 The ministers of the Crown are accordingly spoken 
 of in ordinary usage as the Government. Sometimes, in 
 contradistinction to the Legislative Body, they are called 
 the Executive Government; sometimes, in contradis- 
 tinction to the various depositaries of local authority, 
 they are described as the Central Government. But in 
 theory the executive power is vested in the Sovereign 
 alone ; and in the form taken by all ministerial acts this 
 theory is strictly observed. Writs, warrants, commis- 
 sions, patents, and other public documents of a like 
 nature, " run " in the Queen's name : the Crown is 
 still the visible symbol of authority under which all 
 the actual work of government is carried on. 
 
 In earlier times, however, the Crown was not only the 
 visible symbol, but the actual source of all executive 
 authority; and in order to form correct ideas of the 
 present relations of the Crown to its ministers, it will be 
 necessary to take a brief historical survey of the process 
 by which their relations have grown up. Down to a 
 period, then, which it is convenient and substantially if 
 not strictly accurate to fix at the Revolution of 1688, 
 the government of England was carried on by virtue of
 
 4 CENTEAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 the royal prerogative that is to say, by the Sovereign 
 in person, with the advice and assistance of ministers 
 selected by himself, and not responsible (in any formally 
 recognised way) to any one save himself. 1 Under this 
 system Parliament had nothing to say to the choice of 
 the royal ministers, and possessed no power of controlling 
 them when chosen. The Sovereign was of course not 
 bound to follow their advice; but Parliament had no 
 means of suggesting what advice they should give, or of 
 interfering to prevent its being acted upon when it was 
 bad. They could only complain or remonstrate after 
 the mischief was done, or sometimes, in extreme cases, 
 punish the mischievous advisers : they could not forbid 
 or prevent the advice being taken. But as the nation 
 grew in its capacity for self-government, it sought, as all- 
 growing nations do, to limit the authority of its rulers ; 
 and the stern experience of two Revolutions taught 
 its people the best way of compassing the object. The 
 
 1 It is to be understood that the proposition thus broadly stated 
 is simply a statement of historical fact, and that it neither affirms 
 nor denies any particular theory of constitutional law. It has 
 nothing to say to such statements as, e.g., that of Macaulay, to the 
 effect that the doctrine of the responsibility of ministers is of 
 "immemorial antiquity;" or to this of another writer, that "it 
 may be confidently asserted that there is no period of our history 
 where the Sovereign could, according to the law and constitution, 
 act without advice in the public concerns of the kingdom ; " or to 
 this of a third, " that the Crown of England has always had a Privy 
 Council inseparable from it," which council "has always been 
 bound to advise the Crown in every branch and act of its executive 
 conduct." All these propositions may be true without affecting 
 the fact that down to the Revolution period Sovereign after 
 Sovereign did, whether constitutionally or unconstitutionally, claim 
 and exercise the kind of authority attributed to the royal office in 
 the text.
 
 i.] THE EXECUTIVE GOVERNMENT. 5 
 
 problem to be solved was that of limiting the royal 
 power in practice, while at the same time avoiding the 
 confusion and convulsion which must always attend the 
 attempts of peoples to call their Sovereigns to direct 
 account. The royal power, therefore, was left very nearly 
 intact, but means were provided whereby, without any 
 risk of collision between the Crown and the people, the 
 abuse of this power might be prevented. In other 
 words, the result though not the immediate result 
 of the long constitutional struggle which ended in the 
 great historic event above mentioned was to establish 
 the three main principles upon which our system of 
 government now rests, namely : 
 
 (1.) That the Sovereign is irresponsible; but 
 
 (2.) That for every act of his prerogative his ministers 
 are responsible to Parliament ; and 
 
 (3.) That it is not only the right of Parliament, but 
 its duty to the country, to inquire into the mode of exer- 
 cise of the royal prerogative, to review the advice given 
 by ministers with respect to its exercise, and to approve 
 or condemn that advice as they may think fit 
 
 The recognition of these principles of course imposes 
 certain duties upon each of the three parties to the con- 
 stitutional arrangement 
 
 It is the duty of the Sovereign to select as his 
 ministers such persons as enjoy the confidence of the 
 majority in Parliament, and to retain them as his ad- 
 visers, so long, 1 and so long only, as that confidence is 
 continued to them. 
 
 1 The last instance of a contravention of this rule was the dis- 
 missal of Lord Melbourne and his colleagues, a ministry possessing 
 a majority in Parliament, by William IV. in 1834, and the invita-
 
 6 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 It is the duty of the ministers so selected to court 
 and not to evade the supervision of Parliament over their 
 conduct ; to submit all the acts of their policy at home 
 and abroad (with no further or other concealment than 
 the interests of the nation may sometimes imperatively 
 demand) to the judgment of Parliament ; and to accept 
 an adverse expression of parliamentary opinion upon 
 any important act of their administration as an implied 
 summons to them to resign their offices as advisers of 
 the Crown. 1 
 
 And, lastly, it is the duty of Parliament to respect 
 the irresponsibility of the Sovereign, while strictly insist- 
 ing on the responsibility of ministers ; and, while abstain- 
 ing from any action which might embarrass or weaken 
 the Executive in the discharge of its functions, to main- 
 tain a vigilant watch upon its administrative policy at 
 home and in the colonies and dependencies of the Empire, 
 as well as upon its conduct of the national affairs. 
 
 To trace in full historical detail the steps by which 
 the control of Parliament over the Executive has been 
 established would be altogether beyond the scope of 
 
 tion to Sir Robert Peel, the leader of tlie party in opposition, to 
 form a Government. The new Premier, on assuming office, advised 
 an immediate dissolution, so that the constitutional question in- 
 volved in this act of Royal authority was not fully raised; but 
 Sir Robert Peel's "persuasion" that the old Parliament, had he 
 elected to meet it, would "so far maintain the prerogative of the 
 King as to give the ministers of his choice not an implicit confidence 
 but a fair trial," must be regarded, if justifiable, as somewhat 
 restricting the generality of the proposition in the text. 
 
 1 There are certain exceptions to this rule, which will be noticed 
 hereafter ; but they have been too rare in the past, and are too 
 improbable in the future, to necessitate any qualification of the 
 main proposition in the text.
 
 i.] THE EXECUTIVE GOVERNMENT. 7 
 
 such a work as this. But the principal movements by 
 which this result has been brought about may be briefly 
 indicated. 
 
 It has been said that before the Eevolution of 1688 
 the government of England was carried on mainly by 
 means of the royal prerogative that is to say, by the 
 Sovereign in person, with the advice and assistance of 
 ministers appointed by himself, in whose selection Parlia- 
 ment had no voice, and whose conduct Parliament could 
 not effectively control It is true that the Commons of 
 England had from very early times successfully asserted 
 their right of impeaching obnoxious ministers ; and it is 
 true also that from times almost as early they had 
 resorted to the expedient of withholding supplies of 
 money in order to force the dismissal of such ministers 
 from the councils of the Sovereign. But neither of these 
 checks upon ministerial action was of assured avail In 
 times when the ordinary revenues of the Crown, irrespec- 
 tive of parliamentary supplies, sufficed for its customary 
 expenditure, the power of stopping these supplies was 
 not often efficacious for coercive purposes; while the 
 mere power of punishing men who gave the Sovereign 
 advice conceived by Parliament to be injurious to the 
 interests or adverse to the liberties of the country, but 
 the mischief of which, when once acted upon, might be 
 irremediable, was but a poor substitute for the power to 
 prevent such advice being given, or to intercept the 
 execution of the measures founded upon it. Without 
 investing Parliament with a power of the latter kind, it 
 was clear that ministers of the Crown could not be 
 effectually controlled ; and experience slowly but surely 
 proved that there was only one way of giving Parliament
 
 8 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 the power required. To do so it was necessary that the 
 ministers of the Crown should be either selected from 
 among the members of the representative body, or else 
 should -be immediately on appointment provided with 
 seats in that assembly; and this necessity was first 
 formally recognised in the reign of William III. It is 
 of course true that individual ministers had sometimes 
 had seats in Parliament before this period ; but it was 
 only then, for the first time, that ministers were intro- 
 duced into Parliament for the avowed purpose of ex- 
 plaining, defending, and carrying out the measures of 
 government 
 
 This, however, was not in itself enough. To carry out 
 the responsibility principle thoroughly it was requisite 
 not only that ministers should be members of Parliament, 
 but that they should be persons acceptable to Parliament 
 as a body ; and this requirement also was first satisfied 
 by the same monarch in appointing an administration 
 avowedly selected from the then dominant political party, 
 with the view of carrying on the government in conformity 
 with the views of the majority in the House of Commons. 
 The ministry so formed by him in 1696 was constructed 
 upon an exclusively Whig basis ; but the precedent thus 
 created was afterwards departed from, even by the 
 Sovereign who created it, and it was not till the House 
 of Hanover ascended the throne that ministers were, as 
 a general rule, selected exclusively from among those 
 who were of the same political creed, or who, at least, 
 were" willing to serve under the same political banner. 
 
 It must not, however, be supposed that even when 
 the " responsibility principle " was theoretically respected 
 in the selection of ministers, it was at first as strictly
 
 i.] THE EXECUTIVE GOVERNMENT. 9 
 
 and unvaryingly observed in practice as it is in our own 
 day. This, like other parts of our constitution, has 
 grown up by degrees ; and from the first recognition of 
 the general responsibility of ministers to Parliament, 
 it was a long step to the state of things which exists at 
 present, when there is no single act of the royal preroga- 
 tive for which ministers are not responsible, and no 
 detail of ministerial policy over which the control of 
 Parliament is not habitually, or cannot, if necessary, be 
 effectually exercised. It was indeed a full century from 
 the recognition of this principle before it was brought 
 into complete accordance with the facts. At the out- 
 set of the constitutional period there were several 
 important departments of the work of government to 
 which parliamentary control could hardly be said to 
 extend. This was at first the case, for instance, with 
 the department of foreign policy, which, during the reign 
 of William III., and with the full acquiescence of his 
 ministers, was virtually managed by the Sovereign alone ; 
 while the first two Georges, though they left domestic 
 affairs for the most part to 'their ministers, imposed upon 
 them a foreign policy designed rather to further the 
 interests of Hanover than those of England. We shall, 
 moreover, see hereafter that the military administration 
 of the country was not, till a still later date, brought 
 effectually under parliamentary control 
 
 These cases, however, the direction of foreign policy, 
 and the imperfectly checked exercise of royal prerogative 
 in the case of the army, were, so to speak, permitted 
 departures from the principle of ministerial responsibility. 
 They were practically acquiesced in by Parliament and 
 the country ; they were concessions voluntarily made to
 
 10 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 the claims of royal authority. But the principle of par- 
 liamentary responsibility was for a long time subject to 
 occasional violations of a different sort violations com- 
 mitted by the Sovereign of his own will, and without 
 the consent, or sometimes even against the protest of his 
 subjects. The records of the long reign of George III. 
 abound in examples of this sort. That exceptionally 
 strong-willed monarch in many instances asserted his 
 claim to overrule his ministers ; and though such action 
 might be brought within the constitutional principle on 
 the plea that ministers who allow themselves to be over- 
 ruled, and yet retain their offices, thereby accept respon- 
 sibility for all that follows, the same excuse cannot be 
 pleaded for certain other proceedings of the same king. 
 It is a necessary condition of ministerial responsibility 
 for every act of the Crown that the Sovereign should con- 
 sult with and be guided by his ministers, and by no one 
 else ; otherwise, the right of parliamentary control would 
 become clearly illusory. But George III., during the 
 earlier part of his reign, was in the habit of conferring 
 secretly upon public affairs with noblemen and others 
 who were not members of the administration. He thus 
 created a species of new party, which was known as the 
 "King's friends;" and though this "influence behind 
 the throne " was denounced by many of the leading 
 statesmen of the day, it can be traced with more or less 
 distinctness throughout the greater part of the reign. 
 
 But the process by which the constitutional principle 
 gradually triumphed over these invasions of it, and 
 attained the complete and unchallenged supremacy which 
 it enjoys at the present day, will be more clearly trace- 
 able after we have examined into the origin and growth
 
 i.] THE EXECUTIVE GOVERNMENT. 11 
 
 of the Cabinet. Let it suffice, in concluding this chapter, 
 to summarise as follows the results of its inquiries : 
 
 1. The work of government strictly so called was in 
 earlier times performed by the Sovereign himself through 
 a simple exercise of the royal prerogative. 
 
 2. In the present day it is performed by a body of 
 ministers belonging to the party which possesses a 
 majority in the House of Commons, holding seats in 
 Parliament, and responsible to Parliament for the way 
 in which they perform the work. 
 
 3. The principle of this responsibility was first formally 
 recognised in fact in the year 1696, and first publicly 
 proclaimed and assented to in Parliament in the year 
 
 mi. 1 
 
 4. For the greater part of a century it was but imper- 
 fectly observed, and parliamentary control over the 
 ministers of the Crown continued to be in one or more 
 respects defective ; but 
 
 5. The principle is now firmly established, and the con- 
 trol now complete, so that there is no public act 2 of the 
 Sovereign, whenever and however performed, for which 
 there is not some minister or ministers responsible. 
 
 1 By Lord Rochester in a debate in the House of Lords on the 
 affairs of Spain, Cobbett, Parl. Hist., vi. 972. And see Todd, 
 Parliamentary Government in England, ii. 101 an able and 
 careful work, which has been frequently consulted in the prepara- 
 tion of this volume. 
 
 2 This is so even in the case of the dismissal of a ministry by 
 the Sovereign, for it was laid down in 1807, after the dismissal of 
 the Grenville Administration by George III., and fully admitted by 
 Sir Robert Peel, in the case above referred to, in 1834, "that the 
 incoming ministry assume undivided responsibility for the act of 
 the Sovereign in dismissing their predecessors. "
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE CABINET : ITS FORMATION, FUNCTIONS, AND 
 RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 THE relations between the Crown and Parliament, as 
 traced in the foregoing chapter, determine the first step 
 in the process of "forming a Government." 
 
 On the resignation or dismissal of a previous ministry 
 it is customary, as we all know, for the Sovereign to 
 " send for" some eminent member of one or other of the 
 Houses of Parliament, and to entrust him with the task 
 of forming a new administration. In so doing the 
 Sovereign must be constitutionally guided by the prin- 
 ciples above considered. It is his duty, that is to say, 
 to select such minister-designate from the ranks of the 
 majority of the House of Commons, and further, perhaps 
 (though this is a point on which some latitude of choice 
 must naturally and necessarily exist), to fix upon that 
 one of two or more eligible candidates for the trust who 
 may appear the most likely to be acceptable to the 
 majority of the party to which he belongs. But with 
 the designation of this one person the initiative of the 
 Sovereign is at an end. According to modern usage the 
 Premier alone is the direct choice of the Crown ; and he 
 possesses the privilege of choosing his own colleagues,
 
 CHAP, ir.] THE CABINET. 13 
 
 subject of course to the approbation of the Sovereign. 
 In the exercise of this privilege the Prime Minister then 
 proceeds, either with or without consultation with other 
 leading members of his party, to nominate the persons to 
 be appointed to the various executive offices. The whole 
 number of persons thus nominated are in strictness 
 entitled to the appellation of ministers; while those 
 appointed to the more important of these offices compose, 
 either exclusively or with one or two additions, what is 
 called the Cabinet. It is to this latter and smaller body 
 that the office of advising the Crown is confined. They, 
 and they alone, are, in the exact sense of the words, 
 "The Government" of the country; and it is therefore 
 one of the strangest of the anomalies of our constitution 
 that this supreme body of royal councillors should be 
 utterly unknown to the law, and that no one of them 
 should, in his mere capacity of " Cabinet Minister," have, 
 legally speaking, any right to act as an adviser of the 
 Crown at all. Still more curious is it that their sole 
 legal qualification for this duty should be derived from 
 their formal membership of a council which, in its cor- 
 porate capacity, the Crown has for two centuries ceased 
 to consult. The Cabinet Minister is, as a matter of 
 course, "sworn of the Privy Council," and advises the 
 Sovereign, according to legal theory, in his capacity of 
 Privy Councillor alone ; while that Council itself at 
 present takes no part whatever in this duty of giving 
 advice, nor is in any way responsible for the advice given 
 by those particular Privy Councillors who form the 
 Cabinet. 
 
 The historical process by which this singular result 
 has been brought about is thus concisely summarised by
 
 14 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 Macaulay : " Few things in our history axe more curious 
 than the origin and growth of the power now possessed 
 by the Cabinet. From an early period the Kings of 
 England had been assisted by a Privy Council, to which 
 the law assigned many important functions and duties. 
 During several centuries this body deliberated on the 
 gravest and most delicate affairs. But by degrees its 
 character changed. It became too large for despatch 
 and secrecy. The rank of Privy Councillor was often 
 bestowed as an honorary distinction on persons to whom 
 nothing was confided, and whose opinion was never 
 asked. The Sovereign, on the most important occasions, 
 resorted for advice to a small knot of leading ministers " 
 (whose name of " Cabinet " was derived from the circum- 
 stance of their deliberations being conducted in an inner 
 room or cabinet of the Council apartments in the Palace). 
 " The advantages and disadvantages of this course were 
 early pointed out by Bacon, 1 with his usual judgment 
 and sagacity ; but it was not till after the Restoration 
 that the interior Council began to attract general notice. 
 During many years old-fashioned politicians continued to 
 regard the Cabinet as an unconstitutional and dangerous 
 board. Nevertheless, it constantly became more and 
 more important. It at length drew to itself the chief 
 executive power, and has now been regarded during 
 several generations as an essential part of our polity. 
 
 1 Bacon, Essays, xx. On Counsel. ' ' And as for Cabinet Coun- 
 sels, etc." The passage is historically curious, not only as fixing 
 the date of the term "Cabinet Council," but as showing that the 
 practice of passing over the larger consultative body had begun 
 considerably before Bacon's day, viz. under "King Henry the 
 Seventh of England, who in his greatest business imparted himself 
 to none, except it were to Morton and Fox."
 
 IL] THE CABINET. 15 
 
 Yet, strange to say, it still continues to be altogether 
 unknown to the law ; the names of the noblemen and 
 gentlemen who compose it are never officially announced 
 to the public; no record is kept of its meetings and 
 resolutions, nor has its existence ever been recognised by 
 any Act of Parliament." 
 
 But in order to realise the full magnitude of the 
 change which has been effected by this singular process, 
 it is necessary to look back for a moment upon the history 
 of the great assembly which the modern Cabinet has thus 
 supplanted. We may form some idea of the vast dis- 
 placement of political equilibrium which this transfer of 
 power represents, when we recall the fact that the Privy 
 Council threatened at one period to attract to itself a 
 supreme authority over almost every department of the 
 national life. The King's "Continual," i.e. Permanent 
 Council (as it was called, in opposition to the King's 
 "Great Council," 1 which was assembled only on special 
 occasions, and which, besides the great officers of State, 
 and the selected members of the nobility, who formed 
 the smaller body, included a considerable number of 
 nobles summoned by special writ), at one time exer- 
 cised a more extraordinary combination of legislative and 
 executive functions than any other political assembly 
 in any country has perhaps ever claimed for itself. In 
 addition to its supreme and exclusive title to the office 
 of chief advisers of the Crown, and chief instruments of 
 the royal will, as displayed in acts of government, it arro- 
 gated to itself for a long period an almost illimitable right 
 
 1 This was in fact the Ordinary Permanent Council (concilium 
 privatum assiduum ordinarium) and the House of Lords " blended 
 together into one assembly." Hallam, Middle Ages, iiL 143.
 
 16 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 or at any rate, a right limited only by protest on the 
 part of the popular assembly of judicial interference. 
 Before the jurisdiction of courts of law and equity was 
 marked out, "there was," says a well-known writer 1 on 
 this subject, " scarcely a department of State which was 
 not in a greater or less degree subject to its immediate 
 control. No rank was too exalted or too humble to be ex- 
 empt from its vigilance, nor any matter too insignificant 
 for its interference." Throughout the whole of this 
 period of its highest pretensions, however, it was watched 
 with the greatest jealousy by the House of Commons ; 
 and our parliamentary annals, from the reign of Edward 
 III. down almost to the opening of the constitutional era, 
 abound in records of the vigorous attempts made by the 
 representatives of the people to restrain the Privy Council 
 from interfering with matters belonging to the jurisdic- 
 tion of the courts of law, and from illegally infringing 
 upon the rights and liberties of the subjects. Its judicial 
 usurpations had been more or less effectively checked 
 before the period of the Restoration j and it is from that 
 date that its consultative and executive authority began 
 to be threatened by the rise and gradual growth of the 
 institution destined to replace it the Cabinet Council. 
 The older and larger body, however, may be said 
 to have " died hard," and not without attempts on the 
 part of political doctors to galvanise it into new life. 
 Upon the accession of Charles II, his chancellor, Claren- 
 don, endeavoured to restore to the Privy Council the 
 deliberative efficiency of which its unwieldy dimensions 
 had already deprived it ; and to this end proposed its 
 
 1 Sir Harris Nicolas, Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy 
 Council, Preface, p. ii.
 
 ii.] THE CABINET. 17 
 
 subdivision into four committees, to each of which was to 
 be assigned a separate class of subjects. But this curious 
 experiment, in anticipation of our modern departmental 
 system, proved a failure. So far, indeed, from establish- 
 ing the authority of the Privy Council, it only served, 
 singularly enough, to accelerate its displacement by the 
 Cabinet ; for the so-called committee of foreign affairs, 
 which consisted of Clarendon and five others, mostly his 
 adherents, became in reality a Cabinet, and virtually 
 superseded the rest of the Council, who were only con- 
 sulted on formal occasions. 
 
 A similar fate befel a second attempt to reconstitute 
 the Privy Council a few years later. Sir William 
 Temple's scheme of administration started with the dis- 
 solution of the existing Council, and the appointment of 
 a new and smaller one numbering thirty members only, 
 and composed partly of the chief officers of the Crown 
 and household, and partly of leading members of Parlia- 
 ment chosen from both political parties. From a variety 
 of causes, however, into which it is unnecessary here to 
 enter, the new Council failed to obtain public confidence 
 or to work efficiently, and the author of the scheme him- 
 self dealt the finishing stroke to it by consenting to form 
 an interior Council therein, or in other words to revert 
 once more to the principle of the " Cabinet," now more 
 than ever recognised as a necessary part of the machinery 
 of Government 
 
 From this time forward the decline of the Privy 
 Council from its pristine position of importance was 
 steady and uninterrupted, and from the date of the com- 
 plete and assured establishment of the Cabinet in the 
 position of chief advisers of the Crown and administra- 
 

 
 18 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAV. 
 
 tors of its powers, the Privy Council entirely ceased to 
 hold meetings for purposes of deliberation. All that re 
 mains to it of the dignity of its ancient place in the con- 
 stitution is of a merely formal and ceremonial nature. 
 Certain of the acts of the prerogative which are advised 
 by the Cabinet require to be done "in Council," and 
 their performance is directed by order issued by the 
 Sovereign at a meeting of the Privy Council specially 
 convened for the purpose. So completely, however, have 
 the functions of the two bodies been dissociated, that 
 whereas the Privy Council cannot be holden except 
 under the presidency of the Sovereign, the Sovereign can- 
 not constitutionally preside at a meeting of the Cabinet. 
 His presence would be as irregular at the deliberative 
 proceedings of the latter as it is necessary to the cere- 
 monial proceedings of the former. 
 
 But though the Privy Council has ceased to exist as 
 a constitutional factor in the Government, it continues 
 in existence, and has indeed developed new modes of 
 existence as an administrative department, and also as 
 the trustee under Parliament of certain deputed legisla- 
 tive powers; in both of which capacities it will be treated 
 of hereafter. 
 
 It remains to glance briefly at the steps by which the 
 Cabinet, after it once became recognised as the supreme 
 consultative body, developed the precise character, attri- 
 butes, and mutual relations of parts, which at present 
 distinguish it. 
 
 It has been said that the first step towards establish- 
 ing its effective parliamentary responsibility was the in- 
 troduction of the King's ministers into Parliament. But 
 it must not be supposed that the advantage of this change
 
 II.] THE CABINET. 19 
 
 was immediately recognised by those to whom this 
 advantage accrued. On the contrary, the policy of 
 William III. in this respect was at first regarded with 
 jealousy. The House of Commons of that day, which 
 had already grown impatient of the number of minor 
 dependents upon the Crown who had found their way 
 into its ranks, made several legislative attempts to ex- 
 clude all office-holders from a seat ; and finally succeeded 
 in procuring their prospective exclusion by introducing 
 a clause into an Act of 1700, whereby it was provided 
 that, on the accession of the House of Hanover, no person 
 who had an office or place of profit under the King, or 
 received a pension from the Crown, should be capable of 
 serving as a member of the House of Commons. But 
 the event in contemplation did not take place till four- 
 teen years after, and before half that period had elapsed 
 the advantages of the presence of Cabinet Ministers in 
 the Legislature had become so manifest that Parliament 
 repealed the exclusory clause of its former enactment, 
 and substituted for it the wiser provision that members 
 accepting offices of profit from the Crown should simply 
 vacate their seats, but should (with certain exceptions 
 not necessary to specify here) be capable of re-election 
 by their constituents. 
 
 From this time forth, then, we find the same relations 
 established between Cabinet and Parliament which pre- 
 vail in our own day. But the relations of the members 
 of the Cabinet among themselves were at first very 
 different from what now exist, and a good many years 
 were destined to pass before things finally settled down 
 into their present position. There are three principal 
 points in which this process is to be traced.
 
 20 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 1. Political Unanimity. It would seem very strange 
 to us in these days to see politicians of opposite parties 
 sitting in the same Cabinet ; yet that practice was, for 
 many years after the establishment of constitutional 
 government, the rule rather than the exception. The 
 precedent created by William III. in the selection of 
 the first party-ministry was, as we have seen, very soon 
 departed from, and was thereafter continually set at 
 nought. The later ministries of the same King were of 
 a mixed character ; the ministries of Anne were partly 
 Whig and partly Tory; and the political unity which 
 prevailed in the Walpole administration was succeeded 
 by a return to the old practice under Pulteney. It was 
 not till later that it became an admitted political axiom 
 that Cabinets should be constructed upon some basis of 
 political union, agreed upon by the members composing 
 the same when they accept office together. 
 
 2. Unity of Responsibility. As a consequence of the 
 earlier practice of constructing Cabinets of men of differ- 
 ent political views, it followed that the members of such 
 Cabinets did not and could not regard their responsi- 
 bility to Parliament as one and indivisible. The resigna- 
 tion of an important member, or even of the Prime 
 Minister, was not regarded as necessitating the simul- 
 taneous retirement of his colleagues. Even as late as 
 the fall of Sir Eobert Walpole, fifty years after the 
 Revolution Settlement (and itself the first instance of 
 resignation in deference to a hostile parliamentary vote), 
 we find the King requesting Walpole's successor, Pulteney, 
 " not to distress the Government by making too many 
 changes in the midst of a session;" and Pulteney reply- 
 ing that he would be satisfied, provided "the main forts
 
 ii.] THE CABINET. 21 
 
 of the Government," or, in other words, the principal 
 offices of State, were placed in his hands. It was not till 
 the displacement of Lord North's ministry by that of 
 Lord Eockingham in 1782 that a whole administration, 
 with the exception of the Lord Chancellor, was changed 
 by a vote of want of confidence passed in the House of 
 Commons. Thenceforth, however, the resignation of the 
 head of a Government in deference to an adverse vote 
 of the popular Chamber has invariably been accom- 
 panied by the resignation of all his colleagues. They 
 accept a common responsibility for all his acts of policy, 
 and it is understood that a withdrawal of parliamentary 
 confidence from him implies its withdrawal from them 
 also. 
 
 3. Concert in Action. For nearly a century after the 
 Revolution, the Cabinet, instead of being the consen- 
 taneously acting body which it is at present, was little 
 more than a loose cluster, of mutually independent 
 ministers, carrying on the business of the State in various 
 departments unconnected with each other, and conduct- 
 ing that business under no other general superintendence 
 than that of the Crown. There was no regular concert 
 between ministers : the head of a department was not 
 bound to inform his colleagues, either individually or 
 collectively, of the measures he proposed to take ; nor 
 were there any of these periodical Cabinet Councils in 
 which, nowadays, questions of departmental policy are 
 brought to the cognisance, and sometimes referred to the 
 decision, of the Cabinet at large. 
 
 The inconveniences of this system were many, but 
 transition from it to that which now exists did not be- 
 come possible until the supremacy of the Prime Minister
 
 22 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 had become an accepted principle of our Government. 
 It was to the want of a recognised chief that this lack 
 of concert among the Cabinet was due ; yet for a century 
 after the Kevolution there was no such recognised chief 
 of the Cabinet even in practice ; nor in theory, it may 
 be added, is there any at the present day. Constitu- 
 tionally speaking, ministers are all of equal authority 
 as Privy Councillors, the only capacity in which they 
 possess any constitutional authority at all; and such 
 ascendency as Walpole, for instance, for many years 
 enjoyed was of a purely personal character the result 
 of his natural capacity for rule. So far indeed was this 
 great parliamentary leader from claiming any supremacy 
 in virtue of his position, that he resented the title of 
 Prime Minister as an imputation, and seemed evidently 
 of opinion that such a functionary would be as hateful 
 to the Englishmen of his day as Clarendon declared it 
 to be to those of his own time. Nor, though he un- 
 doubtedly did much to raise that office to the position 
 which it now holds, was he far wrong in his estimate of 
 the opinion then prevailing on the subject. It was one 
 of the complaints of the peers who moved an address to 
 the Crown for his removal, that he had made himself 
 "sole minister;" and though the motion was defeated, a 
 protest was afterwards entered in the journals of the 
 House of Lords, declaring that " a sole or even a First 
 Minister is an officer unknown to the law of Britain, 
 inconsistent with the constitution of the country, and de- 
 structive of liberty in any Government whatsoever ;" and 
 further, that " it plainly appearing to us that Sir Eobert 
 Walpole has for many years acted as such by taking 
 upon himself the chief, if not the sole direction of affairs
 
 xi.] THE CABINET. 23 
 
 in the different branches of the administration, we could 
 not but esteem it to be an indispensable duty to offer 
 our most humble advice to his Majesty for the removal 
 of a minister so dangerous to the Bang and the kingdoms." 
 But despite this protest, the office of Prime Minister con- 
 tinued gradually to attract to itself that " chief if not 
 sole direction of affairs " which now belongs to it. The 
 system of co-ordinate departmental ministers was main- 
 tained throughout the first twenty years of his reign by 
 George III. for his own purposes : he " divided" in order 
 to "govern;" but on the accession of the younger Pitt 
 to power, the King was content to hand over to him 
 the general superintending authority, which he himself 
 had hitherto so obstinately struggled to reserve to the 
 Crown. The supremacy which this statesman success- 
 fully asserted over his colleagues has ever since been the 
 acknowledged right of the First Minister of the Crown ; 
 and the Constitution, as now practically interpreted, may 
 be said to proceed uniformly upon the principle that 
 power and responsibility should be concentrated in the 
 hands of some one man who enjoys the confidence of the 
 country and the majority in Parliament, and whose un- 
 challenged authority is necessary to secure consistency 
 in policy and vigour in administration. 
 
 The authority and functions of the Cabinet, and the 
 mutual relations of its component members, are points of 
 so much importance to our present subject, and the history 
 of this body is so essentially the history of modern exe- 
 cutive government in England, that it may be well to 
 recapitulate the successive stages in its development, as 
 traced in the foregoing pages. 
 
 (1.) First, then, we find the Cabinet appearing in the
 
 24 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 shape of a small informal, irregular Camarilla, selected 
 at the pleasure of the Sovereign from the larger body 
 of the Privy Council, consulted by and privately advising 
 the Crown, but with no power to take any resolutions 
 of State, or perform any act of government without 
 the assent of the Privy Council, and not as yet even 
 commonly known by its present name. This was its 
 condition anterior to the reign of Charles I. 
 
 (2.) Then succeeds a second period during which this 
 Council of advice obtains its distinctive title of Cabinet, 
 but without acquiring any recognised status, or perma- 
 nently displacing the Privy Council from its position of 
 de facto as well as de jure the only authoritative body 
 of advisers of the Crown. (Keign of Charles I. and 
 Charles II, the latter of whom governed during a part 
 of his reign by means of a Cabinet, and towards its close 
 through a "reconstructed" Privy Council.) 
 
 (3.) A third period, commencing with the formation 
 by William III. of the first ministry, approaching to the 
 modern type. The Cabinet, though still remaining, as it 
 remains to this day, unknown to the Constitution, has 
 now become de facto, though not de jure, the real and sole 
 supreme consultative council and executive authority 
 in the State. It is still, however, regarded with jealousy, 
 and the full realisation of the modern constitutional 
 theory of ministerial responsibility, by the admission of 
 its members to a seat in Parliament, is only by degrees 
 effected. 
 
 (4.) Finally, towards the close of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, the political conception of the Cabinet as a body, 
 necessarily consisting (a) of members of the Legislature 
 (b) of the same political views, and chosen from the
 
 n.] THE CABINET. 2fr- 
 
 party possessing a majority in the House of Commons ; 
 (c) prosecuting a concerted policy ; (d) under a common 
 responsibility to be signified by collective resignation in 
 the event of parliamentary censure ; and (e) acknowledg- 
 ing a common subordination to one chief minister, took 
 definitive shape in our modern theory of the Constitu- 
 tion, and so remains to the present day. 
 
 Having thus followed the gradual growth of our 
 system of constitutional government up to that stage 
 of complete maturity which it only attained towards 
 the end of the last century, it is time to pass to the 
 examination of its practical working. Having traced 
 the principle of parliamentary responsibility from its 
 primordial germ to its full development, it has now to 
 be studied in its normal application to the conduct of 
 our Executive Government. The question now before 
 us may in fact be stated thus : Granting that all the 
 functions of rule theoretically vested in the Sovereign 
 must now be always exercised on the advice of a ministry 
 responsible to Parliament, what provision is made in 
 modern political practice for ensuring that the fact and 
 the nature of this advice shall be duly brought to the 
 notice of Parliament ? and in what way is parliamentary 
 disapprobation of this advice brought effectively to bear 
 upon the minister or ministers responsible for it? And 
 since the various functions of the Executive are distri- 
 buted among various departments, these questions involve 
 the further inquiry, What specific means of control over 
 the ministers severally charged with the management of 
 these departments does Parliament possess? The answer 
 to this inquiry will find its natural place in the account 
 to be given hereafter of the organisation and duties of
 
 26 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 the various offices of State ; but a few remarks may here 
 be interposed with reference to the general question of 
 responsibility as attaching to individual ministers. 
 
 The attention of the reader has already been called to 
 the development of the doctrine of collective ministerial 
 responsibility, and to its constitutional importance ; but 
 it now becomes necessary to note the qualifications to 
 which it is subject. The soundness of the general prin- 
 ciple is of course obvious. It is clear enough that so 
 long as it remained possible for a ministry to evade 
 parliamentary condemnation by "throwing overboard" 
 some unlucky colleague, irrespectively of the question 
 whether his acts were or were not in reason and in prin- 
 ciple their own acts, the control of Parliament could 
 never be effectively exercised. 
 
 " The essence of responsible government," it has been 
 said by an eminent English statesman, 1 "is that mutual 
 bond of responsibility one for another wherein a Govern- 
 ment acting by party go together, frame their measures 
 in concert, and where, if one member falls to the ground, 
 the others almost, as a matter of course, fall with him." 
 On the other hand, it would be manifestly as inconvenient 
 as unjust to hold a Government collectively responsible 
 for every administrative blunder committed by an indis- 
 creet or incompetent minister. The rule in such matters 
 appears to be this : that the wrongful acts of a minister 
 in matters peculiarly concerning his own department do 
 not involve the Cabinet at large in any parliamentary 
 censure passed upon such acts, unless (1) they have 
 either voluntarily assumed a share of the responsibility, 
 or (2) are proved, as a matter of fact, to have been 
 1 The late Lord Derby.
 
 n.] THE CABINET. 27 
 
 implicated in the acts censured. But in cases where the 
 act of an individual minister, though departmental in its 
 nature, is in such consonance with the general policy of 
 the Government that they feel it impossible to repudiate 
 it ; or in cases where the retention of such minister in 
 the Cabinet is deemed essential to its existence, and an 
 object to be secured at any cost; or, lastly, in cases 
 where the act is only departmental in form, and is really 
 but a step in the execution of a plan of action already 
 resolved upon by the Cabinet at large ; in all these cases 
 the responsibility becomes necessarily corporate, and min- 
 istry and minister must stand or fall together. 
 
 Examples of both forms of ministerial responsibility 
 the individual and the collective are to be found in the 
 parliamentary history of the present century. The cases 
 of Lord John Kussell and the Vienna Mission in 1855, 
 and of Lord Ellenborough and his despatch to Lord 
 Canning, then Governor - General of India, in 1858, 
 are instances of acts of indiscretion being visited on 
 the heads of the individual ministers who committed 
 them. Those of Sir James Graham and the Mazzini 
 Correspondence in 1844, and of Lord Palmerston and 
 the Don Pacifico Claim in 1850, are instances in which 
 a Cabinet has identified itself with the incriminated act 
 of an individual minister, and declared their responsi- 
 bility for the same to be entire and indivisible. 
 
 Lastly, as to the particular measures by which Parlia- 
 ment exercises its powers of calling ministers to account : 
 These divide themselves into ordinary and extraordin- 
 ary. The ordinary form of procedure resorted to by 
 Parliament against offending ministers is that of censure 
 and dismissal from office ; the extraordinary is that of
 
 28 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 "impeachment" by the Commons at the bar of the 
 House of Lords. In later times the former has been 
 found sufficient, and it has been the long-settled practice 
 to regard the disapprobation of Parliament and the loss 
 of power as punishment sufficient for all errors of admin- 
 istration committed in good faith and without suspicion 
 of corrupt or treasonable motive on the part of the erring 
 ministers. It is indeed nearly a century and a half since 
 the last attempt was made to impeach a minister for 
 merely pursuing a policy considered mischievous by the 
 dominant party in the House of Commons for the time 
 being ; but the much later case of Lord Melville's im- 
 peachment for alleged malversation in office shows the 
 indisposition of the House to part with this means of 
 punishing grave and conscious violations of ministerial 
 duty; and it is not by any means impossible that a 
 detected act of corruption on the part of a minister 
 might, even in these days, expose him to a parliamentary 
 impeachment. Indeed, if it were beyond the reach of 
 the ordinary law, it would have to be so punished, unless 
 the offender were to be allowed entire impunity; and 
 this consideration, indeed, was the real origin of the 
 process. " The times in which its exercise was needed 
 were those in which the people were jealous of the 
 Crown, when Parliament had less control over preroga- 
 tive, when courts of justice were impure, and when, 
 instead of vindicating the law, the Crown and its officers 
 resisted its execution, and screened political offenders 
 from justice. But the limitations of prerogative, the 
 immediate responsibility of ministers to Parliament, the 
 vigilance and activity of that body in scrutinising the 
 actions of public men, the settled administration of the
 
 ii.] THE CABINET. 29 
 
 law, and the direct influence of Parliament over courts 
 of justice, which are at the same time independent of 
 the Crown, have prevented the consummation of those 
 crimes which impeachments were designed to punish." 1 
 
 Parliamentary censure of the penal kind, that, 
 namely, which is followed of necessity by loss of office, 
 can be pronounced only through the House of Commons. 
 A vote of the Upper House in disapproval of ministerial 
 acts may, and indeed must, carry with it considerable 
 moral weight ; circumstances may be conceived in which 
 its effect might so damage and weaken an administra- 
 tion as to lead ultimately to its downfall ; but it does 
 not amount to " censure" in the constitutional sense of the 
 word. Nothing short of a declared withdrawal of the 
 confidence of the popular Chamber imposes any constitu- 
 tional obligation upon ministers to resign their offices. 
 This withdrawal of confidence may be signified either by 
 a formal resolution expressive of the fact, or by a vote 
 conveying disapproval of certain specific acts or omissions 
 on the part of ministers, or by the rejection of legis- 
 lative measures of a certain character introduced by 
 ministers. 
 
 The first two cases explain themselves, and with 
 regard to the third which is much the most usual 
 method of pronouncing parliamentary censure it is only 
 necessary to note the qualifications attached to it Not 
 every rejection of a ministerial bill by the House of 
 Commons, not even the rejection of an important bill 
 by them, is regarded as equivalent to, or as intended to 
 convey, a declaration of parliamentary censure. A mere 
 defeat, or even a series of defeats, in the House of 
 1 May, Law of Parliament, p. 374.
 
 30 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. n. 
 
 Commons upon isolated proposals 1 would not entail the 
 resignation of a Government which had otherwise any 
 ground for believing that its general policy still had the 
 approval of Parliament; nor would the liberal amend- 
 ment and alteration of measures introduced by ministers 
 of necessity entail their resignation. But if a Govern- 
 ment has declared that they regard the passing of a 
 particular measure in a certain shape as a matter of vital 
 importance, the rejection of their advice by the Legisla- 
 ture is tantamount to a vote of want of confidence, and 
 must compel them either to resign 2 or to advise the 
 Sovereign to dissolve Parliament, and refer the question 
 to the country. The circumstances in which this advice 
 may be legitimately tendered to the Crown are of various 
 kinds, but the consideration of them belongs to another 
 branch of the subject. 
 
 1 Especially is this true, as will be noticed in the ensuing chapter, 
 with respect to proposals bearing on taxation and finance. 
 
 2 In this place is to be noticed one of those exceptions to the 
 rule of constitutional duty incumbent upon ministers which were 
 described in Chapter I. as of too rare occurrence to necessitate the 
 qualification of the main proposition in the text. There have been 
 instances, the most memorable of which is supplied by the first 
 ministry of the younger Pitt, wherein a Government has continued 
 to hold office in the face of repeated parliamentary defeats, while 
 ultimately, though not immediately, meditating an appeal to the 
 country to reverse the decision of Parliament. In Mr. Pitt's case 
 the course adopted was justified by results ; but it is clear that the 
 assumption that a representative body has ceased to represent, and 
 that its decisions may, without any immediate appeal against them, 
 be simply ignored, is one which ministers should be very chary of 
 making. If lightly resorted to, the Constitution would be practically 
 set aside.
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 
 THE TREASURY. 
 
 IT has been pointed out in the previous chapter that just 
 as " the Cabinet " has no recognised legal existence, so 
 there is no such official known to the language of consti- 
 tutional law as a "Prime Minister." Supreme as is the 
 authority which the so-called "Premier "has in course 
 of time established over his colleagues, and complete 
 as is their subordination to him, he is in theory only 
 one among other ministers of the Crown, and his sole 
 official title is derived from the department over which 
 he nominally presides. This department is nowadays 
 the Treasury, and the office of First Lord of the Treasury 
 has been held by the Prime Minister, either alone or in 
 conjunction with another, ever since the year 1806. His 
 position, however, in relation to the internal economy of 
 this department is rather that of honorary president than 
 of working chief ; and he is usually too much occupied in 
 considering questions of the general administrative and 
 legislative policy of the country to have time to attend 
 to the departmental business of the office. This business 
 is principally transacted by the other members of the 
 Treasury Board, an institution to whose historical origin 
 it will here be convenient to devote a few words.
 
 32 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 The full official description of the persons who con- 
 stitute this Board is that of " Lords Commissioners for 
 executing the office of Lord High Treasurer," the said 
 persons being the First Lord of the Treasury, the Chan- 
 cellor of the Exchequer, and three other officials known 
 as "Junior Lords." 
 
 The Lord High Treasurer was anciently the sole head 
 of the Treasury, and the most powerful minister in 
 England. For more than a century and a half, however, 
 this high office has been placed, as it is called, "in com- 
 mission." The Duke of Shrewsbury had been appointed 
 Lord High Treasurer by Queen Anne a day or two before 
 her death ; but George I., a few months after his acces- 
 sion, nominated Lord Halifax and four other persons 
 " Lords Commissioners for executing the office of Lord 
 High Treasurer," and the office has continued in commis- 
 sion ever since. The Treasury, however, has undergone 
 the same sort of centralising process as the Cabinet ; for 
 while the Commissioners appointed in earlier times for 
 the execution of this office were, it would seem, of co- 
 ordinate authority, and nominated by the Crown, they 
 have ever since 1715 been appointed by, dependent upon, 
 and subordinate to, the First Lord. For a considerable 
 time, however, they continued to take a real and active 
 part in the administrative business of the department; 
 and it was only by degrees that their offices declined into 
 the virtual sinecures which (in a departmental, though 
 by no means in a parliamentary sense) they have now 
 become. The Treasury is still a Board of Commissioners 
 in name, and the patent under which the members of the 
 Board are appointed still represents them as being of 
 equal authority, with powers to any two or more of them
 
 in.] THE TREASURY. 33 
 
 to discharge the functions of the whole. But the Trea- 
 sury has long since ceased to be a Board in anything but 
 name : it is now practically a department presided over 
 by a single head, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. 
 
 To trace the long and curious history of this ancient 
 institution would lead us too far afield. It must suffice 
 to say that the Exchequer was a branch of the old Curia 
 Regis, which, besides exercising a peculiar legal jurisdiction, 
 now merged in the general judicial system of the country, 
 combined in itself all those various functions of collection, 
 custody, disbursement, and account of revenue, which are 
 now distributed among a variety of officials and depart- 
 ments. On its "receipt side," as it was called, it received 
 payment of all the royal dues and imports payable by 
 the local officers appointed for the collection of the same ; 
 on its " account side," it recorded and checked the pay- 
 ments made for the service of the Sovereign and the 
 State fulfilling in the former capacity the duties now 
 discharged by the Comptroller (and Auditor- General), 
 with the assistance of the officials of the Bank of England, 
 and in the latter capacity the duties now discharged con- 
 jointly by the (Comptroller and) Auditor-General and 
 the working staff of the Treasury. Of this institution 
 the Lord High Treasurer was originally the real as well 
 as the nominal head. If his high office of State did not 
 include that of Treasurership of the Exchequer (as was 
 believed by the most learned of the writers on this sub- 
 ject), the two posts seem at anyrate to have been invari- 
 ably combined, and the latter is of more ancient date 
 than that of Chancellor of the Exchequer. This official 
 was, it is supposed, originally appointed to act as a check 
 upon the Treasurer, and is first met with under Henry 
 
 D
 
 34 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 III. In the eighteenth year of that monarch's reign, one 
 John Maunsell was appointed (by writ directed to the 
 Treasurer) to "reside at the Exchequer of Receipt, and to 
 have a counter-roll of all things pertaining to the said 
 receipt," and the Treasurer was thereby commanded to 
 admit him accordingly. This is conjectured to be the 
 appointment of the first Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
 and a document of a little later date expressly shows this 
 office to be then in existence. In a writ of the 33d 
 Henry III., mention is made of Cancellarius de Scaccario. 
 Appointments continued to be made to this office, and 
 Chancellors of the Exchequer continued to act as assist- 
 ants to or checks upon Lord High Treasurers until the 
 office of the latter functionaries was put into commission, 
 when the Chancellor of the Exchequer became, as we 
 have seen, one of the Commissioners for executing it. 
 
 We have now to trace the change by which this 
 minister has gradually concentrated the collective author- 
 ity of the Treasury Board in his own hands. Originally, 
 when the business of the Treasury was much smaller 
 than it is at present, it was really transacted by the 
 Board, in presence of the Sovereign. The First Lord, 
 the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the Junior Lords, 
 used to sit at the table ; the secretaries attended with 
 their papers, which they read, and the Sovereign and the 
 Lords gave their opinions thereon, the secretaries taking 
 notes of the proceedings, which were afterwards drawn 
 up in the shape of minutes, and read at the next Board 
 meeting. The increase of business, however, during the 
 later years of the last century rendered it impossible to 
 dispose of the business of the Treasury in this way ; and 
 it then came to be transacted on the principle of indi-
 
 in.] THE TREASURY. 35 
 
 vidual responsibility. Papers were still read and passed 
 at Board meetings, to preserve regularity and to comply 
 with the directions of certain Acts of Parliament ; but 
 the Board soon ceased to be a reality. The business 
 was transacted by the junior members, the secretaries, 
 and the permanent officials, under responsibility to the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer and the First Lord of the 
 Treasury. Then after a time these functionaries ceased to 
 meet the Board, except on extraordinary occasions ; and 
 some thirty years ago the Board itself ceased to meet. 
 The Junior Lords of the Treasury are virtually set aside, 
 and have no regular departmental duty to perform, 
 except of a mere routine description, such as signing 
 documents for which their signature is legally necessary ; 
 and the real business of the department is transacted by 
 the secretary and the permanent officials, under the 
 direction and control of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. 
 
 It was the ancient duty of the Lord High Treasurer, 
 or of the commissioners for executing his office, to 
 "provide and take care of the King's profit;" and the 
 Treasury, with the Chancellor of the Exchequer at its 
 head, discharges, as the successor to this duty, exceed- 
 ingly extensive and important functions. 
 
 They are : 
 
 (1.) To provide the means of meeting the necessary 
 yearly expenditure on the military, naval, and civil ser- 
 vices of the nation. 
 
 (2.) To exercise a certain control and supervision (the 
 nature of which will be shortly indicated) over the 
 amount and details of that expenditure. 
 
 (3.) To revise and regulate the internal or domestic 
 expenditure of the other public offices of the State ; and
 
 36 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 generally to exercise such a superintendent authority 
 over the financial management of these offices as is im- 
 plied in these revisory and regulative powers. 
 
 (4.) To decide upon appeals from its own subordinate 
 departments, in all cases arising out of the receipt of 
 revenue; and 
 
 (5.) To determine as to the remission of fines and 
 forfeitures to the Crown. 
 
 It is, however, the first of these duties that, namely, 
 of introducing what is called " The Budget " with which 
 the name and office of the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 is most familiarly associated; and it will here be con- 
 venient to give a brief explanation of this important 
 constitutional proceeding. 
 
 But before considering the mode of raising the funds 
 required for defraying the annual expenditure of the 
 State, it would be only natural to inquire how the amount 
 of that expenditure is determined. The two operations, 
 though both alike of a financial nature, are obviously quite 
 distinct; and though each is performed by the whole 
 House of Commons, the Committee into which the House 
 resolves itself for each purpose is described in each case by 
 a distinct name. It is in what is called " Committee of 
 Supply " that the House determines what sums of money 
 are sufficient to meet the annual expenditure of the State, 
 and votes them as "supplies" to the Crown for employ- 
 ment upon that object ; it is in Committee of " Ways and 
 Means " that it considers and approves the means sug- 
 gested for raising, by taxation or otherwise, the sums 
 required. 
 
 The first step in the former process is the " presenta- 
 tion of estimates." Shortly after the meeting of Parlia-
 
 in.] THE TREASURY. 37 
 
 merit and the opening of the Committee of Supply, the 
 ministers in charge of the naval and military services lay 
 before the Committee their respective statements of the 
 sums which will be required for the maintenance of those 
 services ; and somewhat later in the session a common 
 estimate for the various civil services is submitted also. 
 These estimates are presented to the House, it should be 
 noted, on the collective responsibility of the whole Cabinet. 
 It is the duty of the heads of the respective departments 
 to which they relate to explain such matters to the Com- 
 mittee as may satisfy them of the correctness of the 
 calculations relied upon, and formally to move that the 
 sum required for each item of expenditure should be 
 voted; but the Cabinet^ as a whole, is responsible for 
 the demand. Indeed, the Army and Navy Estimates have, 
 as a rule, been considered and settled in Cabinet Council 
 before being submitted to the House ; and the collective 
 responsibility of the ministry is in this case, therefore, 
 not technical merely, but substantial But the Chan- 
 cellor of the Exchequer, over and above his share in this 
 common responsibility, has in his Departmental capacity 
 a special concern in this matter. It is his duty to satisfy 
 himself that the estimates have been framed with due 
 regard to economy ; and though the heads of the military 
 and naval departments must necessarily have entire free- 
 dom of judgment as to the needs of their respective 
 services, it would still be the duty of the Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer to disallow any expenditure which he might 
 think unnecessary or inordinate, and in the event, which 
 rarely happens, of an item being pressed, in the face of 
 the objection of the Treasury, to oppose it in the Cabinet 
 In order to a more effective exercise of this control, a
 
 38 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP, 
 
 circular is, in the autumn of every year, addressed by the 
 Treasury to the various departments of the Government, 
 including the naval and military establishments, request- 
 ing that, by a certain date, an estimate of the sums 
 required by the particular department for the service of 
 the current year may be prepared for the information of 
 the Treasury. The estimates are called for thus early in 
 order to afford time to the Chancellor to examine them 
 thoroughly, with two distinct objects in view one, that 
 of keeping down expenditure within legitimate limits, 
 and the other, that of ascertaining as early as may be 
 how much expenditure within these limits it will be his 
 duty to provide for. 
 
 Suppose, then, that the estimates for the various 
 services have been duly examined and approved, the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer has now to consider how 
 the demands of these estimates are to be met. The first 
 question of course is, whether the income of the State 
 for the ensuing year will be sufficient to cover them, or, 
 if not, how far it will fall short of their amount. The 
 next step, therefore, is to ascertain what the next year's 
 income of the State may be expected to amount to ; and 
 with this object the Chancellor of the Exchequer obtains 
 from the permanent heads of the revenue departments 
 their estimates of the public revenue for the ensuing 
 year upon the hypothesis that taxation will remain 
 unchanged. 
 
 Let us now first assume that these estimates, on a 
 comparison with the estimates of expenditure, are found 
 to exceed them by a more or less considerable sum. In 
 this case there is said to be a surplus a word which, it 
 must be noted, is as a rule used in a prospective sense in
 
 in.] THE TREASURY. 39 
 
 finance, and as meaning not the national balance in hand 
 after payment of national charges, but simply excess of 
 estimated revenue over estimated expenditure. Should this 
 excess of revenue be considerable, the Government will, 
 as a rule, decide that the greater portion of such excess 
 shall not be collected at all, but that taxation to the 
 extent of that amount shall be remitted. In such a case 
 it would be for the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the 
 first instance, to make choice of the particular imposts 
 which he considers should be abolished or reduced ; and 
 when his selection has been approved by the Cabinet, all 
 is ready for the introduction of his budget. Accordingly, 
 at or soon before the close of the financial year (the 
 national accounts being made up on the 5th of April), 
 he submits to the House of Commons a general state- 
 ment of the results of the financial measures of the pre- 
 ceding session ; he gives a general view of the expected 
 income and expenditure for the ensuing year ; and having 
 thus made the House acquainted with the amount of the 
 expected surplus at his disposal, he indicates the par- 
 ticular remissions of taxation by which he proposes to 
 dispose of it. These proposals, after all questions which 
 may be put with respect to them by members of the 
 House have been answered by the Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer, are then embodied in resolutions ; and these 
 resolutions, when afterwards reported to the House, form 
 the ground-work of bills for accomplishing the contem- 
 plated changes. The House can, of course, either express 
 disapproval of the budget as a whole, or oppose, and 
 perhaps reject, any one of the resolutions which accom- 
 pany it Ministers have, on not a few occasions, suffered 
 defeats of this kind ; and it depends upon circumstances,
 
 40 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 which will be briefly considered hereafter, whether in 
 such a case they would deem it proper to submit to 
 their defeat, and withdraw or modify their condemned 
 proposals, or treat the adverse vote of the House as a 
 withdrawal of its confidence, and resign their offices. 
 
 If, on the other hand, a comparison of the estimates 
 of revenue and expenditure discloses an excess of the 
 latter over the former, the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 will, of course, have not a surplus to dispose of but a de- 
 ficit to make good ; and he will have to devise means of 
 meeting it, whether by loan or by increased taxation. 
 If the latter expedient is, as usually happens, adopted, 
 he will have to consider what existing taxes should be 
 augmented, or what new taxes imposed; and, after 
 obtaining the approval of the Cabinet to his proposals, 
 he will submit them as before, along with his general finan- 
 cial statement, to the House of Commons. There they 
 will be subjected to the same criticism, and, if not re- 
 garded as a satisfactory mode of meeting the deficit, they 
 may be set aside in favour of alternative schemes, or they 
 may be simply rejected out of hand. The House is in 
 no way bound to grant the demands of a Government 
 for the means of meeting a deficiency, although, of course, 
 the unqualified refusal of such a demand, without the 
 suggestion of any alternative, would be equivalent to a 
 vote of "no confidence " of the most emphatic kind. 
 
 Should the national accounts disclose a surplus of only 
 trifling amount, it would probably be left undisposed of, 
 as a margin against possible error in the estimates of ex- 
 penditure or of revenue ; and in this case, as also in the 
 case of an absolute equilibrium being established between 
 expenditure and revenue, the duty of the Chancellor of
 
 in.] THE TREASURY. 41 
 
 the Exchequer will be confined to the proposal of such re- 
 adjustments of taxation such transfers of taxes, that is 
 to say, from one class of taxpayers to another as he may 
 conceive to tend to a more equitable distribution of public 
 burdens, or to conduce, by the relief of particular indus- 
 tries, to the increased prosperity of the country. But in 
 all cases where the surplus is considerable, it would, as a 
 general rule, be the duty of the Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer to dispose of it, and of the House of Commons 
 to see that he does so ; for the effect of a budget is to 
 satisfy Parliament not only that the public income to 
 be raised for the current financial year will be sufficient, 
 but that it will be no more than sufficient, to meet the 
 expenditure which the Government propose to incur 
 within that year. To raise more revenue than is required 
 is simply to lock up in the Exchequer so much money 
 that might, to the greater advantage of the country, have 
 been left to "fructify," as the phrase is, "in the pockets 
 of the people." 
 
 Thus far, however, we have been dealing only with 
 proposals, with proposals on the one hand to spend so 
 much money, and on the other hand to raise so much 
 money; and we have now to consider the process by 
 which the actual payments into and out of the National 
 Exchequer are effected. The local details of the collec- 
 tion of revenue are obviously foreign to the subject of 
 this volume, and the public moneys cannot be held to 
 come within the scope of its inquiries until they are 
 actually lodged in the coffers of the Central Government. 
 These moneys, which consist partly of the hereditary 
 revenues of the Crown (now surrendered to the control 
 of Parliament in exchange for the Civil List), and partly
 
 42 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 of the proceeds of taxation, are nowadays all alike paid 
 into the Banks of England and Ireland " to the account 
 of the Exchequer," and constitute one common fund 
 known as the Consolidated Fund. It is out of this fund 
 that the payments for the services of the country are, 
 upon proper authority, made ; and the nature and con- 
 ditions of this authority next claim consideration. 
 
 It is of two kinds : one of a permanent character, and 
 the other dependent upon periodical exercise of the 
 power of Parliament ; and more than half of the money 
 is dealt with under authority of the former kind. About 
 three -fifths of the whole annual expenditure is made 
 under the express direction of Acts of Parliament, and 
 these payments can be made, therefore, without the 
 sanction of a special parliamentary vote. The interest 
 on the National Debt, the sums payable for the Civil 
 List, annuities to the royal family, pensions, certain 
 salaries and allowances, the expenses of the courts of 
 justice, these, together with certain other charges, un- 
 necessary to enumerate, are imposed by permanent 
 statute upon the Consolidated Fund ; and these statutes 
 are, of course, a sufficient authority to the custodians of 
 the Fund to make the several payments required. The 
 principle represented in this procedure is that the secur- 
 ity of the public creditor, the dignity of the Crown, the 
 independence of judges, etc., are objects of public con- 
 cern; and that these objects would be imperfectly at- 
 tained if the payments above enumerated were subjected 
 to the uncertainty of an annual vote. 
 
 But as regards the remaining two-fifths of the ex- 
 penditure, which includes interest on the unfunded debt, 
 the maintenance of the naval and military forces, the
 
 in.] THE TREASURY. 43 
 
 expenses of the collection of revenue, and the charges of 
 the various civil services, no payments can be made under 
 these several heads except on the authority of express 
 parliamentary votes. 
 
 The process, however, by which this authority is 
 obtained is a somewhat complex one, and the various 
 forms and securities by which the outgoings of the public 
 Exchequer are constitutionally regulated are elaborate 
 enough to require a few words of detailed explanation. 
 
 The mode in which the sanction of Parliament is 
 obtained for the various proposals of expenditure sub- 
 mitted by ministers in their estimates has already been 
 explained in the brief account given above of the pro- 
 ceedings in Committee of Supply ; but another process is 
 necessary before this parliamentary sanction can be made 
 practically available by the Executive. A vote in Supply 
 is a mere resolution of the House of Commons that 
 certain sums of national money shall be appropriated to 
 certain national purposes ; it gives no authority to the 
 Government to draw upon the Exchequer, nor to the 
 custodian of the revenues the Comptroller of the Ex- 
 chequer to make any payments or advances thereout. 
 Such a resolution merely authorises the expenditure, but 
 does not provide the means of making it To make this 
 provision the functions of another committee the Com- 
 mittee of Ways and Means require to be called into 
 play. Accordingly, as soon as the votes on account of 
 the great services have been "reported," a resolution is 
 proposed in Committee of Ways and Means for a general 
 grant out of the Consolidated Fund "towards making 
 good the supply granted to Her Majesty;" and the 
 principle of parliamentary control is so strictly respected
 
 44 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 that the grant is never allowed to exceed the amount of 
 the votes actually passed in Committee of Supply. Even 
 then, however, the process is not constitutionally com- 
 plete, for the Constitution requires the assent of the 
 Crown and the House of Lords to the appropriation of 
 public moneys ; and the resolution of the Committee of 
 Ways and Means has therefore to be embodied in a Bill, 
 which passes through its various stages, and at a very 
 early period of the session receives the royal assent ; at 
 which time, but not before, the Treasury acquires full 
 power to direct an issue out of the Consolidated Fund to 
 meet the payments authorised by the votes in supply, or, 
 if that Fund be insufficient, to raise by Exchequer Bills, 
 on the security of the Fund, the money required to 
 defray the expenditure sanctioned by such votes. 
 
 Such being the mode in which the Treasury obtains 
 power to draw out and apply moneys, it only remains to 
 consider the forms which have to be observed by the 
 officials in whose charge those moneys are placed. 
 
 The head of the Exchequer the Comptroller and 
 Auditor-General is an officer combining two functions 
 which were formerly distinct, and who, as indeed the 
 nature of his duties demands, is altogether independent 
 of the Treasury. In order to justify this official in 
 issuing moneys to the Government, he must of course 
 satisfy himself that a Ways and Means Act of the kind 
 already described has been duly passed, and that it 
 covers the amount of money for which application is 
 made. There must, moreover, be presented to him one 
 or more royal orders authorising the Treasury to apply 
 the supplies granted to the Crown by the Ways and 
 Means Act covering the same, in conformity to the
 
 in.] THE TREASURY. 45 
 
 parliamentary vote. This done, he grants to the Trea- 
 sury, on its application, a general credit on the Exchequer 
 accounts at the Bank of England to the amount limited 
 by the votes; and the Treasury, operating upon that 
 credit, issues orders to the Bank to transfer money to the 
 account of the Paymaster-General, by whom it is paid 
 out, as required, to the different services. 
 
 Thus far of the processes by which the national 
 revenue is applied to the requirements of national ex- 
 penditure. To follow the application of the money, 
 and minutely to trace the various and elaborate arrange- 
 ments of check and audit which have succeeded to the 
 simple machinery of the old "Exchequer of Account," 
 would lead us into an inquiry too extensive for a work of 
 this kind. But though these departmental details of the 
 process of national book-keeping may properly be re- 
 garded as beyond the range of this volume, it would be 
 an omission in any account of "Central Government" to 
 pass over the main constitutional provision for enabling 
 the Legislature to supervise the application of the moneys 
 which it votes to the Executive. 
 
 The mode of granting supplies in the House of Com- 
 mons, and the further steps necessary to give effect to 
 this grant, and to authorise the issue of money from the 
 Exchequer, for the expenses of the various services have 
 been already described ; and it has been observed that 
 the issues of money authorised by a Ways and Means 
 Bill, is never permitted to exceed the total amount 
 already voted in Committee of Supply. But, this alone 
 would be but an imperfect check on the dealings of 
 ministers with the national revenues. The House of 
 Commons having, for instance, voted (say) 5,000,000
 
 46 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 on the 6th of March for the Army, 5,000,000 on the 
 13th of March for the Navy, and 5,000,000 on the 
 20th of the same month for the Civil Service, a Ways 
 and Means Bill is passed on the 30th, empowering the 
 Exchequer to issue 15,000,000. Here, though the 
 sum does not exceed the total of the various supplies 
 voted, it is clear that if the Government were able to 
 apply 7,000,000 instead of 5,000,000 of it to the 
 Army, and 6,000,000 instead of 5,000,000 to the 
 Navy, leaving only 2,000,000 for the Civil Service; 
 and if they could repeat or vary the operation in respect 
 of subsequent grants of supply, the intentions of Parlia- 
 ment might be altogether defeated, and its control over 
 public expenditure rendered virtually illusory. It is, in 
 other words, essential to the efficiency of such control 
 that Parliament should possess the power of following 
 its grants into the hands of the Executive, and of 
 taking care that these grants are employed for the 
 specific purposes for which they were intended, and in 
 the intended proportions. This object is attained by the 
 annual passing of what is known as the Appropriation 
 Act a measure which is the statutory expression of the 
 constitutional principle that "the sums granted and 
 appropriated by the Commons for any special service are 
 to be applied by the Executive Power only to defray the 
 expenses of that service." This rule, there is authority 
 for believing, is one of ancient recognition in our consti- 
 tutional system ; but it was not till after the Restoration 
 that it was distinctly formulated and partially enforced, 
 nor till after the Revolution of 1688 that it found em- 
 bodiment in express parliamentary enactment. A statute 
 of the first year of William and Mary contains appropria-
 
 in.] THE TREASURY. 47 
 
 tion clauses relating to the supplies voted in that year ; 
 and thenceforth it became the settled practice that the 
 sums granted by the House of Commons for the current 
 service of any given year " should by a special appropria- 
 tion, either in the Act for levying the aid, or in some 
 other Act of the same session, be applied only to the 
 services which they had voted." 
 
 We are now, then, in a position to review the whole 
 process of granting money to the Executive for the 
 various services, and of finally ensuring the application 
 of the several grants for each service to their respective 
 purposes. First, and in the manner above described, 
 certain sums of money are voted for certain services in 
 Committee of Supply. Upon these is founded a Ways 
 and Means Bill, authorising the issue of the sums specifi- 
 cally for such purposes from the Exchequer, and when 
 issued they are entered to the credit of these services in 
 the accounts of the Paymaster-General. This function- 
 ary is then legally warranted in applying all "moneys 
 in his hands to the general expenditure, without reference 
 to the Exchequer credits from which the moneys have 
 been transferred," provided of course that the service 
 to which he applies any money has been voted by Parlia- 
 ment, and that the vote be not exceeded. But the last 
 grant of Ways and Means to cover the last vote in supply 
 for the session is made in the Appropriation Act; in 
 which enactment all the previous grants are enumerated, 
 and each having been appropriated to its specific service, 
 the whole series is covered by a clause providing that 
 " the said aids and supplies shall not be issued or applied 
 to any use, intent, or purpose other than those before 
 mentioned, or for the other payments, etc., directed to be
 
 48 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 satisfied by any Act of Parliament, etc., of this session." 
 The Act, however, contains a provision to the effect that 
 the expenditure for the Army and Navy Services shall 
 be confined to those services respectively ; but that " if 
 a necessity shall arise for incurring expenditure not pro- 
 vided for by the sums appropriated for the said services, 
 and which it may be detrimental to the public service to 
 postpone until provision can be made for it by Parlia- 
 ment in the usual course, application shall be made to 
 the Treasury, who are empowered to authorise such 
 additional expenditure to be defrayed out of any surpluses 
 which may have accrued by the saving of expenditure 
 upon any votes within the same department ; provided 
 that the House of Commons shall be duly informed 
 thereof, in order to make provision for such deficient 
 expenditure as may be determined ; and provided also 
 that the aggregate grants for the Army and Navy shall 
 not be exceeded." 
 
 The control of Parliament over the expenditure of 
 public money being thus rendered as complete in detail 
 as it is in gross, it is natural to inquire how the exercise 
 of so rigorous and minute a restraint can be made con- 
 sistent with the always varying needs and often recurring 
 emergencies of the public service. How, it will be asked, 
 is a Government to provide for expenditure suddenly 
 necessitated by cases like these, and the necessity for 
 which may arise at a time when Parliament is not in 
 session, and there is consequently no possibility of 
 obtaining even the sanction of a vote in Supply, to say 
 nothing of the more precise authority of an Appropriation 
 Act? The answer to this is, that the Legislature has 
 already created certain permanent funds applicable to
 
 in.] THE TREASURY. 49 
 
 such contingencies, and the Executive is invested with 
 permanent statutory powers of resorting to them. To 
 meet the needs of the public service, more particularly in 
 the colonies and at the various naval and military stations 
 of the empire, the Government is authorised to make 
 advances, as occasion arises, out of a fund called the 
 Treasury Chest Fund, which, by the Act 24 and 25 Viet. 
 c. 127, is limited to 1,300,000, and assigned for employ- 
 ment by the Treasury as " a banking fund for facilitating 
 remittances, and for temporary advances for public and 
 colonial services, to be repaid out of the moneys appropri- 
 ated by Parliament, or otherwise applicable to those ser- 
 vices." There is also another and smaller fund, called the 
 Civil Contingencies Fund, limited to 120,000, on which 
 the Treasury is empowered to draw from time to time to 
 defray new and unforeseen expenditure for civil services 
 at home, for which no votes had been taken, or to meet 
 deficiencies on ordinary votes. Every advance made from 
 these funds must, however, be repaid out of the parlia- 
 mentary votes passed in the ensuing year to provide for 
 the services for which such advances had been made ; 
 and no expenditure whatever is allowed to become a final 
 charge upon these funds, which are thus, after each suc- 
 cessive call is made upon them, restored to their statutory 
 maximum. 
 
 The restraints and privileges which have been discussed 
 in the foregoing pages have reference to the Treasury 
 only in its capacity as superintendent of the actual work 
 of administration, and for that purpose an expender of 
 public money; but the Treasury exercises, it has been 
 said, a function of scarcely less importance than that of 
 directing the national outlay, in scrutinising, checking, 
 
 E
 
 50 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 and confining within economical bounds, the domestic 
 expenditure, as it may be called, of the various depart- 
 ments. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in other words, 
 is not only the head, so to speak, of the national counting- 
 house, he is the housekeeper of the national household. 
 The control of the Treasury over the other departments 
 of State rests not only upon long usage and tradition, 
 but on ^xpress recommendations of Parliament, and in- 
 deed on the economical principle that there ought to be 
 one authority responsible to Parliament for every act of 
 internal departmental expenditure. Accordingly we find 
 a constant and minute supervision exercised in the name 
 of " My Lords " of the Treasury over all the pecuniary 
 incidents of the management of the various public offices. 
 A " minute of the Treasury " is required for the sanction 
 of any changes in the personnel of their working staff, or 
 any redistribution of their duties which may involve the 
 outlay of public money ; and it is the custom to append 
 to the annual estimates any correspondence which may 
 have taken place between the Treasury and other de- 
 partments upon any questions connected either with their 
 internal or external expenditure which may be deemed 
 sufficiently important to be brought under the notice of 
 Parliament. 
 
 The parliamentary responsibility of this department 
 is, as becomes its importance, provided for with excep- 
 tional completeness. Its working chief, as has been said, 
 belongs as a matter of course to the Lower House of 
 Parliament, and can therefore be called to account by 
 interrogation or motion with respect to all matters of 
 Treasury concern, which, as we know, include a variety 
 of questions that may arise in any of the other depart-
 
 in.] THE TREASURY. 51 
 
 ments of the State, and may in fact be said to cover the 
 whole sphere of the discipline and economy of the Execu- 
 tive Government And not only does the invariable 
 presence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 
 House of Commons make the representation of this 
 department peculiarly direct, but, through the Secretary 
 of the Treasury, and, with respect to certain departmental 
 matters, through the Junior Lords, the House possesses 
 peculiar facilities of ascertaining and expressing its 
 opinion upon the details of Treasury administration. 
 This is especially the case as regards the Secretary of 
 the Treasury, whose functions have greatly increased of 
 late years, and whose office has now become perhaps the 
 most important of any not included in the Cabinet. 
 These officials, however, do not of course relieve their 
 chief of any share of his official responsibility ; nor would 
 they do so, indeed, if they constituted the sole represent- 
 atives of their department in the popular House, instead 
 of being mere attendants therein upon their chief. 
 
 A word should be said here as to the constitutional 
 position of such officials in general. An Under Secretary 
 or other subordinate minister must be regarded as being 
 merely the mouthpiece of his superior officer, and as 
 only responsible for giving effect to the instructions of 
 his chief, and for personal good behaviour. The political 
 head of the department is alone responsible to Parlia- 
 ment. This proposition is substantially true, even in 
 those cases in which an Under Secretary represents his 
 department in one House, while his chief sits in another. 
 It is true that an Under Secretary or a Vice-President, 
 who is in this position, and is required to take a promi- 
 nent part in public affairs, " is naturally supposed to have
 
 52 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 a share in the government of the department, and cannot 
 absolve himself from a certain modified responsibility in 
 regard to it;" but a "much greater responsibility attaches 
 to the departmental chief whose directions the subordi- 
 nate officer is obliged to carry out, and whose authority 
 is supreme." On the whole, in short, it may be said 
 with practical accuracy, that the head of the department 
 is "alone" responsible; and that however influential a 
 position his subordinate might occupy in virtue of his 
 representing that department in the House of Commons, 
 it is doubtful whether he could in any case become 
 constitutionally bound (although, of course, he might 
 personally prefer) to accept a parliamentary censure on a 
 point of departmental policy as applicable to himself as 
 well as his chief. That such censure can ever apply to 
 himself alone, and to the exclusion of his chief, may be 
 confidently pronounced impossible ; the only (apparent) 
 instance to the contrary will be dealt with in its proper 
 place. 
 
 The position of these subordinate officials must be 
 borne in mind in noting what may be said hereafter on 
 the subject of departmental responsibility. In cases 
 where the head of a department is usually or frequently 
 a member of the House of Lords, the parliamentary re- 
 sponsibility of that department is in common parlance 
 spoken of as being provided for by the presence of this 
 or the other departmental official in the House of 
 Commons. Nor does there seem any objection to the 
 expression, so long as we take care not to forget that 
 such officials represent not the principle of responsibility, 
 but an incidental part of the machinery for giving effect 
 to that principle; that their position is that of mere
 
 in.] THE TREASURY. 53 
 
 intermediaries between the chiefs of departments and 
 the popular assembly to which these chiefs are respon- 
 sible, keeping the House duly informed of all that the 
 minister has done, explaining and justifying his proceed- 
 ings when necessary, and receiving vicariously the censure 
 or the approval which the House thinks proper to pro- 
 nounce thereon. 
 
 In the case, then, of the internal administration of the 
 Treasury, whether in its dealings with its subordinate 
 departments of revenue, or as regards the exercise of its 
 economical supervision over the other offices of the State, 
 the sole responsibility rests upon the Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer. In respect of the general financial policy pro- 
 posed by this official, he shares responsibility, as has been 
 said, with the Cabinet at large. And as regards this 
 policy, it should here be noted that a somewhat wider 
 latitude of submission to parliamentary disapproval, 
 without resigning office, is allowed to ministers in re- 
 spect to questions of taxation and finance. The doc- 
 trine laid down on this point by more than one eminent 
 political authority, and generally accepted as sound, is, 
 that questions of taxation " are questions upon which the 
 House of Commons, representing the country, have 
 peculiar claims to have their opinions listened to, and 
 upon which the Executive Government may very fairly, 
 without any loss of dignity, provided they maintain a 
 sufficient revenue for the credit of the country and for 
 its establishments, reconsider any particular measure of 
 finance they have proposed." This, however, as indeed 
 is to be inferred from the proviso with which Lord John 
 Eussell qualified the above remarks, applies only to the 
 questions of "ways and means," and not to "questions
 
 54 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. in. 
 
 of supply." A Government, in other words, may legiti- 
 mately submit to the rejection of a proposal to raise a 
 particular sum of money in a particular way ; but they 
 cannot acquiesce in a refusal on the part of Parliament 
 to sanction the expenditure Avhich ministers have as- 
 sumed the responsibility of declaring necessary for the 
 support of the Civil Government, and the maintenance 
 of the public credit at home and abroad. "No Govern- 
 ment," says one of the greatest of authorities on financial 
 administration, " could be worthy of its place if it per- 
 mitted its estimates to be seriously resisted by the Op- 
 position; and important changes can be made therein 
 only under circumstances which permit of the raising of 
 the question of a change of Government."
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE HOME OFFICE. 
 
 THE administrative department, which in antiquity and 
 importance stands next for consideration, is that pre- 
 sided over by the Home Secretary. This minister is one 
 of five high officers, whose full constitutional title that 
 of Her Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State and 
 whose peculiar dignity and powers, it will need a brief 
 historical retrospect to explain. A review, moreover, of 
 the causes which led to the successive appointments of 
 these officers will incidentally throw a light, not only 
 upon the formation of the particular departments of State 
 over which they preside, but upon the origin and growth 
 of others also. 
 
 At the time when Clarendon constructed his scheme 
 the Principal Secretaries of State were functionaries of 
 gradually increasing importance, but their office had 
 only risen by slow degrees to that position. The full 
 dignity of its title had only been accorded to it about the 
 middle of the previous century, for in earlier periods the 
 holders of this post were not only not styled " Secretaries 
 of State," but were not even described as secretaries at 
 all. " King's Clerk" was the earliest title of the function- 
 ary known later as " King's Secretary," and later still as 
 His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State. The first of
 
 56 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 these titles was the one in sole use down to the reign of 
 Henry III. Until the middle of that reign there is no 
 mention of " King's Secretary," while in the Close Eolls 
 of John and Henry III. there is frequent mention of a 
 King's Clerk It is in a State paper of the 37th of 
 Henry IIL that we first meet with the appellation 
 " King's Secretary " as applied to John Maunsell, 1 who 
 is, by the instrument in question, appointed envoy to 
 negotiate a matrimonial alliance between England and 
 Spain. From this and similar incidents it is to. be in- 
 ferred that the King's Secretary frequently enjoyed the 
 confidence of his Sovereign in a very high degree ; but 
 the trust reposed in him was strictly personal, and unless 
 he also happened to have a seat in the Privy Council he 
 played no recognised or responsible part as adviser of the 
 Crown. John Maunsell himself was a Privy Councillor, 
 as were also several succeeding secretaries, but it is im- 
 possible for many years after to regard the more or less 
 frequent grant of this dignity as any proof of increasing 
 importance in the office. It is possible that particular 
 secretaries may have been appointed Privy Councillors 
 as a reward of their special services, or for the better 
 utilisation of their personal abilities, without its being 
 thereby implied that the office had grown in importance, 
 or that a seat in the Council had become essential either 
 to the dignity or the efficiency of its functions. 
 
 But be this as it may, it is not till the reign of Henry 
 VIIL that the association of the King's Secretaryship 
 with a seat in the Privy Council became invariable. In 
 this same reign, moreover, we find the office for the first 
 
 1 See previous chapter for the appointment of this same per- 
 sonage to be (as is believed) the first Chancellor of the Exchequer.
 
 iv.] THE HOME OFFICE. 57 
 
 time divided. Henry VIII. found it necessary, in 1539, 
 to appoint a second principal secretary, of equal powers 
 and like duties with his colleague. By the terms of their 
 appointment they were "to keep two seals, called the 
 King's Signets, to seal all warrants, writings, etc., loth 
 for inward and outward parts, 1 as had been accustomed." 
 Both were also "to keep registers, and each to have 
 access to the other's register." The delivery of these 
 seals from the hand of the Sovereign to the two officials 
 was the sole formality of appointment, as indeed it 
 continues at the present day to constitute a valid and 
 sufficient delegation of the secretarial powers, though it 
 is now customary to confirm the appointment by the 
 subsequent grant of a patent What was probably the 
 earliest instance of the issue of this instrument in such a 
 case occurs in the reign of Mary, in 1558. 
 
 Between the date of Henry VIH.'s appointment of a 
 second secretary and the accession of Elizabeth, the 
 number of these officials seems to have varied. In the 
 last month of Edward VI. 's reign, for instance, there 
 seems unquestionably to have been three, while in the 
 early days of his successor's rule we find the number 
 reduced to one. Whether, in the case of there being two 
 or more holders of the office, they were all members of 
 the Privy Council, we have no precise means of ascertain- 
 ing. Henry VIIL seems usually to have left one only to 
 sit in the Council during his absence from London, and 
 to have retained the others in attendance on his person. 
 
 1 This provision seems to show that even from the date of their 
 appointment the two secretaries had concurrent cognisance both of 
 foreign and domestic affairs, that each, in short, was a Home 
 Secretary and Foreign Secretary in one.
 
 58 CENTKAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 As a Privy Councillor the King's Secretary would, of 
 course, share all the ordinary responsibilities of members 
 of that body : but he continued for some time after this 
 to be nothing more than a servant of the Sovereign, 
 answerable to his master, and to no one else, for the 
 faithful performance of his duties. It is under Elizabeth 
 that we first find him receiving a title which implies 
 something more than personal service of the Sovereign, 
 and it is Sir Robert Cecil who seems first to have been 
 described in documents of royal signature as "Our 
 Principal Secretary of Estate." But that the title had 
 not then (41st of Elizabeth) become a regular one is 
 evident from the fact that in a later State paper than 
 that in which Sir Robert Cecil is described as above, his 
 style is that simply of " Our Principal Secretary." The 
 then position and dignity of the office may be advantage- 
 ously studied (of course with certain deductions for claims 
 peculiar to the individual as distinct from the post) in 
 the curious tract from the pen of Cecil himself on the 
 " Office of a Secretary of Estate." It is especially 
 interesting as showing not only the highly confidential 
 character of the relations between the Sovereign and his 
 Secretary of State, but the wide discretion which, especi- 
 ally in matters of foreign policy, this famous statesman 
 conceived to be intrusted to him. It is, moreover, 
 incidentally of value as establishing the fact that the 
 grant of a patent was originally no part of the formalities 
 of appointing a Secretary of State. "All officers and 
 counsellors of princes," says Cecil, "have a prescribed 
 authority by patent, by custom, or by oath, the Secretary 
 alone excepted ; but to the Secretary, out of a confidence 
 and singular affection, there is a liberty to negotiate at
 
 iv.] THE HOME OFFICE. 59 
 
 discretion at home and abroad, with friends and enemies, 
 all matters of speech and intelligence. All servants of 
 princes deal upon strong and wary authority and warrant, 
 in disbursements as treasurers, in conference with enemies 
 as generals, in commission for executing offices by patent 
 and instructions, and so in whatever else : only a Secre- 
 tary hath no warrant, no commission, no, not in matters 
 of his own greatest danger, but must rely on the word 
 and integrity of his Sovereign. For such is the multi- 
 plicity of actions and variable motions and interests of 
 foreign princes and their daily practices, and in so many 
 parts and places, as Secretaries can never have any 
 commission so long and universal as to secure them." 
 
 It would, nevertheless, appear from a passage in 
 Clarendon 1 that the Secretaries of State under James 
 I. filled by no means so important a position as 
 had been assumed by the great minister of Eliza- 
 beth. From this period, however, the office grew 
 steadily in consideration, but it was not until after the 
 Eevolution of 1688, and the transfer of power from the 
 Privy Council to the Cabinet, that the Secretary, or 
 rather Secretaries of State (for there were then two in 
 existence exercising co-ordinate powers), began to take 
 the very high and responsible position which they now 
 occupy. In the year 1708, in consequence of the increase 
 of public business consequent upon the union with Scot- 
 land, a third secretary was appointed for the special 
 management of Scotch affairs ; but this office was subse- 
 quently abolished, and, as the result of a variety of 
 changes which will be duly noticed in their proper 
 place, the number of Principal Secretaries of State is 
 1 Clarendon, Hist. Reb., i. 141 (marginal pagination ; Ed. 1849).
 
 60 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 now five, the Home, the Foreign, and the Colonial 
 Secretaries, and the Secretaries for War and for India. 
 It should be borne in mind, however, that this division 
 of duties is a mere matter of administrative convenience ; 
 that the peculiar dignity and importance of the office 
 of "Secretary of State" is historically anterior to, and 
 constitutionally independent of, the particular functions 
 assigned to him in the Executive. It is important, there- 
 fore, from the point of view of strict political accuracy 
 to distinguish between a Secretary of State considered as 
 a departmental officer and the same minister considered 
 as a constitutional intermediary between the Crown and 
 the nation. It is only when the title is employed in the 
 former sense that it would be correct to say that there 
 are five Principal Secretaries of State the Home, the 
 Foreign, and the Colonial Secretaries, and the Secretaries 
 for War and for India. Constitutionally speaking, there 
 is but one Secretary of State ; for the five ministers who 
 divide among them the departmental functions above 
 enumerated are all of co-equal and co-ordinate dignity, 
 all fully authorised to transact, if need be, each other's 
 business all equally competent to discharge these specific 
 duties to the Sovereign which belonged to the Secretary 
 of State, when as yet there was only one. Thus they 
 are the only authorised channels whereby the royal 
 pleasure is signified to any part of the body politic, 
 whether at home or abroad, and any one of them may 
 be empowered to carry the Sovereign's commands at any 
 time to any person. The counter-signature of a Secretary 
 of State is necessary, as has been remarked, to the 
 validity of the sign-manual, and this counter -signature 
 may be attached by any one of these five ministers. The
 
 iv.] THE HOME OFFICE. 61 
 
 Secretaries of State were formerly resident in the royal 
 household, and it is still .the practice for one of them to 
 attend the Queen during her occasional visits to various 
 parts of her kingdom. It is, moreover, a rule that one 
 of them must always be present in the metropolis. They 
 have all necessarily seats in the Cabinet ; and necessarily, 
 therefore, they are members of the Privy Council, and 
 sit in one or other of the Houses of Parliament. The 
 Secretaries for Foreign Affairs, the Colonies, and India, 
 are appointed indifferently from either House. The 
 Secretary for War, however, has now for some years 
 past been selected from the House of Commons, and an 
 unbroken usage of nearly half a century has confined the 
 Home Secretaryship to the popular Chamber. 
 
 The duties of this office are extremely comprehensive 
 and important ; and the minister who fills it may be 
 said to unite in his own person the various functions of 
 
 (1.) Chief of the constabulary. 
 
 (2.) Superintendent in a certain sense of the local 
 magistracy. 
 
 (3.) Overseer of prisons, prison-discipline, and gener- 
 ally of all matters relating to the post-judicial adminis- 
 tration of the criminal law. 
 
 (4.) Adviser of the Crown in the exercise of the 
 royal prerogative of pardon ; and 
 
 (5.) Supervisor of the administration of the various 
 statutes relating to the regulation of certain kinds of 
 labour, or to the protection of the lives of those engaged 
 therein ; together with various other miscellaneous func- 
 tions which it is simpler to notice in detail than to at- 
 tempt to classify. 
 
 The powers of the Home Secretary in his first
 
 62 CENTEAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 capacity as chief of the constabulary are derived from 
 the special responsibility attaching to him in respect of 
 the preservation of the public peace, and the security of 
 life and property throughout the kingdom. For this 
 purpose he exercises, as the representative of the 
 Sovereign, extensive powers over the civil and military 
 authorities of the country. It has been judicially de- 
 clared, in a case decided in the Court of Queen's Bench, 
 that the Home Secretary is " himself a magistrate, and 
 has a power of commitment to prison by warrant for 
 just cause ;" and though the former of these propositions 
 is incorrect, and the latter too broadly stated, there is an 
 overwhelming weight of judicial authority for the pro- 
 position that a Secretary of State is empowered in certain 
 circumstances to commit to prison upon his own warrant. 1 
 His original authority over the movements of the regular 
 army, the militia, and yeomanry, was superseded by the 
 appointment of a Secretary of State for War ; but in the 
 suppression of riot and disorder it would still be the 
 duty of the Home Secretary to communicate with the 
 officers in charge of districts, and to direct them how 
 
 1 Lord Campbell's above-quoted dictum in the case in question 
 is directly opposed to the whole reasonings and conclusions of Lord 
 Camden in the important constitutional case on which his successor 
 principally relied. Lord Camden distinctly lays down in En- 
 tick v. Carrington that the Secretary of State is not a magistrate 
 ex officio, and that his power of commitment is inherent solely in 
 his functions as a Privy Councillor. Nor is it the fact that even 
 as a Privy Councillor he can commit to prison generally ' ' for just 
 cause. " He can do so on suspicion of high treason or treasonable 
 practices. In this respect Lord Camden distinguishes his powers 
 as an individual member of the Council from those vested in the 
 Council collectively, whom, he held, it should seem, to possess in this 
 capacity a general authority to issue warrants of commitment.
 
 iv.] THE HOME OFFICE. 63 
 
 to act for the support of the magistracy in any such 
 emergency. 
 
 These police powers of the Home Secretary are to a 
 large extent prescriptive, that is to say, derived from 
 usage ; but he also exercises a large controlling authority 
 conferred by statute over the police in and around 
 London, the county constabulary, and the police of muni- 
 cipal boroughs. It is also his duty, under the various 
 Extradition Acts, to issue warrants for the surrender 
 (after compliance with certain prescribed forms of magis- 
 terial investigation) of fugitive criminals, the subjects of 
 the several States between which and our own country 
 Extradition Treaties have been concluded. He has 
 similar powers with regard to colonial offenders, and may 
 authorise the execution of warrants under which they 
 may be apprehended and returned to the colonies for 
 trial. 
 
 The functions of the Home Secretary in relation to 
 the local magistracy are of a somewhat peculiar kind. 1 
 His power of interference is in theory of almost indefinite 
 extent ; but in practice, or at least according to the con- 
 ception formed of these duties by most Home Secretaries, 
 they are limited by regard for the important principle of 
 
 1 Since this paragraph was written a debate in the House of 
 Commons (August 18) has revealed the prevalence of an error on this 
 subject, which, in its turn, seems to show a necessity for guarding 
 this account of the Home Secretary's duties from misconstruction. 
 Nothing herein written must be understood to imply that he has 
 any power of revieuring magisterial sentences in a judicial capacity. 
 It is simply in_his capacity of adviser of the Crown in the exercise 
 of its prerogative of mercy that he acts in these cases, and the 
 frequency with which he is solicited to interfere, and does, in fact, 
 institute inquiry, warrants us in treating separately this particular 
 branch of his general duty under head (4).
 
 64 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 allowing all reasonable freedom of judicial discretion to 
 tribunals adjudicating in good faith and within the limits 
 of their jurisdiction. The Home Secretary can and does 
 interfere to advise the reversal or modification of the 
 decisions of magistrates in cases where such a step is 
 necessary to prevent manifest miscarriage of justice ; but 
 the most trusted and judicious of the holders of this 
 office have, as a rule, deemed it wise to follow in this 
 respect the example set by the superior courts, and have 
 declined to interfere with magisterial decisions which are 
 not palpably perverse or precipitate, even though they 
 may not happen to accord with the ministerial view of 
 the merits of the case. 
 
 As adviser of the Crown in the general exercise of 
 its prerogative of pardon, the Home Secretary has an 
 extremely difficult, anxious, and often painful duty to 
 perform. It is true that he seldom, if ever, attempts to 
 discharge it unassisted, and that in deciding on the claims 
 of a convicted prisoner upon the royal clemency, he in- 
 variably seeks, and is generally guided by, the advice of 
 the judge before whom such prisoner was tried. But the 
 aid thus obtained is simply a matter of private satisfac- 
 tion to his own conscience ; it relieves him of a portion 
 of his moral, but of no other, responsibility. He, and 
 he alone, is still held constitutionally responsible for the 
 mode in which the prerogative of pardon is exercised ; 
 and it is not customary even for the Prime Minister, or 
 any of his colleagues (though he might of course con- 
 sult them), to assume any direct or recognised share in 
 the obligations which this duty imposes on the Home 
 Secretary. In the event of Parliament finding it neces- 
 sary to express disapproval of the grant, or denial of a
 
 iv.] THE HOME OFFICE. 65 
 
 pardon in any particular case, their censure would as 
 a rule be deemed to fall upon the head of the Home 
 Secretary alone, and to involve no other consequence 
 than that of his personal retirement from office. 
 
 The difficulty of this duty is considerably increased 
 by the fact that, owing to a special peculiarity of our 
 criminal law^ the chief of the Home Department is some- 
 times compelled to go beyond his ordinary task of con- 
 sidering merely what extenuating circumstances may be 
 pleaded on behalf of a convicted prisoner, and to re-try 
 the whole case. In other words, he has sometimes to do 
 more than weigh the guilt of an admittedly guilty man, 
 and consider what mitigation, if any, of his full legal 
 punishment may be accorded to him : he has, on some 
 occasions, to consider whether a convicted prisoner is 
 guilty at all, and whether he does not deserve, not as a 
 matter of indulgence, but merely as a matter of right, 
 to be absolved from any punishment whatever. Such 
 occasions arise whenever fresh evidence tending to proof 
 of a prisoner's innocence is brought to light after his 
 conviction ; for, since our law does not provide for any 
 criminal appeal upon the fads of a case, the only method 
 in which injustice can be prevented or remedied is by 
 allowing such fresh evidence to form the ground for 
 advising the Sovereign to exercise the prerogative in 
 favour of the prisoner, a proceeding which in itself, of 
 course, involves the injustice, not to say the absurdity, 
 of "pardoning" a man for an offence on the tacitly 
 acknowledged ground that there is no offence to pardon. 
 But it belongs to the Home Secretary to decide whether 
 the evidence in question is really conclusive of the con- 
 vict's innocence or not ; which means, in other words, that 
 
 F
 
 66 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 he is compelled to undertake the functions of a jury in 
 his own person no doubt with the informal assistance 
 of the judge who tried the case, but with none other of 
 the guides to truth, or securities against error, which the 
 proceedings of a regular court of justice are supposed to 
 supply. 
 
 Of late years, moreover, a practice of virtually rehear- 
 ing cases rather upon fresh statements of opinion than of 
 new discoveries of fact, has grown up at the Home Office. 
 On more than one occasion a plea of insanity, which had 
 been duly raised and considered at a prisoner's trial, has 
 been subjected to a further process of investigation by 
 medical experts acting under the direction of the Home 
 Secretary ; and upon their report the finding of the jury 
 on the question of insanity has been practically re- 
 versed, and the prisoner's sentence commuted from one 
 of death to one of "imprisonment during the royal 
 pleasure." It should, however, be added that this prac- 
 tice has been subjected to a good deal of public criticism, 
 and that it is obviously one which is opposed to the 
 general principle under which the criminal law is in this 
 country administered. 
 
 Among the miscellaneous duties of the Home Secre- 
 tary, which it is easier to enumerate than to classify, are 
 those imposed upon him by the Acts for the regulation 
 of factory labour, for the inspection of coal mines, for 
 the regulation of labour in other mines and collieries, for 
 the regulation of schools of anatomy, and by a recent 
 statute for licensing, on certain conditions, the practice 
 of vivisection. He is also invested by statute with 
 various powers for the protection of pauper lunatics and 
 the improvement of lunatic asylums.
 
 iv.] THE HOME OFFICE. 67 
 
 He further exercises power under the provisions of 
 several Acts in respect of many other matters of social 
 interest or of civil obligation. Down to a recent period 
 it was among his duties to approve the regulations 
 framed by the Registrar-General for the guidance of his 
 subordinates with respect to the registration of births, 
 deaths, and marriages ; but these functions have been 
 within the last few years transferred, in company with 
 many others, to another department, to be noticed here- 
 after. But the Home Secretary still controls the regula- 
 tions for the registration of aliens ; and he is empowered 
 to grant, without fee, certificates of naturalisation con- 
 ferring civil rights as English subjects upon foreigners of 
 good repute, who are able to produce proofs of continued 
 residence, and of intention to continue to reside, in the 
 United Kingdom. 
 
 Here, too, perhaps, will be the most convenient occa- 
 sion for a brief review of the administration of Scotland 
 and Ireland the affairs of the latter portion of the 
 United Kingdom being still nominally, and those of 
 the former actually as well as nominally, under the 
 special care of the Home Secretary. 
 
 The union of England and Scotland in 1707 into the 
 kingdom of Great Britain was, unlike that of Ireland a 
 century later, an executive as well as a legislative union. 
 Coincidently with the dissolution of the Scotch Legisla- 
 ture, the whole business of government was transferred 
 to London, and intrusted to a third Secretary of State 
 specially appointed to take charge of Scottish affairs. 
 This arrangement subsisted until 1746, when the office 
 of this functionary was abolished, and his duties divided 
 between the two remaining Secretaries of State. In
 
 68 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 1782, on the organisation of the Home Department of 
 the Secretariat of State, the Scotch business, as being 
 of a domestic character, fell naturally to the new depart- 
 ment, which has been responsible for it ever since. In 
 the actual conduct of it, however, the Home Secretary is 
 to a great extent guided by the advice of a Scotch official 
 the Lord Advocate who may, indeed, be regarded as 
 an Under Secretary (though with considerably more than 
 an Under Secretary's influence) for that part of the United 
 Kingdom. Besides being the Attorney-General and public 
 prosecutor for Scotland, he is the legal adviser of the 
 Crown in Scottish affairs, and having, when appointed, or 
 afterwards obtaining, a seat in the House of Commons, 
 he acts in that House both as the spokesman and repre- 
 sentative of ministers with regard to matters of Scotch 
 administration, and on occasion as intermediary between 
 the Government and the Scottish members, for the purpose 
 of ascertaining the views of the latter on questions speci- 
 ally affecting the interests of Scotland. The due con- 
 sideration of these interests has, in some administrations, 
 been further secured by the selection of one of the Lords 
 of the Treasury from among the members of Parliament 
 representing Scotch constituencies. To this official is 
 intrusted the general supervision of Treasury business 
 affecting Scotland, and he also assists the Lord Advocate 
 in the management of Scotch business in Parliament, 
 with the exception of legal business, for which the law 
 officer is wholly responsible. 
 
 The Irish Executive is still kept distinct, at least 
 outwardly, from that of the rest of the United Kingdom. 
 The government of Ireland is formally vested in a Viceroy, 
 usually styled the Lord Lieutenant, in abbreviation of
 
 iv:] THE HOME OFFICE. 69 
 
 his full official title of "Lord Lieutenant -General and 
 General Governor of Ireland." He is assisted by a Privy 
 Council, consisting of fifty or sixty members, whose 
 sanction, like that of the English Privy Council, is 
 necessary to give validity to many of the official acts of 
 the Executive. The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland possesses 
 nominally very extensive powers, but his actual freedom 
 in their exercise is by no means commensurate with 
 their ostensible extent He acts under instruction from 
 the Crown, conveyed to him by the ministry for the time 
 being, whose business, it has been laid down, " is to direct 
 him in his proceedings, and to animadvert upon his con- 
 duct if they see him act improperly, or in a manner 
 detrimental or inconvenient to the public service, or dis- 
 pleasing to the Crown." The Cabinet Minister, ordi- 
 narily responsible for advising and directing the conduct 
 of the Lord Lieutenant, was at one time the Secretary of 
 State for the Home Department ; and it is presumed that 
 theoretically the responsibility still attaches to him. 1 
 But in practice it has now devolved wholly, and, con- 
 sidering his subordinate title, somewhat anomalously, on 
 a functionary whose strict official style is that of " Chief 
 Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant" The Secretary for 
 Ireland, as he is popularly called, has, since the abolition 
 of the Irish Parliament, become essentially the Prime Min- 
 ister of the Viceroy. He wields great powers, which he 
 
 1 In the House of Commons, on a recent occasion, the Home 
 Secretary was, in the absence of the Irish Secretary, appealed to 
 for information on the state of Ireland, on the ground of his general 
 responsibility for peace and order throughout the United Kingdom. 
 Sir William Harcourt admitted the constitutional warrant for the 
 appeal, but pleaded that ' ' the details of Irish affairs did not pass 
 through the Home Office."
 
 70 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 is sometimes called upon to exercise without communi- 
 cation with his chief, and he is the minister responsible 
 to Parliament for every act of the Irish administration. 
 He is invariably a Privy Councillor, and has always, at 
 least of late years, been a member of the lower branch of 
 the Legislature ; and the increasing frequency with which 
 this post has in modern practice been associated with a 
 seat in the Cabinet is a testimony to its augmented 
 importance, and a proof of its virtual independence of 
 the control of the Home Secretary. We can at any rate 
 scarcely suppose that any one would nowadays share Sir 
 Eobert Peel's "grave objections" to making the Irish 
 Secretary a Cabinet Minister, on the ground that it 
 tended not only to " disturb, but to invert the relation 
 of a subordinate to his chief" (the Lord Lieutenant 
 never being included in the Cabinet), and that it "en- 
 couraged the Secretary still more to assume for himself 
 the exercise of independent powers." On the whole, it 
 seems safe to say that the subordination of the Secretary 
 for Ireland to the Secretary of State for the Home 
 Department has now ceased to represent anything more 
 than a formal recognition of the constitutional principle, 
 that a Secretary of State is the proper medium for the 
 transmission of the commands of the Sovereign to the 
 Lord Lieutenant of Ireland as to any other servant of 
 the Crown; and that the responsibility of the Home 
 Secretary for "the peace of the realm" in general would 
 not nowadays be deemed to warrant his overruling any 
 decision of the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant 
 with respect to administrative policy in Ireland. Such 
 an exercise of authority is now virtually confined to the 
 Prime Minister and to the Cabinet at large.
 
 rv.] THE HOME OFFICE. 71 
 
 It has been already remarked that while the Secre- 
 taries of State for Foreign Affairs, the Colonies, and 
 India, are appointed indifferently from either of the 
 branches of the Legislature, an unbroken usage of nearly 
 half a century has confined the Home Secretaryship to 
 the House of Commons ; and it should here be added that 
 the House from which a Secretary of State must be 
 chosen will not be in some cases a matter of choice, since 
 the number of these functionaries capable of holding 
 a seat in the Lower House is limited by statute. By 
 the Act of Anne, above referred to, the two principal 
 Secretaries of State then in existence (and two Under 
 Secretaries) were at liberty to sit in the House of 
 Commons ; and when the number of secretaries was in- 
 creased to three, no third seat in the Lower House was 
 assigned to them. But in 1854, upon the creation of 
 the fourth Secretaryship of State, for the purpose of 
 separating the administration of War and Colonies, an 
 Act was passed enabling a third Secretary of State and 
 a third Under Secretary to sit in the House of Commons ; 
 and similarly when, in 1858, a fifth Secretary of State 
 was appointed to take charge of the affairs of India, the 
 Act transferring the power of the East India Company 
 to the Executive contained a clause authorising any four 
 of the Principal Secretaries of State and any four Under 
 Secretaries to hold seats in that House. 
 
 The invariable presence of the Home Secretary in the 
 popular assembly secures, therefore, a direct expression 
 of the principle of parliamentary responsibility as regards 
 the affairs of this department in the person of its head. 
 He possesses, however, a parliamentary as well as a 
 political Under Secretary, the former of whom usually
 
 72 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. iv. 
 
 finds plenty of occupation in assisting his chief to discharge 
 the onerous parliamentary duties of an official whose acts 
 are more jealously watched, and more frequently and 
 keenly criticised, by members of the Legislature than 
 those of perhaps any of his colleagues.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE FOREIGN OFFICE. 
 
 IT has been mentioned in the last chapter that among 
 the committees for special business which appear from 
 the records of the State Paper Office to have been ap- 
 pointed from the general body of Privy Councillors, was 
 one entitled the "Lords Committees for Foreign Affairs." 
 Such a committee was, as has been seen, in existence in 
 1630, and is also the subject of another reference in 
 these records ten years afterwards. But there is nothing 
 to show whether it was a temporary or a permanent 
 body, or even merely to establish its continuous identity 
 throughout the period in question. Nor, of course, is 
 it to be supposed that, even if it maintained an unbroken 
 exercise of its functions during these years, it was either 
 then or for long afterwards anything but a very inade- 
 quate representation of the department to which this 
 branch of the duties of the Executive is now entrusted. 
 The resemblance, indeed, between any of these commit- 
 tees, whether for war, or foreign affairs, or what not, and 
 the modern State departments of which they were un- 
 doubtedly the germ, is in every case slight enough. For 
 none of them were ever much more than little detach- 
 ments of Councillors, told off to consider and report to
 
 74 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 their Sovereign upon various matters of State, and to 
 give advice thereon which might be accepted or rejected 
 by him at pleasure ; and the points of distinction between 
 such " advisers of the Crown " and those to whom this 
 title is applied under our modern constitutional system, 
 are necessarily far more important than their superficial 
 similarities. But there are special reasons for supposing 
 that the effective authority of the Committees for Foreign 
 Affairs would in most reigns have been even less than 
 that of other committees. 
 
 The direction and control of the foreign policy of 
 a nation is not only one of the most important of royal 
 prerogatives, but it is the one about which monarchs 
 have generally most concerned themselves. It is the 
 branch of kingcraft in which many kings have taken 
 their chief interest, and which they have the most 
 jealously retained under their own control. It is, more- 
 over, the one with which, in the earlier stages of their 
 political development, people would be least competent 
 and possibly least desirous to interfere. This, at any- 
 rate, was certainly the case with our own people, whose 
 representatives in Parliament, even at a period when the 
 Commons had already begun to display an energetic 
 though fitful activity in the assertion of other constitu- 
 tional privileges, declined to intermeddle in foreign 
 affairs. In the 21st year of Edward III., for example, 
 the House of Commons in express terms excused itself 
 from the duty of advising the King, even at bis own 
 solicitation, in the question of the French war. They 
 were, they said, " so ignorant and simple that they knew 
 not how, nor had the power to devise " as to the war 
 and "the equipment necessary for it;" and though the
 
 v.] THE FOREIGN OFFICE. 75 
 
 circumstances render it probable that the assumption 
 of this extreme humility was not entirely sincere, the 
 incident is none the less valuable as evidence that the 
 Commons of that day felt no temptation to accept this 
 addition to their advisory powers. Even after the 
 Eevolution had laid the basis of our modern constitu- 
 tional system, the Sovereign, as has already been noticed, 
 continued still for a time to exercise a complete control 
 over the foreign policy of the country. Nor is there 
 any reason to suppose that this departure from strict 
 constitutional principle was resented by the nation. On 
 the contrary, there is, as Macaulay points out, every 
 reason to suppose that the nation actively approved of 
 it "It would be a great error," he says, " to imagine 
 even now that our princes merely reign and never 
 govern;" but "in the seventeenth century both Whigs 
 and Tories thought it not only the right but the duty 
 of the first magistrate to govern. All parties agreed in 
 blaming Charles II. for not being his own Prime Minister; 
 all parties agreed in praising James for being his own 
 Lord High Admiral ; and all parties thought it natural 
 and reasonable that William should be his own Foreign 
 Secretary." The divergence, however, between actual 
 practice and constitutional theory was in the later years 
 of William IIL brought by one famous passage of inter- 
 national politics into striking prominence. For the 
 prerogative, which the English Parliament left willingly 
 in the hands of the ablest European statesman of that 
 day, was on one important occasion only capable of being 
 exercised by resort to a procedure which presupposed the 
 principle of ministerial responsibility. The monarch 
 who, in his sole person, and without the advice or even
 
 76 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 the knowledge of a single minister, conducted the negotia- 
 tions for the momentous Partition Treaty to a conclusion, 
 was compelled, in order to execute that instrument in 
 proper form, to obtain the co-operation of a Secretary of 
 State and the imprint of the Great Seal ; and this vali- 
 dation of the King's act formed the substance of one 
 of the articles of impeachment exhibited against Lord 
 Somers by the House of Commons. The Chancellor 
 escaped; but the incident had a result which may be 
 looked upon as marking the commencement of the 
 change whereby this branch of the royal prerogative 
 has been brought as completely as the other within the 
 operation of constitutional principles. To mark their 
 disapproval of the mode in which this treaty had been 
 concluded the House of Commons introduced into the 
 Act of Settlement a clause providing for the discussion 
 of all State affairs in full Privy Council, and for the 
 signature " by such of the Privy Council as shall advise 
 or consent to the same " of all resolutions taken there- 
 upon. This provision was, however, seen to be too 
 stringent, and was repealed before the accession of the 
 House of Hanover brought the Act of Settlement into 
 force; but the spirit which animated it continued to 
 grow. On two occasions in the reign of George II., 
 Lord Hardwicke, the then Lord Chancellor, refused to put 
 the Great Seal to conventions concluded by the King 
 himself the instruments in question being deemed by 
 him to embody provisions injurious to the interests of 
 the country; and long before the end of the century 
 there would have been few constitutional lawyers found 
 to deny that the conduct of foreign policy had taken its 
 place among the prerogatives which the Sovereign is
 
 v.] THE FOREIGN OFFICE. 77 
 
 constitutionally bound to exercise according to the advice 
 of his ministers. 
 
 The effect of this further realisation of the principle 
 adopted in theory at the Eevolution was naturally to 
 raise the functionaries by whom the Sovereign had been 
 hitherto assisted in the management of foreign affairs to 
 the position of responsible ministers. The two officials 
 between whom the Secretariat of State had been divided, 
 from the middle of the sixteenth century onward, became 
 joint depositaries of the powers now exercised in seve- 
 ralty by the Home and Foreign Secretaries. They may 
 be regarded, indeed, as having succeeded to the functions 
 marked out in the scheme of Clarendon for his first 
 Committee of the Privy Council, namely, the "Committee 
 for Foreign Affairs," which was to " have also the corre- 
 spondence with Justices of the Peace and other officers, 
 etc., in the several counties." But though their powers 
 as joint Foreign Secretaries were no doubt co-equal and 
 co-ordinate, the duties involved in the management of 
 the foreign affairs of the country were, for convenience, 
 distributed between them on geographical principles. 
 Down till near the end of the eighteenth century the 
 Secretariat of State was divided into two departments, 
 styled respectively the Northern and the Southern De- 
 partments. To the former was assigned the conduct of 
 our intercourse with Denmark, Flanders, Germany, and 
 the German Princes and States, Holland, Poland, and 
 Saxony, Prussia, Russia, Sweden, and the Baltic. To 
 the latter department belonged France, Portugal, Switz- 
 erland, Spain, Italy, the so-called "Barbary States," and 
 Turkey. This arrangement remained in force until the 
 year 1782, when, among other important redistributions
 
 78 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 of departmental work, the internal and external affairs 
 of the country were definitively separated, and placed 
 respectively under two distinct Secretaries of State the 
 Secretary of State for the Home Department, and the 
 Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. 
 
 The present duties of this last-mentioned minister are 
 of a more uniform and homogeneous character than those 
 of his colleague of the Home Department, but they are 
 nevertheless of a highly important character, and even 
 in ordinary times demand no common share of foresight, 
 energy, vigilance, and discretion. The Foreign Secretary 
 is the official organ and adviser of the Crown in its 
 intercourse with foreign powers, and upon him devolves 
 the duty of conducting those international negotiations 
 upon the success of which the most vital interests of his 
 country, or of Europe at large, may on occasion depend. 
 In affairs of this high moment the general line of policy 
 to be pursued would, of course, be settled by the Cabinet 
 collectively; but the execution of the particular plans 
 agreed upon must be largely left in his hands, and, 
 according to the amount of tact and address displayed by 
 him in directing it, the ministerial policy may to a great 
 extent be made or marred. 
 
 Among the ordinary duties of the Foreign Secretary 
 is that of protecting British subjects abroad, of entertain- 
 ing their complaints and applications for redress, and 
 obtaining satisfaction from foreign powers for injuries 
 which they may have sustained at the hands of the 
 subjects of such powers. 
 
 He has also to introduce to his Sovereign the accred- 
 ited representatives of other Governments, to inquire 
 into and redress their complaints, and to maintain their
 
 v.] THE FOREIGN OFFICE. 79 
 
 privileges inviolate. He has, moreover, to keep foreign 
 States informed of all the important acts of Her Majesty's 
 Government which may concern them, and generally to 
 cultivate amicable relations between such States and his 
 own country, as far as possible ; for which latter purpose 
 he communicates regularly with our ambassadors or 
 other diplomatic agents at the various foreign Courts. 
 Another part of his ordinary duties is to grant passports 
 to British subjects intending to visit those countries, now 
 few in number, in which this restriction upon free access 
 still survives. He has the general selection of all am- 
 bassadors, ministers, and consuls accredited from Great 
 Britain to foreign Powers, though the appointment to a 
 particular mission, at any exceptional crisis, and for the 
 execution of a specific policy, would very often doubtless 
 be made a Cabinet question, and settled by the ministry 
 at large. 
 
 Less of the work of the Foreign Office than of any 
 other great department of the State is performed by sub- 
 ordinate officials. It is not considered safe to allow any 
 decision to be taken in the Foreign Office (except pos- 
 sibly upon matters of mere routine) without the know- 
 ledge and assent of the Secretary of State. Further, no 
 important political instruction is sent to any British 
 minister abroad, and no note addressed to any foreign 
 diplomatic agent, without the draft of such instruction 
 or note being first submitted to the Prime Minister that 
 he may take the pleasure of the Sovereign thereon ; and 
 the neglect of this constitutional formality led in one 
 well-known instance to the dismissal of the offending 
 minister. 1 
 
 1 Lord Palmerston in 1852.
 
 80 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 This rule, however, concerns only the relations be- 
 tween the Foreign Secretary and the Crown. His re- 
 sponsibility to Parliament, and the control of that as- 
 sembly over the exercise of his functions, is provided for, 
 so far as may be, by the practice of periodically laying 
 before Parliament (either with or without a request in 
 either House for its production) the correspondence which 
 passes between the Foreign Secretary and the ministers 
 of foreign powers or our own representatives abroad. 
 Upon the production of this correspondence it is open to 
 any member of Parliament who may be opposed to the 
 policy which it discloses to invite the House to record a 
 censure thereof ; and in the event of such an invitation 
 being accepted, it would be the duty of the minister thus 
 censured, or of the entire Cabinet, if the matter be one 
 of such importance as to have been made a Cabinet ques- 
 tion, to resign office. 
 
 The means of control with which Parliament is thus 
 provided is as a rule sufficient for its purpose ; but there 
 are certain causes inherent in the nature of the case 
 which necessarily render parliamentary control less com- 
 plete and effective in its application to the conduct of 
 foreign policy than to any other of the ministerial 
 functions. 
 
 In the first place, parliamentary inquiry may be, and 
 frequently is, resisted by a ministry during the pendency 
 of negotiations, on the plea that the disclosure of the 
 details at such a stage would be incompatible with the in- 
 terests of the public service. This plea is in many cases 
 well founded, and in no case is it one which a deliberative 
 assembly, in the absence of the information which it is 
 their very object to elicit, can be in a position to contro-
 
 v.] THE FOREIGN OFFICE. 81 
 
 vert. As a rule, .therefore, the plea avails ; but it neces- 
 sarily follows therefrom that Parliament is deprived of 
 all power of interposing (as it can do in other depart- 
 ments of policy) to prevent the adoption of a line of 
 action which a majority of its members may possibly re- 
 gard as injurious to the national welfare. All it can do 
 is to review the conduct of ministers after the fact, and 
 either to approve wise measures which it had no share 
 in directing, or to condemn errors which are beyond its 
 power to repair. 
 
 And, in the second place, there is a part, and a con- 
 siderable part, of the negotiations carried on between 
 English ministers and the Governments of foreign 
 powers, which not only must not be prematurely com- 
 municated to Parliament, but in many cases cannot even 
 be communicated at all, negotiations which, as between 
 the Governments engaging in them, are of a strictly con- 
 fidential character, and are so understood to be by all 
 the parties thereto. It might, no doubt, be urged that 
 the obligation to secrecy is one which an English Govern- 
 ment has, as against an English Parh'ament, no power to 
 contract ; and upon a strict application of the principle 
 of ministerial responsibility, this is no doubt true. But 
 the question, if it is to be reasonably considered, must be 
 treated as one not so much of constitutional principle as 
 of practical expediency. Parliament might be within its 
 right in compelling an English Government to divulge 
 matters of confidential communication with other Powers, 
 and such other Powers might have no reason to com- 
 plain of the non-fulfilment of undertakings which those 
 who entered into them had no authority to contract. 
 But, whether they could reasonably complain of this dis- 
 
 G
 
 82 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 appointment or not, they would assuredly resolve not to 
 subject themselves to it a second time ; and in mere self- 
 defence they would, for the future, decline to communi- 
 cate anything to an English minister which they were 
 not prepared to see published to all the world. How 
 serious a disadvantage our Government would be sub- 
 jected to in their intercourse with foreign Powers, if 
 such a course were to be adopted by the latter, it is un- 
 necessary to point out. 
 
 On the whole, therefore, the point appears to be one 
 on which the strict principles of ministerial responsibility 
 has been wisely relaxed. As regards much of his policy, 
 a Foreign Secretary, or the ministry to which he belongs, 
 may be, and is, fully held to account; and if, as to certain 
 other portions of it, he is left irresponsible and uncon- 
 trolled, it is only to avoid the error of sacrificing ends to 
 means. The principle of ministerial responsibility only 
 exists for the purpose of ensuring that the nation be 
 governed conformably to the national interests; and since, 
 upon any reasonable view of those interests, its Govern- 
 ment must be put in a position to compete in diplomacy 
 upon equal terms with those of other States, the nation 
 does well to refrain from any such exercise of its consti- 
 tutional privileges as would deprive it of that advantage. 
 
 The post of Foreign Secretary has been held under 
 successive administrations for some years past by a 
 member of the House of Lords. The arrangement is, for 
 many reasons, and particularly as regards the ceremonial 
 duties of the office in connection with foreign embassies, 
 a convenient one ; but there is, of course, no reason why 
 it should not be again associated, as it has often formerly 
 been, with a seat in the Lower House ; and it is owing only
 
 v.] THE FOREIGN OFFICE. 83 
 
 *to accidents of personal fitness that nearly all the com- 
 moners who have held the office since Mr. Canning's 
 time have, in virtue of courtesy titles, belonged nomin- 
 ally to the peerage. In the cases in which the Foreign 
 Secretary sits in the House of Lords, his responsibility to 
 Parliament is secured by the presence of a parliamentary 
 Under Secretary in the House of Commons, an official 
 whose departmental duties are perhaps of less importance 
 than those of the permanent Under Secretary ; in whose 
 hands, in order to obviate the inconveniences which 
 would otherwise too frequently result from a sudden 
 change of ministry, the whole of the most important 
 work of the department is generally allowed to remain.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE COLONIAL OFFICE. 
 
 THE Colonial Office is usually described as the third, 
 but, as will be seen, might be more accurately reckoned 
 as the fourth, of the great State Departments to be placed 
 under the separate charge of one of the Principal Secre- 
 taries of State. Its history has been a somewhat singular 
 one, since it has been successively associated at various 
 times with no fewer than three other departments now 
 distinct from it the Board of Trade, the Home Office, 
 and the War Office. With the first-mentioned of these 
 departments, indeed, the history of the early stages of 
 its development is intimately interwoven, and down to 
 nearly the end of the eighteenth century the gradual rise 
 and progress of the two establishments must be traced 
 together. 
 
 In November 1660 Charles II. created a Council of 
 Trade, and, a month later, a Council of Foreign Planta- 
 tions. 
 
 These two Councils, however, were soon destined to be 
 for a brief period more closely united. By a patent of 1 672 
 Charles II. revoked all former commissions, and consti- 
 tuted a single standing " Council for Trade and Planta- 
 tions," with Shaftesbiiry at its head, which remained in 
 function till 1675, when this commission also was revoked,
 
 CHAP, vi.] THE COLONIAL OFFICE. 85 
 
 and in 1695 the "Council," or "Board of Trade and 
 Plantations," as it then began to be called, was revived 
 by William III 
 
 Thus matters remained until 1768, when the increase 
 of business connected mainly with our Transatlantic 
 possessions led to the appointment of a Secretary of 
 State for the Colonial or " American Department," as it 
 was then called, in addition to the two Principal Secre- 
 taries of State then existing. The Board of Trade and 
 Plantations, however, was not immediately abolished, 
 but continued for some years to exist side by side with 
 the newly-created Secretaryship of State for the Colonies. 
 Indeed, it maintained at least a nominal existence as long 
 as the new creation itself, and only disappeared along 
 with it in the great reorganisation of the executive 
 departments in 1782. 1 In that year both the Colonial 
 Secretaryship and the Board of Trade and Plantations 
 were abolished by the 22 Geo. IIL c. 82, and the powers 
 of the latter body transferred "to such Committee or 
 Committees as His Majesty should appoint." These 
 "powers," however, must be understood to mean only 
 the powers of the Board in connection with trade ; for 
 the whole of the colonial business was next year trans- 
 ferred, together with the management of Irish affairs, to 
 the Home Office. Here it was at first conducted in a 
 subordinate department, called the "Plantation Office," 
 under the direction of an Under Secretary and clerks ; 
 
 1 The Board fell under the stinging sarcasms of Burke, who de- 
 scribed it in that great speech on ' ' Economical Reform " which 
 practically brought about the reorganisation, as "a sort of gently- 
 ripening hothouse, where eight members of Parliament receive 
 salaries of 1000 a year in order to mature at a proper season a 
 claim for 2000."
 
 86 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 and on the abolition of this branch office a few years 
 later, colonial affairs became part of the regular business 
 of the Home Department. Under this administration 
 they remained until after the beginning of the next cen- 
 tury, when (in 1801) they were yet again transferred to 
 a new Secretary of State the Secretary for "War. who 
 had been appointed shortly after the outbreak of the 
 revolutionary war in 1794, and whose department ac- 
 cordingly received the title of the Department for " War 
 and Colonies." 
 
 And lastly, in 1854, the two functions of colonial 
 and military administration were finally separated by 
 the appointment of a fourth Secretary of State. The 
 Duke of Newcastle, at that time Secretary for War and 
 Colonies, assumed by virtue of a declaration in Council 
 the office of " Secretary of State for War " alone, and 
 a new appointment was made to the post of Secretary for 
 the Colonies. This change having been effected to meet 
 the special exigencies of a state of hostilities, is on that 
 account usually described as the " creation of the Secre- 
 taryship for War;" but it would be obviously more 
 accurate to say that the " new " Secretaryship of State 
 then created was that conferred upon the new head of 
 the Colonial Department, then first raised to a position 
 of independence, and freed from its connection with 
 an already existing branch of the Secretariat. 
 
 The duties devolving upon this department in rela- 
 tion to the affairs of a colonial empire so extensive and 
 so various in character as our own, must necessarily be 
 very considerable ; but these duties are, as will be seen, 
 by no means directly proportioned in each case to the 
 physical magnitude, or even the political importance, of
 
 vi.] THE COLONIAL OFFICE. 87 
 
 the respective possessions to which they relate. On the 
 contrary, the labours and, except in the case of colonial 
 wars and other similar troubles, the responsibilities of this 
 minister are often far less onerous in the case of our 
 largest and most important colonies than in that of any 
 others ; and this for a reason which will at once appear 
 from a comparison of the different relations which sub- 
 sist between the Executive Government and the various 
 foreign possessions of the Crown. 
 
 These relations are of three kinds, and all British 
 colonies and dependencies may, according as they fall 
 under one or other of these categories, be divided into 
 three classes. They are either 
 
 (I.) Crown Colonies, i.e. colonies in which the Crown 
 has the entire control of legislation, while the work of 
 administration is carried on by public officers under the 
 control of the Home Government ; or 
 
 (II.) Colonies possessing representative institutions but 
 not responsible Government, in which the Crown does 
 not legislate, but exercises a veto on legislation, and the 
 Home Government retains the appointment and control 
 of public officers ; or 
 
 (IH.) Colonies possessing representative institutions 
 and responsible government, in which the Crown has 
 only a veto on legislation, and no control over any 
 public officer except the Governor. 
 
 Now it is evident, of course, that the responsibility 
 of the Colonial Office reaches its maximum in relation to 
 the Government of colonies of the first of these classes, 
 and that it descends, through the second, to its minimum 
 in the third. In certain colonies, or rather dependencies, 
 of the first class, such as Gibraltar, St. Helena, and
 
 88 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 Heligoland, the work of legislation is carried on by the 
 Governor alone; in other Crown colonies, of which 
 Malta, Jamaica, Ceylon, the Gold Coast, etc., may be 
 taken as examples, the Governor legislates with the con- 
 currence of a Council nominated by the Crown ; but in 
 each and all of these cases the initiative in legislation 
 proceeds actually or virtually from the Crown itself, and 
 the administrative officers are the immediate servants of 
 the Home Government. 
 
 In the colonies enjoying representative institutions, 
 whether with or without responsible government, the 
 legislative machinery varies considerably in form. Some 
 of Class IL, as, for instance, certain of the West India 
 Islands, possess a double chamber, viz. a Council nomi- 
 nated by the Crown and an Elective Assembly ; others, 
 as Natal, for example, legislate through a single chamber, 
 partly nominated by the Crown and partly elective. In 
 some, again, of Class IIL the colonies combining repre- 
 sentative institutions with responsible government the 
 upper chamber is nominated by the Crown, while the 
 lower is elective. Such is the case in the Dominion of 
 Canada, in the Cape Colony, in Newfoundland, in New 
 South Wales, and in Queensland. And lastly, others of 
 this class, such as Victoria and South Australia, receive 
 their legislation from two chambers, both constituted on 
 the elective principle. 
 
 But though in each of these classes the legislative acts 
 of the Colonial Assemblies have to receive the sanction 
 of the imperial authority, the possession by the latter 
 class of " responsible government," as well as represen- 
 tative institutions, makes a considerable difference in 
 their relations to the minister at home. In colonies
 
 vi.] THE COLONIAL OFFICE. 89 
 
 thus governed the members of the Executive Council, 
 the Government of the colony, in fact, are appointed by 
 the Governor alone, with reference to the exigencies of 
 a representative system, or, in other words, in accordance 
 with the views of the local Legislature ; while all other 
 public officers are appointed by the Governor on the 
 advice of the Executive Council, the sanction of the 
 Home Government not being required for any of these 
 appointments ; and thus the control of all public depart- 
 ments is practically placed in the hands of persons 
 commanding the confidence of the majority of the 
 representative assembly. 
 
 But while the duties of the Colonial Office are thus 
 lightened as regards this latter class of cases, it has still 
 a mass of very important functions to perform in respect 
 both to the administrative and to the legislative depart- 
 ments of colonial affairs. In the former department the 
 Secretary for the Colonies is often busily occupied in 
 corresponding with Colonial Governors upon questions 
 relating to the policy to be pursued by them in those 
 situations of difficulty which are of such frequent recur- 
 rence in an empire including so many different, and, 
 in many instances, mutually hostile races as our own ; 
 and it not unf requently becomes his duty to keep himself 
 informed almost from day to day (where the telegraph 
 provides means of daily communication) of every succes- 
 sive step on the policy of a Colonial Governor, and to 
 acquaint him in turn with the views and opinions of 
 Her Majesty's Government thereon. 
 
 In the department of legislation (in vhich is to be 
 included the financial measures adopted by colonies not 
 possessing responsible government) the mere routine
 
 90 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP 
 
 duties of the Colonial Department are very extensive, 
 to say nothing of the serious and difficult questions 
 which, in the course of these duties, may at any moment 
 arise. It has been said that the Crown possesses a veto 
 upon all legislative measures of even the most inde- 
 pendent of the colonies., and from this it follows that the 
 whole mass of colonial legislation must pass regularly 
 under the review of the Colonial Office. In every colony 
 the Governor has authority either to give or to withhold 
 his assent to laws passed by other branches or members 
 of the Legislature, and until that assent is given no such 
 law is valid or binding. Laws are in some cases passed 
 with " suspending clauses ; " that is, although assented 
 to by the Governor, they do not come into operation or 
 take effect in the colony until they shall have been speci- 
 ally confirmed by Her Majesty ; and in other cases Parlia- 
 ment has, for the same purpose, empowered the Governor 
 to reserve laws for the Crown's assent instead of himself 
 assenting or refusing his assent to them. Every law which 
 has received the Governor's assent (unless it contains a 
 suspending clause) comes into operation immediately or 
 at the tune specified in the law itself. But the Crown 
 retains its power to disallow the law ; and if such power 
 be exercised at any time afterwards, the law ceases to 
 have operation from the date at which such disallowance 
 is published in the colony. The discretion of the 
 Colonial Secretary as to disallowing or assenting a law is 
 manifestly one demanding much care and judgment in 
 its exercise ; and, in view of this, it is the practice of 
 the department to require every legislative Act of a 
 colony to be accompanied by a statement from the law- 
 officer of the Crown in such colony, to the effect that in
 
 vi.] THE COLONIAL OFFICE. 91 
 
 his opinion the royal assent may properly be given or 
 ought not to be given thereto, and also by a report from 
 the Governor, or from the law-officer, giving all requisite 
 explanations respecting the object of the Act, the motive 
 in which it originated, and any legal or political question 
 which it may involve. With this assistance the Colonial 
 Secretary proceeds to consider the law, and if the objec- 
 tions to it appear grave enough to justify its disallow- 
 ance, he would probably submit the question to the 
 Cabinet. The decision ultimately arrived at, whether 
 favourable or adverse, is then signified, in the case of a 
 colony possessing representative institutions, by order in 
 Council ; in the case of a Crown colony, generally by a 
 simple despatch. 
 
 In some cases a period is limited, after the expiration 
 of which local enactments, though not actually dis- 
 allowed, cease to have the authority of law in the colony, 
 unless before the lapse of that time Her Majesty's con- 
 firmation of them shall have been signified there ; but, 
 according to the general rule, the disallowance of laws is 
 effected by a substantive act of the royal authority, and 
 they remain in force until that authority is thus exerted. 
 
 In colonies possessing representative assemblies laws 
 purport to be made by the Queen, or by the Governor on 
 Her Majesty's behalf (or sometimes by the Governor 
 alone, omitting any express reference to Her Majesty), 
 with the advice and consent of the Council and Assembly. 
 They are almost invariably designated as Acts. In 
 colonies not having such assemblies laws are designated 
 as "Ordinances," and purport to be made by the 
 Governor, with the advice and consent of the Legislative 
 Council
 
 92 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 It has been above observed that under the head of 
 legislation requiring the royal sanction to its validity is 
 to be included the financial measures of colonies not pos- 
 sessing representative assemblies. In such colonies the 
 rule is for the Governor to submit to the Council of his 
 Government, before the expiration of the month of June 
 in each year, such an estimate as he may think necessary 
 of the whole expenditure not already fixed under the 
 sanction of the Imperial Government, which is intended 
 to be charged upon the colonial revenue for the year 
 then next ensuing, and to transmit to the Secretary of 
 State at the earliest opportunity the ordinance providing 
 for the service of that year. Together with these annual 
 estimates the Governor transmits such full and sufficient 
 information as to any expenses of an unusual nature 
 therein comprised as may be necessary to enable Her 
 Majesty's Government to decide upon the propriety of 
 the proposed expenditure. The annual estimate having 
 been passed by the Council of the colony, the draft of an 
 ordinance providing the ways and means for meeting the 
 proposed expenditure is also laid before them, and 
 thereafter transmitted to the Imperial Government for 
 confirmation. Upon this confirmation being received, 
 the expenditure of the year is considered as definitely 
 limited and arranged ; but in case any further and un- 
 foreseen disbursements should afterwards be required for 
 the service of the year, it is the duty of the Governor to 
 submit a supplementary estimate to the Council for the 
 sum so required; and copies of all estimates, supple- 
 mentary estimates, and ordinances for the imposition of 
 taxes, and of all despatches relating thereto, accompany 
 the colonial accounts when the latter are transmitted to
 
 vi.] THE COLONIAL OFFICE. 93 
 
 this country for the final Imperial audit, which, after 
 passing under the revision of a local auditor, they have 
 to undergo. 
 
 To complete the account of the functions mediately or 
 immediately discharged by this department, it is neces- 
 sary to devote a few words to the subject of emigration. 
 The history of this subject has been as follows : A 
 Commission was appointed some fifty years ago to 
 inquire into the question of emigration, and in 1840 
 a "Colonial Land and Emigration Board," consisting 
 of three Commissioners, was appointed. In 1846 the 
 duty of reporting on colonial laws, which had pre- 
 viously been performed at the Colonial Office, was 
 transferred to the Commissioners, and (a vacancy having 
 occurred at the Board) a legal member was appointed for 
 this service. In 1847 the Board was re-organised, and 
 was specially charged (1) to consider all questions relat- 
 ing to colonial lands which may be referred to them by 
 the Secretary of State, to report on claims to lands, 
 draw up leases for minerals, and draft orders in Council 
 relating to land or emigration; (2) to deal with all 
 matters relating to the conveyance of emigrants to the 
 various colonies of Great Britain, especially Australia; 
 (3) to diffuse information respecting the British colonies 
 in aid of the settlement thereof; (4) to report on all 
 colonial laws and ordinances referred to their considera- 
 tion, especially such as relate to land or emigration. 
 
 The duty of reporting on colonial land questions was 
 formerly very onerous, but after the transfer of the 
 management of the Crown lands in most instances to 
 the Colonial Legislatures, the duties of the Emigration 
 Board became considerably reduced, and a few years ago
 
 94 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. vi. 
 
 the Board was altogether abolished. So much of its 
 functions as still remained to it were transferred to and 
 are now performed by certain officials known as "Crown 
 Agents " for emigration. 
 
 The Secretaryship of the Colonies is one of those 
 ministerial posts which are assigned indifferently to 
 members of either branch of the Legislature. Like the 
 Foreign Secretaryship, however, it has, as a matter of 
 fact, been held for several years past under successive 
 administrations by members of the House of Lords. 
 And it may here be added, as it might have been in 
 the course of the remarks made on the subject of the 
 Foreign Secretaryship, that the constitutional necessity 
 of seating the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the House 
 of Commons, the long- accepted rule of appointing the 
 Home Secretary from the same assembly, and the now 
 generally admitted expediency of assigning seats therein 
 to one or both the heads of the two great spending 
 departments the War Office and Admiralty must 
 naturally tend, in the process of distributing places of 
 dignity and importance among the various party leaders 
 in either House, to place these two departments the 
 Colonies and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs more often 
 perhaps than not in charge of a peer. In such cases the 
 responsibility for the conduct of colonial affairs is secured, 
 as in other instances, by the presence in the House of 
 Commons of a parliamentary Under Secretary for the 
 Colonies, who discharges a function precisely analogous 
 to that exercised by the Under Secretary for Foreign 
 Affairs.
 
 CHAPTEE VIL 
 
 THE WAR OFFICE. 
 
 THE duties devolving upon the working head of the 
 War Office must at all times have been, from the nature 
 of the case, important ; but his position was not always 
 one of the same authority and dignity as at present. It 
 is only in comparatively recent times that the direction 
 of this department has been associated with the Secre- 
 tariat of State, and only in quite recent times that it 
 has been assigned as his sole charge to one of the high 
 functionaries who may be said to hold the Secretariat 
 in commission. For a long time, indeed, for a much 
 longer tune, as has been pointed out, than was the case 
 with the other branches of executive government, it 
 would have been impossible for the Chief of the War 
 Department to have occupied a position of co-ordinate 
 authority with the other ministers of the Crown ; for 
 the simple reason that it was long before this officer 
 became in the modern, the full constitutional sense a 
 minister at all. The command of the army was the last 
 of the royal prerogatives to be brought under the prin- 
 ciple of ministerial responsibility; and until it definitively 
 took its place among those executive functions for the 
 proper discharge of which the advisers of the Sovereign
 
 96 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. vir. 
 
 are held accountable, there was no reason why the Chief 
 of the War Department should be an official of Cabinet 
 rank, or why he should even be (though as a matter of 
 fact he frequently was) a member of one or other branch 
 of the Legislature. So long as the Sovereign continued 
 to be in fact, as well as in name, the Comniander-in-Chief 
 of the Army, it was impossible for his War Minister to 
 be a minister in the full constitutional sense of the word. 1 
 A " Secretary at War," as the official who for nearly 
 two centuries presided over the department was called, 
 is first heard of in the reign of Charles II. ; the creation 
 of and first appointment to this office having been made 
 by Eoyal Warrant of January 1668-9. His position from 
 the outset appears to have been an ambiguous one, and 
 his relations to Parliament, to the Crown, and to other 
 offices and officers connected with the military adminis- 
 tration, were ill -defined, and a subject of frequently 
 recurring controversy. He was, as has been said, 
 "neither a military officer, though the Commander-in- 
 Chief claimed his allegiance as such, nor a responsible 
 minister, though the House of Commons strove to fix 
 him with that character. 2 "Under William III. his 
 
 1 It should scarcely be necessary to guard this and the remarks 
 immediately preceding it from misconstruction. They are, of course, 
 not intended to imply that Parliament had, until quite recent times, 
 no general powers of control in military matters. Such powers it 
 has possessed ever since the Revolution Settlement one of the 
 objects of which was indeed to secure them ; and by means of the 
 "power of the purse," and the annual Mutiny Act, the ultimate 
 authority of the House of Commons in this matter has always been 
 well-established enough. All that is meant is that the full control 
 over the details of military administration and expenditure was 
 not acquired until a much later date. 
 
 2 Clode, Military Forces of the Crown, ii. 253.
 
 viz.] THE WAR OFFICE. 97 
 
 authority was permitted to equal or he was at least 
 treated as though it equalled that of a Secretary of 
 State. He accompanied William abroad to his Conti- 
 nental wars as though in the usual constitutional capac- 
 ity of a Secretary of State; and, what is more, his 
 countersign was actually accepted as a proper attestation 
 of the royal sign-manual Such a condition of things 
 was of course eminently unsatisfactory a king who could 
 "do no wrong" attended and advised by, and acting 
 through, a minister who, in those days, continually 
 asserted that he was not a minister responsible to Parlia- 
 ment. There were even occasions when this failure of 
 constitutional responsibility involved serious practical 
 consequences in the way of abridgment of the right of 
 the subject Thus Lord Bath, for instance, the holder 
 of this office in 1717, justified the issue of orders for the 
 illegal trial and execution of the half-pay officers taken 
 on the field of Preston, upon the express plea that 
 the Secretary at War is " a ministerial and not a consti- 
 tutional officer," that, in fact, he was as much "the mere 
 instrument of the commands of the royal Commander-in- 
 Chief as a private soldier is of the commands of his 
 officer." At the same time, however, while minimising 
 the importance of his post for this purpose, a Secretary 
 at War was very ready to magnify it in departmental 
 affairs ; and constant jealousies arose out of the attempts 
 of this official to exercise control over the Transport and 
 Ordnance Offices, and compel the heads of these offices to 
 report directly to him instead of to the Treasury or the 
 House of Commons. 
 
 As regards Parliament, however, the position of the 
 Secretary at War became somewhat more satisfactorily 
 
 H
 
 98 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 defined towards the close of the eighteenth century. 
 The persistent efforts of the House of Commons to fix 
 him with responsibility were at last successful, and the 
 principle contended for not only received fornjal statutory 
 sanction in Mr. Burke's Act in 1783, but was fully 
 admitted by the then Secretary at War himself. In 
 1795, as has been noticed in the preceding chapter, a 
 Secretary of State for War was appointed, and, in con- 
 junction with that office, assumed the administration of 
 colonial affairs. Appointments, however, continued to 
 be made as usual to the post of Secretary of War, and 
 that official remained in reality the working head of the 
 War Department. The so-called department of War 
 and Colonies came by degrees to be known as the 
 Colonial Department alone, and had, in fact, no con- 
 cern at all with the army so far as the home dispositions 
 of the forces went. The administration of military 
 affairs at home was divided between the Secretary at 
 War, the Commander-in-Chief, and the (now extinct) 
 departments of the Master-General and Board of Ord- 
 nance, while the Secretary of State for War and Colo- 
 nies had, on the other hand, the sole management of all 
 troops directly they left the shores of England. 
 
 The inconveniences, however, and the imperfect effi- 
 ciency of this system, had led, by the middle of the pre- 
 sent century, to a general opinion that the duties of War 
 Minister should be separated from those of Colonial 
 Secretary ; and accordingly, at the commencement of 
 the Crimean campaign, the office of Secretary of State 
 for War was created by declaration in Council, and the 
 Duke of Newcastle was appointed thereto, the old office 
 of Secretary at War being nevertheless still retained.
 
 vii.] THE WAR OFFICE. 99 
 
 But the mismanagement of that campaign, and the par- 
 liamentary inquiry to which it gave rise, had the effect, 
 among others, of convincing the Legislature that further 
 consolidation was required ; and shortly afterwards, in 
 1856, our system of military administration substantially 
 assumed its present form. The office of Secretary at 
 War was abolished, and the departments of Ordnance and 
 Commissariat were united with the War Office, to which 
 was also assigned the control of the militia, the yeomanry, 
 and afterwards the volunteers, and the whole was placed 
 under the supreme and undivided authority of the 
 Secretary of State for War. A question much discussed 
 at the time was whether this high office should be con- 
 fined to members of the House of Commons ; and though 
 it was not so limited to fact, and the first War Secretary 
 after the re-organisation was a peer, the post has ever 
 since been held by a member of the popular Chamber. 
 
 We have next to consider the nature and extent of 
 the authority vested in the Secretary for War; and 
 herein of his relations to the military head of the royal 
 forces, the Commander-in-Chief. 
 
 It will be recognised as a necessary inference from 
 much that has been above stated that the relation of 
 the Secretary for War and the Commander-in-Chief must 
 in general, and as regards all important matters of mili- 
 tary administration, be that of superior to subordinate. 
 Were it otherwise, the principle of ministerial responsi- 
 bility could not be applied. For the Commander-in- 
 Chief is not a member of the Cabinet, nor need he have 
 a seat in either House of Parliament ; and unless, there- 
 fore, he could be overruled by the Secretary for War, 
 the acts of administration performed by him in the
 
 100 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 name of the Sovereign would be acts for which no 
 minister would be responsible, which is contrary to the 
 now settled principle and practice of the Constitution. 
 
 It would appear, however, at first sight as though 
 this constitutional principle had been set at nought in 
 the earlier designations to this office. The patent of 
 appointment conferring upon the Secretary of State for 
 War "the administration and government of the army 
 and ordnance, including all matters relating to the 
 pecuniary affairs, establishment, and maintenance of the 
 army," was originally accompanied by a supplementary 
 patent limiting the general powers of the Secretary for 
 War in certain points, namely, " the military command 
 and discipline of the army, and appointments to and pro- 
 motions therein, so far as the same may be exercised by 
 the Crown through the Commander-in-Chief for the time 
 being." But the true constitutional effect of this instru- 
 ment (which is now no longer issued) was determined 
 by a report of the Committee of the House of Com- 
 mons which was appointed in 1860 to consider the 
 question of military organisation. The result of their 
 inquiry was to show that the supplementary patent, 
 rightly construed, was a mere indication of the pleasure 
 of the Crown that the ordinary exercise of the par- 
 ticular powers thereby reserved should appertain to 
 the Commander-in-Chief, subject to the supervision of 
 a responsible minister ; and that the Secretary for War 
 was not and could not be absolved from his constitu- 
 tional responsibility for the mode of exercise of these 
 powers. 1 The practical working of these limitations, 
 
 1 This point is made more clear by the terms of the royal 
 warrant of Oct. 11, 1861, the last issued on the subject, wherein,
 
 vii.] THE WAR OFFICE. 101 
 
 therefore, is merely to give the Commander-in-Chief an 
 initiative in certain acts of administration, while still 
 leaving it necessary for him to obtain the sanction of the 
 War Minister to the performance of these acts. This 
 principle, for instance, as was fully admitted by the 
 Commander-in-Chief before the Committee, is invariably 
 respected in the case of all the higher military appoint- 
 ments. The Commander-in-Chief informs the Secretary 
 for War of the persons whom he proposes to nominate 
 to such appointments, and their names have to be ap- 
 proved by the Secretary for War before being submitted 
 to the Sovereign. And even the ordinary promotions in 
 regiments, which are made by the Commander-in-Chief 
 without communication with the Secretary for War, are 
 nevertheless sent to him before being submitted to the 
 Sovereign, in order that he may have an opportunity of 
 interfering in case any irregularity should be apparent in 
 the step. As to the very highest posts, the command-in- 
 chief on foreign service, etc., they are not only subject to 
 the approval of the Secretary for War, but are in many 
 instances made "Cabinet questions." 
 
 It is evident, moreover, from the nature of the case, 
 that the authority of the Civil Government over the 
 military administration must be supreme ; and that, as 
 a matter of fact, this authority must have existed in a 
 
 after reciting it to be Her Majesty's pleasure that the military com- 
 mand and discipline of, appointments to, and promotion in the army, 
 " together with all powers," etc. etc., vested now or hereafter in the 
 Commander-in-Chief, should be excepted from the department of the 
 Secretary of State for War, it is expressly provided that such powers 
 shall be exercised " subject to our general control over the govern- 
 ment of the army, and to the responsibility of the Secretary of State 
 for the exercise of our royal prerogative in that behalf."
 
 102 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. ' [CHAP. 
 
 latent form even in days before the principle of minis- 
 terial responsibility had been extended to the military 
 prerogatives of the Crown. The ultimate control over 
 an administrative service must necessarily rest with the 
 power to which it owes its existence; and ever since 
 the Revolution "the army has existed only by the will of 
 Parliament. It was declared by the Bill of Rights that 
 "the raising or keeping a standing army within the 
 kingdom in the time of peace, unless it be with the con- 
 sent of Parliament, is against law ; " and this consent is 
 never given for any longer period than a year. In each 
 successive session of Parliament it is necessary to pass 
 a Mutiny Act, which, after reciting in its preamble the 
 above-quoted provision of the Bill of Rights, and declaring 
 that "it is adjudged necessary by Her Majesty and this pre- 
 sent Parliament that a body of forces should be continued 
 for the safety of the United Kingdom, the defence of the 
 possessions of Her Majesty's Crown, and the preservation 
 of the balance of power in Europe," proceeds to enact 
 that the said force shall consist of such and such a 
 number of men. Unless this statute were renewed the 
 army would, ipso facto, cease to exist at the end of 
 the year for which its maintenance was authorised 
 by the Mutiny Act last passed. For there would be no 
 legal authority to raise recruits, nor any legal means of 
 punishing the soldiers of the existing force if they chose to 
 desert and return to their own homes ; since the military 
 discipline to which they are amenable is itself the creation 
 of the Mutiny Act, and unknown to and unenforceable 
 by the common law. It is clear, therefore, as has been 
 said, that the Parliament which creates the army must 
 possess the ultimate control over the army, to say no-
 
 \IL] - - THE WAR OFFICE. 103 
 
 thing of the secondary power which it exercises through 
 its financial functions, and its inherent right to inquire 
 in what manner the money which it grants for the main- 
 tenance of the military service is applied. 
 
 Such, then, are the relations of the Secretary for 
 War to the highest military authority ; his relations to 
 the Navy and the department which presides over its 
 administration are perhaps somewhat less clearly defined, 
 but it will be more convenient to defer the consideration 
 of them until the constitution and functions of the Board 
 of Admiralty come under review. As regards the Cabinet 
 in general, the authority of the Secretary for War is, as 
 regards this most important of his functions, strictly 
 limited. It has already been said, for instance, that the 
 appointments of general officers on foreign service are 
 frequently made Cabinet questions ; and it may be added 
 that a certain class of these appointments are invariably 
 so treated. In the event of a necessity arising for the 
 susception of actual hostilities in any foreign country, 
 the choice of the general officer who is to take command 
 of the force to be despatched devolves, in the first instance, 
 upon the whole Cabinet The Secretary for War then 
 communicates their decision to the Commander-in-Chief, 
 with instructions to him to take the pleasure of the 
 Sovereign thereupon. The Crimean War, as being the 
 first war waged since the creation of the new Secretary- 
 ship of State for the department of military affairs, may 
 be taken as fixing the constitutional practice on the sub- 
 ject; and it was stated by the Duke of Newcastle, in 
 his evidence before the Sebastopol Committee, that not 
 only were the selections for the command -in -chief 
 and the principal divisional commands in the Crimea
 
 104 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 made subject to the approval of ministers in Cabinet 
 Council ; but that all important operations the number 
 of troops to be sent out, and so forth were, as a matter 
 of course, submitted to the Cabinet. This practice has 
 been followed in all the minor wars in which the country 
 has been engaged from that time forward ; so that we 
 may now say that in respect of all the more important 
 duties which devolve upon him when an actual state of 
 hostilities exists, the departmental independence of the 
 Secretary for War is exchanged for the position of mili- 
 tary adviser of the Cabinet, possessing, indeed, a con- 
 sultative voice of exceptional moral authority in their 
 deliberations, but unable, to any further extent than that 
 of his single vote, to influence their ultimate decision. 
 
 His responsibility to Parliament has, as is pointed 
 out above, been secured for many years past, directly 
 and by his personal presence in the House of Commons. 
 Like the other Secretaries of State, however, and indeed 
 most of the chiefs of the great departments, he has an Under 
 Secretary, who, as a rule, of late years has been selected 
 from the House of Lords, and has represented the Office 
 in that branch of the Legislature. As a rule the Under 
 Secretary either is or has been a military man ; and as 
 the Secretary for War is almost invariably a civilian, it 
 has been thought advisable that either the Under 
 Secretary or some other departmental officer in Parlia- 
 ment should be professional, and capable of affording assist- 
 ance to his chief in parliamentary discussions of military 
 matters. With reference, however, to this question of 
 responsibility, it should be borne in mind that on the 
 abolition of the office of the Secretary at War (who was 
 strictly a financial officer representing the Treasury), the
 
 vii.] THE WAR OFFICE. 105 
 
 oversight and control over army expenditure reverted tq 
 the last-named department, which still remains directly 
 responsible for the same, as, indeed, it is for the outlay 
 of the other great spending department of the State, and 
 generally for the financial administration of all the other 
 offices of the Government.
 
 CHAPTER VIIL 
 
 THE INDIA OFFICE. 
 
 THE fifth and last created branch of the Secretariat of 
 State is that entrusted with the direction of the govern- 
 ment of India. 
 
 The extraordinary history of the events by which 
 this vast peninsula became originally the possession of a 
 company of private traders is, or ought to be, well 
 known to every Englishman, and it is not necessary to 
 trace here either the territorial growth of our Indian 
 Empire, or to recount in detail the various political 
 arrangements whereby English Governments endeavoured 
 from time to time to bring the increasing acquisitions of 
 the East India Company under more effective State con- 
 trol. For all purposes explanatory of its present system 
 of administration, it will suffice to limit our retrospect 
 on this subject to the last hundred years of British rule, 
 and to take as a starting-point the great reconstruction 
 of its government effected by Mr. Pitt in 1784. Before 
 that date the administration of the affairs of India by 
 the Court of Directors of the East India Company had 
 been subjected to a certain amount of control on the 
 part of the Home Government ; but the supervision of 
 the Executive had not been vigilantly, nor could it per- 
 haps have been very effectively, exercised. The year
 
 CHAP, vni.] THE INDIA OFFICE. 107 
 
 1783 witnessed Mr. Fox's abortive attempt to pass an 
 Act for reconstructing the system of Indian government, 
 an attempt of which the failure led to the downfall of 
 the Coalition Ministry ; and in August of the following 
 year the bill introduced by his great rival, with the same 
 object, became law. Its main principle consisted in the 
 establishment of a Board of Control, composed of six 
 Commissioners, to be appointed by the Crown (instead 
 of, as in Fox's scheme, to be nominated by the House of 
 Commons), all members of the Privy Council, and of 
 whom the Chancellor of the Exchequer and one of the 
 Principal Secretaries of State were to be two. These 
 Commissioners were not to interfere in commercial 
 matters, but in all other matters their powers were most 
 extensive. They were vested with a control and super- 
 intendence over all civil, military, and revenue officers 
 of the Company, and the Directors were obliged to lay 
 before them all papers relative to the management of 
 their possessions, and to obey all orders which they 
 received from them on points connected with the civil 
 and military government or the revenues of their terri- 
 tories. The Court of Directors had no power to send 
 any orders regarding their civil and military government 
 without the sanction of the Commissioners; but the 
 Commissioners might, if the Directors neglected to send 
 true copies of their intended despatches upon any sub- 
 ject within fourteen days, send of themselves orders 
 and instructions relative to the civil or military concerns 
 of the Company to any of the presidencies of India ; and 
 these instructions the Court of Directors were in such 
 case bound to forward. If, however, the Commis- 
 sioners forwarded any orders to the Court of Directors
 
 108 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 on points not relating to the civil or military govern- 
 ment, or the revenues of the territorial possessions of the 
 Company, the Directors might appeal to the King in 
 Council 
 
 But the most important of the powers reserved to the 
 Executive was that of acting, whenever circumstances 
 seemed to demand it, through a Secret Committee, which 
 the Court of Directors were called on to appoint, and 
 which was not to exceed the number of three. In all 
 cases in which secrecy was requisite, and particularly such 
 as related to war or peace with the native princes of 
 India, the Commissioners of the Board of Control had 
 the power of sending their orders to the local Govern- 
 ment of India through this Committee (which in such a 
 case acted as the mere passive vehicle of their instruc- 
 tions), and without either consulting the Court of Direc- 
 tors, or even informing them of what had been done. 
 By the clause in which the Commissioners were author- 
 ised to transmit orders through this Committee, and to 
 receive answers under the same concealment, the Board 
 could interrupt and suspend, as often as they thought 
 fit, the powers of the Court of Directors. In fact, as far 
 as related to all the higher functions of government, the 
 Court of Directors was practically reduced to three, and 
 these three, in conjunction with the President of the 
 Board of Control (for the two other great ministers 
 nominated to the Board but rarely found time to attend 
 it) constituted the Indian Executive. 
 
 For over seventy years this system of double govern- 
 ment remained in force, but its defects and inconveni- 
 ences were increasingly noticed and deprecated ; and in 
 1858, immediately after the great Indian Mutiny, it was
 
 vni.] THE INDIA OFFICE. 109 
 
 resolved to abolish it An Act was passed vesting in 
 Her Majesty the territories then under the government 
 of the East India Company, and enacting that, save as 
 otherwise provided by the said statute, " all the powers 
 and duties then exercised or performed by the East India 
 Company, or by the Court of Directors or Court of Pro- 
 prietors of the said Company, either alone or by the 
 direction or with the sanction or approbation of the 
 Board of Control, should in future be exercised and per- 
 formed by one of Her Majesty's Principal Secretaries of 
 State." The statute goes on to enact the establishment 
 of a Council, consisting of fifteen members, to be styled 
 the Council of India, and proceeds to provide for the 
 method of their appointment, their qualifications, and 
 the mode of filling up vacancies in their number. They 
 were to hold their offices by the most stable form of 
 official tenure, namely, " during good behaviour," and to 
 be, like judges, removable therefrom only by address 
 from both Houses of Parliament. No member of this 
 Council was to be capable of sitting and voting in Parlia- 
 ment. The Council thus appointed is, by the 19th sec- 
 tion, empowered, " under the direction of the Secretary 
 of State, and subject to the provisions of the Act, to 
 conduct all the business transacted in the United King- 
 dom in relation to the government of India;" and the 
 Secretary of State is authorised "to divide the Council 
 into Committees for the more convenient transaction of 
 business, and from time to time to rearrange such Com- 
 mittees, and to direct what departments of the business 
 in relation to the government of India under the Act 
 shall be under such Committees respectively, and gener- 
 ally to direct the manner in which such business shall be
 
 110 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 transacted." He is further invested with authority to 
 appoint and remove a Vice-President of the Council. 
 Five members of the Council are necessary to form a 
 quorum. It may hold meetings notwithstanding any 
 vacancy in its members ; and such meetings are to be 
 convened and held when and as the Secretary of State 
 shall direct, but at least one such meeting must be held 
 every week. 
 
 The Council thus constituted advises and assists the 
 Secretary of State in the transaction of Indian business, 
 and, as regards two classes of questions, controls his acts. 
 All appointments to the Supreme Council for India, or to 
 the Councils of the several Presidencies, and all appropria- 
 tions of the Indian revenues, are made subject to the con- 
 sent of this Council, who, however, exercise only a power 
 of veto, and can no more take any positive action in 
 these matters without the assent of the Secretary than he 
 without theirs. Other questions not belonging to these 
 two categories are submitted to the Council, and they de- 
 clare their opinions thereon ; but as regards all such other 
 questions, the Secretary of State may overrule the deci- 
 sion of the Council; although, in that case, he must 
 afford them an opportunity of recording their reasons 
 for dissenting from his acts, and must himself record his 
 own reasons for disregarding their advice. He may also 
 introduce Bills into Parliament relating to Indian affairs 
 without consulting his Council thereupon. 
 
 The Legislature, moreover, has deemed it wise to give 
 him the same ultimate powers of summarily authorita- 
 tive and secret action which were possessed by the 
 President of the Board of Control in his relations with 
 the Court of the old East India Company; and the
 
 viii.] THE INDIA OFFICE. Ill 
 
 Secretary of State may despatch letters and issue orders 
 directly to the officials in India through what is known as 
 the " Secret Department," corresponding to the " Secret 
 Committee " of the Court of Directors. The power, how- 
 ever, is of course but rarely resorted to, and as a matter 
 of ordinary routine almost everything goes through the 
 Council 
 
 In pursuance of one of the provisions above cited, the 
 Council has been divided into eight Committees 
 namely, the Eevenue, the Judicial, the Public Works, the 
 Political, the Military, the Finance, the Statistics and 
 Commerce, and the Stores Committee. Each Committee 
 is charged with its own particular branch of administra- 
 tion, and is required to advise upon drafts of despatches, 
 to frame answers thereto for the consideration of the 
 Secretary, and generally to discuss all matters referred 
 to them by the whole Council or by the Secretary of 
 State. 
 
 It follows from the above review of the composition 
 and functions of the Indian Department that the con- 
 stitutional position of the Secretary of State for India 
 differs in a somewhat important respect from that of any 
 other minister. Speaking generally, he is the person 
 responsible to Parliament for the administration of India, 
 and must be prepared to defend in Parliament his con- 
 duct and policy, and also to determine upon his own 
 responsibility all questions affecting the welfare and good 
 government of that country which have not been speci- 
 ally reserved by Parliament for the decision of other 
 authorities. Certain questions, however, having, as we 
 have seen, been distinctly reserved by Act of Parliament
 
 112 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 for determination by a majority of the Indian Council, 
 viz. appointments to the Supreme or Presidential 
 Councils, and grants of money out of the revenues of 
 India, it results, of course, that a. Secretary of State for 
 India, if consulted by the Council upon either of these 
 questions, cannot be held personally accountable for the 
 course actually adopted. It may at first sight appear, 
 and no doubt it is theoretically the fact, that by thus 
 throwing responsibility upon a body not represented, and 
 indeed statutorily disqualified from direct representation, 
 in Parliament, the Legislature has parted with its powers 
 of constitutional control. Practically, however, this is 
 not the case. The proper mode of regarding the Council 
 for India is as a body deputed by Parliament to exercise 
 a species of quasi-parliamentary control in certain matters 
 over the Secretary of State for India, and the authority 
 so delegated is, of course, liable to be revoked. The 
 true position of the Council was beyond doubt accu- 
 rately defined by an eminent Ex-Secretary of State for 
 India in a debate which took place on the subject some 
 fourteen years ago. "The House of Commons is so 
 overwhelmed with business nearer home that it has no 
 opportunity of making itself acquainted with all those 
 vast fields of knowledge that will enable it to exercise 
 an efficient influence over the Secretary of State for 
 India. Therefore it has instituted this Council to be its 
 deputy, as it were, to watch him, and see that the powers 
 placed in his hands are not abused. It ought, however, 
 to be clearly understood that the moment the House 
 steps in and expresses an opinion on a subject connected 
 with India, that moment the jurisdiction of the Council 
 ought to cease. It is not to be endured in this constitu-
 
 viii.] THE INDIA OFFICE. 113 
 
 tional country for a moment that the Council should set 
 itself against the express opinion of the House." Were 
 it otherwise, "their large powers would speedily be 
 restricted." It being understood that the "expression" 
 of its " opinion " by the House means its expression 
 through the formal vote of a majority of the House, and 
 not any informal declaration of the views of a section, 
 however numerous, of its members, there is no doubt 
 that this statement correctly describes the constitutional 
 relation subsisting between Parliament and the Council 
 for India. 
 
 The manner in which the House of Commons exer- 
 cises its general controlling power over the proceedings 
 of the Indian Government in ordinary cases may be seen 
 by referring to the debates in the House on August 2, 
 1867, concerning the famine in Orissa, and the despatch 
 of the Secretary for India respecting the conduct of the 
 local authorities upon that emergency ; and on April 20 
 and 24, 1868, on the policy and conduct of Government 
 in advancing loans of public money to the Madras 
 Irrigation Company. The extent and the limits of its 
 ordinary authority are marked by these two circum- 
 stances (1) that although the whole of the Indian 
 revenues are at the disposal of the Secretary of State 
 and the Council, to be by them drawn upon for all 
 expenditure required for the service of India, they must 
 make known to Parliament all expenditure incurred, and 
 may not increase the debt of India without the sanction 
 of the House of Commons ; and (2) that, on the other 
 hand, although the Indian Budget is annually laid before 
 that House to enable its members to offer suggestions, 
 ask for information, and generally criticise the policy of 
 
 I
 
 114 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. vin. 
 
 the Government in relation to India, the financial state- 
 ment is followed by no application for any vote to con- 
 trol or influence the taxation of India, but merely, by 
 certain formal resolutions, setting forth the actual 
 revenue and expenditure in India for the current year. 
 This, however, does not preclude the moving of abstract 
 resolutions condemning or recommending the resort to 
 particular means of raising revenue. 
 
 The Secretary for India has frequently, during the 
 past years, been a member of the Upper House, and in 
 such cases he is represented in the House of Commons 
 by the Under Secretary, whom the Act, in one of its 
 provisions above quoted, authorises to sit in that 
 assembly.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE ADMIRALTY. 
 
 THE Admiralty is another of those departments which, 
 like the Treasury, have been formed by putting the 
 office of an ancient and high officer of State " into com- 
 mission." What the Treasury is to the long-suspended 
 office of Lord High Treasurer, that the Admiralty is to 
 the similarly situated office of Lord High Admiral. The 
 first appointment to this post of which any historical 
 record exists was made in 1385 in the person of Richard 
 Fitzallen, Earl of Arundel and Surrey; but it is only 
 from the year 1405 that an unbroken series of Lord 
 High Admirals can be traced. In 1636 the office 
 was for the first time put in commission ; and under 
 the Commonwealth the affairs of the Admiralty were 
 managed by a Committee of Parliament. At the 
 Restoration the Duke of York, afterwards James II., 
 was appointed Lord High Admiral, and held the office 
 until 1673, applying himself to its affairs with a dili- 
 gence to which his Secretary, Pepys, as readers of the 
 famous Diary will recollect, gives ample testimony. 
 On his accession to the throne in 1686 he again declared 
 himself in Council to be Lord High Admiral, and retained 
 the post until his abdication in 1688. In the interval 
 between his resignation and resumption of the office,
 
 116 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 and again on the accession of William III., it was put 
 into commission. An Act was passed by the Eevolution 
 Parliament in 1690 for the purpose of defining and 
 declaring the authority of the Commissioners whom it 
 might please the Crown to appoint for the execution of 
 the office; and two years later we find the House of 
 Commons addressing the Crown with the view, appar- 
 ently, of getting this Act put into operation. A resolu- 
 tion was passed to the effect that His Majesty " is humbly 
 advised to constitute a Commission of Admiralty of such 
 persons as are of known experience in maritime affairs ; 
 and that for the future all orders for the management 
 of the fleet do pass through the Admiralty that shall be 
 so constituted." The Admiralty as constituted in pursu- 
 ance of this resolution became substantially the depart- 
 ment which now manages the affairs of the Navy, and 
 which, except for some few years in the last and in the 
 present century, has continued ever since 1690 to execute 
 the office thus put into commission. 
 
 The office of Lord High Admiral was revived for a 
 few months in 1702 in the person of Lord Pembroke; 
 it was held for six years after Lord Pembroke's removal 
 by Queen Anne's consort, Prince George of Denmark; 
 and it was again, in 1827, conferred upon H.RH. the 
 Duke of Clarence. But the results of this last experi- 
 ment gave so little satisfaction that eighteen months 
 later the Duke of Wellington, then Prime Minister, 
 deemed it expedient to advise the revocation of the Lord 
 High Admiral's patent, and to reconstitute the Board of 
 Admiralty on the old basis. 
 
 The Lords Commissioners who form the Board of 
 Admiralty are now four in number, and consist of a First
 
 ix.] THE ADMIRALTY. 117 
 
 Lord and three Junior Lords. They are appointed by 
 letters-patent under the Great Seal, which describe them 
 as " Commissioners for executing the office of Lord High 
 Admiral of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and 
 Ireland, and the dominions, etc., thereto belonging, and 
 the territories or parts beyond the seas possessed by any 
 subjects." Under this patent the Board of Admiralty has 
 control over the administration of the entire naval force 
 of the empire (though not, as will be presently seen, of 
 the movements of that force) both at home and abroad ; 
 it has the command of the royal marines, and the direc- 
 tion of the royal dockyards, and of the vast body of 
 workmen employed therein in shipbuilding, and in the 
 preparation of stores and material for the use of the 
 naval service. 
 
 The First Lord of the Admiralty is always a Cabinet 
 Minister; and of the Junior Lords two are usually "naval," 
 and one " civil ; " the last having, as a rule, a seat in one 
 or the other Houses of Parliament. Two secretaries are 
 attached to it, one permanent and the other " political," 
 the latter of whom represents the department in the 
 House of Commons when the First Lord happens to be 
 a member of the Upper House. 
 
 The Board of Admiralty, unlike the Treasury Board, 
 is a really deliberative body; for although the First 
 Lord possesses, in spite of the nominally co-ordinate 
 powers conferred upon his colleagues by this patent, a 
 supreme authority, he is bound to carry the naval lords 
 with him in his measures ; and he would therefore, in 
 the event of finding any of them irreconcilably opposed 
 to his policy, be compelled either to modify it in defer- 
 ence to their objections or to require them to resign. In
 
 118 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP 
 
 practice, however, this necessity does not often arise, for 
 by soliciting and obtaining the sanction of the Cabinet 
 and the Sovereign to his measures, he can once more 
 place them before his dissentient colleagues in so authori- 
 tative a form that the latter will usually withdraw their 
 opposition and submit to be overruled. 
 
 The departmental relation of the Admiralty to the 
 Cabinet has next to be considered ; and the most impor- 
 tant point to note in this matter is the distinctly subor- 
 dinate position which it holds as compared with that, 
 for instance, of the War Department. Its chief is not 
 a Secretary of State ; it is a mere Executive Board, and 
 as such the exercise of its control over the movements 
 of the navy is largely, though not entirely, subject to 
 directions which may be given to it not only by the 
 Cabinet as a whole, but even by certain other depart- 
 ments over which Secretaries of State preside. Thus, 
 for example, the strength of naval squadrons upon colo- 
 nial or foreign service is determined respectively by the 
 Colonial and Foreign Offices ; and any one of the Prin- 
 cipal Secretaries of State, when conveying the Eoyal 
 commands to the Admiralty for the execution of any 
 service which the Government of the country might 
 require, would have to be as strictly obeyed by that 
 department as they would be mutatis mutandis by the 
 Horse Guards. 
 
 The position of the Admiralty is indeed one of more 
 independence than the Horse Guards in this respect, 
 that the former possess, under their patent, the power 
 of moving ships, whereas the Commander -in -Chief, to 
 quote the dictum of the Duke of Wellington, "cannot 
 move a corporal's guard from London to Windsor
 
 ix.] THE ADMIRALTY. 119 
 
 without the authority of a Secretary of State." But 
 apart from this special attribution of authority, the 
 Admiralty may be regarded as holding the Queen's 
 ships as continually at Her Majesty's disposal, and in 
 readiness to order them to the performance of any duty 
 which the needs of the State, as determined by other 
 departments, or the Cabinet at large, may appear to 
 require. Thus, if the Foreign Office require to send a 
 fleet on any particular service, or the Colonial Office to 
 despatch a ship of war to a colony, the Queen's pleasure 
 would be in each case conveyed to the Admiralty by the 
 respective Secretaries of State for these two departments. 
 These orders once given, the Admiralty is placed in com- 
 munication with the particular department by which its 
 services have been put into requisition, and becomes 
 directly responsible for all the details of the work to be 
 performed. The complete departmental subordination 
 of the Admiralty was illustrated in the last century, 
 when Lord Chatham took the correspondence with 
 naval commanders into his own hands, and is said to 
 have required the First Lord of the Admiralty to sign 
 instructions which he did not even allow him to peruse. 
 And again in the present century, on the occasion of the 
 secret expedition to Copenhagen, the Board of Admiralty, 
 in a document signed with their own hands, formally 
 divested themselves of all control and even cognisance 
 of the movements of the ships detailed for that service, 
 directing the admiral in command to receive his instruc- 
 tions from, and communicate directly with, the Secretary 
 of State. Such an assertion of the supreme authority of 
 the Fjxecutive is not, perhaps, likely to recur in these 
 times; but the value of the precedent as determining
 
 120 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 the constitutional position of this department is not 
 thereby affected. 
 
 Within the sphere of his departmental authority, how- 
 ever, the functions of the First Lord of the Admiralty 
 are of a highly important and responsible character. 
 His duties include the general supervision and control 
 of every department of the service; the consideration 
 and determination of all political questions affecting his 
 department, such as those connected with the suppression 
 of the slave trade ; the settlement of all matters of naval 
 expenditure, and the preparation of the naval estimates, 
 which have to be signed by him; all appointments to 
 naval commands, and promotions therein, and all civil 
 appointments connected with the Admiralty ; all honours 
 and distinction to naval officers, and other like matters. 
 
 To the First Lord of the Admiralty, as to most of 
 the chiefs of the other great departments, a parlia- 
 mentary Under Secretary is attached ; but the rule of 
 late years having been to select the director of the naval 
 as of the military administration of the country from the 
 Lower House, the amount of aid rendered by this subor- 
 dinate minister to his chief in Parliament will in this case 
 depend rather upon arrangements of mutual convenience 
 than upon constitutional requirements. Should the 
 First Lord, however, be a member of the Upper House 
 (as is the case at present), the position of the parlia- 
 mentary Secretary, as representing this department in 
 the House of Commons, and prepared to furnish informa- 
 tion as to all the multifarious details of its immense 
 business, is one of very great importance. Depart^ 
 mentally considered, his position is subordinate to that 
 of the Junior Lords, as he has no consultative voice (at
 
 ix.] THE ADMIRALTY. 121 
 
 least as of right) at Board meetings ; but being in con- 
 stant and confidential communication with the First 
 Lord (whose authority, as has been pointed out, is in 
 the last resort supreme), his effective influence in the 
 department may, if he is a man of energy and ability, 
 be very considerable. His most important duty in the 
 House of Commons, when he represents the Admiralty 
 in that branch of the Legislature, is of course that of 
 moving, explaining, and defending the Navy estimates. 
 Under the general direction of the secretaries, the 
 Admiralty Office is superintended by six principal 
 officers to wit, the Controller of the Navy, in whom is 
 vested the entire management of the dockyards; the 
 Accountant -General of the Navy ; the Storekeeper- 
 General, who checks the supply of stores and timber 
 to the Controller of the Navy; the Controller of Vic- 
 tualling; the Director- General of the Medical Depart- 
 ment ; and the Director of Engineering and Architectural 
 Works (who constructs the barracks for the marines, and 
 all the great buildings connected with the dockyards). 
 All these officers are independent of each other, but are 
 responsible to the Board for the general conduct and 
 special details of the duties of their respective depart- 
 ments. They are always consulted upon every important 
 measure affecting those duties, but they are subject to 
 general directions from the superintending lord, as to 
 any particular service which they may be required to 
 undertake. Whenever occasion calls for it the First 
 Lord himself communicates directly with these officers. 
 With the Controller of the Navy such communications 
 axe most frequent, affording him constant opportunities 
 of laying before the First Lord his views upon the state
 
 122 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. ix. 
 
 of the ships of the Navy, and the measures he may deem 
 necessary to maintain them in an efficient condition. 
 There are also other minor but important departments, 
 such as that of the Director of Transports, the Eegistrar 
 of Contracts and Public Securities, and the Hydro- 
 grapher. Each department is placed under the direction 
 of one of the Junior Lords.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE BOARD OF TRADE. 
 
 THE earliest recognition of the need of a Department of 
 Trade is usually dated from the time of Charles II., but 
 the first suggestion of such a department appears to have 
 been given under the Protectorate. In 1655 Cromwell 
 appointed his son Richard, "with many lords of the 
 council, judges, and gentlemen, and about twenty mer- 
 chants of London, York, Newcastle, Yarmouth, Dover, 
 and other places, to meet and consider by what means 
 the traffic and navigation of the Commonwealth might 
 be best promoted and regulated, and to report on the 
 subject" Nothing is known of the results of this step, 
 and it is probable that not much came of it. This, at 
 least, is to be gathered from the circumstance that the 
 Dutch, who were at first alarmed at this sign of energy 
 on the part of their commercial rival, appear to have 
 been reassured by subsequent observation of the course 
 of events. A curious piece of evidence to this effect is 
 preserved in the records of the State Paper Office in the 
 form of a despatch from the Dutch minister in London 
 to the States-General, describing his relief at the finding 
 that the movement for the promotion of British trade
 
 124 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 had come to nothing. 1 But though Cromwell's efforts 
 in this direction have borne no very substantial fruit, 
 there are, nevertheless, traces to be found of the exist- 
 ence of some kind of Trade Department before the defi- 
 nite establishment of the Councils of Trade and Planta- 
 tions under Charles II. The records of the Exchequer 
 contain the entry of an order for payment to be made of 
 a certain sum to Walter Frost, treasurer, " for the 
 Council's contingencies for satisfying the salaries of the 
 officers attending the Commissioners of Trade." 
 
 It is on the whole, however, correct to say that the 
 first attempt at the establishment of a Trade Council 
 which had any well-defined results took place under 
 Charles II. Its circumstances, which have been more 
 fully described in treating of the Colonial Office, need 
 only be briefly recapitulated here. It will be remem- 
 bered that by two Commissions in 1660, Charles II. 
 established two separate Councils, one for trade, and 
 the other for foreign plantations, which two Councils 
 were afterwards united into a "Board of Trade and 
 Plantations ; " that this Board was abolished in pursu- 
 ance of a resolution moved by Mr. Burke in 1780, 2 and 
 its business, so far as trade was concerned, transferred 
 by 22 Geo. III., c. 82, to " such committee or committees 
 as his Majesty should appoint." The affairs of trade 
 were then managed for a time by an informal Committee 
 of the Privy Council, and it was not till four years after- 
 
 1 Thus runs the passage: "A Committee of Trade was some 
 time since erected in London, which we then feared would be very 
 prejudicial to our State, but we are glad to see that it is only 
 nominal ; so that we hope in time those in London will forget that 
 ever they were merchants." 
 
 2 See Chap. VI.
 
 x.] THE BOARD OF TRADE. 125 
 
 wards that this branch of the Government once more 
 had a regular establishment assigned to it. In 1786 an 
 order in Council was passed creating the Committee of 
 Council for Trade, an offshoot of the Privy Council, 
 which, instead of remaining locally and nominally 
 attached to its parent stock, as has been the case, we 
 shall hereafter see, with another similar outgrowth the 
 Education Department has undergone complete sever- 
 ance from it, and has long ceased to be known in popular 
 language as a Committee of Council at all, but is styled 
 simply the Board of Trade. At its creation in 1786 an 
 establishment of clerks small, of course, as compared 
 with the clerical staff of the present Board was attached 
 to it, and its business appears to have consisted in the 
 consideration of commercial treaties, of colonial Acts 
 affecting trade, and of import and export duties, pro- 
 hibitions, etc., affecting the trade of the country. The 
 business of the Board remained unaltered in principle 
 till the opening of the free trade era in the middle of 
 the present century ; and during the greater part of this 
 period of sixty years its duties seem to have been as 
 follows, viz. to advise the Foreign Office on commercial 
 questions arising out of treaties with Foreign States ; to 
 advise the Colonial Office as to the allowance of the Acts 
 of the various Legislatures so far as related to matters of 
 trade ; to advise the Treasury on matters connected with 
 customs and excise ; to advise the Privy Council Office 
 with regard to the grant of commercial charters by the 
 Crown ; to prepare orders in Council under various Acts 
 of Parliament on matters relating to trade; to collect 
 and revise the statistics relating to trade, and to digest 
 and abstract the national statistics generally. These,
 
 126 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 together with the duty of preparing and superintending 
 through Parliament the Bills arising out of the business 
 of the department, constituted, until a comparatively 
 recent period, nearly the whole of the duties of the 
 Board of Trade. But within this period, the growth of 
 joint-stock companies, the establishment and develop- 
 ment of railways, the rapid increase in shipping, and 
 other extensions of industrial progress, have from time 
 to time necessitated various legislative measures, some 
 of a constructive nature, others relating to regulation 
 and inspection, which have thrown many new adminis- 
 trative duties on the Board of Trade. On the other 
 hand, however, one of the most important of the original 
 functions of the Board, viz. the negotiation of commercial 
 treaties, was in 1872, after inquiry by a Parliamentary 
 Committee, transferred to a newly created department 
 in the Foreign Office. 
 
 In the last century, and at the beginning of this, the 
 mode of doing business at the Board of Trade appears to 
 have been by minutes passed at a Board consisting of 
 the members of the Committee of Council, or some of 
 them. From the minute-books for the years 1786-97 it 
 appears that members of the Committee, varying from 
 one to seven or eight, actually attended, the President of 
 the Board being always one, and sometimes acting alone. 
 This mode of doing business, however, gradually became 
 a fiction ; and now, like that of the Treasury, and unlike 
 that of the Admiralty, the Board of Trade has practically 
 ceased to exist as a deliberative body. It is formally 
 constituted by order in Council at the commencement of 
 each reign, as a Committee consisting of a President and 
 certain ex offido members, including the First Lord of the
 
 x.] THE BOARD OF TRADE. 127 
 
 Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Principal 
 Secretaries of State, the Speaker of the House of Com- 
 mons, and, of all other functionaries, the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury ; but, considered as an executive department, 
 the Board of Trade now means nothing more than the 
 President and his official staff, with whose assistance he 
 transacts all the business of the office. This staff includes 
 (besides the usual "permanent" and "parliamentary" 
 officials) four assistant secretaries, one for each of the 
 four later departments into which the office has been suc- 
 cessively subdivided. Altogether, the Board consists of 
 five departments, viz. (1.) The Statistical and Commer- 
 cial Department ; (2.) The Railway Department ; (3.) The 
 Marine Department ; (4.) The Harbour Department ; and 
 (5.) The Financial Department. 
 
 (1.) The Commercial Department still contains all 
 that is left of the old consultative Board of Trade. In 
 the years immediately prior to 1871-2 (when, as has been 
 noted, the negotiation of commercial treaties was, after 
 inquiry, transferred to a newly-created department of the 
 Foreign Office), the remains of the old consultative busi- 
 ness of the Board of Trade were amalgamated with the 
 Statistical Department. The consultative business now 
 consists in giving advice to other departments on com- 
 mercial matters, if and when they think fit to seek it ; 
 and the business has of late years, it seems, shown a 
 decided tendency to increase. The Statistical Depart- 
 ment was created in 1832. Its business includes the 
 preparation of certain general digests or abstracts of 
 statistics relating to the United Kingdom, the colonies, 
 and foreign countries ; and it has the supervision of the 
 monthly and annual trade accounts, and prepares, with
 
 128 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP 
 
 the assistance of other departments, statistics relating to 
 the special subjects of railways, agriculture, cotton, and 
 emigration. But since 1872, when the Commercial and 
 Statistical Departments were amalgamated, certain func- 
 tions originally belonging to its commercial branch (such, 
 for instance, as the business relating to the registration 
 of designs, which has now been handed over to the 
 Patent Office) have been transferred to other depart- 
 ments. 
 
 (2.) The Kail way Department was originally consti- 
 tuted in 1840; and although in 1846 an Act was passed 
 constituting a separate Board of Railway Commissioners, 
 the powers of this body were re-transferred to the Board 
 of Trade by an Act of five years later, and have ever 
 since bee'n exercised by that department. By the above 
 and various other Acts many duties connected with 
 railways have been imposed upon the Board of Trade, 
 the principal of which are the inspection of railways 
 and their works before they are opened to the public, 
 and the inquiry into accidents as they occur. Besides 
 these it has numerous other duties, such as that of 
 reporting to Parliament on the increase of rates, and 
 on "level crossings;" of examining and approving bye- 
 laws; of granting compulsory power to enter on land 
 when the public safety requires it; of appointing arbitra- 
 tors, umpires, etc. etc. It has also power to grant certi- 
 ficates in certain cases for making railways, and dis- 
 charges also many duties under private Railway Acts. 
 To this department belongs also the inspection of tram- 
 ways, and the approval of the bye-laws relating to them, 
 as well as the preparation and introduction into Parlia- 
 ment of Provisional Orders for new tramways. It has
 
 x.] THE BOARD OF TRADE. 129 
 
 the management and control of various matters connected 
 with the metropolitan gas companies. The Joint-Stock 
 Companies' Registration Office is under this department, 
 and so far as commercial charters are still a business of 
 the Government^ they fall to be dealt with here. But 
 the amount of the business of this department of the 
 Board of Trade as a Railway Department properly so- 
 called has been somewhat affected by the establishment 
 of the Railway Commissioners Court in 1873, and the 
 reference to it of many disputed points which were 
 formerly referred to this department, or to arbitrators 
 appointed by it. 
 
 (3.) The Marine Department was first created as a 
 separate branch of the Board of Trade in 1850. Various 
 matters in connection with nautical questions had, pre- 
 viously to this date, been from time to time referred to 
 the Board; but the Acts passed in 1846, and again in 
 1848, for the inspection and survey of passenger steamers, 
 threw upon it certain executive duties specially connected 
 with merchant shipping. In 1850, after the repeal of 
 the Navigation Laws, much attention was given to the 
 personnel of the Merchant Navy, and the result was the 
 passing of the Mercantile Marine Act of that year, by 
 which was established a system of compulsory examina- 
 tion for masters and mates, and of shipping offices for 
 the engagement and discharge of seamen. To admin- 
 ister this Act a new branch within the department, 
 assisted by professional advice, was instituted; which, 
 having in subsequent years attracted to itself a large 
 amount of work connected with merchant shipping, 
 became speedily the largest in the office. So greatly, 
 indeed, did its business increase, that it became necessary 
 
 K
 
 130 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 in 1866 to divide this department of the Board into 
 three, or rather, perhaps, to detach from it certain of 
 its functions, and to vest these in two other new depart- 
 ments ; so that to the Marine Department, which is con- 
 cerned specially with ships and seamen, there was added 
 the Harbour Department, charged with the business 
 appertaining to lighthouses, pilotage, harbours, and the 
 physical adjuncts of navigation, and the Finance Depart- 
 ment, which is concerned with the money business of the 
 whole office. 
 
 The specific duties of the Marine Department of the 
 Board of Trade in connection with ships and seamen are 
 too multifarious for enumeration here, but the bulk of 
 them may perhaps be generalised as designed to provide 
 for the following objects : the health, discipline, and 
 proper treatment of ships' crews, the professional com- 
 petency, care, and conduct of those in command of them, 
 and the condition, equipment, and management of their 
 ships. 
 
 (4.) The Harbour Department of the Board of Trade 
 has had its origin explained above ; but it should here 
 be added that so many other matters have from time to 
 time been added to its regular duties, that its present 
 name has become somewhat of a misnomer. For, in addi- 
 tion to its having charge of the foreshores belonging to 
 the Crown, and to its above-mentioned functions in con- 
 nection with harbours, lighthouses, pilotage, etc., this 
 department also executes the duties belonging to the 
 Board in respect to the administration of the Weights and 
 Measures Act ; that is to say, it provides and maintains 
 the standards of measure and weight, it tests and examines 
 the weights and measures used in trade and for scientific
 
 x.] THE BOARD OF TRADE. 131 
 
 purposes, and from time to time advises the various local 
 authorities who may seek its advice and assistance for the 
 information of their local inspectors. It also administers 
 the Coinage Act, and provides and issues standards to 
 the Mint and Assay Office for determining the purity and 
 weight of the gold and silver coin of the realm. Under 
 the Sale of Gas Acts, this department provides and 
 maintains standards by which gas is measured for gas- 
 lighting purposes ; and under the Petroleum Act of 1879 
 it has to discharge the duty of testing the apparatus for 
 ascertaining the temperature at which petroleum gives off 
 an inflammable gas. 
 
 (5.) The Financial Department of the Board of Trade 
 was first established as a branch of the Marine Depart- 
 ment in 1851 ; it subsequently became a separate de- 
 partment, and it now deals not only with the general 
 accounts of the Board of Trade and its subordinates, but 
 with those of a variety of funds established at various 
 times for the benefit of seamen and their families. The 
 business of the Financial Department is administrative, 
 and not simply that known as accounting. It has to 
 control receipts and expenditure in the different branches 
 of business above referred to, as well as to keep its 
 accounts. In addition to the above it is entrusted with 
 the delicate and responsible duty of receiving, examining, 
 and presenting to Parliament the accounts of Life Assur- 
 ance Companies. 1 
 
 The provisions for ensuring the responsibility of the 
 
 1 For the foregoing account of the internal administrative 
 arrangements of this office, the writer is indebted to a valuable 
 memorandum prepared by Mr. Roscoe and revised by Mr. T. H. 
 Farrer, the present Permanent Secretary to the Board.
 
 132 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. x. 
 
 Board of Trade to Parliament have been somewhat 
 curiously varied in the course of its history. The Pre- 
 sident of the Board is necessarily, of course, a member 
 of one or other branch of the Legislature, but down till 
 a recent period he was by no means invariably, or even 
 perhaps usually, a member of the Cabinet. 
 
 In accordance, however, with the recommendation of 
 a Committee on Foreign Trade in 1864 that he should 
 have a place therein in order to secure due consideration 
 for his advice and opinions on commercial matters, this 
 office has ever since been held by a Cabinet Minister. 
 
 There was originally also a Vice-President of the 
 Board of Trade, who was a Privy Councillor and a 
 member of the administration, though without a seat in 
 the Cabinet; but the arrangement not having been found 
 to work well in practice, this office was abolished in 
 1867, and the managing staff now consists (under the 
 president) of two secretaries, one of them with a seat in 
 Parliament, and the four assistant secretaries above 
 referred to. In cases where the President was a peer 
 the parliamentary secretary would of course be selected 
 from, or provided with, a seat in the House of Commons.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD. 
 
 THE department which bears this title may lack the 
 political dignity and historic traditions attaching to other 
 offices of the administration ; but it might be said with 
 a certain truth that it yields to none or very few of them 
 in real importance to the community. Certain it is, at 
 any rate, that there is no department upon the efficient 
 discharge of whose functions so many material interests 
 the comfort, the well-being, and even the lives of so 
 large a number of individuals depend. In its present 
 shape and under its present title the Local Government 
 Board is an office of extremely recent institution ; it is 
 little more than ten years, indeed, since it came into 
 existence ; one large branch of its very extensive powers 
 the supervision of the vast national system of poor 
 relief having been up to that time vested in the now 
 extinct Poor Law Board. In order, therefore, to com- 
 prehend the general nature of this portion of its duties 
 it will be necessary to take a brief survey of the consti- 
 tution and powers of the body which it has replaced. 
 
 The Poor Law Board was created in 1834 by the 
 great Statute (4 and 5 William IV. c. 76), establishing 
 the new Poor Law system, and was in the first instance
 
 134 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 hardly a branch of the Central Executive at all. The 
 Commissioners constituting it had none of them a seat 
 in Parliament, at least in their official capacity ; and 
 their proceedings were only brought indirectly under the 
 review of the Legislature through the medium of the 
 Home Secretary, to whom they periodically reported. 
 The Commission was at first appointed only for a limited 
 period. This period, however, was extended by several 
 Acts, and in 1847, the date last fixed for its expiration, 
 it was found necessary, in view of the increasing import- 
 ance of the work, the complexity of its details, and the 
 inconvenience of the imperfect representation of the 
 Board in Parliament, to reconstitute it, and place it 
 under the presidency of a responsible minister eligible 
 to a seat in the House of Commons. This change was 
 effected by the 10 and 11 Viet. c. 109, which enacted 
 that the Board should consist of a President to be 
 appointed by the Queen, and of ^four Cabinet Ministers, 
 who were to be members ex officio, the Lord President of 
 the Council, the Lord Privy Seal, the Home Secretary, 
 and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. 
 
 Such were the powers possessed and exercised by the 
 Poor Law Board down to the date of its abolition in 
 1871, when they were transferred by the 34 and 35 Viet. 
 c. 70, to the newly-created body in whom they are at this 
 moment vested to wit, the Local Government Board. 
 But the changes effected by the statute in question were 
 far more extensive than this, and the functions committed 
 to the new department were far more varied and onerous 
 than those which the old Poor Law Board had been 
 wont to discharge. The Local Government Board is 
 something more than the successor of a single extinct
 
 XL] THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD. 135 
 
 organisation; it is the transferee of certain of the 
 functions of two other administrative bodies. It con- 
 solidates as well as replaces, and besides taking over all 
 the manifold duties connected with poor relief, it has 
 gathered into its hands the whole mass of complicated 
 powers formerly vested in a variety of independent 
 authorities for the preservation of the public health. 
 
 The statute by which the Local Government Board 
 was constituted recites in its preamble that it is "ex- 
 pedient to concentrate in one department the supervision 
 of the laws relating to the public health, the relief of 
 the poor, and local government;" and proceeds to 
 enact that "from and after the establishment of the 
 Local Government Board, the Poor Law Board shall 
 cease to exist, and all powers and duties vested in or 
 imposed on the Poor Law Board by the several Acts of 
 Parliament relating to the relief of the poor, or vested 
 in or imposed on one of Her Majesty's Principal Secre- 
 taries of State "by certain Acts (enumerated in one of 
 its schedules), or vested in or imposed on Her Majesty's 
 Privy Council by certain other Acts (enumerated in 
 another schedule), be transferred to and imposed upon 
 the Local Government Board." The department, the 
 Act continues, "shall consist of a President to be 
 appointed by Her Majesty, and to hold office during her 
 pleasure; and of the following ex officio members, that 
 is to say, the Lord President of the Council, all the Prin- 
 cipal Secretaries of State, the Lord Privy Seal, and the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer." The schedules referred to 
 enumerate seventeen Acts conferring powers and impos- 
 ing duties upon the Home Office, and seven Acts simi- 
 larly empowering and instructing the Privy Council ; all
 
 136 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 which assemblage of powers and duties, together with 
 any others created by the Acts amending the statutes 
 so enumerated, were thenceforth conferred and imposed 
 upon the new department 
 
 The advantages of this change it would be difficult 
 to overrate. At the time of the creation of the Local 
 Government Board, the score or so of sanitary statutes 
 above referred to, which were administered locally by a 
 variety of intersecting and overlapping municipal and 
 parochial authorities, were subject to a. scarcely less 
 complex and confused jurisdiction at headquarters. The 
 division of the central authority between the Poor Law 
 Board, the Privy Council, and a branch of the Home 
 Office known as the Local Government Acts' Office, was 
 productive of extreme inconvenience, uncertainty, and 
 circuity in the enforcement of the law of public health ; 
 and it constituted a distinct and important advance in 
 our methods of administration to bring the whole of 
 these multifarious functions under the control of a single 
 head responsible directly to Parliament. For the Local 
 Government Board, it is perhaps unnecessary to say, is, 
 like the Board of Trade, a Board only in name. In 
 practice its whole administrative work is performed by 
 its president and his staff of secretaries and clerks; 
 provision being made against the necessity of any collec- 
 tive action by the provision in the Act to the effect that 
 "all rules, orders, and regulations made by the Local 
 Government Board shall be valid if made under the 
 seal of the Board, and signed by the president or one 
 of the ex offido members, and countersigned by a secre- 
 tary or an assistant secretary." 
 
 The local working of the various institutions over
 
 XL] THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD. 137 
 
 which this department presides whether in connection 
 with the relief of the poor, the preservation of the public 
 health, or the improvement of towns, etc. will be 
 treated of in more detail in another volume of this 
 series. To give any account of the sanitary code itself 
 of which the last great consolidating statute contains 
 no fewer than 343 clauses would of course make too 
 excessive demands upon the space at my disposal ; but 
 the direct relations of the system of local government to 
 the Central Executive, at its point of contact therewith, 
 ought, no doubt, to be briefly dealt with here. It falls, 
 perhaps, properly within the province of this work to 
 examine briefly the nature and mode of exercise of the 
 functions committed in respect of these matters to the 
 Central Sanitary Authority. It would be wholly impos- 
 sible within my limits to attempt anything like an 
 enumeration of its multifarious powers and duties ; but 
 they may be said to divide themselves, broadly speaking, 
 into three categories ; and it must suffice here to classify 
 them thus, with the addition of a few illustrative examples 
 under each head. 
 
 The functions, then, of the Local Government Board 
 maybe divided into (1.) Initiatory; (2.) Remedial; and 
 (3.) Supervisory. 
 
 (1.) Initiatory. The Local Government Board is em- 
 powered by statute to perform of its own motion a variety 
 of acts in various localities without reference to the local 
 authorities thereof ; such acts being in the nature, some- 
 times of directions or orders issued to such authorities, 
 and sometimes of regulations or restrictions imposed, 
 over the heads of the local authorities, directly upon the 
 inhabitants of such districts themselves.
 
 138 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 Thus, for instance, they may require the local author- 
 ity of a particular district to undertake the removal of 
 nuisances, and to do other specific acts necessary for the 
 preservation of the public health ; or, operating directly 
 upon the inhabitants of such district, they may make 
 regulations for preventing the spread of infectious disease, 
 or prescribe areas within which certain already existing 
 statutory provisions may apply ; declaring, for instance, 
 that provisions originally applicable only to urban dis- 
 tricts shall be in force in rural districts, and investing 
 the rural authority with the powers ad hoc of the urban 
 authority. 
 
 (2.) Remedial. The Local Government Board, in addi- 
 tion or rather by way of necessary supplement to its 
 mandatory powers over local authorities, has the power 
 of stepping in to make good the default of such author- 
 ities by its own immediate action. 
 
 Thus, for instance, on complaint that a local authority 
 has neglected the sewage arrangements or the water 
 supply of their district, the Local Government Board, 
 on being satisfied of the justice of the complaint, may 
 make an order upon the defaulting body to perform their 
 duty within a limited time ; and, if it be not performed 
 within such time, may appoint some person to perform 
 it, and direct that the expenses of the work, and a reason- 
 able remuneration to the person superintending such per- 
 formance, shall be paid by the authority in default ; and 
 any order made for the payment of such expenses and 
 costs may be removed into the Queen's Bench Division, 
 and be enforced in the same manner as if it were an 
 order of that Court 
 
 (3.) Supervisory. The Local Government Board exer-
 
 xi.] THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD. 139 
 
 cises through its inspectors a general oversight of the 
 proceedings of local authorities, and by thus acquainting 
 itself with the sanitary conditions of the various districts, 
 and with any neglect of duty on the part of these author- 
 ities, is enabled to ascertain when the necessity has arisen 
 for the exercise of one or other of its two former func- 
 tions. Further, in the case of all rural authorities and 
 of all urban authorities, except town-councils (which in 
 virtue of their municipal dignity are allowed financial 
 independence), the Local Government Board exercises 
 through its appointed auditors the same general super- 
 vision over expenditure in the matter of local sanitary 
 administration as it does in the matter of the relief of 
 the poor. 
 
 The parliamentary responsibility of the Board is 
 secured by a clause of the Act, providing that the presi- 
 dent and one of the secretaries shall be capable of being 
 elected to and voting in the House of Commons. The 
 office has ever since its creation been held by a member 
 of the Lower House, who has hitherto represented it 
 without the assistance of any secretary. It is perhaps 
 not probable, though there is nothing to forbid a peer 
 accepting the office, that it will be held by any but a 
 member of the House of Commons. In the present 
 Administration it has been associated with a seat in the 
 Cabinet ; but this has been done on grounds of political 
 convenience alone, since its administrative duties would 
 hardly be likely, as a rule, to raise questions of Cabinet 
 importance.
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 THE PRIVY COUNCIL AS A BRANCH OF THE EXECUTIVE 
 THE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT. 
 
 THE history of the Privy Council, considered as an ele- 
 ment in the growth of our constitutional system, has been 
 reviewed in an earlier chapter; but it still remains to 
 examine its modern position and functions as an execu- 
 tive department of the State. The important judicial 
 duties which it discharges belong, of course, to another 
 volume of this series. 
 
 As an executive department, the Privy Council has 
 at various times exercised, through the medium of com- 
 mittees appointed from among its members, a variety of 
 important functions, of which, however, but two now 
 remain assigned to it. What is now known as the Board 
 of Trade, and has become an entirely distinct department 
 of the State, is in reality, as has been shown, an offshoot 
 of the Privy Council, being in fact a committee of that 
 body, originally appointed under the name of " the Com- 
 mittee for Trade." Again, by the Public Health Act of 
 1858, the Privy Council were charged with a certain 
 supervision over the local authorities in sanitary matters, 
 and continued down to 1871 to administer this Act 
 through a permanent subdivision of the Privy Council
 
 CHAP, xii.] THE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT. 141 
 
 known as the Public Health Department. These powers 
 were, by an Act of the last-mentioned year, transferred to 
 the newly created department now known as the Local 
 Government Board ; so that the administrative func- 
 tions at present actually discharged by the Privy Council 
 are reduced to two, and those of a somewhat heteroge- 
 neous kind. They administer the various Actsj for the 
 preservation of the health of English cattle from the con- 
 tagion of imported disease, and they direct the working 
 of the great national system of education. This latter 
 duty by far, of course, the more onerous of the two 
 has been entrusted to them for nearly half a century ; 
 but its demands and responsibilities have, it is needless 
 to say, been vastly increased by the effects of the legisla- 
 tion of the last eleven years. It was in 1839 that a 
 Committee of the Privy Council, with authority to pro- 
 vide for the general management and superintendence 
 of education, was first appointed. Its primary commission 
 was to supervise the distribution of the moneys which 
 Parliament had begun to grant a few years before for 
 educational purposes ; and the Committee, which at first 
 was altogether subordinate to the Privy Council, consisted 
 merely of a few Cabinet ministers, who were empowered 
 to meet together in order to dispose of the very small 
 sum then appropriated to the support of education. 
 But in 1853, on the recommendation of a Koyal Commis- 
 sion appointed to consider the subject, a " Committee of 
 Council for Education" was created and placed under 
 the control of the President of the Council, with a 
 secretary, two assistant secretaries, and a numerous 
 staff of clerks. In 1856, at the suggestion of an experi- 
 enced member of the House of Commons, a Vice-Presi-
 
 142' CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP- 
 
 dent of the Committee of Council was appointed, upon 
 whose functions and position more will be said presently. 
 The members who compose the Committee of Council 
 are usually (with the exception of the Vice -President, 
 and this not an invariable exception) members of the 
 Cabinet. At the present time, by declaration of the 
 Queen in Council, the Committee consists of the Lord 
 President of the Council, the Vice-President of the Com- 
 mittee of Council, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the 
 First Lord of the Admiralty, the Secretaries of State for 
 the Home Department, War, and Foreign Affairs; the 
 Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant, and the Presi- 
 dent of the Local Government Board. For Scotland a 
 separate Committee of Council on Education is appointed, 
 and the Lord President of the Council presides in both. 
 The present Prime Minister is, in his capacity of Chan- 
 cellor of the Exchequer, necessarily a member of a Com- 
 mittee which possesses so large a control over public 
 moneys; and it is a matter of propriety to have the 
 Home Department represented : otherwise there is no 
 absolute necessity for any other member of the Cabinet 
 to be placed on this Committee in mere virtue of his 
 office. 1 
 
 In point of utility and authority, the Committee of 
 Council on Education may be described as standing mid- 
 
 1 And it will be readily seen from the above list that certain 
 members of the Committee have been selected by the Lord Presi- 
 dent of the Council (in whose hands the selection lies) in right 
 rather of their past services official or unofficial to the cause of 
 education, than in consideration of the particular office they hold at 
 present. This is still more apparent in the case of the Scotch 
 Committee, which contains, or contained, one member who held no 
 office, and another who had resigned office.
 
 xii.] THE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT. 143 
 
 way between the Board of Admiralty and the Board of 
 Trade. Their position is not so important or authorita- 
 tive as that of the first-mentioned body ; but they are 
 very far from having become the virtual nonentity into 
 which the latter has in course of time declined. They 
 exercise, indeed, no administrative functions, and take 
 no part in the current business of the office ; but they 
 may be summoned from time to time for consultative 
 purposes by the Lord President of the Council; and 
 they are as a matter of fact called together whenever 
 any important question of general policy has to be 
 decided. The quorum of the Committee is three, but, 
 supposing that number not to be present on a given day, 
 the Lord President or Vice-President of the Committee 
 would undertake of themselves to decide the business 
 upon which the Committee was summoned. The effective 
 power of this body in determining the policy of the 
 chief of the department has given rise to some divergence 
 of opinion among high authorities. It was contended 
 some years ago by Lord Sherbrooke (then Mr. Lowe) that 
 the Committee were not only designed to act as a check 
 upon the Lord President of the Council in respect to 
 the making of minutes, but that the chief responsibility 
 for making minutes rested upon them, and that if the 
 Committee differed in opinion with the President their 
 opinion would certainly prevail Lord Granville, how- 
 ever, who had lately been Mr. Lowe's official chief in the 
 Education Department, expressed himself in different 
 language on this subject ; and it will appear tolerably clear, 
 when we come to consider the constitutional distribution 
 of responsibility for the policy pursued in this department, 
 that Mr. Lowe's view was too broadly stated, and that if
 
 144 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 the opinion of the Committee " prevailed " on any ques- 
 tion of policy, it could only be because the Lord Presi- 
 dent had voluntarily chosen to defer to their opinion. 
 
 Before entering, however, upon this question, it is 
 advisable to point out what is the nature of the duties 
 of this department. Down to the year 1870 its func- 
 tions consisted exclusively, as they still consist very 
 largely, in the administration of a specific fund of public 
 moneys those, namely, which are annually voted by 
 Parliament for the support of education. Out of this 
 fund the Committee of Council make contributions 
 towards the furnishing of schoolhouses, the stipends 
 of pupil teachers, and the supply of educational ap- 
 pliances ; towards the maintenance of schools by 
 annual grants, the amount of which is determined 
 partly by the regularity of the school children's at- 
 tendance, and partly by their proficiency as tested by 
 the results of an inspector's examination; and towards 
 the establishment and support of training-colleges for 
 teachers. But since the passing of the great educa- 
 tional measure of 1870, the business of the department 
 extends far beyond that of administering the annual 
 grant It stands charged with the duty of seeing that 
 every one of the local areas (towns, parishes, or groups 
 of parishes) into which the country has been marked out 
 for this purpose, is supplied with " a sufficient amount 
 of accommodation in public elementary schools available 
 for all the children resident in such district for whose 
 elementary education efficient and suitable provision is 
 not otherwise made ;" and, in case of such supply appear- 
 ing to be insufficient, of directing its augmentation by 
 either voluntary or compulsory methods, in the manner
 
 xii.] THE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT. 145 
 
 prescribed by the Education Act. In the execution of 
 this duty the department has, of course, to exercise a 
 sort of semi-judicial discretion (either immediately, or in 
 some cases after a "public inquiry," held according to 
 the directions of the Act) on the question whether 
 the injunctions of the Act are in any given case ful- 
 filled, or, if not, what would amount to a reasonable 
 fulfilment of them, having regard to the indefinitely 
 varying circumstances of the various school districts 
 throughout the whole United Kingdom. The large 
 increase of work which has thus devolved upon the 
 office has of course necessitated a considerable addition 
 of late years to the number of school inspectors, and 
 also some increase of the staff of examiners, or officials 
 whose function is to consider and take action upon the 
 inspectors' reports. The correspondence of the depart- 
 ment is consequently very extensive, and engages many 
 pens; but nevertheless the whole of it is carried on 
 under the fiction that the Committee of Council are 
 themselves the writers or recipients of all the letters 
 which pass between them and private individuals. 
 Every letter that leaves the office is written in the name 
 of " My Lords," even though it may be only the decision 
 of an assistant secretary or of an examiner upon a 
 point of practice, and may not even have been seen by 
 the secretary. In this, as in other public departments 
 for the transaction of ordinary business, the permanent 
 officer is trusted with the name of the department as he 
 might be with a common seal In the great mass of 
 public business it is impossible to submit every letter to 
 the official head ; and where a case is clear, and covered 
 by precedents, the secretary or examiner would be 
 
 L
 
 146 CENTKAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 justified in deciding it himself in the name of "My 
 Lords." Much, however, of the work of these officials, 
 especially as regards the administration of the fund 
 annually voted by Parliament for education, is regulated 
 for them by what is called "the Code," a minute 
 issued every year by the Committee of Council, fixing 
 the conditions under which payments are to be made to 
 the various schools in receipt of the grant. These 
 minutes, which emanate, it is to be observed, from 
 " the Committee " only, and not, like Orders in Council, 
 from the whole body of the Privy Council itself, under 
 the name of the Sovereign, are as a rule always sub- 
 mitted for approval at one of the Committee meetings 
 (though, if the Committee neglected to attend, a minute 
 might be validly passed by the President and Vice-Pre- 
 sident alone) ; and when thus passed are laid upon the 
 table of both Houses for a month before being acted 
 upon. It is by an examination of this Code, and also 
 of the annual reports presented by the inspectors, that 
 Parliament is enabled to exercise supervision over the 
 details of educational administration and to suggest 
 extensions or restrictions of the sphere of the depart- 
 ment's action. For Scotland a separate Code is issued ; 
 and the whole educational system of the country is, 
 moreover, administered under a separate Act of Parlia- 
 ment. 
 
 The permanent staff of the Education Department 
 is headed by a secretary and four assistant secre- 
 taries three for England and one for Scotland. 
 The Vice - President answers to the " parliamentary 
 secretary" of other departments; but his position 
 is one of considerably greater importance than theirs.
 
 xii.] THE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT. 147 
 
 His office has, on one occasion, been associated with 
 a seat in the Cabinet and he is the official by whom 
 the current business of the department is almost en- 
 tirely conducted. It is a matter of discretion with 
 him as to what he may think fit to bring before his chief, 
 and in point of fact nine-tenths of the business of the 
 department is conducted without reference to the Presi- 
 dent ; but there is, nevertheless, a general understanding 
 that no new rule of practice should be established, and 
 no alterations made in existing rules, without the Presi- 
 dent's sanction. And, generally speaking, despite the 
 importance and authority of the Vice-President of the 
 Committee, the Lord President of the Council must still 
 be held to remain constitutionally responsible for the con- 
 duct of the department. 1 
 
 Attached to the Education Department is the Depart- 
 ment of Science and Art, previously under the direction 
 of the Board of Trade, but transferred therefrom by 
 Order in Council in 1856. This affiliated department is 
 
 1 It was, however, in connection with this branch of the Execu- 
 tive that there occurred the apparent exception (alluded to in Chap. 
 III.) to the rule that responsibility attaches to the chief depart- 
 mental minister, and to him alone. In the year 1864 Mr. Lowe 
 resigned the office of Vice-President on account of a vote of censure 
 passed upon the department by the House of Commons. But he 
 did so because he regarded that vote as conveying 1 a personal reflec- 
 tion upon himself, and his resignation must therefore be regarded 
 as merely the satisfaction of his own sense of dignity and propriety, 
 and not as an act of obedience to any constitutional obligation, or 
 as the creation of any constitutional precedent. This, indeed, was 
 subsequently made clear by a statement of his own chief. Lord 
 Granville said afterwards, in a debate in the House of Lords, that 
 he considered Mr. Lowe's resignation "unnecessary." "Techni- 
 cally," he added, "the Lord President should have resigned, and 
 the Vice-President might have retained his office. "
 
 148 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. xn. 
 
 managed by a Board composed only of the Lord Presi- 
 dent and Vice-President of the Committee of Council on 
 Education, none of the other members of the Committee 
 being consulted with reference to the business. To 
 advise and assist the Board there are, in addition to 
 the secretary and assistant secretary, other permanent 
 officers, and it retains a staff of professors, whose duty 
 it is to superintend the various art schools in the pro- 
 vinces, and conduct examinations thereat. 
 
 The other executive functions of the Privy Council, 
 which were at one time numerous and complicated, are 
 now reduced to but one. The abolition of the Board of 
 Health, and the transfer of its powers and duties to the 
 Local Government Board, has left the Privy Council 
 with no other sanitary functions to perform than those 
 created by the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act of 
 1867, and subsequent statutes, and now discharged by 
 what is called the Veterinary Department of the Council. 
 Into the precise details of these duties it is unnecessary 
 here to enter. It is sufficient to say that they resolve 
 themselves generally into the issue from time to time of 
 Orders in Council prohibiting the importation of cattle 
 from countries infected with cattle plague, or prescribing 
 rules for their admission to our ports, and regulating 
 their mode of transport after their arrival
 
 CHAPTER XIIL 
 
 OTHER EXECUTIVE OFFICES. 
 
 BESIDES the great departments of State which have been 
 enumerated and described above, there are certain other 
 executive offices which, either in right of the constitu- 
 tional importance of the limited functions attached to 
 them, or by reason of their being commonly associated with 
 the high dignity and authority of a seat in the Cabinet, 
 deserve brief mention. The first of these to claim notice 
 on both of the above-mentioned grounds is the office of 
 Lord Privy Seal The incumbent of this office is invari- 
 ably a Cabinet minister; and his official duties being, 
 although constitutionally important, of by no means an 
 onerous nature, the place is usually conferred upon some 
 eminent politician, who, while unfitted from age or other 
 reasons for undertaking heavy administrative duties, may 
 be competent to render valuable assistance at the Council 
 Board. His departmental duties consist in applying the 
 Privy Seal once or twice a week to a certain number of 
 public instruments an act which, though it has now 
 become a mere formality, is nevertheless one of great 
 historical interest It was by means of the Seals in the 
 first instance and primarily, the Great Seal, but after-
 
 150 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 wards and in a secondary degree, the Privy Seal that 
 in earlier periods of our history the only known restraint 
 could be imposed upon the acts of the Crown. The 
 Privy Council had from very ancient times laid claim to 
 take cognisance of every grant or writ issued by the 
 Sovereign, and to authenticate it by the imprint of the 
 Great Seal; and through the instrumentality of the 
 Chancellor, who was always a member of the Council, 
 and also the custodian of the Great Seal, they could 
 refuse to give effect to the King's wishes, or to legalise 
 his grant. This rule was often regarded by Sovereigns 
 as a vexatious and unwarrantable restraint, and they 
 sought to escape from it either by retaining personal 
 possession of the Great Seal, or by insisting that the use 
 of smaller royal seals, including the Privy Seal, which at 
 first were kept in the King's own hands, was sufficient for 
 the purposes of authentication. Parliament, however, 
 always protested against these claims, and when at 
 length the Privy Seal passed into the hands of a regular 
 officer, it was maintained by the lawyers that the Great 
 Seal ought to be affixed to no bill on a verbal warrant, 
 or otherwise than upon a formal writ of Privy Seal. 
 This doctrine, though at first contested by the Crown, 
 eventually won undisputed acceptance. From the time 
 of Henry VIII. the Privy Seal has been the warrant of 
 the legality of grants from the Crown, and the necessary 
 authority to the Chancellor to affix the Great Seal. All 
 grants of the Crown for appointments to office, creation 
 of honours, licenses, patents of inventions, pardons, etc., 
 must be made by charters or letters-patent under the 
 Great Seal, and the command to the Lord Chancellor to 
 prepare such an instrument is in all but a few excepted
 
 xni.] OTHER EXECUTIVE OFFICES. 151 
 
 cases conveyed by means of a writ or bill sealed with 
 the Privy Seal. 1 
 
 Having only these merely formal duties to discharge 
 in his departmental capacity, the Lord Privy Seal is 
 often in a position to afford assistance to the administra- 
 tion in other ways. He has occasionally been despatched 
 on a special mission abroad ; at other times his office has 
 been held in conjunction with another, as, for instance, 
 that of Postmaster-General. 
 
 Another official who is not infrequently a Cabinet 
 minister is the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. 
 The Court from which this office takes its name had its 
 origin in the reign of Henry IV., who, conscious that he 
 was more rightfully Duke of Lancaster than King of 
 England, determined to save his right in the duchy, 
 whatever should befall the kingdom, and accordingly, 
 with the authority of Parliament, severed the possessions, 
 liberties, etc., of the duchy from the Crown, and settled 
 them on himself and his heirs. So they continued dur- 
 ing this and the two following reigns, and after being 
 reappropriated to the Crown by Edward IV. were once 
 more severed from it by Henry VII., and have remained 
 distinct ever since. The Court, which was anciently a 
 kind of Chancery Court, now chiefly takes cognisance of 
 matters connected with the revenues of the duchy. Its 
 jurisdiction, however, such as it is, is exercised by a Vice- 
 Chancellor, a professional lawyer. The Chancellor him- 
 self has no duties in connection with the office, which is 
 usually, therefore, bestowed upon some prominent states- 
 man whose abilities it is desired to utilise in the consid- 
 1 Sir Harris Nicolas, Proceedings, etc., of Privy Council, p. ccxi.
 
 152 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 eration of general questions of policy, and whose time 
 is thus left free for that purpose. 
 
 A place in the Cabinet is also sometimes associated 
 with the presidency of the Office of Works, a post created 
 pursuant to an Act of Parliament passed in 1851. Some 
 twenty years previous to this date the public works and 
 buildings of Great Britain had been for the first time 
 placed under the management of a responsible minister 
 by being assigned to the charge of the Commissioners 
 of Woods and Forests. Under this arrangement, how- 
 ever, a practice grew up of using the land revenues of 
 the Crown to defray expenses connected with public 
 parks and buildings ; and to check this, it was resolved 
 by Parliament in 1851 that the land revenues should be 
 kept apart, and that the cost of erecting or maintaining 
 public buildings should be met by votes in Committee 
 of Supply. And in the following year the department 
 of Woods and Forests was separated from that of Public 
 Works by an Act of Parliament creating the present 
 department. This Board the full title of which is the 
 " Office of Her Majesty's Public Works and Buildings " 
 consists of a " First Commissioner " and of the following 
 ex officio members, namely, the Principal Secretaries and 
 the President of the Board of Trade. As in the other 
 cases which have been noticed, the Board has only a 
 nominal existence; and the department is practically 
 under the charge of one responsible head, the First 
 Commissioner, who is himself under the control of the 
 Treasury. 
 
 The Board has the custody and supervision of the 
 royal palaces and public parks, and of all public buildings 
 not specially assigned to the care of other departments,
 
 xiii.] OTHER EXECUTIVE OFFICES. 153 
 
 whether the same are appropriated for Government 
 offices, for national collections, or for the recreation and 
 enjoyment of the public. The First Commissioner is 
 always a Privy Councillor sometimes, as has been said, 
 a Cabinet minister, and more usually a member of the 
 Lower than of the Upper House of the Legislature. 
 Indeed, as there is no "political secretary" or other 
 like official associated with him in his duties, it would 
 be difficult to secure his proper responsibility to Parlia- 
 ment without placing him in the House of Commons ; 
 his capacity to sit in that assembly having been conferred 
 upon him by the Act creating his office. Here he is, as 
 a matter of fact, very closely watched in the execution 
 of his duties ; there being no matters, probably, which 
 are the subject of more frequent parliamentary questions 
 than those connected with the administration of the 
 First Commissioner of Works. Much of this inquiry, 
 however, arises rather from individual curiosity than 
 from any necessity of asserting the principle of parlia- 
 mentary control The Board is placed by Act of Parlia- 
 ment under the direction of the Treasury, whose sanc- 
 tion is required to any work not directly ordered by 
 Parliament. All estimates for large public works are 
 submitted to the Treasury, by which department, also, 
 the secretary, clerks, and ordinary employes of the office 
 are appointed. The staff of the First Commissioner of 
 Works consists of a permanent secretary, an assistant 
 secretary, and a considerable number of draftsmen, sur- 
 veyors, and clerks.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE TENDENCIES OF CENTRAL GOVERNMENT IN 
 ENGLAND. 
 
 IT is sometimes said, in reply to certain complaints which 
 are not uncommon in these days, that the English citizen 
 was much more " over-governed " in former times than 
 in our own. Except, however, upon such a construction 
 of the term "government" as to make it include "legis- 
 lation," this assertion is obviously opposed to the facts. 
 True it is, no doubt, that in earlier periods of our history 
 the legislator undertook to control and regulate men's 
 actions in many departments of social life which are 
 now regarded as altogether beyond his proper cogni- 
 sance; but a little consideration will show that at the 
 time when legislation was thus unduly active, the con- 
 duct of the citizen was nevertheless subject to far less 
 of that organised supervision and administrative direc- 
 tion to which alone the word "government" properly 
 applies, than it undergoes at present. In the sixteenth 
 and seventeenth centuries, for instance the period when 
 the English Statute-book will be found, perhaps, most 
 crowded with laws sumptuary, laws ceremonial, laws 
 injunctive of religious, moral, and social observance of 
 all kinds the administrative interference of the Govern-
 
 CHAP, xiv.] CENTRAL GOVERNMENT IN ENGLAND. 155 
 
 ment in any of the various matters to which these laws 
 related was of the most limited kind. The State, which 
 was imposing all sorts of commercial restrictions upon 
 its subjects, had nothing answering to a Board of Trade. 
 Ever busying itself about the orthodoxy or heterodoxy 
 of national opinion, it possessed no machinery even 
 remotely corresponding to that of a department of 
 Public Education. It multiplied its commands and pro- 
 hibitions to local authorities while subjecting them to 
 no sort of regular or effective central control. Even the 
 foundation of the vast system of poor relief was laid in 
 a single short Act of Parliament, addressed mainly to 
 country justices and parish overseers. There was no 
 lack of the disposition to "over-government" no defi- 
 ciency of the " paternal " spirit on the part of the State ; 
 but it was deemed a sufficient (as indeed it was at the 
 time the only possible) gratification of that spirit to 
 embody the paternal injunction of the State in a law, 
 to attach penalties to disobedience to that law, and to 
 leave its enforcement to any one who pleased. In short, 
 the so-called over-government of those days was merely 
 another name for a display of excessive and misguided 
 activity on the part of the law maker and the law courts ; 
 and that activity is not what we are accustomed to call 
 by the name of government in these days. In the sense 
 in which the word is used at present in the sense which 
 excludes alike the functions of the legislator and the 
 functions of the judge we are being indefinitely more 
 "governed" in this current year than we were fifty, 
 twenty, or even ten years ago; and we shall, in all human 
 probability, be still more governed ten years hence than 
 we are to-day.
 
 156 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 The reaction raised against meddlesome legislation by 
 growing political enlightenment did, however, undoubt- 
 edly lead at first and for a time to an undue depreciation 
 of the powers and undue restriction of the functions 
 of government properly so called. A gradual appre- 
 hension of the unquestionable truth that much of the 
 necessary work of social life could and would be far 
 better done by individuals acting for themselves than by 
 the best-intentioned and most fatherly of Governments 
 acting for them, begot the erroneous belief that not 
 " most " only of the work, but all of it, might be safely 
 and wisely left to private enterprise. It began to be 
 accepted as an axiom among a certain increasing school 
 of politicians that the duties of a Government, rightly 
 understood, included little if anything more than the 
 simple functions of police ; and that, cceteris paribus, that 
 State was likely to be most prosperous whose rulers, 
 after having cleared away all obstacles to perfect freedom 
 of transaction between man and man, should retire grace- 
 fully to their bureaux and content themselves with merely 
 watching to see that the constable and the magistrate 
 did their duty in preventing this freedom of transaction 
 from being checked by violence or abused by fraud. A 
 proposition founded upon so unduly wide a generalisa- 
 tion from observed facts, held good, of course, only 
 to the extent to which the generalisation itself was 
 sound. It was found, in other words, and as might 
 have been expected, that freedom of private enterprise 
 would only supply the place of governmental action 
 in cases where the interests of the State were iden- 
 tical with the recognised interests of the individual ; and 
 the only interest of universal recognition among mankind
 
 xrv.] CENTRAL GOVERNMENT IN ENGLAND. 157 
 
 is that embodied in the pursuit of material prosperity. 
 The doctrine of laissez-faire, in short, was a doctrine 
 drawn from political economy and pressed into the ser- 
 vice of politics ; and it necessarily fails to apply beyond 
 the limits within which the two sciences coincide. Poli- 
 tical economy is the science of material prosperity, and 
 in so far as the object of all government is to promote 
 the material prosperity of the people governed, the wisest 
 ruler is he who gives the freest play, consistent with the 
 observance of actual law, to the one great motive force 
 upon which economy bases its calculations the acquisitive 
 impulse among his subjects. But in so far as govern- 
 ment is concerned with other interests than that of the 
 material advancement of peoples, in so far as it seeks to 
 promote their physical health, or their moral improvement, 
 or their intellectual progress, its relation to economic 
 forces is altogether different. The everyday experience 
 of life is enough to satisfy any observer that the motives 
 which make men careful of their health, or studious of 
 the purity of their morals, or zealous for the improve- 
 ment of their minds, are motives which cannot, among 
 the mass of men, be trusted to hold their own against 
 the simple desire of money-getting ; and that, unless the 
 command of the State gives voice and enforced authority 
 to those higher impulses to which only a select minority 
 among its citizens are able, of their own free will, to give 
 due weight, such impulses will, on the national scale, 
 be overborne and submerged altogether. A perception 
 of this truth and in this country at any rate we were 
 not long in perceiving it of course compelled a recon- 
 sideration of the prevailing theory of government, and, 
 by consequence, a sharp revival of the tendency to
 
 158 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 State intervention in many matters from which the State 
 had hitherto held aloof. But this partial return to the 
 older theory of the functions of government was coin- 
 cident with a growing distrust of the older methods by 
 which Governments had sought to execute these func- 
 tions. Eight and necessary as it might be that the State 
 should once more revert, so far as certain departments of 
 human action were concerned, to the paternal idea of its 
 duties, it was impossible for the modern politician to 
 shut his eyes to the extreme imperfection of the means 
 by which the State had in former days attempted to 
 realise this idea. The lumber of dead-letter laws which 
 burdened the Statute-book told a tale too plain to be 
 mistaken. It seemed to arise almost naturally out of 
 modern conceptions of government, that wherever the 
 State thought fit to depart from the laissez-faire policy it 
 should definitely take matters into its own hands j that 
 it should not be content, as in former times, with merely 
 commanding the citizen to do certain things, but should 
 itself see that he does it Such a conclusion was indeed 
 a necessary result of the particular process of experience 
 by which the principle of State interference had been 
 re-established. 
 
 It must not be supposed, however, that the growth 
 of this modern theory of government has been attended 
 by anything like a proportionate extension of the functions 
 of the Executive. In many other countries it would have 
 given an extravagant impetus to whatever centralising 
 forces might have been previously in existence; but 
 among ourselves, fortunately, "more government" does 
 not of necessity mean " more centralisation." Our vigor- 
 ous local institutions supply an abundance of effective
 
 xiv.] CENTRAL GOVERNMENT IN ENGLAND. 159 
 
 machinery for the legislative reformer to work with; 
 and they have been largely, and, indeed, for most of the 
 work which the State has thought fit of late years to 
 withdraw from the operation of private enterprise, 
 almost exclusively employed. For instance, the great 
 scheme of public education adopted eleven years ago 
 was carefully fitted into the system of local self-govern- 
 ment; in the consolidation of the laws relating to the 
 public health, and the simplification of the machinery 
 by which these are locally administered, the principle of 
 self-government is still retained as the groundwork of 
 the whole ; and the same mode of procedure has been 
 observed in such other specimens of modern philan- 
 thropic legislation as the Artisans' Dwellings Act. In 
 other words, while recognising the impossibility of trust- 
 ing to individual action for the efficient performance of 
 certain public duties, the State has reflected the national 
 inclination to respect the principle of individualism by 
 still leaving the initiative in the hands of local assem- 
 blages of individuals, while holding its own ultimate 
 compulsory authority in the background. The idea 
 seems to have been to appeal, in the first instance, from 
 private citizens in their individual capacity to the same 
 men in their corporate capacity, and not to invoke the 
 intervention of the Executive until this appeal has obvi- 
 ously proved futile. If A, B, C, etc., individually neglect 
 the duty of observing the rules of health, or of educating 
 their children, or of preventing the working population 
 of their local areas from being crowded together into 
 confined spaces, which thereby become centres of disease, 
 let us try, our legislation seems to say, whether A, B, C, 
 etc., will be willing, upon the express admonition and
 
 160 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. 
 
 injunction of the Legislature, to take better order in 
 these matters through their local representatives; and 
 only in the event of their persistent refusal or neglect to 
 do this, need the action of the Central Government be 
 called into play at all 
 
 It is undeniable, however, that all legislation of this 
 sort, directed though it be in the first instance to the mere 
 enlargement of the duties and powers of local authorities, 
 does nevertheless add considerably to the work of the 
 Central Executive, and proportionately extend its func- 
 tions of government. Nor can it be doubted that the 
 tendency towards such legislation is on the increase in 
 at least three directions. The subjects of public educa- 
 tion and public health have already been briefly referred 
 to ; and of these it need only be further added, by way 
 of summing up, that we appear in all our legislation to 
 be more and more unreservedly accepting the principle 
 that the physical well-being and the mental and moral 
 training of the community are matters within the special 
 care of the State. As regards education in particular, 
 we have now, for good or evil, advanced far beyond 
 that simple plea upon which State interference with 
 the instruction of the people was originally justified 
 namely, as a mere process of insurance against certain 
 evils, undoubtedly of State concern, to which deficiency 
 of education exposes, or is believed to expose, a society. 
 Our educational system has already begun to propose 
 to itself much more ambitious and extensive aims than 
 that of a mere reduction of the crime and pauperism 
 which are so largely due to ignorance; and our legis- 
 lators are continually acting, or being solicited to act, 
 on the assumption that it is their duty to take care
 
 xiv.] CENTRAL GOVERNMENT IN ENGLAND. 161 
 
 that the greatest amount of instruction which social 
 and financial conditions leave it possible to impart, be 
 given to the largest possible number of persons in the 
 community. And since, though the actual provision of 
 this education is left to the charge of local government, 
 its sufficiency and efficiency is determined solely by the 
 Central Executive, it follows that every advance of our 
 educational system tends to bring the conduct of indi- 
 viduals under a more and more imperious form of State 
 control 
 
 The same considerations apply, mutatis mittandis, to 
 the subject of public health; but there is yet another 
 and wide sphere of civic action over which the Execu- 
 tive steadily inclines to extend its authority. In the 
 two above cases its action is defended by appeal to the 
 interests of society at large; but in that about to be 
 considered it would be difficult to bring the interference 
 of the State under this plea. We cannot so treat the 
 case in which the State acts as the protector, not of the 
 whole community, but of certain classes thereof the 
 classes selected being, of course, those which are, or are 
 assumed to be, unable to protect themselves. The oldest 
 and of course the most defensible example of this species 
 of Government interference was that initiated by the 
 legislation protective of children engaged in certain of 
 the manufacturing industries. The Factories and Work- 
 shops Acts imposed restrictions both upon parents and 
 employers of labour in respect of the ages at which, 
 and the hours during which, children should be allowed 
 to work, and entrusted a department of the Central 
 Government with the duty of seeing that these Acts were 
 respected. But this special intervention on behalf of a 
 
 M
 
 162 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. [CHAP. xiv. 
 
 manifestly powerless class has been followed by many 
 others on behalf of classes of whom helplessness cannot, 
 or cannot in the same sense, be predicated. They are in- 
 terferences of the State for the protection of adults whose 
 position, in respect of the matters which have provoked 
 their interference, is theoretically at least a position of 
 voluntary contract, but who, from the fact that they 
 do not protect themselves, are inferred to be practically 
 incapable of so doing. Instances of such interferences 
 of the State are to be found in the various Mines Kegula- 
 tion Acts, and later, in an even more signally illustrative 
 shape, in the Unseaworthy Ships Act; all of which 
 statutes have necessitated an extension of the functions 
 of the Central Executive in order to carry out their 
 provisions. Nor does a parliamentary session often 
 pass without some scheme of philanthropic legislation 
 being proposed, which would, if adopted, involve an 
 addition to the labours of some department of the Exe- 
 cutive. It is beyond the province of a work like this 
 to pronounce any opinion on the policy or impolicy of 
 the course upon which the nation appears to have 
 entered in this respect; but it is permissible to point 
 out in what way and to what extent it operates to ex- 
 tend the functions of the Central Government 
 
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