presented to the 
 UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 SAN DIEGO 
 
 by 
 
 MRS. LEO HERZ 

 
 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND
 
 THE GOVERNANCE 
 OF ENGLAND 
 
 BY 
 
 SIDNEY LOW 
 
 NEW EDITION 
 REVISED AND RESET, WITH 
 
 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY 
 
 NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 LONDON : T. FISHER UNWIN 
 
 '9H
 
 First Edition, 1904 
 Second Impression, 1906 
 Third Impression, 1910 
 Fourth Impression, 1911 
 Fifth Impression, 1914, 
 {Revised Edition) 
 
 (All rights reserved)
 
 TO 
 
 VISCOUNT MORLEY, O.M.
 
 " As the State was formed to make life 
 possible, so it exists to make life good." 
 
 ARISTOTLE, Politics, i. 2.
 
 INTRODUCTION TO REVISED 
 EDITION 
 
 A RE-TOUCHED portrait is seldom a satisfactory 
 production. It is a fact I have had to keep in 
 mind in preparing for the press this new edition of 
 a book first published more than nine years ago. 
 Such fidelity to the original as the sketch may have 
 possessed when executed might be lost in the attempt 
 to make it a register of all the changes which time 
 has wrought upon the features of the subject. The 
 task would be one of peculiar difficulty at the 
 present moment ; for my revised edition is called 
 for, as it happens, while the structure of our polity 
 is undergoing a process of reconstruction still 
 incomplete. With the ultimate form and powers of 
 the Upper Chamber in suspense, and with the 
 revolution in the government of Ireland impending 
 but undecided, it would be futile to pass a definite 
 judgment on transitory developments which must 
 eventually assume a more definite and tangible 
 shape. And so, while drawing some fresh illustra- 
 tions and arguments from the events of the past 
 few years, I prefer to leave this book as, in the 
 main, an account of the " working constitution " of 
 the United Kingdom in the opening decade of the 
 twentieth century. 
 
 vii
 
 viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 It may, however, be worth while to indicate 
 briefly some of the changes that have occurred 
 since the following chapters were composed. 
 Several of these changes were anticipated ; and 
 those who did me the honour to read my pages 
 with attention in 1904 will not perhaps have been 
 surprised by the march of events during the years 
 that have since elapsed. I have left the chapters 
 on "The House of Lords" and "The Peers as a 
 Senate " substantially as they were written, though 
 I am conscious that their interest must now be 
 largely antiquarian. But, since it is impossible to 
 know what the Upper Chamber will become, it 
 seems useful to leave on record what it was, and 
 what, to a certain extent, and pending further 
 modifications, it still is. 
 
 The Parliament Act of 1911 is a definite step 
 towards the enlargement of the " written " at the 
 expense of the unwritten, or conventional, constitu- 
 tion. It has given a precise, statutory, shape to 
 that limitation of the legal prerogative of the House 
 of Lords which had previously rested on a tacit 
 understanding. In writing of the Upper House* 
 I have pointed out that the prerogative was endured 
 because it was believed that it never would be 
 exercised again except in the most moderate and 
 cautious fashion. The strength of the House of 
 Lords, I said, lay in its weakness ; and I quoted a 
 Conservative statesman, the late Lord Iddesleigh, 
 who thought " that the House of Lords would be 
 perfectly intolerable, if it were as powerful in 
 reality, as it is in appearance." If, I added, the 
 House ventured to act as other Second Chambers 
 '- See infra, Chap. XII.
 
 INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 act from time to time that is, if it set itself 
 deliberately to oppose and defeat the considered 
 policy of the popular assembly " there would be 
 an outcry before which the hereditary principle 
 would go down." The forecast has been justified 
 by events. In 1909 the Peers amended, and 
 practically destroyed, the Finance Bill of a minis- 
 try commanding an exceptionally large majority 
 in the House of Commons. Their technical right 
 to do so was unquestionable ; but the right had 
 remained in abeyance so long that it was con- 
 sidered obsolete. No sooner was it asserted in 
 this formidable shape than measures were taken 
 to prohibit its employment in the future. The 
 veto of the Peers, habitually regarded as merely 
 suspensive and temporary in practice, was cast 
 into that form by specific enactment. At the 
 same time the " hereditary principle " was directly 
 attacked and virtually abandoned, not merely by 
 one of the great political parties, but by both ; and it 
 was agreed that in due season the House of Lords 
 should be converted into a Senate constituted, 
 wholly or in part, by election and nomination. 
 
 It would be contrary to the principles of this work 
 to discuss the policy of the Unionist peers in their 
 assault upon the Liberal Budget of 1909. No doubt 
 there were those among them who felt that a 
 protest is not wholly vain even if it is doomed to be 
 ineffectual. A general may sometimes be justified 
 in risking a battle even if it can hardly fail to 
 end in his defeat. Those who held themselves 
 to represent the conservative forces of society 
 may have thought that they could not submit 
 to the attack on property, in 1909, any more 
 
 la
 
 x INTRODUCTION 
 
 than their predecessors, in 1832, could acquiesce, 
 without a struggle, in the attack on privilege. 
 But in the latter case, if not in the former, the 
 Peers must have known, or at least they should 
 have known, what the consequences would be. 
 Whether their stand against the new methods 
 of taxation were right or wrong, on general 
 grounds, it was bound to produce the results which 
 in fact ensued. The "reserved powers" of the 
 House of Lords were certain to be abolished the 
 moment it was seen that they were no longer 
 kept in reserve but might be made operative. The 
 House, I wrote in 1904, " can seldom venture to 
 assert itself, and then only in a tentative and 
 temporary fashion. If any measures were taken to 
 add to its self-confidence, to give it real authority, 
 to impart to it a consciousness of something like 
 a political equality with the other House, it could 
 scarcely be conserved in its present shape. The 
 demand for a complete reconstruction would be 
 irresistible." So it has proved. 
 
 But the precise form which this reconstruction 
 will assume is still indeterminate. The preamble of 
 the Parliament Act signifies that the limitation of 
 the veto of the Peers is to be supplemented, or 
 perhaps superseded, by the creation of an elective, 
 or partly elective, Second Chamber. In fact, there 
 is to be " House of Lords Reform," on a scale more 
 extensive than is suggested in the pages allotted to 
 the subject below. * It is there pointed out that for 
 considerably more than half a century the subject has 
 been before the minds of constitutional reformers. 
 The creation of life-peers, of peers nominated by 
 ''' See Chapter XIII on " The Peers as a Senate
 
 INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 the Crown, of ex-officio peers, or of representative 
 peers for the whole of the United Kingdom, had been 
 proposed by Eussell, Palmerston, Salisbury, Lord 
 Rosebery, and others, as a means of diluting the 
 oligarchical and hereditary character of the House 
 of Lords. It had been felt, long before the crisis in 
 which King Edward VII. 's reign closed, that the 
 House ought to have a stronger representative 
 element. Representation, it is true, can be secured 
 by other means than direct popular election : and a 
 House so largely made up of men who have risen 
 from the ranks by their own efforts, a House which 
 includes peers who have received their letters-patent 
 for distinguished achievements in the field, in the 
 public service, in politics, in the administration of 
 the dependent empire, in the practice of the law, in 
 commerce and industry, and sometimes even in 
 literature and science such a House cannot be 
 deemed unrepresentative of some of the best elements 
 of our society. Conservative reformers in the past 
 would have been content to carry this kind of repre- 
 sentation further. They would have liked to see 
 fewer peers sitting in Parliament by the sole title of 
 being the heirs of their predecessors, and a larger 
 number who had gained their seats by their own 
 merits or good-fortune, and were drawn from all 
 classes, and from the Dominions and Dependencies 
 as well as the United Kingdom. A Senate reinforced 
 by eminent doctors, engineers, professors, noncon- 
 formist ministers, economists, men of business, 
 labour experts, and colonial delegates, would 
 undoubtedly have commanded respect. 
 
 But, as things stand, it is tolerably certain that 
 no reconstitution of the Upper Chamber will be
 
 xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 entertained which does not provide for a considerable 
 number of senators chosen by direct election, with 
 or without an admixture of peers appointed for life, 
 for the duration of a Parliament, for a fixed term of 
 years, or by ex-officio qualifications. Several plans 
 have been proposed with this object. It is indeed 
 easy enough to sit down and work out on paper a 
 scheme which looks attractive and even fascinating 
 on paper. In practice the difficulties are consider- 
 able. The elective part of the arrangement involves 
 a regrouping or redistribution of constituencies ; 
 since, if the existing divisions were retained, the 
 elected section of the Upper House would simply be 
 a copy or reduplication of the Lower. There are no 
 natural, historical, or geographical, units to serve 
 the purpose, like the " sovereign states " of the 
 American Union, and the cantons of Switzerland. 
 The counties of the United Kingdom are glaringly 
 unequal in size and population ; and they have, with 
 some exceptions, little local self-consciousness or 
 individuality. Probably the most convenient device 
 would be to divide the whole country into a compar- 
 atively small number of electoral areas, roughly 
 equal in population, each choosing senators by the 
 scrutin de liste method. It might be desirable to 
 soften the inequalities and crudities of the mere local 
 vote by giving some share of direct representation 
 to definite orders and professions; but I do not 
 know how this is to be accomplished. Indirectly, 
 proportional voting might contribute to this end, and 
 so might the selection of the recognised heads of 
 various important interests and communities as 
 nominated peers. In some such way it is supposed 
 that a Senate might be created, which would be
 
 INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 more or less responsive to the popular will, and 
 would derive additional authority from the personal 
 distinction and status of its members. 
 
 But it is not certain that this nicely balanced 
 machine could be got to work in the manner desired. 
 Most second chambers are either too weak or too 
 strong. An Upper Chamber in which the elective 
 element preponderated might be much more self- 
 assertive, and much more obstinate in the exercise 
 of its veto, than the House of Lords before the 
 Parliament Act. Like the American Senate, and the 
 Legislative Councils in the Dominions, it would 
 produce frequent deadlocks with the popular 
 assembly, and insist on its direct commission from 
 the Sovereign People. The danger might be avoided 
 by giving greater weight to the official and appointed 
 members ; but this might lead to inconvenience of 
 another kind. A Second Chamber, penetrated by 
 the sense of its own impotence, might become more 
 like the French, than the American, Senate : that is 
 to say, a highly respectable debating-society with 
 little real influence over affairs. Able and ambitious 
 men would prefer the activity and opportunities of 
 the House of Commons to the repose of an ineffective 
 council-chamber, no longer gilded by the social 
 prestige of the hereditary peerage. 
 
 To steer a prosperous course between these two 
 extremes in the remodelling of the Upper Chamber 
 will not be easy. There are other alternatives 
 which may perhaps be considered. One is to leave 
 the House of Lords, as it stands at present under 
 the Act of 1911, unreformed, or at least only 
 reformed by a mild tincture of life-peerages. It 
 would retain much of its former dignity, even
 
 xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 though deprived of the liberty to destroy a first- 
 class Government measure or to force a dissolution. 
 Its power in this respect would be permanently 
 limited to holding legislation in abeyance for two 
 sessions and a portion of a third; and it would 
 have no power to touch money bills, a power 
 which in any case it would never be likely to use 
 again. 
 
 Narrowed as the prerogative of the peers would 
 thus be, it might still enable them to perform some 
 valuable public services. They would have the right 
 to remonstrate, the right to criticise, the right to 
 deal freely with all but those measures that involved 
 the fate of parties, the right to formulate an 
 emphatic protest against legislation of which they 
 disapproved, and the right to compel a Government 
 to submit its controversial proposals to some thirty 
 months of public discussion before it could pass 
 them into law. It is at least an open question 
 whether with these opportunities the House of 
 Lords, still retaining much of its historic tradition 
 and its association with the territorial and industrial 
 aristocracy, might not be in reality more influential 
 than a new-minted and miscellaneous assembly, 
 with larger nominal powers, but with no roots 
 in the past, and no definite relation towards any 
 great permanent element in our social organism. 
 
 Another hypothesis is that of averting the 
 necessity for reforming the Second Chamber by 
 abolishing it. It is a suggestion which one cannot 
 mention without diffidence since it has hardly ever 
 been deemed worthy of serious consideration. It 
 is commonly assumed that a single-chamber Parlia- 
 ment must be a kind of constitutional monstrosity.
 
 INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 This, I suppose, is due in part to the fact that almost 
 every progressive community, in adopting repre- 
 sentative institutions, has imitated the system 
 which grew up in Great Britain. Yet this system 
 of two Houses, of an "aristocratic" and a 
 "popular" division of the law-making apparatus, 
 is itself the result of a series of accidents. There 
 is nothing, in the nature of things, which prescribes 
 that a Parliament should be divided into two 
 compartments, and not more than two- There was 
 a stage in our history when we had only one Great 
 Council of the Realm, and the arrangement might 
 well have persisted. There was another stage when 
 it seemed likely that there would be three chambers 
 a chamber of the burgesses or commons, a chamber 
 of the gentry or knights, and a chamber of the 
 greater barons or nobles with a separate house for 
 the clergy, and perhaps another for the merchants 
 and traders. And if that had been the course of 
 evolution, no doubt eminent jurists and political 
 philosophers would have been prepared to show 
 that the true adjustment of " checks and balances," 
 the happy medium between democratic license and 
 ordered freedom, could not possibly have been 
 maintained without the conjoint existence of three 
 chambers, or four, or possibly five. It is true 
 that in Great Britain, from the time of the Tudors 
 to the end of Queen Victoria's reign, the dual 
 arrangement was successful, and indeed essential. 
 But whether it is equally necessary in the future 
 may be open to question. 
 
 In the body of this work it is pointed out that 
 the functions of the House of Lords are to refer 
 projects of legislation to the Sovereign People, so
 
 xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 as to provide against hasty enactments by a 
 temporary majority in the House of Commons ; to 
 revise bills sent up to it; to act as a "ventilating 
 chamber " and expose the ministerial measures to 
 the light of unrestricted and impartial debate; to 
 bring to bear the knowledge and experience of 
 eminent statesmen, jurists, and ex-officials on the 
 problems of administration ; to assist in the work 
 of private bill legislation, for which many of its 
 members are abundantly qualified ; and finally to 
 serve as " a reservoir of ministers." All these func- 
 tions are valuable. Some, however, are atrophied 
 by recent changes ; some can be discharged by other 
 agencies. The House of Lords can no longer force 
 a Government to appeal to the people against its 
 will. The revision of bills, passed through the 
 House of Commons amid the heat and tumult of the 
 party conflict, is still advisable ; but it is a task 
 that might conceivably be left to a capable com- 
 mittee of lawyers and parliamentary draughtsmen. 
 If the House of Lords were no longer available as 
 a ventilating chamber the men who shine in its 
 debates might continue to criticise and to warn ; for 
 noble lords would still have the platform and the 
 press at their disposal. 
 
 But under a single-chamber system, it may be 
 said, the check which an Upper House exercises 
 upon the abuse of its position by a Cabinet would 
 cease to operate. It does not operate very effectively 
 at present, and it is likely to grow weaker. The real 
 restraint upon the majority in the Commons is 
 the existence of the Opposition in the House and the 
 constituencies, and the knowledge that the sovereign 
 electorate can, and will, call the alternative Govern-
 
 INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 ment into office if it is dissatisfied with the conduct 
 of the group it has placed in power. The abolition 
 of the Second Chamber is not likely to be seriously 
 contemplated. But if it were accomplished it would 
 be a far less revolutionary change in the substance, 
 if not in the form, of our system than is commonly 
 supposed. 
 
 It would, however, require to be accompanied by 
 the Referendum, or some other machinery for 
 ascertaining the popular will, when ministers were 
 unwilling to submit to a general election. Such a 
 device may be necessary in any case. There is a 
 good deal to be said for the Referendum, and there 
 are also many obvious and valid objections to it. In 
 the few communities where it has been applied, 
 notably in Switzerland and the Australian Common- 
 wealth, it is said to have worked satisfactorily ; but 
 it is still comparatively new, it has not often been 
 tested by questions which rouse intense feeling, and 
 it has been tried under conditions far less complex 
 than those that prevail in this country. The 
 difficulty of isolating the issue referred to the 
 electors has been dwelt upon, with that of pre- 
 venting the verdict upon the particular measure 
 submitted from becoming a condemnation, or an 
 acquittal, of the Government on its general policy. 
 Yet, in spite of these obstacles, some method of direct 
 appeal to the people on the merits of a legislative 
 proposal may have to be adopted, for occasional 
 use and in the last resort, in order to ascertain 
 whether the opinion of the Cabinet does or does 
 not correspond with the opinion of the nation, when 
 a general election is refused, and may not occur in the 
 regular course for years.
 
 xviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 In the earlier editions of this work it has been 
 pointed out that the two efficient factors in the 
 working of our political system are the Cabinet 
 and the electorate, since the House of Lords and 
 the House of Commons have lost so much of their 
 theoretical powers. Becent changes have tended 
 to increase the power of the governing committee, 
 and to limit the function of the constituencies to 
 that of a final court of appeal, delivering judgment 
 at fixed intervals. The Parliament Act adds to the 
 strength of a Cabinet in office. It does so directly 
 by restricting the veto of the House of Lords upon 
 legislation. Indirectly it contributes to the same 
 result by reducing the term of a Parliament by two 
 years. 
 
 Under the septennial limit the date of a general 
 election was unknown and indeterminate, for it 
 was almost a rule that a Parliament would be 
 dissolved before it expired by efflux of time. The 
 elections might therefore be expected at any 
 moment, at least after two or three sessions 
 had been held, when there might be a doubt 
 whether the " mandate " still held good. With 
 quinquennial Parliaments there will be much less 
 likelihood that elections will be taken at irregular 
 intervals. In the first and second years they 
 will be avoided because the House of Commons 
 is too near its cradle, in the third and fourth 
 years because it is already drawing towards its 
 grave. It is suggested below* that a Prime 
 Minister has many inducements to defer an appeal 
 to the country as long as possible ; and that neither 
 his followers nor even his opponents are, as a rule, 
 * See Chap. VI.
 
 INTRODUCTION xix 
 
 anxious to expedite his movements. Ministers are 
 naturally in no hurry to expose their offices and 
 emoluments, or private members their seats, to 
 the hazard of the polls. The payment of parlia- 
 mentary salaries is not likely to diminish this 
 reluctance. Any excuse to postpone the ordeal will 
 be considered with indulgence, and the automatic 
 recurrence of a general election at comparatively 
 short intervals would furnish an excellent and 
 plausible excuse. A further motive is supplied by 
 the provisions of the Parliament Act. A Cabinet 
 requires three sessions to pass into law a measure 
 opposed by the Upper House. For any bill of this 
 kind, introduced in the second or third session, 
 the full five years' term will be requisite ; and 
 Ministers will not dissolve sooner if they see a 
 fair chance of carrying their programme to a con- 
 clusion. 
 
 In this respect, then, our system tends to grow 
 more like that of the United States, with some of 
 its characteristic merits and defects. The possibility 
 that a general election may be held at any moment 
 has caused our parliamentary life to be passed in an 
 atmosphere of feverish uncertainty. To this circum- 
 stance is due much of its nervous unrest, but 
 also much of its tingling vitality. Members are 
 always preparing, with unsleeping vigilance, for the 
 ordeal of the ballot. They cannot relapse into 
 somnolence for two or three years and awaken only 
 to fierce electioneering at stated intervals. Bage- 
 hot and other critics have said that in America 
 "you cannot find the Sovereign People" when you 
 want them. In England it is supposed that yon 
 can find them by means of an ad hoc dissolution
 
 xx INTRODUCTION 
 
 which enables the constituencies to confirm or 
 withdraw the commission it has entrusted to a 
 ministry. With this privilege or liability restricted 
 the Cabinet would become less responsive to public 
 opinion and more self-confident : even though it 
 might no longer have at hand so easy an expedient 
 for enforcing discipline in the House of Commons 
 as the menace of a premature dissolution. A minis- 
 try, on entering office, might do so with a reasonable 
 assurance that it would probably not be compelled to 
 render an account of its stewardship until the expira- 
 tion of the full statutory term. The control of Parlia- 
 ment over the administration, already weakened by 
 the causes set forth below, will be further relaxed 
 if it becomes the practice for a Cabinet to remain in 
 office for a definite and prescribed, rather than an 
 uncertain, period. "A President's usefulness," says 
 an American critic quoted on a later page, " is 
 measured, not by efficiency, but by calendar month ; 
 it is reckoned that if he be good at all he will be 
 good for four years." And of the Prime Minister, 
 like the President, it may perhaps also be said that 
 he " need only keep alive." 
 
 The Prime Minister's influence and importance 
 are growing. He is acquiring new and enlarged 
 attributes, beyond those he possesses as chairman 
 of the executive board, and chief of the dominant 
 party in Parliament. Considerable progress has been 
 made towards bestowing substantive recognition 
 upon his office. The royal Proclamation of December 
 2, 1905, which gave precedence to " Our Prime 
 Minister " next after the two Archbishops, has 
 more than a ceremonial significance. It indicates 
 that the Prime Minister is no longer officially
 
 INTRODUCTION xxi 
 
 " unknown to the constitution," or known only as a 
 privy councillor placed at the head of the Treasury 
 or some other department of State. Even if he 
 chooses to be "a minister without portfolio" he 
 has a titular dignity which raises him above his 
 colleagues, and above all non-royal personages in 
 the kingdom, except the two great ecclesiastics, and 
 the quasi-ecclesiastical Lord Chancellor.* 
 
 The form now corresponds more closely to the 
 facts. The increasing size of Cabinets has caused 
 the figure of the Prime Minister to stand out more 
 prominently above the ranks of his colleagues. 
 Special functions are attaching themselves to his 
 office, which enlarge its scope, and create for him a 
 distinctive sphere of activity. He is the chief adviser 
 of the Crown, not only in the affairs of the United 
 Kingdom, but also in those of the British Empire. 
 That responsibility has always been his ; but it is 
 invested with a new significance. As steps are 
 taken towards the integration of the various units 
 of the Empire in military and naval defence, in 
 economic organisation, in the direction of foreign 
 policy, it is seen that the Crown stands in need of 
 responsible advice in these and other matters which 
 effect the interests of more than one state. A 
 
 * The Table of Precedency now stands as follows : 
 
 The King. 
 
 The Prince of Wales. 
 
 Other members of the Royal Family. 
 
 The Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 
 The Lord High Chancellor. 
 
 The Archbishop of York. 
 
 The Prime Minister. 
 
 Thus the Prime Minister takes precedence of all peers, 
 whatever their rank, except the Lord Chancellor, and of every 
 other officer of state or of the Royal Household.
 
 xxii INTRODUCTION 
 
 machinery, still inchoate but promising extensive 
 development, has been set up for common con- 
 sultation and joint action within certain limits. 
 We have the Imperial Conference, with its periodical 
 meetings and its permanent secretariat ; we have 
 the Committee of Imperial Defence, with its stand- 
 ing sub-committees and its technical staff. 
 
 Both these organs belong to the Empire, and in 
 them the self-governing colonies claim to stand 
 on a footing of equality with the Island Kingdom. 
 The Dominions assert that their own executive 
 councils are not subordinate to the " Imperial " 
 Cabinet, but co-ordinate with it; and they view 
 with jealousy any control of the Empire machinery 
 by a ministry dependent upon a party majority 
 in the English legislature. They will yield its 
 direction to the Prime Minister, but only in his 
 capacity of chief adviser of the Imperial Crown. 
 
 It follows that the Premier is acquiring the 
 attributes of an Imperial Chancellor, and that he is 
 performing certain duties to which the " collective 
 responsibility" of the Cabinet cannot easily be 
 applied. The point was emphasised when the 
 Imperial Conference of 1907 resolved that in future 
 the Prime Minister, not the Colonial Secretary, 
 should be the ex-officio president. At the sittings 
 of the Conference the President has a wide range 
 of action, in which he is to a considerable extent 
 independent both of his colleagues and the Com- 
 mons. He may, as he did in 1907 and in 1911, 
 summon the Foreign Secretary or the First Lord 
 of the Admiralty to confer with the represen- 
 tatives of the Dominions, or even to enter into 
 private negotiations with them. The Parliament of
 
 INTRODUCTION xxiii 
 
 Westminster can take no more cognisance of his 
 proceedings, unless he comes to it for supplies or for 
 legislation, than the Parliament of Ottawa. In the 
 Committee of Imperial Defence the Prime Minister's 
 authority is even less restricted. The Committee is 
 not under the control of the Cabinet, though it in- 
 cludes certain Cabinet ministers. It is really the 
 Prime Minister's advisory council, and he can 
 summon to it not only ministers of the Dominions 
 and the leader of the Opposition, but also members 
 of the permanent staff of the War Office and Admir- 
 alty, and other State departments, and, indeed, 
 any persons he pleases, whether they have re- 
 presentative character or not.* With the extension 
 of this method of conducting joint affairs we may 
 expect a more definite recognition of the Prime 
 Minister's status as Imperial Chancellor, and perhaps 
 eventually the separation of that function from the 
 presidency of the British ministry, and the leadership 
 of the British parliamentary majority. 
 
 It is pointed out in the analysis of " The 
 Monarchical Position " (Chapter XV.) that Colonial 
 constitutionalists, so far from showing any distrust 
 of the Royal prerogative, are even inclined to 
 exaggerate its importance; for they see in it a 
 protection against the control of " Downing Street," 
 or of the party majority in British politics, and a 
 guarantee for that formal political equality of all 
 the self-governing states of the Empire on which 
 they insist. "The King," I have written, "is 
 the head of the Empire, and there is no other; 
 
 * See Viscount Esher, The Committee of Imperial Defence, 
 p. 19 ; and a Paper by the present writer in King's College 
 Lectures on Colonial Problems (1913). p. 224 seq.
 
 xxiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 for if the Prime Minister, or the Secretary of State, 
 of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and 
 Ireland is allowed to act as his responsible adviser 
 in that capacity, it is only on sufferance " ; since 
 theoretically the King in Canada or in Australia 
 should be advised by his Canadian or his Australian, 
 and not by his English councillors. What, how- 
 ever, would happen if questions were to arise in 
 which the peoples of Great Britain and two or 
 more Dominions are involved, in which their 
 interests clash, and in which conflicting opinions 
 would be offered by the different sets of advisers? 
 Here the Sovereign must either be guided by his 
 Imperial Chancellor, and leave him to adjust the 
 matter with his confreres overseas, or he must act 
 upon his own independent judgment. But this 
 latter alternative would be a noticeable departure 
 from our established practice, and it would be 
 contrary to the spirit of the maxim that " the King 
 can do no wrong " ; which means that the King can 
 do no political or executive act except under re- 
 sponsible advice and through responsible agents. 
 In fact the prerogative is wielded by the Crown- 
 in-Council, the council being the ministerial body 
 which can be called to account by its constituents. 
 According to the orthodox theory, the Sovereign 
 is not bound to accept the advice offered him ; but 
 if he rejects it, he must be prepared to "send 
 for" another group of councillors who will be able 
 to obtain the support of the legislature and the 
 electorate. This neat and compact formula may 
 apply very well to insular politics, especially when 
 there are only two great organised and disciplined 
 political parties ; but with a federal or quasi-federal
 
 INTRODUCTION xxv 
 
 system, and even in internal affairs when there 
 are several groups of nearly equal strength, it may 
 not work so smoothly. If unhappily the conditions 
 which preceded the American Revolution were so 
 far reproduced that the majority in one portion 
 of the King's dominions were opposed to a policy 
 favoured by the majority in another portion, 
 where should the Sovereign turn for guidance ? 
 Could he confidently accept the advice of his 
 English " government," when it may be a question 
 of deciding between it and another of his govern- 
 ments, which may be an Australian, a Canadian, 
 a South African, perhaps an Indian,* government ? 
 Even in home affairs, especially if Home Rule 
 for Ireland were developed into a federalist consti- 
 tution for the whole kingdom, or if the Referendum 
 were adopted, the King might seek advice which 
 his Cabinet could not always offer with the requisite 
 impartiality ; as, for instance, whether a dissolution 
 might be required to solve an inter-state deadlock, 
 or whether a particular question ought to be sub- 
 mitted to the popular vote, or, again, which of the 
 leaders of a divided and heterogeneous Opposition 
 
 * It must not be forgotten that since the great series of 
 reforms introduced by Lord Morley, the Governor-Genera 
 of India in Council, though still autocratic, stands at the 
 head of a hierarchy of legislative bodies and administrative 
 council with a large elective element. He is, therefore, in 
 close touch with the opinion of influential classes of the Indian 
 population. When the Indian Government and the India 
 Office disagree, as they do from time to time, must the final 
 decision always remain with the latter ? True, the King- 
 Emperor exercises his prerogative which overrides both ; but 
 then it would appear that he would only act, as things stand, 
 on the advice of his Prime Minister and Secretary of State, who 
 might be interested parties in the dispute. 
 
 16
 
 xxvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 should be " sent for." All this seems to point 
 to a revival of the older functions of the Privy 
 Council long fallen into abeyance. The Judicial 
 Committee of the Council advises the King upon 
 the exercise of his prerogative as the supreme dis- 
 penser of justice in all parts of his dominions except 
 the United Kindom.* It is at least conceivable 
 that a political Committee of the Council may 
 eventually be appointed to advise the Crown upon 
 matters which concern more than one of his states 
 or dependencies, and upon constitutional questions. 
 The Prime Minister might be president of this 
 Committee, as he is of the Committee of Defence ; 
 though as Imperial Chancellor rather than as 
 head of the Cabinet. It may be said that any 
 such innovation would relax the control of the 
 House of Commons over the Imperial policy. This 
 is true. But the control, as I have shown, is in- 
 effective at present ; and the establishment of a 
 council of extra-parliamentary advisers, hazardous 
 as may appear, might be the alternative to a sub- 
 stantial increase of the direct personal authority 
 of the Crown, which would be more hazardous still. 
 As to Home Eule it would be out of place to 
 speculate upon its possible results, since at the time 
 of writing t it is uncertain whether the projected 
 changes in the government of Ireland will be 
 effected, or what aspect they will ultimately assume. 
 
 * The present Lord Chancellor (Lord Haldane) has suggested 
 that the exception should be removed, and that the Judicial 
 Committee should become the final tribunal of appeal for 
 the entire Empire, occasionally sending out some of its judges 
 to the Dominions to adjudicate there on cases i brought up to 
 it from the local courts. 
 
 f December, 1913.
 
 INTRODUCTION xxvii 
 
 I see no reason to modify the general conclusion 
 at which I arrived nine years ago, when I said that 
 some machinery of subordinate legislatures and 
 executives, some devolution on a large and systematic 
 scale, would be required in order to relieve the 
 central Parliament of burdens beyond its strength. 
 Almost every great and progressive country, except 
 France and Italy, has worked out the division 
 between provincial and national institutions ; and 
 it seems inevitable that we shall be compelled to 
 apply, in some shape, the federal methods which are 
 in operation, in one form or another, in Germany, 
 in the United States, in Switzerland, in Austria, in 
 the Dominion of Canada, in the Commonwealth 
 of Australia, and in the Union of South Africa. 
 Whether the initial grant of Home Eule to Ireland 
 should be regarded as a step towards this goal, or 
 an impediment in the path, is a polemical question 
 into which I do not desire to enter. But, whatever 
 may be the outcome of the present inflamed con- 
 troversy, one can hardly doubt that in the end a 
 solution will be found, which will leave local and 
 provincial affairs to be dealt with in local and pro- 
 vincial assemblies, under the reserved sovereignty of 
 a central legislature occupied with the politics of 
 the Kingdom and the Empire. 
 
 In the analysis of the composition of the House 
 of Commons attempted in the first edition of this 
 book, I indicated the probability of a larger propor- 
 tional influx of middle-class and working-class 
 members. Some change of this kind there has 
 been in the last few years, but it is less marked than 
 might perhaps have been expected, The Labour
 
 xxviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 representatives have increased since the dissolution 
 of the 1900 Parliament ; but they still form a group 
 which is numerically unimportant, far weaker than 
 the Irish Nationalists, and not much stronger than 
 the Ulster members or the Welsh. A Labour party 
 which constitutes only six or seven per cent, of the 
 House of Commons would represent Labour very 
 inadequately, if it could be supposed that the great 
 multitude of industrial electors really desired to 
 delegate their authority in Parliament exclusively 
 to men drawn from their own order. No such 
 general inclination is yet apparent. Working-men 
 in most constituencies seem content to be repre- 
 sented by persons outside the wage-earning ranks. 
 
 The payment of parliamentary salaries, and a 
 simplification of the electoral system that would go 
 far towards conferring the franchise upon every adult 
 person, not suffering under the disability of being 
 an idiot or a woman, may make a considerable 
 difference in the future. Up to the present the 
 character of the House of Commons remains very 
 much as it was described in 1904 ; though the 
 " socio-political " class, as I called it, has been 
 further encroached upon by the mercantile and 
 professional elements. Lawyers are as numerous 
 in the House as ever, and more prominent than at 
 any former period on the front benches. No 
 Cabinet, before that of Mr. Asquith between 1908 
 and 1912, had lawyers, who had been in active 
 practice, as its Prime Minister, its Secretary for 
 War, its First Lord of the Admiralty, its Chief 
 Secretary for Ireland, and its Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer. The "democratic" element in the 
 House was considerably strengthened by the great
 
 INTRODUCTION xxix 
 
 Liberal victory in the general election of 1906, after 
 ten years of Conservative government. Many of 
 the country gentlemen, sons of peers, landowners, 
 and manufacturing magnates, were swept out by 
 the tide to make way for schoolmasters, solicitors, 
 journalists, tradesmen, and minor employers of 
 labour. Very much the same thing occurred at the 
 first general election after the Beform Act of 1832, 
 and the sequel in both cases was similar. A con- 
 siderable number of the new men retired, or lost 
 their seats at subsequent elections, and were re- 
 placed by members of the older type. 
 
 A Parliament in King George V.'s reign includes 
 a larger body of persons of moderate means, 
 persons who have had to earn their living by their 
 own exertions, than any Parliament in the reign 
 of Queen Victoria. But the socio-political class, 
 and the descendants of the " governing families," 
 are still well represented, and if the aristocratic 
 element is declining the plutocratic is growing 
 stronger. The influence of financiers and financial 
 corporations in politics is expanding even more 
 noticeably than that of the lawyers. Instead of 
 the "great Whig houses " of the past we may 
 have an array of great mercantile and banking 
 dynasties, with one brother or uncle or cousin, 
 it may be, in the Cabinet, another an Under- 
 secretary of State, another sitting as a private 
 member in the House of Commons, another raised 
 to the peerage for his public services or his liberality 
 to his party. 
 
 Such men may possess not only high individual 
 ability, but also a knowledge of business, and a 
 close acquaintance with cosmopolitan finance, which
 
 XXX 
 
 may often prove valuable in the conduct of public 
 affairs. At the same time there are obvious risks 
 in this connection of politics with the " money 
 power," in the association between comparatively 
 poor men, able to influence governments and 
 popular assemblies, and the enormously wealthy 
 groups that control the banks, the stock exchanges, 
 and the great industries. 
 
 The danger is felt in the United States, in France, 
 and in other communities where democratic institu- 
 tions co-exist with abounding wealth and a spirit 
 of determined enterprise. With us the abuse has 
 not so far manifested itself in the graver forms ; but 
 we have had some significant warnings which point 
 to a peril of a special kind. In England it is easier 
 than it is elsewhere for the financier to get into touch 
 with the politician through the nexus of London 
 society. There are countries where the 'mercantile 
 centres are locally separated from the political; 
 there are other countries where the division is social 
 or conventional, where the banker, the stock-jobber, 
 the contractor, would not naturally come into con- 
 tact with ministers, with deputies, with high officers 
 of state, and with the landed aristocracy. 
 
 In the amalgam of fashionable London all these 
 elements are fused together. English society is 
 catholic in spite of its exclusiveness ; and if it 
 offers a cold welcome to virtuous obscurity it is 
 always eager to recognise wealth and success. The 
 man who has " arrived," through politics or com- 
 merce, is not merely a tolerated guest, nor is he 
 treated with frigid courtesy ; he is admitted to the 
 inner circle, and speedily assimilates its habits and 
 even its modes of thought. The House of Commons
 
 INTRODUCTION xxxi 
 
 leader, who may have begun life in the workshop, 
 and the millionaire, who started as a clerk in a 
 city office, meet at aristocratic dinner-tables and 
 at pleasant country-house parties in historic man- 
 sions. A "great lady," with an ancient title, may 
 be the hostess at a gathering which would include a 
 Cabinet minister, born in a country parsonage, who 
 has married one of her sisters, and a mammoth 
 company-promoter on whom she has bestowed the 
 hand of her daughter. In the unrestrained intimacy 
 of domesticity, sport, and travel, on the golf-course, 
 and in visits to the same pleasure resorts, the men 
 who direct the great dominating interests, com- 
 merce, politics, the law, finance, the press, are 
 brought very close together. Even the brilliant 
 platform rhetorician, who may have been lifted into 
 power as the champion of the masses or the minor 
 bourgeoisie, is apt to forget his clients and his past 
 in this constant association with opulent and well- 
 born persons, whose luxuries and tastes he shares. 
 These considerations apply to all parties ; for the 
 great interests, the family connections, the society 
 friendships, cut across the party lines. 
 
 The association of the money-power with politics 
 is not an unmixed evil, though it may lend itself 
 to grave abuses unless carefully controlled. It is 
 indeed inevitable ; since government can no longer 
 confine itself mainly to national defence, adminis- 
 tration, and law-making : nor can it even discharge 
 its duties in these spheres, without close reference to 
 industrial, mercantile, and financial activities. The 
 past few years have made further damaging assaults 
 upon the conception of the State as a detached 
 arbiter between all its citizens, occupied in pro-
 
 xxxii INTRODUCTION 
 
 tecting them from external attack and internal 
 disorder, and leaving them, with serene impartiality, 
 to push their fortunes as they please by any kind 
 of " private enterprise " which is not illegal. The 
 revolt of one party against free trade, and the 
 repudiation by another of the rigours of free 
 contract, are two expressions of the same reaction 
 from the individualistic and competitive orthodoxy 
 of the nineteenth century. State socialism has 
 been accepted in fact if not in name ; and 
 there is no influential body of political thought 
 which definitely repudiates the principle, though 
 there is much controversy as to the extent and 
 manner of its application. 
 
 The last decade has witnessed the creation of 
 a new bureaucracy, with its army of inspectors, 
 statisticians, rate - collectors, surveyors, valuers, 
 and clerks. Englishmen have always distrusted 
 " officialism," and they have none of that respect 
 for the public functionary which prevails on the 
 continent of Europe. The civil servant, the 
 national or municipal employe, has been regarded 
 rather as a necessary evil than an object of 
 admiration or affection. Yet the increase, both 
 in the numbers and in the multifarious duties, of 
 this hierarchy might have been, and indeed was, 
 anticipated.* A government which is superintend- 
 ing elementary and secondary education, providing 
 pensions for aged persons, conducting a colossal 
 insurance business, furnishing medical aid to the 
 greater part of the industrial population, sur- 
 veying and valuing all the landed estates of the 
 country, and managing labour bureaus, evidently 
 
 * See infra, p. 201.
 
 INTRODUCTION xxxiii 
 
 needs a very large staff of servants. The pro- 
 fessional administrator, of one kind or another, is 
 a characteristic product of modern conditions like 
 the professional politician. 
 
 The relation between the one class and the other 
 may become more intimate than it is at present. 
 Politics is ceasing to be an occupation or an 
 amusement for persons with leisure, ambition, and 
 private means. The payment of legislative salaries, 
 and the revival of the system of nomination for 
 civil service appointments, will render it easier for 
 a poor man to devote himself to public life with 
 some prospect of ^making a moderate living by it, 
 even if he never reaches the highest rungs of the 
 ladder. Much will depend upon the competence, the 
 zeal, and the integrity of these persons. If it became 
 the custom for young men of good education and 
 ability to graduate through the municipal councils 
 to the House of Commons, and thereafter to find 
 permanent employment in the administrative 
 services, they might be called professional politi- 
 cians in no derogatory sense. After all politics is 
 a business of complicated detail, in which the 
 knowledge and experience of the trained man are 
 needed, as well as the energy and common sense 
 of the public-spirited amateur. 
 
 Public spirit of a high kind, and a comprehensive 
 acquaintance with practical affairs, together with 
 a philosophic grasp of general principles, will be 
 required for the solution of the large and difficult 
 problems which lie before all governments in the 
 immediate future. These problems have assumed 
 unprecedented proportions, and attracted unparal-
 
 xxxiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 leled interest, during the past few years. Parliament 
 has been compelled to devote a large part of its 
 attention to such subjects as elementary education, 
 old age pensions, national insurance, the protection 
 of children, the prevention of sweating, the care 
 of the feeble-minded, the regulation of the hours of 
 labour in mines, arbitration in industrial disputes, 
 the powers and responsibilities of trade-unions, the 
 treatment of the unemployed, and the readjustment 
 of taxation so as to transfer a greater share of the 
 burden from the poor to the rich. It has embarked 
 upon this course of ameliorative legislation in a 
 characteristically empirical fashion, turning with 
 reluctance from the established' party conflict, and 
 dragging one piece-meal project of social reform 
 after another into the field of strife. As a result, 
 its response to the new ideas, the new ambitions, 
 the new hopes, or the new delusions, as some might 
 call them, vibrating through large sections of the 
 population, has been confused and uncertain. 
 Ministers, members of Parliament, and politicians 
 generally, as well as the writers in the press, have 
 met the portentous growth of the socialistic and 
 syndicalist sentiment among the working-classes, 
 and the movement to effect a redistribution of in- 
 dustrial profits by the combined efforts of the wage- 
 earners themselves, either by suggesting hasty 
 expedients to meet each temporary emergency as 
 it arises, or by denying the significance and reality 
 of the phenomena. Labour unrest has been treated 
 with hurried, and mostly ineffectual, palliatives by 
 legislators and administrators who have not cared 
 to make a systematic analysis of the large and 
 complex causes that underlie its manifestations.
 
 INTRODUCTION xxxv 
 
 The same may be said of the agitation among 
 women for political privileges, which has proved as 
 embarrassing as the agitation among men for 
 economic advantages. The House of Commons and 
 politicians of all parties, with a few exceptions, long 
 regarded the claim for female enfranchisement as 
 a harmless joke, which might be treated either with 
 friendly tolerance or with indulgent censure. But 
 a serious demand for the suffrage by women, 
 whether it can be conceded or not, might have 
 been foreseen. It was the natural sequel to that 
 process of feminine emancipation, and that develop- 
 ment of feminine individualism, which had been 
 promoted by legislation, by the teaching of thinkers 
 and writers for more than half a century, and by 
 physical and statistical causes. The " governing 
 classes," if they had neglected the novelists, the poets, 
 and the philosophers, ought at least to have studied 
 the Registrar-General's Returns ; and they might 
 have perceived that, in a country where the surplus 
 of female over male lives was mounting steadily year 
 by year till it passed the million, the whole status 
 of women was changing, and the change would 
 have its reflex action as all social and economic 
 change must have sooner or later upon the 
 political system. 
 
 But those who have the direction of affairs are 
 commonly, as Professor Dicey has pointed out, 
 "behind the age; " for the ideas which were new 
 when they were at the receptive period of their 
 lives are likely to be superseded by the time that 
 they have attained to a commanding position.* 
 
 * " Law-making in England is the work of men well ad- 
 vanced in life ; the politicians who guide the House of Commons,
 
 xxxvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 Few even among the greater reforming statesmen 
 have had the adaptability to carry their thoughts 
 away from the generation which was young when 
 they were young, and to turn to that which is 
 young when they are old, and will be old when 
 they are dead. They do not often find themselves 
 prepared to deal effectually with such a crisis as 
 arises, from time to time in the life of a nation, 
 when a cloud of doctrines and opinions, long held 
 in suspense in the intellectual atmosphere, has 
 filtered through to the masses, and crystallized 
 into a demand for action. I have pointed out 
 below that for more than a century our public 
 interest has been mainly devoted to political objects.* 
 But the governance of a people is concerned with 
 much besides politics ; and its expression, even in 
 the political form, must accommodate itself to 
 the ethical, psychological, and social conceptions 
 which have become prevalent, unless it can modify 
 them to fit into its own moulds. " Eepresentative 
 government and modern industrialism," I have 
 said, " have not as yet harmonised the political and 
 economic forces." 
 
 This adjustment has made little progress since 
 these words were written nine years ago ; and it 
 is likely to grow both more difficult and more 
 urgent in the years that lie before us. Some of 
 
 to say nothing of the peers who lead the House of Lords, are 
 few of them below thirty, and most of them are above forty 
 years of age. They have formed or picked up their convictions 
 and, what is of more consequence, their prepossessions in early 
 manhood, which is the one period of life when men are easily 
 impressed with new ideas." Dicey, Law and Public Opinion in 
 England, p. 33. 
 
 :; ' See infra, p. 310.
 
 INTRODUCTION xxxvii 
 
 the restraints upon the power of the democracy, 
 described in the following pages, are still opera- 
 tive. But some are sensibly relaxed ; and the great 
 body of electors who live by manual labour show 
 a much more definite consciousness of their 
 strength, and a more resolute intention to use it 
 for the improvement of their own position. 
 
 We have a society in which political power rests 
 with the mass of its poorer members; in which 
 education, carried up to a certain level, is general ; 
 in which an unprecedented mental restlessness 
 has been stimulated by the diffusion of reading 
 matter, and the facilities for rapid communica- 
 tion ; in which class barriers are still rigid, 
 though the physical, temperamental, and personal 
 differences, which formerly divided classes from one 
 another, have been attenuated ; in which moral 
 sanctions and conventions, handed down by tradi- 
 tion, and based ultimately on Christian theology, 
 have lost much of their force ; in which the 
 relations of the individual to the universal order, 
 to the state, to the family, and to his fellow- 
 citizens, are being freely examined in the light 
 of new scientific discoveries and philosophical 
 speculations ; in which there is a rising belief 
 that a system of industrialism, based on arduous 
 toil for weekly wages by the majority of mankind, 
 is as much opposed to reason and humanity as 
 slavery itself. A revolution, as comprehensive as 
 that which ultimately abolished predial and domestic 
 servitude, seems to be entering upon its initial 
 stages ; the passion for material equality, which has 
 succeeded that for political equality, will hardly 
 be satisfied without many strenuous attempts to
 
 xxxviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 transfer property, and all the amenities and oppor- 
 tunities which go with property, from the Few 
 to the Many. The value of our Constitution will 
 be tested by its action in the presence of these 
 aspirations and impulses; and by its capacity to 
 shape them to a favourable issue, without the 
 disasters and the disorganisation by which revolu- 
 tionary changes in the social structure, and in its 
 ethical and economic basis, have so often been 
 attended. 
 
 S. L. 
 LONDON, 
 
 December, 1918.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION TO EEVISED EDITION . vii 
 
 CHAPTKK 
 
 *^I. THE CONSTITUTION AND THE CONVENTIONS. 1 
 
 . THE CABINET SYSTEM . . .15 
 
 . THE PARLIAMENTARY TYPE OP GOVERNMENT 44 
 
 ^ IV. THE CABINET AND THE COMMONS . . 55 
 
 ^ V. THE CONTROL OF PARLIAMENT . . 74 
 
 VI. THE SELECTIVE AND ELECTIVE FUNCTIONS 
 
 OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS . . 95 
 
 VII. GOVERNMENT BY PARTY . . .116 
 
 "^VIII. MINISTERIAL EESPONSIBILITY . . 135 
 
 \s IX. THE PRIME MINISTER AND THE INNER 
 
 CABINET ..... 155 
 
 ^ X. THE LIMITATIONS OF DEMOCRACY . . 172 
 
 "" XI. GOVERNMENT BY AMATEURS . . 199 
 
 xzziz
 
 xl CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGK 
 
 I/' XII. THE HOUSE OP LORDS . . .218 
 
 XIII. THE PEERS AS A SENATE . . . 234 
 
 l/XIV. THE MONARCHY . . . .256 
 
 XV. THE MONARCHICAL POSITION . . 274 
 
 XVI. ASPECTS OP CHANGE . . . 290 
 
 INDEX . 313
 
 THE GOVERNANCE OF 
 ENGLAND 
 
 CHAPTEB I 
 
 THE CONSTITUTION AND THE CONVENTIONS 
 
 THE inquirer into the machinery of English politics, 
 who takes Machiavelli's advice, and endeavours to 
 "follow the real truth of things rather than an 
 imaginary view of them," is confronted by the 
 difficulty which forced from De Tocqueville, in a 
 moment of irritation, the impatient aphorism that 
 there is no constitution in England : elle n'existe 
 point. The difficulty goes beyond the obvious 
 difference, so often noticed, between an "unwritten" 
 constitution and one embodied in fundamental acts 
 or organic laws, like that of the United States, or 
 that of France under the Third Republic. This 
 distinction is deep and searching, but too much 
 may be made of it. It is true the constitution of 
 the United States enables the American com- 
 mentator to discuss his subject with a precision 
 and definiteness, to which his English rival seldom 
 endeavours to attain. The former finds it easy to 
 assume the strictly legal attitude ; he has a fixed 
 body of positive legislation to guide him, and in the 
 last resort can always fall back upon an authorita- 
 
 2 i
 
 2 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 tive text. His position resembles that of a judge 
 interpreting an Act of Parliament ; the English 
 constitutionalist has more often to decide on what 
 may be called the equities of the case. Sometimes 
 he has positive statutes to rely upon, but often he 
 can only refer to the decisions of his predecessors, 
 or to established practice, or to a consensus of 
 opinion, based on a kind of political morality or 
 etiquette, analogous to the old jus natures and jus 
 gentium. 
 
 It is not so much that our constitution is un- 
 written, for of course much the largest part of it is 
 written and printed ; * but that it is unfixed and 
 flexible, where others are rigid. We are not con- 
 cerned with a solid building, to which a room may 
 be added here, or a wing there ; but with a living 
 organism, in a condition of perpetual growth and 
 change, of development and decay. There are 
 written constitutions which possess similar features, 
 and there are unwritten constitutions which do not. 
 The political systems of the self-governing British 
 Colonies, which are modelled on that of the Mother 
 Country, differ from it fundamentally in this respect. 
 They are created by Parliamentary enactment ; and 
 a statute like the Dominion of Canada Act, or the 
 Australian Commonwealth Act, is a " Constitution " 
 like that of the United States. It is possible for a 
 court of law to interpret its terms on strictly legal 
 
 * " A great part of our Constitution is already written. 
 Many of the powers of the Crown, many of the powers of the 
 House of Lords, including the whole of its judicial powers, 
 much of the constitution of the House of Commons and its 
 entire relation to the electoral body, have long since been 
 defined by Act of Parliament." Main*, Popular Government, 
 p. 125.
 
 THE CONSTITUTION AND CONVENTIONS 3 
 
 principles, and to pronounce whether any executive, 
 or legislative, transaction is ultra vires or not. But 
 what is ultra vires, when done by the Imperial 
 Parliament of Britian, or by the Executive Govern- 
 ment under its presumed authority? It is a 
 question of opinion, and of opinion that varies from 
 time to time. 
 
 It is a commonplace to say that the British 
 system of government, though grounded on law, is 
 largely dependent on what have been called consti- 
 tutional conventions.* In this respect it is not 
 unique. The studies and researches of Sir Henry 
 Maine, of Waitz, Seebohm, Stubbs, Tylor, and 
 others, have shown that all human societies live 
 largely on legal and historical fictions.! An institu- 
 tion, or an office, is maintained for centuries after its 
 true meaning has departed, and when its operative 
 function is being performed by other agencies. The 
 " ceremonial " part of government is conserved, and 
 may often continue to attract reverence and regard, 
 though it is virtually atrophied ; while by its side is 
 a more or less unnoticed " efficient " element which 
 is doing the actual work. This is the universal 
 
 * See Professor Dicey, The Law of the Constitution, where 
 the nature of the distinction is made the subject of an acute 
 and able analysis. 
 
 f " Almost everybody can observe that when new circum- 
 stances arise we use our old ideas to bring them home to us : 
 it is only afterwards, and sometimes long afterwards, that our 
 ideas are found to have changed. An English' court of justice 
 is in great part an engine for working out this process. New 
 combinations of circumstances are constantly arising, but in 
 the first instance they are exclusively interpreted according to 
 old legal ideas. A little later lawyers admit that the old ideas 
 are not quite what they were before the new circumstances 
 arose." Maine, Early History of Institutions, p. 230.
 
 4 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 tendency. It is visible everywhere, and one may 
 find traces of it in the greatest and the smallest of 
 human polities and societies in the Kussian Empire 
 and in the arrangements of a Parish Council.* But 
 from one cause or another most modern civilised 
 states have found it necessary to clear away a good 
 deal of this age-worn paraphernalia, and have con- 
 sciously endeavoured to turn the conventions into 
 systematised and formal rules. They do not always 
 succeed, and they never succeed completely. In 
 England the attempt has scarcely been made. We 
 have had no revolution for two hundred years ; we 
 have not been compelled to clean the slate, or 
 examine the foundations of our beliefs ; and we are 
 proud of being an illogical people. So we have 
 carefully avoided systematisation ; we provide for 
 immediate necessities ; and we are content with a 
 constitution, which has been found to meet our 
 practical requirements, though it is partly law, 
 and partly history, and partly ethics, and partly 
 custom, and partly the result of the various 
 influences which are moulding and transforming 
 
 * The United States Constitution, like our own, is being 
 constantly modified by new precedents and conventions, as 
 clear-sighted American publicists recognise. " Ours is scarcely 
 less than the British a living and fecund system. It does not, 
 indeed, find its rootage so widely in the hidden soil of un- 
 written law ; its tap-root at least is the Constitution, but the 
 Constitution is now, like Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights, 
 only the sap-centre of a system of government vastly larger 
 than the stock from which it has branched a system some of 
 whose forms have only very indistinct and rudimental begin- 
 nings in the simple substance of the Constitution and which 
 exercises many functions apparently quite foreign to the 
 primitive properties contained in the fundamental law." 
 Woodrow Wilson, Congressional Government, p. 8.
 
 THE CONSTITUTION AND CONVENTIONS 5 
 
 the whole structure of society, from year to year 
 and one might almost say, from hour to hour. 
 
 This is one reason why the English method of 
 government is so hard to describe. Any account 
 of it must be like the picture of a living person. 
 If you want to see exactly how the original appears, 
 you do not refer to a photograph taken twenty or 
 thirty years ago. The features may be the same, 
 but their expression, their proportion, and their 
 whole character, have changed. In the interval 
 between one examination of our public polity and 
 another, the formal part may not have greatly 
 altered, but the conventional, the organic, the 
 working, portion has been modified in all sorts of 
 ways. The ^structural elements, it is true, exhibit 
 a wonderful superficial permanence. The Crown, 
 the two Houses of Parliament, the Council of 
 Ministers, the Electorate, the Judicature, and the 
 mutual relations of these various powers and 
 authorities, are the material of all the historians 
 and jurists. There is the same machine, or at least 
 a machine which is painted to look the same. But 
 its balance and adjustment have been varied; in 
 its operation it is quite different, and needs different 
 handling. 
 
 The problem of English constitutional history has 
 been that of reconciling the theory with the facts, 
 and of adapting the apparatus to its purpose, 
 without absolutely taking it to pieces and recon- 
 structing it on other lines. This has been the task 
 of legislative and political efforts from age to age. 
 The working efficiency of the system is a measure 
 of the practical, though often unconscious, skill 
 with which the process has been performed. It is
 
 6 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 also a testimony to the long series of fortunate acci- 
 dents which have shaped the destinies of the nation. 
 Other constitutions have been built ; that of Eng- 
 land has been allowed to grow, and so the organism 
 has gradually adapted itself to its environment. Its 
 development has been biological rather than me- 
 chanical ; and for this reason it is still instinct with 
 vitality, while some of its much later imitators show 
 signs of stiffness and desiccation. 
 
 Form and Substance. 
 
 The strangest feature in the whole case is not 
 merely the unconsciousness, but the reluctance, 
 with which these organic transformations are per- 
 mitted. From decade to decade, one may almost 
 say from century to century, the formal structure 
 of English government alters hardly at all. Essen- 
 tial elements are introduced, modified, abandoned ; 
 but this goes on without express recognition in the 
 statute-book, or in the proceedings of the legislature, 
 or even in the common apprehension of the public. 
 So far as the form of our institutions are concerned 
 we might scarcely have moved from the Act of 
 Settlement. If ever the civilisation of modern 
 Europe should be lost and buried, like that of Assyria 
 and Chaldea, and should have to be reconstructed 
 from written records, the philosophic inquirer of 
 the future would assuredly fall into errors as striking 
 as those of some of our own investigators, who 
 have confused the Egypt of the the Shepherd Kings 
 with the Egypt of the Ptolemies, and applied to 
 the Hellenic world of Homer conditions which 
 prevailed in the age of Plato. 
 
 The conscientious inquirer into a rediscovered
 
 THE CONSTITUTION AND CONVENTIONS 7 
 
 Britain would have much excuse for failing to 
 detect the difference between the twentieth, and 
 the eighteenth, or even the sixteenth, century. He 
 would find the proclamations and the statutes of 
 King Edward VII. and Queen Victoria couched in 
 terms not greatly different from those employed 
 under the Stuart and the Tudor sovereigns. He 
 might unearth copies of Blackstone and De Lolme, a 
 volume of Hallam, some chapters of Lord Brougham 
 and Earl Grey, and a discoloured fragment of 
 Lord Courtney of Penwith ; * and he would natur- 
 ally infer that since the same forms, and names, 
 and authorities, were so often used, and apparently 
 in the same relation, they meant the same things. 
 By painstaking research and collation he would 
 no doubt obtain a clear idea of Magna Carta, of 
 the Habeas Corpus Act, of the Bill of Eights, of 
 the Privilege of Parliament, of Stockdale's Case 
 and Hansard's Case, of the procedure of the House 
 of Commons, and perhaps of the rules governing 
 the administration of civil and criminal justice. 
 But he would be gifted with the instinct of 
 genius if he penetrated to the springs of English 
 political action, and realised that the efficient factors 
 were for the most part not those he found in his 
 books, and not those of which the Acts of Parlia- 
 ment, and the decisions of the law-courts, took 
 cognisance. 
 
 This curious opposition between the actual and 
 the formal elements is not entirely due to that 
 innate conservatism which has contributed much 
 to the strength, and something to the weakness, 
 
 * The Working Constitution of the United Kingdom; by 
 Leonard Courtney (London, 1901).
 
 8 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 of Britain. It is true that the Englishman has 
 a reverence for the past, which is not exceeded 
 in any Western country. Stare super antiquas vias 
 is with him not so much an axiom as a religion. 
 When a change is contemplated he prefers to 
 justify it, not by an appeal to general principles, 
 but by showing that it is in accordance with pre- 
 cedent, and a natural and necessary consequence 
 of what has gone before. Hence we have the 
 strange spectacle, witnessed in England with a 
 complacency that amazes foreigners, of new legis- 
 lation constantly supported by references to the 
 practice and maxims of a community in which 
 the problems of modern society could not have 
 been conceived by the liveliest imagination. In 
 the age of railways, and wireless telegraphy, and 
 flying machines, we are still guided by the authority 
 of legislators who knew nothing of steam-power, 
 and sometimes even by precedents drawn from 
 the acts of sovereigns and statesmen who died 
 before the invention of gunpowder and printing. 
 
 But we look to the past, not merely because 
 it is the past always a recommendation in itself 
 to Englishmen but because our formal constitu- 
 tion is strictly a legal system. It is founded on 
 law ; and in all the great struggles of our history 
 there has been a constant reference, if not to 
 positive enactments, at any rate to legal principles 
 and methods. Our constitution, as one of the 
 ablest expounders of it has declared,* is supposed 
 to be part of our Common Law. Changes, especi- 
 ally those of an organic nature, have been de- 
 fended mainly on the ground that they were 
 * Hearn, The Government of England.
 
 THE CONSTITUTION AND CONVENTIONS 9 
 
 either the actual revival of ancient rights or the 
 abolition of unwarranted accretions upon the 
 established customs. To the Englishman, in his 
 political capacity, "use" was what was sought and 
 venerated ; the " abuse " was only the perversion of 
 good custom. Our forefathers "wanted nothing 
 new ; to stand upon the old way was their interest 
 and desire. Expediency is always open to debate. 
 It admits by its very nature different opinions. 
 But right lucet ipsa per se. If its existence be 
 once established, there can be no further question." 
 An educated Englishman, says Professor Hearn, 
 asked from what source a knowledge of our Consti- 
 tution might be gained, would probably refer the 
 inquirer to " those three great Statutes, which 
 Lord Chatham called the Bible of the British 
 Constitution." But a reference to them would be 
 disappointing. If he turns to Magna Carta, the 
 student may read of the writ mort d'ancestor and 
 the assize of novel disseizin, of scutages and aids, 
 of weirs and rivers, of weights and measures. In 
 the Petition of Eight he will find that the Crown 
 may not make illegal exactions of money without 
 the consent of Parliament, and that it is forbidden 
 to perform various other acts which, as he knows 
 very well, it is not in the least likely to attempt. 
 In the Bill of Eights he will have the advantage of 
 reading all that James the Second ought not to have 
 done ; and he will be interested to observe that the 
 King's subjects may have arms " suitable to their 
 conditions and as allowed by law," and that jurors 
 "which pass upon men in trials for high treason" 
 ought to be freeholders. Even if he looks at the 
 three great Eeform Acts of the nineteenth cen-
 
 10 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 tury, and to the debates in both Houses of 
 Parliament which led up to them, he will still 
 find comparatively little that guides him as to the 
 true character of our institutions ; though he may 
 learn something about forty-shilling freeholders, and 
 compound householders, of the occupying tenant 
 and the lodger vote, of the registration of electors, 
 and the qualification for the service franchise. 
 
 But for much that is essential to the political 
 machine, as it operates to-day, he may search in 
 vain through the statutes, and the parliamentary 
 debates, and the legal reports, from the reign of 
 King Edward I. to the reign of King Edward VII. 
 There is no positive law for the establishment of our 
 national representative system. " No statute, no 
 rule of Common Law, no resolution of either 
 House of Parliament, has yet recognised the 
 Cabinet." Responsible Government is non-existent 
 for all that our legal theory knows of it. No 
 formal cognisance is taken, even by the House of 
 Commons itself, of the division into parties and of 
 the fact that the Imperial executive is a committee 
 of one of them. And the further fact that this com- 
 mittee holds office at the mercy of the parliamentary 
 majority is not only not mentioned but it is most 
 carefully and elaborately concealed. " In the body 
 of the Act,* for example, which conferred upon 
 Victoria its present form of government, the words 
 ' responsible minister,' or any equivalent terms, 
 never once occur. Were it not for a marginal note 
 which forms no portion of the Act, not even a hint 
 would be given by this statute of the important 
 change, which it was intended to effect" (Hearn, 
 Government of England, p. 8). 
 
 * 18 & 19 Viet. c. 65.
 
 THE CONSTITUTION AND CONVENTIONS 11 
 
 The list of subjects, which are not embodied in 
 Acts of Parliament or other formal documents, 
 might be indefinitely enlarged. There is no reference 
 to the influence on Parliament of the electorate, 
 to the organisation of public opinion, to the unique 
 position of the Prime Minister, to the relations 
 of the Executive and the Legislature towards 
 the various classes in the community, to the part 
 played by public meetings and political organi- 
 sations.* At the same time the action and inter- 
 action of the various parts of the machine of State 
 are often misrepresented by the legal formulae which 
 are supposed to describe them. It is known that 
 the whole arrangement would come to hopeless 
 wreck if any attempt were made to work it on these 
 
 * Professor Dicey points out (The Law of the Constitution, 
 p. 285) that just as it cannot be said with strict accuracy that 
 English law recognises the liberty of the press, so it can 
 hardly be said that our constitution knows of such a thing as 
 any specific right of public meeting. The right of assembling 
 is nothing more than a result of the view taken by the Courts 
 as to individual liberty of person and individual liberty of 
 speech. There has never been any such formal recognition of 
 this right as there is in the Belgian Constitution, Art. 190 
 which contains the following clause : " Les Beiges on le droit 
 de s 'assembler paisiblement et sans armes, en se conformant 
 aux lois, qui peuvent rSgler Vexercice de ce droit, sans 
 neanmoins le soumettre a wne autorisation prealable." As t 
 freedom of the press, it would appear, from the legal rules, 
 summarised by Mr. Dicey from Stephen's Digest, that the 
 whole of Carlyle's writings, much of Mill's, a good deal of 
 Ruskin's, most of Herbert Spencer's, Darwin's, Huxley's, and 
 Tyndall's, and some of John Henry Newman's, and Froude's, 
 might have rendered their authors liable to fine or imprison- 
 ment. In fact, as Mr. Dicey caustically says, " Freedom of 
 discussion is in England little else than the right to write or 
 say anything which a jury, consisting of twelve shopkeepers, 
 think it expedient should be said or written."
 
 12 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 lines. That which renders it not only possible, but 
 safe, convenient, effective, and, in the main, satis- 
 factory, is the series of conventions, by which 
 institutions have been perverted to quite other 
 purposes than those they are supposed to fulfil. 
 We live under a system of tacit understandings. 
 
 But the understandings themselves are not always 
 understood. A large part of the work of those who 
 have written on the English constitution consists 
 of an examination of the expedients by which the 
 rigour of an archaic body of doctrine is modified to 
 suit the exigencies of a complex and highly-deve- 
 loped modern civilisation. They have had to recon- 
 cile, or at least to compare, the theory with the 
 practice, to point out how the one differs from the 
 other, and how the business of the nation gets itself 
 done under cover of the historical fictions. This has 
 been the task which has been admirably fulfilled, by 
 such writers as Hearn, Todd, Walter Bagehot, and 
 Professor Dicey. It may perhaps be said that since 
 the subject has been handled by authorities, so well 
 equipped, so learned, and so able, there can be no 
 necessity to deal with any portion of it again. But 
 it is of the essence of the English system of govern- 
 ment that it is in a state of constant development. 
 From year to year it varies ; and a picture drawn in 
 the middle period of Queen Victoria's reign can 
 scarcely be faithful to life in the opening decades of 
 the twentieth century. Of the distinguished authors 
 who have been mentioned above, three wrote 
 their works before the Reform Act of 1867 ; * 
 even Professor Dicey's valuable treatise, in its 
 
 * In the Introduction to the second edition of his Englith 
 Constitution, published in 1872, Bagehot has some remarks on
 
 THE CONSTITUTION AND CONVENTIONS 13 
 
 first edition, dates back as far as the year 1885, and 
 Sir William Anson's great text-book, The Law and 
 Custom of the Constitution, was composed in 1886. 
 Many things have happened in the interval. It has 
 been a period of rapid movement, of intense intel- 
 lectual activity, of almost unexampled scientific and 
 mechanical progress, of momentous changes in the 
 world outside these islands, of much shifting of 
 social and industrial forces within them. All this 
 has left its impress upon our public polity. The 
 shaping process of ages has not ceased during the 
 past thirty or forty years, and there is ample warrant 
 for taking stock of the situation. 
 
 "An observer," says Bagehot, in his opening 
 sentences, "who looks at the living reality will 
 wonder at the contrast to the paper description. 
 He will see in the life much which is not in the 
 books ; and he will not find in the rough practice 
 many refinements of the literary theory." The 
 hint may perhaps be applied even to his own 
 fine and penetrating study. Anxious to distinguish 
 between the working principle and the " literary 
 theory," he, like some other critics of his time, laid 
 special stress on those features which had been 
 inadequately appreciated by their predecessors. In 
 their writings, the transformation of the older English 
 aristocratic constitution into a kind of ministerial 
 republic is accomplished ; we are bidden to recog- 
 nise the effacernent of the Crown, and the House of 
 Lords, the weakening of the ancient " checks " and 
 " balances," the practical sovereignty of the House 
 
 the possible effects of the Act of 1867. But the book itself was 
 written before that statute, and it " describes the English 
 Constitution as it stood in the years 1865 and 1866."
 
 14 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 of Commons, and the predominant importance of 
 the Cabinet. Bagehot's ideas, sound and logical as 
 they are in the main as an explanation of the 
 "rough practice" which prevailed when Lord 
 Palmerston was in office, have themselves crystal- 
 lised into something like a " literary theory." The 
 conventions, as frequently happens, become con- 
 ventionalised. We cannot take the speculations 
 and inferences of the critics belonging to the great 
 middle-class period of English constitutional history 
 as though they were of pontifical authority for the 
 present day. Much has occurred since they wrote 
 which they could not foresee ; of some influences, 
 which were at work even in their own time, they 
 were not always clearly cognisant. 
 
 The chief component elements of our political and 
 constitutional system, such as the Monarchy, the 
 House of Lords, the House of Commons, the 
 Ministry, and the Electorate, present themselves in 
 three different aspects ; which may be called the 
 formal, the conventional, and the actual. They can 
 be regarded from the point of view of the jurist, 
 engaged in defining legal rights, attributes, and 
 obligations ; or from that of the constitutionalist, 
 who wishes to ascertain the nature of the customs 
 and rules by which these various powers and 
 prerogatives have been modified or extended ; 
 or, again, from that of the practical observer, 
 interested in political and social evolution, who 
 tries to penetrate below the surface to " the reality 
 of things." It is with the last of these, rather 
 than the two former, that the following chapters 
 are principally concerned.
 
 CHAPTEE II 
 
 THE CABINET SYSTEM 
 
 Evolution and Accident. 
 
 THERE is no part of our system more interesting 
 to consider under the three different aspects, to 
 which reference has just been made, than that 
 which is the centre of the whole. From the legal 
 point of view the Cabinet is only a committee of the 
 Privy Council, and its members are merely " his 
 Majesty's servants," * the high officers who are en- 
 trusted by their sovereign with the management of 
 the great administrative departments, and from whom 
 he may obtain confidential advice on affairs of state. 
 According to the conventions of the constitution 
 the Cabinet is the responsible executive, having the 
 complete control of administration and the general 
 direction of all national business, but exercising 
 these vast powers under the strict supervision of the 
 representative chamber, to which it is accountable 
 for all its acts and omissions. If we look only at 
 the actualities of the case, we might be inclined 
 to say that the Cabinet, in its existing shape, is a 
 committee not of Parliament, but of one party in 
 
 * They are still so styled in the summons to a Cabinet 
 Council. 
 
 16
 
 16 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 Parliament, which while it is in office ha3 the 
 control of legislation, administration, policy and 
 finance. It is a committee which owes its existence 
 to the majority of the electorate, to whom alone it 
 is really, though fitfully, responsible. And if we peer 
 below the surface of things a little closer, we might 
 even conclude that its chief functions have passed 
 from the Cabinet as a whole, and that they have 
 been transferred to an inner council or conclave, 
 consisting of the Prime Minister and the three or 
 four influential colleagues who share his confidence 
 and are habitually consulted by him. 
 
 Englishmen are sometimes disposed to look upon 
 the development of responsible government, in its 
 modern form, as a peculiar testimony to their 
 capacity for practical affairs. We credit ourselves 
 with a double allowance of political righteousness, 
 and magnify the virtues of our ancestors, who forged 
 the great instrument and consciously adapted it to 
 its purpose. But it is impossible to examine the 
 history of the Cabinet system without feeling that 
 this praise must be considerably qualified. Our 
 constitution, and our method of government, have 
 been for the most part shaped by a series of 
 fortuitous events. They are the " accidents of an 
 accident." We do well to honour the wisdom of 
 our forefathers ; but they were not wise enough to 
 foresee the curious evolution of which the results are 
 before us. On the contrary, some of the ablest of 
 them were occupied in endeavouring to divert its 
 course and to change its mode of operation. We estab- 
 lished a great Empire beyond the seas, as Sir John 
 Seeley laboured to explain, in successive fits of 
 absence of mind, seldom realising the greatness of
 
 THE CABINET SYSTEM 17 
 
 the work on which we were engaged. And the same 
 philosophical historian has pointed out that a some- 
 what similar criticism may be applied to the organic 
 changes in our internal government during the past 
 two centuries. " The development," he says, " was 
 much more casual and accidental, much less 
 necessary, than is commonly supposed. It was not 
 a necessary result of the growth of the ' spirit of 
 liberty/ but a very peculiar result of very special 
 circumstances. It follows, I think, that we ought 
 not to consider a minister of the English type, con- 
 ducting legislation and administration at once, and 
 rising and falling at the pleasure of Parliament, to 
 be necessarily the normal, and only proper, result of 
 political development." And he adds : " So gradual 
 was this development, and so much was it disguised 
 at every step with legal fiction, that even now, I 
 think, it is by no means clearly understood." * 
 
 It would be strange, indeed, if any body of persons 
 had deliberately set themselves to the task of 
 creating a system like that under which the govern- 
 ance of Great Britain is now carried on. For its 
 characteristic features, and some of its peculiar 
 excellences, depend upon conditions so extra- 
 ordinary that no amount of political sagacity could 
 have been expected to prepare for them in advance. 
 There is such an air of unreasonableness, and even 
 absurdity, about many of these provisions, that they 
 have seldom been precisely formulated ; and they 
 have been denied and ignored in theory, long after 
 they have been accepted in practice. The Parlia- 
 ments of the eighteenth century, in the very act of 
 converting " the King's servants " into a committee 
 * Seeley, Introduction to Political Science, pp. 271, 291. 
 
 3
 
 18 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 of the House of Commons, were anxious to do the 
 exact opposite, and to exclude ministers and 
 " placemen " from the Legislature altogether. The 
 separation of the legislative and executive elements, 
 which is the complete negation of Cabinet govern- 
 ment, was a cherished doctrine long after the two 
 had become indissolubly associated. There was 
 nothing, on which the jurists and constitutionalists 
 of the eighteenth century insisted more strongly, 
 than this division of powers. It seemed the most 
 remarkable feature in the British system to 
 Montesquieu, whose Esprit des Lois became, as 
 Mr. Bryce observes, a sort of Bible of political 
 philosophy to the founders of the American Union. 
 The lawyers and the philosophers were equally 
 enthusiastic. It was emphasised by Blackstone, 
 and it had been praised by Locke, who laid down 
 the rule that " legislative and executive powers are 
 in distinct hands in all moderated monarchies and 
 well-framed governments." 
 
 The proposition would no more have been ques- 
 tioned by Somers and Walpole than it was after- 
 wards by Hamilton and Madison. The framers of 
 the United States Constitution, when they took 
 measures to keep ministers out of Congress, and 
 made the cabinet-officers directly responsible to 
 the President, were imitating what they regarded 
 as cardinal principles in the English system. 
 They thought they were maintaining its essential 
 virtues, while discarding what they considered to be 
 disturbing and dangerous innovations. On the 
 purely constitutional question, many, perhaps most, 
 Englishmen would have agreed with them. The 
 statesmen of our Ke olution era, while they were
 
 THE CABINET SYSTEM 19 
 
 busy creating the Cabinet, were extremely suspicious 
 of " closet government," and had a tenderness for the 
 older Privy Council, although they were in fact 
 reducing it to a nullity. In the original articles of 
 the Act of Settlement was one excluding from the 
 House of Commons all persons holding office under 
 the Crown ; and another specially aimed at the 
 secret, or private, council of ministers which 
 prescribed that matters connected with the chief 
 executive government should be transacted in 
 the Privy Council, and that all acts of this body 
 should be signed by the councillors responsible 
 for them.* Throughout the greater part of the 
 eighteenth century, while the Prime Minister was 
 gradually becoming a kind of elective President or 
 Chief of the State, there was a widespread feeling 
 that the English constitution had no place for a 
 Prime Minister at all. 
 
 If we come down to our own times we find the 
 paramount and unqualified authority of the House 
 of Commons continually asserted, while the powers 
 of that House are being steadily transferred to the 
 Cabinet. No statesman did more to assist the pro- 
 cess than Mr. Gladstone; yet Mr. Gladstone con- 
 stantly professed his belief in the theory of complete 
 ministerial subordination to the elected chamber. 
 The acknowledgment of the supremacy of the 
 House of Commons he regarded as " the cardinal 
 
 * " All matters and things relating to the well governing of 
 the kingdom, which are properly cognisable in the Privy 
 Council, by the laws and customs of this realm shall be trans- 
 acted there, and all resolutions taken thereupon shall be signed 
 by such of the Privy Council as shall advise and consent to the 
 same." This article in the Act of Settlement was repealed in 
 1705.
 
 20 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 axiom " in the modern British constitution.* Nor 
 did Gladstone, and those who derived their 
 inspiration from him, come to close quarters with 
 the fact that the Cabinet is not the nominee either of 
 the Commons or the country, but of a portion of the 
 House and a portion of the electorate. This, too, 
 might be called a " cardinal axiom "; but few people 
 can bring themselves to acknowledge it. Lord 
 Morley, in his excellent chapter on the subject in 
 his memoir of Walpole, neatly, but incompletely, 
 defines the Cabinet as "a committee chosen by one 
 member of the two Houses of Parliament from 
 among other members." It would be nearer the 
 truth to say that the Cabinet is a committee selected 
 by one member of one party in Parliament from 
 among other members of the same party. 
 
 If we did not know that the Cabinet system not 
 only existed, but was in practice extremely efficient, 
 we might deem it a fantasy as strange as any con- 
 ceived in the brain of a philosophical visionary. 
 It might seem the nightmare of a satirist, the 
 burlesque of an Aristophanes or a Eabelais, that 
 the laws of a country should be made by a big, 
 miscellaneous, public meeting, composed for the 
 most part of rather idle men, who attended or 
 stayed away as they pleased ; that the chief func- 
 tions of actual rule, the command of fleets and 
 armies, the protection of life and property, the direc- 
 tion of foreign policy,the management of the national 
 revenues, should be entrusted to the nominees 
 of rather more than half this meeting, and that 
 they should perform their duties, subject to constant 
 molestation and attack from the other portion; 
 * Gladstone, Gleanings, i. 236.
 
 THE CABINET SYSTEM 21 
 
 that the administration of this country should be 
 carried on in a manner extremely distasteful to 
 perhaps a third or nearly a half of its inhabitants ; 
 that the Government should be elected for an in- 
 definite period, as the result of a sort of plebiscite ; 
 that it should consist of a secret committee ; and 
 that its members should be rewarded or punished, 
 not for their own acts, but for those of their col- 
 leagues, so that a minister who had managed his 
 department well might be deprived of office because 
 another minister had managed his badly. Fantastic 
 as these attributes must seem, when thus baldly pre- 
 sented, they do in fact belong to the essence of our 
 polity in its present phase. They are not mere 
 excrescences or superfluities. If they were dropped, 
 the system would be fundamentally different. It 
 might be better or worse ; but its whole principle of 
 action and method of operation would be other than 
 they are. 
 
 The Cabinet in the Constitution. 
 
 The peculiar characteristics of the Cabinet are 
 largely accounted for by the fact that it is a 
 cross between a committee of the Privy Council 
 and a committee of the two Houses of Parlia- 
 ment. To put it in another way, its members 
 are at_once_the servants of the Crown and_the, 
 ^servants of the Nation^ Historically it was a com- 
 mittee of the Council ; legally so far as it has 
 any separate legal existence it is so still. 
 
 Its origin may be read in the works in which the 
 development of our institutions has been traced.* 
 
 * A good deal has been written about the Cabinet ; but con- 
 sidering its importance, the literature devoted to the subject
 
 22 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 Much learning has been expended on the task 
 of distinguishing between the various royal 
 and national councils from which the Cabinet is 
 ultimately derived. The council of departmental 
 ministers and great officers of state goes far back 
 into our history. When Sir John Fortescue wrote 
 in 1471, the ministerial system was well developed. 
 He expressly gives the initiative in legislation, as 
 well as executive and administrative functions of 
 all kinds, to the King's councillors. They were to 
 meet frequently in order to " commune and delibre 
 upon the matters of defecultie that fallen to the 
 king " ; and upon matters " of the pollicye of the 
 
 cannot be called ample. From the historical and legal point 
 of view, the Cabinet is treated in the works of the constitutional 
 historians and lawyers, Hallam, Stubbs, Hearn, Cox, Creasy, 
 Todd, Erskine May, Dicey, Anson, Lowell, and others ; in 
 Freeman's Growth of the English Constitution; in Gneist's 
 Englische Verfassungs-geschichte, and Das Englische Parla- 
 ment; Sir George Cornewall Lewis's Correspondence and his 
 Essays; Earl Grey's Parliamentary Government (2nd ed., 
 1864) ; Boutmy's Developpement de la constitution et de la 
 societe politique en Angleterre ; and H. D. Traill's Central 
 Government. There is a concise and accurate account of 
 the growth of the ministerial system, during the eighteenth 
 and early nineteenth centuries, in Miss Mary Blauvelt's 
 painstaking Development of Cabinet Government in England 
 (1902). When we turn from the historical, to the political, 
 side, the materials are scanty. One or two distinguished 
 statesmen, who have themselves been members of Cabinets, 
 have told us something. The most valuable of these dis- 
 quisitions from those who speak with the authority of actual 
 experience are Gladstone's papers in the first volume of his 
 Gleanings, and Lord Rosebery's observations in his 
 monograph on Sir Robert Peel (1899). Lord Morley hi his 
 memoir of Walpole (1889), chap, vii., gives an excellent analysis 
 of the functions of the Cabinet, which is understood to 
 have been partly " inspired " by Gladstone ; and in Lord
 
 THE CABINET SYSTEM 23 
 
 reaume," such as " how the goying owt of the 
 money may be restrayned," and bullion brought in, 
 and how " the prises of merchaundise growen 
 in this launde may be holde up and encreased," 
 also " how owre navy may be mayntened and 
 augmented." The Council are to consider how the 
 lawes are to be amended " in such thynges as they 
 neden reformacion in " : whereby, it is added, the 
 Parliament will do more good in a month in the 
 amendment of the law, than they would do in a 
 year, "yf the amendynge thereoff be not debated, 
 and such counsell be riped to their handes."* 
 
 Fortescue indicates the tendencies which were 
 changing the feudal council of nobles and great 
 ecclesiastics into the mere ministerial bureau of 
 the Tudor kings, consisting of able administrators. 
 As these officials had no roots in the soil, and were 
 not connected with the land-owning aristocracy or 
 
 Morley'a Biography of b'.s former leader there are many 
 illuminative passages. Some light on the actual working of 
 Cabinets has been thrown by the publication of Lord Malmes- 
 bury's Memoirs of an Ex-Minister; and there is much 
 incidental information to be gained from Greville, and from 
 the various political Memoirs and published Diaries of the 
 nineteenth century, especially the Peel Papers and the Life of 
 the Prince Consort. The. private secretary to a Prime Minister 
 may be expected to know more than most people about 
 the internal economy of Cabinets. Sir Algernon West, who 
 was private secretary to Mr. Gladstone, writes pleasantly and 
 instructively in his Recollections, and in an informing article 
 entitled No. 10, Downing Street, in the Cornhill Magazine 
 for January, 1904. See also Beport of the Eoyal Commission 
 on the war in South Africa ; and W.Evans-Gordon, The Cabinet 
 and war (1904). One need hardly do more than refer to the 
 well-known, and now almost classical, chapter in Bagehot'a 
 English Constitution. 
 
 * Fortescue, The Governance of England, chap. xv.
 
 24 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 any of the powerful estates, but were simply clever 
 lawyers, capable diplomatists, or active courtiers, 
 they became absolutely dependent upon the Crown. 
 The House of Commons was much more anxious to 
 protect the personal liberties of the subject, and 
 above all to limit the exactions of the royal 
 Exchequer, than to interfere actively in the 
 Executive Government. It left the details of 
 administration to the Sovereign, and was concerned 
 rather in maintaining its independence, by excluding 
 the royal ministers, than in increasing its own 
 influence, by admitting them to its deliberations. 
 
 The long conflict between the Monarchy and the 
 Parliament instilled into the minds of the defenders 
 of popular rights a strong belief in the advisability 
 of separating the legislative from the executive, as 
 well as from the judicial, functions. When the 
 Revolution Monarchy came into being, with a 
 strict Parliamentary title, it found itself left with 
 the tradition of a royal monopoly of executive 
 power. The tradition was the cause of most of 
 the political struggles of the eighteenth century. 
 The Hanoverian kings, and especially George III., 
 were unable to reconcile themselves to the fact 
 that their " servants " were agents and nominees of 
 the House of Commons. The House itself was only 
 dimly conscious of the truth which many of its 
 members regarded with apprehension. The revela- 
 tion that government could only be rendered pos- 
 sible by the consent of a majority of the elective 
 chamber seemed to many Englishmen quite as 
 monstrous and irrational as it did to the King 
 himself ; and that, no doubt, was one of the reasons 
 why the devices adopted to secure votes in the
 
 THE CABINET SYSTEM 25 
 
 House, the shameless bribery, the backstairs in- 
 fluence, the court intrigues, were tolerated with 
 so little display of popular indignation. 
 
 It was also the reason why a minister, possessing 
 the royal confidence, could sometimes contrive to 
 carry on the administration with a minority of the 
 House of Commons. Not till well down into the 
 last centurjr did the House really establish its 
 power_ as a " government-making or^an." When 
 William IV., in 1834, dismissed the Whig ministry, 
 and called Sir Kobert Peel to office, he found that 
 our Constitution had altered since the earlier part of 
 his father's reign. The majority of the House was 
 against the King's minister, and the King's minister 
 found that he could not govern. But in the 
 eighteenth century a minister, called to office by the 
 Crown, could rely upon a certain amount of support, 
 because it was thought that administration was the 
 business of the Sovereign and his advisers, and that 
 even members in Opposition, as the lder Pitt said 
 to Grenville on the repeal of the Stamp Act, would 
 be justified in accepting measures of which they 
 disapproved. " The truth is that in those days 
 a Parliament was still distinctly felt to be a con- 
 ference between the representatives of the people 
 and the Sovereign, present by his ministers. 
 Whatever the Sovereign might propose was re- 
 ceived with profound deference. And it had not 
 yet entered the mind of the representatives that 
 they were entrusted with the government of the 
 country. They were in the habit of thinking that 
 it was the business of the King to govern the 
 country."* 
 
 * Seeley, Introduction to Political Science, p. 287.
 
 26 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 What the Parliaments wanted was ministerial 
 responsibility, in a different sense from that in 
 which the term would now be used. They were 
 anxious that the King should have a body of 
 responsible servants with whom the Commons 
 could deal freely and safely; whose names were 
 known, whose proceedings were open and above, 
 board, and who could be made individually account- 
 able for advice given to the Crown. They had no 
 objection to the King having his own administrative 
 council; indeed, they regarded this as necessary 
 and natural, But they thought it wrong that the 
 King should be under the influence of a number of 
 persons, perhaps unknown, perhaps with no recog- 
 nised status, who might meddle with affairs in an 
 underhand fashion, and whose responsibility for 
 what was done in the royal name could not be 
 brought home to them. 
 
 This was the real cause of the objection to the 
 Cabinet, and the reason why the name remained so 
 long odious to our ancestors. By a " cabinet council " 
 they meant a committee, which sat in secret and 
 which perhaps had discreditable reasons for doing 
 so. The name, as is well known, occurs in Bacon's 
 Essays, where the writer, in treating of " the incon- 
 veniences of counsels," says that "the doctrine 
 of Italy and practice of France hath introduced 
 cabinet councils, a remedy worse than the disease." 
 The term was applied by Clarendon to Charles I.'s 
 confidential private advisers; and the Second Ee- 
 monstrance of the Long Parliament complains of 
 the management of the great affairs of the realm in 
 cabinet councils by men unknown and not publicly 
 trusted. " Formerly," says a writer of the closing
 
 THE CABINET SYSTEM 27 
 
 years of the seventeenth century, "all matters of 
 state and discretion were debated and resolved in 
 the Privy Council, where every man subscribed his 
 opinion and was answerable for it. The late King 
 Charles II. was the first who broke this most excel- 
 lent part of our Constitution, by settling a cabal or 
 cabinet council, where all matters of consequence 
 were debated and resolved, and then brought to the 
 Privy Council to be confirmed."* 
 
 To restore the older practice was the object 
 of the article in the Act of Settlement mentioned 
 above. And though this was not allowed to come 
 into operation, there was a steady refusal to 
 recognise the secret committee. In 1711, in the 
 House of Lords, a motion of censure was put 
 down against "the cabinet council " for the conduct 
 of the war in Spain. When the motion came on, 
 the wording was altered so as to make the censure 
 apply to the ministers, not to the Cabinet. Lord 
 Cowper and other speakers held that the law 
 had no cognisance of any such body. This debate, 
 it is true, occurred in the infancy of the institution, 
 when the Cabinet was not very clearly distinguished 
 from the Privy Council as a whole, and when the 
 "Lords of the Council" were able to exercise an 
 authority equal, and in some cases as in that of the 
 famous coup d'etat of the Whig peers at Kensington 
 Palace beside the deathbed of Queen Anne 
 superior, to that of the ministers. 
 
 A century later the whole question was argued 
 out again in the House of Lords, when Lord Ellen- 
 borough, the Lord Chief Justice, was brought into 
 
 * Trenchard, Short History of Standing Armies (quoted by 
 Hallam, Constitutional History, iii. 182).
 
 28 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 the Grenville-JFox Administration by the personal 
 influence of Lord Sidmouth. By this time the 
 " Lords of the Council " had disappeared and the 
 Privy Council had become atrophied. The Cabinet 
 was so well established that it could not be ignored ; 
 and even such opponents of innovation as Eldon 
 and Hawkesbury in the Lords, and Castlereagh 
 in the Commons, repudiated the notion that it was 
 unknown to the Constitution, and that therefore 
 no cognisance could be taken of the admission of 
 a particular person to a body which had no legal 
 existence. The proposed votes of censure in the 
 two Houses did not mention the Cabinet. In the 
 Lords the reference was to " any committee or 
 assembly of the Privy Council"; in the Commons 
 it was moved " that the functions of a minister 
 of state, and of a confidential adviser of the 
 executive measures of the Government, should be 
 kept distinct from that of a judge." 
 
 Macaulay and Sir George Cornewall Lewis in- 
 ferred from this that Parliament still ignored the 
 existence of the Cabinet. At any rate, it did not 
 formally discover it, eo nomine, till long after. In 
 1851 a Committee of the House of Commons was 
 appointed to regulate the procedure connected with 
 the opening and prorogation of Parliament. The 
 Committee, in its report, proposed that a certain 
 precedence should be assigned to " Cabinet Minis- 
 ters." But this was rejected by the House, on the 
 ground that these functionaries were unknown to 
 the Constitution. Another half century had to pass 
 before the House of Commons was at last allowed 
 to admit that such persons existed. In the Session 
 of 1900 the term "the Cabinet," employed in an
 
 THE CABINET SYSTEM 29 
 
 amendment to the Address, appeared on the notice- 
 paper of the House.* This was probably the first 
 occasion on which reference had been made, in 
 any official document, to the ruling committee 
 of the Empire. Other parliamentary constitutions 
 have not been able to maintain this impenetrable 
 mystery about the vital organ of Government. The 
 Cabinet is usually the formal Council of State, 
 with the Premier, whatever his other office, as its 
 President. In the Australian Commonwealth the 
 Ministry is the " Executive Council," with the Prime 
 Minister as its ex-officio chief, and with a Vice- 
 President and a paid Secretary. 
 
 The Privy Councillor's Oath. 
 
 It ia_as memhp-rsnf t.bp Prjyy Council that Cabinet 
 Ministers are hung on to the legal constitution. 
 Otherwise they are merely departmental officers of 
 greater or less dignity. A Secretary of State has, it 
 is true, certain statutory duties and prerogatives, 
 and a place in the scale of precedency, which is 
 only one degree below the vice-chamberlain of the 
 Koyal Household, and next above the eldest son of a 
 viscount ; but there is very little formal distinction 
 between a Postmaster-General in the Cabinet and a 
 Secretary of the Treasury outside, or between the 
 President of the Local Government Board and that 
 great permanent official, the Comptroller-General, 
 who has the whole national revenue under his 
 guardianship, who is bound to see that it is paid 
 
 * " We humbly express our regret at the advice given to your 
 Majesty by the Prime Minister in recommending the appoint- 
 ment of so many ;of his own family to offices in the Cabinet." 
 Amendment moved by Mr. Hartley, Dec. 10, 1900.
 
 30 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 out under the provisions of some Act of Parliament, 
 and who can prevent the Treasury and the entire 
 Cabinet from drawing a sixpence of the money 
 lying in the Bank of England to the account of the 
 Exchequer, unless he is satisfied that it is required 
 for a purpose duly authorised by the law, and that 
 it will be applied to that purpose and no other. 
 In the department of the Comptroller-General, if 
 anywhere, the embodied spirit of the British Con- 
 stitution abides ; there are enshrined the long results 
 of the struggle, which placed the control of public 
 funds beyond the reach of arbitrary power.* 
 
 But the Comptroller-General, though he may 
 have a more genuine authority than most of the 
 ministers, is only an officer in the service of the 
 Crown. The Cabinet Minister is supposed to share 
 its counsels. To him, as a Privy Councillor and 
 adviser of his Sovereign, a special liability attaches. 
 In this capacity he has taken a pledge, which he 
 must not violate. There is, of course, no such thing 
 as the " Cabinet Minister's oath of office." The 
 minister is under no obligation beyond that laid 
 upon him by the oath of fidelity and secrecy which 
 has been from a very early period required of 
 every person entering office as a member of the 
 King's Council. The councillors, says Fortescue, 
 are "to be sworne to counsell the King, after a 
 forme to be divised for ther owthe, and in especiall 
 that they shall take no fee nor clothynge nor no 
 rewards off any man except only off the King." 
 
 * The Comptroller-General is appointed by letters-patent, 
 and cannot be removed except by a joint address from both 
 Houses of Parliament (see the Exchequer and Audit Depart- 
 ments Act, 1866, 29 and 30 Viet. c. 37, sec. 3).
 
 THE CABINET SYSTEM 31 
 
 Mr. Plummer, in his valuable discussion of the 
 whole subject in his edition of Fortescue's Govern- 
 ance, reproduces the actual form of the oath taken 
 in 1437 by the Keeper of the Privy Seal and other 
 ministers, who "have sworene and made feythe 
 unto the King to counsaille him wel and trewly, 
 to kepe the King's Counsaille sure, and shortly 
 they shall consail and doo alle that good counsaillers 
 sholde." The oath has followed this model roughly 
 through the centuries. The present form is as 
 follows : 
 
 " You shall swear to be a true and faithful servant unto the 
 King's Majesty, as one of his Majesty's Privy Council. You 
 shall not know or understand of any manner of thing to be 
 attempted, done, or spoken, against his Majesty's Person, 
 Honour, Crown, or Dignity Royal ; but you shall let and 
 withstand the same to the uttermost of your power, and 
 either cause it to be revealed to his Majesty himself, or to 
 such of his Privy Council as shall advertise his Majesty of the 
 same. You shall, in all things to be moved, treated, and 
 debated, in Council, faithfully and truly declare your mind 
 and opinion according to your heart and conscience ; and shall 
 keep secret all matters committed and revealed unto you or 
 that shall be treated of secretly in Council. And if any of. 
 the said Treaties or Councils shall touch any of the Coun- 
 sellors, you shall not reveal it unto him, but shall keep the 
 same until such time as by the consent of his Majesty, or 
 of the Council, publication shall be made thereof. You shall 
 to your uttermost be in faith and allegiance unto the King's 
 Majesty ; and shall assist and defend all jurisdictions, pre- 
 eminences, and authorities, granted unto his Majesty and 
 annexed to the Crown by Acts of Parliament or otherwise, 
 against all Foreign Princes, Persons, Prelates, States, or 
 Potentates. And generally in all things you shall do as a 
 faithful and true servant ought to do to his Majesty. So help 
 you God and the Holy Contents of this Book." 
 
 To the Cabinet Councillor the oath is a serious 
 matter. The pledge to maintain secrecy cannot be
 
 32 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 deemed a mere form. It is not merely the King's 
 secrets that the minister swears to keep, but also, 
 and particularly, the secrets of his colleagues. 
 Under this provision everything which passes at 
 a Cabinet meeting is strictly confidential. It cannot 
 be divulged, save with the express permission of 
 the Sovereign, which is only granted in very excep- 
 tional circumstances, and on the advice of the 
 Prime Minister. The Cabinet Minister, the 
 moment he is sworn, is linked with his colleagues 
 by a solemn bond. As Privy Councillor the legal 
 offence he can commit is a failure to observe the 
 terms of his oath, in every particular, including 
 that of keeping "the King's counsel" locked in 
 his own bosom, unless or until he is authorised to 
 disclose it. 
 
 It is true that the Cabinet Minister shares this 
 responsibility with between two and three hundred 
 other individuals, drawn from various orders and 
 ranks in society, all like him members of the 
 King's Council, and entitled to have the words 
 " Eight Honourable " prefixed to their names. The 
 Privy Council is a miscellaneous body of highly 
 respectable persons. It includes the Princes of the 
 Royal House, the two Archbishops, several Dukes, 
 and other Peers, the survivors from former Cabinets, 
 a sprinkling of leading Colonial statesmen, the Lord 
 Chief Justice, the Lords Justices of Appeal and 
 other judges, some officers of the Royal Household, 
 a few diplomatists and retired Indian officials, and a 
 number of private members of Parliament, selected, 
 it would seem, rather for their social standing and 
 party loyalty than for political prominence or intel- 
 lectual distinction. Most of these right honourable
 
 THE CABINET SYSTEM 33 
 
 gentlemen can take their oath with a clear conscience, 
 since they are not likely to have the opportunity of 
 breaking it. They can safely swear not to divulge 
 state secrets for they will not hear any. Unless the 
 Privy Councillor be a minister, or one of a limited 
 number of court officials, it is improbable that he will 
 ever be summoned to a Council at all. The Privy 
 Council, save for certain formal and ceremonial 
 purposes, is merely a name. Its political powers 
 have passed to one committee, and its judicial 
 authority, as the highest of the King's law-courts, 
 to another.* The remainder of the Privy Council 
 are an " honorific mob " of persons, on whom it is 
 thought desirable to confer some titular rank. Of 
 late years the dignity has occasionally been bestowed 
 on eminent literary and scientific men, like Lecky 
 and Huxley, on the principle, perhaps, that they 
 were " too bad for heaven and just too good for hell : " 
 gentlemen who might not have cared for a knight- 
 hood and were not deemed eligible for a peerage. 
 
 * The august tribunal, which sits unobstrusively in Downing 
 Street to hear Colonial and Indian appeals, is still (1913) styled 
 the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council ; but it might just 
 as well be called as before long no doubt it will be the 
 Imperial Court of Appeal, since its connection with the Privy 
 Council is merely nominal. The change of name and status 
 might have been made long ago but for the contention, steadily 
 asserted by Colonial constitutionalists (see Todd's Parlia- 
 mentary Government in the British Colonies}, that the supreme 
 authority in the Empire is vested in the Crown, not in the 
 Parliament of Great Britian. Colonists, it was thought, would 
 not easily reconcile themselves to seeing the decisions of their 
 own judges overruled in an English court of law. The Judicial 
 Committee does not, in form, confirm or reverse the judgments 
 of the Colonial tribunals ; it merely reports on the case, and 
 advises the Crown to exercise its prerogative, 
 
 4
 
 34 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 A Secret Committee. 
 
 The writers of the text-books are agreed on certain 
 characteristic features of the English Cabinet system. 
 One of these distinguishing points is the collective 
 responsibility of ministers; another that the 
 Cabinet is answerable for its acts to the House 
 of Commons and may be deprived of office the 
 moment it ceases to retain the confidence of the 
 assembly; a third that its other members are 
 subordinate to the Prime Minister, who is the 
 director of the whole administration, and its repre- 
 sentative before the nation and the Crown. But 
 there are two other points on which less stress is 
 laid. The English^ Cabinet is a Party CoramitiLee ; 
 and it is a Secret Committee. These characteristics 
 are usually noticed in a rather grudging and hesi- 
 tating fashion, as though they were mere ex- 
 crescences on the surface of the system. But they 
 
 have become established factors in the working 
 
 " ** * ___-- ~- ** 
 
 of the machine. They are parts of the organism; 
 without them it would be fundamentally trans- 
 formed. Secrecy and partisanship are elements 
 of Cabinet government, in the shape in which it is 
 exhibited among ourselves. And yet nothing is 
 clearer than that they were not consciously intro- 
 duced, and that they have developed themselves 
 without the cognisance, or against the wishes, of 
 successive generations of Englishmen. They are 
 the most singular examples of that process of adap- 
 tation and adjustment, under the pressure of 
 historical accidents and temporary necessities, by 
 which our institutions have been moulded. 
 The fact that the English Cabinet is a secret
 
 THE CABINET SYSTEM 35 
 
 committee is in reality a most astonishing pheno- 
 menon, though use and wont have obscured its 
 significance to our eyes. We have been so familiar 
 with it for generations that we often forget its 
 peculiarity. We take it as a matter of course that 
 the gravest concerns of a people, among whom 
 publicity and public discussion prevail to an extent 
 seldom equalled, should be decided under the 
 cloak of an impenetrable darkness. Yet, no doubt, 
 Lord Rosebery, who has himself shared in the 
 arcana of Cabinets, is right when he suggests that 
 " to the inquiring foreigner, nothing can seem more 
 extraordinary, in a country with so much of 
 democracy about it, than the spectacle of a secret 
 council, on the Venetian model, sworn to absolute 
 silence, and conducting the business of a nation 
 which insists on publicity for everything less im- 
 portant." And we may further agree with him 
 that " of all anomalous arrangements for executive 
 government in an Anglo-Saxon community, during 
 the present epoch and under the present conditions, 
 the strangest is the government of England by a 
 Secret Committee." * 
 
 The Cabinet is a secret, not a private, committee. 
 The distinction is essential, though often overlooked. 
 Most Englishmen are aware that the Cabinet meets 
 in private ; they do not always grasp the fact that 
 it works in close and guarded secrecy. In this 
 respect it stands apart from nearly all governing 
 councils, in ancient and modern times, and from 
 
 * " That it works well on the whole," adds Lord Bosebery in 
 his monograph on SirTiobert Peel, " is a tribute less to the in.- 
 stitution itself, than to the capacity of our race to make any 
 conceivable institution succeed."
 
 36 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 most other boards of management. Privacy is 
 not unusual. It is indeed an element of the com- 
 mittee system. When a large body of persons 
 the inhabitants of a nation, the ratepayers 
 of a town, the shareholders of a company, the 
 members of a club, or the subscribers to a charity 
 commit, or entrust, their affairs to a selected group, 
 they do so, in part, to avoid the inconvenience of 
 constant open debate. Business cannot be properly 
 transacted at a public meeting. But thought a good 
 committee takes care to obtain the_advantages^)f 
 privacy it is not, as a rnle^jpermitted to assert the 
 further prerogative^ ^fsecrcc^T Special occasions 
 will arise, when it niay be necessary to proceed 
 in camera, without records and without witnesses ; 
 but it is always recognised that this is a license not 
 oftened to be claimed, and legitimate only when 
 matters of exceptional delicacy are under considera- 
 tion. A board which was in the habit of frequently 
 ordering its secretary out of the room, closing its 
 minute-book, and engaging in secret confabulation, 
 would soon lose the confidence of those to whom it 
 was responsible. 
 
 What would be the first step of any competent 
 committee, to which administrative functions and 
 fiduciary powers of any kind were delegated? 
 It would make haste to regularise its existence. 
 It would elect a chairman ; it would appoint a 
 secretary and other officers ; it would fix the day 
 and hour for its periodical meetings; it would 
 provide a fund for printing and other necessary 
 expenses; it would determine its quorum and the 
 order of its business; and it would arrange that 
 notes of its proceedings should be taken, and that
 
 THE CABINET SYSTEM 37 
 
 the minutes should be duly read and passed. What 
 would be thought of the committee of a corporation, 
 or even the committee of a cricket club, which 
 had no secretary, and no quorum, and no minute- 
 book, and no rules of order : which kept no records ; 
 and which was so conducted that it was impossible, 
 even for its own members, to say what it had done, 
 or refused to do, at any meeting? A committee, 
 which acted in this fashion, would certainly incur 
 grave discredit, and would be regarded as behaving 
 with intolerable, and almost immoral, irregularity. 
 
 That, however, is the fashion in which the most 
 powerful committee in the world does, in fact, 
 conduct its deliberations. The Cabinet has carried 
 secrecy and informality to the highest pitch. Its 
 meetings are^ still supposed to be nothing but 
 casual consultations between a number of Privy_ 
 Councillors. It~nas no regular time" of assembly. 
 It has no fixed place of meeting.* It has no 
 office, no staff, no secretary, no rules, no corporate 
 funds, no permanent location. It could not receive 
 a letter or answer it, except through the First Lord 
 of the Treasury or some other of its members, for 
 it has no note-paper, and no seal, and no petty 
 cash to buy stationery or pay messengers. It 
 comes together at uncertain intervals. The date 
 
 * Cabinets have no local habitation. " I see them," says 
 Sir Algernon West, "in old days meeting everywhere. In 
 Bertram Currie's house in Combe Wood is a brass tablet 
 recording how a Cabinet was held there during a visit of Mr. 
 Gladstone's. Another Cabinet which I recollect was adjourned 
 from the room in Downing Street to the Garden Terrace." 
 In recent years Cabinet Councils have usually been held at 
 the official residence of the First Lord of the Treasury in 
 Downing Street, or else at the Foreign Office.
 
 38 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 is fixed, usually at short notice, by the Prime 
 Minister. Each member of the Cabinet re- 
 ceives a brief printed message, unsigned, but 
 understood to emanate from the First Lord of 
 the Treasury, announcing that " His Majesty's 
 Servants " will meet at the Foreign Office, or at 
 No. 10, Downing Street, at such and such a time. 
 The date and place are left blank in the printed 
 form, and are filled in at the Prime Minister's office. 
 When it assembles, the Cabinet finds that it has 
 no corporate character. It might be a fortuitous 
 conference of heads of departments at one of the 
 public offices, or a meeting of party leaders at 
 the Carlton Club. It has a standing President in 
 the Prime Minister, who has more than the 
 ordinary power of a chairman at a meeting in 
 bringing forward such subjects as he thinks fit, 
 and closing debate at his discretion.* The pro- 
 
 * He may even arrange the order in which the ministers 
 are to be seated round the Council table. Mr. Glad- 
 stone was particular on this point. See the interesting 
 article by Sir Algernon West, No. 10, Downing Street, 
 already mentioned. The ex-private secretary states that, 
 before a Cabinet meeting, Gladstone would sometimes draw 
 on a sheet of paper, a plan of the table, with the places 
 to be occupied by himself and the other ministers duly 
 indicated. Gladstone used also to bring with him, for his 
 own guidance, notes of the business to be transacted, and 
 the same thing was done by Sir Robert Peel, and no doubt 
 by other Premiers. A Prime Minister will, however, occasion- 
 ally lay bfefore his colleagues his views on some great 
 question of public policy, by means of written or printed 
 Memoranda, circulated in the strictest confidence, among 
 the members of the Cabinet. This practice is not con- 
 fined to the chiefs of the Administration. Other ministers 
 will sometimes call the attention of the Cabinet to 
 matters of public importance by the circulation of similar
 
 THE CABINET SYSTEM 39 
 
 ceedings are conversational and informal. There is 
 no agenda paper, and indeed no paper of any kind. 
 Not only are no records or minutes kept, but it is 
 understood that a minister may not take a note, 
 for future reference, of anything said or done 
 during the Council.* The Premier is expected-lO. 
 send the Sovereign in writing an account of the 
 Council and a summary of the decisions arrived at. 
 Otherwise no report of the transactions is made to 
 any one. A cohort of newspaper reporters may 
 hang about Downing Street as the ministers leave 
 the Council, but they get nothing. 
 
 The secrets of the Cabinet are guarded with 
 undeviating fidelity. At rare intervals a glimpse 
 is permitted into the temple, when there has been 
 a dispute within its precincts, and the obligation 
 
 confidential statements. Sir Eobert Peel was much given 
 to the composition of these Memoranda, which were usually 
 " read by himself at a meeting of the Cabinet, and after- 
 wards sent in circulation amongst the members of the 
 Government." In the summer of 1903, when the con- 
 troversy over fiscal policy had reached an acute stage in 
 the Ministry, Mr. Balfour circulated two documents, on the 
 question of tariffs and import duties, among the members 
 of his Cabinet. One was subsequently published as a 
 pamphlet; the other remained confidential, and its contents 
 were unknown except to ministers. 
 
 * Sir Algernon West informed me that when he was private 
 secretary to the First Lord of the Treasury he was accustomed 
 to go into the council chamber, immediately after the meet- 
 ing, and destroy any sheets of written paper which might be 
 left upon the table. But it was seldom that such documents 
 were found ; for it is contrary to etiquette to write anything 
 at a Cabinet meeting. It is believed, however, that ministers 
 frequently indemnify themselves for this reticence by com- 
 municating to their private diaries an ample resume of the 
 proceedings.
 
 40 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 to silence has been relaxed by mutual consent 
 and the permission of the Sovereign. Such was 
 the case on the resignation of Lords Carnarvon 
 and Derby in 1879, that of the Unionist 
 ministers in 1886, and that of Mr. Chamberlain, 
 Mr. Kitchie, Lord George Hamilton, and Lord 
 Balfour of Burleigh, in September, 1903. The last 
 was an interesting illustration of the curious in- 
 formality with which the proceedings of a Cabinet 
 Council are conducted ; for it was clear, from the 
 subsequent disclosures of some of the Free Trade 
 ministers, jthat they were unaware of the fact that 
 Mr. Chamberlain had offered his resignation to 
 the Prime Minister before the Cabinet met. The 
 Premier believed that his colleagues were cognisant 
 of this important circumstance, and apparently some 
 of them were ; but in the buzz of conversation 
 which prevailed the statements made were not 
 completely understood by all the ministers. When 
 there are eighteen or twenty gentlemen assembled 
 in a conference, at which no particular rules of 
 order are observed, it must, no doubt, often be 
 difficult for everybody to follow the proceedings. 
 But these revelations of Cabinet mysteries are 
 extremely rare. It remains broadly true that the 
 highest concerns of the nation are discussed and 
 decided in close conclave.* 
 
 * Occasionally confidential Cabinet minutes have been 
 drawn up and submitted to the Sovereign. But the only 
 public document, necessarily signed by all the members of 
 the Cabinet, is said to be the Order for General Eeprisals, 
 which constitutes a declaration of war, and is issued with the 
 signatures of the Cabinet Ministers. This document is 
 technically an order of the Privy Council, and it is signed by 
 ministers in their capacity as Privy Councillors. On July ly
 
 THE CABINET SYSTEM 41 
 
 A secret governing committee of this kind has 
 few parallels in the past,* and none at the present 
 day, except where there has been a more or less 
 complete adaptation of our practice. The American 
 Cabinet is the advisory council of the President, 
 who is in the chair at the meetings, and takes an 
 active part in the discussions. The French Cabinet 
 has_a_nftte mj.de of the business done, and some- 
 times serLds__an official report to the newspapers. 
 The President of the Republic may attend the 
 councils it' tie pleases, and he maj_jnfo a .Tip in f.hg. 
 debates or put_questions to the .ministers. The 
 s^e_pnyjlfi^ej.s_^eserved, and frequently exercised, 
 by the sovereign inmost monarchicaTsFates abroad. 
 TEere canncTt easily 5e a secret sitting in the 
 presence of a witness who is not a member of the 
 conjuration. If the supreme executive government 
 of England were what the law supposes it to be 
 that is, government by the King in Council it 
 would be conducted under these conditions. 
 Instead of the informal but all powerful Cabinet, 
 huddled away in a corner, and discussing the 
 things of the party as well as the affairs of the 
 country under the friendly cloak of darkness, we 
 should have the Privy Council, a regular and 
 dignified body, with its register, its rules, its clerk, 
 its traditions, and its legal precedents. The acts of 
 
 1871, after Queen Victoria had signed the warrant abolishing 
 the purchase of commissions in the Army, the Cabinet, at the 
 Queen's request, drew up a formal Minute of the advice its 
 members had given her on the subject. 
 
 * The most famous is the Venetian Council of Ten, that 
 powerful and mysterious Junto, to which the English Cabinet 
 was occasionally compared by its hostile critics in the 18th 
 century.
 
 42 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 ministers, if not their words, would remain on 
 record; it would be possible to find out what the 
 Council had done or had declined to do. 
 
 In the presence of the Sovereign, and with this 
 amount of publicity secured, mere party considera- 
 tions would have to be kept in the background. In 
 such a Council, if a minister were asked why he 
 wanted a bill brought in or drafted, he would have 
 to find some reason based on public policy. He could 
 not say, as perhaps he might, at the Cabinet : " Well, 
 you know, if we don't get this thing through, we 
 shall simply lose the whole vote of such and such 
 a trade at the next election," or use words to that 
 effect. When the Cabinet wanted to turn itself 
 into a party caucus, it would have to go elsewhere, 
 and discuss the interests of its own political 
 connection apart from the affairs of the nation. 
 
 There appears nothing in the formal Constitu- 
 tion to prevent the Sovereign from attending a 
 sitting of the Cabinet or of any other committee 
 of the Privy Council. William III. and Queen 
 Anne habitually presided over the meetings of their 
 ministers. The custom fell into abeyance because 
 George I. could not understand English. To the 
 accident that the throne was filled by German 
 princes at a critical period of our history we owe 
 the peculiar constitution of our supreme executive. 
 If the kings had been able to take part in the 
 ministerial deliberations, the Cabinet would pro- 
 bably not have been secret. If it had not been 
 secret it is difficult to see how it could have become 
 a close committee of the party majority in the 
 House of Commons. And if, for the rule that no 
 placeman should be capable of serving in Parlia-
 
 THE CABINET SYSTEM 43 
 
 ment, there had not been substituted, as has been 
 said, " the rule that no man should be capable of 
 becoming a placeman unless he served in Parlia- 
 ment," * the connection between the executive and 
 the legislative organs could scarcely have been 
 maintained. But in that case the most distinctive 
 features of the modern British system of government 
 would never have reached their full development.! 
 
 * See a witty and forcible letter on " The King and the 
 Cabinet," by Mr. Thomas Gibson Bowles, M.P., in the Times, 
 October 19, 1901. 
 
 f Colonial governors are sometimes instructed in their letters- 
 patent to attend and preside at the meetings of the Executive 
 Council, and to be guided by its advice. They may, however, 
 if they think fit act in opposition to this advice, reporting 
 the reasons for their dissent to the Imperial Government. 
 The Governor usually summons the meeting of the Council. 
 Minutes are kept, and any councillor is entitled to place on the 
 record the reason for any proposal or opinion which he may 
 have brought forward at the meeting. Some Australian and 
 Canadian statesmen disapprove of the presence of the 
 Governor at the sittings of the Executive Council, and have 
 expressed strong objection to the practice. See A. B. Keith, 
 Besponsible Government in the Dominions, (1912), i. 151-158 
 seq. 
 
 It is also worth noticing that in France it has now become 
 the custom to have two sets of Cabinet Councils, which are 
 usually held two or three tunes weekly during the session of 
 the Chambers. At one kind of council the President of the 
 Eepublic takes the chair, and foreign policy, and general 
 legislative and administrative affairs, are discussed. The 
 Prime Minister presides over the other set of councils, which 
 are concerned more particularly with parliamentary, and 
 presumably also party, business.
 
 CHAPTEK III 
 THE PARLIAMENTARY TYPE OF GOVERNMENT 
 
 ACCIDENTAL in its origin, with its powers undefined 
 and largely hypothetical, the English Cabinet system 
 has nevertheless become the standard and type of 
 responsible government, in its Parliamentary form. 
 Only by this extremely delicate and complicated 
 arrangement, this nice balance of interests and 
 powers, this combination of a council of state with 
 a party directorate, does the machine work with 
 some ease and smoothness. No other arrangement 
 seems able quite so effectively to place the centre of 
 authority under the control of those who are sup- 
 posed to represent the popular will. It is claimed 
 for it that it maintains the democratic principle of 
 referring the ultimate decision to the people them- 
 selves, and gives them full liberty in the choice of 
 their rules and law-makers ; that it ensures the 
 exercise of the functions of government by a body 
 of persons, whose views are in consonance with the 
 majority of the popular chamber; that it confers 
 on the executive the strength and wide discretion 
 necessary for stable administration, and at the same 
 time renders it responsible at all times to the great 
 jury, whose members are themselves accountable to
 
 PARLIAMENTARY TYPE OF GOVERNMENT 45 
 
 the nation ; that it strictly conserves the practice 
 of public discussion at every stage of a public trans- 
 action ; that it requires the holders of high office to 
 be prepared to vindicate their acts before a tribunal, 
 which can punish them by dismissal, if it is dis- 
 satisfied or unconvinced. It creates a real sovereign 
 power, which is supreme in every department of 
 state, arid in every region both of legislation and 
 administration; and it makes it possible to carry 
 out, by the normal course of constitutional pro- 
 cedure, reforms and changes of the most compre- 
 hensive character, provided they are really desired 
 by the majority of the electors. 
 
 The Parliamentary type of government is fre- 
 quently contrasted with the presidential and federal 
 types, the only other forms that seem likely to hold 
 their own in free and civilised communities which 
 have passed beyond the phase of autocratic monarchy. 
 From De Tocqueville downwards the comparison 
 has often been drawn. Foreign pjps^rversjjiaturally. 
 desirous of improving their own institutions, haye, 
 sometimes over-emphasised the merits of the Eng- 
 lish system. Perhaps they dp not jifwayjjjsee how 
 much it..dep,eixds_uppn_ circumstances which _may_ 
 be called local or. accidentaL The mixture contains 
 numerous ingredients, " traces," as the analysts say, 
 of many diverse elements, and if one is omitted, or 
 introduced in undue proportion, the whole flavour 
 of the resultant is altered. None of the imitations, 
 with which the world is covered from Norway to 
 New Zealand, exactly reproduces the original. In 
 one country, they have failed to provide for the 
 secrecy and collective responsibility of the council 
 of ministers ; in another, there may not exist a
 
 46 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 wealthy leisured class to form the link between 
 society and politics ; elsewhere, there has been 
 wanting that tendency to a clean-cut division of 
 parties, a well-marked dualism of public opinion, 
 which provides the machinery for putting the 
 Cabinet in office and for turning it out. Even in 
 those colonies where every effort has been made 
 to apply the English model as closely as possible, 
 the resemblance is incomplete. A careful commen- 
 tator on Australian politics says: 
 
 " It is doubtful whether responsible government, in the 
 sense of government by a ministry, which carves out a definite 
 policy approved by the country, and, in return, receives 
 allegiance from its supporters in Parliament, has ever been 
 acclimatised in Australasia, except in New South Wales under 
 the influence of the late Sir Henry Parkes. How, indeed, 
 could it be otherwise, when it was sought to transplant a deli- 
 cate system, hallowed by conventions and dependent for its 
 success upon the election of a special class of representatives, 
 among a community necessarily ruled by men who had little 
 experience of public life ? Australian Parliaments, save on the 
 rare occasions when some important issue, such as that of the 
 tariff, has come to the front, have not been divided on ordinary 
 party lines, and have amused themselves with the excitement 
 of a constant succession of new ministries, selected on personal, 
 and not on political, considerations. New South Wales, South 
 Australia, and Victoria, to take three provinces at random, 
 have had, respectively, twenty-eight, forty-two, and twenty-six 
 ministries in forty years. . . . Australia has been confronted with 
 the difficulty, experienced by every young country, that the 
 men, who should naturally enter Parliament, are prevented by 
 commercial or professional duties from devoting the necessary 
 time, and that, in the absence of men of leisure, constituencies 
 are much hampered in their choice of candidates. The pay- 
 ment of members, it is needless to say, offers no inducement to 
 the successful merchant, but has increased the competition 
 among men to whom the salary is an inducement." * 
 
 * H. de E. Walker, Australasian Democracy (1897), p. 264.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY TYPE OF GOVERNMENT 47 
 
 It would not be difficult to show that the parlia- 
 mentary monarchies on the Continent of Europe, 
 such as Italy and Belgium, which remodelled their 
 constitutions in the last century, with the express 
 purpose of assimilating them to our own, have had to 
 admit equal or wider divergencies. For the course 
 of Flemish and Italian history has not been at all 
 like that of Britain, and the stratification of society 
 is very different. 
 
 But the parliamentary governments possess one 
 prime quality in common. In all of them, in 
 England, in Prussia, in France, in Belgium, and in 
 the British Dominions, the ministers are members 
 of Parjdament. The executive board is accountable 
 to the elected chamber, and its acts can be examined, 
 revised, criticised, and disallowed, by the represen- 
 tatives of the constituencies. There is, or so it is 
 assumed, direct responsibility ; there is direct power. 
 The ministers canjjp great things they can, indeed, 
 do almost everything; but it is on the condition 
 that^they have the_ confidence of the_ ^national 
 delegation. While they retain that, they are 
 among the most powerful and efficient rulers on 
 earth ; the moment they forfeit it, they become 
 private citizens. Clothed with this authority, their 
 range of political action is scarcely limited. An. 
 English Prime Minister, with his majority secure in 
 Parliament, can do what the (jgrman Emperor, and 
 the American President, and all the Chairmen of 
 Committees in the United States Congress, cannot 
 clo ; lor he can alter the laws, he can impose taxa- 
 tion or repeal it, and he can direct all the forces"!)? 
 the state" The one condition is that he must keep 
 Eis majority the outward and concrete expression
 
 48 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 of the fact that the nation is not willing to revoke 
 the plenary commission with which it has clothed 
 him. 
 
 The root of the whole is the usage by which 
 ministers are compelled jo_belong to one or' the 
 Other House of Parliament. It is mere custom, anci 
 as we have seen was steadily opposed, not so much 
 by the Crown, as by the Legislature itself. Even 
 now the law looks upon the practise grudgingly, 
 and will not allow more than four Secretaries of 
 State, and four Under- Secretaries of State, to have 
 seats in the House of Commons at any one time 
 (21 & 22 Viet. c. 106, sec. 4, and 27 & 28 Viet. c. 
 34).* "There is no statute or legal usage of this 
 country," says Gladstone, " which requires that 
 the ministers of the Crown shall hold seats in the 
 one or the other House of Parliament. It is perhaps 
 on this account that, while most of my countrymen, 
 would as I suppose declare it to be a becoming and 
 convenient custom, yet comparatively few are aware 
 how near the seat of life the observance lies, how 
 closely it is connected with the equipoise and unity 
 of the social forces." I Without it the " servants of 
 Crown " would not be kept continually cognisant 
 
 * In April, 1864, there was a solemn constitutional debate, 
 due to the fact that, through inadvertence five Under-Secretaries 
 of State had been allowed to sit and vote in violation of the 
 statute. An Act of Indemnity was passed to relieve the fifth 
 Under-Secretary from the possible pains and penalties he 
 might have incurred. 
 
 j- Gladstone, Gleanings, i. 224. Mr. Gladstone recalls the 
 fact that, from accidental circumstances, he held the office of 
 Secretary of State between December, 1845, and July, 1846, 
 without a seat in the House of Commons. It is, he says, 
 " by much the most notable instance of the kind " in our 
 recent history.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY TYPE OF GOVERNMENT 49 
 
 of the fact that they are also the servants of the 
 joation. Without it they could not have in their 
 hands the general management of legislation, and 
 without it their responsibility for executive acts 
 could not be brought home to them at every stage. 
 In the United States the distinction of powers, 
 theoretical with us, or obsolete, is still alive and 
 operative. The Executive is kept apart from the 
 Legislature. The members of the Cabinet do not 
 sit in Congress; they are merely heads of depart- 
 ments, responsible to the President, who is the 
 chief of the administration. Congress occupies 
 itself in making laws and providing for the raising 
 and disbursement of the Federal revenues. There 
 is no Ministry directly responsible to the Legisla- 
 ture, unless it be the chairmen of the various 
 committees of the House of Representatives, whose 
 ministerial functions are in many respects more 
 important than those of the Cabinet officers. These 
 latter are only highly-placed confidential clerks, 
 like our "permanent" under-secretaries, though 
 without the element of permanence. The Presi- 
 dent is Premier for the purpose of diplomatic 
 negotiations, naval and military administration, and 
 foreign affairs; but for legislative purposes, the 
 Prime Minister, if there be such a functionary, is 
 the Speaker of the House of Eepresentatives, who 
 nominates the committees and takes care that the 
 chairmen are members of the dominant party. 
 
 The several sections of this ministry of com- 
 mittees act separately, without concurrence or true 
 concert, with very little reference to the executive, 
 and sometimes with scant regard to a common policy. 
 Finance is regulated under a method, which has 
 
 5
 
 50 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 been described as that of spending according to the 
 suggestions of one body and taxing in obedience to 
 the suggestions of another. The Chairman of the 
 House Committee of Ways and Means has some- 
 times been called the American Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer. But he is a Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer who has only to look after the raising of 
 revenue. The expenditure is under the control of 
 another finance minister, the Chairman of the Com- 
 mittee of Appropriations ; while the Cabinet officer, 
 actually at the head of the Treasury department, is 
 not responsible for either side of the Budget, and is 
 indeed little more than an expert witness who is 
 allowed to lay his suggestions before the Congress 
 committees for acceptance or rejection.* 
 
 The American system divides responsibility, and 
 makes it difficult to place it anywhere. The Con- 
 gress cannot control a President who has been 
 elected, without reference to its feelings and 
 sympathies, for a fixed term of years ; the Presi- 
 dent has no authority over a Congress, which 
 may happen to have a majority drawn from the 
 party opposed to him, since he cannot dissolve 
 and appeal from the representatives to the electo- 
 rate; and the House of Eepresentatives has little 
 power even over its own business, which is really 
 transacted by the heads of the two-score "little 
 legislatures " that owe their being to the Speaker. 
 
 * " To see our Cabinet officers resign, because appropriations 
 had been refused for the full amount asked for in the Secretary 
 to the Treasury's ' Letter,' would be as novel in our eyes, as 
 would be, in the view of our English cousins, the sight of a 
 Ministry of the Crown remaining in office under similar cir- 
 cumstances." Woodrow Wilson, Congressional Government. 
 p. 164.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY TYPE OF GOVERNMENT 51 
 
 Now these various powers and responsibilities are 
 supposed to be entrusted, under the true Cabinet 
 system, to the same hands, and they are exercised 
 in an atmosphere of public discussion. They are 
 combined in a governing Council, which derives its 
 existence from a Representative Chamber chosen 
 directly by the electorate. " The people [that is, 
 the qualified voters] have allowed an executive to 
 subsist, with apparently wide powers ; but they 
 virtually choose this executive, and keep it in so 
 close and constant a dependence upon their plea- 
 sure, that it dare not act against what it believes 
 their will to be." * The nation can be master in 
 its own house, its energies can be directed along 
 one channel, instead of being dissipated by want 
 of unity. The officers, the sailors, and the engi- 
 neers of the ship of state, can work in conjunction, 
 with combined purpose and harmony of will. The 
 House of Commons is theoretically strong, because 
 it can call the Ministry to account for every act, and 
 compel their resignation by refusing supplies. The 
 Ministry is its servant, but not its slave ; for it can 
 advise the King to dissolve Parliament, appeal to 
 the nation, and ask it to decide. 
 
 Some of the acutest of American publicists have 
 been specially struck by the manner in which our 
 system, unlike their own, makes power, both to 
 legislate and to govern, the direct prize and result 
 of successful leadership in popular assemblies. A 
 national Parliament, they say, should train poli- 
 ticians for practical statesmanship, it should exhibit 
 them to the country, so that when men of ability 
 are wanted, they can be found. " In those Govern- 
 * Bryce, American CommomveaUh, L 218.
 
 52 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 ments which are administered by an executive 
 committee of the legislative body, not only the 
 training, but also the exhibition, is constant and 
 complete." * An American nominating convention 
 does not "look over the roll of Congress " to pick a 
 man to suit its purpose. If it did it could not find 
 him, because Congress is not a school for jhe 
 preparation of administrators^. The business of 
 Congressmen is "to pass Bills, not to keep them 
 in running order after they have become statutes." 
 But the Cabinet politician has to learn both arts. 
 " The Ministry is a legislative Ministry, and 
 draws its life from the Legislature, where strong 
 talents always secure executive place. A long career 
 in Parliament is at least a long contact with prac- 
 tical statesmanship, and at best a long schooling in 
 the duties of the practical statesman." The leaders 
 of English public life, we are told, have something 
 besides the weight of character, the prestige of per- 
 sonal service, and the authority of individual experi- 
 ence, to exalt them above the anonymous writers in 
 the press. 
 
 The people are interested in the Parliamentary 
 debates, for they know what they mean, and to 
 what end they may lead. They feel that they are 
 present at "a discussion by the sovereign legisla- 
 tive body itself, a discussion in which every feature 
 of each mooted point of policy shall be distinctly 
 brought out, and every argument of significance, 
 pushed to the furthest point of insistence, by recog- 
 
 * I am quoting here, and in the following pages, from 
 various chapters of President Woodrow Wilson's admirable 
 study of Congressional Government (twelfth edition, Boston, 
 895).
 
 PARLIAMENTARY TYPE OF GOVERNMENT 53 
 
 nised leaders in that body ; and above all a dis- 
 cussion upon which something something of 
 interest or importance, some pressing question of 
 administration or of law, the fate of a party or 
 the success of a conspicuous politician evidently 
 depends." By its ability in dealing with its legis- 
 lative proposals in Parliament the ministry's tenure 
 of office is regulated ; on his capacity in defending 
 or in assailing the ministerial policy in Parliament 
 is based the aspirant's chance of one day becoming a 
 minister himself. The prospect, or even the possi- 
 bility, of winning high and honourable office is the 
 safest method to infuse the best talent of the nation 
 into public life. T)ur indulgent Transatlantic critics 
 fament that a place in Congress has no prize to offer, 
 greater than membership of some one of numerous 
 committees, none of them supreme in policy, or 
 with recognized authority to do more than sug- 
 gest ; whereas in England a seat in Parliament 
 is eagerly sought " by men of the rarest gifts, 
 because a career there is the best road, is indeed 
 the only road, to membership of the supreme Com- 
 mittee of Government. Leadership, with authority 
 over a great ruling party, is a prize to attract great 
 competitors, and is in a free Government the only 
 prize that will attract great competitors." 
 
 Such eulogies need some qualification, when we 
 apply them to the conditions that actually prevail. 
 It would_b^safe to say that Cabinet government^ 
 mifjJitJoe, rather than that it is, all that is implied 
 in Jihe flattering estimates of its admiring critics. 
 The model was nearer the reality in the years 
 between the two great Reform Bills than at any 
 other period ; for in that era of middle-class supre-
 
 54 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 macy, before the electoral flood-gates had been 
 opened to the inrush of the masses, and at a time 
 when legislation and internal affairs were of rela- 
 tively greater importance than foreign policy, the 
 relations between the executive, the legislature, 
 and the constituencies, were much more like those 
 imaged in the constitutional theory than they can 
 be said to be at the present day. Even in the 
 'sixties, the ideal of the text-book writers was often 
 a long way from the facts ; and the modifying in- 
 fluences have gained force in recent years. Account 
 should be taken of the extent and real character 
 of the responsibility of ministers; the relations 
 of members of the Cabinet to one another and 
 to the Prime Minister; the development of the 
 party system; and thejiminished power and im- 
 portance of the House of Commons as compared 
 with the ministry on the one hand and the electo- 
 rate on the other, The last is the most significant 
 feature in our recent political evolution. " The 
 principal change," says Todd, "effected by the 
 development of the English Constitution since 
 the Revolution of 1688 has been the virtual trans- 
 ference of the centre and force of the State from the 
 Crown to the House of Commons." One might 
 add that the principal change effected since 1832 
 has been the further tendency to shift this " centre 
 and force" from Parliament to the Cabinet, and to 
 render the latter amenable to the control of the 
 constituent bodies themselves rather than to that 
 of their elected representatives.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 THE CABINET AND THE COMMONS 
 
 THE House of Commons is the most remarkable 
 public meeting in the world. Its venerable 
 antiquity, its inspiring history, its splendid tradi- 
 tions, its still youthful spirit and energy, the un- 
 rivalled influence it has exercised as the model of 
 Parliaments, its inseparable connection with the 
 vitality of the English nation, its place as the visible 
 centre, the working motor of our constitution all 
 this gives it a unique position. More than the 
 Monarchy itself, more, far more, than the Cabinet, it 
 attracts the attention not of Englishmen alone, but 
 of foreigners. Its debates are studied beyond the 
 Channel and beyond the Ocean. Its proceedings are 
 familiar to many thousands who have never set foot 
 in Britain, and have never uttered a word in the 
 English tongue. For a man to have attained a 
 conspicuous station in this august assembly, to be 
 numbered among its leaders, its trusted councillors, 
 its favourite orators, is to be counted among the 
 foremost figures of his age. 
 
 The_story of English history is the record of the 
 struggle of the House of Commons, first for freedom. 
 then for power^ The long contest of the elective 
 
 55
 
 56 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 chamber with the aristocracy and with the Crown, 
 is that which lends dignity to the annals of our race, 
 and vies in interest with the expansion of the Anglo- 
 Saxon peoples in the regions outside Europe. The 
 process was almost complete before its results were 
 fully realised. But the recognition is now ungrudg- 
 ing and unqualified. The constitutionalists of the 
 last century made it their business to enforce the 
 lesson that the House of Commons was the real 
 reservoir of authority in our polity, the life-giving 
 element from which all others derived their validity. 
 It was the true " efficient " part, whatever reverence 
 and value might attach to the other, the dignified 
 and ceremonial factors. 
 
 Much of the work of these writers is an attempt 
 to substantiate the proposition that the House of 
 Commons, in Mr. Gladstone's phrase, is the centre 
 of our system, the solar orb round which the 
 other bodies revolve. Men who were born when 
 George IV. or William IV. was king, were still 
 able to find some novelty and freshness in the 
 final phases of the rivalry between the Crown and 
 the Commons. They dwelt, disproportionately as 
 it may seem to us, on the conclusion and the 
 consequences of the long struggle. Looking at 
 the state of things which prevailed in the first 
 half of Queen Victoria's reign, when the House of 
 Commons was more nearly the nation, in a political 
 sense, than it had ever been before or than it has 
 ever been since, they even magnified its authority. 
 They endeavoured to show that it had absorbed 
 many of the functions of the Crown, and of Parlia- 
 ment as a whole, that it was supreme alike in law- 
 making, in the management of finance, in the
 
 THE CABINET AND THE COMMONS 57 
 
 control of administration, and in the direction of 
 public policy. The "Old Whigs" viewed with 
 mingled admiration and apprehension, the Old 
 Tories with undisguised alarm, this presumed 
 omnipotence of the popular chamber. The 
 Quarterly Review in 1866 spoke disparagingly of 
 "the feeble and pliable executive of England," 
 which " yields, and must yield, to the slightest wish 
 of the House of Commons." Nassau Senior said 
 that "the House of Commons, even now, while it is 
 returned by less than one-tenth of the people, is 
 the preponderating power in the British Empire. 
 Keturned by universal suffrage, representing, not as 
 now a fraction, but the whole of our population, it 
 would trample on the Crown and the House of 
 Lords." Earl Grey, in 1864, thought that some 
 increase in the power of ministers, in relation to the 
 House of Commons, was " a matter of urgent 
 necessity." 
 
 The extreme theory of Parliamentary omnipotence 
 was concisely re-stated by the Duke of Devonshire, 
 on September 5, 1893, in a speech delivered in 
 the House of Lords during the debates on the 
 second Home Rule Bill. In the 
 
 said the Duke, Parliament (which for these purpose^ 
 means the H^ap. nf Oommons^ Js "supreme," 
 not only in its legislative, _bntin its executive^ 
 functions : 
 
 " Parliament makes and unmakes our Ministries, it revises 
 their actions. Ministries may make peace and war, but they 
 do so at pain of instant dismissal by Parliament from office ; 
 and in affairs of internal administration the power of Parlia- 
 ment is equally direct. It can dismiss a Ministry if it is too 
 extravagant or too economical ; it can dismiss a Ministry
 
 58 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 because its government is too stringent or too lax. It does 
 actually and practically in every way directly govern England, 
 Scotland, and Ireland." 
 
 But it should be remembered that this uncom- 
 promising assertion of Parliamentary sovereignty 
 was put forward by an eminent Whig statesman, 
 who, though still playing an active and distinguished 
 part in politics in the closing decade of the 
 nineteenth century, had served his political appren- 
 ticeship more than forty years earlier, was first in 
 office under Lord Palmerston, and was a Cabinet 
 Minister under Lord John Russell. 
 
 It seems, at any rate, an excessive assumption to 
 maintain that the House of Commons, or Parlia- 
 ment, does " actually and practically, in every way," 
 directly govern the kingdom. The House is still 
 powerful, it is still influential in all departments of 
 government, it is still a bulwark of public liberty, 
 and still the worthy and splendid elective assembly 
 of a great people. It does much and could do more. 
 Even now its attributes are mighty, it does not 
 cease to be interesting, and at times the world gazes 
 enthralled upon the battles which rage within its 
 walls. The show of power is with it, nor has it 
 abated its pretensions, or diminished by one jot the 
 assertion of its nominal authority. But it is under- 
 going the evolution which comes in turn upon most 
 political organisms. Much of its efficiency has 
 passed to other agents. It supremacy is qualified 
 by the growth of rival jurisdictions. Its own, 
 servants have become, for some purposes, its^ 
 masters, The Crown is at least as powerful as it 
 was when the Throne was occupied by a retired 
 royal lady. TbeCabinet is more powerful, and has.
 
 THE CABINET AND THE COMMONS 59 
 
 drawn to itself many attributes which the Commons 
 aresfoll imagined to possess. The Electorate, fully 
 conscious of its own influence under an extended 
 franchise, wields a direct instead of a delegated 
 authority. And causes, internal to the House itself, 
 have deprived it of some of its functions, and limited 
 its exercise of others. 
 
 These functions may be classified under the 
 following heads : 
 
 (1) Legislation. 
 
 (2) Administration and executive control. 
 
 (3) Financial policy and management of the public 
 revenue. 
 
 (4) The discussion of abuses and the redress of 
 grievances. 
 
 (5) The testing and selecting of public men in 
 debate, and their appointment to ministerial offices. 
 
 With all these matters the House is still con- 
 cerned. But it is difficult to maintain that in 
 any of them, except perhaps the last, it has con- 
 served its old privileges without diminution. 
 
 The House as a Legislative Body. 
 The law-making function is, if not the oldest, at 
 any rate the most dignified and conspicuous 
 attribute of Parliament, and the one that strikes the 
 popular imagination with the liveliest force. It has 
 so far dwarfed the other powers and duties of the 
 great national Councils that we commonly talk of 
 the two Houses, and sometimes of the Lower House 
 alone, as the Legislature. But when we say that 
 the House of Commons makes the law, we use 
 language that no more conveys the facts than the 
 legal formula, which tells us that every statute is
 
 60 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 enacted by the King with the advice and assent of 
 Parliament. New laws are made by the Ministry, 
 with the acquiescence of the majority, and the 
 vehement dissent of the minority, in the House of 
 Commons. The Crown has nothing to do with the 
 matter, the House of Lords very little, except that it 
 has a limited power seldom exercised in cases of real 
 importance to delay the operation of the proposed 
 measure; the Opposition party protest against it, 
 energetically but powerlessly at every stage ; and the 
 non-official ministerialists are able to do no more 
 than affect the treatment of details. 
 
 Every member of the House, with the exception 
 of a score or so who sit on the front benches to the 
 right of the Speaker's chair, would admit, if he spoke 
 the truth, that his influence over legislation was 
 little greater than that of a private individual out- 
 side. He has the opportunity to criticise, to object, 
 to make suggestions ; but so has any writer in the 
 press, or any one else who is able to address his 
 countrymen in writing or by word of mouth. The 
 legislator, it is true, may utter his criticisms, 
 his objections, or his suggestions, under conditions 
 that confer on them a certain air of authority and 
 help to secure for them some amount of publicity ; 
 though one may doubt whether the orator who 
 addresses an attenuated House in a speech of half 
 an hour's duration (neatly summarised in five lines 
 of the daily papers the next morning), has any 
 special advantage over that possessed by a person 
 who can make his voice heard from the pulpit or the 
 platform, or is allowed to express his opinions in 
 influential journals and important magazines. The 
 Education Bill of 1902, weakly and ineffectually
 
 THE CABINET AND THE COMMONS 61 
 
 debated in the House of Commons, was exposed to 
 a continuous hail of hostile comment from the 
 leaders of the Nonconformist community outside 
 Parliament ; and no one, I think, can honestly 
 contend that these vigorous controversialists, some 
 of whom could at any moment call up an audience 
 of several thousand people to listen to their words, 
 would have produced more effect if their speeches 
 had been delivered in the House of Commons. 
 
 The power to shape legislation is in practice^conj: 
 fined_tp those members of the House who form the 
 inner ring of the Cabinet for the time being. A 
 Leader of the Opposition will probably be one of the 
 most powerful and influential of living men; he 
 may have behind him the enthusiastic devotion and 
 respect of a constituency which is numbered by 
 millions ; he may be accepted, with unquestioning 
 satisfaction and sincerity, as the representative of 
 their political opinions by nearly one-half the inhabi- 
 tants of the country. His position, even if not sup- 
 ported by brilliant ability, renders him a critic of 
 legislation whose lightest words are listened to with 
 attention ; nor would one deny that such attention is 
 bestowed upon him by ministers, or assert that they 
 can afford to disregard his arguments or his proposals. 
 Nevertheless, until a general election has changecL 
 ^he^balance_of _pjrj^esjn Parliament, he can neither 
 legislate, nor as far as the House of Commons is 
 concerned prevent legislation . on any subject of a 
 controversial nature^ that is to say, on any subject 
 which is Insufficient importance to excite wide- 
 spread interest. No doubt, if he chose to bring in 
 some harmless or colourless measure an amend- 
 ment of the Midwifery Act, let us say, or a Bill to
 
 62 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 regulate the placing of street letter-boxes he would 
 have a good chance of carrying it into law; but 
 even then that would only be because the minister, 
 whose department was concerned, might be disposed 
 to accept his views. His position and personal in- 
 fluence would cause the suggestion to come before 
 the ministerial mind with greater weight than if it 
 had been made by a writer in a newspaper ; other- 
 wise, the Opposition chief has really not much more 
 power than anybody else to get even an administra- 
 tive reform carried. 
 
 If the department, through the minister tem- 
 porarily at the head of it, decides that the Mid- 
 wifery Act does not need amendment, or that street 
 letter-boxes are suitably placed already, the leader 
 of the Opposition, like any influential reformer outside 
 Parliament, could do no more than protest, endeavour 
 to educate opinion on the subject, rouse public 
 interest in it, demand action at some future time. 
 Some of this work he would probably accomplish 
 from his place in the House ; but he could do it 
 quite as effectually, and very probably he might 
 even find it more convenient and desirable to do it, 
 on the platform, through the political organisations, 
 and in the press. In Parliament he has no direct 
 control over legislation and policy. If he chooses to 
 insist upon his opinion and to divide the House 
 against the Ministry, he will do so only to emphasise 
 his protest. The moment the leader of the Opposi- 
 tion announces that he proposes to vote against the 
 Government on the Pillar-box Bill, that Bill would 
 become a party question ; the Ministry would stand 
 or fall by it ; the majority would vote one way, the 
 minority would vote the other; and as the Ministry,
 
 THE CABINET AND THE COMMONS 63 
 
 from the nature of the case, represents the majority, 
 and the leader of the Opposition the minority, the 
 latter, of course, must be beaten whenever the 
 subject of the fight is of sufficient importance for 
 the parties to muster their forces. 
 
 Thus we have the curious fact that nearly one- 
 half of the " Legislature " are not legislators at all, 
 or only legislators on sufferance and on matters of 
 no moment. They can neither make laws nor 
 prevent laws being made. They can, it is true, 
 talk about them, while they are in the process of 
 making; but so can anybody else. There was an 
 Homeric battle-series at Westminster, when the 
 leaders of the Unionist Opposition raked the Home 
 Eule Bill with their fire through the long-drawn 
 days of the Session of 1893. But for all the practical 
 effect these speeches had on the fortunes of the Bill 
 in the House of Commons itself, they might as well 
 have been delivered in a public hall or a college 
 debating society. 
 
 The Unionist orators did not turn votes by their 
 arguments, nor would Cicero and Demosthenes 
 have done so under like conditions. It is of the 
 essence of our existing Parliamentary system, as it 
 has developed in recent years, that votes are not 
 turned. A member of Parliament is elected to vote_ 
 for a particular Ministry, or to vote against it. He 
 is the delegate of his constituents, or rather of that 
 active section of his constituents which assumes the 
 local management of political affairs. " Your repre- 
 sentative," said Burke to the electors of Bristol, 
 " owes you not his industry only, but his judgment* 
 and he betrays, instead of serving, you if he sacri- 
 fices it to your opinion. I maintained your interests
 
 64 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 against your opinions, with a constancy that 
 became me. I knew you chose me to be a pillar 
 of the State, and not a weathercock on the top 
 of the edifice." But that is not at all the view of 
 a representative's functions taken by the members 
 of a modern Liberal or Conservative Association. 
 They do not send him to Parliament to exercise 
 his independence ; they would be particularly 
 annoyed and irritated if he did ; and they scrutinise 
 his votes with jealous care, in order that they may 
 take him to task speedily, and with no superfluous 
 delicacy or reserve, if he shows any dangerous 
 tendency in that direction. 
 
 And the modern M.P. understands the conditions 
 of his political existence so well that, in point of 
 fact, he hardly ever does vote against his party on 
 any party issue, when his own side is in office. 
 Rare indeed are the recent cases in which a 
 Ministry has been beaten in a regular party 
 division by the defection of its own supporters. 
 One of these, the defeat of the Gladstone Govern- 
 ment in 1885, on Mr. Childers's Budget Bill, was 
 partly an accident, if it was not, as many people 
 thought, produced by the connivance of ministers 
 themselves, engaged in the process known as 
 "riding for a fall." Much the same may be said 
 of the adverse vote on the supply of ammunition to 
 the Army, which resulted in the ejection from office 
 of the Eosebery Government on June 21, 1895. 
 The Ministers, if they had chosen to muster their 
 followers, could the next evening have reversed the 
 snap vote of censure, taken on a side-issue in a half- 
 empty House. But they were conscious that their 
 position was unsatisfactory, that they had no real
 
 THE CABINET AND THE COMMONS 65 
 
 majority in the country, and that they were in office 
 only by the sufferance of the Irish members. _A 
 ^Ministry may purposely court defeat in the House 
 wkejn it jjejaires a freskjbppeaf to the constituencies. 
 Or^ of course, it may go to pieces itself, and the 
 yarty wilL_respon5 to _ its collapse. The Liberal 
 disaster in 1886, on the first Home Rule Bill, was 
 not so much a revolt against the Cabinet as the 
 result of civil war within that body a mutiny in 
 the camp with several of the generals at its head. 
 So was the partial disruption of the Unionists that 
 occurred when Mr. Chamberlain began his Tariff 
 Reform agitation in the spring of 1903. If Con- 
 servative members were found in the Opposition 
 lobbies, and one or two even sitting on the Liberal 
 benches, it was only because a question had arisen 
 on which the Cabinet itself was divided. The Free 
 Trade Unionist was opposing some of his leaders 
 at the bidding of some others. These cases do not 
 affect the general truth of the proposition that the 
 Ministry is the real law-making organ, and that it 
 can count on the support of its Parliamentary 
 majority for any legislative project, so long as 
 the majority holds together. 
 
 The Legislative Initiative. 
 
 That tbe__Ministry should initiate legislation is a_ 
 cbaracteristic_part of our system. The Cabinet 
 Traits its measures, and submits them to the 
 Legislature ; which considers and discusses them, 
 as a body of persons arranged in parties, not as 
 a collection of individuals each entitled to have 
 his own opinion on public policy and allowed some 
 
 6
 
 66 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 opportunity of carrying his views into effect. 
 Every transaction, every project of law, comes 
 before the House as an act of the Ministry and an 
 act of the Party. If it fails, or should be condemned 
 the result is a blow to the executive, and indirectly 
 to that portion of the electorate by whom it is 
 appointed. The system checks irresponsible sciolism. 
 and hasty experimentalising. It may render legisla- 
 tion slow, but it prevents it from becoming fantastic. 
 The official who lays a new proposal before the 
 House of Commons knows that he, or at any rate 
 his friends and connections, may have to carry it 
 into effect. If it is sound, they will strengthen 
 their position in the country; if it works badly, 
 discredit may attach to them for years to come. 
 
 Most foreign legislatures, set up with more or less 
 idea of imitating our own, fail to reproduce this 
 feature. They do not reserve the initiative in legis- 
 lation to the executive ; or they do not criticise by 
 parties. In some, as in the United States Congress, 
 the law-making function is altogether separate from 
 the ministerial ; in others, as in most of those of 
 Continental Europe, and in the Australasian States, 
 individual members may compete with ministers, 
 and perhaps prevail against them. They have a 
 concurrent right of initiative; and, owing to the 
 lack of party discipline, and the fact that groups of 
 members will combine for particular purposes, there 
 is always a fair chance that a ministerial project 
 may be rejected, and that a private member's pro- 
 posal may be carried, even though the Government 
 should have opposed it. So it happens that one set 
 of persons may make laws, and another set may see 
 to their execution.
 
 THE CABINET AND THE COMMONS 67 
 
 American critics noticing the feverish, scattered 
 energy of their own Congress, struggling ineffec- 
 tually under its avalanche of Bills, are more im- 
 pressed than Englishmen are apt to be with the 
 initiating prerogative of our Cabinet. " The func- 
 tion of the British Ministry," we are told, "is to 
 provide the necessary legislation ; and as a rule 
 the Ministry is composed of men well known to the 
 public and of more than usual experience. The 
 function of the American Committee, on the other 
 hand, is simply to sift or impede the efforts of a 
 large assembly, composed of persons of equal 
 authority, to pass laws, with the execution of 
 which, if they were passed, they would have nothing 
 to do." * 
 
 A public meeting, without regular leadership, is 
 likean army withcmt generals. It is apt to degene- 
 rate into a mob, with all the mob vices of fitfulness, 
 haste, and tyranny. " No portion of our Parlia- 
 mentary history," Macaulay has pointed out, is 
 "less pleasing or more instructive," than the period 
 at the close of the seventeenth and the beginning of 
 the eighteenth century, when the lower Chamber 
 was left to itself, without adequate direction, either 
 from officers of the Crown or ministers of its own 
 choice. 
 
 "The House of Commons became altogether ungovernable; 
 abused its gigantic power with unjust and insolent caprice, 
 browbeat King, and Lords, and Courts of Common Law, and 
 the constituent bodies ; violated rights guaranteed by the Great 
 Charter ; and at length made itself so odious that the people 
 were glad to take shelter, under the protection of the Throne 
 and the hereditary aristocracy, from the tyranny of the assembly 
 which had been chosen by themselves." 
 
 * E. L. Godkin, Unforeseen Tendencies of Democracy, p. 108.
 
 68 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 The remedy was found in the gradual establish- 
 ment of Cabinet government in the eighteenth 
 century, and the complete recognition, in the nine- 
 teenth, of the Ministerial system in Parliament. 
 The legislative initiative has been freely conceded to 
 the Government by the most philosophical students 
 of representative institutions. "When," said John 
 Stuart Mill, in a speech in the House of Commons 
 in 1863, " a popular body knows what it is fit for 
 and what it is unfit for, it will more and more 
 understand that it is not its business to administer, 
 but that it is its business to see that the administra- 
 
 tion_is done by proper persons, and tq^Jfeepthem .to 
 their duties. I hope it will be more and more felt 
 that the duty of this House is to put the right 
 persons on the Treasury Bench, and when there to 
 keep them to their work. People will more value 
 the importance of this principle the longer they 
 have experience of it." 
 
 The operation of the principle has been carried 
 much further since Mill spoke. It is not merely a 
 question of Cabinet initiative and direction, but of 
 Cabinet authority over legislation, almost unre- 
 strained. The privilege of the executive in these 
 matters was supposed, before recent changes, to be 
 consistent with a concurrent right of the mem- 
 bers of the House of Commons to make proposals 
 themselves, with some chance of getting them 
 embodied in the statutes. And it was always 
 understood that the House had an unlimited power 
 to amend and modify all projects laid before it, 
 whether by ministers or other persons. But its 
 prerogative in both these respects has been at- 
 tenuated. The " rights " of the private member
 
 THE CABINET AND THE COMMONS 69 
 
 are still maintained, and sometimes plaintively or 
 angrily vindicated; but his opportunities are so 
 slight, and so fettered and guarded, that they are 
 useless. In the earlier part of the last century it 
 was possible for the most important changes in the 
 law to be introduced and carried through the House 
 of Commons by non-official legislators. The culmi- 
 nating instance was that of the Roman Catholic 
 Relief Bill in 1825, brought in by Sir Francis 
 Burdett and passed through its third reading. 
 This was one of the last instances of a first-class 
 measure, involving the deepest political issues, 
 being laid before Parliament otherwise than by 
 a minister. But for several decades afterwards, 
 the independent member could still have his 
 chance with Bills of a somewhat less controversial 
 character, or with those on which opinion was not 
 divided according to party lines. 
 
 But even over these questions the House, as 
 distinct from the Government, has now very little 
 power. Its opinion, whether expressed by the 
 second reading of a bill, or by a resolution, is of 
 scarcely any practical value, unless it is endorsed by 
 the Cabinet, and placed on the party programme. 
 A division in favour of some change or reform, 
 which has not received the official stamp, is 
 a mere demonstration, and it carries no real weight. 
 The House of Commons passed resolutions in 
 favour of payment of members, but nothing was 
 done until a ministry in office was converted to the 
 principle, and then it was put into practice without 
 direct statutory authority. Ministers ignore " aca- 
 demic " votes of the House, and the newspapers treat 
 them as harmless exhibitions of enthusiasm or
 
 70 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 caprice. Year by year bills for legalising marriage 
 with a deceased wife's sister, and for conferring the 
 parliamentary franchise on women, were introduced 
 and strongly supported. The former amendment of 
 the law has at length been enacted by the acquiescence 
 of the ministry. But several years earlier, in 1902, 
 it had been carried through the second reading by 
 a majority of over two to one. Here, in form, was 
 an overwhelming demonstration in favour of a 
 specific change in the law, on the part of the popular 
 Assembly, which, in the oft-quoted words of De 
 Lolme, can do anything except make a man a 
 woman or a woman a man. In this case it did 
 no more than if it had been a meeting of the 
 Economic Section of the British Association. 
 The Bill received no " facilities " from the Govern- 
 ment, and it went no further. The triumphant 
 division was a useful advertisement for the move- 
 ment, but that was all. It furnished a striking 
 example of the transfer of real legislative power 
 from the House at large to its Executive Com- 
 mittee. 
 
 Under the rules at present in force, the Govern- 
 ment has precedence at every sitting throughout 
 the session, except the evening sittings on Tuesday 
 and Wednesday, and the sittings on Friday. 
 Priority is given to private members' notices of 
 motion on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and to private 
 members' bills on Fridays. After Easter, the 
 Government takes the evening sittings on Tuesdays, 
 and after Whitsuntide, it takes all sittings, except 
 those of the third and fourth Fridays after Whit- 
 Sunday. This does not give much play for the 
 private member's constructive statesmanship. And
 
 THE CABINET AND THE COMMONS 71 
 
 even on the days when he can claim precedence 
 his limits of action are much restricted. The 
 "Twelve-o'clock Rule," as it is called, and the 
 automatic suspension of the sittings of the House 
 at half-past five on Fridays, make it difficult for 
 any controversial business to be debated to a 
 conclusion unless it is in the hands of the Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 The arrangement, by which the House rises, in 
 the ordinary course, at midnight, was intended to 
 put an end to the demoralising scandal of frequent 
 all-night sittings, sometimes produced by a mere 
 knot of obstructives in order to annoy and harass 
 the majority. But the result has been to place the 
 private member at a further disadvantage. The 
 Government can always suspend the Twelve-o'clock. 
 RuleTo ^secure a proper hearing and" due attention 
 
 , _ ^ V 
 
 for matters in which it is ^interested. The, 
 private member has 'no such power ; so that avery 
 small hostile minority can generally talk out his 
 motion, by impeding its progress until midnight 
 comes "with its abhorred shears " and slits the thin- 
 spim~life. Thus, even if he gets a place on the 
 order-paper before Easter, the private member has 
 very little scope, and at the best he can hardly expect 
 to do more than call attention to his proposals, in 
 the hope that they may impress public opinion, and 
 be inscribed in time on a Ministerial programme. 
 After Easter he can do very little indeed, and after 
 Whitsuntide nothing at all. 
 
 If he cannot legislate himself he may be supposed 
 to have the power and opportunity to criticise the 
 legislation of the Executive. This he does, and 
 with as much freedom as his standing in the
 
 72 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 House allows. On the second reading of Govern- 
 ment Bills he can say a good deal on the general 
 principle. But what he says is mainly intended 
 for the outside public and the reporter's gallery. 
 The Bill is not likely to be rejected on this occa- 
 sion, for the simple reason that it has behind it 
 the strength of the Government, and therefore the 
 weight of the more numerous party in the House. 
 In Committee the Government can always call up 
 its supporters to vote for any clause as a question 
 of confidence; and it can cut short discussion 
 altogether, by getting the House (that is, its own 
 majority of the House) to declare that the various 
 stages of a Bill under consideration shall be con- 
 cluded at certain fixed dates. The notice for 
 " closure by compartments " appears in some such 
 form as the following, under the name of the Leader 
 of the House : 
 
 "Licensing Bill (Procedure). That the proceedings in 
 Committee and on Report of the Licensing Bill shall be 
 brought to a conclusion in a manner hereinafter mentioned, on 
 six allotted days. . . . 
 
 " After this order comes into operation, any day shall be 
 considered an allotted day for the purpose of this Order on 
 which the Licensing Bill is put down as the first Order of 
 the Day. 
 
 "... After the passing of this Order, on any day on which 
 any proceedings on the Licensing Bill stand as the first Order 
 of the Day, no dilatory Motion on the Bill, nor under Standing 
 Order No. 10, nor Motion to postpone a Clause, shall be 
 received, unless moved by the Minister in charge of the Bill, 
 and the question on any such Motion shall be put forthwith. 
 Nor shall any opposed private business be set down at the 
 evening sitting for consideration on any of the allotted days or 
 on the day on which the third reading of the Bill is put down 
 as first Order."
 
 THE CABINET AND THE COMMONS 73 
 
 This is a comparatively mild example. Discus- 
 sion is truncated but not absolutely stifled. A 
 more drastic form of " closure by compartments " 
 was introduced to assist the progress of the second 
 Home Kule Bill and has been rendered more 
 rigorous since. How little real control members of 
 the Commons, on either side, can exercise over the 
 legislation proposed by ministers has been strikingly 
 illustrated in almost every Session since 1893, when 
 measures of the largest scope, bristling with con- 
 troversial detail, on which it is inconceivable that all 
 those who constitute the majority to say nothing 
 of the minority of the House could have seen 
 absolutely eye to eye, have been voted through at 
 the call of the Cabinet, with a considerable propor- 
 tion of the clauses not so much as discussed in 
 Committee. It would seem as if the rank and file 
 of the predominant party are content to give a free 
 hand to their leaders, without even taking the 
 trouble to look into the Bills they are asked to pass 
 into law.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE CONTROL OF PARLIAMENT 
 
 IN cases of the kind just mentioned, we might 
 almost imagine that if by some silent and miraculous 
 revolution the House of Commons were swept 
 out of existence, while the other parts of our Con- 
 stitution were left standing, the progress of events 
 in all essentials would have been little different from 
 what it was. The function fulfilled by the House 
 of Commons, though it looked all-important, was in 
 reality nearly otiose. Let us imagine that in 1893 
 Gladstone and his colleagues had been elected by 
 the direct choice of the constituencies, instead of 
 by a process of secondary election through the 
 Houses of Parliament. Instead of sending a number 
 of delegates to London to support Mr. Gladstone 
 until he thought fit to resign or dissolve, the Liberal 
 and Nationalist electors of the three kingdoms 
 might have cast their votes at once for the Liberal 
 statesman and for such other public men as he 
 desired to assist him in the government of the 
 country. And suppose the Ministry thus chosen had 
 "tabled" its Home Rule Bill before the nation on 
 the 1st of February, by means of the Queen's 
 printers, and had announced that on the last day of 
 
 74
 
 THE CONTROL OF PARLIAMENT 75 
 
 July this Bill, with such alterations as ministers 
 themselves might incline to make in it, should be 
 sent up to the House of Lords. 
 
 One may be inclined to ask what difference in 
 the general result this would have produced. The 
 Bill would have been before the country for six 
 months; it would have been discussed, criticised, 
 turned inside out, defended by its supporters, riddled 
 and bombarded by its opponents, in the news- 
 papers, in the magazines, and on the platform. 
 The vigorous speeches of the front Opposition 
 bench would have had quite as much effect on the 
 mind of the nation, and on the minds of ministers, 
 if they had been delivered at public meetings ; and 
 scores of other members, who never found a chance 
 of speaking on the measure in the House, would 
 have had leisure and opportunity to talk about it to 
 the country. 
 
 In the space that intervened between the first 
 and third readings of the second Home Kule Bill, 
 the measure, it is true, was almost recast ; and the 
 same may be said of the third Home Bule Bill. 
 But the alterations were jiot in the main due to 
 adverse votes in the House of Commons. They were 
 the effect of searching criticism, and of the convic- 
 tion, brought home to^the minds of ministers. thaiL 
 some garts of their Bill would not "work." If it 
 is admitted ffiat all the oratory of Westminster will 
 not turn half a dozen votes one way or the other, 
 on any question of real public interest, the chief 
 theoretical value of the debates disappears. The 
 House is scarcely a legislating chamber; it is a 
 machine for discussing the legislative projects of 
 ministers, and only one among the various instru-
 
 76 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 ments by which political discussion is in these days 
 carried on.* 
 
 The declining power of the House of Commons 
 in this respect receives less attention than it 
 deserves, though it has been admitted, sometimes 
 with reluctance, sometimes with a certain satis- 
 faction, by some keen observers. The late Lord 
 Salisbury occasionally noticed the phenomenon, 
 as in his speech at Edinburgh on October 30, 1894, 
 when he said : " There is an enormous change in 
 the House of Commons as I recollect it, and the 
 evolution is going on still; and we have reached 
 this point that discussion of a measure is possible 
 in the Cabinet, but for any effective or useful 
 purpose, it is rapidly becoming an impossibility in 
 the House of Commons." 
 
 Lord Salisbury, though he regarded the change 
 with his customary philosophical and scientific 
 
 * One of these instruments is the press ; and the newspapers 
 can sometimes modify Ministerial projects much more rapidly 
 than the House of Commons. In July, 1904, ministers were 
 engaged in drafting a scheme of Army reorganisation. Whether 
 by accident, or by a calculated indiscretion, the outlines of the 
 plan appeared in the newspapers a few days before the date 
 fixed for the War Minister's statement. A cardinal point was 
 the virtual abolition of the Militia. This proposal was at once 
 strongly condemned, not only by the Opposition journals, but 
 also by several of the leading Conservative organs. As the 
 result, when the project was laid before Parliament, it was 
 found that the provisions relating to the Militia had been 
 eliminated. The Secretary for War declared that he still 
 believed in his original proposals : but that he felt compelled 
 to abandon them in view of the fact that they were plainly 
 out of accord with public sentiment. It may well be doubted 
 whether three months of heated debate in Parliament would 
 have produced as much effect as this brief campaign in the 
 newspapers.
 
 THE CONTROL OF PARLIAMENT 77 
 
 detachment, did not consider that it was one to be 
 applauded. Private members of the House some- 
 times raise their voices against it in angry or 
 plaintive remonstrance. " Were they prepared," 
 said one of these oppressed legislators indignantly, 
 in the debates on the Closure resolutions by which 
 it was proposed to expedite proceedings on the 
 Licensing Bill of 1904 
 
 " Were they prepared to declare that as a body the House 
 was unfitted to frame its measures, and that when a Bill 
 passed into Committee, if time was short, or if the measure 
 was controversial, or if any elements of complication arose, it 
 was to be taken, not in the form in which Parliament had 
 settled it, but in the form in which the Government draftsman 
 had framed it, and in which the Cabinet had chosen to adopt 
 it ? The Constitution had undergone a serious change. It had 
 ceased to be government by Parliament ; it had become govern- 
 ment by Cabinet ; and an even later development, they were 
 told, had taken place, and it was now government by Prune 
 Minister in Cabinet, little distinguishable from the autocracies 
 into which the democracies of the past had degenerated. . . . 
 There was no tribunal by which legislation could be reviewed 
 and criticised. The only security given was in the discussion 
 and deliberation of Parliament, and if they came to the con- 
 clusion that this deliberation and discussion could not be 
 expended upon their measures, then they were abandoning one 
 of the most important functions which the House had hitherto 
 exercised."* 
 
 No doubt a member's views as to the growing 
 encroachments of the Government on the right of 
 discussion are apt to be coloured by his own relations 
 to it. The extinguished Opposition orator may 
 writhe beneath the closure like a toad under the 
 harrow. To the minister, anxious to push his Bill 
 
 * Mr. Lawson Walton in the House of Commons, July 1, 
 1904.
 
 78 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 through, the harrow may seem only a useful imple- 
 ment of agriculture. But, aside from all party spirit, 
 there must be many members of the House who 
 regard their own powerlessness with misgiving and 
 dissatisfaction. One of them has put the case 
 strongly but temperately in these words : 
 
 " There is no doubt as to the facts of recent Parliamentary 
 history. In the last few years the powers of the Government 
 have been greatly increased, those of private members have 
 greatly declined not merely powers of talking, for that is 
 little, but of doing useful work. Each step in the process 
 looks small, 'but the cumulative result is very considerable. 
 For instance, the closure used to be occasionally refused. 
 Even Mr. W. H. Smith, who sat more continually in the 
 House watching its proceedings than any Leader of recent 
 years, was refused the closure. The Government is practically 
 never refused the closure now. Then the rules are much more 
 stringently applied in a more technical or quasi-legal manner 
 than formerly, whether as regards questions, amendments, 
 instructions, or points of order. Again, it was practically 
 impossible, till the greater stringency of administering the 
 rules of these later years, to pass Bills, as was done during 
 the late Parliament, without an amendment of a single word. 
 
 " It is supposed to save time ; but what effect does it have on 
 private members, on both sides of the House, to be told that 
 no contribution they can give, no argument they can make in 
 the direction of improvement, is of the slightest use,? The 
 Government says it knows how to draw a Bill which is abso- 
 lutely perfect, and all suggestions about the Bill are made to 
 appear waste of time. If this be so, what is the use of a 
 deliberative Assembly ? " * 
 
 * The quotation is from a letter by " An Old Member of the 
 House of Commons " in the Westminster Gazette, March 19, 
 1901. Cf. the remarks of Mr. F. E. Smith on the First Beading 
 of the Parliament Bill, February 22, 1911 : " Hon. members 
 knew the conditions under which business was carried on in the 
 House. It was only to use a form and a name to say that they
 
 THE CONTROL OF PARLIAMENT 79 
 
 It must be remembered tbat the situation of 
 
 Ministerialist member outside the Ministry itself is 
 not much better than that of his rival on theoppoaitq 
 benches. He,also. is only in alimitecLsena_a, 
 legislator; he has scarcely Ibny^power to make 
 new laws or prevent them being made, jaLJio_ 
 amend old ones. He is not consulted, anyjaora- 
 than the members of the Opposition, on bills which 
 ^ministers propose to introduce ; he sees them only 
 when they come from the printers ; and then he 
 knows that, whether he likes them or not, he will 
 be expected to support them by his vote in the 
 lobbies. 
 
 On the other hand this suppression of " the 
 liberty of unlicensed debate," as Milton might have 
 called it, and the regulation of desultory, half- 
 instructed, opinion, has found its advocates, and 
 even its enthusiastic eulogists. Against the doubt- 
 ing words of Lord Salisbury, may be set the exul- 
 tant langage of Lord Salisbury's son, a brilliant 
 representative of the newer school of Toryism. 
 Speaking in the House of Commons in March, 
 1901, in ardent defence of the revised rules of 
 procedure brought forward by the Government, 
 
 were left to the House of Commons. They were not left to 
 the House at all ; they were left to the Cabinet. The Home 
 Secretary had attempted to draw a distinction by saying that 
 the Cabinet existed only by the support of the private member, 
 and the right hon. gentleman added that a breath from the 
 House of Commons would blow the Cabinet away. A fallacy 
 underlay that observation. . . . The House knew that the day 
 of the private member had passed away, perhaps never to 
 return. The influence of the private member was a thing of 
 the past, and it had progressively declined as the strength of 
 the caucus had progressively grown."
 
 80 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 Lord Hugh Cecil uttered these remarkable sen- 
 tences : 
 
 " We hear often of the infringements of the rights of private 
 members, and it cannot be denied that a transfer of political 
 power from the House of Commons to the Cabinet is going on. . . 
 Why is it that nobody cares, outside these walls, about the 
 rights of private members ? Because there is a deep-seated 
 feeling that the House is an institution which has ceased to 
 have much authority or much repute, and that when a better 
 institution, the Cabinet, encroaches upon the rights of a worse 
 one, it is a matter of small concern to the country." 
 
 Such language, as Mr. Bernard Holland observes in 
 his penetrating study of our method of Government 
 entitled Imperium et Libertas, has hardly been heard 
 within the precincts of the Palace of Westminster 
 since the days of Charles L* In 1791, Beeves, the 
 author of the History of English Law, anxious to 
 exalt the royal prerogative, used somewhat similar 
 language about the House of Commons, contend- 
 ing that the chambers of Parliament were but 
 branches on our constitutional tree, which might 
 be lopped off without seriously damaging the trunk. 
 The House was deeply indignant, and compelled 
 the Government to prosecute Beeves for sedition, 
 though the jury refused to find him guilty, t 
 
 * Mr. Holland adds : " The theoretical and practical deduc- 
 tion from this doctrine is that the House of Commons is to 
 become a mere body for registering the decrees of a secret 
 committee, largely consisting of men in the House of Lords 
 who never come near it. How long in that case will the House 
 of Commons continue to attract the services of able men ? It 
 is felt already that, for a man who desires not so much honorary 
 distinction as real and practical work, the London County 
 Council offers satisfactions, which Parliament is powerless to 
 bestow." Imperium et Libertas, p. 257. 
 
 f State Trials, xxvi. 530-534.
 
 THE CONTROL OF PARLIAMENT 81 
 
 Nodody however proposed to prosecute, or even to 
 reprimand, Lord Hugh Cecil, for his open aspersion 
 of the dignity and authority of the House of 
 Commons. Perhaps it was felt that there was 
 undeniable truth in his statement of the facts, what- 
 ever might be thought of his verdict on the merits 
 of the two " institutions," which were the objects of 
 his audacious comparison. 
 
 The House of Commons and the Executive. 
 
 What has been said of legislation applies largely 
 to administration. The House of Commons no 
 
 longer controls the Executive'; on the contrary, the 
 Executive controls the House of Commons. The_ 
 theory is that the ministers must justify each and all. 
 of their_acts before the representatives of the nation 
 at every stage; if they fail to do so. those repre-^ 
 sentatives will turn them out of office. But in our. 
 modern practice the Cabinet is scarcely ever tnrnecL 
 out of office by Parliament whatever it does._ The^ 
 Ministry niav fall by its own connivance as in 1885" 
 and T855, when it feejs that the country is turning 
 against ij; ; or it may break-up on some question, 
 like that"of tomp. "Rnlft pr Free Trade, upon which 
 its own "members are divided. But such a question 
 will be one of policy, not of administrative action. 
 It is very difficult to bring a Government to 
 account for anything done in its ministerial work. 
 The real check upon a too gross and salient mis- 
 use of Ministerial power is, no doubt, the salutary 
 fear of public opinion ; but this is a restraint that 
 would be pretty nearly as operative without the 
 assistance of the House of Commons which does 
 not respond to it except after a general election. 
 
 7
 
 82 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 For the control of Parliament^ which was sup- 
 posed to be regular, steady, and constant, ia^ 
 exchanged the_ control of the _electprate j which is 
 powerful but intermittent. It is brought into 
 operation at uncertain intervals, and is exercised 
 only with reference to one or two great issues 
 of policy, often determined by ministers them- 
 selves, instead of being applied, from day to day, to 
 the conduct of public affairs. The country may 
 change its politics in consequence of the acts or 
 omissions of the Executive, but the rank and file 
 of the House do not. If they do, we should find 
 members constantly, or at any rate occasionally, 
 voting with the Opposition ; but that scarcely ever 
 happens. Even when a party is broken by internal 
 dissension, members are very reluctant to vote 
 against the official leaders, though they will some- 
 times abstain from voting with them. This was 
 the case with the Free Trade Unionists in the 
 various debates which arose out of Mr. Chamber- 
 lain's Preferential agitation. Only a very small 
 knot of the " free fooders " voted regularly with the 
 Opposition in the Session of 1904, though they were 
 quite as strongly opposed as the Liberals to the 
 fiscal views of the chief members of the Cabinet. 
 The custom of voting with the party has solidified 
 into a rule ; and that rule established, the control 
 of Parliament tends to become sensibly attenuated, 
 till for long periods of time it is almost non-existent 
 for practical purposes. 
 
 Lord Bosebery, a Prime Minis cer who has held 
 his office under the new conditions, has pointed 
 out that, in any case, the theorecical accountability 
 of the Cabinet is normally and resjuiarly in abeyance
 
 THE CONTROL OF PARLIAMENT 83 
 
 for half the year. "During the whole of the 
 parliamentary recess, we have not the faintest idea_ 
 of what our rulers are "doing, or planning, or_ 
 negotiating, except in so far as light is afforded by 
 the independent investigations of the pres_s."* But 
 a body of men who have their hands upon the details 
 of a complicated business all the time cannot be 
 effectively supervised by another body paying fitful 
 attention to the subject during a part of the time. 
 The members of the House of Commons are occupied 
 in various ways ; they have many things to interest 
 them during the short London season ; and though 
 they may have every desire to do their political work 
 properly the circumstances are much against them. 
 Half the House is taken up with business, and the 
 other half with amusement. As the Session goes 
 on, and the weather grows warmer, and London 
 society plunges into its summer rush of brief 
 excitement, many members find it difficult to devote 
 their energies steadily to their " parliamentary 
 duties." It is difficult for the Whips to keep a 
 house, when so many of their men are loitering at 
 garden parties and afternoon fetes, or lunching late 
 and long, or lingering over the dinner-table, or 
 hurrying off to country-houses and golf-courses 
 from Friday to Monday. How can a man plough 
 solidly through his Blue Books and his Reports 
 and Papers in this distracting environment ? 
 
 The conditions of Parliamentary life are illustrated 
 by the curious and unexpected results of the Rules 
 of Procedure which were drafted under the direction 
 of Mr. Balfour. They were based on what seemed 
 
 * See Lord Rosebery's article on Sir Robert Peel in the 
 Anglo-Saxon Review for June, 1899.
 
 84 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 the sound assumption that the House of Commons 
 would do its business better if it adopted more 
 businesslike methods, and had its regular hours 
 every day for work and its regular periods for rest 
 and refreshment. Instead of continuous sittings 
 which might last from noon of one day till sunrise 
 on the next, with benches nearly empty for hours 
 at a time, the House was to meet at half-past two, 
 go on till half-past seven on four days a week, 
 adjourn till nine, and continue to sit, in the 
 ordinary course, till midnight. It was hoped that 
 members, after the day's work, would go home to 
 dinner, and come back, fresh and vigorous, for the 
 evening's debate. But jit se.ems jbhe mejpbp-r_n_f_ 
 Parliament is so constituted that the only way to 
 secure his punctual attendance is ^^ 
 down_to the Ijouseanci lock him np as lo 
 Is wanted?" Otherwise Ee cannot be trusted^lo. 
 jjgmftjTi, ftTJ 11 to vote, when required. His wife 
 and daughters, and his friends, and his own natural 
 desire to be in a pleasanter place than the heated 
 chamber, and uninviting corridors, of the House, 
 are too much for him. Members of Parliament, on 
 the testimony of one of their number, " are to a 
 considerable extent predatory in their habits, going 
 for their food to other people's houses. The 
 conventional luncheon hour in London varies from 
 1.30 to 2 nominally ; allowing for ordinary 
 unpunctuality, 1.40 to 2.10 ; the dinner-hour is 
 anywhere after 8.15. These are clearly incom- 
 patible with attendance at Westminster at 2.30 
 and 9."* 
 
 * See a letter from Mr. Keginald Lucas, M.P., in the Times, 
 May 5, 1904. A fortnight after the date of Mr. Lucas's letter
 
 THE CONTROL OF PARLIAMENT 85 
 
 The disability, no doubt, affects one party more 
 than the other, since a Conservative Whip is likely 
 to find a larger proportion of his flock disturbed by 
 the demands of fashion and society than his Liberal 
 competitors ; * and, of course, much will depend 
 upon the discipline of the party, and the feeling 
 of the rank and file towards their chiefs. Still, 
 the fact is incontestable that, whether through the 
 preoccupations of work or pleasure, the majority 
 of members are unable to bestow upon the pro- 
 ceedings of the Executive that continuous, uninter- 
 mitting, attention by which alone effective control 
 can be maintained. 
 
 The opportunities of the private member to bring 
 
 there was a discussion in the House on some of the results of 
 the new Rules. Dr. Farquharson, a Scotch member, said : 
 " There were many members who found it most inconvenient 
 to be at the House at two o'clock especially those gentlemen 
 who were in business or professional life. The House of 
 Commons ought not to be a place accessible only to men of 
 leisure who wished to enlarge their social circle. Under present 
 conditions it was impossible for any man carrying on com- 
 mercial or city life, or practising in the Law Courts, to come 
 to the House before four or five o'clock, when the interesting 
 questions were over." Mr. Balfour, in his reply, said : " I 
 come to the conclusion that the domestic attractions to which 
 the hon. gentleman refers are of a high character. Many 
 gentlemen find it difficult to return to the House at nine 
 o'clock, unless there is some special excitement, or some hope 
 of an interesting scene." 
 
 * The difference between the two parties in this respect was 
 noted long ago. Lord Malmesbury writes in his Diary under 
 date February 25, 1837 : " A good deal of division exists among 
 the Tories, who are very careless in their attendance, and who 
 prefer their pleasures to their duties. Not so the Whigs, who 
 are always ready to obey their leader's call, and never dream 
 of thinking for themselves." Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, 
 p. 56.
 
 86 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 pressure to bear upon the Administration by a 
 motion in the House are even more limited than 
 his command over legislation. He has three 
 courses open. He can put down an amendment to 
 the Address, if he sees his way to suggest one 
 which raises an important question of general public 
 policy. He can ballot for the chance of putting 
 down a notice of motion on a Tuesday or Wednesday, 
 in the period during which those evenings are not 
 required by the Government. And he can also, at 
 any afternoon sitting, after questions, and before 
 the Orders of the Day, rise to move the adjournment 
 of the House " for the purpose of discussing a 
 definite matter of urgent public importance." 
 
 If more than forty members rise in their places 
 to support him, he can bring forward his motion. 
 This is an ancient constitutional privilege which 
 has always been regarded as of substantial value, 
 since it enables any member, with the assistance of 
 a comparatively small minority, to have the conduct 
 of ministers debated. But it has been rendered 
 almost nugatory by the restrictions placed upon its 
 exercise. Formerly a motion for the adjournment, 
 for purposes of debate, might be made without 
 leave or conditions at any time before the Orders of 
 the Day were called on. Now such motions may 
 only be made by ministers of the Crown. Further, 
 a motion for the adjournment must (1) not revive 
 discussion on a matter which has been discussed in 
 the same session, and (2) it must not anticipate 
 a matter which has been already appointed for 
 consideration by the House, or with reference 
 to which notice of motion has been previously 
 given.
 
 THE CONTROL OF PARLIAMENT 87 
 
 The result of these rules is that jijsuDporter of the 
 Ministry may "block " debate on any subject, for a 
 *wnole session,, by giving a notice of a motionon that 
 subject If he frames his notice in sufficiently wide 
 terms he can anticipate all attempts to deal with 
 any branch of it, or with any cognate topic, by a 
 subsequent motion for the adjournment. Ingenious 
 members amuse themselves by " thinking out any 
 possible subject that could be of interest to any 
 human being, and putting down a notice of motion 
 upon it." Thus, if at any time it seems desirable to 
 examine any act of the Government, by means of a 
 motion for the adjournment, the probability is that 
 the mover will find himself blocked by a notice on 
 the paper, and will be told by the Speaker that he is 
 out of order. 
 
 It seems unlikely that this "blocking" practice 
 will be tolerated much longer. But the weakness 
 of the private member, and of the House generally, 
 and the growing strength of the Cabinet, are not 
 due in the main to the Kules of Procedure. These 
 might be amended. But their amendment would 
 not affect the deeper causes which have altered 
 the balance between the Legislature and the 
 Executive. 
 
 Even if members were very industrious, instead 
 of being, for the most part, rather idle, and if they 
 were much more capable and zealous than is 
 generally the case, they could not cope with the 
 work. It may or may not be true that the " closure 
 by compartments " method " stifles the voice and 
 paralyses the action of the House of Commons," and 
 that it "is causing the House of Commons to be 
 regarded as a mere automatic machine for registering
 
 88 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 the edicts of a transient majority."* Such results 
 at any rate are not due to ambition or grasping love 
 of power on the part of Cabinet ministers. Very 
 few of our statesmen are built that way. They 
 are not in the least inclined to play the part of 
 a Strafford. But " the King's business must be 
 carried on " ; and regularly every session it turns 
 out that it will not be carried on, without the use 
 of expedients which, in the phraseology of politics, 
 are called drastic. 
 
 "The Parliament," said Gladstone, "is over- 
 weighted; the Parliament is almost overwhelmed." 
 This was spoken more than thirty years ago ; and 
 assuredly the description has lost none of its force 
 during the intervening period. The House of Com- 
 monsjs buried under thejnultiplicity of its nominal 
 duties, the variety of its functions, the mountainous 
 mass of its 
 
 The result of trying to cope with these colossal 
 tasks is that the business of the House is in arrear, 
 as a matter of course, after the first few weeks 
 of the session, and members, without reluctance or 
 with relief, surrender the whole conduct of trans- 
 actions into the hands of the ministers; who 
 alone, with the assistance of the officials of the 
 House and the chiefs of the permanent Civil Service, 
 know what is being done, and can keep their heads 
 in the whirlpool. 
 
 * Mr. Asquith on the proposal to closure the Licensing Bill 
 by stages in the House of Commons, July 1, 1904. Mr. 
 Asquith was in opposition at the time. His words were 
 several times cited against himself in the sessions of 1912 and 
 1913, when as Prime Minister he applied the closure with even 
 more severity than his predecessors.
 
 THE CONTROL OF PARLIAMENT 89 
 
 The manner in which the most sweeping ad- 
 ministrative changes can be made without the 
 authority, or even the cognisance, of the House 
 of Commons, was strikingly exhibited when the 
 Army Council was created, and the War Office 
 reorganised, in 1904. The revolutionary changes 
 involved were only communicated in very vague and 
 general terms to the House ; and that only in the 
 course of a debate on the vote for the Secretary 
 of State's salary a week before the close of the 
 session. On August 15, Parliament was prorogued. 
 Two days later a string of orders-in-council 
 appeared, denning in elaborate detail the functions, 
 status, and responsibilities of the Army Council, 
 and those of the newly-constituted Inspector- 
 General of the Forces. It cannot be said that 
 the House of Commons was consulted on these 
 very important executive acts, or was even made 
 acquainted with them, before " His Majesty, by 
 and with the advice of His Privy Council," was 
 " pleased to order " that they should be carried into 
 effect. 
 
 The House as a Guardian of the National 
 
 Finances. 
 
 If what has been said above is correct, it applies 
 to the management of finance, which is partly 
 administration and partly legislation, and in either 
 character is beyond the effectual control of non- 
 ministerial members of Parliament. The Budget is 
 determined by the general policy of the Grovernmentl, 
 Itmay be altered irT detail with the acquiescence 
 of its authors, or as the result of a bargain with 
 doubtful allies and possible foes, as was the case
 
 90 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 with the re-cast Finance Bill of 1909-10; or in 
 consequence of an out-of-doors agitation. But in 
 the House itself the Ministerial finance can only 
 be modified by defeating the Ministry. 
 
 Mr. Bryce * tells us that " the House of Commons 
 is strong because it can call the Ministry to 
 account for every act, or by refusing supplies, com- 
 pel their resignation." But the refusal of supplies 
 is a constitutional figment. " The ultimate legal 
 sanction," says Sir William Anson, t " which the 
 House of Commons could bring to bear on a 
 Ministry of which it disapproves, the refusal to 
 pass the Mutiny Act or grant supplies, has never 
 in fact been applied." And even if the House 
 were willing to take this course, it could not 
 do so, unless it were ready to turn out a Ministry ; 
 that is, unless the majority would consent to 
 humiliate itself and allow a triumph to its rivals. 
 Nothing can be better in form than the separation 
 between the functions of the Committee of Ways 
 and Means and those of the Committee of Supply, 
 or the manner in which the Estimates are brought 
 in, presented, and discussed. But in practice 
 
 control of the House is largely inoperative; first 
 because"of the fe^"eT!i^'*sc1im r e^a^ainst time, which 
 forbids deliberate and prolonged examination of 
 detail ; J and secondly, because a serious attempt to 
 refuse a Vote, or alter an item in an account, can 
 
 * The American Commonwealth, i. 266. 
 
 f Law and Custom of the Constitution, i. 130. 
 
 J A few days before the close of the session of 1904, the 
 sum of 28,000,000 was voted en bloc without discussion. On 
 June 19, 1900, the House voted nearly 42 millions sterling in 
 less than five hours.
 
 THE CONTROL OF PARLIAMENT 91 
 
 usually be foiled by setting the party machinery to 
 work. A strong Free Trader and Home Buler 
 would be reluctant to instal in power a government 
 of Tariff Reformers and Unionists merely because 
 he wished to prevent an isolated piece of extrava- 
 gance in the War Office or the Admiralty. 
 
 The province of private members in regard to 
 finance is, in fact, limited to criticism, and there 
 are special reasons why such criticism should be 
 ineffective. The details are often highly technical, 
 and most members are ignorant of the complicated 
 questions which arise in connection with the finan- 
 cial and departmental measures presented to them. 
 Debate on these subjects is almost abandoned to 
 the handful of experts who are too few in numbers, 
 and too little influential with the outside public, 
 to be able to force their views upon unwilling 
 ministers. 
 
 Who is not familiar with the farce of a debate on 
 the Army or the Navy in Committee ? Millions are 
 voted away, vital questions of Imperial importance 
 are discussed and disposed of, in the presence of a 
 minister and an under-secretary or two, an ex-First 
 Lord, a couple of thoughtful hobbyists, and a dozen 
 or so of growling colonels and grumbling captains. 
 The bulk of the House busy, fatigued, bored and 
 idle is out at dinner, or on the terrace, or in the 
 smoking-room; its members will come and vote if 
 required, but otherwise will know no more of the 
 debate than the newspaper-readers who will glance 
 languidly the next morning over the array of un- 
 intelligible figures and obscure technicalities. Here, 
 again, the function of the House of Commons is no 
 longer active. Other organs could, and in point of
 
 92 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 fact do, supply its place. Which would command the 
 more attention : a speech on some military or naval 
 topic, in Committee of the House of Commons ; or 
 a letter in large type in the newspapers, by a public 
 jnan who is a recognized authority on the subject ? 
 Several times in recent years it has been shown that 
 it is far easier to compel a Government to change its 
 naval or military policy, as the result of a "scare" 
 or an agitation got up in the press, than by means 
 j>f votes and speeches in Parliament. 
 
 The House as a Ventilating Chamber. 
 
 It is the^time-honouredand cherished function jiL 
 Parliament to _calL-atteniaon_ to^ abuses, and to 
 4BiaiLd._the__redress of jpublic .grievances. At 
 the beginning of public business on four days 
 of the week, a period of three-quarters of an hour 
 is set apart, during which any question, of which 
 previous notice has been given, may be addressed to 
 a minister; or if the questions are of an urgent 
 character, and relate to matters of exceptional public 
 importance or to the arrangement of business 
 in the House, a question may be asked without 
 notice. If the member desires a verbal answer to 
 his question he may distinguish it by an asterisk ; 
 otherwise a printed answer is circulated with the 
 Votes ; unless the minister thinks it of such interest 
 that he prefers to deliver his answer in the 
 House. 
 
 This right of freely questioning the advisers of 
 the Crown is an ancient and valuable privilege. It 
 is, however, somewhat limited by the fact that the 
 Speaker is the judge of the propriety or admissibility 
 of any question, and may disallow it if in his
 
 THE CONTROL OF PARLIAMENT 93 
 
 opinion it is of unreasonable length, if it contains 
 statements of an argumentative, ironical, or abusive 
 nature, or if it refers to any debate that has been 
 held in the current Session ; or again, if it reflects 
 on the character or conduct of ministers or members 
 of the House, or if it asks for a mere expression of 
 opinion, or if it deals with an abstract question, 
 or a hypothetical proposition. In addition to all 
 this, the minister, if he finds the inquiry incon- 
 venient, may decline to return an answer as being 
 detrimental to the public interest, or indeed without 
 giving any reason at all. 
 
 It will be seen that this method of extracting 
 information on the actions of the Executive is in 
 practice considerably circumscribed. Nevertheless 
 the shower of questions, "starred" and "un-starred," 
 descends upon the heads of ministers, day after day, 
 during the session. Not the least onerous part of 
 their duties is that of fending off the persistent 
 inquisitor, without either committing themselves 
 and their departments, or seeming to shirk in- 
 vestigation. The knowledge that any pertinacious 
 opponent may, at any moment, summon a member 
 of the Government to the witness-box does to a 
 certain extent act as a drag upon the Cabinet 
 autocracy, since it prevents ministers from sitting 
 and working entirely in the dark, and compels them 
 to keep an anxious eye on the public and the press. 
 
 A questionjn the. House of Commons is then one 
 excellent way of giving publicity,_to. a subject. At 
 the same time it must be remembered that it is only 
 one way. These are plenty of others, and some of 
 them are now almost equally effectual. The value 
 of the question asked, and its influence on the
 
 94 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 public mind, depend not so much on the fact that 
 it is put in the House as on the personal weight of 
 the member who brings it forward. 
 
 A public man of repute has facilities for carrying 
 out the ventilating process without the assistance 
 of Parliament. If a person wants an administrative 
 evil remedied, or a new project accepted, he may 
 write about it to the papers, or he may get up a 
 public meeting and have speeches delivered upon it ; 
 and by such methods he might well render more 
 effectual help to his cause than if he requested the 
 member for his division to ask a question in the 
 House of Commons. Or he may induce some 
 persons of influence to go in deputation and talk 
 about the subject to one of the ministers. Thereby 
 he serves a double object : he may perhaps bring 
 over to his views the temporarily omnipotent indi- 
 vidual, who can, if he chooses, give effect to them ; 
 and if he does not succeed in that, he will, at any 
 rate, have brought the matter before the notice of 
 the newspaper-reading world in what may be called 
 a formal and official manner. The practice of 
 spending deputations fro migjaiip-r.s JH . tapit recognition 
 of the^changing _relations_between the Gavernnient 
 and L ParlianienjL__^Itinipliea. that for immediate 
 
 Commons.
 
 CHAPTEE VI 
 
 THE SELECTIVE AND ELECTIVE FUNCTIONS OF 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 
 
 THERE is one function of the House of Com- 
 mons, which is not legally and seldom even con- 
 ventionally recognised, but which is of extreme 
 value and interest. It is a place where men are 
 tested for practical statesmanship, and where they 
 are sifted and selected. In Parliament, politicians 
 of all degrees of capacity are exhibited to the country, 
 " so that when men of ability are wanted they can 
 be found, without anxious search or perilous trial."* 
 The House is a great arena and training ground 
 for public men ; here they have the opportunity of 
 showing their mettle, and displaying those qualities 
 of mind and character, which distinguish the sheep 
 from the shepherd, and the rulers from the ruled. 
 Here, by a long process of reversed gravitation, the 
 larger intellects, through years of friction and 
 contest, gradually rise to the surface, while lighter 
 and smaller men settle down in the obscurer depths ; 
 and it is by the results of this elaborate competitive 
 examination that the House chooses its prize-winners 
 and leaders. The test may not be perfect, but it is 
 
 * See the article by Mr. Parton, in the Atlantic Monthly, 
 vol. 25, p. 148. 
 
 96
 
 96 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 efficacious. The clash and conflict of personality go 
 on daily through the session, the winnowing and 
 sorting machinery is always at work. There must 
 be some real qualities of superiority in the man 
 whose claims to leadership are admitted, after this 
 ordeal of constant supervision and inspection, by 
 nearly seven hundred of his rivals and fellows, 
 some of them persons of exceptional capacity, nearly 
 all shrewd men of the world. 
 
 It may, of course, be said that the qualities by 
 which success is achieved under these conditions 
 are of a special kind : the power of effective speech, 
 and the gift of winning popularity in a large mis- 
 cellaneous club, are not necessarily guarantees for 
 judgment, decision, and insight. And it may also 
 be urged that quite undue importance attaches 
 to mere oratorical excellence and the talent for 
 dialectic and debate. The system, we are some- 
 times told, tends to exclude the strong silent man, 
 and to hand over our affairs to tonguesters and 
 rhetoricians. 
 
 There is something in the reproach ; but it applies 
 less to the House of Commons than perhaps to any 
 popular assembly in the world. Englishmen, though 
 they may be ruled by talk, are singularly unim- 
 pressed by oratory as such. It requires a public 
 speaker of the most exceptional genius to perform 
 those feats which can be accomplished, with com- 
 parative ease, among peoples of more excitable or 
 imaginative temperament to work up a crowd into 
 a passion of enthusiasm, or to throw over it the spell 
 of that " magnetism," of which Americans think 
 so much and we think so little. If the House 
 of Commons is a talking-shop, it is one in which
 
 THE SELECTIVE FUNCTIONS 97 
 
 mere talkers are distinctly at a discount. A member 
 may have great oratorical talent, an easy flow of 
 words, admirable elocution, and all the graces of 
 style ; but he will produce little effect on his fellow- 
 members, unless they feel that behind all this lies 
 the weight of strong character, and the force of a 
 vigorous personality. Some of the most accom- 
 plished and finished speakers have never attained 
 any real eminence in the chamber ; which, on the 
 other hand, has frequently allowed itself to be 
 swayed and controlled by men like Walpole, and 
 Pelham, and Castlereagh, who were in no sense 
 orators. In our recent Parliaments, statesmen like 
 Sir Stafford Northcote, Mr. W. H. Smith, and the 
 ninth Duke of Devonshire, whom nature had 
 gifted with a limited oratorical endowment, had 
 no difficulty in acquiring and maintaining the 
 confidence of the House of Commons. John Bright 
 was almost, if not quite, the greatest orator of 
 the Victorian era, and he found his opportunity in 
 a passionate public agitation for which the gifts 
 of the platform were particularly demanded. But 
 he never had a tithe of the influence in the House 
 which was wielded by Cobden, whose merits 
 were chiefly those of clear reasoning and lucid 
 exposition. 
 
 It is true that the roll of our great party leaders 
 contains some splendid oratorical names, such 
 as those of the two Pitts, of Fox, Canning, Peel, 
 Gladstone, and Disraeli ; but it may be said that 
 the House admired and followed these men, not 
 so much because of their eloquence as because it 
 recognised in them magnificent gifts of mind, tem- 
 perament, and character. These are the qualities 
 
 8
 
 98 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 which really appeal to the House of Commons, and 
 it is only when a great orator shows that he possesses 
 them that he can prevail over that assembly. 
 
 Whatever may be the imperfections of the test, 
 it is one that can be constantly applied under con- 
 ditions which are fairly equal for all and generally 
 understood. The floor of the House is a battle- 
 ground where any man may fight his way to the 
 front ; the lists are set, and if he desires to compete 
 for the prize of political distinction, he is free to 
 enter. When he gets there, he plays his part upon 
 a conspicuous stage; the theatre is open to the 
 public eye, and the world is gazing upon the actor 
 from day to day. Parliament gives him a platform 
 and a pedestal, it sets him up in the view of the 
 nation, and invests him with a certain importance, 
 and a recognised status. Yet even here it may be 
 noted that there has been a considerable change 
 of late. Other elements of our society compete in 
 interest with that which is purely political. 
 
 It was Bagehot's opinion that the literary world, 
 the scientific world, the philosophical world, were 
 not only not comparable in dignity to the political, 
 but in comparison were hardly worlds at all. 
 The newspaper, he says, " makes no mention of 
 them; and it could not mention them." If this 
 were true at the time when Bagehot was writing, it 
 must be said that we have moved rapidly in the 
 intervening space. No one, I suppose, would now 
 contend that a famous author, a popular preacher, a 
 distinguished man of science, or even a successful 
 actor, is less in the public thoughts than the politi- 
 cians, if we except some half-dozen leaders of the 
 very first rank. " I wrote books," Bagehot heard a
 
 THE SELECTIVE FUNCTIONS 99 
 
 man say, " for twenty years, and I was nobody; I 
 got into Parliament, and before I had taken my seat 
 I had become somebody." In these days one would 
 be more likely to hear testimony of an entirely 
 different character. " I sat in Parliament for twenty 
 years, I voted steadily, I even made a speech occa- 
 sionally, and I backed a bill or two. But outside 
 my constituency, where my wife gave away the 
 prizes to the school children, nobody ever seemed to 
 have heard of me. Then I wrote a flashy novel, 
 and some flippant essays, and I became a sort of 
 celebrity at once. They began publishing my 
 portrait in the illustrated papers, and discussing the 
 kind of waistcoat I wore." 
 
 Farther, there is the difficulty, already noted, 
 against which the new member has to contend 
 in making his way: that of the overpowering 
 influence of the official group. Private members 
 have steadily decreasing opportunities for useful 
 work, and for exhibiting their ability. 
 
 "No man, when chosen to the membership of a body 
 possessing great powers and exalted prerogatives, likes to 
 find his activity repressed and himself suppressed, by impera- 
 tive rules and precedents, which seem to have been framed for 
 the deliberate purpose of making usefulness unattainable by 
 individual members. Yet such the new member finds the rules 
 and precedents of the House to be."* 
 
 What is here said of the Washington House of 
 Representatives applies also to a great extent to its 
 older rival at Westminster. The young politician 
 who enters Parliament for the first time might be 
 justifiably addressed to this effect : " You will find 
 
 -' Woodrow Wilson, Congressional Government, p. 63.
 
 100 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 the House an extremely dull place; you will find 
 your abilities very largely wasted as a private 
 member. If you have the luck to get into the 
 Cabinet, and are at the head of a great office, you 
 will have most interesting work, and a position of 
 first-rate importance ; but what are your chances? " 
 
 The chances are slight. The Parliaments of 1895 
 and 1900, until the reconstruction of the Ministry 
 after the crisis on the fiscal question in the 
 autumn of 1903, only brought five or six new 
 men into the Cabinet, and these new ministers 
 had all been in the House fifteen to twenty years. 
 So that the advice to the candidate might justly be 
 summed up in the words of a witness already 
 quoted. " Expect fifteen to twenty years as private 
 member or under-secretary ; and then, on an 
 average, once every two or three years, there will be 
 one vacancy in the Cabinet. Will you give the best 
 years of your life to this long and rather unin- 
 teresting apprenticeship, on the off-chance of 
 becoming a member of the institution to which 
 so much of the political power of the country is 
 being slowly and surely transferred?"* 
 
 It is significant that several of the men who have, 
 in recent years, risen most rapidly in the House, 
 had made their reputations before they got there. 
 The ambitious politician, in these days, might 
 almost be recommended to be sure to make him- 
 self somebody before he entered Parliament. Long 
 before the obscure and unknown member could have 
 found the opportunity to make his mark in the difficile 
 
 * See the letter already referred to from an " Old Member 
 of the House of Commons," in the Westminster Gazette, 
 March 19, 1901.
 
 THE SELECTIVE FUNCTIONS 101 
 
 and over- worked chamber itself, he might possibly 
 have gained a name and attracted a following for 
 himself outside. He might have become the mayor 
 of a great provincial municipality, like Mr. Cham- 
 berlain; or have written books, and established 
 himself as a leader of political thought, like Lord 
 Morley ; or made a reputation at the Bar and on the 
 platform, like Mr. Asquith ; or engineered a success- 
 ful labour movement, and had the trade union 
 thousands to back him up, like Mr. John Burns. 
 Nevertheless, when all the qualifications have been 
 considered, it remains the fact that the House of 
 Commons continues to be our great national 
 selecting agency for public men, and its efficiency 
 in this respect, though diminished, is still un- 
 rivalled. 
 
 The House as an Electioneering Body. 
 
 The selective function is related to the most sig- 
 nificant of all the present activities of the lower 
 chamber of Parliament, that is to say, the business 
 of making and unmaking Ministries. This is 
 now its primary constitutional office, and no other 
 can be compared with it in real importance. But it 
 does the work indirectly, or it might be more ac- 
 curate to say that it lends itself to the work. The 
 real political sovereign, and the arbiter of the destinies 
 of cabinets, is the electoral body. In the eighteenth 
 century, Ministries went out of office because they 
 lost the confidence of the King ; in the great Parlia- 
 mentary period of the nineteenth century, because 
 they had lost that of the House of Commons ; and 
 under the democratic franchise they have usually 
 taken their dismissal from the electors. Sir
 
 102 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 William Anson points out * that the only Premiers, 
 before 1830, who resigned, in consequence of defeats 
 in the House of Commons, were Sir Eobert Walpole 
 in 1741, and Lord Shelburne in 1783. From 1830 
 to 1867 a defeat in the House of Commons, on 
 what the Cabinet regarded as a vital issue, was 
 the ordinary mode of terminating the existence of 
 a Ministry. Between 1867 and 1906 there were 
 nine changes of Government, and in seven of these 
 cases ministers resigned, not because they were 
 defeated in the House of Commons, but because the 
 verdict of the constituencies at a general election 
 had been given decidedly against them. The power 
 which determines the existence and extinction of 
 Cabinets has shifted first from the Crown to the 
 Commons, and then from the Commons to the 
 constituencies. 
 
 It is the constituencies, then, which in fact decide 
 on the combination of party leaders to whom they 
 will, from time to time, delegate their authority. 
 But their verdict is taken by what is virtually a 
 process of double election, corresponding roughly 
 to the method whereby a President of the United 
 States is chosen. The electoral colleges in America 
 have theoretically the right to select any person 
 they please ; but they are appointed on the under- 
 standing, never violated in practice, that they will 
 cast their vote for the candidate nominated at the 
 great party Conventions. Similarly the member of 
 Parliament, sent to the House of Commons by his 
 constituents, goes there under a pledge, which is 
 almost though not quite as binding, that he will 
 cast his vote, under all normal conditions during 
 * The Law and Custom, of the Constitution, ii. 130.
 
 THE SELECTIVE FUNCTIONS 103 
 
 the life of the Parliament, for the authorised leaders 
 of his party. The main difference is that the 
 presidential electors, when they have installed the 
 President in office, have done with the matter; 
 whereas our ministerial electors continue busy 
 until it is time to choose another Prime-Minister- 
 President. 
 
 This great official's chances of obtaining a further 
 term are largely determined by his conduct in Par- 
 liament. Here he is constantly on his trial, before 
 the jury of the nation, who will be called upon, at 
 the expiration of five years or some shorter 
 period, to render their verdict. It is towards 
 this high tribunal that the eyes of both parties are 
 turned. The nation is interested in what is being 
 done, mainly because of its possible influence upon 
 the fortunes of the parties and the party leaders. 
 Legislation, though no doubt in most cases 
 honestly intended for the public benefit, must 
 always be viewed from this standpoint. The 
 minister can never forget that a successful Act 
 of Parliament added to the statute-book is a point 
 in his favour in the contest which is always im- 
 pending. The Leader of the Opposition is equally 
 conscious that to defeat a Government measure, 
 however well designed it may be, is to cast discredit 
 upon his opponents and improve his own position. 
 
 It follows that a quite disproportionate amount 
 of attention is paid to the electioneering side of 
 ministerial projects. A bill affecting the property 
 and daily pursuits of millions may go through 
 almost unnoticed, while the fiercest conflict will rage 
 for weeks round some other measure which involves 
 partisan issues in a direct form.
 
 104 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 The Education Acts of 1902 and 1903 introduced 
 momentous changes into the system of national 
 instruction. But these were ignored, while debate 
 seethed angrily round the provisions dealing with 
 the management of the voluntary schools. It was 
 on this alone that Conservatives and Liberals, 
 Anglicans and Nonconformists, could find a con- 
 venient battle-ground, since it was felt that on this 
 the result of the next general election might 
 possibly turn. While the Parliament of 1880 was 
 never too busy to spend hours and days over Mr. 
 Bradlaugh's Oath and over Bedistribution, enact- 
 ments regulating the rising electrical industry of the 
 country and, according to some authorities, going 
 far to strangle it were allowed to pass without 
 serious discussion. 
 
 A Premier would find himself regarded as a dull 
 and unimaginative person, unworthy of his position, 
 if he did not give his followers and the public 
 a reasonable amount of exciting sport every session 
 by a first-class fighting measure. It sometimes 
 seems as if non-contentious proposals, with which, 
 otherwise, most people would be disposed to agree, 
 have to be made interesting by the introduction 
 of the party element. And this is indeed natural, 
 though the real reason cannot well be avowed. 
 The session is only a preparation, more or less 
 direct, for the general election. No sooner has 
 one of these great national events been decided, 
 than the electoral barometer begins to be sedu- 
 lously tapped in order to ascertain what the pros- 
 pects for the next are likely to be. A series of 
 adverse by-elections is much more likely to modify 
 ministerial policy than the most brilliant eloquence
 
 THE SELECTIVE FUNCTIONS 105 
 
 and lucid argument expended in debate across the 
 floor of the House. 
 
 In recent years this position of the House of 
 Commons, as a kind of preparatory school for the 
 polls, has been sometimes accepted without disguise. 
 It was frankly admitted by the Unionist leaders, 
 and more particularly by Mr. Chamberlain, after 
 the adoption of the policy of Tariff Reform. In 
 one of his speeches in 1904, Mr. Chamberlain 
 expressed great admiration for the Referendum, 
 and regretted that no such expedient for ascertaining 
 the popular will, on a single great issue of policy, 
 existed under our system.* In the meanwhile he 
 pointed out that some sort of a substitute could be 
 created, by preparing the public mind, through a 
 prolonged period of discussion and agitation, and 
 eventually submitting the question for decision at 
 the polls. It may be said, indeed, that it is, to a 
 
 * " Parliament is the executive of the nation's will. I do not 
 appeal to the executive, I appeal to the makers of Parliament. 
 Well, it is unfortunate, I have often thought it is unfortunate, 
 that in our Constitution there is no such admirable arrangement 
 as exists in the United States of America, in Switzerland, and 
 in some other places, and which is there called a Referendum. 
 A Referendum is a proceeding by which any great change of 
 policy is submitted, independently of everything else, to the 
 people at large ; a plebiscite is taken on a policy, and the policy 
 disconnected altogether from questions of persons and questions 
 of party. A man may vote for the policy, and at the same 
 tune he may vote for his representative for the party which 
 hitherto has been opposed to the policy ; but if he does he 
 gives them at the same time an instruction as to the policy 
 which they are to carry out. I wish we in this country could 
 take to-morrow a Referendum, a plebiscite, a vote of the people 
 as to whether or not they would have the change in our fiscal 
 system which I have proposed to you." Mr. Chamberlain at 
 Birmingham, May 12, 1904.
 
 106 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 large extent, in the power of any Government to 
 turn a general election into a species of Referendum, 
 if they can succeed in concentrating all attention 
 upon one single point of overwhelming interest, and 
 so asking the electors to decide for or against them 
 on that. 
 
 The Ministerial Referendum. 
 
 It is not always possible for a Ministry to get an 
 issue so sharply cut. It may have to be judged on 
 the general conduct of affairs and on its attitude 
 towards a great variety of topics. But it has con- 
 siderable opportunities for choosing the weapons, 
 and fixing the conditions, of the duel. In his 
 capacity of chief electioneering manager a Prime 
 Minister must carefully consider when it best suits 
 his party interests to go to the country. He 
 naturally looks for the most favourable moment ; 
 that is to say, the moment when it seems likely 
 that his own friends will do well and his adversaries 
 will do badly. One of the peculiar features of 
 the true Cabinet system is that you can always 
 " find the sovereign people," as it has been said, 
 at the very moment when you want it. Under the 
 arrangement prevailing in countries like the United 
 States, where there are regular times for renewing 
 the executive and the legislature, this cannot be 
 done. The appeal unto Caesar can only be made 
 at fixed intervals, and under rigid conditions. How- 
 ever deeply the nation may be estranged from the 
 President it can only get rid of him at the 
 appointed date, which may be two, or three, or 
 nearly four, years distant; and however little the 
 Senate and the House of Kepresentatives may
 
 THE SELECTIVE FUNCTIONS 107 
 
 correspond in their composition to popular opinion 
 they must live out their allotted time. The American 
 system, according to one of its critics, is essentially 
 astronomical or mathematical. " A President's 
 usefulness is measured, not by efficiency, but by 
 calendar months ; it is reckoned that if he be good 
 at all, he will be good for four years." The Prime 
 Minister must keep himself in favour with the 
 majority ; " a President need only keep alive." 
 
 Some other critics have seen, in this very fact, a 
 most noteworthy merit ; they have pointed out that 
 there is a stability in the American policy which is 
 wanting to our own. It is less subject to the gusts 
 of passing passion and popular excitement ; the 
 country cannot be called upon to change its rulers, 
 perhaps to come to some irrevocable decision, on a 
 sudden impulse. A measure of social innovation, so 
 violent as to be impossible in the United States, 
 might be carried in England, after a single general 
 election, under the inspiration of some magnetic 
 personality, or the arts of a triumphant demagogue. 
 When Philip is drunk in America he has plenty 
 of time to grow sober. A Government cannot take 
 its opponents by surprise, and by suddenly flinging 
 itself upon the polls gain a verdict before the nation 
 has had time to think the matter out. All parties, 
 and all interests, have warning and notice before- 
 hand in the United States. They know when the 
 Presidential and the Congressional elections will 
 take place, and they have plenty of opportunity to 
 put their case forward, and to rebut that of their 
 adversaries. 
 
 Under the English system it is often in the 
 power of a Cabinet to rush the appeal to the
 
 electorate. A surprise dissolution is not only 
 possible but it has more than once actually 
 occurred. In the closing fortnight of January, 
 1874, the Liberal majority in Parliament was 
 still solid, and there seemed absolutely no reason 
 of state for an appeal to the constituencies. And 
 hardly anybody had the faintest idea that such an 
 appeal would be made when Mr. Gladstone com- 
 municated his decision to dissolve to his Cabinet 
 Council on the 23rd of January. On the 24th, 
 the Prime Minister announced the impending 
 dissolution in an address at Greenwich. This was 
 positively the first intimation given to the public, 
 and the announcement fell like a thunderbolt. But 
 no time was allowed for reflection or preparation. 
 On the 26th of January a proclamation was issued 
 dissolving Parliament ; and by the 29th the first 
 members were returned to the new House of Com- 
 mons. The elections were practically complete by 
 the second week in February. They showed a decisive 
 majority against the Government, and on the 17th 
 of February Mr. Gladstone tendered his resignation 
 to the Queen and Mr. Disraeli was " sent for." The 
 whole proceeding, it will be seen the dissolution, 
 the electoral campaign, the actual elections, and the 
 change of Government had occupied less than a 
 month. 
 
 Again, in the autumn of 1900, the Unionist 
 Ministry had a powerful and still unbroken majority. 
 It was conducting a war which, beyond doubt, 
 had the enthusiastic support of the nation. There 
 appeared no adequate warrant, on public grounds, for 
 suddenly plunging the country into a general elec- 
 tion at a moment when its energies were needed
 
 THE SELECTIVE FUNCTIONS 109 
 
 for the successful prosecution of the campaign. 
 Ministers, however, thought, as it proved rightly, 
 that no time could be more propitious to them for 
 obtaining a renewal of their commission from the 
 electors. Towards the middle of September it was 
 announced that Parliament would be dissolved ; on 
 the 17th the Royal Proclamation was issued; the 
 first returns were received on the 29th ; and by the 
 middle of October the elections were over, and the 
 Government had obtained a majority of 130. In 
 1900 the surprise dissolution was in favour of minis- 
 ters, in 1874 it went against them ; but on neither 
 occasion could it be said that the sovereign people 
 had chosen its rulers with that deliberation which 
 so solemn an act would seem to require. 
 
 There are few things which shock English political 
 morality more deeply than the manner in which on 
 the Continent * elections are habitually " worked " 
 by the Administration. A hostile critic might 
 perhaps suggest that the opportunity allowed to an 
 English Cabinet of snatching a general election 
 when it pleases, and without any regard to other 
 interests than those of its party, is an equal 
 abuse of popular institutions. It is an abuse from 
 which the country would, no doubt, be protected 
 by the authority of the Crown if it became too 
 flagrant ; for it is well within the prerogative of 
 the Sovereign to refuse his assent to a dissolution 
 of Parliament, if advised on inadequate or frivolous 
 grounds.! But such action cannot conveniently be 
 
 * And even in New Zealand ; see H. de B. Walker's Austra- 
 lian Democracy, p 269. 
 
 f In the self-governing States where party majorities are 
 narrow and changes of Ministry frequent, the right of the
 
 110 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 taken by the King, unless he has reason to suppose 
 that the Opposition leaders would be willing to accept 
 office without dissolving Parliament, and this is not 
 often the case. It is difficult to prevent a minister, 
 with a majority still unbroken though perhaps 
 crumbling, from choosing his own time, and his 
 own ground, for the electoral battle. And much of 
 his tactical skill, and perhaps a part of the intellec- 
 tual energy that might be applied to the national 
 service, will be occupied in so arranging matters 
 that his appeal to the constituencies will be made 
 under circumstances adverse to bis opponents. 
 
 In another way, this power of the Prime 
 Minister to call a dissolution when he pleases 
 increases the authority of the Cabinet. It can 
 be used as a kind of penal measure, if Mini- 
 sterialists are too undisciplined and the Oppo- 
 sition too obstructive. Whatever motives may 
 have induced a member to seek a place in the 
 House of Commons, he will usually want to hold 
 it as long as he can, and with as little trouble 
 and expense as possible. Each election means to 
 him a fight, a considerable outlay of money, and 
 the risk that he may lose a seat which he pre- 
 sumably desires to retain. From his personal 
 
 Governor to refuse a dissolution is occasionally exercised, in 
 order to save the community from the expense and annoyance 
 of superfluous general elections. Dissolutions were, for example, 
 refused in New South Wales by Lord Belmore in 1872, Sir 
 Hercules Eobinson in 1877, and Lord Carrington in 1889 ; and 
 by Lord Northcote, as Governor-General of the Australian 
 Commonwealth, in 1904. Other instances are given by Todd, 
 Parliamentary Government in the British Colonies, chap, xvii., 
 and Keith, Responsible Government in the Dominions, 180-211.
 
 THE SELECTIVE FUNCTIONS 111 
 
 point of view a short Parliament is a mistake, 
 and a premature dissolution a nuisance. Even 
 the Opposition member, unless he belongs to the 
 front benches or the official ring, is not nearly so 
 anxious for a fresh appeal to the country as the 
 public imagines. His party may have something 
 to gain by the shuffle of the cards, but he individu- 
 ally very little. In any case he will have to incur 
 much trouble, and an expenditure which may 
 amount to a thousand pounds or more. 
 
 The Ministry can often subdue rebellion in its 
 own ranks, and to a certain extent keep its antago- 
 nists from going to extremities, by allowing it to be 
 known that if certain things are done, or not done, 
 there will be a general election. " If you don't 
 vote straight, and vote regularly," says the Leader, 
 through the Whips, " you will have to fight for your 
 seats, and put down your money, and risk the loss of 
 your Parliamentary salaries, now instead of two, 
 or three, or four, years hence." The hint is, no 
 doubt, carefully and diplomatically conveyed, and 
 is not often made in public, though sometimes even 
 this may be done. On June 25, 1904, when the 
 Unionists were much demoralized, and very slack 
 in their attendance, Mr. Balfour was asked whether 
 he would not " withdraw all seriously contentious 
 measures and wind up the business of the Session, 
 in order to submit the policy of Ministers to the 
 judgment of the country." The Prime Minister 
 issued the following written reply : 
 
 " I do not propose to take the course suggested by the hon. 
 member, unless the Government incur such a defeat as proves 
 that they have lost the confidence of the House of Commons ; 
 or unless they fail to secure that day-to-day support which is
 
 112 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 necessary in order effectively to carry on Parliamentary busi- 
 ness. In either of these events they would, of course, ask 
 relief from responsibilities which they are not sustaining for 
 their own comfort or satisfaction." 
 
 One of Mr. Balfour's supporters in the press 
 commented on these remarks the next day with 
 illuminative candour: 
 
 " Members should bear in mind that elections are expensive 
 and, if unsuccessful, extremely mortifying things. Counter 
 attractions during the next few weeks may perhaps tempt 
 members to risk the Government's defeat on a snap division. 
 But we would remind those gentlemen that their carelessness, 
 if continued, will probably involve the substitution of an 
 election expenses bill for the rent of a grouse moor, besides 
 a possible defeat at the polls." * 
 
 As a rule neither statesmen nor publicists are 
 quite so outspoken. These arcana imperil are kept 
 decently in the background. But the possibilities 
 here referred to are always within the sphere of 
 political consciousness. The veiled threat is specially 
 cogent in the earlier period of the life of a Parlia- 
 ment. When it is entering its fourth or fifth year, 
 members grow more callous, since they know that 
 in any case the appeal to the constituencies cannot 
 be long deferred. This is one of the reasons why 
 ministers usually find some difficulty in maintaining 
 
 * On March 15, 1867, Lord Derby at a meeting of the Con- 
 servative party said that if the Eeform Bill were rejected the 
 Government would dissolve. On this Mr. Herbert Paul, 
 History of Modern England, ii. 79, observes : " A penal 
 dissolution has always been regarded as a legitimate weapon 
 for a Minister in an emergency to use. But it means, of course, 
 that every member who votes against the Government will 
 subject himself, if he succeeds, to a fine of some hundreds of 
 pounds."
 
 THE SELECTIVE FUNCTIONS 113 
 
 the perfect cohesion and subordination of their party, 
 and in keeping down the exuberance of their oppo- 
 nents, as the parliamentary term is approaching its 
 penultimate stage. 
 
 It follows also that one cannot, at any given 
 moment except in the few months immediately 
 succeeding a general election, say that the House 
 of Commons represents the opinion of even the 
 majority of the electorate. It may have done so, 
 roughly speaking, when it was chosen : but it may 
 have lost that character long before it has seemed fit 
 to the Premier to recommend a dissolution. The 
 balance of parties in the constituencies may have 
 changed ; but the balance of parties in the House 
 remains the same, except in so far as it has been 
 disturbed through the by-elections. Thus, a Prime 
 Minister may continue to govern for a period that 
 may even extend over years, in defiance of popular 
 opinion, which has only indirect methods of making 
 its influence felt until the Cabinet is willing to 
 allow a new Parliament to be elected.
 
 NOTE TO CHAPTER VI 
 
 LOED SALISBUKY ON THE CABINET AND THE 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS 
 
 SEVERAL years ago I dealt with some of the points discussed 
 in the preceding chapters, in a monthly Eeview. The paper 
 was read by the late Marquis of Salisbury, from whom I 
 received the following letter: 
 
 HATFIELD HOUSE, 
 
 December 2, 1894. 
 
 DEAE SIR, I have read your article in the Nineteenth 
 Century with much interest and sympathy. I believe the 
 view taken in it to be, generally speaking, entirely sound. 
 There is only one criticism which I will allow myself. I think 
 that you rate too low the share which, as things are, the 
 House of Commons possesses in the selection of the men who 
 are placed upon the Treasury bench. Of course they have 
 no nominal or conscious share ; but, nevertheless, when party 
 leaders have to select, for a certain number of the offices of the 
 Government, members of the House of Commons who have 
 never held office before, one of the qualifications, which they 
 consider with the greatest care, is that of being able to speak 
 and act in a manner acceptable to the House of Commons ; 
 and if a man who has held{office before has shown a marked 
 incapacity in this respect, the party leaders will always be glad 
 of any decorous method of excluding him from ministerial 
 office. 
 
 The following is the reason which makes this considera- 
 tion so imperative upon them. I think you reason quite 
 soundly in showing that, in respect to the larger issues, the 
 House of Commons is gradually losing its power, between the 
 Cabinet on the one side, and the electorate on the other. The 
 power which the Cabinet has of acting upon the various 
 motives which guide members of Parliament is so great that 
 
 114
 
 THE SELECTIVE FUNCTIONS 115 
 
 the majority is more and more becoming a blind machine ; but 
 this observation only applies to the deliberate and considered 
 decisions of the House of Commons. If there is time for 
 party pressure to be applied, time to bring into play the 
 importunity of electoral associations, a member of Parliament 
 who is inclined to be recalcitrant finds himself very powerless, 
 and is more and more disposed to yield. But there are many 
 decisions of the House of Commons which are taken upon the 
 spur of the moment, in which an issue arises during the 
 same night as that in which the division is announced. In 
 this case there is no time for pressure, and the votes of mem- 
 bers are very much affected by the course of the debate, and 
 consequently by the influence and the dexterity of the member 
 of the Government who has charge of the question. By 
 the odd convention of Parliament, an adverse vote upon 
 such occasions is often fatal to the Government. They are 
 held to have broken the unwritten law, or, at all events, to 
 have strained it, unless they resign upon such a vote; and 
 even if they do not do so, or if they procure a subsequent vote 
 of confidence, their power, and heir prospect of a continued 
 tenure of office, are materially compromised by such an 
 accidental defeat. 
 
 I do not know whether this state of things will last. I ain 
 inclined to think that it is dying away, and that as time goes 
 on Cabinets will become less and less sensitive to chance votes 
 of the House of Commons, and will rely more and more upon 
 those more deliberate decisions which they can influence by 
 their electoral machinery. But so long as it does last, Parlia- 
 mentary dexterity will bear a very high premium, and will be 
 much sought after in the selection of rising statesmen ; and so 
 far the House of Commons will remain very powerful. In 
 other words, its whims and caprices will retain great authority^,. 
 Jong jiffer its' power of coining to an independent and deliberate 
 resolution has passed away. 
 
 This is the only criticism I have to offer upon your view of 
 the present position of the House of Commons ; and I dare say 
 that criticism may not remain true very long. 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 SALISBURY.
 
 CHAPTEB VII 
 GOVERNMENT BY PARTY 
 
 AN American writer to whom I have previously 
 referred says that the British Parliamentary system 
 is "perfected" party government. The adjective is 
 worth noting. Government by parties prevails to 
 some extent under every free popular constitution ; 
 but only in that of the United Kingdom, and those 
 which are closely modelled upon it, is it carried out 
 in a thoroughly uncompromising fashion. The 
 English are supposed to be an " illogical people " ; 
 but in this respect they evince in their actions, 
 though not perhaps in their words, a conspicuous 
 and remorseless logic. There is no attempt to 
 concede to the defeated combatant in the elec- 
 toral struggle any shred of political power. The 
 ^"spoils" system has been abandoned, for more 
 than fifty years, in the administration of the Civil 
 Service of the Crown ; but it is retained, without 
 
 disguise or mitigation, in the direction of jgoliticaT 
 
 affairs. 
 
 '"-^ 
 
 The minority, indeed, as Cobden said, has only 
 one right, that of using all its efforts to bp.r.nmq the_ 
 majority in its turn ; and until it is successful in 
 
 "~1 * I g ! ^l I I -~ " " -^ a^^*^ -. ^^ 
 
 that enterprise it must submit to impotence ana 
 
 116
 
 GOVERNMENT BY PARTY 117 
 
 exclusion. We do not attempt to mitigate the 
 disaster inflicted on the defeated party at a general 
 election by giving its members any real share either 
 in the executive government or in the making of laws. 
 We have accepted none of those expedients by 
 which, in other countries, the rigour of the conflict, 
 in appearance at least, is somewhat relaxed. 
 
 In the United States the control of administration 
 is the prize of victory in a Presidential election, 
 and the vanquished faction gets no chance of 
 office for four years ; but it can make its influence. 
 Jelt in legislation. _ The Speaker of the House of 
 Representatives, who is one of the managers of the 
 party dominant in that Chamber, will take care 
 that there is a majority of his own associates on 
 every one of the important committees by which 
 the Acts of Congress are shaped. But he would 
 not venture to exclude his opponents altogether. 
 The composition of the committees is supposed to 
 correspond roughly to that of the House; so that, 
 in each of these legislative councils, there will be a 
 quota of members of the defeated party able to take 
 some part in the moulding of legislation. The 
 right of the minority may not in practice amount 
 to very much, but it is at any rate not ignored. 
 Similarly, in the French Chamber the various 
 bureaux are supposed to be fairly selected from 
 the different groups of which the assembly is com- 
 posed. 
 
 In Great Britain itself, when we look at what 
 may be called the subordinate legislatures, we see 
 that the supremacy of the party element, while 
 admitted for electoral purposes, has its edge blunted 
 in the ordinary direction of business. The govern-
 
 118 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 ing bodies of the great municipal corporations are 
 often chosen strictly on party lines. But even 
 where the system is recognised, with the least con- 
 cealment, as for example in the London County 
 Council, its severity has been so far relaxed that 
 the minority is not placed under the ban of com- 
 plete exclusion nor is it condemned to merely power- 
 less criticism. The victorious majority at the polls, 
 when constituting the chief administrative com- 
 mittees by which the policy of the Council is deter- 
 mined, will usually see that the chairs are filled by 
 their own leaders, and they will arrange to have a 
 superiority of votes at each of these boards; but 
 the minority has in every case its proportionate, or 
 something like its proportionate, share of represen- 
 tation. It would be considered an intolerable abuse 
 of their advantages for a majority to refuse to allow 
 to their defeated rivals a sufficient allotment of seats 
 in all the committees. 
 
 But in the conduct of national affairs we admit^ 
 no such^compromise. Our politics, as Mr. Balfour 
 has said, are an organised quarrel,* and we accept 
 the results with an equanimity none the less sur- 
 prising because we prefer that it should not be 
 explicitly recognised. We constantly profess that 
 the Government of the day represents the House of 
 Commons, and through the House of Commons the 
 
 * " In English domestic politics we are never at peace our 
 whole political organisation is arranged in order that we may 
 quarrel and we always do quarrel, sometimes over matters of 
 great importance, sometimes over matters of small importance, 
 sometimes over matters which cannot but be matters of bitter 
 strife, and some matters which I should suppose might be 
 always dealt with by agreement." Mr. Balfour at Fulham, 
 July 19, 1902.
 
 GOVERNMENT BY PARTY 119 
 
 nation. In reality it does nothing of the sort ; it 
 Represents, as a rule, rather more than one half of the 
 electorate, and rat.hej le,ss than two thirds of the 
 House^ We speak of the Administration resting on 
 popular support ; forgetting that by something like 
 a moiety of the electors it is not supported, but on 
 the contrary vehemently disliked, and that their only 
 interest in it is to turn it out and put something 
 else in its place. The spectacle of millions of free 
 men in a free state, habitually governed in opposi- 
 tion to their own will, and their own convictions, 
 is so astonishing that we prefer to avert our gaze 
 from it. 
 
 The party system is treated as something ex- 
 ceptional and a little discreditable. Men may be 
 willing to die for party but they seldom praise it. 
 For two centuries Englishmen, while throwing an 
 incredible amount of ardour and energy into their 
 great faction fight, have systematically condemned 
 it. Hardly any writer of the first rank except Burke, 
 or any leading statesman except Mr. Balfour, has 
 cared to face the facts deliberately. From the time 
 of the great Duke of Marlborough, who towards the 
 darkening close of his career declared that he had 
 no wish in the world except to live in some country 
 where the detested names of Whig and Tory were 
 unknown, to the present day, there has been an 
 unbroken stream of theoretical condemnation. No 
 sentiment is more likely to elicit applause at a 
 public meeting than the statement that "this, 
 Mr. Chairman, is not a party question, and I do not 
 propose to treat it from a party standpoint."
 
 Parties and Groups. 
 
 Yet the division into parties, is, in fact, essential 
 to the operation of our constitutional machinery. 
 Our government is " a system whose successful work- 
 ing pre-supposes the existence of two great parties, 
 and no more ; parties, each strong enough to 
 restrain the violence of the other, yet one of them 
 steadily preponderant in any given House of 
 Commons." * If the imitations and adaptations 
 have failed to produce the expected results it is 
 to a large extent due to the fact that this condition 
 has been found incapable of transplantation. The 
 constitution of the third French Republic is as 
 much dependent upon an elective Parliamentary 
 Cabinet as our own ; but while it has assimilated 
 much it has so far failed to establish that perma 
 nent duality of organised opinion which has pre- 
 vailed with us since the end of the seventeenth 
 century. Instead of parties France has had groups ; 
 and we have only to looIE mto the penetrating 
 chapters of Mr. Bodley's great work on French 
 politics to understand the meaning of this distinction. 
 In twenty-one years, as Mr. Bodley has pointed 
 out, France had twenty Ministries ; and seventeen 
 different politicians had held the portfolio of Foreign 
 Affairs. "All these seventeen ministers have been 
 Republicans, holding practically identical opinions 
 on current affairs, and not one of the twenty 
 changes has been due to a direct party vote, which 
 is impossible in the French Chamber." 
 
 The group system necessarily robs the Cabinet 
 and the Parliamentary regime of some of their most 
 * Bryce's American Commonwealth, i. p. 287.
 
 GOVERNMENT BY PARTY 121 
 
 valuable and characteristic features. Where it 
 prevails the process of secondary election, by which 
 the administration is really appointed, is deprived 
 of all its efficacy. There is not even an approximate 
 certainty that the Government represents the 
 majority of the Legislature, or that the majority 
 of the Legislature represents any one preponderant 
 opinion in the country. You cannot choose your 
 ministers properly, and you cannot control them 
 when chosen, if there are no real parties separated 
 by clear dividing lines, but merely cliques and asso- 
 ciations scrambling for office. Popular election will 
 only work without friction where, as normally in. 
 Great Britain and the United States, there are two 
 great parties,and_no more than two. 
 
 The inconvenience which may arise if the number 
 is increased by a single unit has been exhibited in 
 our recent politics. The Irish Nationalists have 
 often threatened to throw our Parliamentary 
 machine into complete confusion, and they have at 
 times met with sufficient success to justify the 
 boast. A ministry cannot be stable if it is the 
 nominee of a chance collection of groups. It may 
 be destroyed by some turn of the political kaleido- 
 scope at any moment, and the process of selecting it, 
 instead of being simple and straightforward, becomes 
 one of personal intrigue and fine-spun calculation. 
 Whatever may be said against the two-party system, 
 it does, at any rate, supply an intelligible and 
 efficient agency for selective purposes. It may be 
 rough and ready, it may be inaccurate in its results ; 
 but at least it will work. 
 
 No one will deny that a certain fissiparous 
 tendency in English parties, and more particularly
 
 122 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 in one of them, has become very marked of late 
 years. It is not unlikely that in the immediate 
 future there will be many members on one side of 
 the House of Commons, and perhaps on both, who, 
 in addition to professing a general allegiance to one 
 or other of the greater combinations, will have also 
 pledged themselves to support the aims of some 
 much smaller body or sect. The future of English 
 constitutional politics largely turns on the relations 
 which the one drift of opinion will bear to the other 
 in the mind and conduct of this kind of bi-coloured 
 legislator. 
 
 When the time comes for him to choose between 
 his party and his group, or in the still more exacting 
 moment when he sees a chance of assisting the 
 particular interest to which he is pledged at the cost 
 of voting against his leaders and the allies with 
 whom he usually acts, the member of Parliament, 
 like Desdemona before the Venetian senators, will 
 " perceive here a divided duty." In a certain number 
 of cases it may be only reasonable to suppose that 
 his decision will resemble that of Brabantio's 
 daughter. To his group, no doubt, he owes a filial 
 reverence. " To you," he may often say with truth, 
 " I am bound for life and education " for political 
 life and a sound education in particularism ; and he 
 would no doubt be willing to add 
 
 " My life and education both do learn me, 
 How to respect you." 
 
 After which very proper tribute to the sanctities of 
 political kinship we may perhaps expect him to 
 throw himself, even as Desdemona did, into the arms 
 of that other more exigent "party " with whom he
 
 GOVERNMENT BY PARTY 123 
 
 is on terms of the closest intimacy. TheGroupist 
 in him will give place, when the strain comeq r to 
 ,the Partisan..* 
 
 On the other hand, it may be said that even if 
 the groups would hesitate to combine against the 
 Ministry of their choice when it is a question of a 
 formal vote of confidence, there is no certainty that 
 they would not do so on other issues. Indeed, we 
 have had examples before now of a snap division 
 taken on some minor point, by which sudden defeat 
 is inflicted on a Government that has still 
 a good working majority in the House. The 
 Prime Minister whose observations I have given 
 above t has pointed out that it is this circumstance 
 which renders it as necessary as ever it was for the 
 Cabinet to include members, skilled in the art of 
 House of Commons management and possessed of 
 the confidence of the chamber. It is true that the 
 Ministry is generally impregnable, when it has had 
 time to organise electoral pressure, and to bring to 
 bear the party machinery on the rank and file ; but 
 it is always liable, unless the House of Commons is 
 adroitly managed and properly held in hand, to 
 sustain a rebuff on some incident that may arise in 
 
 * The strain may be felt in the constituencies as well as 
 in the House of Commons. We have an illustration in the 
 present (1913) relations between the Liberal and the Labour 
 parties. The latter group is nominally independent of the 
 former. But in Parliament the Labour members have usually 
 acted in close association with the Liberals ; and Labour 
 candidates, in spite of the opposition of their executives, some- 
 times stand, and get themselves elected, as " Liberal-Labour" 
 representatives. 
 
 f See Note to Chapter VI., supra, " Lord Salisbury on the 
 Cabinet and the House of Commons."
 
 124 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 the course of debate, or on some question too remote 
 from general interest to rouse the feeling of 
 the constituencies. As the parties are more and 
 more broken up into groups, no doubt temporary 
 agreements among several of them to support each 
 other mutually, on the do ut des principle, might 
 become more common. But it is not at all certain 
 that these combinations, even if they produced 
 rather frequent successes in the division lobbies, 
 would really diminish the authority of the Cabinet. 
 Ministers might perhaps be supported by the electors 
 if they treated the division as nothing more than a very 
 emphatic expression of opinion in favour of a particu- 
 lar policy or measure, which need not involve anything 
 so serious as the resignation of the Government. 
 
 Parties and Principles. 
 
 In the meanwhile, we still have the dual party 
 system ; and _its justification is to be found in 
 the fact that it continues to operate as the jnost 
 effective restraint we possess on Jho^ otherwise^ 
 almost uncontrolled power of the 
 
 and the Parliamentary majority. 
 
 The " checEs^and balances " of which we hear so 
 much from writers on the Constitution are, for the 
 most part, no longer operative. The royal veto 
 is a form which has long been disused ; the powers 
 of the House of Lords were limited by custom even 
 before the passing of the Parliament Act. There is 
 nothing at all resembling the elaborate apparatus 
 by which the founders of the American constitution 
 endeavoured to make Congress a counterpoise to 
 the President, and the Senate a brake upon the 
 House. In Great Britain there is always the
 
 GOVERNMENT BY PARTY 125 
 
 possibility of a majority in the House of Com- 
 mons legislating in a spasm of reckless violence, 
 at the instigation of a powerful and injudicious 
 Ministry. The true check upon a presumptuous 
 Government and a hasty Legislature is the existence 
 of an alternative party, numbering its adherents by 
 hundreds of thousands in the constituencies, and 
 having its articulate chiefs in the House of Commons 
 itself. It is this which really controls the English 
 Prime Minister, as it controls the American Presi- 
 dent ; both functionaries are aware that their steps 
 will be watched and scrutinised by jealous and 
 capable rivals, having in the countrj' an elec- 
 toral army which in any case is nearly equal to 
 their own, and may easily become superior. The 
 check on the Ministry-in-office is the 
 
 of an alternative Ministry -out- of -o 
 and able to take its place at any moment ; and such 
 an opposition Government in posse is impossible 
 without the two great well-balanced forces, always 
 mobilised and on the war footing. 
 
 The dual arrangement of parties in England grew 
 out of a series of historical accidents. If there had 
 been no revolt against the Stuarts, and no succession 
 of sovereigns who were heartily disliked fay nearly 
 three generations by one portion of their subjects, _ 
 andwere Jiheref ore dependent on the support _of 
 another portion, the line could not have bfte.n Rf> 
 sharply drawn. The division into Whigs and 
 Tories worked into a tradition, and eventually into 9. 
 nationarEabit. SeF'it is strange that the dualism 
 should have been so steadily maintained, and that 
 it should scarcely ever have been broken. It 
 seems to correspond to some inherent racial
 
 126 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 quality. Sir Henry Maine thinks that man, as he 
 is a fighting animal is also a partisan, from the 
 nature of his being. " Party feeling is probably far 
 more a survival of the primitive combativenesa of 
 mankind than a consequence of conscious_jntel- 
 lectual differencesHbetween man and maou. It is 
 essentially the same sentiment as that which in 
 certain states of society leads to civil, intertribal, 
 or international, war ; and it is as universal as 
 humanity."* 
 
 This may explain why there are parties, but not 
 why there are only two parties. It is often con- 
 tended that the division is scientific, and corresponds 
 to a real dichotomy, since every man is by nature 
 either a Liberal or a Conservative, according as the 
 hesitating or the adventurous elements prevail in 
 his temperament. " Men," says Lord Courtney, 
 " have always been, and must be, drawn into camps 
 of progress and of caution."! But the distinction 
 appears arbitrary. Caution and progressiveness are 
 only two of the characteristics which all or most 
 men possess in greater or less degree. In private 
 life, and in ordinary relations, it would be no easier 
 to range them into these two classes than under 
 any other equally comprehensive categories. And 
 it is impossible to maintain that these attributes 
 have been constant in the two great English parties. 
 The Conservatives or Tories have often been 
 progressive; the Liberals or Whigs stationary or 
 retrogressive. 
 
 Macaulay, in his famous reply to Lord Mahon, 
 maintained that the Whigs had always kept in 
 
 * Maine, Popular Government, p. 31. 
 
 f TJie Working Constitution of the United Kingdom, p. 138.
 
 GOVERNMENT ,BY PARTY 127 
 
 advance of the Tories, even though the whole 
 nation might have moved onwards, just as the 
 forelegs of the stag are always leading. But in 
 fact both parties have passed and repassed one 
 another, and have frequently exchanged policies 
 and ideas ; each by turn has had its phases of 
 protection and free trade, imperialism and insularity, 
 democracy and oligarchy, socialism and individ- 
 ualism. During the first three-quarters of the 
 eighteenth century, and down to the accession 
 to power of William Pitt, the Tories, with some 
 justice, boasted that they were the representatives 
 of popular rights and national interests as against 
 the aristocratic Whig cliques; and until the out- 
 break of the great war with France it was the 
 Whigs who were usually the party of foreign adven- 
 ture and expansion, while the Tories had rather a 
 stronger leaning towards peace, retrenchment, and 
 economic progress. Political reform has never been^ 
 a Liberal monopoly; and social reform has found 
 its champions in the Conservative ranks aswp.il a,s 
 in those of their rivals. On the other hand, the 
 Conservatives, until the Beaconsfield Ministry of 
 1874, were not specially identified with the main- 
 tenance of the Empire ; and in the 'fifties and 
 'sixties of the last century, under Lord Derby and 
 Disraeli himself, they were less ardent vindicators of 
 English pretensions abroad than the dominant 
 section of the Liberals under Palmerston. 
 
 Thus it is a difficult, perhaps even an impossible, 
 task to draw a dividing line from age to age 
 between the two parties, on the basis of doctrine. 
 But the fact is that Englishmen, in their public as 
 in their private life, have no great regard for abstract
 
 128 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 generalisations. They are careless about measures 
 and much more particular about men. Attachment 
 to persona, rather than fidelity to principles, is 
 the spirit of our party life. The English nation, as 
 M. Boutmy well says, can much more easily dispense 
 with belief in an abstraction than with belief in a 
 man. " At almost every epoch in its existence 
 it has been dominated by the image of some 
 citizen, t brave, assiduous, energetic, always ready to 
 step into the breach, a type of the active virtues 
 which the race conceives to be the highest of moral 
 perfections."* 
 
 The parties, therefore, instead of being two groups 
 of believers endeavouring to propagate their own 
 particular faith, are two armies of active combatants, 
 each desiring above all things to follow its own 
 chosen champion to victory. Not the defeat of a 
 principle, but the defeat of a leader and his " side," 
 is the really mortifying thing. In this soldier-like or 
 sportsman-like conception loyalty to the chief is 
 almost the first of virtues. The subaltern, the 
 fighter in the ranks, would not think of deserting 
 his colours, or refraining from putting forth all his 
 strength on the field of battle, because he happened 
 to disagree with his commander's views on strategy 
 and tactics. Mr. Balfour has explained the success 
 and permanence of the party system in England by 
 ascribing it to " some natural moderation in our 
 British blood," wmcE7 he thinks, " enables us^ to be 
 political enemies without attributing every infamous 
 motive tojJioaeLQn the opposite side in politics. ' ' t 
 
 * Boutmy, Psychologic politique d/u, peuple angla/is, iv., 
 chap. 3. 
 
 | Speech at Haddington, September 21, 1902.
 
 GOVERNMENT BY PARTY 120 
 
 This is undoubtedly a valuable trait ; and it works 
 in well with a rather loose hold on principle com- 
 bined with a keen realisation of purely personal 
 claims. The great party leader, who has won the 
 confidence of his followers by the display of energy, 
 capacity, courage and intellectual ability, may 
 execute, with something like impunity, the most 
 startling transformations. He may alter the pro- 
 gramme as he pleases, provided that he continues, 
 to fill the bill himself and exhibit those qualitigg_ 
 by which he has attained his superiority. That 
 Peel, after his surrender to Roman Catholic eman- 
 cipation in 1829, should have been left with the 
 opportunity of "betraying" the Tory party a second 
 time sixteen years later, must always seem a marvel 
 to those who do not understand this feature of our 
 public life ; but it was not more remarkable than 
 Disraeli's "leap in the dark" in 1867, or Glad- 
 stone's capitulation to Home Rule in 1886, or Mr. 
 Chamberlain's abandonment of Free Trade in May, 
 1903. All these statesmen carried with them many 
 or most of their political adherents. The nation 
 was much more interested in considering the expe- 
 diency and possible results of the new movement in 
 each case than in discussing the consistency of its 
 authors. 
 
 The prevailing sentiment has always been very 
 much that which animated the Duke of Welling- 
 ton when that staunch supporter of Protestant 
 ascendancy agreed to consider the Catholic claims 
 in order to avert, as he thought, revolution and 
 social disruption. " The King's government must 
 be carried on " : and the Duke was more concerned 
 in conducting the political campaign safely and 
 
 10
 
 130 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 successfully than in vindicating the intellectual and 
 moral coherency of his action ; just as in fighting 
 a battle he would not have thought it necessary to 
 inquire whether the dispositions by which he was 
 able to beat the enemy were, or were not, in strict 
 accordance with the rules of the text-books. 
 
 Nothing indeed is more curious than to observe 
 the unimportance of formal statements of doctrine 
 compared with the significance attributed to the 
 utterances and assertions of influential men. The 
 party organisations and conventions put for- 
 ward their programmes at frequent intervals, but 
 nobody takes much notice of them. The formula 
 does not bind the party, and the ordinary_eletar 
 cares nothing about it. For this~~reason the 
 sweeping general statements of policy drawn up 
 at meetings of delegates are allowed to pass with 
 languid indifference. It is quite understood that 
 they mean very little. Shareholders do not tremble 
 in their shoes when a Trades Union Congress 
 declares for "nationalisation" of railways; land- 
 lords are not even excited when Federated Liberal 
 Associations resolve to expropriate land values. 
 
 It seems to the English temperament a waste oJ[ 
 time to refute the expression of erroneous opinion 
 unless it is to be followed by action. Then, indeed, 
 it is aTvery different matter. For nearly twenty years 
 the National Union of Conservative Associations 
 had been passing occasional resolutions in favour of 
 "Fair Trade" and Eetaliation, without attracting 
 the slightest attention. But a single leading states- 
 man uttered a few sentences, which seemed to 
 intimate an intention to attack the established 
 fiscal system, and instantly the whole country was
 
 BY PARTY 131 
 
 in a ferment. There was nothing new in what Mr. 
 Chamberlain said at Birmingham on the 15th of 
 May, 1903 ; but then Mr. Chamberlain had, or he 
 might have had, the power to give effect to his 
 views. This brought the question into " practical 
 politics," and made it serious at once. 
 
 It is to this characteristic, more than to the 
 natural moderation in our British blood to_which 
 Mr. Baifonr referred, that the relative lack of 
 violence in our party conflict is probably due. As 
 neither party has a very strong or definite body 
 of principle to work upon each is disinclined to go to 
 extremes ; both are, in a sense, opportunists. It is 
 quite understood that there will be no sudden break 
 in the continuity of public policy after a change of 
 Government. Each party, as soon as it gets into 
 power, is habitually taunted with adopting the 
 measures of its opponents ; and it is true that in 
 opposition, the leaders, conscious of the responsi- 
 bilities they may have to face, are extremely careful 
 not to compromise themselves by unreserved con- 
 demnation of what has been done. It is only 
 the irregular, unattached., fighter^ in the vanguard, 
 little likely to be burdened with office, who 
 can be as vigorous and uncompromising as they, 
 please. The division between the parties is to a 
 large extent artificial ; each exaggerates its differ- 
 ences from its rivals, while in opposition, and leans 
 in the direction of the alternative policy, when in 
 power, "so as to correct the discontinuity which 
 party organisation tends to produce." 
 
 Is it on this account that Oppositions have nearly 
 always been weak since 1832 ? Do the responsible 
 leaders feel that they must not commit themselves
 
 132 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 too strongly, lest they damage the inheritance to 
 which they expect to succeed? Lord Salisbury 
 indeed, converted this sentiment into something 
 like a general rule, and developed it in his famous 
 doctrine of the Pendulum : 
 
 " What is known as ' the pendulum ' has established itself as 
 the law of English politics, and I think that within certain 
 reasonable limits each party should accept the work of its 
 predecessor and try, as far as it can do consistently with the 
 public interest, to work it out to a satisfactory conclusion. 
 And I do not think that in doing so we can be exposed to 
 the imputation of inconsistency or of having changed t our 
 opinions." 
 
 Inspired by such feelings, it must be difficult for 
 the front-bench men, on the left of the Speaker's 
 chair, to assail with complete conviction all the 
 proceedings of those whom they hope to follow in 
 office. At any rate, it seems to need the agency of 
 some unfettered guerilla leader in the ranks of the 
 minority, such as Disraeli was among the Conser- 
 vatives after 1846, and Randolph Churchill between 
 1881 and 1885, to infuse genuine vigour into a 
 Parliamentary Opposition. 
 
 If, however, it is difficult to regard the two great 
 factions as really divided by permanent differences 
 of principle there may be more ground for con- 
 sidering that the division is based on the conflict of 
 interests. It is true that for at least a century the 
 one party has, on trie whole, been more closely 
 identified^ with property and vested rights than trie 
 other. We have not been entirety free from Tine 
 danger of stratification by classes ; and sometimes 
 it has seemed that we might actually find ourselves 
 in presence of the " two nations " of " Sybil,"
 
 GOVERNMENT BY PARTY 133 
 
 with all the " haves " on one side, and all the 
 " have-nots " on the other. Our party conflicts 
 might then have become more like those of the 
 republics of the ancient world and of the mediaeval 
 town communities : that is to say, a struggle 
 between the richer and the poorer part of the 
 population. 
 
 This result has been prevented or postponed by 
 the national characteristics which are referred to 
 below.* The English have continued to be a 
 " deferential people"; and neither of the established 
 parties^ has thought it necessary^ or ffeairahle^ j-.ry_ 
 exclude men of wealth, social influence, or aristo- 
 cratic descent from the high places in their councils. 
 These elements are more conspicuous on one side 
 than the other ; but they have, so far, always 
 been admitted to a large share of authority in both 
 camps. Nevertheless the tendency to a division of 
 the nation by horizontal rather than vertical bulk- 
 heads, to make the struggle one of classes rather 
 than of policies, has manifested itself from time to 
 time in Great Britain as in other Western countries. 
 
 The conflict has been usually averted even when 
 it has seemed imminent by some great quarrel that 
 crossed the dividing social lines. Such was the 
 struggle for ;Free Trade between 1832 and 1846 ; 
 and the disruption of the Conservatives in the latter 
 year, under the strain of Repeal, at least saved 
 Toryism from becoming a merely anti-popular creed 
 of privilege and reaction. In 1885 Gladstone 
 declared that the "masses" were on one side in 
 politics and the " classes " on the other. If this 
 were true, he did much though without intending 
 * See infra, Chap. X.
 
 134 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 any such result to arrest the development by his 
 conversion to Home Rule. For this movement 
 compelled many Liberals to seek union with the 
 Conservatives ; and it submerged the rising social- 
 istic, ultra-democratic sentiment in the Liberal 
 Party under the volcanic ashes of a fierce racial 
 and sectarian controversy. 
 
 Stratification again was growing very marked 
 in the years of Gladstone's final ministry, and those 
 which followed. From 1892, onwards till nearly 
 the end of the century, it was almost a matter of 
 course that any person, belonging to the propertied, 
 " respectable " orders of society, should be a Con- 
 servative ; while the masses of working-class voters, 
 feeling the power conferred upon them by the ex- 
 tension of the franchise, were growing aggressively 
 Radical. Then came the Boer War, and the transfer 
 of the political conflict to the Imperialist battle- 
 ground ; and then again the division on fiscal 
 policy and the dispute over Tariff Reform. What- 
 ever may have been the motives or the policy 
 inspiring the successive disruptions of English 
 parties, since the eighteenth-century Whigs fell 
 to pieces in the war with France, they have 
 had this effect. The great peril, so constantly 
 present to the minds of philosophic opponents 
 of democracy in ancient and modern times, has 
 been averted; and even under a wide popular 
 franchisg_jwe have not as yet found the 'Nation 
 divided into two antagonistic and embittered 
 political hosts, of which one would include all who" 
 own property, and the other would be made up of 
 those who possess little but their hands and their 
 votes.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 THE accountability of ministers to Parliament, and 
 through Parliament to the nation, is the theoretical 
 
 basis of our modern English Constitution. The x 
 
 ^ * ' i "* - *-* 
 
 Cabinet is a political council ; it is a party com- r 
 niittee ; but it is also an administrative board. 
 It is engaged not merely in legislation, and in the 
 shaping of policy, but in the daily supervision and 
 management of the business of the nation. Great 
 powers are entrusted to its members, with a corre- 
 sponding responsibility. " The laws," as Burke 
 says, " reach but a very little way. Constitute 
 government how you please, infinitely the greater 
 part of it must depend upon the exercise of powers 
 which are left at large to the prudence and upright- 
 ness of ministers of state. Even all the use and 
 potency of the laws depends upon them. Without 
 them your Commonwealth is no better than a 
 scheme upon paper ; and not a living, active, effec- 
 tive organisation." It is on the efficiency and 
 integrity of ministers, and on the ability of the 
 people's ^ representatives to call them to account, 
 that good government ultimately depends. The 
 merit of cabinet government is that it defines and 
 concentrates ministerial responsibility, and makes it 
 
 135
 
 136 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 possible to bring the popular judgment to bear 
 upon the servants of the State, when they have lost 
 the public confidence, or discharged the duties badly. 
 But an English Cabinet is a group of political 
 leaders, not a body of persons trained to administra- 
 tion. They have risen to prominence by the arts of 
 the platform, the senate, or the salon ; and they are 
 not, as a rule, selected for high office because of any 
 special knowledge or understanding of the important 
 departmental work they are appointed, and paid, to 
 control. In our time, a Ministry consists of a certain 
 number of men of, as a rule, proved integrity and 
 good social standing, most of whom have attained a 
 certain distinction in one or the other House of 
 Parliament. Two or three may be persons of bril- 
 liant talent and acknowledged force ; two or three 
 more have a deserved reputation for character and 
 ability ; several of the others have a full share of 
 that capacity which one commonly expects to find 
 in the best kind of English gentleman, well-born, 
 well-educated, well-placed, and well-to-do. 
 
 But they are seldom " experts " in a business, 
 to which they bring no more than a general know- 
 ledge of affairs, such as a reasonably intelligent 
 person may be assumed to possess. Sometimes they 
 may not even reach this moderate standard. In 
 one Cabinet a country landowner, in another a 
 lawyer or a financier, may be acting as the nominal 
 chief and " responsible " director of the Navy of 
 Britain. The Army may be under the control of 
 a middle-aged civilian 
 
 " That never set a squadron in the field ; 
 Nor the division of a battle knows, 
 More than a spinster."
 
 MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY 137 
 
 A hunting country squire, whose acquaintance with 
 learning ended forty years before when he took his 
 " pass " degree at Oxford, may find himself Minister 
 of Education ; and the Empire of India, with its 
 clash of races and religion, its feudatory princes and 
 kings, and its three hundred and fifty Oriental 
 millions, may be represented by a Nonconformist 
 solicitor. 
 
 Some years ago I listened to a speech at a public 
 meeting, delivered by the Vice-President of the 
 Council who, under the system then in force, was 
 at the head of the Department of Education. The 
 right honourable gentleman, having occasion to 
 make use of the word " chirnsera," pronounced it as 
 if it were spelt " kimmerer." It may not be 
 essential that he who drives fat oxen should himself 
 be fat : but one would suppose that a Minister of 
 Education would have education enough not to 
 make a mistake of this kind. 
 
 The system is defended on the ground that, after 
 all, precise and comprehensive knowledge of the 
 details of his office is not what is required of a 
 minister under our Parliamentary constitution. It 
 is for his official subordinates to supply him with 
 the technical details, and generally to look to the 
 business of the department. He bri^i^a-to bear ^pn 
 jt the cool, matured, judgment of a shrewd man 
 of the world; he is able to 
 
 its doings in Parliament; and gep^g^y *" bpi re- 
 sponsible for it in the eyes _of the great council 
 of the nation. Like the "golden chain that Homer 
 tells us binds heaven and earth and sea to the 
 throne of Jove, this great official catena is supposed 
 to join the highest and the lowest, and to stretch
 
 138 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 from the humblest messenger or door-porter to the 
 exalted seats, where the statesmen who rule the 
 Empire lie beside their thunder. Through one 
 superior or another all grades of the service are 
 responsible to the highly-placed gentlemen, titled 
 and ribboned, who are the heads of the permanent 
 staff; they themselves, these accomplished under- 
 secretaries, are responsible to the noble lords or 
 eminent commoners who hold the ministerial seals ; 
 while these ministers, in the fulness of their power, 
 are liable at any moment to be arraigned, not merely 
 for their own acts, but for the acts of their sub- 
 ordinates, before the Assembly, which again is 
 itself responsible to the sovereign People. This is 
 the doctrine of ministerial responsibility, which is 
 by many regarded as the main shaft and supporting 
 pillar of the political edifice. 
 
 It is, at any rate, one of the features in it which 
 we are accustomed to consider with a good deal 
 of complacency. There seems something business- 
 like in the arrangement, as well as something very 
 much in consonance with the spirit of our in- 
 stitutions. It has been said that the_essence of good 
 government isthejpower to find the proper man to 
 hang if_things go wrong. We like to think that 
 we have satisfactorily provided for that. We can 
 always " hang a minister," we murmur to ourselves, 
 when we contemplate the possibility of things going 
 grossly wrong ; and we feel a kind of pity for peoples 
 who have nobody to hang. In America, for in- 
 stance, you could not think of hanging a minister, 
 because the minister is only a kind of clerk to 
 the President, and the President is practically 
 irresponsible and irremovable as long as his term
 
 MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY 139 
 
 of office lasts. And in countries like Germany 
 and Austria, where the Sovereign governs as well 
 as reigns, you may do what you like to ministers, 
 but you cannot really touch the effective ruler of 
 the state without risking rebellion or revolution, 
 which are remedies too strong for ordinary applica- 
 tion. But in England, so it is held, we can, without 
 violence or any disturbance of the normal machinery 
 of government, maintain a constant control over all 
 departments of the executive. We have always 
 before our eyes the minister, and that minister is 
 responsible to us ; and if, through negligence or 
 incompetence, he does not do his work properly, 
 we know how to deal with him. 
 
 It sounds formidable ; but in practice it is not so 
 very terrible. The process of hanging a minister, 
 as understood in modern times indeed ever since 
 impeachment went out of fashion is about the 
 mildest species of execution that could be devised 
 by human ingenuity. Perhaps if ministers did 
 anything palpably wicked if they pocketed the 
 gold of a foreign enemy, if even it could be proved 
 that they were guilty of flagrant corruption and gross 
 dishonesty it might be possible to rouse public 
 indignation to the point of actually sending them 
 for trial. But it would take almost a coup d'etat, or 
 a series of revolutionary riots, to accomplish that ; 
 and, after all, when things have gone so far it 
 becomes possible to bring home his responsibility 
 even to a despotic sovereign. The most autocratic 
 ruler in the world cannot afford to outragqJJia- 
 feelings of his subjects beyond a certainjooinlt 
 
 But in the ordinary way, what is our check upon 
 ministers what the penalty we hold over them to
 
 UO THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 induce them to govern us with prudence, unrelaxed 
 attention to their duties, and well-informed 
 judgment. Practically no more than this : if^jwe 
 are not satisfied with their doings WP nari_Jvnrn 
 them out of office, and decline to let them come in 
 again. To speak precisely, one might say thaiTthe 
 electorate can only do the latter of these two 
 things. The way to punish a minister, without a 
 generalelection, is by an adverse vote in the House 
 of Commons on a question which would involve the 
 defeat of himself and his colleagues. If he does any- 
 thing to incur the just wrath of those six hundred 
 and seventy vigilant censors and austere critics, the 
 fall will come. He himself will lose his large salary 
 and his fine position ; he will have the mortification 
 of dragging down his colleagues, and he may even 
 condemn his party to disaster at the polls, and to 
 political impotence for several years. 
 
 Collective Liability. 
 
 But this responsibility of ministers is collective^ 
 not individual. The Administration, as a whole, 
 answers for the acts of its members. " The Cabi- 
 net," says Lord Morley, " is a unit a unit as 
 regards the Sovereign, and a unit as regards the 
 Legislature. Its views are laid before the Sovereign 
 and before Parliament, as if they were the views of 
 one man. It gives its advice as a single whole, 
 both in the royal closet and in the hereditary, or 
 the representative, chamber. If that advice be not 
 taken, provided the matter of it appear to be of 
 proper importance, then the Cabinet, before or after 
 an appeal to the electors, dissolves itself and dis- 
 appears. The first mark of the Cabinet, as that
 
 MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY 141 
 
 institution is now understood, is united and in- 
 divisible responsibility."* 
 
 No article in our constitutional practice is better 
 established, or has been more unreservedly recog- 
 nised. Its gradual ascent to the place it now 
 occupies forms one of the most interesting and 
 important chapters in English history. It was 
 definitely asserted before the close of the seven- 
 teenth century, and formally admitted in Parlia- 
 ment in the reign of Anne. In 1711 the positive 
 declaration was made in the House of Lords t 
 that the ministers, " according to the fundamental 
 constitution of this kingdom," are jointly account- 
 able for all the acts of the Crown. But, though 
 theoretically acknowledged, the rule was very 
 imperfectly observed during the greater part of the 
 eighteenth century ; ministers continued to carry 
 on their departmental business without much con- 
 cert and co-operation under the general superin- 
 tendence of the Sovereign. 
 
 It was not till the second Eockingham Ministry, 
 .in__l 782^ that the principle of collective ministerial 
 responsibility was accepted. This Cabinet came 
 in "on the distinct understanding that measures 
 were to be changed as well as men ; and that the 
 measures for which the new Ministry required 
 the royal consent were the measures which they, 
 while in opposition, had advocated." I The King 
 was deeply chagrined, and talked of retiring to 
 Hanover; but he submitted to the necessity of 
 
 * Morley, Walpole, p. 155. 
 
 f By Rochester in a debate on Spanish affairs. Parlia 
 vnentary History, vi. 972. 
 
 I See Hearn, The Government of England, p. 196.
 
 142 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 the case, and the effect of his compliance was 
 accentuated when the younger Pitt entered office 
 at the head of an administration whose members 
 might perhaps have been more accurately described 
 as the Prime Minister's assistants rather than 
 the King's servants. The collective responsibility 
 of ministers has seldom^ been seriously questioned 
 since 1783. George IV. in 1825 made a faint 
 attempt to disturb it by inviting his ministers to 
 furnish him with " an individual opinion " on the 
 question of the proposed recognition of the inde- 
 pendence of the Spanish American Colonies. The 
 ministers declined, and sent instead a joint reply, 
 drafted after consultation, in which they defended 
 their policy. It was an intimation that the whole 
 Cabinet intended to stand or fall by the proposals, 
 distasteful though they were to the Sovereign, which 
 certain of their number had framed.* 
 
 It would not now be disputed that a minister 
 must either be prepared to support a policy which 
 his colleagues endorse, or that he must resign his 
 office. Almost the last attempt on the part of a 
 minister to conduct the affairs of his department 
 without regard to the general policy of the Cabinet 
 was that of Lord Palmerston after the coup d'etat of 
 1851. The Foreign Secretary, on his own initiative, 
 expressed to M. Walewski, the French Ambassador, 
 his "entire approbation of the act of the President." 
 Lord John Russell insisted on Palmerston's resig- 
 nation. Nominally his dismissal was required on 
 the ground that he had exceeded his authority as 
 Secretary of State. In reality his offence was that 
 he had ignored, or opposed, the collective decision 
 * Stapleton, Canning and his Times, pp. 418, 435.
 
 MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY U."> 
 
 of the Cabinet to pursue a course of strict neutrality 
 and non-intervention in French affairs. 
 
 This case differs altogether from that of a resig- 
 nation, such as were those of Mr. Chamberlain and 
 of the Free Trade ministers in 1903, due to the 
 inability of members of the Cabinet to agree upon 
 a question of general policy. It^ does, however, 
 occasionally happen that Parliament is able jo take 
 cognisance of the acts of a particular minister^ and 
 to isolate^ him, so. to speak, from the sphere of col- 
 lective responsibility. In 1855 Lord John Eussell 
 was personally aimed at when Sir Edward Bulwer 
 Lytton gave notice of a vote of censure on " the 
 minister charged with the negotiations at Vienna," 
 Lord John anticipated the discussion of the 
 motion by quitting office, admitting that the 
 Austrian proposals, which he had supported at 
 Vienna, had not been approved by his colleagues. 
 In 1858 Lord Ellenborough's famous despatch, con- 
 demning Lord Canning's equally famous proclama- 
 tion, was the subject of hostile resolutions in both 
 Houses of Parliament. _A minister may bejjensured 
 by Parliament for irregularities, unconnected with 
 the general action of the Administration, and in that 
 event^^his^ retirement would not^ necessarily involve 
 the j:esignation_of his colleagues. Such a case was 
 that of Lord Westbury, who was compelled to 
 resign the Great Seal in 1865, in consequence of a 
 vote of censure carefully framed so as to strike at 
 the Lord Chancellor without in any way damaging 
 his colleagues. 
 
 But if the minister does not take an inde- 
 pendent line, or commit offences against public 
 morality or political etiquette, he is sheltered
 
 144 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 behind the shield of joint responsibility. This 
 means that he carries on his departmental duties 
 under the protection of the entire Cabinet and that 
 the whole force of the party machine will be 
 brought to his assistance when required. The theory 
 is thus stated by an eminent authority : 
 
 Each minister acts in his own department as the recognised 
 agent of his colleagues in that particular department, subject, 
 however, to inquiry and control by the whole body. But in all 
 jsases on which any difficulty ia lively to arise, each minister, 
 trom motives, not merely of prudence, but of honour, takes the 
 opinion of the Cabinet. When the precaution is taken, the 
 measure becomes the common act of the Ministry. All its 
 members have either expressly approved of it, or have at least 
 sanctioned it by their acquiescence." * 
 
 This doctrine of joint ministerial responsibility 
 is the most characteristic of all our constitutional 
 understandings.! Without it the due account- 
 ability of ministers to the elective assembly cannot 
 
 * Hearn, The Government of England, p. 204. 
 
 f It is one of those conventions of the Constitution " with 
 which," says Professor Dicey, "the law has no direct con- 
 cern." In the legal sense the responsibility of ministers 
 means no more than that some minister is liable for every 
 act of the Crown in which he takes part. This responsi- 
 bility of ministers appears in foreign countries as a iformal 
 part of the Constitution; in England "it results from the 
 combined action of several legal principles : first, the maxim 
 that the King can do no wrong ; secondly, the refusal of 
 the Courts to recognise any act as done by the Crown, which 
 is not done in a particular form, a form in general involving the 
 affixing of a particular seal by a minister, or the counter- 
 signature, or something equivalent to the counter- signature, of 
 a minister ; thirdly, the principle that the minister who affixes 
 a particular seal, or counter-signs his signature, is responsible 
 for the act which he, so to speak, endorses." Dicey, The Lai. 
 of the Constitution, p. 26.
 
 MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY 145 
 
 be maintained. So at least it is assumed, not 
 merely in England, but in other countries where 
 the Parliamentary system of government is in force. 
 In France it is carried, in theory, almost as far as in 
 this country, and it has been authoritatively claimed 
 that it applies not only to the actions, but to the 
 words, of members of the Cabinet. In a speech, 
 delivered on September 21, 1902, M. Combes, the 
 French Premier, protested against the hasty 
 partisanship which endeavoured to find a declara- 
 tion of Government policy in every unconsidered 
 observation of any individual member of the 
 Administration : 
 
 " Our adversaries are not, and cannot be, unaware, so 
 absolute is the rule and so constant the tradition in this 
 matter, that under a Parliamentary system the Government 
 is never committed by a minister's individual declarations, but 
 only by those of the head of the Government. He alone is 
 responsible before the Chamber and before the country for the 
 direction given to policy, and he alone has the power of making 
 known that direction. Each minister individually has juris- 
 diction and authority only for the administration of his depart- 
 ment. To recall this rule, which is of the very essence of the 
 Parliamentary system, is to reduce to its true value, that is to 
 nullity, the pretension paraded by our adversaries of holding 
 the entire Ministry to a phrase, more or less unfaithfully 
 reported, which has slipped into some reporter's summary. 
 If, for instance, it concerns domestic policy the Premier alone 
 can be attacked, as the organ of the Government and the 
 country, for the declaration which he deems it proper to make. 
 If it concerns foreign policy, the Minister for Foreign Affairs 
 alone is commissioned to speak and act in the name of the 
 Government. Such is the true Parliamentary system." 
 
 The Delinquent Minister. 
 
 A good deal of pains has been expended in point- 
 ing out the various methods by which the repre- 
 
 11
 
 146 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 sentatives of the nation and the electorate are able 
 to punish the members of an incompetent Executive. 
 But few writers seem to have thought it worth 
 while to consider what this punishment amounts 
 to in practice. Punishment, which is not really 
 punitive, and which fails to visit the consequences 
 of his offences upon the wrong-doer, cannot be 
 deemed to have much efficacy. The__essence. of_ja 
 
 deterrent^ 
 
 In private life, and in most pursuits and avoca- 
 tions, a breach of responsibility has a definite 
 meaning, and is commonly followed by direct and 
 painful results. An officer in the Army or Navy, 
 who is responsible for the safety of a ship, or the 
 good order of a regiment, has much to lose by an 
 exhibition of negligence or irresolution. He can 
 be dismissed from the service, and forfeit not only 
 his rank and social status but the prospect of all 
 professional reward and perhaps even his means 
 of livelihood. So in civil employment. If a butler, 
 after being told that he is responsible for the plate- 
 chest, carelessly allows the spoons to be stolen, he 
 may be dismissed without a character, and may 
 never again get a good place. If the manager of a 
 bank, or the cashier of a commercial house, makes 
 a few bad mistakes in dealing with the interests of 
 his employers, he can be deprived of his position, 
 and will be practically a ruined man. Failure, dis- 
 grace, poverty, even starvation, may be the conse- 
 quences of laxity, incompetence, irregularity, 
 indolence. Honour and material benefits are 
 gained by the person who discharges his trust with 
 zeal and fidelity ; humiliation and actual want may
 
 MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY 147 
 
 be the portion of those who err, not necessarily 
 through dishonesty, but through inattention or lack 
 of judgment. 
 
 The "responsible" minister of the Crown does 
 not find his energies stimulated and guided 
 in this fashion. Ambition, public spirit, a sense 
 of duty, may induce him to administer his 
 department efficiently. But he has little to 
 gain, beyond the satisfaction of his own con- 
 8C1 j i 5kxJ23L~flOiggZ tne work supremely well, anct~ 
 not _Yery much^to lose by doing it rather badly. 
 He is one of a body which answers^ as a 
 whole, for the acts of its members.* 
 
 of CojQmiQiis cannot dismiss a minister, of whose 
 actsjt^ disapproves, it cannot even formally censure 
 him, unless it is prepared to get ricTof all his col- 
 leagues as well. nSTpwi" a-3 a yule, th^ is just 
 
 House is most reluctant to do. If it censures 
 the Ministry, it practically censures itself; if it 
 consigns it to defeat at the polls, it is of course 
 depriving a considerable number of its own mem- 
 bers of their seats. It is absurd to suppose that 
 the House of Commons even the party majority 
 approves every action of every member of a com- 
 mittee of some twenty ministers or more t over a 
 space of four or five years. But very rarely 
 indeed does it express its disapproval in the only 
 fashion for which a Premier need care, that is 
 
 * " The Chancellor of the Exchequer may be driven from 
 office by a bad despatch from the Foreign Office, and an 
 excellent Home Secretary may suffer for the blunders of a 
 stupid Minister of War." Morley, Walpole, 155. 
 
 f Considerably more, if we include the ministers who are 
 outside, as well as those within, the Cabinet circle.
 
 148 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 by a hostile division on a point of real importance, 
 or an unfavourable vote in Supply. It is prac- 
 tically impossible to brin^ a minister to book 
 
 unless the House is prepared to sacrifice the whole 
 
 "" t . . . ^ ' 
 
 Cabinet to punish^ him. 
 
 The Government can always meet an attack, 
 which might otherwise be successful, on the 
 administration of a particular department, by 
 making the question one of confidence. A good 
 illustration is supplied by the debate of January 
 27th, 1902, on the agreement entered into by the 
 Postmaster-General with the National Telephone 
 Company. The agreement was condemned by many 
 of the supporters of the Conservative Administration 
 in office, and a hostile amendment was moved by 
 the Lord Mayor of London, himself a strong Con- 
 servative ministerialist. There was no real question 
 of party policy involved ; it was simply the judgment 
 and good sense of a minister, as the head of a branch 
 of the public service, that was challenged. It was 
 not easy to defend the agreement on its merits ; 
 but the ministerialists were warned not to condemn 
 it, since such condemnation would be accepted by 
 the Government as equivalent to a vote of censure. 
 A Conservative private member, said that "if the 
 amendment were carried, the Government would 
 be told that they had been defeated on a 
 serious charge," and the House would incur the 
 responsibility of changing the administration of 
 the country "at a very critical period in its 
 history." * Mr. Hanbury, speaking for the Cabinet, 
 put this point with even more directness. " The 
 
 * See the report of the debate in the newspapers of January 
 28, 1902.
 
 MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY 149 
 
 hon. member who has just sat down has, perhaps, 
 with a little more ingenuity than ingenuousness, 
 said that this discussion ought to be approached in 
 no party spirit ; but this is an amendment to the 
 Address, and as such must be a vote of censure on 
 the Government." 
 
 These appeals proved effectual. The Lord Mayor 
 declined to vote for his own amendment, and the 
 Ministry won an easy victory in the division. A 
 newspaper, which supported the Government but 
 opposed the telephone agreement, made the following 
 comment on the result : 
 
 " This is not very satisfactory ; but it is the consequence of 
 our present system of government, by which it is impossible 
 to call to account any single minister for the delinquencies of 
 his department without compelling the resignation of the whole 
 Ministry. There can be no doubt that, engaged in a war 
 as we are, with vast issues hanging upon the retention in office 
 of men who can be trusted to ' see the thing through,' the less 
 must yield to the greater interest, and London must hunger 
 after an efficient telephone system for years to come. The 
 party machine, in fact, has intervened ; and the influence of 
 the Boer War is felt in a matter which has, strictly speaking, 
 no concern whatever with \ that war, and which is in no sense a 
 party question." 
 
 The party machine always does intervene, if the 
 occasion is sufficiently serious, to protect the 
 departmental chief; so that the theoretical power, 
 residing in Parliament, to bring about the dismissal 
 of a minister, if he offends, is not a very serious 
 check upon the conduct of any member of the 
 supreme Executive. 
 
 If his responsibility were, in fact, what it is in 
 theory, a minister would reason with himself some- 
 what in this wise :
 
 150 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 " Here," he might say, " is an obviously difficult 
 and unpleasant bit of work to be done, which will 
 cause a great deal of trouble, rouse a lot of opposi- 
 tion among my permanent officials, and take up so 
 much time that I shall hardly be able to enjoy my 
 autumn holiday and my shooting this year. But 
 then, if I omit to do it, the House of Commons will 
 find it out, and I may have to resign and be dis- 
 graced ; so here goes to clean the Augean stable ! " 
 Whereas, if he is irresolute or indolent, he may, 
 as things stand, reasonably argue in quite a different 
 fashion : 
 
 " After all, if we don't put that business right 
 it won't so very much matter. The Service may 
 suffer a little, but the thing has gone on for years, 
 and may well last my time. Very likely some 
 pertinacious fellows will make a fuss about it in 
 the House and the newspapers ; but that will not 
 hurt us particularly. The general election is a 
 good way off, and when it comes we shall lose or 
 win on various issues quite unconnected with my 
 little department. People will have forgotten all 
 about it by that time ; and even if they do remember, 
 their votes will be determined by dozens of other 
 considerations." 
 
 As an incentive to good departmental adminis- 
 tration, the " fall " is necessarily inoperative ; since 
 every minister knows that he is quite liable to 
 lose his place when the time comes, not because of 
 any misdeeds of his own, but through some accident 
 or mistake independent of his office or his personal 
 action. He may have cost the country thousands 
 of lives and millions of pounds by launching an ill- 
 arranged expedition into the heart of a distant
 
 MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY 151 
 
 continent, too late for it to be of any use ; but his 
 " fall " may not be due to that misfortune. It may 
 have quite passed out of mind when his defeat is 
 eventually brought about because his colleagues 
 have decided perhaps in opposition to his own 
 wishes to put an unpopular tax on sugar or on beer. 
 All this the minister knows, and something more. 
 He cannot fail to be aware that at the end of a few 
 years of office he is extremely likely to be turned 
 out in any case, whether the administration to 
 which he belongs has been efficient or incompetent. 
 It may be stated as a general proposition, which 
 most electioneering experts accept, that the chances 
 at a general election are distinctly unfavourable 
 to the party in office. If its majority is very large 
 it may contrive to stay in, much reduced in 
 numbers, as was the case in 1900 and 1910 : with a 
 small margin it will be beaten, as in 1892, 1895, and 
 1905. We do not know much about the obscure 
 working of the electoral mind ; but we know that, 
 whether the cause be caprice, or some confused idea of 
 equity, or a general discontent with the conditions 
 of existence in a rather unsatisfactory world, the 
 elector is commonly inclined to " give the other 
 fellows a chance." The odds are considerable that 
 a Ministry, whatever its record, will do badly at 
 the polls after being four or five years in power. 
 The longer a Government stays in, the more time 
 is there for the balance to swing against it. But 
 if this be true, it detracts further from the value 
 of the " fall " as a stimulus and deterrent. A 
 Cabinet will not be greatly influenced by the threat 
 of exclusion when it knows that in all probability 
 it will be excluded in the natural course of things.
 
 152 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 A minister will not refrain from governing ill, lest 
 he be " hung," since he must feel that he is quite 
 likely to be hung, even if he governs well. 
 
 There is another circumstance which tends to 
 make his responsibility sit somewhat lightly on an 
 English minister. Even if it were true that any 
 slackness or inefficiency is promptly detected and 
 punished by the House of Commons, what, after all, 
 would the punishment amount to ? Only that the 
 distinguished amateur is bowled out rather sooner 
 than he expected, and has had a shorter innings 
 than he desired. 
 
 But the pavilion is not a bad place from which to 
 watch the game for a time, especially if it happens 
 to be a pavilion well kept and well furnished, and 
 well provided with excellent refreshment and the 
 best of good company. Our ministers do not break 
 their hearts when they lose office. They are rich, 
 or if not rich influential and distinguished persons, 
 occupying a fine position in the most agreeable 
 society in the world, possessing a substantial pro- 
 portion of the things which make leisure worth 
 having. Politics, pursued in our modern, gentle- 
 manly, sportsmanlike fashion, carries with it no 
 painful penalty for the politician who loses ; he does 
 not play for his head, or his fortune, or even his 
 reputation. The worst punishment Parliament or 
 the electorate inflicts upon the minister who has 
 forfeited its confidence (beyond the loss of a salary 
 which he is often too wealthy to miss) , is that of send- 
 ing him back to his friends, his estates, his sports, 
 his studies, and his recreations. That is the utmost 
 we do to him : though he may have made mistakes, 
 which will leave their mark on the stability and the
 
 MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY 153 
 
 prosperity of the country for generations, which 
 may have imperilled the safety of the Empire, or 
 have gone far to endanger the social order of the 
 country. 
 
 If he personally comes to grief at the polls, it is 
 more likely to be on a question of policy than on 
 one of administration. The crushing defeat of Sir 
 William Harcourt, during the election of 1895, was 
 certainly not due to his laches as Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer, nor to any want of capacity, zeal, and 
 devotion to the public service. He was perhaps the 
 ablest member of the defeated Cabinet, and his 
 financial reforms were approved by the entire 
 Liberal party. But he had identified himself 
 with the most unpopular project of the Rosebery 
 Government. The electors of Derby admired his 
 Budgets, but they disliked the Local Veto Bill ; 
 and they punished the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 for his injudicious advocacy of that measure by 
 depriving him of his seat. 
 
 The defeated leader, the " fallen minister," soon 
 had another constituency provided for him, and was 
 ready to take his place again at the head of the 
 Liberal ranks in the House of Commons, with every 
 prospect of resuming his seat in a Liberal Cabinet, 
 when the electoral fiat should restore his connection 
 to power. Even if he had failed to get back speedily 
 to Parliament, he would have been little the worse. 
 His friends, his followers, his sovereign, the general 
 public, thought no less highly of him. His exclusion 
 from office, the fact that he had helped to guide his 
 party to disaster, deprived him of some toilsome 
 duties ; but it left him still a great gentleman, dis- 
 tinguished, prosperous, and respected.
 
 154 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 To an American Cabinet officer, dismissal may 
 mean exchanging a residence in the City of 
 Washington, with its pleasant cosmopolitan society, 
 for a law office in a remote western town. In 
 France, the transition may be even more marked, 
 as M . le Ministre leaves the stately apartments, in 
 which he has lived at the charge of the Eepublic, 
 with a train of secretaries and attendants, a 
 dignified person in the select circles of a wealthy 
 and brilliant society, to return, a somewhat obscure 
 private citizen, to his desk or his newspaper. In 
 these cases the loss of place may be a far heavier 
 penalty than it can be for an English minister, ap- 
 pointed from the ranks of the governing oligarchy, 
 rich, important, and influential. Macaulay points 
 out that in the period between the Restoration and 
 the rei'gn of George II., when impeachments and pro- 
 scriptions were still possible, the party conflict was 
 carried on with savage ferocity. The temper of 
 politicians was exacerbated by tke risks they ran and 
 the consequences of failure. In the English political 
 contest, as it has been conducted since the great 
 Reform Bill, success, for those who are in the front 
 ranks, may bring some satisfaction, but failure bears 
 with it few real terrors. The game can be played 
 with good-humoured complaisance, and with little 
 trace of the social envy and bitterness noticeable in 
 some other countries, so long as the leading per- 
 formers are a group of men for whom politics is 
 only one of the occupations or the amusements of an 
 extremely comfortable existence.
 
 CHAPTEK IX 
 
 THE PRIME MINISTER AND THE INNER CABINET 
 
 THE Prime Minister, until within the last few 
 years was " unknown to the Constitution," and 
 is still only recognized indirectly.* There is no 
 "President of the Cabinet." There is a Presi- 
 dent of the Council, who should be at the head 
 of the Government, but is, in fact, only a minister 
 with no departmental duties of any real importance 
 a " minister without portfolio," to use the Con- 
 tinental term. It might tend to simplicity if the 
 Prime Minister always held this titular post. Lord 
 Eosebery, when Prime Minister in 1894, endeavoured 
 to make the office of Lord President of the Council 
 a reality by taking it into his own hands. In France 
 the Premier is officially President of the Council of 
 Ministers. In Canada the Prime Minister is ex 
 
 * "The Prime Minister has no salary as Prime Minister. He 
 has no statutory duties as Prime Minister, his name occurs in 
 no Acts of Parliament, and though holding the most important 
 place in the constitutional hierarchy, he has no place which is 
 recognised by the laws of his country. That is a strange 
 paradox." Mr. Balfour, at Haddington, Sept. 21, 1902. 
 Ceremonial, if not legal, recognition has now been conferred 
 upon the office. On December 2, 1905, some months after the 
 publication of the first edition of the present work, a Royal 
 Proclamation was issued, giving "place and precedence" 
 to "the Prime Minister" next after the Archbishop of York. 
 
 155
 
 156 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 officio President of the Privy Council of the 
 Governor-General. In the Australian Common- 
 wealth, though the Premier is usually at the head 
 of an important department, such as the Ministry 
 of External Affairs, or the Ministry of Home Affairs, 
 he is also President of the " Executive Council," 
 the existence of which body is so far recognized that 
 it has a Vice-President and a Secretary.* 
 
 But in England the existence of the Prime Minister 
 was long and jealously concealed. He does not seem 
 to have been formally mentioned in any public docu- 
 ment before 1878, when he made his appearance in 
 an unexpected place. In the opening clause of the 
 Treaty of Berlin, Lord Beaconsfield is described as 
 "First Lord of Her Majesty's Treasury, Prime 
 Minister of England." This was, no doubt, a con- 
 cession to the ignorance of foreigners, who might 
 not have understood the real position of the 
 British plenipotentiary if he had been merely 
 given his official title. There is another timid 
 advance towards reality twenty-two years later : 
 at the time of the reconstruction of the Unionist 
 Cabinet in November, 1900, the Court Circular, 
 whether through inadvertence, or in a deliberate 
 spirit of daring innovation, alluded to the Marquess 
 of Salisbury as " Prime Minister." t 
 
 The term, or its alternative " Premier," J has 
 always been rather " unconstitutional." In 1761 
 George Grenville declared Prime Minister to be 
 " an odious title." Lord North thought so too, 
 
 * See supra, p. 29. 
 
 f See the Court Circular, dated " Windsor Castle, Nov. 12," 
 in the Times of Nov. 13, 1900. 
 
 | First used apparently in its present sense in 1746.
 
 THE INNER CABINET 157 
 
 and would never allow himself to be so described by 
 his friends or in his own family circle. In the 
 great attack upon Walpole in the Commons in 1741, 
 Sandys said : " According to our constitution we 
 can have no sole or prime minister ; we ought always 
 to have several prime ministers or officers of state ; 
 every such officer has his own proper department, 
 and no officer ought to meddle in the affairs belong- 
 ing to the department of another."* A hundred and 
 sixty-three years afterwards, in the opening period 
 of King Edward VII.'s reign, we find one jealous 
 vindicator of ancient forms complaining in Parlia- 
 ment that a catalogue of " birthday honours " had 
 appeared in the newspapers as "the Prime Minister's 
 List," and another inquiring whether the Prime 
 Minister had any legal status at all.t 
 
 * A motion to this effect was brought forward in the House 
 of Lords and defeated. But the minority entered a protest on 
 the journals " that a sole, or even a first, minister is an oflice 
 unknown to the law of Britain, inconsistent with the constitu- 
 tion, and destructive of liberty in any Government whatever." 
 
 f " Mr. MacNeill asked the First Lord of the Treasury why, 
 in the official announcement of the list of birthday honours, 
 had that list been intituled the Prime Minister's list; what was 
 the reason for this new departure in the form of the official 
 announcement ; and at whose suggestion and on whose respon- 
 sibility had it been made ; and whether there was any, and if 
 so what, precedent for the announcement of the list of Birthday 
 Honours as the Prime Minister's list. 
 
 " Mr. Balfour : There was no official announcement of the 
 kind supposed by the hon. gentleman made. I understand the 
 list of honours was headed in one newspaper as the hon. gentle- 
 man suggests, but that was not the ordinary way in most of the 
 newspapers, and certainly it had no authority from myself. 
 
 " Mr. G. Bowles : Will the right hon. gentleman say, for the 
 information of the House, whether he is aware of any such 
 official recognized by the law as the Prune Minister ? " See 
 the parliamentary report in the newspapers of July 1 1904.
 
 158 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 It seems to be characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon 
 temper to start with an office and to end with a 
 man. The Prime Minister's position is the result of 
 the same process as that which has converted the 
 President of the Board of Trade into what is vir- 
 tually a Minister of Commerce, and the First Lord 
 of the Admiralty into a Minister of Marine. Much 
 of the authority of the Cabinet has insensibly passed 
 over to that of the Premier, as the powers of a 
 Board of any kind tend to be concentrated in the 
 Chairman, especially if his colleagues are much 
 below him in ability and reputation. From the 
 nature of the case a Prime Minister in England is 
 usually a strong man. Second-rate politicians may 
 work their way into the Ministry by influence, 
 intrigue, family connections, painstaking industry, 
 good luck, and the efflux of time. But the Chief 
 must be one whom a great party can respect, to 
 whom it has surrendered the control of its destinies, 
 and who has won his way to the foremost place in 
 its councils through years of conflict with ambitious 
 rivals. He is likely to be above the level of the 
 ordinary politician ; and the mere fact that he has 
 " arrived," that he has won the race and reached 
 the goal first, must impress the ablest of his lieu- 
 tenants. He cannot easily be only primus inter 
 pares, and of recent years he has nearly always been 
 something more. He is the really " responsible " 
 minister, the person who answers to the sovereign 
 and who answers to the nation. 
 
 It is the Premier who has been nominated by the 
 choice of the people as expressed at a general 
 election. His associates in office, or in the leader- 
 ship of the Opposition, may or may not count ; a
 
 THE INNER CABINET 159 
 
 few of them do, most of them do not. Bismarck 
 once said that the issue at a general election in 
 Germany was fur oder gegen Bismarck. And some- 
 thing of the sort may often be truly said at a general 
 election in England. It has been for or against Mr. 
 Gladstone, Lord Salisbury, Mr. Balfour, Mr. 
 Asquith, or some other eminent statesman who 
 stands at the head of a party. When the plebiscite 
 has been declared in favour of the successful leader, 
 he is " sent for " by the Sovereign, to whom he has 
 been in fact " sent" by the electorate. The other 
 ministers, with just the few exceptions of the men 
 who stand so near his throne that they cannot 
 thrust them aside, are merely his nominees. So 
 long as he does not ignore those commanding per- 
 sonages whom the public and the party know, he 
 can do very much what he likes with the remainder 
 of his staff. All that is required is that his appoint- 
 ments shall not be flagrantly improper, and that his 
 departmental ministers shall be reputable personages, 
 of some standing in Parliament, who can be classed 
 as of " Cabinet rank." 
 
 That the Prime Minister must be the responsible 
 Executive, and the other ministers his subordinates, 
 was asserted in plain terms by Pitt a hundred years 
 ago. Lord Melville, in his famous Letter to Adding- 
 ton in 1803, said that Pitt deemed it absolutely 
 necessary that " there should be an avowed and real 
 minister, possessing the chief weight in the Council, 
 and the principal place in the confidence of the King. 
 In that respect there can be no rivalry or division of 
 power. The power must rest in the person generally 
 called the First Minister. ... If it should come 
 unfortunately to such a radical difference of opinion
 
 160 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 as no spirit of conciliation or concession can 
 reconcile, the sentiments of the Minister must be 
 allowed and understood to prevail." 
 
 The precise amount of authority exercised by the 
 Prime Minister must depend upon circumstances 
 and his own character. If he is a Pitt, a Peel, a 
 Palmerston, a Disraeli, or a Gladstone, he may come 
 near to Iffeing a dictator. During the fifty years that 
 followed the death of Pitt, the Cabinet, as a whole, 
 exercised an unusual control of affairs, because the 
 interval that separated the Premiers from thair 
 coadjutors was not very wide. From the Ministry 
 of " All the Talents " in 1806 to that of the Liberals 
 in 1855, the Prime Ministers, with the exception of 
 Canning and Peel, were somewhat wanting in 
 commanding ability and in their hold upon popular 
 support. Lord Grenville, the Duke of Portland, 
 Spencer Perceval, Lord Liverpool, Lord Goderich, 
 Grey, Melbourne, Aberdeen, were scarcely statesmen 
 of the first rank ; and perhaps the same verdict 
 would now be passed on Lord John Russell. Their 
 Cabinets, however, included many able men who 
 were well able to hold their own with their titular 
 chiefs, and often carried more weight with Parliament 
 and the constituencies. For the greater part of the 
 following half century the conditions were reversed. 
 The office of Premier became more like that of an 
 elective President, when it was held by a succession 
 of able men who were unquestionably the real, as 
 well as the nominal, chiefs of their parties, and who 
 as a rule stood far above all rivalry or competition 
 on their own side. In such circumstances an 
 English Prime Minister may be an important per- 
 sonage indeed. " Nowhere in the wide world," said
 
 THE INNER CABINET 161 
 
 Gladstone,* "does so great a substance cast so small 
 a shadow; nowhere is there a man who has so much 
 power with so little to show for it in the way of 
 formal title or prerogative." 
 
 In the days of Pitt, and as late as those of Peel, 
 it seems to have been possible for a Prime Minister 
 to maintain an effective control over all branches of 
 his administration. The letters of Peel show that, 
 during his last Ministry, he kept himself constantly 
 in touch with the other members of the Cabinet in 
 their departmental work, and largely directed their 
 offices, especially in matters referring to foreign 
 policy, colonial affairs, and finance. But no Prime 
 Minister can now attempt this kind of minute 
 supervision, even when he has no department of 
 his own.f To do so, says Lord Kosebery, would 
 
 * Gleanings, i. 244. Gladstone reminds us that depart- 
 mentally the Prime Minister is "no more than the first named 
 of five persons, by whom jointly the powers of the Lord 
 Treasureship are taken to be exercised ; he is not their master, 
 or otherwise than by mere priority their head : and he has no 
 special position or prerogative under the formal constitution of 
 his office. He has no official rank except that of Privy Coun- 
 cillor. Eight members of the Cabinet, including five Secretaries 
 of State, take precedence of him.' " The ceremonial anomaly, 
 as stated above (p. 155) has now been amended by the Royal 
 Proclamation of December, 1905, which gives the Prime Minister 
 precedence over all his colleagues. 
 
 f As a rule the Prime Minister is First Lord of the Treasury, 
 with departmental duties which may be called nominal. But 
 the rule has had conspicuous exceptions. Gladstone, in 
 1880-81, following the example of Pitt, was his own Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer. Lord Salisbury was Foreign Secretary from 
 1887 till 1900, when he accepted the sinecure office of Lord 
 Privy Seal. The Premier, or any privy councillor, might pre- 
 sumably be a member of the Cabinet, without holding even a 
 titular department, as was the case with Lord Lansdowne in the 
 
 12
 
 162 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 demand more time and strength than any man has 
 at his command. Peel himself arrived at the con- 
 clusion that the task of a Prime Minister in the 
 House of Commons, as he understood the office, had 
 become almost an impossibility. In August, 1845, 
 he wrote : 
 
 " I defy the minister of this country to perform properly 
 the duties of his office; to read all that he ought to read, 
 including the whole foreign correspondence ; to keep up the 
 constant communication with the Queen and the Prince ; to 
 superintend the grant of honours and the disposal of civil 
 and ecclesiastical patronage ; to write with his own hand to 
 every person of note who chooses to write to him ; to be 
 prepared for every debate including the most trumpery con- 
 cerns; to do all these indispensable things, and also sit in 
 the House of Commons eight hours a day for one hundred 
 and eighteen days." 
 
 Palmerston Cabinet of 1855. Since 1905 the Premiership has 
 been associated with the office of President of the Imperial 
 Defence Committee. In this capacity, the Prime Minister is 
 at the head of a department, specially occupied with the 
 control and co-ordination of the naval and military policy of the 
 Empire. The Defence Committee is not a committee of the 
 Cabinet. What it may become in the future is an interesting 
 question ; but at present it is constitutionally the advisory 
 council of the Prime Minister, and it includes, besides 
 Cabinet Ministers, certain high officials concerned with military 
 and naval administration whom its President may be dis- 
 posed to summon to its deliberations. It has its own 
 secretary and permanent staff; and since the operations of 
 the War Office, the Admiralty, the Foreign Office, and the 
 Colonial Office come under its purview, and since it is 
 occasionally attended by ministers of the self-governing 
 Dominions, it may be regarded as the committee of the 
 Prime Minister in his capacity of Imperial Chancellor rather 
 than in that of Chief of the Executive in Great Britain and 
 Ireland.
 
 THE INNER CABINET 163 
 
 " The worst of it is," adds Peel, " that the 
 really important duties to the country those out 
 of the House of Commons are apt to be neglected." 
 The last consideration applies with fuller force since 
 Peel wrote. The head of the Government is not 
 only enmeshed in his Parliamentary duties for six 
 months of the year, but he has frequently to take 
 part in platform agitation during the recess. A 
 Premier may lose grip of the administration, but 
 he cannot relax his hold on the party conflict. " A 
 minister of these days," says Lord Rosebery, "would 
 be preparing or delivering a speech in the country, 
 when Peel would be writing minutes of policy for 
 the various departments." As a fact, the Prime 
 Minister is seldom able to keep himself constantly 
 in touch with any of the departments, unless it is 
 that of the Foreign Secretary, with whom he must 
 necessarily be in frequent communication, and whose 
 more important dispatches are supposed to be 
 submitted to him. Otherwise he must leave his 
 subordinates very much to themselves. He must 
 accept responsibility for the work of departmental 
 chiefs, with whose proceedings he can scarcely be 
 acquainted, and they on the other hand can shelter 
 themselves behind him, and call upon him to throw 
 the shield or his influence with the House of Com- 
 mons and the country, over acts performed in their 
 ministerial capacity. 
 
 The Cabinet and the Conclave. 
 
 In the shaping of policy and legislation the 
 collective action of ministers is not in practice 
 always effectively exercised. The Prime Minister
 
 164 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 does not often take all his colleagues into his 
 confidence; or even consult them, except at the 
 more formal Cabinet Councils. There is no reason 
 why he should ; for the majority of them are not of 
 sufficient personal or official weight to affect his 
 decisions. There are, however, a few ministers, the 
 holders of the greater offices, or men of high 
 authority with the party and Parliament, with whom 
 he must be on confidential terms at every stage, for 
 fear of a defection which would be dangerous. And 
 it is these few who form a kind of private governing 
 conclave or executive committee of the ministerial 
 Council a Cabinet within a Cabinet. 
 
 The growth of the Inner Cabinet is one of the 
 most interesting developments of recent years. It 
 is not exactly novel, for something of the sort 
 existed, and was made cause of complaint, from 
 time to time during the eighteenth century. Under 
 Walpole almost all important matters were dis- 
 cussed in the first instance, in an informal Cabinet, 
 consisting of the First Lord of the Treasury, the 
 Chancellor, and the two Secretaries of State. 
 Under Pelham the Prime Minister and his brother 
 and the Chancellor formed an Inner Committee. 
 
 This practice was so far recognised that in the 
 early part of George III.'s reign there were usually 
 two classes of ministers those who were allowed to 
 see private papers and confidential despatches, and 
 those from whom these documents were withheld 
 by their colleagues. The gradations of influence 
 within the Shelburne Cabinet in 1782 were described 
 by Shelburne himself in curious language. First, 
 there were ministers who were admitted to the 
 Cabinet without possessing access to confidential
 
 THE INNER CABINET 165 
 
 information. Then there was the Cabinet "with 
 the circulation," that is, with the privilege of 
 a key to the official boxes, in which foreign 
 despatches and other important papers were, and 
 still are,* sent round for the perusal of ministers; 
 and highest of all was the Cabinet " with the cir- 
 culation and the post-office," that is to say, with 
 the power of ordering the letters of individuals to 
 be opened, a right which technically belonged only 
 to a Secretary of State, and would naturally be 
 granted only to persons of the greatest weight in 
 the Administration.! The first Earl of Malmesbury, 
 during the negotiations for peace with France 
 wrote a double set of despatches from Paris and 
 Lille, one set, which contained the really confi- 
 dential information, being shown only to Pitt, 
 Grenville, and Canning; while the second set, 
 which was comparatively unimportant, was allowed 
 to be seen by the remaining ministers. In the 
 heyday of Parliamentary government, that is, be- 
 tween the 'thirties and the 'sixties of the last cen- 
 tury, the Junto had more restricted opportunities. 
 The Cabinets were comparatively small, and many 
 of their members stood on a footing of something 
 like personal equality. There was not much room 
 for discrimination in a Cabinet of thirteen or 
 fourteen, which might include such members as 
 Palmerston, Gladstone, Lord John Russell, Sidney 
 Herbert, Lord Clarendon, Cardwell, and the Duke 
 of Argyll, all of whom were ministers together 
 
 * Secret and confidential documents are circulated among 
 ministers by means of locked boxes, to which every member of 
 the Cabinet possesses a master-key. 
 
 j- See Todd, Parliamentary Government, ii. chap. 3.
 
 166 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 under the Earl of Aberdeen. In such a company 
 the difficulty would have been to leave anybody out 
 of the select conclave. 
 
 The influence of the Inner Council has been 
 fostered by the increasing size of modern Cabinets. 
 The old tradition was that the Cabinet should be 
 a very small body. Confidence and intimate discus- 
 sion are difficult in a large committee. If some 
 of the members are removed from others, even 
 by the space of a long table, the character of the 
 assembly is changed. The proceedings become 
 more like those of a public meeting, with speeches 
 and debates instead of informal conversation. In 
 the eighteenth century, seven was regarded as the 
 proper number for a Cabinet. Additions were made 
 steadily, but slowly. Up to the middle part of 
 Queen Victoria's reign the number of Cabinet 
 Ministers was not supposed to exceed twelve, and 
 even this was deemed inconveniently large. Greville 
 thought that a Cabinet of fifteen was " much too 
 numerous " ; and Macaulay notes with something 
 like horror that " we have seen Cabinets of sixteen." 
 But this figure is now commonly exceeded. Lord 
 Derby's Cabinet of 1858 had thirteen members ; 
 Lord Palmerston's, which followed, had fifteen ; 
 Lord Derby's in 1867 the same number; Mr. 
 Gladstone entered office in 1868 with a Cabinet 
 of sixteen, and with one of fifteen in 1880, and 
 one of seventeen in 1892. The Salisbury Govern- 
 ment of 1886 had sixteen Cabinet ministers ; that 
 of 1895 had nineteen, and when reconstructed 
 in 1900 the total reached twenty. And Sir Henry 
 Campbell-Bannerman's Cabinet of 1906, and that 
 of Mr. Asquith which followed, were equally
 
 THE INNER CABINET 167 
 
 numerous. The figure is not likely to fall much 
 below this point, and may not improbably rise 
 beyond it. 
 
 The large Cabinet is one result of the complexity 
 of modern government and the specialisation of 
 administrative functions. There are more first- 
 class official departments than there were a hundred 
 years, or fifty, or even fifteen, years ago. New 
 ministries have had to be created, and these are 
 pushing their way into line with the older and 
 more dignified offices. War and Marine, Finance, 
 Foreign Policy, and the Colonies and Depen- 
 dencies, are not the only matters which require 
 the attention of a powerful minister and an 
 authoritative bureau. Commerce is too important 
 an interest to be left out of the Cabinet. So is 
 Education. The Vice-President of the Council has 
 now been transformed into a regular Minister of 
 Education, who must have a seat in the supreme 
 committee. Nor is it easy to omit the Minister 
 for Agriculture, the President of the Local Govern- 
 ment Board, or the Postmaster-General. There 
 are more seats to be filled, though perhaps some 
 others may be vacated. The Lord Privy Seal may 
 disappear as well as the Chancellor of the Duchy of 
 Lancaster ; but we can hardly go on much longer 
 without a Minister of Labour, a Minister of Trans- 
 port and Communications, a Minister of Public 
 Works, and a Minister of Health.* 
 
 This is a legitimate cause of Cabinet expansion. 
 There are others not quite so defensible. Public 
 
 * Mr. Asquith admitted the Attorney General to the 
 Cabinet, a step perhaps towards the establishment of a 
 Ministry of Justice.
 
 168 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 men in England are usually long-lived, and they 
 do not retire early. It is an article in the code of 
 political etiquette that a statesman who has once 
 attained " Cabinet rank " should be entitled to high 
 office whenever his party comes back to power, so 
 long as he himself remains a member of either 
 House of Parliament. A Prime Minister, in form- 
 ing his administration, is distracted and disturbed 
 by the "claims" of various worthy noblemen and 
 gentlemen, often of advanced age, who would feel 
 affronted if they were passed over. Gladstone said 
 that the next most serious thing to admitting a 
 new man to the Cabinet is to leave out a man 
 who has once been a member. Lord Derby, on the 
 formation of the Aberdeen Cabinet, told Queen 
 Victoria that if the Premier were to satisfy all the 
 claims upon him he would have to include at 
 least thirty-two persons in his Cabinet. Greville, 
 glancing caustically at the ministerial crisis of 
 1839, is struck by the " manner in which the 
 public interests are complimented away for the 
 sake of individual pretensions." Poulett Thomson 
 " must have been " Chancellor of the Exchequer, if 
 not Governor of Canada: he " could not be passed 
 over " Greville does not understand why.* Some- 
 times, however, these claims are not merely per- 
 sonal. The leader of a great party has many 
 groups and subdivisions to consider. The various 
 interests demand a fair share of representation. 
 One aspirant is perhaps the mouthpiece of a 
 policy, which is not in all respects that of the 
 " front-bench men," but which has asserted itself 
 too strongly to be ignored. Another gives potent 
 * Greville Memoirs, Part ii. chap. 7.
 
 THE INNER CABINET 169 
 
 expression to local sentiment, and is the master 
 of many votes. A third is a clever novus homo, 
 who has been forcing his way through from the 
 back benches, without much regard to the feelings 
 of the "old gang," and him it may be desirable 
 to harness and muzzle. 
 
 The easy way to dispose of these claimants is 
 to put them into the Ministry, and if they will 
 not be content with the subordinate grades, 
 to admit them to the Cabinet itself. It is 
 worth noting that the distinction between the 
 superior and inferior classes of ministers is being 
 weakened. A capable under-secretary may some- 
 times be as important a personage as if his name 
 appeared over the rubric, The above form the 
 Cabinet. The stronger line of demarcation is the 
 circumference of the Inner Ring ; and the outsider, 
 even though introduced to the ruling body under 
 the pressure of circumstances, may not be allowed 
 to enter this select circle. He may be in the 
 Cabinet, rather than of it, and he may discover 
 that he has little more control over policy than 
 some of his colleagues who cannot put " right 
 honourable" before their names. 
 
 Now and again, some revelation is made to the 
 public, and a corner of the veil is just sufficiently 
 uplifted to show that to be a member of a Cabinet 
 is not necessarily to share the confidence of its 
 Chief. When Gladstone formed his Adminis- 
 tration in 1886 he included some ministers who 
 were not in complete accord with him on the pro- 
 posed legislation for Ireland. Sir George Trevelyan 
 afterwards stated that he and his friends had 
 supposed that they would be allowed " to knock
 
 170 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 the measure about in the Cabinet," * and mould 
 it into a shape which they could accept. Mr. 
 Chamberlain entered the Government under reser- 
 vations, and on the condition that the question 
 should form the subject of inquiry and discussion. 
 "I imagined that it was intended to proceed with 
 the examination step by step in the Cabinet, and 
 that after full consultation, we were all to be called 
 on to endeavour to build up some scheme which 
 would fulfil the intentions of the Prime Minister." 
 But he found that he had " misunderstood his right 
 honourable friend in this particular." The Home 
 Rule Bill was completed by Gladstone, in concert 
 with Mr. John Morley and one or two other 
 members of his Junto : the Outer Cabinet were 
 merely called upon to register the results. 
 
 We get a glimpse of the same state of things, 
 in the disclosures, which ensued upon the minis- 
 terial secessions from Mr. Balfour's Cabinet, during 
 the autumn of 1903. It would seem that the 
 crucial decisions were not communicated to the 
 general body of the Cabinet, and that ministers 
 even so important as the Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer and the Secretary of State for India were 
 not admitted to the confidential conclave. 
 
 We may perhaps expect further development 
 along these lines. In a very large Cabinet, partly 
 composed of busy departmental officers, political 
 management will tend to be left more and more in 
 the hands of the influential sub-committee. It is 
 a repetition of the evolution of the Cabinet itself. 
 The organic, working, secret, " cabal," segregated 
 
 * Morley, Life of Gladstone, iii. 294 ; S. H. Jeyes, Mr. 
 Chamberlain, p. 254 seq.
 
 THE INNER CABINET 171 
 
 itself from the Privy Council, which gradually lost 
 its efficiency and became merely formal. Similarly, 
 the Inner Cabinet may draw to itself the effective 
 power of the whole body in the moulding of legisla- 
 tion and the direction of policy. The real business 
 may be transacted at little meetings, still more 
 private than those to which " His Majesty's 
 Servants" are summoned; and a Cabinet Council 
 may in time become a rare, and almost superfluous, 
 ceremony.* The Cabinet is a long way from this 
 stage at present. But even now, ministers are 
 rendered nominally responsible for many matters, 
 of which some of them have little real knowledge, 
 and on which they can bring to bear no genuine 
 influence. 
 
 * There was much complaint in the autumn of 1901 at the 
 infrequency with which Cabinet Councils were summoned. 
 Although the country was at war, there was no formal meeting 
 of ministers for several weeks after the prorogation of Par- 
 liament, and not one in the month of September or until 
 towards the end of October. The Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 apologised for' a state of things, which was in rather remark- 
 able contrast with previous practice (Lord Palmerston held 
 no less than ten Cabinets in September and October, 1855), 
 by saying that there really was no need for these frequent 
 meetings. " There are such things as interviews between 
 ministers . . . there are official messengers who carry com- 
 munications between differenb departments, and even to an 
 incompetent Government the telegraph and the post-office are 
 open " (speech by Sir Michael Hicks Beach at Oldham, Oct. 
 10, 1901). This looks like a rather plain-spoken admission that 
 the formal Council, the pledge of solidarity and collective re- 
 sponsibility, has been largely superseded by informal inter- 
 views and communications between certain selected members 
 of the Cabinet.
 
 CHAPTEE X 
 THE LIMITATIONS OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 The Sovereign People. 
 
 THE English Constitution might be the most demo- 
 cratic in the world. Nowhere else does it seem so 
 easy for the Sovereign People to exercise its will ; 
 nowhere else is the power of that sovereign so little 
 fettered. In most monarchical and federal states 
 this power is crossed and checked in various ways. 
 The great majority of the citizens of the United 
 States might perhaps be firmly persuaded that it 
 was desirable to abolish the separate State legisla- 
 tures, or to impose export duties on commodities, 
 or to allow soldiers to be quartered in the houses of 
 civilians, or to withhold the franchise from coloured 
 persons, or to grant titles of nobility, or to have the 
 President chosen by direct, instead of by secondary, 
 election. But they could do none of these things 
 without a revolution, or without the difficult and 
 elaborate processes by which the amendment of the 
 constitution is safeguarded. 
 
 In England, changes at least as sweeping as any 
 of those mentioned, could be consummated by the 
 normal political machinery. No AssembUe Con- 
 stituante or National Convention would be required 
 
 172
 
 THE LIMITATIONS OF DEMOCRACY 173 
 
 for the purpose. Parliament is, from the legal 
 point of view, the absolute sovereign of the British 
 Empire : " since every Act of Parliament is binding 
 on every court throughout the British dominions, 
 and no rule, whether of morality or of law, which 
 contravenes an Act of Parliament, binds any court 
 throughout the realm." * But the political, as dis- 
 tinguished from the strictly legal, sovereignty, is 
 with the electoral body. The electorate is the real 
 "sovereign" in England, and the conventions of 
 the Constitution are supposed to maintain its 
 supremacy. " Our modern code of constitutional 
 morality secures, though in a roundabout way, what 
 is called abroad the Sovereignty of the People." t 
 
 And to that sovereignty no limits are set. Demo- 
 cracy in America could not impair the validity of 
 contracts, or prescribe a redistribution of all private 
 property. But if the great majority of the English 
 electorate were persuaded that such innovations 
 were desirable, they could have them carried into 
 effect by the ordinary process of legislation. There 
 is no bar to the unchecked authority of the demos, 
 such as is presented in the United States, not 
 merely by the Constitution, but by the position of 
 the President : and in the monarchical countries 
 of Continental Europe by the control over adminis- 
 tration exercised by sovereigns who are practically 
 their own prime ministers. 
 
 In Great Britain, the Executive is supposed to 
 
 * Dicey, The Law of the Constitution, p. 357. 
 
 f " A dissolution," adds Professor Dicey, " is in its essence 
 an appeal from the legal to the political sovereign. A dis- 
 solution is allowable or necessary whenever the wishes of the 
 Legislature are, or may fairly be presumed to be, different from 
 the wishes of the nation."
 
 174 THE GOVERNANCE OP ENGLAND 
 
 be the servant and nominee of the Legislature ; 
 the Legislature consists of delegates of the larger 
 number of the Electors; and it is difficult to see 
 what further extensions in the direction of popular 
 government any partisan of Ochlocracy the rule 
 of the multitude could devise. Yet, in effect, the 
 multitude does not rule England. It is singular 
 how little the advance of Democracy, in the sense 
 just spoken of, has led to the actual administration 
 and control of affairs by persons belonging to the 
 most numerous classes of the population. 
 
 Our Government retains the characteristic, which 
 has so often roused the enthusiastic approval of 
 foreign observers, and of Burke, and Hallam, and 
 Macaulay, and Brougham, and other writers of the 
 Whig and Liberal school. It is still a " limited 
 Monarchy," as it used to be called, though perhaps 
 it could be more accurately styled a limited Demo- 
 cracy ; and it might even now be "likened to a 
 pyramid, of which the broad base, supporting the 
 whole, is formed by the People ; the middle portion 
 is the Aristocracy of rank, property, talents, and 
 acquirements ; and on the narrow summit rests the 
 Crown." * The rule of the Many continues to be 
 checked and qualified by the influence of the Few, 
 though that influence can no longer be called 
 aristocratic, in the sense in which the term could 
 have been used in the eighteenth, or the earlier part 
 of the nineteenth, century. 
 
 The Socio-Political Class. 
 
 The successive extensions of the suffrage have 
 frequently inspired cautious critics with alarm. 
 * Lord Brougham, The British Constitution, p. xx.
 
 THE LIMITATIONS OF DEMOCRACY 175 
 
 Educated and philosophical writers, belonging to the 
 comfortable middle classes, regarded with dismay 
 the transfer of preponderant political power to the 
 masses. They predicted that the process would 
 be destructive to the national stability and the 
 maintenance of social order. Government would 
 be administered, not in the interest of the whole 
 community, but in those of the most numerous 
 and poorest section. Property would be held at 
 the mercy of a vast predatory horde for whose 
 exclusive benefit the laws would be framed ; experi- 
 ence, knowledge, culture, trained judgment, would 
 be shouldered out of public life, and their places 
 taken by credulity, recklessness, and greed. These 
 forebodings were not confined to observers of the 
 more academic and conservative temperament, like 
 Lord Sherbrooke, Sir James Stephen, Sir Henry 
 Maine, and Mr. Lecky.* They were shared to some 
 extent by Liberal, and even Kadical, advocates of 
 popular rights, whose affection for the People was 
 perceptibly tempered by apprehension. Bagehot 
 says frankly, " I am afraid of the ignorant multitude 
 of the constituencies." Leading men in politics, on 
 the Liberal side, did not say this so plainly, but that 
 was what they meant. It was expected that the 
 Keform Bill of 1867 would be followed by a great 
 change, not only in the principles of our public life, 
 but in its personnel. 
 
 Neither result has been manifest. The new 
 voters showed no greater desire than their pre- 
 decessors for sweeping innovations or revolutionary 
 experiments. Still less is it true to say that the 
 Democracy has insisted in enthroning its own 
 * See Lecky, Democracy and Liberty (1896), passim.
 
 176 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 members in the seats of power, and turning out 
 the men of property, birth, and superior education, 
 to make room for them. For the Labour Cabinet, 
 and for the House of Commons with a majority 
 of members belonging to the working class, we 
 must go to the Australian Colonies. In England 
 we move cautiously. The demagogue plays his 
 part in our politics, but it cannot be said that he 
 is much more conspicuous than he was in the 
 'sixties of the last century. Since the Reform Bill 
 of 1867, the Conservatives have divided office fairly 
 with the Liberals ; and the former party has seldom 
 been more powerful, in Parliament and the country, 
 than it was during the greater part of the two 
 decades following the further extension of the 
 franchise in 1885. 
 
 It was reasonable to expect that the establish- 
 ment of political equality would lead to a great 
 change in the composition of the Legislature and 
 the Executive. One might have anticipated that 
 wealth and rank would disappear or lose all their 
 predominant influence. The House of Commons, 
 it was thought, would be constituted, like the 
 French Chamber, largely of minor professional 
 men doctors and engineers in no great practice, 
 country attorneys, journalists, and schoolmasters, 
 with, of course, plenty of labour delegates. But 
 the English working man, for five-and-thirty years 
 after the Act of 1867, followed in the footsteps of 
 the small shopkeeper, his predecessor in political pre- 
 dominance, during the five-and-thirty years that suc- 
 ceeded the Act of 1832. He remained generally 
 faithful to the tradition, which has prevailed through 
 all English history, that the conduct of public affairs
 
 THE LIMITATIONS OF DEMOCRACY 177 
 
 should be largely entrusted to those who enjoy the 
 advantages of birth, breeding, and affluence. 
 
 The recognition of this superiority is one of the 
 most distinctive of national traits. It has been 
 praised as the useful attribute of a Deferential 
 People, or sneered at as the characteristic of a 
 Nation of Snobs. The passion for equality, which 
 burns in the breast of the Frenchman, leaves the 
 Anglo-Saxon cold. There is a " best set " wherever 
 men and women of the race are gathered into any 
 kind of association. You find it at the Universities, 
 at every pleasure-resort, on board a passenger 
 steamer, and in the Australian back-blocks. It is 
 very nearly as well marked in American society as 
 in that of Great Britain. There are towns, all over 
 the United States, where there are certain families, 
 who are recognised as belonging to the best people, 
 and are looked up to, and sought after, by their 
 fellow-townsmen in consequence. The social dis- 
 tinction bulks as largely in the novels of Mr. Ho wells 
 and Mr. Henry James, as those of Thackeray ; and 
 the society portrayed in Washington Sqttare is not 
 much less " deferential " than that described in 
 Pendennis. 
 
 In America this sentiment is mainly social; it 
 is not carried into politics, from which, until 
 recent years, men of culture and position have been 
 disposed to stand aloof. In England, however, 
 politics has always been a kind of adjunct to society. 
 It still remains an occupation with distinctly aristo- 
 cratic associations. There are many reasons for 
 this. One is the fact that political power was so 
 long bound up with the possession of land. Another 
 cause was the existence of the House of Lords, and 
 
 13
 
 178 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 the fact that rising rich men, who in other countries 
 are anxious to get into politics for material pur- 
 poses, do so in England because it brings them into 
 contact with peers, and the sons and relatives of 
 peers, and other persons of social consequence. 
 
 It might conceivably happen, in France or in 
 the United States, that the entire legislative body, 
 in both its Chambers, with the Cabinet thrown 
 in, might not contain a single individual belonging 
 to " smart " society no one whom an ambitious 
 parvenu with a discerning wife and marriageable 
 daughters would care particularly to know. In 
 England such a situation is much less likely to 
 arise. Politics is pretty certain to attract a con- 
 siderable number of persons who have the things 
 which many Englishmen and most Englishwomen 
 esteem much more than intellect or mere clever- 
 ness; that is to say, titles, and ancient lineage, 
 and great landed possessions, and riches which 
 have descended upon the holders without any vulgar 
 effort of their own. London fashionable society is 
 a vast and mixed crowd. But the Peerage is at 
 its centre, in its inmost select circle. And the peers, 
 or some of them, cannot help being politicians. 
 
 The element of wealth is as important as ever it 
 was ; its relative weight has increased in comparison 
 with that of birth. The tendency of modern Parlia- 
 ments is to become rather less aristocratic and 
 rather more plutocratic. Bagehot who, with many 
 of the middle-class writers of the mid- Victorian 
 epoch, was almost morbidly conscious of class dis- 
 tinctions thought that the constituencies cared for 
 nothing so much as rank and birth in their 
 representatives. " A man who is an honourable or
 
 THE LIMITATIONS OF DEMOCRACY 179 
 
 a baronet, or better yet, perhaps, a real earl, though 
 Irish, is coveted by half the electing bodies ; and 
 cceterls paribus a manufacturer's son has no chance 
 with him." This could not now be said. Most 
 constituencies would be better pleased with the 
 son of a great manufacturer than with an im- 
 pecunious "honourable " or an Irish peer. But, no 
 doubt, the manufacturer's son would be more of a 
 "gentleman," more tinged with aristocratic ideas 
 and associations, than his predecessor in Lord 
 Palmerston's day. He would have been at Eton or 
 Harrow, he would very likely be a sportsman and 
 a landowner, he would have all the tastes and 
 manners of the class into which he is very likely to 
 have married. 
 
 It would not be true to say that politics in 
 England, even in Queen Victoria's reign, was a 
 monopoly of the rich. Still less would that 
 generalisation hold in the reign of King George V. 
 Nevertheless many members of Parliament are 
 persons of independent means, and most of those 
 who take a leading position might be called wealthy. 
 A poor man may get into the House of Commons, 
 with his expenses paid for him by a political or in- 
 dustrial organisation. This is usually the case with 
 labour representatives, who are " run " by the trade 
 societies, and depend on their parliamentary salaries 
 for their support ; and there are other members, 
 English, Scotch, Welsh, and Irish, in a somewhat 
 similar position. But a political aspirant in 
 England should be in easy circumstances, and if 
 he is very rich his upward progress will be 
 smoother and more rapid. Without sufficient 
 private resources, he finds himself handicapped in
 
 180 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 various ways. In London, during the session, 
 he is associated with a luxurious, pleasure-loving 
 society, that has a great deal of money to spend, 
 and spends it freely on dressing, dining, motor- 
 driving, theatre-going, in parties, entertainments, 
 and amusements of all kinds. The legislator need 
 not take part in this expensive life ; but if he 
 does it is much easier for him to be at the centre 
 of things, and to understand what is going on and 
 become influential with his party. 
 
 If he is to be a leader, he must entertain, and 
 give dinners and receptions. This is expected of 
 him in a country where dining and politics have 
 been closely associated for two centuries. Our 
 Ministerial system may almost be said to have 
 been born at the dinner-table. The first regular 
 private meetings of the Cabinet were Harley's 
 famous Saturday dinners, at which the inner group 
 of Queen Anne's Council could get together and 
 discuss affairs, without the presence either of the 
 Queen or of inconvenient colleagues.* The tradition 
 has been maintained. Politics, the dinner-table, 
 and the salon, have never sundered their alliance. 
 There is a curious letter from Disraeli to Lord 
 Malmesbury, in which the importance of "the 
 Captain " [Lord Derby] giving the proper dinner 
 parties, is dwelt upon with amusing solemnity : 
 
 " The cards should all be out ; if the dinners took place a 
 month hence it would not matter. What they want is to be 
 asked to their leader's, and to have their cards meeting them 
 
 * Blauvelt, Development of Cabinet Government in 
 England, p. 131. Swift was occasionally present at Harley's 
 Saturday dinners, and often alludes to them in his letters and 
 journals.
 
 THE LIMITATIONS OF DEMOCRACY 181 
 
 on their arrival in town. You must remember this is a new 
 Parliament, full of new men who have never entered his 
 house. . . . Those who understand these things have all 
 been to me to say how critical this is. ... Lord Salisbury 
 also should be asked to invite the men. His dinners last 
 year did great good, when our fortunes were darkest." * 
 
 The letter is dated January 24, 1853; but I 
 daresay a party leader of the twentieth century is 
 occasionally admonished in a similar strain by 
 " those who understand these things." 
 
 These matters, though they may be weighty 
 enough to the member of Parliament himself, do 
 not deeply concern his constituents. But they also 
 have their own reasons for wishing him to be 
 well-to-do. The party managers want a member, 
 who can contribute handsomely to the local political 
 clubs, pay most of the expenses of registration, 
 and provide the whole, or a good part, of the 
 salary of the agent and his clerks. The electors 
 at large have a natural affection for the lavish 
 public-spirited person, who is always ready to re- 
 spond to local solicitations with a sufficient cheque. 
 Church guilds, musical societies, charitable com- 
 mittees, football and cricket clubs, flourish under 
 the fertilising stream, and tap its source with un- 
 blushing rapacity. The wealthy M.P. or candidate 
 groans but pays. Sometimes, if he is "nursing" 
 the place assiduously, the constituency, in its 
 corporate capacity, may receive a douceur in the 
 shape of a public library, or an open space, or a 
 swimming bath. 
 
 Even for those who do indulge in these political 
 luxuries the cost of getting and holding a seat in 
 
 * Malmesbury, Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, p. 293.
 
 182 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 England is often heavy. A considerable proportion 
 of the English members of Parliament would be 
 satisfied if their annual outlay upon their division 
 came to no more than .500. Many spend less, 
 some a great deal more. There are large county 
 divisions, and certain small and greedy urban 
 communities, debauched by a succession of over- 
 affluent members, in which the annual expenditure 
 could be reckoned in thousands of pounds rather 
 than hundreds. And this is exclusive of the 
 actual cost of the election, which may be anything 
 from 600 to 2,000, and may have to be defrayed 
 at any moment determined by the Fates and the 
 Prime Minister. A man in straitened circumstances 
 cannot meet all these demands with the open- 
 handed liberality the electors appreciate. Against 
 the average member of Parliament, especially if 
 he be a Conservative, there can hardly be a more 
 injurious imputation than that he " does nothing " 
 for the place that he spends no money there. 
 And unless he is a politician of real distinction, 
 or of exceptional personal popularity, he is in 
 some danger of finding that his local Association is 
 angling industriously for a more munificent patron. 
 Apart, however, from selfish considerations, the 
 electors incline towards the rich man on public 
 grounds. Englishmen have a rooted regard for 
 success, particularly if it is of the solid, material 
 kind ; and wealth means success, in a world where 
 everybody would be rich if he could. It is a proof 
 of ability to have made a great business or to have 
 kept it going. Even if the money has been inherited, 
 its possession is interpreted as evidence of stability 
 and soundness. It is the old idea of the stake in
 
 THE LIMITATIONS OF DEMOCRACY 183 
 
 the country. A man with a large income and fat in- 
 vestments may not be so clever as a fluent lawyer 
 or an ingenious professor, but he is felt to be more 
 trustworthy. Besides, he can be independent. He 
 will be under no temptation to turn his politics into 
 cash. The poor man, with no capital but his brains 
 and a possibly precarious profession, is always looked 
 upon as very much of an adventurer in England 
 till he has " arrived." The constituencies so far 
 have not shown themselves specially anxious to 
 facilitate his arrival by the political road. They have 
 of late extended a certain favour towards the trade- 
 union working-man delegate ; but to the " carpet- 
 bagger " none at all. 
 
 The Parliamentary Oligarchy. 
 
 There are signs of a change. Tendencies are 
 at work, which may undergo sudden and rapid 
 development. Nothing would be less surprising, 
 than a very substantial modification of the social 
 and personal character of the House of Commons 
 during the next decade or two. In the meanwhile it 
 cannot be said that the real "democratic" element 
 has ever yet made its presence conspicuously felt in 
 the representative Chamber. 
 
 The Parliament of 1900 was perhaps a little less 
 wealthy and a little less aristocratic than its prede- 
 cessors ; * yet it was, in the main, an assembly of 
 persons who had either made or inherited a fortune, 
 
 * It was computed that a quarter of the members of the 
 House of Commons in 1865 were connected with the thirty- 
 one " great governing families " of England. In this House 
 there were 134 members of noble families, and 83 others of 
 aristocratic birth or descent.
 
 184 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 or who were connected with the landed and terri- 
 torial classes. Taking the assembly as a whole, its 
 composition was pretty much what it had been 
 twenty, thirty, or fifty years earlier. I select, at 
 random, from a list of this Parliament, a dozen 
 names of English and Scottish members, beginning 
 with one letter of the alphabet, and a dozen names 
 beginning with another letter. The status and pro- 
 fession of these members are given below, and in 
 some cases their place of education, since this is often 
 a guide to the social position of Englishmen of the 
 upper and middle classes: 
 
 1. Steamship owner ; company director. 
 
 2. K.C. ; eminent Chancery lawyer. 
 
 3. K.C. ; successful barrister. 
 
 4. Country gentleman ; Eton and Christ Church. 
 
 5. Member of great financial family; Eton and Trinity. 
 
 6. Son of a duke. 
 
 7. Brother of a duke. 
 
 8. Wealthy landowner and country gentleman. 
 
 9. Landowner and member of old territorial family. 
 
 10. Labour delegate. 
 
 11. Chairman of manufacturing company : Eton. 
 
 12. Country gentleman ; Eton. 
 
 1. Landowner; ex-diplomatist, member of aristocratic 
 
 family. 
 
 2. Manufacturer and coal owner. 
 
 3. Banker. 
 
 4. Country gentleman ; retired military officer. 
 
 5. Very wealthy merchant and financier. 
 
 6. Merchant. 
 
 7. Newspaper proprietor. 
 
 8. Great landowner ; partner in wealthy banking firm : 
 
 married to daughter of an earl ; Eton. 
 
 9. Son of a peer. 
 
 10. Country gentleman.
 
 THE LIMITATIONS OF DEMOCRACY 185 
 
 11. Wealthy country gentleman and colliery owner ; Harrow 
 
 and Trinity. 
 
 12. Country gentleman ; barrister ; Yeomanry officer ; 
 
 Harrow and Trinity. 
 
 The result would be much the same if we went 
 over the whole catalogue. Country gentlemen, 
 brewer, colliery proprietor, banker, " J.P. and D.L." 
 are descriptions which continue to meet the eye 
 descriptions slightly chequered by the occasional 
 "journalist," "miner's agent," and "trade union 
 secretary." About a quarter of the members had 
 been to school either at Eton or at Harrow. Now, 
 the proletariat has not yet taken to sending its boys 
 to these seminaries ; and it may be said that most 
 of the youths educated there are the sons of very 
 well-to-do parents, while many of them belong to 
 the class which, in any other country but England, 
 would be called aristocratic. 
 
 The Oligarchy in the Cabinet. 
 
 When we ascend from the Commons to the 
 Cabinet we find the popular element no more con- 
 spicuous. If we look at the body which really 
 rules the Empire, we see at once that it mainly 
 represents one portion of the House, and that the 
 undemocratic portion. And this is not the case 
 with the Conservatives alone, who might, perhaps, 
 be expected to have more indulgence for the claims 
 of wealth and birth in public life : the tendency 
 has been little less pronounced in the Liberal 
 Ministries. 
 
 In this respect our political system has preserved 
 much of its oligarchical character. The effective
 
 power continues to be retained in the hands of 
 a comparatively small body of persons, many of 
 them born to politics and brought into it young. 
 Koughly speaking, this class is composed almost 
 entirely of persons who form part of what is called 
 Society. It includes a considerable proportion of 
 the Peerage, with a certain number of members of 
 the older county families, who are rich enough to 
 keep good houses and live in style in London, as 
 well as a sprinkling of industrial, mercantile, and 
 financial, magnates who have the same qualifications. 
 These are the people who can, and do, " boss " 
 politics : not so much because they are clever, or 
 noble, or even rich, as simply because they are at 
 the centre of affairs, and have convenient oppor- 
 tunities for getting their hands upon the levers. 
 
 The case is similar to that which constantly 
 occurs at a public meeting, or a large committee, 
 called to discuss and transact any kind of business. 
 A knot of active and busy persons will gather round 
 the table, at which the chairman and secretary sit, 
 and they will propose the motions, draft the resolu- 
 tions, suggest the amendments, and generally arrange 
 matters as they please. There is nothing to prevent 
 any individual, in the body of the hall, or near the 
 door, from taking his fair share in the proceedings, 
 beyond the fact that he is isolated and unsupported, 
 and locally sundered from the focus of activity. If 
 he can speak, trumpet-tongued, he may command a 
 hearing; but if he is only an ordinarily quiet and 
 modest person he never gets his chance. The fussy 
 wire-puller at the table can do more with a whisper 
 than he could with a burst of eloquence. 
 
 So it is with la haute politique amongst us. The
 
 THE LIMITATIONS OF DEMOCRACY 187 
 
 governing cliques can govern because they see one 
 another daily : they are always calling on each other, 
 or lunching, or dining, or attending receptions 
 together ; they have been at the same schools and 
 colleges ; they have shot together, hunted together, 
 yachted together ; they stay at the same country 
 houses, when they leave the dozen or so of streets 
 and squares in London in which they all live ; and 
 about half of them are more or less closely connected 
 by the ties of blood or marriage. Of course, the out- 
 sider does get in, just as he may contrive to make 
 his voice heard at the public meeting; but he has to 
 be an outsider of unusual ability and force of char- 
 acter, and even then he does not, as a rule, win his 
 chance till he has either married into the circle, or 
 acquired sufficient wealth and social prestige to be 
 assimilated by it. 
 
 Society in England, however, has always exhibited 
 a wide liberality in its recognition of personal ability. 
 The selective process, by which it winnows out a 
 certain number of capable men, and admits them to 
 the socio-political connection, is really an important, 
 though of course quite unacknowledged, element in 
 our political system. The process is no doubt often 
 performed capriciously, irregularly, and unmethodi- 
 cally ; still it has served the purpose of bringing 
 into public affairs some talent which might other- 
 wise never have found its opportunity. To succeed 
 in London society, said Disraeli, you require TnHn^ 
 
 *" "< i "' nyii T'f t." 1 ' U J.T- "*j. 
 
 genius, or a million. He was himself the most 
 striking illustration of the fact that genius, especially 
 a genius for politics, may sometimes confer on its 
 possessor all, and more than all, the opportunities 
 which could be offered by wealth or inherited rank.
 
 188 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 Of the Prime Ministers of the nineteenth century 
 the greater number were peers, or closely connected 
 by birth with the Peerage, like Grenville, Portland, 
 Liverpool, Grey, Melbourne, John Kussell, Aberdeen, 
 Palmerston, Derby, and Salisbury ; two, Peel and 
 Gladstone, belonged to wealthy mercantile families ; 
 but Addington was the son of a physician, Canning's 
 father was an obscure barrister and his mother an 
 actress, and the elder Disraeli was a Jewish literary 
 man, of foreign descent, with a name which most 
 Englishmen were unable to pronounce correctly. 
 The successful outsiders had made their way, by 
 luck or their own cleverness, into the select circle. 
 Addington, whose father had been medical attendant 
 to the great Earl of Chatham, was put into Parlia- 
 ment for a close borough when he was six-and- 
 twenty. Canning, after attracting attention to him- 
 self in his brilliant career at Eton and Christ Church, 
 was no more than twenty-four when Burke and Pitt 
 introduced him into politics as member for Newport. 
 
 There have been Cabinet Ministers, like John 
 Bright, Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, Lord Morley, and 
 Mr. John Burns, whose distinction has been 
 achieved outside the socio-political coterie, who have 
 been commanding figures in the country, and well 
 known to the public, before they were admitted to 
 the dominant group. Such cases may become more 
 frequent in the future ; but the number of men, who 
 have scaled the walls of the political citadel, by the 
 truly democratic method of impressing their person- 
 ality upon the masses of their fellow-citizens, has so 
 far been small. Nor of these are there more than 
 two or three who have attained positions of the 
 highest eminence and authority, and who could have
 
 been thought of as possible candidates for the first 
 place of all. 
 
 We have, then, this actually large, but relatively 
 rather small, governing class, consisting of the few 
 thousand representatives of the nobility, landowners, 
 capitalists, and leading professional men, who make 
 up London society. No constitutional rule or 
 precedent prescribes that ministers shall be appointed 
 from this set of persons. But, from the circum- 
 stances of the case, they usually are so appointed. 
 The electorate itself is far too amorphous, too scat- 
 tered, and too ill-organised, to perform the process 
 of selection ; and there is nothing in England corre- 
 sponding to the party conventions, by which candi- 
 dates for the Presidency of the United States are 
 nominated. When the result of a general election 
 has decided that one of the two great parties is to 
 enter office the Sovereign sends for the statesman 
 who is the most conspicuous figure on the winning 
 side, and commissions him to form a Ministry. This 
 personage, whether he be a great nobleman or a dis- 
 tinguished commoner, has passed most of his years 
 even if he has not been actually "born in the 
 purple " within the innermost recesses of the socio- 
 political edifice. He himself may be, and probably 
 is, altogether above any vulgar admiration for wealth, 
 rank, and fashion. Yet the conditions of his life 
 make it difficult for him to break away from his 
 environment. His opportunities do not allow him 
 to consort with people who are poor, unknown, and 
 socially obscure. When he has to make up his 
 ministry he naturally consults his own little court of 
 followers and allies ; and they naturally press the 
 claims of their own friends and kinsmen. What
 
 190 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 wonder if the distribution of offices falls largely to 
 the members of this body? 
 
 A ministry, Liberal or Conservative, has so far 
 always been composed in part of the Premier's 
 political associates and supporters among the 
 Peerage. The rest are drawn from the House of 
 Commons; and since, as a rule, one fairly well- 
 educated and capable Englishman is as well able 
 to perform the duties of a public department as 
 tfUS another, when assisted by a sedulous, permanent 
 civil service, no great harm is done, and public 
 feeling is not outraged, by the fact that social 
 influences largely determine the choice. A man of 
 conspicuous ability, the representative of great classes 
 or interests, a Lloyd George or a John Burns, 
 may have to be admitted, whether he belongs 
 to the right set or not. But such men are rare. 
 The public is not specially concerned in asserting 
 the claims to office of one member of the House 
 of Commons rather than another. It has done its 
 duty at the polls by practically appointing A and 
 his party to the government, in preference to B 
 and his following ; and it is quite content to 
 leave the constitution of the executive committee, 
 and the allocation of the posts in it, to the 
 leader and his advisers. The jpoweiLis exercised. 
 on condition thaJLJt be not grossly abused* Pro- 
 vided the men appointed are respectable, upright, 
 and fairly competent politicians, of good private 
 character, and of some experience in public life, the 
 nation is satisfied. 
 
 A glance at the composition of any recent English 
 Ministry will show how largely it still continues to 
 be made up from this governing oligarchy. Here is
 
 THE LIMITATIONS OF DEMOCRACY 191 
 
 Lord Salisbury's third Administration, as formed on 
 June 29, 1895: 
 
 Marquess of Salisbury 
 
 Mr. A. J. Balfour 
 
 Lord Halsbury 
 Duke of Devonshire 
 
 Viscount Cross 
 
 Sir Michael Hicks-Beach 
 Sir Matthew White-Ridley 
 Mr. Chamberlain 
 
 Marquess of Lansdowne 
 Lord George Hamilton 
 
 Mr. Goschen 
 
 Lord Ashbourne 
 
 Lord Balfour of Burleigh 
 
 Lord James of Hereford 
 
 Mr. Ritchie 
 
 Mr. Chaplin 
 
 Mr. Walter Long 
 
 Mr. Akers Douglas ... 
 
 Status or Occupation. 
 Great peer and landowner ; 
 
 head of ancient and wealthy 
 
 aristocratic family. 
 Nephew of Lord Salisbury; 
 
 wealthy landowner. 
 Lord Chancellor. 
 Head of the House of Cavendish ; 
 
 great territorial magnate. 
 Peer ; landowner and Chairman 
 
 of Quarter Sessions. 
 Baronet and landowner. 
 
 Ditto. 
 Successful manufacturer and 
 
 man of business. 
 Peer and wealthy landowner. 
 Son of a Duke. 
 Wealthy financier. 
 Distinguished lawyer. 
 Head of old Scottish aristocratic 
 
 family; landowner. 
 Successful lawyer. 
 Wealthy man of business. 
 Country squire and landowner. 
 Ditto. 
 Ditto. 
 
 The subordinate ministers outside the Cabinet 
 included a duke and five other peers, two eldest sons 
 of peers, and one nephew of the Prime Minister. 
 
 This is a Conservative Cabinet; but if we turn 
 to a Liberal Ministry the analysis would not be 
 very different. Take the members of the 1894-95 
 Administration : 
 
 Earl of Rosebery 
 Earl of Kimberley 
 
 Status or Occupation. 
 Peer and wealthy landowner. 
 Ditto
 
 192 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 Marquess of Ripon Peer and wealthy landowner. 
 
 Lord Tweedmouth Ditto 
 
 Earl Spencer Ditto 
 
 Lord Herschell Successful lawyer. 
 
 Mr. Asquith Ditto 
 
 Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman Son of a wealthy manufacturer 
 
 and landowner. 
 
 Sir William Harcourt ... Member of ancient and aristo- 
 
 cratic county family. 
 
 Sir George Trevelyan ... Baronet and head of old county 
 
 family. 
 
 Sir Henry Fowler Wealthy solicitor. 
 
 Mr. John Morley Man of letters. 
 
 Mr. Arnold Morley Son of a very wealthy manu- 
 facturer. 
 
 Mr. James Bryce Distinguished jurist. 
 
 Mr. Shaw Lefevre Landowner, nephew of a peer. 
 
 Mr. A. H. D. Acland ... Member of old county family. 
 
 Literature and learning were a little better repre- 
 sented in this Liberal Cabinet, in the persons of Mr. 
 Morley and Mr. Bryce. Otherwise, it was not really 
 much more "popular" in its composition than its 
 predecessor. 
 
 The Liberal Cabinet of King Edward VII.'s reign 
 as formed by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and 
 reconstructed by Mr. Asquith, was more " popular," 
 that is to say, it included besides one Labour 
 member, five or six barristers and solicitors and 
 a professional literary man. But even in this 
 " democratic " Cabinet, birth, wealth, and social 
 influence were among the qualifications of two-thirds 
 of the members. They were, of course, not the only 
 qualifications ; yet it is plain that they were allowed 
 as much weight, in determining the selection, as 
 was the case with the rival Ministry. No one 
 who knows English politics will be prepared to
 
 THE LIMITATIONS OF DEMOCRACY 193 
 
 maintain that all, or even most, of Mr. Asquith's 
 colleagues were persons who could have been 
 nominated beforehand on their public reputation for 
 places in the Cabinet. They were included because 
 they happened to be known and favourably regarded 
 in the right quarters. 
 
 Again, in September, 1903, if the nation had been 
 polled to nominate a Colonial Secretary in succes- 
 sion to Mr. Chamberlain, the name of Mr. Alfred 
 Lyttleton would not have been found on the list. 
 To the general public he was known mainly as a 
 cricketer; in the House of Commons itself he was 
 popular and respected, but he had not taken a very 
 active part in debate, and would not have been 
 regarded as one of the leaders of the Assembly. It 
 was because his high gifts of character and intellect 
 had been rightly gauged by the inner circle, in 
 which a Prime Minister moves, that he was elevated 
 from the back benches of the House of Commons to 
 one of the half-dozen highest posts in the service of 
 the Crown. Democracy would certainly not have 
 made Mr. Lyttleton Colonial Secretary, perhaps, 
 it would not have made him a minister at all. The 
 governing oligarchy did so, and its discretion was 
 wisely exercised. It was a rather striking illustra- 
 tion of the manner in which an able man of high 
 social and personal qualifications, but of no great 
 political standing, may be introduced into the 
 supreme administration of the country. 
 
 It is not a process ol jobbery: for it 
 
 happen that bad or incapable men are corruptly 
 'given posts_lor which they "are unfit : but oligarchi- 
 cal, .m_its essence, it certainly is^ The members 
 of the oligarchy are, as a rule, so far removed from, 
 
 14
 
 194 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 the need of earning a livelihood, as to be able 
 to enter active politics in the prime of life. Some 
 of them have been preparing themselves for office 
 from their boyhood, by a long course of study, by 
 travel, and by an early apprenticeship to the House 
 of Commons, so that, as they near forty, they have 
 acquired an experience, with which the middle-class 
 man, who enters Parliament about that age, cannot 
 be expected to cope. 
 
 This is a real advantage, which acute foreign 
 observers of our politics fully appreciate. The late 
 Mr. T. B. Keed, formerly Speaker of the United 
 States House of Representatives, told the present 
 writer that he often looked with envy on this feature 
 of our system. In America, he said, too many of 
 the ablest men come into Federal politics too late in 
 life. Mr. Reed added that they often leave too 
 early. In England a man can take to politics 
 young, and he has a good chance of remaining in it 
 to an advanced age : 
 
 " Till old experience doth attain, 
 To something like prophetic strain." 
 
 In the United States a valuable political career 
 may be interrupted, or destroyed, by the operation 
 of the rule which prohibits a man from becoming 
 a candidate for Congress outside his own district. 
 Thus, if he forfeits the favour of his local supporters, 
 or from any other cause loses bis seat, he may never 
 ffit back to Congress. In England, a statesman. 
 who has some public following, may have to wander 
 from one constituency to another : but there is pretty 
 certain to be a body of electors somewhere
 
 THE LIMITATIONS OF DEMOCRACY 195 
 
 win..take^care that his services are not lost to 
 his party. The English political leader, beaten 
 in London or Lancashire, can appeal to a more 
 favourable electorate in Scotland or Wales. But 
 an American Eepresentative, who had been ousted 
 from his seat for a Congressional district in Massa- 
 chusetts, could not find compensation by travelling 
 to Illinois or Colorado ; nor could he even seek the 
 suffrages of another constituency in his own State. 
 The Constitution prohibits the former alternative; 
 and State law or established usage deprives him of 
 the latter, by prescribing that a member of Con- 
 gress must be resident in the district for which he 
 is elected. 
 
 The American custom is theoretically more 
 reasonable than our own ; for, other considerations 
 apart, it does seem proper that the representative of 
 a locality should have local interests and ties. The 
 insistence on the local qualification in America may 
 be due, as Mr. Bryce suggests, to the eighteenth- 
 century abuses of the English electoral system, under 
 which adventurers, unconnected with the district, 
 were sent down to a borough by influential patrons, 
 or allowed to buy the seat from the "freemen." 
 Yet the American restriction keeps some eminent 
 men out of public life, and it prevents others from 
 obtaining that useful kind of authority which 
 is the result of long association with affairs. 
 Here, as elsewhere, we have been fortunate 
 enough to find that the defects and anomalies, 
 which scientific constitution-makers avoided, have 
 turned out to be valuable in practice. The earlier 
 years of American politicians have been devoted, 
 more often than is the case in Great Britain, to
 
 196 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 some professional pursuit, or to money-making. 
 The able young man, unless he intends to " live 
 by the altar," and to pursue politics for gain, has 
 to establish his material position, before he can 
 become a candidate for Congress or his State Legis- 
 lature. By that time he is middle-aged ; he has 
 behind him the habits of half a lifetime, passed in 
 specialised labour ; and he does not so easily adapt 
 himself to another kind of business which has 
 rules and technicalities of its own. The difficulty^ 
 of a Democracy lies in inducing a sufficient^ number 
 of honest and capable men to undertake public__ 
 duties without the temptation, or the hope, of 
 obtaining the *' spoIIsT^ As long as the governing 
 oligarchy retains its influence that difficulty will 
 be less apparent in England than it has been in 
 some other countries. 
 
 On the other hand, it must be remembered that 
 our political leaders have not often been forced 
 to undergo that routine of unrelaxed toil, pursued 
 for the greater part of the day during the great 
 part of the year, which falls to the lot of the 
 majority of adult human beings on the face of 
 this earth. Many of them, indeed, would speedily 
 break down under such continuous and sustained 
 exertion. It is astonishing how little it takes 
 to make a member of Parliament ill^ A fortnight 
 of real pressure is enough to send harassed legis- 
 lators flying to the country, in search of rest 
 and change.* During the troubled weeks of the 
 
 * Mr. S. H. Jeyes, in his monograph on Mr. Chamberlain, 
 attributes no small portion of the success of that statesman 
 to the fact that, unlike most of his rivals, he was able to 
 devote himself to his political duties with genuine energy and
 
 THE LIMITATIONS OF DEMOCRACY 197 
 
 summer of 1899, which preceded the outbreak 
 of the Boer War, some of the most responsible 
 personages in the Cabinet were away taking their 
 holidays. It hardly seems to have occurred to them 
 that a minister could postpone his vacation, and 
 remain in town till the early autumn, even at a time 
 when the country was trembling on the very verge 
 of a great campaign.* 
 
 The members of this class have always exhibited 
 and continue to exhibit, many qualities which 
 Englishmen esteem. They are upright, patri- 
 otic and good-tempered, and they survey public 
 affairs with that easy, unimpassioned, common 
 sense which we understand and rather admire. 
 Some of them are persons of the highest intellectual 
 capacity, and most of them are fairly able, and as 
 well informed and well educated as the majority of 
 their countrymen. And it may be said that they 
 are the sort of men who have, for centuries, led the 
 English people in peace and war, in commerce and 
 administration, and by whom, on the whole, the Eng- 
 lish people have shown themselves well content to be 
 led. A different kind of leadership may be required 
 
 industry. " With the unfettered leisure of a man of fortune, 
 he combined the habits of a man of business. Whether agita- 
 ting on a public platform or directing party organisations, he 
 laboured as industriously as an official whose salary is regulated 
 by the results he achieves. When he was grappling with 
 administrative problems in Whitehall he was as keen about the 
 efficiency of his department as if he were building up a private 
 business." Jeyes, Mr. Chamberlain, His Life and Public 
 Career, p. 155. 
 
 * See Sir Bedvers Buller's correspondence with Lord 
 Lansdowne in the Beport of the Royal Commission on the 
 War in South Africa, 1903.
 
 198 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 in the future, and it may or may not be forth- 
 coming. But so far the tradition of the past has 
 continued to prevail, and its influence, in this 
 respect, though, no doubt, decreasing steadily, is 
 still very great.
 
 CHAPTEK XI 
 GOVERNMENT BY AMATEUBS 
 
 IT has often been made a reproach to Democracy, 
 particularly to modern Democracy, that it is careless 
 as to the special qualifications of those who direct 
 its affairs. It chooses its rulers not because they 
 are competent but because they are popular^ A 
 man becomes a member 61 a legislature not on 
 account of his ability but because his opinions are 
 those of the greater number of the electors. It will 
 hardly be disputed that modern representative insti- 
 tutions under a wide franchise have not brought into 
 the national service the highest skilled talent of the 
 community. Mr. Godkin* says that in America, 
 in the case of elective offices, such as those of legis- 
 lators and governors, there is a marked tendency to 
 discredit such qualifications as education and special 
 experience. He thinks that this is due to the pre- 
 vailing worship of Equality^ " In the popular mind 
 there is what may be callecf a disposition to believe, 
 not only that one man is as good as another, but 
 that he knows as much on any matter of general 
 interest." 
 
 Mr. Bryce takes much the same view. " The 
 
 * Unforeseen Tendencies of Democracy, p. 43. 
 199
 
 200 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 fact is," he says, " that the Americans have 
 ignored in all their legislative, as in many of their 
 administrative arrangements, the differences of 
 capacity between man and man. They^underrate_ 
 the difficulties of government, and overrate the_ 
 etpacitieiTof thelmaa-Ql common sense. Great are 
 the blessms_ofj8^uality ; but what follies are com- 
 mitted in its name ! ' ' * "^Polrbics^ like criticism, 
 
 according to Byron's definition, t is one of the 
 businesses for which, on this assumption, no special 
 preparation or predisposition is required. 
 
 While the passion for social equality is much 
 less noticeable in this country than in the United 
 States and France, the tolerance of intellectual 
 equality is even more marked, and the belief in 
 the average good sense of the average man quite 
 as strong. Government in England is government, 
 by amateurs. The subordinates, in their several 
 grades, are trained ; the superiors, the persons in 
 whom rest responsibility and power, are untrained. 
 Yet the necessity for trained intelligence and 
 accuracy is greater than ever. The influence of 
 government on all departments of national life has 
 increased, and will continue to increase. We may 
 not like this tendency, but we cannot check it. The 
 doctrine of administrative laissez-faire is not so 
 much discredited as out of date, in an age when 
 public authorities are constantly finding fresh duties 
 and responsibilities thrown upon them. Govern- 
 ment, which carries our letters, and manages our 
 
 * Bryce, The American Commonwealth, i. 483. 
 f "A man must serve his time to any trade, 
 Save criticism ; critics are ready made." 
 Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.
 
 GOVEENMENT BY AMATEURS 201 
 
 telephones and telegraphs, and hoards our savings, 
 and sees after the teaching of our children, and 
 may presently own our railways, has also become 
 a national purveyor of medical treatment and a 
 gigantic insurance corporation. It tells us how 
 much sugar we may take with our beer and how 
 much fat with our butter. It casts its eye upon the 
 windows of our lodging-houses and the ventilators 
 in our factories. It takes cognisance of the import- 
 ation of German corkscrews and Austrian lead 
 pencils, and could not allow five sparrows to be sold 
 for a farthing without its intervention. The revival 
 of the tariff controversy brought back a whole body 
 of economic preoccupations, from which, in this 
 country, governments and parliaments had been 
 relieved. The incessant and multitudinous activity 
 of the State will grow with the growing complexity 
 of the social system, with the new wants, the new 
 duties, the new dangers, which are constantly 
 arising. A modern nation is running with all its 
 motors at high pressure, and it will not run itself. 
 The amount of skilled faculty required in every 
 important business is greater than ever it was. 
 But the greatest business of all the business of 
 government is carried on by persons who have 
 very often no special attainments, and as a rule no 
 special training. We require some acquaintance 
 with the technicalities of their work from the subor- 
 dinate officials, but none from the responsible 
 chiefs. A youth must pass an examination in 
 arithmetic before he can hold a second-class clerk- 
 ship in the Treasury ; but a Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer may be a middle-aged man of the world, 
 who has forgotten what little he ever learnt about
 
 202 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 figures at Eton or Oxford, and is innocently anxious 
 to know the meaning of " those little dots," when 
 first confronted with Treasury accounts worked out 
 in decimals. A young officer will be refused his 
 promotion to captain's rank if he cannot show some 
 acquaintance with tactics and military history ; but 
 the Minister for War may be a man of peace we 
 have had such who regards all soldiering with 
 dislike, and has sedulously abstained from getting 
 to know anything about it. 
 
 It may be said that all this is merely a character- 
 istic of government by the people under the forms 
 of popular election. The amateur is installed in 
 power in the central government of France, and the 
 United States, and in other countries with a fully 
 developed representative system, and he directs 
 municipal affairs almost everywhere. Moreover, he 
 is no newcomer in the government of England. 
 From Saxon and Norman times downwards we have 
 had him. The tithing-men, and hundred-men, and 
 the freemen of the boroughs, the freeholders of 
 the county court, the barons of the Great Council 
 and the Curia Regis, the knights and burgesses of 
 the early Parliaments, the members of the later 
 House of Commons, the justices at Quarter Sessions, 
 the Guardians of the Poor, all these, in their several 
 degrees, were ordinary citizens, "unlerned and 
 lewed," as Chaucer would have called them, laymen 
 picked out from the average mass of their class and 
 ordered to discharge public functions. It might be 
 urged that government is only being conducted on 
 the principles which have prevailed for ages in 
 Great Britain, which are also prevailing at present 
 over a large part of the civilised world.
 
 GOVERNMENT BY AMATEURS 203 
 
 There are, however, two points to be noticed. 
 The first is that government is more technical than 
 ever it was before ; the second that the governors 
 are, relatively speaking, less expert than at any^ 
 previous period. The older English system dis- 
 tinctly contemplated that the actual executive 
 should be in the hands of a very highly trained body 
 of professional politicians, that is to say, the King 
 and his paid officers, who had the best reason for 
 taking their duties with the utmost seriousness, 
 since the master might have lost his crown, and 
 the servants their heads, if they made too many 
 mistakes. The Saxon thegnhood, and the Norman 
 comitatus, the prelates and magnates sumrP nT1pf l 
 to the King's Council, were closely conversaat_ 
 with the kind of business they were required to 
 discuss, 
 
 . i '*" 
 
 All the older English deliberative assemblies 
 were constituted of persons who were called to- 
 gether to handle affairs with which they would 
 have some amount of precise acquaintance. Right 
 down to the end of the eighteenth, and far into 
 the nineteenth, century, central as well as local 
 government was mainly in the hands of the county 
 gentlemen, and the nominees of the territorial pro- 
 prietors. In a country which was preponderantly 
 agricultural, these rural interests were all-important. 
 The " governing class " was then really occupied in 
 the national administration. " Not by the forms of 
 Parliamentary rule/' says Professor Gneist, " but 
 by personal activity in the daily work of the 
 State, has the greatness of England been created, 
 as was once that of Republican Rome." It is the 
 surcease of this " personal activity," the divorce
 
 204 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 between the local and the central institutions, 
 which fills the great conservative constitutionalist 
 with apprehension for the future stability of our 
 society, and launches him upon a sea of doleful 
 foreboding.* 
 
 The Detached Property Owner. 
 
 The Prussian professor may lay undue emphasis 
 on this point, but it is not one to be ignored. The 
 change, though comparatively recent, is consider- 
 able. The landed class is still strongly represented 
 in the House of Commons, and paramount in the 
 House of Lords ; but its character has altered. Its 
 members are no longer ascripti glebes, bound by 
 intimate ties to the soil of England. The great 
 landlord is often a mere rentcharger, the smaller 
 landowner a kind of rentier. " The inactive peer," 
 says Gneist, " who in previous generations formed 
 the exception, has become an everyday phenomenon, 
 at a time when the very existence of the House of 
 Lords is at stake. An irresistible desire to wander 
 abroad has taken possession of the landed gentry, 
 though their presence on their estates has become 
 more necessary than ever, in order not utterly to 
 lose their waning local influence." t This kind 
 of " phenomenon " is more common now than it 
 was a very few years ago. There njev-r_was such 
 a leisured classes there jsjn England_at thejjrjesejit 
 Hay leTsured^ in the sense of being completely 
 
 * Gneist, Student's History of the English Parliament, 
 p. 415. 
 
 f " All moves," adds Prof. Gneist in his inspiriting fashion, 
 "as formerly in France and Germany when on the very brink 
 of the precipice."
 
 GOVERNMENT BY AMATEURS 205 
 
 irresponsible, utterly unfettered by public obliga- 
 jions. entirely jj^<fom'flti'p. f and good-naturedly selfish. 
 Everybody who has any acquaintance with English 
 society must be familiar with the country gentle- 
 man unattached. Let us take a typical specimen. 
 
 His ancestors, for many generations, were the 
 lords of some thousands of acres of moor and pasture 
 ground, with a little good plough-land, in a county 
 of the North. Through the vicissitudes of our 
 history they assiduously nursed that estate, living 
 in modest sufficiency from the tribute of their 
 tenants and the profits of their own farming and 
 cattle-breeding. One squire was out with the dis- 
 orderly Lancastrian host that fell into rout at 
 Towton ; another rode behind Rupert at Marston 
 Moor ; a third just cautiously saved himself from 
 joining the Young Chevalier on the march to Derby. 
 They were hard-drinking hunting men and sturdy 
 Tories all through the eighteenth century; they 
 damned Bonaparte and the Whigs in the early 
 nineteenth ; one of them sat in Parliament after 
 the Eeform Bill, and voted steadily for Peel and the 
 Corn Laws until the Great Betrayal of 1846. They 
 were always local leaders, minor magnates in their 
 own sphere, busy with the affairs of their small 
 enclave, much occupied in county business, way- 
 wardens, officers of the Militia and the Yeomanry, 
 Justices of the Peace. 
 
 The present head of this ancient house has no 
 taste for the routine of rather dull business and 
 unexciting recreation. He does not see why he 
 should bury himself among his ancestral fallows, 
 and work like an auctioneer's clerk. The estate 
 is more valuable than ever it was before, for there
 
 206 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 are minerals in the neighbourhood, and rents have 
 risen ; but the home farm is given up, and the 
 agent looks after the tenants. Our squire is on 
 the Commission of the Peace, but he seldom appears 
 on the Bench, where he would have to rub shoulders 
 with local tradesmen and interest himself in 
 squabbles over a public-house license. He goes 
 to his grim old Hall in the autumn for the shooting, 
 since he is fond of sport, in the modern fashion, 
 which is to say that he is fond of amusing himself. 
 But he does not stay long. He has a house in 
 a square in Kensington, where his wife expects him 
 to give dinner parties ; he plays golf at various 
 places on the English and Scottish coasts and 
 motors over the French roads ; he spends his 
 summer at a German bath, and much of his winter 
 on the Kiviera or in Egypt. He is a perfectly 
 happy, upright, and deeply respectable Briton. 
 His tastes are manly ; his instincts are sound ; _be 
 is full of a healthy, egotistical domesticity. He 
 lives for himself and his wife and his sons and 
 daughters, and in a minor degree for the rest of his 
 family and his friends. But of citizens he is the 
 most uncivic ; he dwells apart from the main cur- 
 rents of national life ; he isjn the State but_not of it. 
 Perhaps that is an extreme case. But the number 
 of such men is rapidly increasing. You meet them 
 everywhere men of independent fortunes, inherited 
 from their ancestors, and perhaps increased by 
 judicious intermarriage with the prosperous bour- 
 geoisie. Nowhere is there so much wealth, abso- 
 lutely free from any corresponding sense of obligation, 
 as in modern Britain. Property, we are told, has 
 its duties as well as its rights; in most countries
 
 GOVERNMENT OF AMATEURS 207 
 
 and in most ages it has had to undertake the dis- 
 tinctly onerous duty of defending itself from attack. 
 But in our securely fenced and padded society the 
 property-owner has no such anxiety. P]fl.p.k cp.re 
 need not mount behiH *>>* ^"T"ei"^ No one 
 menaces, no one disturbs him, unless it be at times 
 a Eadical Chancellor of the Exchequer. He may, 
 if he pleases, be as much a stranger, politically 
 speaking, in England, as he is in the Continental 
 pleasure resorts in which he passes so much of his 
 time. 
 
 The greater landowners cannot take their respon- 
 sibilities so lightly. The management of a large 
 estate is still a serious business, requiring attention 
 and care. But even here there is a change. The 
 wealthiest English landlords derive the chief part 
 of their income from urban ground-rents and lease- 
 holds, or from mines, railways, docks, and other 
 forms of industrial property. The head of one of 
 these vast concerns must have an office, and he does 
 well to look after it himself. But he need no longer 
 be in close personal contact with the administration 
 of the country. If he has rural estates, he keeps 
 them up mainly for recreative purposes ; he has 
 his parks, his gardens, his coverts, and his mansions, 
 to which he retires for sport, and rest, and the 
 entertainment of his friends. He continues to be 
 a very important personage in his various districts ; 
 but his importance is social and personal rather 
 than administrative. There are exceptions, as in 
 the case of some of the territorial magnates, who 
 own large tracts of land remote from the great 
 towns, and are surrounded by some shadows of 
 the old quasi-feudal tradition. They still retain an
 
 208 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 interest in country government ; but county govern- 
 ment^outside the county boroughs, is drifting away 
 from the tide of English political and industrial 
 activity. This beats most strongly in the urban 
 municipalities, great and small, and from the life of 
 these places in modern thegnhood stands apart. 
 
 It is from this comfortable class of persons, 
 independent, and to some extent dSracines no 
 longer bound intimately to the land, but attached 
 to it by a mere "cash nexus" that the House of 
 Commons, as we have seen, is largely recruited. T'be. 
 landed interest vies with the mercantile plutocracy 
 in filling the Jbencbes of the Lower Chamber. The 
 two classes together with the lawyers still form the 
 majority of the House, if the members from Ireland 
 and Wales are excluded. The large admixture of 
 the mercantile element may perhaps be regarded as 
 a counterpoise to the amateurishness of the more 
 strictly " leisured " men. These ironmasters, rail- 
 way directors, manufacturers, bankers, mill-owners, 
 are not idlers, and they must know a good deal about 
 practical affairs. But they may be amateurs in the 
 House of Commons. The better they know their 
 businesses, the more closely they attend to them, 
 the less likely are they to approach either the details, 
 or the broad principles, of politics in a serious pro- 
 fessional manner. 
 
 There is, of course, a good deal to be said for a 
 governing body which is not too full of minute 
 knowledge. A collection of experts is in many ways 
 a dangerous^assembly. It is apt to be stiff. pedantic. 
 impracticable^. If all the members of the House of 
 Commons were as well informed and sedulous as a 
 handful of them are, ministers would be worried to
 
 GOVERNMENT BY AMATEURS 209 
 
 death, and the work of the Empire would not get 
 itself done. The House is a fairly representative 
 collection of average Englishmen, interested in public 
 questions, but not overwhelmed by them, and gene- 
 rally able to look at things in a detached, practical 
 fashion. They are not wholly unconscious of their 
 own limitations, they are honest and well-meaning, 
 and they are fairly capable. So they can consider 
 the acts of the Executive, and discuss legislative 
 projects, with the cool, shrewd, tolerant judgment 
 of men of the world, who are neither fanatics 
 nor formalists. T^^j^ng 6 ^ is. not that the House, 
 of Commons may become too zealous, but jhat it 
 
 n t be zealous enough. Its members, though 
 
 ^grij^bt, and sometimes able, are too apt to 
 regard ^politics asjiTpastime, and the House itself as 
 a^club. 
 
 The Amateur in the Electorate. 
 
 If the elected is a political amateur, so assuredly 
 is the elector. Of all the curious, unforeseen results 
 due to the development of the representative system 
 under modern conditions none is more remarkable 
 than the manner in which it has relieved the 
 great mass of citizens from active participation 
 in politics. Aristoi.lp, r,nnmdp.rp.fl iff fiftfte-ffitia-1 that 
 the ..Siiata..ahjQiild.,i)^ small enough for all p.itiy.p.nH 
 to take a personal share in the functions oJMjllS 
 TegTslatiL:e_aridJEn'e^juj5ciary. The invention of re- 
 presentation has enabled a Democracy to be enlarged 
 beyond the constricted area of the Greek city ; and 
 the free press and the public meeting have given 
 opportunities for the constant and intelligent super- 
 vision of their Government to the inhabitants of 
 
 15
 
 210 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 even the largest and most scattered communities. 
 The ordinary elector is supposed to be keenly alive 
 to the march of events, and to follow with close 
 attention the acts and omissions of those to whom 
 he has entrusted the stewardship of his corporate 
 interests. 
 
 But that is not so in fact. The mechanical im- 
 provements and appliances of civilisation, combined 
 with the growth of the democratic principle, have 
 brought into politics those great masses of toiling 
 men who, according to Aristotle, are too busy to be^ 
 good. " The jurors who are to be our citizens," 
 observes the philosopher of a slave-holding republic, 
 "must not be husbandmen, as leisure, which is im- 
 possible in an agricultural life, is equally 
 
 the culture of virtue and political action." He is led 
 therefore to the conclusion that " neither the 
 mechanics, nor any other members of the State, 
 who do not cultivate virtue, are entitled to political 
 rights." * 
 
 In a modern State the citizens, whether they 
 " cultivate virtue " or not, have little scope for 
 leisured thought. The great majority have neither 
 the time nor the mental concentration, to study 
 politics in a systematic fashion. True, we have a 
 free and a cheap press, and everybody reads the news- 
 papers. But it is only a very insignificant minority, 
 who keep their minds fixed steadily, from day to day 
 
 * " It is evident, from what has been demonstrated, that in a 
 State in which a perfect polity prevails, and in which the 
 citizens are just men in an absolute sense, the citizens ought not 
 to lead a mechanical or commercial life ; for such a life is 
 ignoble and opposed to virtue." Aristotle, Politics, bk. iv. 
 chap. 9.
 
 GOVERNMENT BY AMATEURS 211 
 
 on the sequence of events with the object of arriving 
 at a reasoned decision. Of the rest, many take their 
 papers for the sporting columns, 1 the gossip, or the 
 reports of proceedings in the courts of law ; some 
 perhaps for the notices of literature, art, and the 
 drama ; others for the fashion articles and the 
 notes and paragraphs about well-known people and 
 society functions, or for information upon finance 
 and trade. 
 
 When men live in small communities, even rjnfler 
 an imperfect system of self-government, they cannot 
 avoid personal participation in some public functions. 
 So it was in the older rural England, before the 
 organic social changes of the last century. Where 
 a family might go without its winter firing, if the 
 lord of the manor prohibited the cutting of turf 
 and the collection of wood, every tenant would be a 
 self-appointed member of a Commons Preservation 
 Society. Much satire has been expended upon the 
 Parish Pump ; but one can understand the interest 
 that humble installation must have possessed for 
 the little group of households which had to draw 
 their own water from it daily in their own buckets. 
 There were civic duties to discharge as well as civic 
 rights to vindicate. 
 
 The old offices, or many of them, exist, and they 
 have been largely reinforced by the army of new 
 ones created under the Municipal Corporations Acts, 
 the Local Government Acts, and the Education 
 Acts. But the population has grown out of all 
 relation to them, and they are lost amid the vast 
 agglomerations of people in the great towns and the 
 greater town suburbs. Neither local government, 
 nor central government, is now the concern of the
 
 212 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 general body of Englishmen, who take no share in 
 the one, and only an intermittent and occasional 
 part in the other. These functions are discharged 
 not by the citizens as a whole, but by small com- 
 mittees, sometimes selected, sometimes self -elected.* 
 The great malorityjof Jhe inhabitants of a city jire 
 what^tbe^G-reeks called Ji&iots (t&tJmu),persons who 
 perform no^public_,dutieB i and take no interest_m^ 
 ~pufelic_ ajfairs. And nowhere, with the doubtful 
 exception of the United States, is there so large a 
 proportion of persons who live " the untroubled life 
 of the non-political man " t as in a great English 
 urban centre. 
 
 To the English town-dweller, if he so pleases, the 
 State and the City are no more than huge benefit 
 clubs, from which he derives many advantages in 
 return for moderate periodical disbursements of cash. 
 He pays his subscription by way of a cheque to the 
 rate-collector or the assessor of Income Tax, grumb- 
 ling a little at the amount ; and that is very often 
 the sum of his civic sacrifices, beyond the liability 
 to serve, once in a way, perhaps once in a lifetime, 
 upon a jury. The great machine is run for him by 
 paid officials, or by small bodies of voluntary opera- 
 tors ; he hardly hears the whirring of the wheels 
 as they buzz past. There are tens of thousands of 
 intelligent Londoners of all classes who do not 
 know the names of the members of their Borough 
 Council and their Board of Guardians, who have 
 
 * Through the abolition of the personal duties of the 
 citizen, the communal body is, in fact, virtually transformed 
 into a system of shareholders." Gneist, Students' History of 
 the British Parliament, 416. 
 
 \ |3ioc dvSpdf Idiurov dtrpdyfjuav (Plato, Republic, 620 C).
 
 GOVERNMENT BY AMATEURS 213 
 
 not the faintest idea of the duties of a school- 
 management committee, who except at election 
 times would find some difficulty in remembering the 
 Parliamentary and County Council division for 
 which they have a vote. 
 
 For the vast majority of adult persons the single, 
 tie tbat binds them to the political system of their_ 
 country is the exercise of the franchise. At the 
 polls, is made the appeal unto Caesar ; the electors 
 constitute themselves the supreme tribunal, and 
 pronounce their verdict on the great issues of policy, 
 and the conduct of the administration. "The 
 franchise," says Professor Hearn,* "is not, as many_ 
 persons contend, either a right or a trust. It is a 
 '^utj?' But there never was a solemn obligation 
 more easily borne, a duty which could be discharged 
 with less effort, or attention, or care, or risk, or 
 labour, or personal inconvenience. Nothing is 
 required from the elector but the expenditure of a 
 few minutes of his time once in two, or three, or 
 perhaps five, years. A parliamentary election, the 
 choosing of a new Grand Council of the Empire, 
 need give him no more trouble than taking out a 
 dog-license. 
 
 Before the Ballot Act, and the general simplifica- 
 tion of electoral machinery, the case was different. 
 The process of recording the vote was slow and 
 cumbrous, it made some demands upon the leisure 
 and patience, and sometimes even upon the moral 
 and physical courage, of the elector. He may have 
 had a long journey to take in bad weather over bad 
 roads. With open voting, especially when the poll 
 was going on for days, the course of the fight could 
 * The Government of England, p. 537.
 
 214 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 be closely followed. Every voter must have felt 
 that he was taking a personal part in it, and it 
 would have been strange if he did not develop that 
 individual interest which, at present, is often con- 
 fined to a mere handful of active political "workers" 
 in the constituency. In the literature of the earlier 
 part of the nineteenth century we get vivid pictures 
 of the older electioneering, with the rowdy nomina- 
 tion day, the speeches of the rival candidates on the 
 hustings, the excited mobs clamouring round the 
 booths, the electors marching up to vote for the 
 Blue or Bun candidate, proudly or defiantly con- 
 scious that the public eye was upon them, and 
 perhaps aware that consequences, not uninteresting 
 to themselves, might follow. There is an excellent 
 (>f J accoun * ^ * ne whole transaction in Lytton's My 
 ^jjLlTk ^'yT.' Novel, and another, burlesqued but informing, in 
 \)jJ)J* ' the famous chapter in Pickwick on the Eatanswill 
 Election. The picture is one of Hogarthian riot 
 and rough vigour, but at least it is alive. 
 
 If the corruption and coarseness of the old 
 system have disappeared, much of its animated 
 interest has gone too. There is no hustings,* the 
 
 * M. Boutmy rather quaintly regards the suppression of the 
 hustings as fraught with all sorts of grave consequences. " The 
 law of 1872 attacked what seemed to be only a farce in the 
 worst of taste ; but this farce of a day, during which the crowd 
 satisfied to repletion its brutal appetite for power, shrouded 
 the real act of sovereignty, to all appearance mean and insig- 
 nificant, in a veil of dust, noise, and intoxication, which pre- 
 vented their attaching due value to it and grudging the ballot 
 to the freehold electors. The system of secret voting, while 
 it deprived the people of their few hours of license, during 
 which they exhausted their superfluous animal spirits (ou il 
 son trop-plein de vie bestiale), also unwisely took
 
 GOVERNMENT BY AMATEURS 215 
 
 nomination is a matter of form, the oratorical duel 
 in public between the opposing candidates has been 
 abolished ; the polling lasts only one day, and in the 
 great town it is usually a quiet and dull day. The_ 
 _electifira .has been divested of every circumstance o 
 significance and jiignity. The town-hall, or an 
 elementary school, or some other public building, 
 has replaced the polling-booth. In the middle of 
 the large bare room the row of sentry-boxes of 
 rough boarding is erected. At an unimpressive 
 table sit the returning officer and his clerks with 
 the tin ballot-boxes in front of them. The elector 
 strolls into the room, gives his name and address 
 to one of the officials, receives a numbered slip of 
 paper with the names of the candidates, takes it to 
 one of the deal shanties to affix his cross, comes 
 back with it folded, drops it through a slit in the 
 tin box, and goes out. That is all; and to the voter 
 it sometimes seems too little. Anybody who has 
 had much experience in elections must have 
 observed that a young working-class elector will 
 often appear bewildered and disconcerted by the raw 
 simplicity of the whole proceeding. Unconsciously \ 
 he feels that it is too brief, too unimportant. He 
 fancies that there must be something more for him 
 to do : that this high privilege, this urgent duty, of 
 which he had heard so much, ought not to be rattled 
 through with so scant a ceremony, so little expen- 
 diture of energy on his own part. 
 
 Writers on the constitution dwell on the analogy 
 
 from them that participation which rendered the masses less 
 conscious, and the compensation which softened for them 
 the bitterness of the feeling of inequality and exclusion." 
 Psychologic politique du peuple anglais, part iv. chap. i.
 
 216 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 between the electoral and the judicial system. 
 " Popular Government," says Sir Henry Maine,* 
 " and Popular Justice were originally the same 
 thing." The jurors, in the courts of law, as 
 Maine points out, are strictly controlled and guided, 
 and are assisted to arrive at a definite conclusion on 
 the facts before them by a system of contrivances 
 and rules of the highest elaboration and artificiality. 
 But the adjudicating Democracy, in its political capa- 
 city, is under no compulsion to examine the evidence 
 closely, it has no expert professional guidance, and 
 it is allowed, and indeed encouraged, to discharge 
 its functions with the minimum outlay of time 
 and attention. What confidence would be placed 
 in the decision of a jury in the law-courts, if there 
 were no guarantee that the jurors had heard the 
 addresses of counsel, if some of them knew nothing 
 of the case except what they had gathered from 
 intermittent glances at newspaper reports, and if 
 they were not obliged to take any more real trouble 
 in the matter than would be involved in personal 
 attendance for a few minutes in order to record 
 their verdict on a ballot-paper? 
 
 It is a curious result, not so much of Democracy, 
 as of modern industrial and social conditions and 
 the increase in the size of all units of govern- 
 ment and population. Political power is vested in 
 the mass of citizens ; but the mass of citizens, in 
 most countries, are too busy or too indifferent to 
 obtain political knowledge. Hence it arises that 
 
 * Maine, Popular Government, p. 89 : see also his Early 
 Law and Custom, -p. 160; and Stubbs' Constitutional History, 
 i. 620 seq. ; Palgrave, Rise and Progress of the English 
 Commonwealth; Brunner, Entstehung der Schwurgerichte.
 
 GOVERNMENT BY AMATEURS 217 
 
 their public affairs are still managed for them, and 
 the direction of their public policy really determined, 
 by an oligarchy of one kind or another. In some 
 states, with a wide popular franchise, but an im- 
 perfectly developed constitutional system, as in 
 Austria and Germany, it takes the form of a ministry 
 and a civil service under the control of a strong 
 personal monarchy. In the Latin countries, it is 
 usually seen in the shape of a powerful, all-pervading 
 bureaucracy. The modern English substitute is 
 found in groups of persons who pay rather more 
 continuous attention to public affairs than the 
 majority of electors. They also are amateur poli- 
 ticians, so far as training and expert knowledge 
 are concerned; but their jinterest in politics^ and 
 jjhgir dflft ftr flnTjf.ifrnt. with it, give them a limited 
 kind of professional competence in the pursuit, and 
 a certain amount of acquaintance with, what. may, be 
 called its technique. The number of this class tends 
 to increase, since politics has become one of the 
 open professions and its rewards and emoluments 
 are no longer confined to the privileged few, and the 
 exceptionally fortunate. Payment of members of 
 Parliament, and the creation of a new bureaucracy, 
 not drawn exclusively from the organised Civil 
 Service, will no doubt have a considerable* effect. 
 Intelligent and active persons may devote them- 
 selves to politics from other motives besides vanity, 
 public-spirit, a sense of duty, a natural omciousness, 
 or a vague ambition to become distinguished. The 
 general amateurishness of the electorate will be 
 diluted by a larger element of those for whom politics 
 will be the main occupation and predominant 
 interest of their lives.
 
 CHAPTEK XII* 
 THE HOUSE OP LOEDS 
 
 THE strength of the House of Lords for two 
 centuries lay in its weakness^ if it had 1 been able_ 
 to exercise a Jithe of the powers it theoretically" 
 possessed, itjnust_ have been reformed out of exist- 
 ence long ago. " There can be no doubt," said 
 a Conservative statesman, the late Earl of Iddes- 
 leigh, " that the House of Lords would be perfectly 
 intolerable, if it were as powerful in reality as it is 
 in appearance." It is not, and it cannot be, so 
 strong as most Second Chambers as the American 
 or the French, Senate, the Swiss Standerath, or the 
 Legislative Councils in our self-governing Colonies. 
 If it ventured to act as these Upper Houses do 
 from time to time there would be an outcry before 
 which the hereditary principle would go down. 
 A Senate in Washington, a State Council in 
 Berne, or a Legislative Council in Melbourne, 
 may not only interfere with the Executive, but it 
 may, and sometimes does, bring about a dead- 
 lock either with the Government or the popular 
 Chamber. It can take this course, not without 
 
 * [For reasons stated in the Introduction this and the 
 following chapter have been left, with a few alterations, as they 
 appeared in the first edition of this work, published in 1904.] 
 
 2J8
 
 THE HOUSE OF LORDS 219 
 
 friction, but without producing revolution, because 
 it is felt that the Senators or the Councillors, 
 whether elected or nominated, do represent some- 
 thing besides mere privilege. 
 
 The House of Lords, ever since the struggle over 
 
 "Rill yrg .a ViQv^pd by 3. 
 
 that it existed ftp sufferance. It could seldom 
 venture to assert itself, and then only in a tentative 
 and temporary fashion. If any measures had been 
 taken to add to its self-confidence, to give it real 
 authority, to impart to it a consciousness of some- 
 thing like a political equality with the other House, 
 it could scarcely have been conserved in its present 
 shape. The demand for a complete reconstruction 
 would have been irresistible. It was sometimes 
 urged that while the House of Commons represented 
 everybody, the House of Lords represented nobody. 
 This was one of the reasons why, on the whole, the 
 two Chambers got on so well together. Everybody 
 and Nobody, as Lord Iddesleigh observed,* must 
 find it hard to quarrel. But if a Second Chamber 
 were established, which represented somebody, the 
 case would be different. Everybody could quarrel 
 with Somebody easily enough. 
 
 The House of Lords does, in fact, possess 
 some representative character. Like the rest of 
 our institutions it was not made, it grew ; and 
 it has grown into something rather like that which 
 the constitution-makers of the last hundred and 
 fifty years have been trying to create. Assuming, 
 as they did, that some check on the democratic 
 law-making chamber was necessary, they had to 
 devise a Council, which was not irresponsible, but 
 * In an article in the New Review for March, 1894.
 
 220 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 yet was not responsible to quite the same con- 
 stituency as the other House. If there were a King 
 or a Governor available, he could nominate for life 
 or a term of years, as in the New South Wales 
 constitution, or in Louis Philippe's Chamber of Peers. 
 Otherwise the Upper House had to be elected, either 
 by some kind of fancy franchise, or by electoral 
 districts different from those forming the con- 
 stituent bodies for the popular Chamber. The 
 result is representation, but unequal, and more or 
 less capricious, representation. The___better__the 
 electoral scheme.. of the primary Legislature, jthe 
 
 "If there be two 
 
 representative Chambers, and if one be formed on 
 sound principles, the second, so far as it differs from 
 the first, must deviate from those principles." * 
 
 Under a Federal system the difficulty can be 
 parried. The Senate can be appointed by the 
 States, and in its constitution it can embody the 
 principal of local autonomy out of which the Union 
 has been formed. But in this case glaring in- 
 equalities are apt to be perpetuated. The Canton 
 of Bern, with its 640,000 inhabitants and 2,600 
 square miles of territory, has no more representation 
 in the Swiss State Council than Appenzell with 
 only 14,000 people and an area of sixty-one miles. 
 The State of New York has two seats in the American 
 Senate, and so has the State of Nevada. The House 
 of Lords may have as much claim to correspond 
 to a number of different elements in the com- 
 munity as an Assembly solely constituted with 
 reference to territorial divisions, historical in their 
 origin but now perhaps merely geographical terms 
 
 * Hearn, p. 543.
 
 THE HOUSE OF LORDS 221 
 
 which have almost lost their meaning, jt represents 
 jvgjried_andjmportant interests, much and diversified 
 knowledge, and nearly all classes in our society, 
 J3xcept the m.oat numerous. Many of the Peers 
 have been trained to politics by years passed in the 
 House of Commons. Some of them have precisely 
 that experience of public service, in a responsible 
 office, which Mill, in his Representative Government, 
 insists upon as one qualification in the members of 
 a good Second Chamber : they have been high 
 officials in India, in the Colonies, or at home, 
 pro-consuls and administrators, successful soldiers 
 or diplomatists. A few of them represent learning, 
 science, and art, as they cannot be, or at any rate 
 are not, represented in the Lower House. Such 
 men as Tennyson, Leighton, Playfair, Kelvin, 
 Lister, might not have cared to sit in the House of 
 Commons, and very likely would not have been 
 elected. 
 
 A Senate cannot be deemed unrepresentative of 
 some of the best elements of a nation when among 
 its members may be included the greatest, or nearly 
 the greatest poet and painter of their age, the most 
 famous savants, philosophers, and jurists, the most 
 eloquent preachers, the most learned theologians, 
 and many of the magnates of finance, industry, and 
 commerce.* The House of Commons is full of 
 lawyer M.P.'s, but with a few exceptions these are 
 
 * " It would be difficult, not to say impossible," said a 
 defender of the Upper Chamber in 1894, "except under an 
 entirely novel and complicated system of elective bodies, to 
 create an assembly as representative, as is the House of Lords, 
 of all the great professions, industries, trades, and other 
 interests, which look to Parliament for direction and guidance."
 
 222 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 not the leaders of their profession. They must be 
 politicians and " good candidates," and some of the 
 finest of our legal intellects are neither. These 
 jurists find their appropriate place among the Peers. 
 In spite n of Jihe, dead weight of tfce mere titled 
 nobodies, there is probably more intellect and ability 
 in the House of Lords than in any other Second 
 
 ft na.mpA 
 
 The Revisory Powers of the House. 
 But the House of Lords has a character of its 
 own, which it is impossible to impart to any 
 artificially constructed Senate. Something besides 
 personal ability and distinction is required to give 
 weight to a law-making, governing council., " The 
 King of England," said Disraeli, "may make Peers, 
 but he cannot make a House of Lords. The order 
 of men of whom such an assembly is formed is the 
 creation of ages." Though they have lost much of 
 their ancient prestige and unique position, the Peers 
 still possess attributes which impress the mass of 
 mankind. Mere talent, even in countries where per- 
 haps talent is more appreciated t-foaji it i_s in England , 
 has a very limited range in politics. Pe Tocqueville 
 lays" of the American House of Eepresentatives 
 three-quarters of a century ago, that it was very 
 poorly provided either with distinction or dignity. 
 " You are struck by the vulgar aspect of this great 
 Assembly. The eye looks often in vain for a cele- 
 brated man." It would not have looked in vain in 
 the French Chamber of Peers after the Bourbon 
 restoration. Celebrated men were quite common in 
 that body, which could almost claim to represent the 
 highest intellect of contemporary France. All the
 
 THE HOUSE OF LORDS 223 
 
 same it was quite insignificant and never exercised 
 any real authority. The House of Lords has the 
 influence which belongs to wealth, to high rank 
 and ancient lineage, to landed property, to ideas 
 and sentiments, which have been interwoven into 
 the texture of English society, and to traditions, 
 and usages, and habits of mind, which are the 
 growth of ages. No synthetic process could quite 
 reproduce this curious and complex result of time 
 and chance. 
 
 A few years ago it was a commonplace to say that 
 the constitutional functions of the Peers are too 
 well understood to need discussion. The limited 
 and suspensory character of their veto was supposed 
 to be realised by everybody, and particularly by 
 themselves. If the system of " checks and 
 balances " is to save a country from the excesses of 
 democratic violence, the House of Lords fulfils its 
 purpose very imperfectly. It used to be imagined 
 that a popular Chamber was always liable to be 
 carried away by sudden gusts of emotion, or by 
 spasms of destructive zeal, unless a steady hand 
 could be laid upon the rein at any moment. But a 
 House of Commons, led by a strong Cabinet, with 
 the majority of the electorate behind it, could not be 
 bitted and bridled by the Peers. What Wellington 
 and Lyndhurst shrank from seventy years ago, 
 would not be attempted again by any champion 
 of the forces of conservatism. The Lords cannot 
 
 prevent reform or even revolution, if the electoraja. 
 ia in earnpc* g"^ vg.g a Ministry to its mind. In that 
 sense the Upper House is not the check upon 
 popular violence or ministerial haste. The true 
 safeguard ia the existence of the Opposition minority
 
 224 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 jind the potenfrq.1 alf.firna.bVft ftnvernment. If this 
 is influential in the Commons and the country, 
 nothing subversive can be done. No Cabinet, so 
 at least it used to be held, could venture upon a 
 really radical change, with the consciousness that 
 two out of every five electors were opposed to it, 
 and with an apprehension that "the supremacy 
 of the odd man " might be turned against themselves 
 after the next election. 
 
 The duty of the House of Lords, as defined in the 
 books, was to provide that time should be given for 
 mature reflection on matters of importance. It 
 could not upset the verdict ; but it could take care 
 that the issue is properly placed before the Court. 
 It could ask for suspense of judgment till the national 
 tribunal has weighed and examined the arguments. 
 It could say to the committee which speaks for 
 the Commons: "You tell us you have received 
 your mandate or, as the vulgar might put it, got 
 your orders to do such and such things. Well, 
 we are not quite sure. We think you were chosen 
 on other grounds. We did not notice any special 
 reference to this subject in your election addresses. 
 So we shall throw out your Bill, and you can go to 
 he people and place the question before them, 
 in an isolated, definite, fashion. If you come 
 back with a great majority, we must no doubt admit 
 that you are right in your construction of the 
 popular will, and we shall have to allow you to do 
 what you want." 
 
 What exact amount of proof the Lords were en- 
 titled to require was always a moot point. Might 
 they throw out a first-class political measure after 
 an ad hoc election ? In fact it depended on the real
 
 THE HOUSE OF LORDS 225 
 
 strength of ministers, and the extent to which they 
 could be supposed to carry public opinion with them. 
 The leaders of the Peers have to consider whether 
 they are defying a popular sentiment, sufficiently in- 
 tense to make itself felt decisively at the polls. ^They 
 can act freely when they believe that the Government 
 would be bound to accept a rebuff and that it is_ 
 Jin no condition, to go to the country. This was 
 the case in 1893, when the House of Commons 
 passed the Home Rule Bill and the House of Lords 
 rejected it. Mr. Gladstone's more ardent followers 
 were extremely indignant, and there was a fierce 
 Eadical outcry against the Upper Chamber. But 
 Lord Salisbury, who led the Peers, maintained 
 that he had the best constitutional authority for his 
 action. He contended that Home Eule was not 
 fairly before the constituencies in the preceding 
 general election. The scheme of an Irish Parlia- 
 ment was looked upon as temporarily " dead," and 
 the Liberals had won their victories on a programme 
 of domestic reforms. 
 
 The action of the House of Lords on this occasion 
 was clearly in accordance with the constitutional 
 conventions. If Mr. Gladstone had gone to the 
 country and had come back which was extremely 
 unlikely with a strong majority, the Unionist peers 
 were bound by the declaration of their leader to 
 give way. But if there had been any chance that 
 they would refrain from putting their veto upon the 
 Bill of 1893, it is tolerably certain that this measure 
 would not have been introduced. Many of the 
 Liberals who voted for it in the Commons did so, 
 because they knew that no harm would ensue : the 
 Upper House would take care that the Bill did not 
 
 16
 
 226 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 go further. If there had been no revising Second 
 Chamber there would have been a sufficient check 
 upon the minister in the apprehensions of his own 
 followers, conscious that they had only a half-hearted 
 support in the constituencies. A Government could 
 not have accepted the responsibility of dissolving the 
 union of the Three Kingdoms in such circumstances. 
 The House of Lords did not, as Unionist speakers 
 used occasionally to declare at the time, " stand 
 between us and revolution." There could scarcely 
 have been a revolution, against the wishes of the 
 larger part of the electorate in England and 
 Scotland. 
 
 The powers of the Lords were in reality more 
 effectively displayed in this Parliament by their 
 action upon the Parish Councils Bill and the 
 Employers' Liability Bill. On Home Eule, Mr. 
 Gladstone's followers were divided and only in part 
 convinced. But in his measures of domestic reform 
 the Prime Minister had his party with him. Yet the 
 Peers sent back both Bills, with important amend- 
 ments, which almost changed their character. On 
 the Parish Councils Bill, a compromise was reached. 
 But on Employers' Liability the Peers stood stiffly 
 to their guns. They had inserted in the Bill the 
 clause establishing a general right of "contracting 
 out," which had been the subject of the hottest 
 debates in the Lower House, and had been vigorously 
 resisted, and finally refused, by the Government. 
 The Bill, as thus altered, was sent down to the 
 Commons, who immediately rejected the amend- 
 ment by more than the normal ministerial majority. 
 The Lords calmly sent it back again ; and in the 
 end, after some warm language had been used on
 
 THE HOUSE OF LORDS 227 
 
 the Liberal benches, Mr. Gladstone abandoned the 
 measure. There were frequent threats of appealing 
 to the Democracy against the privileged Chamber. 
 But the agitation died away, since it was clear that 
 the Peers, on the Employers' Liability Bill, had a 
 strong prima facie case. They contended that they 
 were merely protecting the liberties of that large 
 body of working-men who did not want to be denied 
 the power of making their own contracts. The 
 Government was challenged to ascertain, by means 
 of a general election, what proportion these persons 
 bore to the whole body of labour voters. As 
 Ministers were uncertain on the subject themselves, 
 and by no means confident that there was any wide- 
 spread enthusiasm for the compulsory system, they 
 preferred to leave the question unanswered. 
 
 The revival of the House of Lords, and its success- 
 ful self-assertion, in this long session was a remark- 
 able phenomenon. I may perhaps be allowed to 
 reproduce some sentences published soon after 
 these events, because they may be thought to bear 
 witness to the impression produced upon many 
 observers at the time. " The Peers," it was said, 
 " have done nothing but exercise their old constitu- 
 tional privilege in a thoroughly constitutional fashion. 
 In the great era of moderate Liberal progress and 
 middle-class predominance, which extended from 
 the Ministry of Lord Melbourne to the Ministry of 
 Lord Beaconsfield, the House of Lords was insen- 
 sibly losing its importance as a working factor in 
 the machinery of the constitution. Largely com- 
 posed of elderly or middle-aged Peers, of the old 
 Whiggish and old Tory connections, its conduct was 
 marked, as a rule, by a natural timidity, and a
 
 228 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 shrinking desire to avoid forcing itself obtrusively 
 upon the hostile notice of those still dreaded and 
 unfamiliar legions, whom the Eeform Bill and the 
 ballot-box had brought into the field. The Peers 
 felt that they were the reliquia Danaum the rem- 
 nants of the old Constitution that had escaped the 
 fierce storm of change and progress. Besides, 
 Liberal ' ideas ' were in the air, and a generation 
 brought up on its Mill and its Macaulay had an 
 idea that all ' privilege ' was opposed to the eternal 
 verities of politics. Therefore, the Lords, the 
 privileged class of legislators, had a tendency to 
 keep themselves a good deal in the shade, to shirk 
 anything in the nature of a conflict with the Ministry 
 and the majority of the day, to render themselves 
 a mere registering Chamber, whose main function 
 it was to endorse and accept the edicts promulgated 
 in ' another place.' The veto power was recognised : 
 it might be used if occasion called for it ; but it was 
 felt that the occasion would arise more and more 
 seldom, until in fact, the veto of the Lords, like the 
 veto of the Crown, became almost atrophied from 
 disuse." 
 
 There was another cause, and perhaps a more 
 potent one, for the comparative inemcacy and un- 
 obtrusiveness of the House of Lords during the 
 greater part of Queen Victoria's reign ; and this was 
 the character of the House of Commons. A second 
 Chamber is necessary chiefly because a First 
 Chamber is imperfect. " With a perfect Lower 
 House," said Walter Bagehot, " it is certain that. 
 an Upper"Blouse woulcl be scarcely of any value. If 
 we had an ideal House of Commons, perfectly repre- 
 senting the nation, always moderate, never passionate,
 
 THE HOUSE OF LORDS 229 
 
 abounding in men of leisure, never omitting the 
 slow and steady forms necessary for good considera- 
 tion, it is certain that we should not need a higher 
 Chamber. But, though, beside an ideal House of 
 Commons, the Lords will be unnecessary, and there- 
 fore pernicious beside the actual House, a revising 
 and leisured legislature is extremely useful if not 
 quite necessary." 
 
 The House of Commons, of forty or fifty years 
 ago, was very far from a perfect legislative and 
 deliberative assembly. But it got through its 
 work; and it fairly represented the views, and 
 realised the aspirations, I do not say of the nation, 
 but at any rate of the electorate. It accomplished 
 what it was wanted to do : that is to say, it 
 gradually and steadily brought into operation those 
 moderate political reforms, on which the hearts of 
 most middle-class Englishmen were seriously, if not 
 too ardently, set. It did not overload itself with 
 business; its personnel commanded the respect of 
 the country ; it contrived to turn out a respectable 
 tale of legislation, year by year; and, though it 
 had its ample share of the inconsistency, the 
 contradictoriness, and the mental confusion, which 
 are common to all large and miscellaneous assemblies 
 of men, it was a reasonably successful body, which 
 knew what the nation desired and was able to carry 
 out its intentions. At no time in its^fl.rp.p.r has tha 
 House of Commons, been more powerful and more- 
 emcient than it wfla during fihp, fir* ^rp.a dp.p.a.flp.s 
 of Queen Victoria's reign. And in the fourth 
 decade, though the "leap in the dark" of 1867 had 
 enthroned the Democracy in power, the old influences 
 and traditions remained, and the House of Commons
 
 230 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 was still a sober, capable, business-like council, 
 regarded with respect and quiet admiration by most 
 Englishmen. 
 
 Recent years have witnessed a great change. The 
 House of Commons has become incapable of execut- 
 i^S 1 ls_ajy^t^^taiaks J ._withQut an amount of straining 
 an *L C5eai]QD^.thai^ threatens to shake the wEole 
 labric to pieces^ Only by terrific exertions, and 
 after much fuss and wasted energy, can it succeed 
 in doing anything at all. The "impotence of 
 Parliament " has become a commonplace of politi- 
 cal controversy. But obviously if such an assembly 
 is impotent impotent to perform its functions of 
 rapid and effective legislation, and impotent to con- 
 trol its own members it would seem to need a 
 helping, sustaining, and revising hand somewhere. 
 Thus the old constitutional conception of the 
 Upper House became of much more actual and 
 practical importance. It felt compelled to do what 
 the theorists have always said that it ought to do 
 if occasion arose. Under the House of Commons' 
 conditions, Bills are hustled through, with half 
 their clauses undiscussed, and the other half a mass 
 of contradictions, absurdities, and inconsistencies. 
 These ragged, amorphous, measures may be cut 
 and trimmed into shape in the House of Lords, and 
 sent back again shorn of the excrescences fastened 
 upon them by embarrassed ministers, overwhelmed 
 with work, and distracted by the necessity of 
 conciliating one or other section of their mis- 
 cellaneous following. 
 
 " When Parnell organised the Nationalist Party, 
 and used it to hamper and shackle all English legis- 
 lation, he builded better, or at least larger, than
 
 THE HOUSE OF LORDS 231 
 
 he knew. His object was to worry the House of 
 Commons into getting rid of its Irish Question at 
 all costs ; he probably did not guess that the indirect 
 results would be a growing conviction, on the part 
 of Englishmen, that it was necessary to find some 
 constitutional counterpoise to the erratic and un- 
 certain motions of an Assembly, which might at 
 any moment be at the mercy of a set of determined 
 adventurers, the representatives of a province, a 
 sect, or a class, prepared to fight for their own 
 special object, regardless of the general welfare, or 
 even of those large and well-marked party interests, 
 which the use and traditions of two centuries have 
 established. 
 
 " Small and uninfluential as the majority may be, 
 while it lasts and holds together it can do what it 
 pleases. Because it knows its tenure of power is 
 uncertain it is the more anxious to reap its harvest 
 while it can. And there would scarcely be a limit 
 to the mischief a demoralised collection of self- 
 seeking and ambitious groups might do, if there 
 were no Second Chamber to compel reflection and 
 reconsideration, and to enforce a reference to the 
 people, before the rights and liberties of whole 
 sections and large classes of the population are 
 traded away." 
 
 This was written in the last decade of the nine- 
 teenth century. In the second decade of the 
 twentieth, one would be inclined to lay less emphasis 
 upon this checking and balancing function of the 
 House of Lords. Its importance is still great ; 
 but it is now more clearly seen that the true 
 counterpoise to democratic haste and partisan 
 violence in legislation is to be found elsewhere.
 
 232 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 Moreover, a writer, a few years ago, r must still have 
 found his opinions unconsciously coloured by the 
 traditional view of the relations of the Peers to the 
 party system, which had been adopted by the con- 
 stitutionalists of the preceding period. The House 
 of Lords was regarded as a great conservative force, 
 because the House of Commons was assumed to be 
 necessarily radical. During the interval that elapsed 
 between the Keform Bill of 1832 and the defeat of 
 the Liberals at the general election in 1874, the 
 Conservatives were more often in a minority in the 
 House of Commons than their opponents. " Only 
 for fifteen 'years out of the last fifty," said Mr. 
 Gladstone,* " has the ministry of the day possessed 
 the confidence of the House of Lords." Bagehot 
 in the Introduction to the second edition of his 
 work, written in 1872, regards it as quite natural 
 that the Peers should be in opposition to the Govern- 
 ment of the day. It was taken for granted that this 
 situation would frequently recur. Much of the 
 most authoritative writing on the subject was 
 framed on the assumption that the House of Lords 
 would naturally act as a steady drag upon a Ministry 
 and a House of Commons, both normally of liberal, 
 or radical, tendencies. The progressive element, 
 indeed, seemed likely to be so powerful, that the 
 slight advantage given to the other cause, by the 
 possession of a majority in the Upper House, could 
 be conceded without alarm. 
 
 Events have shaped themselves differently since 
 
 the great extension of the franchise in 1867. 
 
 From that date to the end of King Edward's reign, 
 
 the Conservatives were in power more than half 
 
 * In the essay Kin beyond Sea, originally published in 1878.
 
 THE HOUSE OF LORDS 233 
 
 the time ; in twenty-four out of the forty-three 
 years, they held office. Instead of being the cham- 
 pions of a minority in the Lower House and the 
 constituencies, the Peers are now often on the side 
 of the Administration a mere " Committee of the 
 Carlton Club," as their adversaries will sometimes 
 bitterly suggest. In such circumstances, a good 
 deal of their theoretical usefulness, as a checking 
 and revisionary organ, disappears. When the Con; 
 servatives are in power, the Peers are slow to 
 interfere with any great political measure, for fear 
 of giving an advantage to the party which the 
 majority of their number dislike and distrust. They 
 remain languid and quiescent, with their constitu- 
 tional functions largely in abeyance, until the 
 advent of a Liberal Ministry recalls them to 
 activity, as it did in 1893 and 1906. The standing 
 Conservative majority in the House of Lords then 
 becomes of some effect, whether for good or evil. 
 It is on such occasions that resentment is roused by 
 the spectacle of a privileged caste always able to 
 resist the popular will ; and with that sentiment 
 fanned into fresh vitality by a quarrel between 
 the Peers and a Liberal Cabinet an agitation for 
 the reform or reconstruction of the Upper Chamber 
 is almost certain to be set on foot.
 
 CHAPTEE XIII 
 
 THE PEERS AS A SENATE 
 
 THE House of Peers might be ended, or it might 
 be mended, according to the once popular antithesis. 
 Ending never had many advocates. Single-chamber 
 governments have hardly ever been tried, and the 
 very idea is usually rejected it would not always 
 be quite easy to say why as dangerously impractic- 
 able.* Eeform has usually aimed at breaking down 
 the hereditary monopoly, and introducing a repre- 
 sentative and temporary element. Many devices 
 and expedients had been from time to time suggest- 
 ed before the great coup of 1911, by Conservative, 
 as well as by Liberal, statesmen. Those who 
 were anxious to increase the efficiency, and sustain 
 the authority, of the Peers, as well as those 
 who were jealous of their exclusive privileges, 
 had been in favour of some change. Lord Salis- 
 bury and Lord Iddesleigh, Mr. Gladstone and Lord 
 Bosebery were among the House of Lords re- 
 formers. 
 
 * The question is discussed by Mill in the chapter " Of a 
 Second Chamber" in his Representative Government. The 
 elaborate vindication of the existence of a Second Chamber, 
 as a check on the representative House, is one of the main 
 purposes of President John Adams's famous Defence of the 
 Constitution of Government of tJie United States, 1787-1788.
 
 THE PEERS AS A SENATE 235 
 
 Most of the schemes had the common aim of 
 leavening the mass of hereditary legislators by an 
 admixture of persons who will owe their elevation 
 to merit or to election. The simplest method is 
 that of the creation of life-peers, which, according 
 to the best authorities, is not a constitutional inno- 
 vation at all, but merely a reversion to ancient 
 practices. Freeman and Stubbs contended that 
 the Crown, according to the early precedents, 
 has a right, which has never been abandoned, 
 to summon a peer to sit in Parliament, without 
 incurring an obligation to extend the privilege to 
 his descendants.* Unfortunately for themselves the 
 Peers succeeded in defeating an attempt to intro- 
 duce, or re-introduce, life-peerages. In 1856 Sir 
 James Parke was created Lord Wensleydale, by 
 letters-patent which stated that his peerage was 
 bestowed upon him for life only. The Lords, 
 under the influence of Lyndhurst's eloquence and 
 imposing personality, refused to allow the new life- 
 peer to take his seat. The Ministry gave way, 
 the decision was accepted as good law, and an 
 
 * Stubbs' Const. Hist,, iii. 443 n., says that the doctrine of 
 " ennobling the blood " is historically a mere absurdity : " it is 
 impossible to regard the blood as ennobled by law." Disraeli, 
 in his Vindication of the English Constitution, says : " It 
 would not be too much to affirm that the law of England does 
 not recognise nobility ; it recognises the peerage, and it has 
 invested that estate with august accessories ; but to state that 
 a man's blood is ennobled is neither legal nor correct, and the 
 phase, which has crept into our common parlance, is not 
 borrowed from the lawyers, but from the heralds." The 
 opposite view is taken by May (Const. Hist., i. 290), who says 
 that " all temporal peers have been ennobled by blood." See 
 also, Pike, Constitutional History of the House of Lords, 
 chap. xv.
 
 236 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 excellent opportunity for quietly modifying the 
 composition of the Upper Chamber was lost. 
 Twenty years later, while the general question of 
 life-peerages was left untouched, a limited number 
 of judicial life-peers, the Lords of Appeal in 
 Ordinary, were created by statute. These Lords 
 are simply paid judges of the House of Lords 
 Court, but they are summoned to Parliament for 
 life and are allowed to sit and vote. 
 
 The precedent thus established might easily have 
 been carried further. A moderate infusion of life- 
 peers has often been recommended by those re- 
 formers, who want to do something for the House 
 of Lords without doing too much. Earl Bussell 
 brought in a Bill in 1869 which would have allowed 
 the Crown to nominate four life-peers, in any one 
 year, or twenty-eight in all. A much bolder 
 measure, providing for a very extensive creation of 
 representative life-peers, was laid on the table by 
 Lord Dunraven, an independent Conservative, in 
 1888. In the same session, Lord Salisbury intro- 
 duced his House of Lords (Life-Peers) Bill as a 
 Government measure. The Crown was to have the 
 right of nominating five life-peers in any one year, 
 with a total number not exceeding fifty. Three of 
 the five life-peers were to be appointed from among 
 those who were, or had been, ambassadors, colonial 
 governors, judges, generals, or admirals. The 
 Bill, however, met with little favour and was 
 dropped. Lord Kosebery's Eesolution, which was 
 rejected by the House earlier in the same session, 
 went further. It would have permitted the Crown 
 to constitute an Upper Chamber, made up partly of 
 selected members of the Peerage, and partly of life-
 
 THE PEERS AS A SENATE . 237 
 
 peers ; the latter to be persons, who had gained 
 distinction in some branch of the public service. 
 
 Lord Lansdowne's Bill, which was carried 
 through the second reading in May, 1911, and then 
 dropped, provided that the Upper House should 
 consist of one hundred "Lords of Parliament" 
 elected from among their own number by the 
 hereditary peers ; one hundred and twenty elected 
 by the members of the House of Commons for the 
 districts they represented ; one hundred nominated 
 by the Crown with due regard to the distribution of 
 parties in the Commons ; with seven spiritual, and 
 sixteen judicial, peers. 
 
 Even if the hereditary principle is retained there 
 is an obvious advantage in the free introduction of 
 life-peers. No doubt many able men from the 
 professional classes do succeed in getting to the 
 House of Lords ; but not till they have made their 
 name and their money, and are growing old and 
 tired. An eminent scientist of seventy, a high- 
 placed official retired under the age limit, must 
 add rather to the distinction than to the practical 
 efficiency of the House of Lords. 
 
 To make room for the life-peers it would be 
 necessary to withdraw from many of the heredi- 
 tary legislators the right to attend the sittings 
 of the House. As a fact very few of them do 
 attend, except when the occasion arises for quench- 
 ing some exciting or subversive measure which has 
 come up from the Commons. Then they arrive in 
 their cohorts; and noble lords, who have never 
 listened to the debates and know nothing of the 
 arguments, grope their way through the unfamiliar 
 corridors, and take part in a division reckoned
 
 238 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 in hundreds. At other times the tenants of the 
 Chamber are no more than a handful. The way to 
 get cured of an excessive admiration for the House 
 of Lords, it has been said, is to go and look at it. Its 
 ordinary sittings are not impressive. There is none 
 of the noise, the bustle, the tingling vitality, of the 
 House of Commons. A half-score of elderly gentle- 
 men are in the Government seats, a few more 
 loosely scattered about the other benches. Even in 
 an important debate the speakers would have an 
 unusually good audience if there were seventy or 
 eighty members present. 
 
 It would be well to confine attendance to those 
 who are really interested in the work and capable 
 of doing it, and to keep out the loungers, the 
 incompetent, and the disreputable. This could 
 be easily accomplished by electing representative 
 peers for England, as is done for Scotland and for 
 Ireland under the Acts of Union. If the peers were 
 allowed to appoint, say, two hundred of their own 
 body to be Lords of Parliament, all the statesmen, 
 the party leaders, and the experienced politicians, in 
 the peerage would find their places. The business 
 would not be interfered with by the capricious 
 presence of ignorant amateurs ; and public senti- 
 ment would be spared the shock it occasionally 
 feels, when it observes that, however dissolute or 
 disgraceful a peer may be, nothing short of bank- 
 ruptcy, or a conviction for felony, can exclude him 
 from the ranks of the hereditary legislators.* 
 
 * Lord Salisbury's Bill of 1888 contemplated relieving the 
 House of its more unworthy members, by providing that 
 where any Peer had been guilty of disgraceful conduct, the 
 House might present an address to the Sovereign, who might
 
 THE PEERS AS A SENATE 239 
 
 This restriction of the right to sit in the House of 
 Lords would have several advantages. Membership 
 of the Upper Chamber would no longer be the mere 
 privilege conferred by birth, but would be bestowed 
 on the representative peer by the votes of his own 
 order. The House would contain all the most able 
 and respected of the peers ; and it would be kept 
 within manageable limits. Under the present system 
 it is constantly expanding, and it threatens to grow 
 altogether unwieldy. Each administration takes a 
 substantial contingent of successful soldiers, lawyers, 
 eminent officials, and wealthy and active party men, 
 out of the commonalty, and lifts them, and their 
 heirs, into the baronage. Peel was the last Premier 
 to exercise a jealous supervision over the bestowal 
 of honours by the Crown. In five years he only 
 recommended the creation of five peerages. " It 
 reads to us," says one of Peel's successors, "like 
 a dream, like a chapter dropped from the annals 
 of some Utopia or Atlantis."* 
 
 Every Prime Minister now adds his tens, or even 
 scores, of members to the Upper House. A revising 
 Senate should be a rather small body ; but the 
 House of Lords is nearly as large as the House of 
 Commons.! If the process of fresh creation goes 
 on at the same rate for another half-century, the 
 
 then direct that the writ of summons should be cancelled 1 and 
 the Peer disentitled to sit during the existing Parliament. See 
 Pike, Constitutional History of the House of Lords, p. 277. 
 Under 33 and 84 Viet., cap. 23, sec. 1, Peers, convicted of 
 treason or felony, are disqualified from sitting or voting. They 
 are also, by the same statute, disqualified during bankruptcy. 
 
 * Lord Rosebery in the Anglo-Saxon Beview, June, 1896. 
 
 f The full Assembly would contain over six hundred 
 persons, if attended by all the Peers of the United Kingdom, the 
 representative Peers of Scotland and Ireland, and the Bishops.
 
 240 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 Chamber may become a mob. It will be far too 
 large for effective deliberation, if all, or even a 
 reasonable portion, of those entitled to a summons 
 should care to be present. Incidentally, it may be 
 observed that the increased size of the House makes 
 the constitutional remedy of " swamping " all but 
 impossible in practice, and thus has produced one 
 of the very results aimed at in the Peerage Bill of 
 1719. The Peers, under George L, endeavoured to 
 establish a monopoly for themselves by restraining 
 the Crown from the creation of more than six 
 beyond the then existing number of peerages. 
 The attempt, if it had succeeded, would have given 
 us, instead of a peerage, a nobility ; instead of an 
 aristocratic class, shading gradually into other 
 sections of the community, we should have had 
 a narrow and rigidly-defined privileged caste. The 
 project was indefensible and was, very fortunately, 
 defeated. But it was not entirely the outcome of 
 mere selfish exclusiveness : it was also dictated in 
 part by the desire to remain independent, and 
 to save the House of Lords from being filled with 
 courtiers and subservient ministerial nominees. 
 
 The Crown never has "swamped" the Upper 
 Chamber ;* but it is conceivable that it might have 
 done so, when perhaps thirty or forty new patents 
 
 * Brougham declared that there was no real intention of 
 swamping in 1832, and that he would himself have opposed 
 the project if brought forward seriously. See his British 
 Constitution, p. 268. This use of the prerogative had been 
 advised by the Cabinet in a memorandum to the King before 
 the general election of December, 1910, and it might have 
 been applied if the Peers had refused to accept the Parlia- 
 ment Act of 1911 ; but in that case it might have been 
 necessary to create three hundred new peerages or even more.
 
 THE PEERS AS A SENATE 241 
 
 would have sufficed to neutralise a hostile majority 
 and turn the scale. With a House seven or eight 
 hundred strong, viscounts would have to be brought 
 up by platoons, and barons by battalions, in order 
 to produce much effect. The expedient could not be 
 attempted, without making both the Crown and 
 the peerage ridiculous. 
 
 If, however, the House of Lords were com- 
 posed of 150 to 200 representative peers, elected 
 by their order, and about the same number of 
 members appointed by the Crown for life, some of 
 these difficulties would disappear. Without per- 
 manently increasing the size of the House, it might 
 be possible to carry out a partial swamping operation 
 by life-peers ; since it would be recognised that, as 
 these ennobled emergency-men died off, their places 
 need not be supplied. While the normal member- 
 ship of the House would be smaller, the actual 
 attendance would be better. Two-thirds, or three- 
 quarters, of the hereditary peers would find it no 
 hardship to be deprived of a privilege, of which, at 
 present, they very seldom avail themselves.* 
 
 * A rather fantastic suggestion, which yet is not without a 
 certain attractiveness, is that a peer, on succeeding to his 
 honours, should be placed a grade lower in the hierarchy than 
 his predecessor. Thus a duke would be succeeded by a 
 marquis, a marquis by an earl, and so on. The effect, of course, 
 would be that in five generations or less the peerage would die 
 out, unless in the course of that period the head of the family 
 could contrive to get himself raised a step in rank. The peer 
 would be involved, throughout his life, in a kind of competitive 
 examination, on the results of which the future position of his 
 family would depend. If he were a respectable, public- spirited 
 person, who had done something meritorious, he would no 
 doubt obtain his promotion as a matter of course. If he were 
 an idler or trifler, the Crown and the Prime Minister would 
 
 17
 
 242 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 On the other hand, the ambitious young aristo- 
 crat, anxious to play his part on the larger stage 
 of the Commons, would not find himself doomed to 
 political extinction, or premature repose, by the 
 death of his father. He could wear his coronet, 
 without forfeiting his seat in the Lower House. 
 If Palmerston had been a peer of the United 
 Kingdom, his political career would assuredly 
 have been very different from what it was. For- 
 tunately for him he held only an Irish peerage, and 
 was, therefore, eligible for election to the House of 
 Commons. Under the arrangement suggested, any 
 peer, if he wished it, might divest himself of his 
 dignified disabilities. That some do feel the dis- 
 qualification was shown by the Peer's Disabilities 
 Eemoval Bill, laid before Parliament in 1893, at the 
 instance of some distinguished young members of 
 the House of Commons, who were the eldest sons of 
 peers. It provided that peers might vote at elections 
 and might themselves be elected members of the 
 House of Commons, but in that case their here- 
 ditary titles were to lapse ; a peer, accepting the 
 office of Secretary of State, was to lose his 
 peerage and hereditary titles, for himself and his 
 heirs, and become a commoner. The Bill, which 
 was not perhaps meant very seriously, never 
 reached the stage of a second reading.* It is one 
 of the consequences which must be reckoned with 
 that any limitation of the hereditary principle in the 
 Upper Chamber would set free the cleverest and 
 
 decline to help him, and if his immediate successors were not 
 more deserving, the peerage would lapse. It would be an 
 automatic method of eliminating the unfit stock from the 
 governing circle. 
 
 * Hansard, 4th series, viii. 839.
 
 THE PEERS AS A SENATE 243 
 
 most ambitious of the peers to enter for the prizes 
 of the Lower Chamber. The aristocratic element, 
 mitigated in the one House, would gain an accession 
 of strength in the other. 
 
 The nominated members of the House of Lords 
 the life-peerage would no doubt add to its re- 
 putation and influence. Some of them might be 
 merely wealthy nobodies, or fussy party men ; but 
 the former class certainly, and the latter in all 
 probability, might be better content with the solid 
 advantages of an hereditary title. Prime Ministers, 
 if they used their opportunities discreetly, might 
 easily make the list of life-peers an imposing cata- 
 logue, containing many distinguished names, which 
 the public would recognise and respect. 
 
 It might, moreover, be possible to impart to the 
 House of Lords a further and very valuable repre- 
 sentative element. The House of Commons recog- 
 nises no distinctions or divisions but those of locality. 
 Hence whole classes and interests may remain 
 virtually unrepresented, unless they happen to 
 command a strong vote in a particular constituency. 
 The older English principle of giving representation 
 to " estates," or orders of men, has entirely dis- 
 appeared. The device of using the local division 
 as an electoral unit is so convenient that it is 
 never likely to be abandoned, since it is a 
 method of getting the Legislature chosen which 
 cannot easily be bettered for simplicity and rough 
 practical effectiveness. Yet it is both imperfect 
 and unscientific if the object be to bring together 
 an assembly in which the various elements of the 
 population, and the leading activities and occupations 
 of all classes, are fairly represented.
 
 244 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 It can hardly be pretended that, in these days, 
 
 persons living in local juxtaposition have interests 
 
 necessarily identical, or are in any but a purely 
 
 physical and geographical sense the members of a 
 
 community. This might have possibly been the 
 
 case when difficulties of communication made 
 
 men everywhere dependent on their immediate 
 
 neighbours. These conditions have changed. Local 
 
 ties have weakened ; the intercourse between persons 
 
 of the same profession and the same class can be 
 
 pursued easily enough on a national scale. The 
 
 modern Englishman may love his neighbour; but 
 
 he is not bound to have anything to do with him. 
 
 On the other hand, those with whom he is associated 
 
 in sentiment and interest, and with whom indeed he 
 
 is in frequent contact, may have their place of 
 
 residence many miles away. A stockbroker in 
 
 South Kensington may have much more in 
 
 common with another stockbroker living at Brighton 
 
 than with a greengrocer in the next street. The 
 
 members of a profession, the adherents of a sect, 
 
 may be scattered all over the kingdom, and form a 
 
 numerous body in the aggregate, and yet not be 
 
 strong enough in any one district to send their own 
 
 candidate to Parliament or to turn votes. 
 
 It is undoubtedly a defect in the House of 
 Commons that it takes no account of the interests 
 which have grown up irrespective of locality. The 
 object of most of the schemes of proportional 
 representation is to correct the haphazard crudities, 
 and the possible inequalities, which are, or may 
 be, the result of the present system. Some 
 of these proposals are highly ingenious, like 
 the device suggested by Mr. Hare, which won the
 
 THE PEERS AS A SENATE 245 
 
 approval of Mill, or like that to which Lord 
 Courtney has given his support.* The weak point 
 of all these proposals is their complexity. Unless 
 very carefully managed, they would almost certainly 
 tend to hand over the conduct of elections to the 
 professional manipulator. Even the attempt to 
 secure some sort of minority representation, by 
 three-cornered constituencies, did not work well, 
 and it had to be abandoned. The practical difficulty 
 of representing either minorities or "estates" in 
 the House of Commons will rather increase than 
 diminish. 
 
 Something, however, might be done in the 
 House of Lords. Various important orders and 
 interests could find their voice in that Assembly. 
 The judicial life-peers, and the ecclesiastical life- 
 peers, might be provided with suitable colleagues. 
 Without touching on the question of Church 
 Disestablishment, it may perhaps be surmised that 
 the monopoly of political power possessed by the 
 Bishops cannot be much longer maintained. The 
 leaders of the other great religious communities 
 might put in a claim for a certain number of seats 
 in the Senate ; nor perhaps would that body be any 
 the worse if, on questions of public morals and 
 conduct, on Licensing Bills or Education Bills, it 
 could learn the opinions, not only of the Anglican 
 Bishops, but of the leaders of Wesleyanism and 
 Congregationalism, and of the prelates of the Roman 
 Church in Britain. 
 
 For the well-being of our modern society it may 
 be urged that the medical profession is even more 
 
 * It is described in The Working Constitution of England, 
 chap. xvi.
 
 246 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 important than the legal ; and the public service 
 would gain something, if life-peerages were regularly 
 bestowed on the Presidents of the Royal College of 
 Surgeons and the Royal College of Physicians. 
 Learning and science might be directly represented 
 in other ways. The University members, a mere 
 powerless anomaly in the House of Commons, 
 might be transferred to the Lords, and reinforced 
 by representatives from other centres of education, 
 besides those at present capriciously recognised for 
 political purposes. The Chambers of Commerce and 
 the Institute of Bankers, and other authoritative 
 organisations of the trading and mercantile com- 
 munities, might also be allowed a certain number 
 of seats. And finally the trade-unions might be 
 permitted to leaven the august assembly by sending 
 to it a few of their most able officials. It might be 
 difficult, indeed, to persuade these tribunes of the 
 people to accept a title of honour, even for their own 
 lives ; but if they could become peers without being 
 lords they might consent to serve in a Chamber 
 where their special knowledge of working-class 
 opinion would necessarily be of value. 
 
 A House of Lords so modified would undoubtedly 
 form a strong Senate. The real danger is that it 
 might become too strong. It is the difficulty which 
 confronts us the moment we consider any scheme 
 of House. of Lords reform. If the reform is genuine 
 it must obviously result in increasing the power of 
 the Second Chamber. The hereditary peers are 
 acutely conscious of the fact that they hold their 
 legislative privilege by a precarious tenure. A body 
 of representative peers of Parliament who had been 
 nominated because of their real or assumed capacity,
 
 THE PEERS AS A SENATE 247 
 
 might often be unwilling to subordinate their 
 opinions to those of the House of Commons. A 
 Senate, largely composed of clever men of affairs, 
 who owed their success in life to their own exertions, 
 might at times prove inconveniently self-assertive. 
 Those who advocate the introd action of the repre- 
 sentative, or the nominated, element into the House 
 of Lords, should do so with the consciousness that 
 any such innovation would add to its authority and 
 its influence. 
 
 Even in its present " unreformed " condition the 
 House is frequently able to get its own way. The 
 consequences which directly ensued upon the 
 rejection of the Finance Bill of 1909 showed that 
 the Peers cannot thwart the national, or even the 
 ministerial, will on great occasions. But great 
 occasions do not often occur. Public feeling, though 
 intense when roused, runs along a narrow channel. 
 For nine bills out of ten the electorate cares nothing; 
 and with these the Lords have still a pretty free 
 hand. Many measures in which some of the peers 
 take a great interest, such as bills affecting private 
 rights, and those promoted by local authorities, they 
 can mould and transform, and even reject. The 
 London County Council, and some of the other 
 great municipal bodies, are constantly bringing 
 forward bills to promote improvements, or establish 
 public services, which get through the Commons 
 and are thrown out, or passed only with onerous 
 restrictions, in the House of Lords. 
 
 In the domain of private legislation the work done 
 by the House is of extreme importance. The bills 
 of private individuals or companies are divided, in 
 their initial'stages, between the two Houses ; and it
 
 248 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 may fairly be said that Private Bill Committees of 
 the Lords will compare very favourably in authority 
 and impartiality with those of the Commons. The 
 peers who sit on the Committees are as a rule men 
 of large practical experience and sound legal and 
 administrative training; and it is understood that, 
 on the whole, these tribunals command the con- 
 fidence of the financial and business community. 
 Outside the Cabinet there are few individuals more 
 powerful than the Lord Chairman of Committees, 
 who can sometimes, by a stroke of the pen, effect 
 alterations in the Standing Orders relating to Private 
 Bill procedure, which may be of much more real 
 and far-reaching importance than many an Act of 
 Parliament that has filled the newspapers for weeks. 
 The burden of private bills is increasing; and the 
 work could not be got through at all if it were left 
 to the unaided energies of the House of Commons. 
 
 Moreover, if the Upper House no longer controls 
 the Administration, it can still criticise it. As a 
 ventilating chamber it might, if its members pleased, 
 almost supersede the House of Commons. That 
 Assembly is so fettered by its rules, so overwhelmed 
 by the quantity of its business, and it is held so 
 tightly in the grasp of the party system, that free 
 discussion is always difficult, and sometimes impos- 
 sible. But in the House of Lords, which has an 
 elastic code of procedure, which conducts its debate 
 in an easy, informal fashion, uncoerced by the 
 Ministry or even by the Chair, * there is no diffi- 
 
 * The Lord Chancellor is ex-officio Chairman of the House of 
 Lords, but he has no authority to rule a speaker out of order, 
 and no more right than any other Peer to call attention to 
 irrelevancies.
 
 249 
 
 culty in raising a discussion at any time on almost 
 any subject of public importance. A minority, 
 muzzled or silenced in the Commons, may give full 
 expression to its views, in " another place." It can- 
 not turn out its opponents ; but it can develop its 
 own argument, and lay its case before the nation. A 
 Ministry, which, owing to the " congestion" of 
 business towards the end of a session, or from other 
 causes, has had to hurry through votes and the 
 committee stages of bills, without adequate con- 
 sideration, in the House of Commons, may some- 
 times find this breathless legislation retarded in the 
 House of Lords.* 
 
 The license of unrestricted discussion, mitigated 
 by the dinner-hour, may sometimes be employed in 
 
 * On the 29th of July, 1904, that House had before it the 
 Finance Bill, which had left the Commons the previous day, a 
 Thursday. The Friday afternoon alone remained for the Bill 
 to pass through all its stages in the Upper House ; since the 
 House of Commons adjourned at 5.30 that day, and the Royal 
 Assent to the Finance Bill which must be given in the 
 presence of both Houses could not otherwise be formally 
 signified before the following Monday, August 1st. On that 
 date the taxes imposed by the Finance Act of the preceding 
 year expired. No legislative authority would then have existed 
 to sanction their further imposition, and a Bill of indemnity 
 would have been necessary to legalise the duties levied at the 
 Customs House. The Liberal Peers, however, as a protest 
 against the unceremonious haste with which they were asked to 
 deal with a measure of so much importance, insisted on debat- 
 ing the Bill till nearly six o'clock, by which time the Commons 
 had risen, and the Eoyal Assent could not be given. As a 
 matter of fact nothing happened. The dissentient Peers had 
 forgotten that the 1st of August was a Bank Holiday, on which 
 day the Customs House would be closed, and no duties levied 
 The House of Commons sat on the Monday, and the Eoyal 
 Assent was 'given to 'the Bill in time for the resumption of 
 business at the ports on the Tuesday.
 
 250 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 the Lords for merely factious or obstructive pur- 
 poses. But, wisely used, it may occasionally serve 
 as a really valuable means of compelling ministers 
 to defend and explain a policy, which the House of 
 Commons has not had sufficient opportunities of 
 examining in detail. And if the peers were a little 
 more zealous in their Parliamentary duties, and 
 more regular in their attendance, they might 
 frequently make their House an arena for the dis- 
 cussion of those larger questions of public policy 
 questions of imperial interest, or of social and 
 economic reform which the Commons, absorbed in 
 the exigencies of the passing hour, dismiss as irrele- 
 vant or academic. They might lift politics from the 
 rut of the commonplace, and bestow some attention 
 on those more comprehensive principles, and those 
 remoter consequences, for which a bustling popular 
 assembly, and a busy partisan executive, have no 
 time or thought. For the philosopher in public 
 affairs, if there is room anywhere, it should be, one 
 would think, in the House of Lords : though that 
 is the last place, it must be admitted, where any- 
 body would look for him at present. 
 
 The House of Lords a " Reservoir of Ministers." 
 
 The House, however, if it does not make or un- 
 make Ministries, has a large share in their compo- 
 sition. There is no law* which prescribes that 
 every important public department shall have its 
 
 * Except the negative provisions of the Acts, already referred 
 to, which provide that not more than four Secretaries of State 
 and four Under-Secretaries shall sit in the House of Commons 
 at one time.
 
 THE PEERS AS A SENATE 251 
 
 representative in both Houses, so that if the Secre- 
 tary of State or other ministerial chief is in one 
 Chamber, his assistant must be a member of the other. 
 It is merely one of the conditions which are pretty 
 rigidly observed, and it has both its drawbacks and 
 its advantages. The assumed necessity for maintain- 
 ing the administrative balance in the two branches 
 of the Legislature may sometimes unduly limit the 
 Premier's field of selection. Thus in December, 
 1900, the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, vindicated 
 himself for an appointment, to which some objection 
 could be taken, by pointing out that there were few 
 peers available at the moment for this particular 
 office, and that a member of the House of Commons 
 was ineligible for it, because the minister at the head 
 of the department was already sitting in that 
 chamber. * 
 
 But this is a drawback counterbalanced by the 
 utility of the House of Lords as a "reservoir of 
 ministers." t Without this source of supply at his 
 disposal, a premier would be restricted, both for his 
 Cabinet and his under-secretaries, to the members 
 of his own party in the House of Commons. The 
 executive would be made up entirely of politicians, 
 dependent, in every case, on a party majority in the 
 constituencies. The House of Lords makes it pos- 
 sible to bring in a certain number of men of a different 
 stamp, men who are responsible to Parliament, 
 without being at the mercy of the ballot, and who, 
 from their training and position, may often have 
 
 * See Lord Salisbury's remarks on the appointment of Lord 
 Hardwicke as Under- Secretary for India, December 14, 1900. 
 
 f The phrase is Bagehot's, in The English Constitution, 
 chap, iv
 
 252 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 qualities which are difficult to find among those 
 who have risen to prominence in an elective 
 Chamber. There are, and there are likely to remain, 
 certain posts in the administration of an Empire 
 like our own, for which it is desirable to have not 
 merely " gentlemen," but great noblemen, wealthy, 
 cultured, highly placed, and socially distinguished. 
 
 A Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs ought to 
 be, and now usually is, a member of a great aristocratic 
 house. Of recent years he has usually belonged to one 
 of those territorial families whose names are known 
 to the cosmopolitan society of the world a Salisbury, 
 a Rosebery, a Derby, a Granville, a Lansdowne, or a 
 Grey. Sometimes, it is true, ministers so qualified 
 may have seats in the House of Commons, like Castle- 
 reagh, Palmerston, John Russell, and Sir Edward 
 Grey. Often they will prefer to be in the Upper 
 Chamber. The work of the Foreign Office is 
 constant and exacting. The daily round may not 
 be more severe than that which many professional 
 men and business men perform as a matter of 
 course ; but it has got to be got through punctually. 
 Important despatches, and interviews with ambas- 
 sadors, cannot be postponed because the Secretary 
 of State has to spend his afternoons and evenings in 
 the House of Commons. Even half a century ago 
 the duties of the Foreign Office could not easily be 
 combined with constant attendance at Parlia- 
 ment. 
 
 Lord Malmesbury * says : "I found what Lord 
 
 Palmerston told me was correct namely, that 
 
 the average work of the Foreign Office took him 
 
 ten hours of the twenty-four." Disraeli (in 1864) 
 
 * Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, p. 585.
 
 THE PEERS AS A SENATE 253 
 
 "quite scouted the idea" of being Foreign Secretary, 
 as he wanted to retain the leadership of the House 
 of Commons, and felt that the one position was 
 incompatible with the other. Mr. Balfour, indeed, 
 once laid it down as an absolute rule that the head of 
 the Foreign Office should be in the Lords. Speaking 
 in the House of Commons on the proposal to erect 
 a national monument to Lord Salisbury, he referred 
 to the regret which that statesman experienced, 
 when his accession to the Peerage removed him 
 from the popular Chamber. "And yet," added 
 Lord Salisbury's nephew, "it is a singular reflection 
 to make that, had Lord Salisbury been able to have 
 his way, had he indeed remained, what he was born 
 to be, an ornament to the debates in this House, it 
 would have been quite impossible for him to have 
 been ^Foreign Minister, through all the long and 
 troubled years in which he dealt with our foreign 
 policy; for this most laborious department can 
 never be filled, in my judgment, by any man who 
 both does his work in his office and also does his 
 work in this House." * 
 
 Possibly, with the increase and specialisation of 
 the business of Government, the principle may have 
 to be applied to other departments besides the 
 Foreign Office. Freed from the burden of per- 
 petual debate, and to a large extent emancipated 
 from the bondage of the lobby, the House of Lords 
 minister has great opportunities for administrative 
 
 * See the Report of Mr. Balfour's speech in the newspapers 
 for May 18, 1904. " No man can efficiently discharge in con- 
 junction, especially at a time of crisis, the duties of the Foreign 
 Department and those attaching to the leadership of the 
 Commons." Gladstone, Gleanings, i. 101.
 
 254 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 usefulness. But the number of peers who 
 have the requisite capacity, and who are at 
 the same time willing to devote themselves to 
 the rather dull monotony of official business who 
 are not too old, or too young, too idle, too frivolous, 
 or too much occupied with other matters, for such 
 an employment is not very large. The bottom of 
 the "reservoir" is rather easily reached, when it is 
 tapped for able men, willing to take upon them- 
 selves the more arduous work of politics, without 
 its excitements, and with small prospect of such 
 rewards as can really appeal to their ambition.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 THE MONARCHY 
 
 THE. Crown of England is a convenient working 
 hypothesis^ " There is no distinction/' says Mr. 
 Gladstone,* " more vital to the practice of the 
 British constitution or to the right judgment upon 
 it than the distinction between the Sovereign and 
 the Crown." The distinction is often overlooked, 
 and it is all the easier to do so because no account is 
 taken of it in our legal or our ceremonial termino- 
 logy. The law and the conventions do not distin- 
 guish between the rights, the powers, and the 
 prerogatives, of the actual Sovereign, and those of 
 the mythical, immortal, omnipotent, all-embracing, 
 infallible, and omniscient, personality or institution, 
 which is technically the central and binding force of 
 our whole system. The Crown is like the ether, 
 which modern physicists postulate as the essence of 
 matter and energy. There may be no such thing ; 
 but to assume that there is gives coherency to 
 theory and a basis for calculations and inferences 
 of value. There is certainly no such thing as the 
 English monarchy, as it is represented in the 
 statutes, in the courts of law, and in proclamations, 
 
 * Gleanings, vol. i. p. 234. 
 
 256
 
 256 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 orders in council, and formal documents in general. 
 The government of this country is not that of a 
 semi-divine despot. The Sovereign who is the 
 hereditary and ceremonial head of a parliamentary 
 democracy has many privileges and attributes of 
 the highest importance ; but the tremendous powers, 
 technically ascribed to him, he does not possess. 
 They belong to a convenient myth, which is called 
 the Crown, but might almost as well be called the 
 Nation, or the Will of the People, or any other 
 suitable abstraction. 
 
 " To most Englishmen," says Professor Dicey, 
 " the extent of the authority actually exercised by 
 the Crown is a matter of conjecture." The transfer 
 of powers from the Sovereign, in his personal 
 capacity, to the Crown, in the abstract, has been 
 going on through the centuries of English history.* 
 What it comes to, in effect, is that most of the 
 prerogatives, theoretically belonging to the Crown, 
 are now in reality exercised by the Committee of 
 Parliament which is supposed to represent the 
 nation. There is a famous passage of Blackstone 
 in which the nature of the prerogative is denned in 
 the most impressive terms : 
 
 " We are next to consider those branches of the 
 > royal prerogative which invest our sovereign 
 
 * " The leaders of the English people in their contests with the 
 Royal power never attempted, except in periods of revolutionary 
 violence, to destroy or dissipate the authority of the Crown as 
 head of the State. Their policy was to leave the power of the 
 King untouched, but to bind down the action of the Crown to 
 recognised modes of procedure, which, if observed, would 
 secure first the supremacy of the law, and ultimately the 
 sovereignty of the nation." Dicey, The Law of tlie Consti- 
 tution^ chap. viii. p. 899.
 
 THE MONARCHY :>f>7 
 
 lord, thus all-perfect and immortal in his 
 kingly capacity, with a number of authorities 
 and powers ; in the exertion whereof consists 
 the executive part of Government. This is 
 wisely placed in a single hand by the British 
 constitution, for the sake of unanimity, 
 strength and despatch. The King of Eng- 
 land is, therefore, not only the chief, but 
 properly the sole, magistrate of the nation ; 
 all others acting by commission from, and 
 in due subordination, to him ; in like manner 
 as, upon the great revolution of the Koman 
 state, all the powers of the ancient magistracy 
 of the Commonwealth were concentrated in 
 the new Emperor : so that, as Gravina 
 expresses it, in ejus unius persona veteris 
 reipublicce vis atque majestas per cumulatas 
 magistratuum potestates exprimebatur." 
 If this be taken as a description of the royal office 
 in Great Britain, it is, of course, absurd. It cannot 
 be said that some of the modern definitions are 
 much more accurate, if accepted in their application 
 to the Sovereign as an individual person. Lord 
 Brougham, writing in 1860, tells us that : " The 
 whole executive power is lodged in the Sovereign; 
 all appointments to offices in the Army and Navy ; 
 all movements and disposition of those forces ; all 
 negotiation and treaty ; the power to form or to 
 break alliances ; all nomination to offices, whether 
 held for life or during pleasure ; all superintendence 
 over the administration of the civil and the criminal 
 law ; all confirmation or remission of sentences ; 
 all disbursements of the sums voted by Parliament ; 
 all are in the absolute and exclusive possession of 
 
 18
 
 25S THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 the Crown."* The terms used by Mr. Gladstone, 
 eighteen years later, are not very dissimilar: 
 
 "The Sovereign in England is the symbol of the nation's 
 unity, and the apex of the social structure ; the maker (with 
 advice) of the laws ; the supreme governor of the Church ; the 
 fountain of justice ; the sole source of honour ; the person to 
 whom all military, all naval, all civil service is rendered. The 
 Sovereign owns very large properties; receives and holds, in 
 law, the entire revenue of the State ; appoints and dismisses 
 ministers ; makes treaties ; pardons crime, or abates its 
 punishment ; wages war or concludes peace ; summons and 
 dissolves the Parliament ; exercises these vast powers for the 
 most part without any specified restraint of law ; and yet 
 enjoys hi regard to these and every other function an absolute 
 immunity from consequences." 
 
 As an account of the state of things actually 
 prevailing under Queen Victoria, the words of the 
 Liberal statesmen are no more accurate than those 
 of the Tory lawyer in the reign of George III. It is 
 not true that the actual occupant of the throne is the 
 supreme governor of the Church, the fountain of 
 justice, or the "sole source" of honour; that the 
 whole executive power is lodged with him ; that he 
 makes all appointments to offices in the Army and 
 Navy ; that he regulates the movements and dis- 
 position of those forces ; that he negotiates treaties, 
 and forms alliances ; or that he exercises any kind of 
 superintendence over the administration of the civil 
 and the criminal law. But these powers belong to 
 the prerogative ; and what the prerogative means 
 in the legal sense is set forth by Bagehot. He 
 thinks that it would " very much surprise people " 
 if they were only told how many things Queen 
 
 * Brougham, British Constitution, 3rd ed. 1826, p. 261.
 
 THE MONARCHY 259 
 
 Victoria could have done without consulting Par- 
 liament : 
 
 " She could disband the army (by law she cannot engage more 
 than a certain number of men, but she is not obliged to 
 engage any men) ; she could dismiss all the officers, from the 
 general commanding-in-chief downwards ; she could dismiss 
 all the sailors too ; she could sell off all our ships of war and 
 all our naval stores ; she could make a peace by the sacrifice of 
 Cornwall, and begin a war for the conquest of Brittany. She 
 could make every citizen in the United Kingdom, male or 
 female, a Peer ; she could make every parish in the United 
 Kingdom a ' university ' ; she could dismiss most of the civil 
 servants ; she could pardon all offenders." * 
 
 Queen Victoria could, of course, have done none 
 of these things ; but some of them might have been, 
 and in fact actually were, done by her Cabinets. It 
 was not the Queen who abolished purchase in the 
 Army by an act of prerogative. In 1871 the Glad- 
 stone Cabinet carried a Bill through the House 
 of Commons, by which the sale of commissions 
 was abolished. The Bill was rejected by the Lords, 
 and the Cabinet thereupon proceeded to effect its 
 object by the issue of a royal warrant. The use of 
 the prerogative, in this instance, had really nothing 
 to do with the Sovereign ; it was simply an easy 
 method, by which the Ministry of the day carried 
 out its own policy in accord with what it presumably 
 regarded as the wishes of the electorate. 
 
 There was a somewhat similar employment of 
 the reserve powers of the Crown thirty years later, 
 when Mr. Balfour's Government, towards the close 
 of 1903, appointed a committee of three persons, of 
 whom one was a peer, one an admiral, and the 
 
 * Bagehot, English Constitution, Introduction to second 
 edition, pp. xxxvii and xxxviii.
 
 260 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 other a distinguished military officer, to examine the 
 central organisation of the Army. Acting on their 
 report, the Government at a stroke remodelled our 
 military administration, changed the whole consti- 
 tution of the War Office, created a new Army 
 Council of high officers in substitution for the 
 existing heads of the military departments, and 
 even abolished so great an office of state as that 
 of the Commander-in-Chief. Parliament was not 
 consulted, except subsequently and indirectly, when 
 certain votes were required to make good the 
 expenditure incurred. These far-reaching and ex- 
 tensive changes were executive acts, carried out by 
 proclamation, or by orders in council, royal warrants, 
 and departmental decrees. They were done in 
 virtue of the prerogative of the Crown, wielded, 
 however, in no sense by the wearer of the Crown, 
 but by the Prime Minister of the day, who was thus 
 enabled to obtain the irresponsibility and indepen- 
 dence of Parliamentary control, which the legal 
 theory claims for " the King in Council." * 
 
 Constitutional Kingship. 
 
 It is sometimes said that the roval prerogative is in 
 abeyance. In reality it is transferred. What portion 
 of the comprehensive powers, inherent in the 
 Crown, could, might, or should, be exercised by the 
 Sovereign, is a point which has never yet been 
 
 * " We forget that the executive de jure is the Crown in 
 Council, that the Crown in this capacity is wholly outside 
 Parliament, that the part which the Crown plays in Parliament 
 is to receive the advice of its people and to make laws : not to 
 submit, formulate, or defend a policy." Anson, The Law and 
 Custom of the Constitution, i. 39.
 
 THE MONARCHY 261 
 
 determined. English political history, for nearly two 
 centuries, consists, to a considerable extent, of the 
 struggle to decide the question. 
 
 According to the conventional theory, the solu- 
 tion has been reached by handing over the operative 
 part of the prerogative, as well as all executive 
 authority, to the responsible elective committee of 
 Parliament. The Sovereign retains great influence, 
 great dignity, and complete freedom from political 
 liability; but he has had to abandon the right to 
 direct national affairs, or to shape national policy. 
 The King can still "do no wrong." The meaning 
 of this axiom, and its value from the legal point of 
 view, are well understood. What it signifies is that 
 there is no public act of the Sovereign for which 
 responsibility cannot be brought home to somebody, 
 and that no one can plead the orders of the Crown 
 in defence of any illegal proceeding. It remains 
 true that for any purely private and personal action 
 which can be performed without agents or human 
 assistance, the Sovereign could not be made 
 amenable. If a King of England were to go 
 out into the streets and pick the pockets of his 
 subjects, or if to use Professor Dicey's illustration 
 he were to shoot his Prime Minister through the 
 head with his own hand, there is no court of law 
 which could take cognisance of his deeds. The 
 nation would have to leave him to that retribution, 
 which the ghost of Hamlet's father prescribes for 
 his faithless Queen.* In exchange for security 
 from the turmoil of politics, the Sovereign is sup- 
 
 * " Leave her to heaven, 
 
 And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge, 
 To prick and sting her."
 
 262 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 posed to have resigned the substance of royalty 
 the right to rule to other hands. 
 
 But it has never been contended by English 
 critics, as it is by some foreign observers, impatient 
 of the mysterious half-lights and vague shadows, in 
 which our system moves, that the transfer has been 
 complete. An American philosophical investigator, 
 of the depth and learning of Mr. Burgess, regards 
 our constitution in its present shape, as dating from 
 the Reform Bill,* and considers most of our his- 
 torical learning as obsolete, especially in that part 
 which relates to the functions of the Monarchy. 
 To him Great Britain is a Ministerial Eepublic, 
 and the Sovereign a mere ceremonial figure-head. 
 Few Englishmen would be willing to accept this 
 conclusion. They know that though the King does 
 not govern the country, he does still have a share 
 in the control of Government, which may be greater 
 or less, according to circumstances, but is in any 
 case substantial. 
 
 The precise extent of this participation is hard to 
 define. The orthodox "literary theory," of our classic 
 school of publicists, is summarised in a sentence by 
 Mr. Gladstone. The character of the regal office, he 
 says, has been altered; but this great position has 
 not been emptied of its force and reduced to an 
 illusion. " The nearest approach to an account com- 
 bining truth and brevity would perhaps be found in 
 the statement, that while in extent the change has 
 been, at least inwardly, nothing less than a transform- 
 ation, its substance may chiefly be perceived in 
 
 * " I contend that the present constitution of Great Britain 
 did not exist before the year 1832." Burgess, Political Science 
 and Constitutional Law, i. 91.
 
 THE MONARCHY 263 
 
 a beneficial substitution of influence for power." * 
 The whole authority of theJState periodically returns 
 intojthe BoyaThands whenever a Ministry is changed. 
 During the interval between the retirement of one 
 Government and the appointment of another the 
 King is the depositary of power. Moreover, it is 
 his personal duty to decide which of the leaders 
 of the majority in Parliament shall be entrusted 
 with the Premiership. The right to commission a 
 particular statesman to form a Ministry remains, 
 though it is conditioned by the fact that the 
 Sovereign's field of choice is narrowly restricted. 
 And again, within certain limits, the Sovereign may 
 also require the acting chief of the executive to 
 seek a fresh mandate from the electorate. Power, 
 of a genuine kind, must rest with the Sovereign so 
 long as it is at his discretion to " send for-/' the 
 leader of the Opposition, and so long as he can 
 under favourable circumstances demand, or refuse, 
 a dissolution. 
 
 But these functions are exceptional, and can be 
 exercised intermittently, and only for very brief 
 periods. In the ordinary course of things, the 
 constitutional Sovereign is understood to have three 
 rights, which have been defined as the right to be 
 consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn. 
 The minister can do what seems good to him and 
 his colleagues. But it is subject to the obligation 
 of submitting every important decision, before it can 
 
 * Gleanings, i. 38. As long ago as 1783 we are rather surprised 
 to find Lord North saying to Fox, on the formation of the 
 Coalition Ministry : " The King ought to be treated with all sort 
 of respect and attention ; but the appearance of power is all that 
 a king of this country can have." Russell, Memorials of FOJ-, 
 ii. 38.
 
 264 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 be carried into effect, to this dignified, authoritative, 
 supremely influential, critic. The correct attitude 
 for the King, we are told,* is that of the sagacious, 
 dispassionate mentor. He should address his potent 
 "servant" in some such terms as these: "The 
 responsibility of these measures is upon you. What- 
 ever you think best must be done. Whatever you 
 think best must have my full and effectual support. 
 But you will observe that, for this reason and that 
 reason, what you propose to do is bad ; what you do 
 not propose to do is better. I do not oppose, it is 
 my duty not to oppose ; but observe that I warn" 
 
 Such remonstrances and exhortations must often 
 have effect. They come to the harassed politician 
 from a quarter he cannot ignore, with all the weight 
 and prestige given to them by the exalted station of 
 the speaker. There are few men who can treat the 
 lightest, to say nothing of the gravest, words of a 
 king or queen as if they were those of anybodj^ 
 else. But the Royal Counsellor has other advantages. 
 He speaks from the vantage-ground of perhaps a 
 greater knowledge than the minister possesses, and 
 of a closer and more intimate connection with 
 affairs of state. Ministers come and go ; but there 
 is no resignation for the King, while life endures. 
 His statesmanship may conceivably be much sounder 
 than those of his nominal advisers. Lord Eldon 
 declared that George III. had more wisdom than 
 all his ministers together. He attributed this, not 
 so much to the King's natural abilities, as to his 
 unrivalled opportunities for acquiring political 
 knowledge by an experience far longer than that 
 of the oldest member of his Cabinet. " A King," 
 * Bagehot, chap. iii.
 
 THE MONARCHY 265 
 
 said Peel, * " after a reign of ten years, ought to 
 know much more of the working of the machine 
 of Government than any other man in the country." 
 
 A wise and sagacious monarch, it is urged, may 
 be well content with his hortatory and monitory 
 privilege. It gives him great opportunities to 
 mould events ; but whether it amounts to all that 
 the constitutionalists of the old Whig line main- 
 tained, is somewhat doubtful. 
 
 The actual position was defined at the beginning 
 of King Edward VII. 's reign by an observer, who 
 had closely studied the relations between Queen 
 Victoria, her son, and their constitutional advisers. 
 ' ' The Prime Minister has been trained in a school 
 which identifies his office with practically absolute 
 political power." Again : " The Sovereign can 
 under the constitution no more initiate a policy for 
 ministers to follow, or impose upon them, by the 
 urgency of his appeal, a policy of his own devising, 
 than he can by his sole authority promulgate a new 
 law." And further : " Under no conceivable circum- 
 stances ^a.n a- (Tnvp.rnm.ejpt's action in high matters 
 of policy orifTina.tp. suddenly and unprovokedlv with 
 the King." t 
 
 * Croker Papers, ii. 316. 
 
 f These passages are from an interesting letter in the 
 Spectator of January 3, 1902, on the Prime Minister and the 
 Crown, written by Mr. (now Sir Sidney) Lee, the author of 
 the authoritative biographies of Queen Victoria and her 
 successor. Mr. Lee was writing to dispose of a rumour, 
 which had suggested that Court influence, rather than the 
 deliberate judgment of the Ministry, was " the efficient , cause 
 of the co-operation of our own Fleet with the German Fleet 
 off the Venezuelan coast. In plain terms, we are invited to 
 believe that the English Sovereign, of his own motion, has 
 successfully importuned his ministers to entangle this country
 
 266 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 Custom, it is true, "requires the minister to 
 acquaint the occupant of the throne with his inten- 
 tions, particularly in the domain of foreign affairs, 
 before carrying them into effect." Having been 
 seised of the ministerial project, the Sovereign may, 
 if he pleases, criticise; but then "usage forbids the 
 minister to attach to the Royal criticisms any 
 paramount force." The minister " invariably treats 
 them as unauthoritative suggestions," and he is 
 "entitled to ignore them altogether;" while his 
 Sovereign has not even a constitutional right to 
 feel offended. 
 
 A Recent Experiment. 
 
 Our constitutional Monarchy, like our Cabinet 
 system, is a modern and fortuitous growth. It 
 may be true that the root-idea of " limited 
 monarchy " lies embedded in our institutions. This, 
 however, means little more than that an English 
 King is guided by the rule of law, not by the 
 dictates of his own arbitrary will. Fortescue * is 
 at great pains to point out the difference between 
 a "lordship only royal," in which the Prince rules 
 by the jus regale, and a kingdom " royal and 
 politick," which is governed under " a lawe called 
 jus politicum et regale." But the expedient of 
 converting both the jus politicum and the jus regale 
 into an undefined right to advise and admonish, is 
 modern and largely accidental. 
 
 in an alliance with a foreign Power." Such action, it was 
 contended, would have been entirely inconsistent with the 
 traditions inherited by King Edward from his predecessor 
 on the throne. 
 
 * The Governance of England, chap. ii. And see Mr. 
 Plummer's illuminating Note on this passage.
 
 THE MONARCHY 267 
 
 The fact that the Hanoverian succession was \ 
 secured, at the death of Queen Anne, by a com- ( 
 bination of the great Whig nobles, enabled these ] 
 magnates to create a ministerial oligarchy, founded ( 
 on territorial influence. The effect was to con- 
 vert the " King's servants " into the King's masters. 
 The authority appropriated by the aristocratic 
 league was eventually transferred to the nominees 
 of the middle-class House of Commons ; but at 
 every stage it was watched with doubting eyes by 
 the nation, and there was always a large party 
 willing to aid the Sovereign in the endeavour 
 to obstruct the process. From the accession of 
 Anne to the accession of Victoria, the Tory Party, 
 narrow and prejudiced, as it often showed itself, 
 was animated and ennobled by the idea of defeat- 
 ing the domination of a class, and reconstituting 
 the ancient Monarchy in all its efficiency as the 
 representative of the nation as a whole. If, at 
 the back of their consciousness, the Whigs and 
 Liberals preserved the inspiring ideal of civil and 
 religious liberty, the Tories were elevated by this 
 dimly-seen vision of the Patriot King, freed from the 
 fetters of a faction or a clique, and focussing the 
 energies of the State for the common benefit. The 
 conception had appealed to the glowing imagination 
 of Bolingbroke, and its swan- song was sung by 
 Disraeli in pages of brilliant rhetorical prose. 
 
 The attempt failed, not so much because the 
 national genius disliked it, or because the national 
 institutions forbade its realisation, as because the 
 Sovereigns themselves were incapable of filling the 
 place marked out for them. The first two Georges 
 were strangers, absorbed in the politics of Conti-
 
 268 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 nental Europe. The third king of the line, a man 
 of strong character, if of limited understanding, was 
 prevented from pursuing a steady policy by long 
 intervals of insanity. His son came to the throne, 
 hopelessly discredited by personal irregularity, and 
 enfeebled by years and dissipation. The successor 
 of George IV. was an elderly Prince, of good in- 
 tentions, and mediocre ability ; and from him the 
 sceptre passed to a girl of eighteen. 
 
 It is significant that the true constitutional system, 
 as defined in the books, was not really established 
 till the reign of a female Sovereign. Even George 
 IV., broken by age and disease, made an angry 
 struggle against his Cabinet ; even William IV. 
 appealed, though ineffectually, from the Ministry and 
 the Parliamentary majority to the nation when he 
 dismissed Lord Melbourne in 1834. If the sons of 
 George III. had been vigorous and capable rulers ; 
 if William IV. had been succeeded, not by a young 
 lady, but a man of talent and energy in the prime 
 of life: the political evolution of the nineteenth 
 century might have taken a different turn. The 
 subtle and delicate balance, by which the hereditary 
 Monarchy_andrthe_jslagtrve Mimstryare enabled to 
 work in unison,js^ most likely to be conserved when 
 tlie Sovereign is a woman, and the executive chief 
 a statesman of dignified station and commanding 
 talent 
 
 The large and philosophical generalisations, with 
 which we are familiar, are really drawn from the ex- 
 ceptional conditions that prevailed during the reign 
 of Queen Victoria. When we are told that " the 
 suggestion of the Sovereign may influence the judg- 
 ment of the minister ; " that " Princes are rather
 
 THE MONARCHY 269 
 
 moons than suns in the political firmament " ; that the 
 Throne must remain " sheltered within an inner and 
 landlocked haven," and that " the mental habits, 
 which it tends to generate, will be less masculine, 
 though more amiable : " we can clearly discern the 
 picture before the writer's mind. It is that of a 
 Queen, still young and comparatively unversed in 
 affairs, listening with a kind of filial reverence to the 
 sentences of a Melbourne or a Peel ; or of a Queen, 
 of mature years, prudent, high-minded, and 
 sagacious, but broken by an inexpugnable affliction, 
 reserved, retiring, and somewhat self-absorbed, 
 dominated by the impressive personality, the 
 vibrating intellectual force, of a Gladstone or a 
 Disraeli. It would almost seem as if, for the proper 
 working of the constitutional machine, we required 
 the Salic Law of succession to be inverted, so that 
 the crown of Britain should never be inherited 
 except by a woman. 
 
 It happened that at the critical stage of develop- 
 ment the throne was occupied not merely by a 
 woman but by a very young unmarried woman. 
 When she did wed, she took as husband a Prince 
 who, by his integrity, his unselfishness, his abso- 
 lute freedom from personal ambition, was best 
 fitted to assist the experiment. Yet, even with the 
 throne shared by one so little " masculine," in any 
 derogatory sense, as Prince Albert, the political 
 apparatus ran sometimes with ominous jerks and jolt- 
 ings. There was frequent trouble with the Cabinet, 
 and occasionally it grew serious. The ideal arrange- 
 ment, the equipoise of " influence and power," did 
 not work at all well when the Sovereign was under 
 the close inspiration of an able, scholarly, cautious
 
 270 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 observer of affairs like the Prince Consort, and was 
 nevertheless expected to yield to the impatient im- 
 pulsiveness of Palmerston. Nor were the relations 
 altogether perfect, even with the impeccably correct, 
 and somewhat priggish, Cabinet of Lord Aber- 
 deen. The throne was certainly not " sheltered 
 within an inner and landlocked haven " in the 
 early part of 1854, when it was being furiously 
 assailed by the newspapers, and when it was com- 
 monly believed by the London mob, and by many 
 people all over the country, that the Prince, and 
 possibly the Queen as well, would be " committed to 
 the Tower."* 
 
 In the Life of the Prince Consort there is a 
 remarkable letter addressed to him by Baron Stock- 
 mar at this period. The Prince's mentor, with all 
 his constitutionalism, was impatient of what he 
 deemed the ministerial encroachments of the pre- 
 ceding quarter of a century. He was greatly dis- 
 turbed by the idea that the majority of the people 
 were being "impressed with the belief, that the 
 King, in the view of the law, is nothing but a 
 mandarin figure, which has to nod its head in assent, 
 or shake it in denial, as his minister pleases." 
 Stockmar exhorted his Koyal pupils not to yield to 
 this opinion : 
 
 " The most jealous and distrustful Liberalism, in any dis- 
 cussion about the definite interpretation of the law of Royal 
 prerogative, must be satisfied, if this be placed no higher than 
 a right on the part of the King to be the permanent President 
 of his Ministerial Council. Now the most stupid of Englishmen 
 
 * " People," wrote the Prince himself, on January 24 1854, 
 " surrounded the Tower by thousands to see us brought to it! "
 
 THE MONARCHY 271 
 
 knows, that, up to the present hour at least, his country is 
 always governed by only one party, and that consequently the 
 Premier of the Cabinet for the time is and can be nothing else 
 but the Chief of the Party then in power. Out of the very 
 character of this Party Chief it ought to be demonstrable to the 
 narrowest capacity, that every Premier, even were he a 
 patriot of the most far-seeing views, and absolutely exempt 
 from prejudice, must suffer from two drawbacks inherent in his 
 office, which demand a constitutional corrective, and for which 
 none can be sought or found, except in the true position of the 
 Crown towards the Cabinet, and in the way it deals with it in 
 the exercise of its prerogative. . . . 
 
 " The twaddle about ministers being responsible to the 
 nation for every fault of head or heart will not keep matters 
 straight. Where the question is how to keep the State in health, 
 our object should be, not to cure a complaint by severe remedies 
 after it has broken out, but to protect it against disease. . . . 
 
 " Ministerial responsibility in these days, for such ministers 
 as are incapable, and at any rate for such as are unscrupulous, 
 is a mere bugbear. The responsible minister may do the most 
 stupid and mischievous things. If they are not found out, he 
 may even continue to be popular ; if they do come to light, it 
 only costs him his place. He resigns or is removed that is 
 all : the whole punishment, the whole restitution made for the 
 mischief done to the commonweal." * 
 
 Mr. Gladstone, who was himself a member of the 
 Aberdeen Cabinet, took his revenge upon Baron 
 Stockmar by treating this Memorandum with 
 high contempt in his review of Sir Theodore 
 Martin's Biography twenty years later. His scorn- 
 ful criticism of the German publicist reads less 
 convincingly to-day than it did at the time it was 
 written. Many people will perhaps think that the 
 Baron's remarks about the real character of minis- 
 terial responsibility were not altogether foolish, and 
 that they deserved, and still deserve, consideration. 
 But Mr. Gladstone in this, at any rate, faithful to 
 
 * Martin, Life of the Prince Consort, ii. 545 seq.
 
 272 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 his whiggism, was always impatient of adverse criti- 
 cism upon a method of government which he had 
 invested with a kind of sanctity. The constitutional 
 Monarchy, as he understood it, with a Liberal 
 Cabinet in office, seemed to him the sum and crown 
 of human political wisdom, and as perfect, and 
 apparently almost as permanent, as the order of 
 Nature itself. Yet it might scarcely have endured, 
 without considerable modification, even to the end 
 of the Queen's reign, but for the premature death of 
 the Prince Consort.* The loss of her diligent con- 
 fidential adviser rendered the Queen, even when 
 riper years brought her a larger experience, less able 
 to hold her own with the strong and self-assertive 
 ministers of her later period. The cherished sorrow, 
 that caused her to seek a life of comparative seclu- 
 sion, her dislike to continuous residence in or near 
 London, and a certain inability to grasp, steadily 
 and constantly, the complicated details of public 
 policy, which the Prince, with his laborious industry 
 and cultivated intelligence, might have corrected 
 all this induced her to acquiesce, not perhaps quite 
 willingly, in the establishment of Cabinet supremacy. 
 Modern constitutionalism was watered by the teara 
 shed over the mausoleum at Frogmore. 
 
 * During the second decade of his married life, the Prince 
 Consort exhibited a certain tendency to enlarge the personal 
 influence of the Throne in the conduct of affairs. The angry 
 criticisms of the Liberal journalist " Verax," in a once famous 
 pamphlet, The Crown and the Cabinet, (Manchester, 1878), 
 though exaggerated, and bitterly hostile to the Prince and his 
 official biographer, have an element of truth.
 
 THE MONARCHY 273 
 
 NOTE TO CHAPTER XIV 
 LORD ROSEBERY AND THE EOYAL PREROGATIVE 
 
 IN January, 1903, a speech was delivered by the Earl of 
 Rosebery at Plymouth, which contained a passage of some 
 interest iin connection with the relations of the Crown and the 
 Cabinet. It was urged that in the difficulties created by the re- 
 construction of the Army after the South African Campaign, it 
 would have been wise to appoint Lord Kitchener Secretary of 
 State for War, with " large and almost dictatorial powers," so 
 that he might have a " free hand " to deal with army adminis- 
 tration. It might, no doubt, be objected that if Lord Kitchener 
 had become Secretary of State he would be a member of the 
 Cabinet, and as such responsible for the acts of the Cabinet. 
 " But," said Lord Rosebery, " is there a necessity for that ? 
 As Secretary of State he might only be summoned to the meet- 
 ings of the Cabinet which had to do with his department ; and 
 he might be definitely cut off from the collective responsibility 
 of the Cabinet. It is in the Power of the Sovereign to summon 
 any Privy Councillor to any Cabinet for any particular pur- 
 pose ; and there is no reason why he should not have adopted 
 that course in the case of Lord Kitchener." The words italicised 
 seem worthy of attention. We are to assume that Lord Rose- 
 bery would have seen nothing objectionable in the appointment 
 of a Secretary of State, responsible, not to the Premier and the 
 general body of his colleagues, or to the majority of the House 
 of Commons, but directly to the Crown. It is clear that, in the 
 situation imagined, the military Secretary of State must be, 
 in more than a formal sense, " the King's servant " ; since he 
 would be expressly released from all dependence on that govern- 
 ing committee of the dominant party in Parliament which is 
 known as the Cabinet. Lord Rosebery was, perhaps, not 
 speaking with much sense of responsibility, nor was he faced 
 by the immediate prospect of office. But his suggestions are 
 noticeable ; since they show that one of the most eminent of 
 Liberal statesmen, at the opening of the twentieth century, 
 was prepared to accord to the Crown a share in the actual 
 conduct of administration, such as the champions of Royal 
 prerogative, a hundred years earlier, would scarcely have 
 ventured to demand. 
 
 19
 
 CHAPTEE XV 
 
 THE MONARCHICAL POSITION 
 
 IT has been shown that the "limited monarchy," 
 as we now know it, is a modern growth, fertilised 
 in a special soil and under conditions exceptionally 
 favourable. It must be regarded as still on its pro- 
 bation ; and advantageous as it has proved to us, 
 there is really no warrant for the opinion, frequently 
 maintained by English writers, that it is an arrange- 
 ment so simple, so intelligible, and so obviously just 
 and wise, that, like Truth, in Dryden's satire,* it 
 needs but to be seen to be beloved by all sensible 
 people. On the contrary, it is extremely complex, 
 mysterious, and artificial ; so delicate, and so curi- 
 ously adjusted, that it is scarcely possible to expose 
 it to analysis without a sense of unreality. On the 
 face of it, the distribution of powers, as between the 
 actual and ceremonial authority, is puzzling and 
 unnatural. If we were not habituated to this unde- 
 fined dualism it might appear as irrational as the 
 relationship between the Frankish king and his 
 
 * "For Truth has such a face and such a mien, 
 As to be loved needs only to be seen." 
 
 Dryden, The Hind and tJie Panther. 
 
 374
 
 THE MONARCHICAL POSITION 275 
 
 Mayor of the Palace, or that of the Mikado to the 
 Shogun in old Japan. 
 
 One can conceive a painstaking investigator, after 
 the next glacial epoch, writing in something like 
 this strain : 
 
 "Not the least extraordinary among the practices 
 of this remarkable nation was the institution of 
 what seems to have been a kind of double royalty. 
 For reasons which, even after all my conscientious 
 examination of their records, are still obscure to 
 me, it seemed good to the English people to en- 
 cumber themselves with two Chief Kulers, the one 
 hereditary, and the other appointed from time to 
 time for an indefinite period. And while the sub- 
 stance of power belonged to the latter, all its outward 
 attributes were lavished upon the former. 
 
 "A stranger visiting London at this era would 
 have become speedily conscious of the splendour and 
 dignity of the ancient monarchy. The palaces of 
 the king, and the residences of his family, would be 
 pointed out to him. He would find the Sovereign 
 surrounded by a pompous and stately pageantry. 
 All the picturesque and decorative formalities, which 
 had disappeared from ordinary life, were still main- 
 tained for him. When he drove out on any public 
 occasion he was attended by a magnificent body- 
 guard of mounted soldiers, with drawn swords and 
 shining armour. When he personally opened the 
 session of his legislative chambers, the peers of his 
 realm appeared before him, arrayed in antique robes 
 of barbaric sumptuousness. His Household was 
 supervised by great officers of state and regulated 
 by a complicated etiquette. The proudest magnates 
 of the land were honoured by a post in his domestic
 
 276 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 service. The noblest ladies did not disdain to be en- 
 rolled among the personal attendants of his Queen. 
 
 " Such were the attributes of the hereditary chief 
 of this Empire. Great is the difference when we 
 turn to the elective ruler. No pomp or ceremony 
 attended his movements. In his dress, his bearing, 
 his mode of life, he was in no way distin- 
 guished from any private citizen. He was not 
 necessarily of ancient lineage or aristocratic birth. 
 He might, it is true, be a great noble, but this 
 does not seem to have been essential ; for this 
 supremely important office could be conferred on one 
 who was the son of a manufacturer, of a small 
 country landowner, of a physician, an actress, or 
 an obscure literary man of alien race and religion. 
 After the stranger in the streets of the capital had 
 passed the glittering procession of the monarch, with 
 its blazing uniforms, its armed and mounted escort, 
 its gleaming corselets and tossing plumes, he might 
 easily enough come upon the de facto ruler, walking 
 undistinguished and almost unrecognised amid the 
 crowd upon the pavements." 
 
 To the " common sense of the common people," 
 the contrast is only less poignant, because it is not 
 perceived. Monarchy has been for so many thousands 
 of years the ordinary mode of government for by far 
 the greater part of mankind that it has passed 
 into the instinctive consciousness of the race. Most 
 people, in all countries and climates, accept the rule 
 of a Sovereign as a law of nature. And to the vast 
 majority of human beings the conception of a king 
 is that of a despot. Limited and constitutional 
 monarchy is a thing which, even in England, is 
 only very partially appreciated by the multitude.
 
 THE MONARCHICAL POSITION 277 
 
 If it were announced that the King had " ordered " 
 that women were no longer to visit the theatres 
 in garments which left their necks bare, expert 
 observers would recognise that this was either a 
 hoax or a revolution. But many people would take 
 it quite as a matter of course. There would probably 
 be far less sense that any despotic encroachment had 
 been attempted upon " the liberty of the subject " 
 than if Parliament tried to accomplish the same end 
 by legislation. A large number of persons throughout 
 the country would be genuinely surprised to learn 
 that Parliament could, and that the King could not, 
 render it penal to wear, or to abstain from wearing, 
 any particular kind of costume. And in fact, though 
 the King could not, and would not, issue a sump- 
 tuary edict, he might express a wish ; and the wish 
 would have all the force of law with a considerable 
 portion of his subjects. 
 
 The Rehabilitation of Royalty. 
 
 The future of constitutional Monarchy in England 
 is an interesting subject for speculation. Will the 
 subtle equilibrium be maintained, or will the beam be 
 tilted to one scale or the other ? Much, of course, de- 
 pends on character the character of the monarchs, 
 and the character of the ministers, in the current, 
 and the coming, generation. We can hardly hope 
 to reproduce in permanence that very unusual 
 interaction of personal forces to which reference has 
 been made. There are influences at work which 
 tend to depress the royal office, and others which 
 may exalt it. 
 
 On the one hand, there is no doubt that Royalty 
 has lost much of the semi-religious sanction, on
 
 278 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 which, in most ages, it has rested. The divinity that 
 hedges a throne is far less perceptible than it was 
 three-quarters of a century ago ; when, though 
 the wearers of the Crown might be openly insulted, 
 there was still much of the old " Church and 
 King" feeling left. There were numbers of the 
 most excellent people in England to whom " loyalty " 
 was a virtue like piety, and the Lord's anointed 
 a reverential figure, quite apart from his character 
 or his actions. That sentiment has almost died 
 out. The King is a human being, and the Throne 
 a mundane institution. Such a rationalistic attitude 
 is not altogether favourable to Royalty, which has 
 so much of the attributes of mystery that it 
 flourishes best in an atmosphere of faith. 
 
 Socially and morally, however, Eoyalty rather 
 gained than lost ground in Europe during the 
 second half of the nineteenth century. At the time 
 of Queen Victoria's accession the institution was a 
 good deal discredited. The great reaction, which 
 succeeded the revolutionary wave at the close of the 
 previous century, had spent itself, and a distinctly re- 
 publican sentiment was noticeable in most Western 
 countries. Royalty had done little to vindicate its 
 metier after the fall of Napoleon. The Bourbon 
 Restoration in France had been a conspicuous 
 failure, and had ended, ignominiously enough, in 
 the Revolution of 1830. The bourgeois monarchy 
 of Louis Philippe, which followed, had failed to 
 make the Royal office popular at home or respected 
 abroad. The King himself, though a man of con- 
 siderable intellectual ability, was a self-opinionated 
 pedant, who believed that human nature could be 
 deceived to an unlimited extent by forms and words.
 
 THE MONARCHICAL POSITION 279 
 
 The system by which he ruled France was a 
 despotism of the middle classes, and it had not even 
 the merit of being honest. Under this shabbily cor- 
 rupt regime feeling was steadily ripening for the 
 outburst of 1848, which led the way to another 
 trial of Caesarism, and finally to what seems likely 
 to be permanent Kepublicanism. 
 
 In England itself the Monarchy was less popular 
 than it had been at any time since the latter part of 
 the seventeenth century. George the Fourth had 
 thoroughly discredited the office. Although his 
 offences were condoned by the fashionable world of 
 the metropolis they were never really forgiven by 
 the middle classes or by the masses, with whom, 
 especially since Queen Caroline's trial, the King 
 had been openly and bitterly disliked. How pre- 
 valent this feeling was, and how little attempt was 
 made to disguise it, is shown by the outspoken 
 comments of the Times when George the Fourth 
 died. Without even making a pretence of con- 
 ventional eulogium the journalists wrote with a 
 frankness which, in these days, strikes us as 
 brutal : 
 
 " The truth is and it speaks volumes about the man that 
 there never was an individual less regretted by his fellow- 
 creatures than this deceased King. What eye has wept for 
 him ? What heart has heaved one throb of unmercenary 
 sorrow ? Was there at any time a gorgeous pageant on the 
 stage more completely forgotten than he has been, even from 
 the day on which the heralds proclaimed his successor? If 
 George the Fourth ever had a friend a devoted friend in any 
 rank of life, we protest that the name of him or her * has not 
 yet reached us." 
 
 " : The writer had forgotten Mrs. Fitzherbert.
 
 280 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 We can measure the change of opinion since 1830 
 by endeavouring to imagine a respectable London 
 newspaper publishing a statement of this kind on the 
 very morrow of the death of a Koyal personage, no 
 matter what his character had been. 
 
 William the Fourth, though less open to hostile 
 criticism than his brother, was not an impressive 
 personality. He was honest, good-natured, self- 
 indulgent, and rather foolish. The best that could 
 be said of him was that he had done little harm, 
 and that he had meant well by the country. The 
 Times was kinder to him than to his predecessor, 
 but it was openly contemptuous : 
 
 " All is now over. The good old King of England is relieved 
 from earthly trouble from mental anxiety, domestic and 
 political from bodily suffering, such as it was terrible to 
 witness. Death has done its worst on what was mortal of 
 King William, and the memory of his inoffensive nature will 
 protect that portion of him, which bade defiance to death, from 
 the shafts of human envy, vengeance, or malignity." 
 
 This was not exactly the kind of sovereign to 
 raise the reputation of the Crown. In point of 
 fact, when the Queen came to the throne, a large 
 part of England was flagrantly anti-monarchical. 
 Of the two great political parties, one was 
 ostentatiously opposed to the Court and what it 
 considered the Court faction. But outside the Whigs 
 and the Tories there was an immense body of 
 unenfranchised, but not inarticulate, opinion in the 
 country, which was strongly inclined to repub- 
 licanism ; and by it the ancient constitutional 
 monarchy of Great Britain was treated with uncon- 
 cealed disrespect. The populace of London, which 
 in recent years has become frantic in its demonstra-
 
 THE MONARCHICAL POSITION 281 
 
 tions of attachment to the throne, was in those 
 days notoriously disloyal. Greville in his Diary, 
 describing the wedding of the Queen, notes it as 
 rather an agreeable sign that the behaviour of 
 the people showed some amount of courtesy and 
 interest.* 
 
 The change which has occurred in the intervening 
 period is remarkable. The age covered by the reigns 
 of Victoria and Edward VII has been an era of 
 nation-building. The loose and shaky fabrics, which 
 seemed tottering to their fall sixty years ago, have 
 now in most cases become sound, water-tight, and 
 stable structures. Many causes have combined to 
 bring about these results ; but it is undeniable that 
 one of the most efficient factors has been the 
 character and personality of the sovereigns who 
 have occupied several of the European thrones 
 during a greater or less portion of the period. After 
 George the Fourth and William the Fourth, and 
 Louis Philippe, and Francis and Ferdinand of 
 Austria, and the two Frederick Williams of Prussia, 
 and the unhappy individuals who finally discredited 
 the thrones of the Spanish Bourbons, we have had 
 Queen Victoria and King Edward of England, 
 William the First and then William the Second in 
 Germany, Francis Joseph of Austria, Victor Em- 
 manuel of Italy, Alexander the Second the " Tsar 
 
 * " The Queen proceeded in state from Buckingham House 
 to St. James's without any cheering, but then it was raining 
 enough to damp warmer loyalty than that of a London mob. 
 . . . Upon leaving the palace for Windsor she and her young 
 husband were pretty well received." Greville Memoirs, vol. iv. 
 chap. vii. 
 
 Tho Tories were specially disloyal. " They seem not to care 
 one atom for the Crown," notes Greville on September 5, 1839.
 
 282 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 Liberator " of Russia, Leopold the First of Belgium, 
 King Christian in Denmark, Queen Christina in 
 Spain, and the Emperor Mutsuhito in Japan. 
 
 Not all these august personages could be described 
 without exaggeration as men or women of genius ; 
 but it is, I think, safe to assert that they have been 
 gifted with some of the best and most useful 
 qualities which a sovereign can have. They were 
 all capable and courageous, they laboured for the 
 interests of their respective countries with assiduity 
 and zeal, and their personal character, in most 
 cases, was such as to secure them the regard of 
 their subjects. It happened also, by another happy 
 stroke of Fate, that several of them lived to an 
 advanced age, and that their reigns were prolonged 
 far beyond the average span. There is, perhaps, no 
 other station in life in which length of years is so 
 palpable an advantage as in that of kingship. No 
 one can doubt that the secular duration of Queen 
 Victoria's reign was of the utmost political value to 
 the British Empire. It took years before the 
 people, either of Great Britain or Greater Britain, 
 were weaned from the contemptuous toleration which 
 they had extended to the last proceeding representa- 
 tives of the Hanoverian dynasty. 
 
 The personality of the Queen was a real consoli- 
 dating agency in the British Empire. While 
 Downing Street was lecturing the Colonies, and 
 while the colonists were still raw with the old sense 
 of suspicion and distrust, there was a grow- 
 ing pride in the throne and an increasing 
 attachment to the reigning family. The sense of 
 a profound interest, and a kind of proprietorship, 
 in the Courts at Osborne, Windsor, and Balmoral,
 
 THE MONARCHICAL POSITION 283 
 
 quickened by occasional visits of princes to India 
 and the Colonies, did much to weld the widely- 
 scattered realms together. The " bond of Em- 
 pire " was not the Imperial Parliament, which the 
 legislatures of the self-governing Colonies regarded 
 with jealousy, nor the Imperial Cabinet, which 
 they look upon as only one of the many committees 
 that administer the several self-governing portions 
 of the British dominions : but the Throne, as 
 represented by a venerated Sovereign. There has 
 been a most remarkable modification of the attitude 
 towards the Koyal prerogative. Colonial constitu- 
 tionalists are now inclined even to exaggerate the 
 powers of the Crown.* But we may well doubt 
 whether there would be this contented acquiescence 
 in the Royal supremacy, if the occupant of the 
 throne during the latter half of the nineteenth 
 century had been a George the Third or a George 
 the Fourth. Unconsciously the colonial writers 
 have generalised from the particular case before 
 them, and have assumed that the head of an 
 Imperial Eealm must be such a one as Queen 
 Victoria was, so virtuous in private life, so careful of 
 her subject's rights in the conduct of public affairs. 
 
 This points to one of the regions in which 
 the royal authority may perhaps be expected to 
 increase rather than diminish. The King is the 
 head of the Empire, and there is no other; for if 
 the Prime Minister, or the Secretary of State, of the 
 United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland is 
 
 * See Todd's Parliamentary Government in the British 
 Colonies. Apart from its many other merits this standard 
 work derives special value from the fact that the author was a 
 distinguished Canadian publicist.
 
 284 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 allowed to act as his responsible adviser in that 
 capacity, it is only on sufferance. There is no 
 disposition on the part of the Colonies to strengthen 
 their relations with the English Cabinet and Parlia- 
 ment. The tendency is the other way. Federation, 
 if its numerous difficulties could be surmounted, 
 might give us a real " Imperial " Ministry and 
 Council of State. In the meanwhile, the fact re- 
 mains that, for administrative and political purposes, 
 the Commonwealth of Australia, Canada, South 
 Africa, New Zealand, are all but independent nations, 
 linked to one another, and to the other members of 
 the Empire, by the personal union of the Crown. 
 
 The Sovereign of England is not only the head of 
 the Empire, but he is also the head of Society. The 
 importance of this position was somewhat obscured 
 through the retired life led by Queen Victoria for 
 nearly forty years. Yet no judicious historian under- 
 rates the benefit conferred upon the nation by the 
 Queen and Prince Albert in setting the highest 
 possible standard of private and domestic decorum. 
 The most exalted household in the land was the 
 most exemplary and the best regulated. Great as 
 the influence was which radiated from Windsor and 
 Balmoral it might have been even more extensive 
 if the Court had been closely in touch with the 
 various elements that make up our social life. It 
 is impossible, in any case, that the association of 
 the Court with high society should fail to have a 
 strong indirect influence upon politics. For in 
 Great Britain, as in an earlier chapter I have en- 
 deavoured to show,* whatever may be the case in 
 other countries, the connection between London 
 * See Chap. X. supra.
 
 THE MONARCHICAL POSITION 285 
 
 society and the business of Government is close 
 and constant. Clever men and wealthy men go 
 into Parliament, and aspire to an influential position 
 there, very often in order that they may make good 
 their footing in that circle to which nearly all the 
 members of one House, and many of those in the 
 other House, belong. 
 
 But of this circle the Court is the natural and 
 official centre. Bound it the whole social firma- 
 ment revolves. That body of well-to-do persons, 
 in whose luxurious life so many millions of other 
 people are interested, is itself interested in Eoyalty. 
 What the King and the Queen, and the other 
 members of their family say, and do, and think, 
 constitutes for them a kind of minor ethical code, 
 a rule of manners, and conduct. If the King were 
 not allowed to sign another proclamation, or to 
 receive another report from his Prime Minister, this 
 circumstance alone must continue to render him an 
 active force in affairs. 
 
 Political action is not, and cannot be, limited to 
 the making of laws and the management of the 
 public departments. Denied the control of these 
 matters, the Sovereign has been encouraged to pay 
 attention to other branches of national activity. Art, 
 literature, science, and the stage, he is expected to 
 patronise with judgment. He has been permitted to 
 assume the position of Chief Almoner to the nation, 
 to be the directing mind in the sphere of charitable 
 beneficence. Many of the great movements for im- 
 proving the condition of the masses, for supplying 
 them with better dwellings, hospital attendance, 
 good nursing, and relief in distress, are supervised 
 or inspired by the Royal Family.
 
 286 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 The great constitutional statesmen of the Victorian 
 period regarded this development of monarchical 
 activity with complaisance. Government and law- 
 making being the concern of ministers and Parlia- 
 ments, it was thought that this outlet should be 
 allowed for the royal energies. It was considered 
 a harmless and tranquil region, undisturbed by 
 friction and partisanship. But the play of natural 
 forces cannot be easily controlled. This business 
 of social amelioration is politics in the highest 
 sense, and may be so recognised more clearly, with 
 every fresh failure of " private effort " to fulfil the 
 public needs. How the people are fed and housed 
 is more important than how the people should vote. 
 
 To solve these and kindred problems, a policy, 
 constructive and assertive, and perhaps attacking 
 many interests and prejudices, may be evolved. 
 The Sovereign's interest in social .reform cannot 
 always be limited to a vague benediction of the 
 altruistic spirit. He may have to take a side, in 
 order to assist the efforts of those who are trying to 
 "make men moral by act of Parliament," which 
 is likely to be among the main functions of the 
 legislature, and of all executive authorities, in the 
 future. And the nation might approve his pro- 
 gramme even though it did not happen to be that of 
 his Prime Minister. 
 
 Foreign Affairs. 
 
 That the Sovereign ought to exercise an exten- 
 sive and direct influence over the management of 
 foreign politics was not denied by the vindicators 
 of Cabinet privilege in Queen Victoria's reign. 
 Parliament has only a very limited and imper-
 
 THE MONARCHICAL POSITION 287 
 
 feet control over the treaty-making prerogative of 
 the Crown ; and it is admitted that in the exercise 
 of this power by the ministry the Sovereign should 
 participate at every stage. In the famous memor- 
 andum, written after Lord Palmerston's indis- 
 cretions in August, 1850, it was stated that the 
 Queen required to be made cognisant of the details of 
 negotiations conducted by the Secretary of State : 
 
 " She expects to be kept informed of what passes between 
 her and the Foreign Ministers, before important decisions are 
 taken, based upon that intercourse ; to receive the foreign 
 despatches in good time ; and to have the drafts for her ap- 
 proval sent to her in sufficient time to make herself acquainted 
 with the contents before they are sent off.'' * 
 
 The Queen did a great deal more than merely 
 advise and warn the Foreign Office during the 
 earlier part of her reign. No doubt her authority 
 was much exaggerated by her Royal relatives and 
 connections abroad, and by foreign potentates gene- 
 rally. Yet there were occasions when she intervened 
 directly with important results. It was at her 
 request on the suggestion and by the advice of 
 the Prince Consort that the peremptory despatch, 
 originally drafted by Lord John Eussell on the Trent 
 affair, was so softened and modified that it could be 
 accepted by the United States Government without 
 loss of self-respect. Many well-informed Americans t 
 believed that but for this action of the Queen and 
 the Prince it would scarcely have been possible to 
 avert a war. Nor can it be doubted that the Queen's 
 visits to Louis Philippe, in 1843 and in 1845, had 
 
 * Martin, Life of the Prince Consort, ii. 306. 
 f See the statement of Mr. Thurlow Weed in Martin, 
 v. 424.
 
 288 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 much to do with promoting, and maintaining, the 
 entente cordiale between Great Britain and France 
 during this troubled period. 
 
 We have had a later example of the emollient 
 effect on international relations of Royal attentions. 
 When King Edward VII. came to the throne, Great 
 Britain, in consequence mainly of the feeling 
 aroused by the war against the South African 
 Republics, was very coldly regarded in nearly all 
 the European countries, great and small. The 
 King paid a series of visits to various continental 
 courts and capitals, and it was presently seen that 
 the whole situation bad altered. The entente with 
 France was restored, and a valuable convention 
 arranged for the settlement of outstanding questions 
 between the two Powers. The ancient amity with 
 Italy and Portugal was revivified ; a good deal of 
 the friction which had insensibly grown up between 
 England and Germany was removed, and an Anglo- 
 German Treaty of arbitration concluded. There 
 is no warrant for assuming that the diplomatic 
 formalities were transacted otherwise than in the 
 regular course between Downing Street and the 
 various foreign Cabinets. But no doubt has ever 
 been entertained, or expressed, as to the part played 
 by the King's courtesies in bringing about the 
 results. International alliances and arrangements 
 are not merely an affair of protocols. They derive 
 their force from public sentiment ; and on this a 
 Sovereign can work more easily than any ministry. 
 Foreign affairs are likely to become more, rather 
 than less, important in the future, and the change 
 will not diminish the influence of the Crown. 
 During the period between the accession of
 
 THE MONARCHICAL POSITION 289 
 
 George IV. and the death of Queen Victoria, 
 international politics, though at times exciting 
 enough, were on the whole less absorbing than 
 domestic legislation. This is the special sphere 
 of Parliament and of a parliamentary Cabinet. 
 It is a region from which the Crown must 
 keep clear, for fear of becoming entangled in 
 party politics. But foreign policy is the concern 
 of a nation as a whole. Parliament cannot be 
 constantly in touch with it, and no statesman can 
 have that delicate personal relationship with ruling 
 dynasties abroad on which so much depends. 
 
 The causes which tend to support the monarchical 
 principle may be offset by the rising tide of oppo- 
 sition to all privilege and inequality of status, 
 perceptible in most countries, even in " deferential" 
 Britain. There is no active republicanism; but 
 there is undoubtedly a feeling that hereditary rank, 
 and advantages of any kind which are the mere 
 accident of birth, are somewhat irrational. The 
 throne is likely to feel the shock of this levelling 
 impulse, far later than the aristocracy or the pluto- 
 cracy. But the old jealousy of royal ascendancy, 
 though dormant, might easily be revived. No wise 
 Sovereign would take any step that would induce 
 his subjects to examine the foundations on which 
 the mysterious institution of kingship is based, or 
 to reanimate controversies which for long have 
 seemed to bear only an historic interest. If the 
 monarchy gains, as perhaps it may, a certain 
 accession of influence and even of direct authority, 
 the result will come about naturally and insensibly, 
 and rather by the irresistible pressure of events than 
 by any personal initiative. 
 
 20
 
 CHAPTEE XVI 
 ASPECTS OF CHANGE 
 
 BEPEESENTATIVE Government, like the constitu- 
 tional Monarchy, is still* on its trial. The problems 
 before it are novel, and it has yet to prove its com- 
 plete capacity to deal adequately with them. In 
 England we have a set of conditions, which are, at 
 present, without parallel elsewhere, and have never 
 found their exact analogue in the past. There have 
 been great Empires, and there have been great 
 Democracies. But we alone have essayed the 
 experiment of combining the two, and vesting the 
 control of territories scattered over the world and 
 of a vast subject-population, in the committee of a 
 representative chamber elected by the popular vote. 
 The Imperial Parliament is nominally and 
 legally, at least the sovereign authority in the 
 Empire. It is also the sovereign authority, in 
 the same sense, of the United Kingdom of Great 
 Britain and Ireland. Its executive is supposed to 
 manage the public business of forty-five millions 
 of English, Scotch, Welsh, and Irish people, in a 
 group of European islands ; it is the quasi-despotic 
 ruler of hundreds of millions of Asiatics and 
 Africans ; and it is understood to direct the common 
 affairs, and the international relations, of a loose 
 
 290
 
 ASPECTS OF CHANGE 291 
 
 confederacy of self-governing communities under 
 the British Crown. It is asking too much of 
 human nature to suppose that a single set of 
 officials should cope with all these duties, or that 
 a single " big public meeting " should see that they 
 are adequately performed. 
 
 Devolution. 
 
 The separation of imperial, from purely local, 
 functions seems the obvious method of relief. 
 Whether the former can be handed over to a true 
 Imperial Council, in which 'all the states and terri- 
 tories of the Empire shall be represented, is an 
 interesting question. It remains, for the present, 
 purely academic. Much has been written and 
 spoken of Imperial Federation during the past 
 thirty years. It has been the ideal of some able 
 statesmen, and the goal towards which many, who 
 take pride in the Empire, hope that we are tending. 
 But it cannot be said that any practicable scheme 
 has yet been formulated, nor that the movement 
 has so far roused an enthusiastic sentiment, among 
 either the democracies of the Colonies or the elec- 
 torate in the Mother-Country. 
 
 Even without waiting for the establishment of 
 federal institutions on the imperial scale, the 
 attempt may be made to render the central Legis- 
 lature more efficient by releasing it from some of 
 its burdens. The House of Commons is not so 
 much overworked, as overwhelmed, by the multi- 
 plicity of its nominal duties. No other legislative 
 body in the world none of which history has given 
 us any account had to attend to so many things, at 
 once so weighty and so trivial. We are endeavour-
 
 292 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 ing to get our one Legislature to do that which, in 
 Germany, in the United States, and even in Canada 
 and Australia, is done by many Legislatures. There 
 is no distinction between great and small : between 
 subjects merely local and transient and those of 
 imperial and enduring importance. The same 
 steam-hammer is raised and lowered to break an 
 egg or to pound an armour-plate. An Act to alter 
 the succession to the Throne, or to legalise slavery, 
 would be prepared by the same machinery, and it 
 would go through the same stages, as one empower- 
 ing District Councils to examine milk-pails. 
 
 The members of the House of Commons, in their 
 casual hours of comparative leisure, are expected to 
 discuss the high policy of an Empire greater than 
 that of Alexander, Charlemagne, and Napoleon 
 Bonaparte, taken together. From a famine in 
 Asia, a campaign in Africa, they turn to a row 
 with the police in Ireland, a squabble with the 
 Post Office in London. The men, who on Monday 
 afternoon are holding in their hands the issues of 
 peace and war, and pronouncing a decision that 
 will change the course of history, may on Tuesday 
 be dividing over tramways in Camberwell or gas- 
 works in Gravesend. 
 
 The difficulty and the danger are present to the 
 mind of many able public men. Such expressions 
 as the following are not uncommon : 
 
 " To the thoughtful Imperialist there appears to be great 
 and growing danger that the working classes of this country 
 may be thrown into an attitude of hostility to the Empire, by 
 the absorption of so large a proportion of the time of the 
 House of Commons on Imperial questions and the failure 
 to give adequate attention to those questions which affect
 
 ASPECTS OF CHANGE 293 
 
 them in their homes. To the determination that these ques- 
 tions shall be adequately considered is due the rise of a Labour 
 party, which will almost certainly be much more numerous in 
 the next Parliament than in this." * 
 
 The tendency is to find a remedy in the method 
 known as Devolution that is, devolving internal 
 business upon national or provincial councils. The 
 Imperial Parliament would devote itself to those 
 things which are really imperial, such as the Army 
 and the Navy, international trade, and the mutual 
 relations of the various constituent states of the 
 Empire. Purely local affairs would be delegated 
 to purely local assemblies. 
 
 This proposed creation of National Councils 
 would be no more than an extension of the principle 
 of subordinate government. Just as the city of 
 Glasgow, for instance, is entrusted by Parliament 
 with the management of certain matters which 
 directly affect its own area, so the inhabitants of 
 that part of the United Kingdom called England, 
 or that part called Scotland, would have their own 
 legislature, empowered to make local statutes or by- 
 laws, and their own executive committee. The 
 model is that of the federal constitution of 
 Canada in its relations with the provincial govern- 
 ments. Under the Dominion Act of 1867 there 
 is no such assertion of state-rights as is embodied, 
 either in the American Constitution, or in the 
 Australian Commonwealth Act. In Canada only 
 those powers are exercised by the provinces which 
 have been expressly granted by statute; all other 
 rights and functions belong to the Dominion. Under 
 
 * Mr. T. A. Brassey, in the Times, July 6, 1904.
 
 any feasible system of devolution in Great Britain 
 there could be no question as to the Imperial 
 Parliament retaining its sovereignty. It could not 
 surrender the right of revising any law of the 
 provincial authorities, or that of revoking such 
 powers as it may have granted them. 
 
 There is nothing revolutionary in the proposed 
 change. It is, in fact, the natural development of 
 the system of local government, which we have been 
 gradually building up through the municipal cor- 
 porations and the county councils. Our legislation 
 has long recognised a common identity of interests, 
 among the peoples of each of the respective nation- 
 alities which constitute the kingdom. 
 
 The separate interests of Scotland have been 
 acknowledged, in the Acts of 1885 and 1887, by the 
 creation of a Scottish Secretary of State, to whose 
 department has been transferred all purely Scottish 
 administration, and by a separate system of pro- 
 cedure in Scottish private legislation.* 
 
 In Ireland we had already gone much further 
 long before the Home Rule Bill of 1912 was intro- 
 duced. The Irish Agricultural and Technical 
 Instruction Act of 1899 creates a statutory Council 
 of Agriculture for the whole of the island. This 
 board, which is partly nominated and partly elected 
 by the County Councils, exercises a variety of 
 functions conferred upon it by Parliament; and it 
 is worth noticing that the Act empowers the 
 Government to transfer to it by Order in Council 
 
 * An adaptation of the Scottish system to Wales has 
 been recommended by the Select Committee, appointed in the 
 Session of 1904 to consider the question of Welsh Private 
 Legislation procedure.
 
 ASPECTS OF CHANGE 295 
 
 any other suitable administrative powers held by 
 any public department in Ireland. 
 
 This important statute practically concedes the 
 principle of devolution. If Parliament can devolve 
 upon one National Council the control of waste 
 lands and inland fisheries, it could similarly delegate 
 to the same body, or to others, the supervision of 
 education, local government, locomotion, the poor 
 law, the control of licensing, telephones, railways, 
 factories, and workshops, and private-bill legislation. 
 
 The relations of the subordinate to the para- 
 mount legislature and executive should present no 
 difficulty with the experience of foreign countries, 
 and our own colonies to guide us. Some of the most 
 energetic and advancing communities in existence, 
 such as the United States of America, the German 
 Empire, the Dominion of Canada, and the Common- 
 wealth of Australia, are organised on the basis of 
 a separation of local and central functions ; and we 
 are justified in inferring that the progress of these 
 countries is due, in part at least, to the suitability of 
 this method of government for societies in a high 
 state of industrial development.* 
 
 The advantages claimed for this long-foreshadowed 
 change are that it will set free the Central Parlia- 
 ment, and give it leisure and energy to attend 
 steadily to imperial interests. The House of 
 Commons will gain in dignity, as well as efficiency, 
 if it is in a position to discuss these large questions, 
 without being harried and disturbed by the constant 
 pressure of minor legislation. On the other hand, the 
 various National Councils would be able to devote 
 
 * See the admirable discussion of the whole subject in 
 Hollands's Imperium et Libertas.
 
 296 THE GOVERNANCE OP ENGLAND 
 
 themselves, with undivided aims, to those subjects 
 which intimately concern their constituents, without 
 being involved in the vortex of general party politics. 
 It has been seen that measures of social reform, 
 or of merely municipal interest, cannot be con- 
 sidered on their merits, because the fate of a Cabinet 
 and the destinies of the Empire may be associated 
 with them. In the course of the Session of 1901, 
 when vital issues of war and peace were engaging 
 public attention, the House of Commons was invited 
 to discuss, for several hours, the propriety of allowing 
 the London County Council to run tram-cars along 
 the Thames Embankment. The proposal might have 
 been right or it might have been wrong ; but it was 
 surely ridiculous that the supreme Legislature of 
 the Empire should have been compelled to meddle 
 with it at all, in the midst of its graver preoccupa- 
 tions. Mention has been made above of the debate, 
 in the same session, on the agreement between the 
 Postmaster-General and the National Telephone 
 Company, when an amendment, brought forward 
 by the supporters of the Government, was defeated 
 because it was treated as a vote of censure.* If 
 the matter had come before a Provincial, instead 
 of an Imperial Parliament, it is possible that an 
 English Ministry might have been overthrown upon 
 it ; but London members would at least have been 
 able to condemn a piece of departmental mis- 
 management, without incurring the odium of being 
 called pro-Boers. 
 
 It has long been evident to many observers that 
 systematic devolution would go far to deal with 
 the standing difficulties of Irish administration 
 
 * See Chap. VIII, p. 148, supra.
 
 ASPECTS OF CHANGE 297 
 
 without really paving the way for secession or 
 separation. The establishment of a strictly subor- 
 dinate Provincial Legislature is not in any way 
 opposed to the principles of national unity. It was 
 indeed the remedy suggested by leading members 
 of the Unionist party before Mr. Gladstone brought 
 forward his more revolutionary proposals in 1886. 
 There is little doubt that Lord Carnarvon during 
 his Viceroyalty in 1885, and Lord Kandolph 
 Churchill in the House of Commons, were actually 
 considering a measure of this kind. 
 
 Mr. Chamberlain, in the Home Rule debates of 
 1886 advocated the Federal method. " I say," he 
 declared, " that in my view the solution of this 
 question should be sought in some form of Federa- 
 tion, which should really maintain the Imperial 
 unity, and which would at the same time conciliate 
 the desire for a national local government, which is 
 felt so strongly by the constituents of Irish members 
 opposite." And he suggested as an alternative to 
 the Gladstonian policy " the present Constitution of 
 Canada not, however, in the relations between 
 Canada and this country; those are the wrong 
 lines, and lines against which I protest, and which 
 mean separation but in the relations inter se of 
 the Provinces of Canada and the Dominion Parlia- 
 ment. Those are the relations which I for one am 
 perfectly prepared to establish to-morrow between 
 this country and Ireland." Similarly the Duke of 
 Devonshire : 
 
 " The necessities of the case are not limited merely to the 
 creation of County Boards or Municipal Councils. But some 
 larger provincial, perhaps even national, organisations and co- 
 ordination of local authorities, may be required in England.
 
 298 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. When that time comes, let 
 Ireland share in whatever is granted to England, to Scotland, 
 or to Wales. But when it comes it will, in my opinion, be the 
 outgrowth of institutions which have not yet been created." 
 
 Their creation may perhaps be deemed within 
 reasonable distance. The setting up of a National 
 Council has been advocated by a party among the 
 Irish landlords and " loyalists " themselves, not as 
 a preliminary to Home Rule, but because they hope 
 it will prove an antidote to the larger Separatist 
 agitation.* 
 
 * " While firmly maintaining that the Parliamentary union 
 between Great Britain and Ireland is essential to the political 
 stability of the Empire and to the prosperity of the two islands, 
 we believe that such union is compatible with the devolution to 
 Ireland of a larger measure of local government than she now 
 possesses. We consider that this devolution, while avoiding 
 matters of Imperial concern and subjects of common interest 
 to the kingdom as a whole, would be beneficial to Ireland and 
 would relieve the Imperial Parliament of a mass of business 
 with which it cannot now deal satisfactorily, and which 
 occupies its time to the detriment of much more important 
 concerns " (Manifesto issued by the Irish Eeform Associa- 
 tion," August 30, 1904). The organising Committee of the body 
 included Lord Dunraven, Lord Louth, Sir Algernon Coote, and 
 other noblemen and gentlemen connected with the owner- 
 ship of Irish land. 
 
 Simultaneously with the appearance of this statement Mr. 
 Lloyd George, as leader of the Welsh members in the House 
 of Commons, put forward Devolution as the chief item in 
 the political programme of his party : " Wales wants to get 
 on with its national work, and it finds itself delayed and 
 hindered at every turn by the interference or actual hostility 
 of a Parliament knowing but little of the local conditions of 
 which the Constitution has made it the sole judge." Indepen- 
 dent Review, September, 1904.
 
 ASPECTS OP CHANGE 299 
 
 A Foreign Affairs Committee. 
 
 With, or without, Devolution, something might 
 also be done to confer on Parliament a closer 
 supervision over the management of external affairs. 
 It has been shown that the opportunities of the 
 private member of Parliament to intervene in 
 these matters are even more restricted than in 
 other departments of policy. He can, of course, 
 question ministers ; but if the Minister answers 
 evasively, or declines to answer at all, on the 
 plea that to do so would be detrimental to the 
 national interests, the questioner is helpless. He 
 can call attention to the subject in Committee 
 on the Estimates, or even, if he pleases, move a 
 regular Motion in the full House. But this in 
 either case, if he is seriously supported by his 
 party, would be equivalent to a vote of censure, 
 " You do not happen to approve of a particular step 
 we have taken," Ministers might say, and prac- 
 tically do say, to their followers. " Very well ; but 
 recollect that, if you join Mr. Blank of the Opposi- 
 tion in saying so, we may have to go out of office, 
 and you know what that means. How will your 
 constituents like you to jeopardise the ' Pro- 
 gramme' you were sent up to support, because we 
 have drawn a wrong boundary in Asia, or sacrificed 
 some leagues of swamp and desert in Africa?" 
 
 The argument is strongest when applied to 
 foreign policy, because here the private member 
 has the least certainty that he is right and that 
 his leaders are wrong, and he knows, at any rate, 
 that he would have the greatest difficulty in per- 
 suading his constituents that his motives have
 
 300 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 been patriotic and his action prudent. Besides, 
 he is aware that it is hardly possible for him to 
 have all the facts before him. The solemn 
 ministerial hint about information, which is vitally 
 important but cannot be disclosed, is one not easily 
 waved aside. It may be, and often is, a mere pre- 
 tence ; but, on the other hand, it is frequently quite 
 genuine. 
 
 No Government can carry on important negotia- 
 tions with success, or act with the swiftness and 
 decision which diplomacy may occasionally require, 
 if every step taken has to be submitted to a public 
 assembly and reported in the public press. Even 
 blue-books cannot tell everything ; and the real 
 history of some of the most complicated transactions 
 of our time may be sought in vain in the official papers 
 laid before Parliament. It will not be known in its 
 completeness till private letters and memoranda and 
 confidential documents, not likely to see the light in 
 our generation, are published. It is, indeed, very 
 obvious that the conduct of foreign policy must be 
 in the hands of a small and private body. It can- 
 not be entrusted to a popular chamber. A fool, or 
 a coward, Macaulay says, has sometimes com- 
 manded an army with success; but a debating 
 society, never. And if this be true of war, it is 
 equally true of that veiled conflict of nations which 
 is called diplomacy. 
 
 But the present system is obviously very little 
 in harmony with the spirit of representative 
 government. We are almost as much at the 
 mercy of two men, so far as foreign policy is 
 concerned, as if we were the -inhabitants of a 
 continental country, where foreign affairs are
 
 ASPECTS OF CHANGE 301 
 
 personally directed by a quasi-autocratic Emperor 
 and a Chancellor not responsible to Parliament. 
 The long and successful tenure of the Foreign 
 Secretaryship by Lord Salisbury, coming at a 
 moment of transition, did something to stereotype 
 the practice. When Lord Salisbury left the Foreign 
 Office in 1892, Lord Rosebery entered it, as " Prime 
 Minister for Foreign Affairs," with an understand- 
 ing, accepted by both parties, that he was not to be 
 interfered with in the conduct of his department. 
 Thus there was more one-man rule ; and it was 
 hardly broken by the retirement of Mr. Gladstone, 
 since it was known that Lord Eosebery continued 
 to act as a sort of superior Foreign Minister or 
 Imperial Chancellor of State himself, even after his 
 former office had been transferred to Lord Kimberley. 
 When the Liberals returned to power in 1906 the 
 tradition was revived ; and it was steadily maintained 
 under a Foreign Secretary, who had the confidence 
 of the Opposition as well as of his own friends, and 
 was so persistently supported by the majority of 
 both parties that his policy was rarely criticised 
 and not often seriously discussed. 
 
 When the Foreign Secretary is a peer it will 
 frequently happen that the Foreign Office will be 
 represented in the House of Commons by a young 
 gentleman, of ability indeed, but of no great 
 experience or authority. It would appear that in 
 such a case it is not deemed necessary to set a 
 statesman of weight and influence to advise with the 
 People's Chamber on foreign policy. It is enough 
 to have there a fluent and accomplished young 
 official to act as the transmitting agency from the 
 greater powers above, and to convey with neatness
 
 302 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 and point such limited information as it is thought 
 occasionally desirable for the nation's representa- 
 tives to possess. 
 
 That the direct management of foreign affairs 
 should remain in the hands of responsible ministers, 
 need not be disputed. Parliament, however, might 
 be admitted, to some extent, to their confidence. 
 In more than one foreign country, this has been 
 attempted. In France, the bureaux of the Chamber 
 are almost executive bodies, and their activity, and 
 the continuity of policy they are able to secure, 
 do a good deal to counteract the administrative 
 instability produced by frequent ministerial changes. 
 In America the control of foreign policy is one of 
 the special functions of the United States Senate. 
 The Constitution allows the Senate the right to 
 confirm or reject all engagements made with alien 
 Powers. Its Committee on Foreign Eelations is 
 regularly informed of every important step taken or 
 meditated by the Executive. The Committee sits 
 with closed doors, so that difficult negotiations are 
 not likely to be embarrassed by being prematurely 
 divulged. 
 
 This Committee can do two things. In the first 
 place, it can remonstrate with the President if it 
 considers that his ministers are taking an impolitic 
 step. Thus it can bring to bear, not indeed the 
 whole weight of a popular assembly, but that of 
 some of its most influential representative members, 
 on the conduct of foreign affairs. And, secondly, it 
 can act as a link between the Executive and Con- 
 gress, and can provide that the two authorities are 
 in touch with one another. Since the American 
 Constitution requires that all treaties and interna-
 
 ASPECTS OF CHANGE 303 
 
 tional conventions must be ratified by the Senate, 
 it is necessary that this Chamber should be seised 
 of their purport and meaning before they are 
 provisionally concluded. 
 
 There is something to be said for constituting a 
 similar Committee on Foreign Eelations in the 
 Imperial Parliament. There might be one for the 
 House of Commons and one for the House of Lords 
 or other Second Chamber ; but probably the better 
 arrangement would be to form a joint Committee 
 selected from the two Houses. The Committee 
 should be a small one say twenty members, of 
 whom twelve might be chosen from the Lower 
 Chamber and eight from the Upper. It would 
 include members of both parties, and would be 
 appointed, not for the session but for the duration 
 of the Parliament. It would not be in any sense 
 an executive body : that is to say, it would not 
 be supposed to take the actual conduct of foreign 
 affairs out of the hands of the Cabinet. Its 
 functions would be to advise, to discuss, to 
 investigate, and generally to act as the eyes and 
 ears of Parliament, where its particular department 
 is concerned. It would sit with closed doors, and 
 its divisions should not be made public. This 
 last-named provision, in which the proposed 
 conclave would differ radically from the existing 
 Grand Committees, is of the utmost importance. 
 Deliberating in camera, the members of the Com- 
 mittee would be able to express their independent 
 opinions, and would not be afraid (since they would 
 neither jeopardise their own individual position nor 
 that of their party) to oppose their leaders, if 
 they deemed opposition necessary.
 
 304 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 Such a bureau should have power to call for 
 papers, documents, correspondence, and drafts of 
 conventions and agreements with foreign states, 
 before these were laid upon the table of the House ; 
 and it would be entitled to request the Secretary of 
 State, or his immediate subordinate, to explain the 
 details of the policy which the Government proposed 
 to pursue. The Cabinet would be under no compul- 
 sion to adopt the opinion of the Committee. But 
 when ministers differed from it, they would do 
 so under a grave sense of responsibility; for they 
 would have the full knowledge that this weighty 
 little council, composed of the most competent and 
 influential private members of both chambers, was 
 against them. On the other hand, Parliament and 
 the country would have more confidence in the 
 conduct of the most critical department of state, if 
 they knew that its intricate and mysterious recesses 
 (necessarily mysterious so far as the mass of the 
 public is concerned) had been explored by a com- 
 paratively impartial, and reasonably well-informed, 
 body of investigators. 
 
 The objection to any such arrangement is that it 
 might interfere with the secrecy desirable for the 
 conduct of international negotiations. A secret told 
 to twenty persons, it is said, is a secret no longer. 
 But, as a matter of fact, the most confidential 
 matters are frequently discussed in cabinet councils, 
 and the risk that they will be prematurely divulged 
 is considered so slight that it is habitually dis- 
 regarded. Moreover, it may be urged that the 
 occasions when absolute secrecy and silence must 
 be maintained are not numerous, and possibly it 
 would be no bad thing if they were lessened. A
 
 ASPECTS OF CHANGE 305 
 
 Cabinet, supposed to lie under the obligation of 
 vindicating its conduct before a representative 
 Assembly, should be given as little temptation as 
 possible to enter upon concealed conventions and 
 private understandings. Its opportunities would not 
 disappear absolutely. The Secretary of State might 
 refuse information to the Committee, as he now 
 does to the House, in the alleged interests of the 
 public service ; but the Committee would be in a 
 far better position than the House to decide whether 
 the excuses were genuine or not. 
 
 It would be foreign to the purpose of these 
 chapters to discuss the larger problems which a 
 ruling Democracy may have to face, when it is con- 
 cerned not so much with the government, as with the 
 organic life, of the community. We live in an age 
 of change, of scepticism, and of scientific inquiry. 
 In all the civilised and progressive societies of the 
 world thoughtful people are asking themselves 
 whether their political institutions are suited to the 
 conditions of modern existence. It is recognised 
 that the art of government has not kept pace 
 with the march of knowledge and scientific effort 
 in other fields. Social change and industrial evolu- 
 tion have moved in the past few decades at a rate 
 unequalled during any period of which we possess 
 the records. Small wonder if the political organism 
 has not adapted itself to this breathless advance. 
 
 England is not the only country where it is felt 
 that politics is no longer a business for the well- 
 meaning, public-spirited person, endowed only with 
 an exceptional allowance of vanity or leisure. 
 
 With us the tradition will not easily be broken 
 21
 
 306 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 down. There is no liking for the professional 
 politician. Yet it is seen that administrative and 
 legislative functions cannot be discharged, in a 
 complex society, without something more than 
 good intentions and a respectable character. The 
 finest trained intellects are needed for the nation's 
 service. Can it be said that the nation gets them ? 
 
 Modern industrial communities have so far not 
 been very successful in bringing to bear on the 
 work of government any large share of the talent 
 which has been devoted to science, commerce, 
 learning, and finance. 
 
 The great and sudden increase in the number of 
 Labour members at the general election of 1906 was 
 symptomatic of a change which might have been 
 anticipated. There may be a further enlargement 
 of this group, or it may be weakened by the growth 
 of an obvious tendency on the part of the trade- 
 unions to substitute direct action by their own 
 organisations for legislative intervention. In any 
 case the Labour member must have his place in an 
 assembly which should represent all classes, and 
 express the feelings of every section of society. But 
 while some of these working-class politicians have 
 shown themselves men of exceptional capacity, it is 
 not evident that they will generally bring into our 
 public life that kind of trained intelligence of which 
 it stands most in need. The education supplied by 
 the workshop and the trade society is useful, and so 
 is that of the polo-ground and the hunting-field ; but 
 both require to be supplemented by qualities which 
 are not usually acquired in either school. 
 
 A great urban constituency could find abundance 
 of varied knowledge and proved ability among its
 
 ASPECTS OF CHANGE 307 
 
 merchant princes, its masterful captains of industry, 
 its shrewd traders and financiers, its accomplished 
 professional men, its managers, foremen, and 
 highly-skilled artisans and craftsmen. It seems 
 strange that such a microcosm, with its multifarious 
 activities and interests, when it is appointing a 
 representative to the highest council of the nation, 
 should be asked to choose between a middle-aged 
 man of fashion, who never did a week's real work 
 in his life, and a day labourer, who cannot write a 
 grammatical letter, and could not read a serious 
 book. Both may be honest and well-meaning, and 
 even capable ; but the one is frivolous, and the 
 other ignorant ; and you could hardly throw a stone 
 in the High Street of the town in the middle of the 
 day without hitting a person who would make a 
 better Member of Parliament than either. 
 
 It has been pointed out above that the appre- 
 hensions of the opponents of Democracy, as to the 
 consequences of the franchise extensions, have not 
 been altogether justified. Sir Henry Maine was 
 greatly afraid of the uninstructed masses and of 
 the presumed " opposition between democracy and 
 science." * But the intellectual difference between 
 the patron and the client, between the governing 
 class and its protig&s, is less wide than when these 
 suggestions were made, and it is growing narrower. 
 A modern M.P. may be no better equipped, in the 
 things that make for the understanding of practical 
 
 * Popular Government, pp. 37, 189, &c. Maine refers, 
 with approval, to M. Paul Bourget's remark in Essais de 
 Psychologic Contemporaine : " II eat possible, en effet, qu'une 
 divergence eclate entre ces deux grandes forces des socieies 
 modernes : la democratie et la science."
 
 308 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 affairs, than his own chauffeur, or perhaps even his 
 own butler. The distinction is not so much 
 between classes as between individuals. The space 
 that separates the politician from the skilled 
 mechanic may be considerably less wide than that 
 which divides both from a professor of physics, on the 
 one hand, and a bricklayer's labourer, on the other. 
 
 Politics never was a monopoly of highly-educated 
 persons. It is not a finished culture that is required, 
 but a gsneral grasp of affairs, and a vigorous, practical 
 comprehension of the conditions which regulate the 
 relations of individual, classes, and communities. 
 The men who were put into the Parliaments and 
 the Cabinets of the nineteenth century were in 
 many respects well fitted to deal with problems 
 that were predominantly political and legislative. 
 But in the future the forces of the state seem likely 
 to be directed mainly into two channels of activity. 
 A constant attention will necessarily be devoted to 
 what are called imperial questions, and to all that 
 concerns the situation of the Empire, as one of a 
 family of powerful, well-developed, and self-asser- 
 tive nations. This is the business of statesmanship ; 
 and it needs not only judgment and firmness of 
 character, but special knowledge which cannot be 
 acquired without study and reflection. 
 
 In domestic affairs, another group of subjects will 
 call for attention. Beform has a different meaning 
 at different periods. It is no longer the concession 
 of political power to the body of the people, the 
 abolition of class and religious privileges, the free- 
 ing of industry from fetters, and the emancipation 
 of trade. The future will have other cares. 
 
 Governments and Parliaments will be compelled
 
 ASPECTS OF CHANGE 309 
 
 to occupy themselves more closely with tariffs and 
 commercial policy, with industrial organisation, with 
 education and scientific research, with public health, 
 transport, municipal enterprise and control, and 
 with all that concerns the social well-being of the 
 people. The revolution for it is nothing less by 
 which the weight of population has been shifted 
 from the villages to the towns has been allowed to 
 run its course almost unnoticed. The problem faces 
 the rulers and thinkers of all civilised communities.* 
 But it is most insistent in Great Britain, where 
 already four-fifths of the inhabitants live in urban 
 or suburban areas ; and its solution calls for a high 
 level of public virtue, for sympathy, good sense, and 
 wide intelligence. 
 
 The governing class has, with some exceptions, 
 not thought it necessary to take up this duty. It 
 leaves it to be dealt with by local boards, largely 
 composed of small shopkeepers. " Society," deeply 
 interested in Parliamentary politics, has treated 
 municipal affairs with well-bred contempt. Parlia- 
 ment itself, while it does nothing to raise the stan- 
 dard of personal efficiency in the municipal bodies, 
 has systematically enlarged their powers and 
 increased their responsibilities. Perhaps, under a 
 system of devolution, the old organic connection 
 between the local and central government may 
 be restored ; t and able and ambitious men, trained 
 
 * " Our civilisation has become urban within the present 
 generation, almost without our knowing it." Godkin, Unfore- 
 seen Tendencies, Introd., p. vi. 
 
 f " The humble processes, by which men had made their by- 
 laws in the manorial courts and amerced the offenders ; by 
 which they had assessed the estates or presented the report of 
 their neighbours ; by which they had learned to work with the
 
 310 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 to administration in their borough councils and 
 county councils, may ascend to the provincial, or the 
 national, assemblies, and so at length gain a place in 
 the supreme Parliament of the Empire. 
 
 The stability of our institutions may be exposed 
 to tests more searching than any they have recently 
 had to encounter. Englishmen, for more than a 
 hundred years, have been able to keep their politics 
 clear of all the deeper issues that touch on ethics, 
 on theology, on religious doctrine, on the relations 
 of the individual to his own soul, and to the visible, 
 and the spiritual, universe. Man, regarded as a 
 "political animal," has been the chief, almost the 
 exclusive, object of interest in our legislation. This 
 convenient simplicity may not be maintained. Man 
 is many things besides a political animal. The 
 problems and the controversies which, in one form 
 or another, have run through European history, are 
 still vital ; and we have only to look across the 
 Channel to see how easy it is to bring them back to 
 the political arena. Even in the whirl of adventure 
 and material prosperity a nation does not wholly 
 lay aside the memory of the passions and troubled 
 emotions of its past. 
 
 And if we should still be spared such anxieties, 
 there are others we are not likely to be spared. Ke- 
 presentative government and modern industrialism 
 have not as yet harmonised the political and 
 the economic forces. Throughout recorded history, 
 
 judges of the King's Court for the determination of custom, 
 right, justice, and equity, were the training for the higher 
 functions, in which they were to work out the right of taxation, 
 legislation, and political determination on national action." 
 >tubbs, Constitutional History of England, i. 623.
 
 ASPECTS OF CHANGE 311 
 
 power and wealth have seldom been dissociated ; 
 the ruling class was usually that which owned 
 property or held the land.* Under parliamentary 
 institutions and a wide franchise political sove- 
 reignty rests with the unendowed multitudes. If 
 they choose to put forth the strength with which 
 the laws have clothed them they hold the riches of 
 the rich, the amenities of the favoured few, at their 
 mercy. 
 
 In other ages the fortunate minority have usually 
 lived in their own world apart, shut off by barriers, 
 physical, moral, or racial, from the masses. With 
 us it is otherwise. During the short London season, 
 one may witness, on any warm summer evening, 
 a scene of strange significance. In front of some 
 opulent mansion a long train of carriages and 
 motor-cars will be in waiting after a fashionable 
 entertainment. The opening doors reveal glimpses 
 of sumptuous light and colour, the sparkle of gems 
 on the bare shoulders of women, the shimmer of 
 silk and velvet under the softened radiance of the 
 electric lamps. Outside, on the pavements, clustered 
 about the carriages, so near that they could touch 
 the departing guests with their hands, there will be 
 a little crowd of quietly interested onlookers. Some 
 of them are late workers, going homeward after 
 their day's toil, poor hard-wrought people, to 
 whom a single glittering stone, from one of the 
 circlets uncovered before their eyes, might be 
 worth the pain of a laborious year. " En effet Us 
 
 * " The great and brilliant achievements of history are wont 
 to be accomplished at times when economic organisation has 
 rested on the same foundations as political power and order." 
 G. Schmoller, The Mercantile System,
 
 312 THE GOVERNANCE OF ENGLAND 
 
 sont des hommes," wrote La Bruyere, in his bitter 
 sketch of the French peasantry of the old regime. 
 They were men, but they were not voters. Our 
 modern wealth, kindlier, more self-restrained, less 
 arrogant than in the past, yet lives under the 
 curious gaze of a giant, always armed, and some- 
 times hungry. Democracy in England has not 
 used its powers : it has, indeed, scarcely been 
 conscious of them. But that is due to circum- 
 stances and conditions, which are not sempiternal, 
 and may not much longer endure. 
 
 Whatever difficulties may lie before us, we can 
 be allowed to hope that they will be met by those 
 processes of adaptation and adjustment with which 
 the survey of our annals has made us familiar: 
 if there are great changes to come that they will 
 be accomplished under the ancient usages, and 
 through the established methods of traditional 
 legality. In the foregoing pages it has not been 
 deemed necessary to treat the Constitution with 
 the undiscriminating adulation sometimes bestowed 
 upon it : as though it were the perfection of human 
 wisdom and prescient design, whereas in many 
 of its parts it is no more than the result of 
 fortunate chance and temporary expedient. But 
 it enshrines within its being the principle of Life 
 and the principle of Law. Its capacity for growth, 
 its rhythmical flexibility of movement have not left 
 it ; and we may trust that its venerable forms, and 
 salutary conventions, will prove equal to the 
 rending strain of social reorganisation in the future, 
 even as they have withstood the shocks and 
 tempests of political reconstruction in the past.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Aberdeen Cabinet, 166, 270 
 
 Adjournment, Motion for, how re- 
 stricted in practice, 86 
 
 "All the Talents," Ministry of, 
 160 
 
 Amateurs, in office, 199 seq. ; in 
 the electorate, 209 seq. 
 
 American Constitution compared 
 with British, 1, 4, 49, 106, 117, 
 124, 173, 194, 302 
 
 Anne, Queen, at Cabinet Councils, 
 42 
 
 Anson, Sir William, The Law and 
 Custom of the Constitution, 13, 
 22, 90, 102 
 
 Aristotle, on civic virtue, 210 
 
 Army Eeorganisation Scheme of 
 1904 
 
 Asquith, Kt. Hon. H. H., legal ele- 
 ment in his Cabinet, Introd., 
 xxviii ; on House of Commons as 
 an "automatic machine," 87; 
 his reputation outside Parlia- 
 ment, 101 
 
 Australia, Parliamentary Govern- 
 ment in, 46 
 
 Australian Commonwealth Act, 2, 
 29 
 
 Bacon, Francis, allusion to " Cabi- 
 net Councils," 26 
 
 Bagehot, Walter, The English 
 Constitution, quoted or re- 
 ferred to, 12, 13, 98, 178, 251, 
 264 
 
 Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J., his Closure 
 notice, 72 ; his Rules of Pro- 
 cedure, 83, 84 ; his threat to 
 dissolve, 111 ; on our politics as 
 " an organised quarrel," 118 ; on 
 the party system, 128 ; on 
 Honours List, 157 ; on advan- 
 tage of Foreign Secretary being 
 a peer, 253 ; appointment of War 
 Office Reorganisation Committee, 
 259 
 
 Beaconsfield, Benjamin Disraeli, 
 Earl of, 98, 108, 129, 131, 156, 
 188, 267, 269 
 
 Blackstone, Sir William, Commen- 
 taries on the Laws of England, 
 7, 18, 256 
 
 " Blocking " motions in the House 
 of Commons, 87 
 
 Bodley, J. E. C., author of France, 
 on instability of French Cabinets, 
 120 
 
 Boutmy, Emile, De~vetoppement de 
 la constitution en Angleterre, 22 ; 
 Psychologie politique du peuple 
 anglais, 128, 214 n. 
 
 Brougham, Lord, The English 
 Constitution, 7, 174 ; on " swamp- 
 ing " the House of Lords, 240 n.; 
 on attributes of the Sovereign, 
 257 
 
 Bryce, James, The American Com- 
 monwealth, quoted or referred to, 
 18, 51, 120, 195, 199 
 
 Burns, John, M.P., 101, 188 
 
 313
 
 314 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Cabal, use of the term in seven- 
 teenth century, 26 
 
 Cabinet, The, its actual and formal 
 character, 15 ; tardy recognition 
 of, 16; its accidental growth, 17; 
 attempt to check its development 
 in the Act of Settlement, 19 ; 
 its place in the Constitution, 21 ; 
 authorities on, 21 ; feeling to- 
 wards in eighteenth century, 24 ; 
 Parliamentary refusal to acknow- 
 ledge its existence, 27, 28 ; still 
 " unknown to the Constitution " 
 in 1851, 28 ; formally mentioned 
 in amendment to the address, 
 1900, 29 ; connection with Privy 
 Council, ib. ; oath taken by 
 members of as Privy Councillors, 
 31 ; a secret committee, 34 ; in- 
 formality of its meetings, 38 ; 
 its secrets faithfully guarded, 
 39 ; its connection with the 
 Legislature, 48 ; assumed to be 
 the servant of the House of 
 Commons, 56 ; its control of 
 legislation, 62; John Stuart Mill 
 on legislative initiative of, 68 ; 
 "a better institution" than 
 House of Commons according to 
 Lord Hugh Cecil, 79 ; its almost 
 unchecked control over executive 
 government, 81 ; Lord Bosebery 
 on, 82; its control of finance, 
 89 ; long apprenticeship required 
 for it, 100 ; its power to choose 
 its own time for appeal to elec- 
 torate, 106 ; Lord Salisbury's 
 letter on Cabinet and Commons, 
 113 ; its attitude towards Par- 
 liamentary groups, 123 ; charac- 
 ter of its members, 136 ; collec- 
 tive responsibility of, 140 ; dis- 
 agreements in, 143 ; M. Combes, 
 French Premier, on Cabinet 
 system, 145 ; Inner Cabinet, 163 ; 
 
 in eighteenth century, 164 ; partly 
 due to size of modern Cabinets, 
 165 ; only Inner Cabinet admitted 
 to complete knowledge of policy, 
 170 ; oligarchic character of 
 Cabinet, 185 seq. ; wealth and 
 birth largely represented in, 188 ; 
 composition of recent Cabinets, 
 190 ; Lord Salisbury's and Lord 
 Rosebery's, 191 ; Cabinet Minis- 
 ters mostly men of leisure, un- 
 used to steady hard work, 196 ; 
 amateur administrators, 201 ; 
 real check on Cabinet, not the 
 House of Lords, 223 and Introd., 
 xvi; relations of Sovereign with, 
 265 seq. 
 
 Cabinet, American, 138, 154 
 
 Cabinet "claims," Mr. Gladstone 
 and Lord Derby on, 168 
 
 Cabinet Council, early use of the 
 name, 26 ; by Bacon, ib. ; by 
 Clarendon, ib. ; in Trenchard, 
 27 ; long regarded with dislike, 
 i&. ; attempt to move vote of 
 censure on in Lords, ib. ; not 
 recognised by law, 28 ; meetings 
 of, 37 ; procedure at, 38 ; pre- 
 sence of Sovereign at, 42 ; com- 
 plaint^ of their infrequency in 
 1901, 171; Sir Michael Hicks- 
 Beach on substitutes for, 171 n. 
 
 Cabinet dinners, 180 
 
 Cabinet, French, 41, 43 n., 145, 
 154 
 
 Cabinet Ministers. See Cabinet, 
 Cabinet Council, and Ministers, 
 responsibility of 
 
 Cabinet Minutes, 39 
 
 Canadian Constitution, 2, 293 
 
 Canning, George, 97, 160, 188 
 
 Cecil, Lord Hugh, on Cabinet as 
 "a better institution" than 
 Commons, 80 
 
 Chamberlain, Et. Hon. J., 65, 82,
 
 INDEX 
 
 315 
 
 101, 105, 129, 131, 170, 188, 
 297 
 
 Chatham, William Pitt, Earl of, 
 25 
 
 Childers Budget defeated, 64 
 
 Churchill, Lord Randolph, 132 
 
 Civil service, increase of and exten- 
 sion of its functions, Introd., 
 xxxii 
 
 Closure, 72, 77 
 
 Cobden, Richard, his influence in 
 debate, 97 ; on rights of minor- 
 ity, 116 F 
 
 Combes, Emile, French Premier, 
 on Cabinet responsibility, 145 
 
 Committee of Imperial Defence, 
 162 n., Introd., xxiii 
 
 Committees, in French Chamber, 
 302 
 
 Committees, House of Commons,90 
 
 Committees, House of Lords, 248 
 
 Committees, in American Congress, 
 49, 302 
 
 Commons, House of, 55 seq. ; rela- 
 tyms to Crown and Cabinet, 56 ; 
 real functions of, 58 ; as a legis- 
 lative body, 59; Macaulay on, 
 67 ; Lord Salisbury on its declin- 
 ing power, 76 ; Lord Hugh 
 Cecil on its inferiority to Cabinet, 
 80 ; relations to Executive, 81 ; 
 an "automatic machine," 87; 
 its limited control of finance, 
 89 ; Mr. Bryce on its supposed 
 strength, 90 ; its function as a 
 "ventilating chamber," 92; its 
 selective functions, 95 seq. ; 
 oratory in, 96 ; an electioneering 
 body, 101 ; Cabinet authority 
 over supported by threat to dis- 
 solve, 111 ; Lord Salisbury's 
 letter on relation to Cabinet, 
 113; Party system in, 120; 
 social position of its members 
 and classes from which they are 
 
 drawn, 183 seq. ; Introd., xxvii 
 seq. ; multiplicity of its duties,291 
 Comptroller-General, 30 
 Congress, American, 49, 66, 99 
 Courtney, Lord, Working Constitu 
 tion of the United Kingdom, 7, 
 126, 245 
 
 Crown, a working hypothesis, 255 ; 
 its legal position, 256 ; Black- 
 stone's and Mr. Dicey's defini- 
 tions, ib. ; Lord Brougham's, 
 257 ; Mr. Gladstone's and Bage- 
 hot's, 258 ; its reserved powers 
 employed by Ministry, 259. See 
 also Prerogative and Sovereign 
 
 Deceased Wife's Sister Bill, 69 
 
 Defence, Committee of Imperial, 
 162 n., Introd., xxiii 
 
 De Lolme, John Louis, 7, 70 
 
 Devolution, 291 seq. 
 
 De Tocqueville, Alexis, 2, 45 
 
 Devonshire, Duke of, on Parlia- 
 mentary omnipotence, 57 ; on 
 devolution, 297 
 
 Dicey, Professor A. V., The Law of 
 the Constitution, 3, 11, 12, 13, 
 22, 144, 256, 261 ; Law and Pub- 
 lic Opinion, Introd., xxxvi 
 
 Dissolution, may be " snatched," 
 107 ; power of the Crown to re- 
 fuse consent to, 109 ; can be used 
 by Government as penal mea- 
 sure, 110 
 
 Education Acts, 1902 and 1903, 
 debates'on, 104 
 
 Edward VII., King, constitutional 
 tradition inherited by, 265; his 
 influence in foreign politics, 288 
 
 Elections, at fixed intervals in 
 America, 106; and probably in 
 Great Britain in consequence of 
 Parliament Act, Introd., zix;
 
 316 
 
 INDEX 
 
 before the Ballot Act, 212; 
 
 modern procedure at, 214 
 Electorate, its amateurishness, 209 
 Ellenborough, Lord, in the Gren- 
 
 ville-Fox Administration, 27 
 
 " Pair trade," resolutions, 130 
 
 Federal System, in United States 
 and other countries, Introd., 
 xxvii, 220 
 
 Federalist Home Rule, Introd., 
 xxvii ; Mr. Chamberlain's advo- 
 cacy of, 297; Duke of Devon- 
 shire on, ib. ; its applicability to 
 the United Kingdom, 298 
 
 Foreign Affairs Committee, 303 
 
 Foreign Relations, Committee of, 
 in United States, 302 
 
 Foreign Secretary, often a peer, 
 252 ; his uncontrolled position, 
 300 ; his increasing detachment 
 from party system under Lord 
 Salisbury, Lord Rosebery, and 
 Sir Edward Grey, 301 
 
 Fortescue, Sir John, The Govern- 
 ance of England,! 22, 23, 31, 266 
 
 France, Cabinet system in, 41, 43 n., 
 145, 151 ; instability of Minis- 
 tries, in, 120 ; composition of 
 legislature in, 176 ; passion for 
 equality in, 177 ; system of par- 
 liamentary committees in, 302 
 
 Free Trade Ministers in 1903 ; 
 resignation of, 143, 170 
 
 Free Trade, struggle for, 133 
 
 General elections ; time fixed for 
 them by Cabinet, 106; that of 
 1874, 108 ; that of 1900, 109 
 
 George III., King, his resistance to 
 the constitutional system, 267-8 
 
 George IV., King, his struggle with 
 his Cabinets, 268 ; newspaper 
 comments on his death, 279 
 
 Gladstone, W, E., 19, 20, 22, 48, 
 
 74, 88, 97, 108, 161 n., 255, 258, 
 262, 269, 271 
 
 Gneist, Dr. Rudolf, Englische Ver- 
 fassungg - geschichte, 22 ; The 
 English Parliament, 22 ; on the 
 decline of local government, 
 203, 204 
 
 Godkin, E. L., Unforseen Ten- 
 dencies of Democracy, 67 
 
 Greville, C. G., on Cabinet 
 " claims," 17 ; on the accession 
 of Queen Victoria, 281 
 
 Grey, Earl, Parliamentary Govern- 
 ment, 22, 57 
 
 Grey, Sir Edward, Foreign Secre- 
 tary, 252, 301 
 
 Haldane, Lord, on proposed Im- 
 perial Court of Appeal, Introd., 
 xxvi 
 
 Harcourt, Sir William, 153 
 
 Hearn, Professor William Ed- 
 ward, The Government of Eng- 
 land, 8, 9, 10, 22, 144, 213 
 
 Hicks-Beach, Sir Michael, on sub 
 stitutes for Cabinet Council, 
 171 n. 
 
 Holland, Bernard, Imperium et 
 Libertas, 80 
 
 Home Rule Bills, 63, 65, 73, 129, 
 Introd., xxvii 
 
 Home Rule, on federal basis, 
 Introd., xxvii, 297 seq. ; applica- 
 tion to England, Scotland, and 
 Wales, 298 
 
 Hustings, disappearance of, 214 
 
 Iddesleigh, 1st Earl of, on House 
 of Lords, 218 
 
 Imperial Chancellor, Prime Minis- 
 ter as, Introd., xxii 
 
 Imperial Conference, Prime Minis- 
 ter as President of, Introd., xxii 
 
 Imperial Court of Appeal, Introd. , 
 xxvi n.
 
 INDEX 
 
 317 
 
 Imperial Defence Committee, 162 
 
 n., Introd., xxiii 
 India, Government of, and effect 
 
 of recent changes, Introd., xxv 
 Inner Cabinet. See Cabinet 
 Insurance Act, Introd., xxxii-iv 
 
 Jeyes, S. H., Life of Mr. Chamber- 
 lain, 196 
 
 Judicial Committee of the Privy 
 Council, 33 n., Introd., xxvi 
 
 Junto in the Cabinet, 165 
 
 " King can do no wrong," meaning 
 
 of the axiom, 261, Introd., xxiv 
 King. See Crown, Kingship, 
 
 Monarchy, Prerogative, and 
 
 Sovereign 
 Kingship, constitutional, its true 
 
 character, 260 
 
 Labour members, 179, 306, Introd., 
 xxvii 
 
 Labour unrest, Introd., xxxiv 
 
 Lawyers, influence of, in Parlia- 
 ment and the Cabinet, Introd., 
 xxviii 
 
 Lee, Sidney, letter to the Spectator 
 on influence of Crown in foreign 
 politics, 265 
 
 Lewis, Sir George Cornewall, 22, 
 28 
 
 London County Council, 80 n., 118 
 
 Lords, House of, its weakness and 
 its strength, 219 ; compared with 
 other Second Chambers, 220; 
 revising powers of, 222 ; con- 
 stitutional functions of, 223 ; 
 limited veto of, 223 ; action of, 
 on Home Rule Bills, 225 ; on 
 Employers' Liability Bill, 226; 
 revival of in Parliament, 1892- 
 95, 227 ; Bagehot's opinion of 
 necessity for, 228 ; regarded as 
 normally in opposition to Minis- 
 
 try, 232; reform of, 234 seq. ; 
 life-peerages, 235 seq. ; creation 
 of Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, 
 236 ; Earl Russell's proposals, 
 1869, ib. ; Lord Dunraven's do., 
 ib. ; Lord Salisbury's Life Peers' 
 Bill, 1888, ib. ; Lord Rosebery's 
 resolutions, ib. ; Lord Lans- 
 downe's Bill, 1911, carried 
 through second reading, 237 ; 
 Peers' Disabilities Removal Bill, 
 242 ; representative system pos- 
 sible in House of Lords, 243; 
 Committees of the House, 248; 
 the House as "reservoir of 
 ministers, 250 ; opportunities of 
 capable Peers, 253 ; effects of 
 Parliament Act on position 
 of, Introd., viii seq. 
 Lyndhurst, Lord, 222, 235 
 Lyttelton, Alfred, his appointment 
 as Colonial Secretary, 193 
 
 Macaulay, Lord, 28, 67, 154, 174, 
 300 
 
 Maine, Sir Henry, his Popular 
 Government, 2, 126 ; his Early 
 History of Institution*, 3 ; on 
 the origin of Parties, 126 ; on 
 the jury system, 216 ; on popular 
 ignorance, 307 
 
 Malmesbury, 1st Earl of, 165 
 
 Malmesbury, 3rd Earl of, Memoirs 
 
 > of an Ex-minister, 85, 181, 252 
 
 Mill, John Stuart, 68, 221 
 
 Ministers, Responsibility of, 135 
 seq. See also Cabinet 
 
 Monarchy, 25, 255 seq. ; its rehabi- 
 litation in public opinion in 
 nineteenth century, 278 seq. ; 
 its influence in the oversea 
 dominions, 283 and Introd., xxiii. 
 See also Crown, Prerogative, 
 Sovereign 
 
 Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, 18
 
 318 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Morley, Viscount, definition of 
 Cabinet, 20 ; on ministerial 
 responsibility, 140, 147 n. , in 
 1886 Cabinet, 170 
 
 National Councils, proposed crea- 
 tion of, 293 
 North, Lord, 156, 263 n. 
 
 Oath, Privy Councillors, 31 
 Oligarchy, the, in Parliament, 183 
 in the Cabinet, 185 seq. 
 
 Palmerston, Lord, 127, 142, 160, 
 188, 242, 287 
 
 Parliament, conception of, in 
 eighteenth century, 25; con- 
 nection with Executive, 48 ; 
 public interest in, 52 ; theoretical 
 omnipotence of, 57 ; actual limits 
 to its power, 69 ; control of, 
 75 seq. ; largely superseded by 
 other agencies, 93 ; ministers in, 
 135 ; sovereignty of, 173 ; ex- 
 penses of members, 181 ; oli- 
 garchy in, 183 seq. ; social status 
 of members, 184 ; imperfect con- 
 trol of foreign policy, 299 
 
 Parliament Act, Introd., viii seq. 
 
 Parliamentary Government, 44 
 seq. ; compared to Federal and 
 Presidential types, 45 ; essential 
 characteristics of, 47 
 
 Parties, political, in Parliament, 
 116; in the United States Con- 
 gress, 117; and groups, 120; 
 and principles, 124 ; dual division 
 an historical accident, 125 ; diffi- 
 cult to draw dividing line, 126 ; 
 Mr. Balfour on, 128 ; party 
 conventions, 130 ; moderation 
 of, 131 ; stratification of, 133 
 
 Party system, 116 seq. ; Mr. Bal- 
 four on, 130 ; used to protect 
 departmental ministers; 145, 147 
 
 Payment of members, Introd., 
 
 xx viii 
 Peel, Sir Robert, 25, 97, 130, 160, 
 
 163, 205 
 
 Peerage. See Lords, House of 
 Peers. See Lords, House of 
 Peers, Life. See Lords, House of 
 " Pendulum," Lord Salisbury on, 
 
 132 
 Pitt, William, 127, 142, 159, 
 
 161 n. 
 
 Premier, first use of term, 156 
 Prerogative, royal, 260 seq. ; con- 
 stitutional theory on, 261 ; Glad- 
 stone on, 262 ; limits within 
 which it operates, 263 ; actual 
 position of, 265 ; Lord Eosebery's 
 view of, 273 ; appreciation of it 
 by colonial constitutionalists, 33 
 n., 283, and Introd., xxiii ; effects 
 of recent changes on, Introd., 
 xxv 
 
 President of the Council, 155 
 President, position of, in the United 
 
 States, 109 
 Press, Liberty of the, not formally 
 
 recognised, 11 
 
 Prime Minister, " unknown to the 
 Constitution," 154 ; given formal 
 precedence by royal proclamation, 
 155 n. and Introd., xxi ; official 
 use of title in Treaty of Berlin, 
 156 ; used in Court Circular, ib. ; 
 Lord North objects to it, ib. ; 
 "Prime Minister's List" of 
 honours, 157 ; his choice by a 
 kind of plebiscite, 159 ; Pitt on 
 his position, ib. Mr. Gladstone 
 on, 161; First Lord of the 
 Treasury, ib. ; relations to the 
 Sovereign, 263 seq.; his influ- 
 ence growing, Introd., xx ; as 
 Imperial Chancellor, Introd., 
 xxii 
 Prince Consort, relations with
 
 INDEX 
 
 319 
 
 Crown and Cabinet, 269 ; Baron 
 Stockmar's letter to, 270; his 
 advice to the Queen and un- 
 popularity, ib. ; consequences of 
 his premature death, 272 
 
 Private members of Parliament, 
 powerlessness of, 70, 77, 85 
 
 Privy Council, 29 seq. 
 
 Privy Council, Judicial Committee 
 of, 3 n., Introd., xxvi 
 
 Privy Councillor's Oath, 31 
 
 Proportional Representation, 244 ; 
 Introd., xii 
 
 Questions to ministers, 91 ; their 
 value, 93 
 
 Reed, T. B., Speaker of United 
 States House of Representatives, 
 on comparative age of English 
 and American politicians, 194 
 
 Referendum, The, considered, 
 Introd., xvii ; Mr. Chamberlain's 
 commendation of, 105 ; minis- 
 terial, 106 
 
 Representation, of " estates " and 
 interests, 244 ; proportional, 244 
 
 Resignation of ministers, how pro- 
 duced, 102 
 
 Responsibility of ministers, 133 
 seq. 
 
 Responsible government not form- 
 ally recognised, 10 
 
 Roman Catholic Relief Bill, 69 
 
 Rosebery, Earl of, on Cabinet 
 system, 35 ; on ministerial re- 
 sponsibility, 82 ; President of the 
 Council, 155 ; on position of 
 Prime Minister, 161 ; composi- 
 tion of his Cabinet, 191 ; reso- 
 lutions for reform of House of 
 Lords, 236 : on the bestowal of 
 peerages, 239 ; his suggestion 
 that Lord Kitchener should be 
 summoned to the Cabinet, 273 ; 
 
 " Prime Minister for Foreign 
 Affairs," 301 
 Russell, Earl, 141, 158 
 
 Salisbury, Marquess of, on declin- 
 ing power of the House of Com- 
 mons, 75 ; his letter on relations 
 of Cabinet and House of Com- 
 mons, 113 ; on the "pendulum," 
 132 ; composition of his third 
 Cabinet, 191 ; his House of 
 Lords' Reform Bill, 236; on 
 Peers as ministers, 253 ; effects 
 of his long tenure of office, 30 
 
 Seeley, Sir John, Introduction to 
 Political Science, 16, 17, 25 
 
 Senate, American, 216, 219 ; 
 Foreign Affairs Committee of, 
 302 
 
 Settlement, Act of, 19 
 
 Shelburne, Lord, description of 
 his Cabinet, 164 
 
 "Sybil," the "two nations" of, 
 132 
 
 Smith, F. E., on powerlessness of 
 private members, 78 n. 
 
 Socialism, growth of, Introd., xxxii 
 
 Speaker, The, 87 
 
 Speaker in American House of 
 Representatives, his function in 
 nominating Committees, 117 
 
 Sovereign, the, and the Crown, 
 255: his supposed attributes, 
 256 ; accounts of his position by 
 Blackstone, Brougham, Glad- 
 stone, and Dicey and Bagehot, 
 256-7, constitutional kingship, 
 60 seq. ; " literary theory " of, 
 262; Eldon and Peel on Sove- 
 reign's opportunities, 264; his 
 relations towards the Cabinet, 
 265, 270, 274 ; his actual posi- 
 tion a modern development, 266 
 teq. ; ideal constitutional Sove- 
 reign a woman, 269; contrast
 
 320 
 
 INDEX 
 
 between Sovereign and Prime 
 Minister, 275 ; his Imperial 
 status, 282 and Introd.,xx'ni ; the 
 head of society, 4 ; influence on 
 foreign politics, 286. See also 
 Crown, Monarchy, Prerogative 
 
 Stockmar, Baron, his Memorandum 
 to the Prince Consort, 270 
 
 "Swamping," possibility of, 240; 
 threat of in 1832 and 1911, ib. 
 
 Tariff Reform movement, 39 n., 
 82, 105, 129, 131, 134 
 
 Telephone Agreement, 1902, debate 
 on, 148 
 
 Todd, Alpheus, author of Parlia- 
 mentary Government in England, 
 and Parliamentary Government 
 in the British Colonies, 12, 22, 
 64, 110n.,283ra. 
 
 Trade Unions, Introd. , xxxiv, 306 
 
 United States, Constitution. See 
 American Constitution. 
 
 Victoria, Queen, what she could 
 technically have done, 258 ; and 
 the abolition of purchase in the 
 Army, 259 ; generalisations on 
 constitutional monarchy drawn 
 
 from her position, 268 ; relations 
 to her Prime Ministers, 269 ; 
 influence of Prince Consort on, 
 ib. ; her life after the Prince's 
 death, 272 ; gains and losses of 
 Royal office in her reign, 279 ; 
 her personality as a link of Em- 
 pire, 282 ; her action in foreign 
 politics, 287 
 
 War Office, remodelled in 1904, by 
 Mr. Balfour's Government, 259 
 
 Wellington, Duke of, 129, 223 
 
 West, Sir Algernon, Recollections, 
 23 ; No. 10, Downing St., ib. ; 
 on Cabinet meetings, 37, 38, 39 
 
 Westbury, Lord, compelled to 
 resign, 143 
 
 William IV., King, dismissal of 
 Whig Ministry, 25 ; influence on 
 development of constitutional 
 monarchy, 268 ; newspaper com- 
 ments on his death, 280 
 
 Wilson, Woodrow, Congressional 
 Government, 4, 50, 52, 99 
 
 Women, changing position of, 
 Introd., xxxv 
 
 Women's Suffrage, demand for, 
 Introd. , xxxv ; Parliamentary 
 treatment of, ib. 
 
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