speeches, and to pass resolutions; they form associations of a quasipermanent character and long lists of names are published.1 The columns of the newspapers teem with correspondence; the "leaders" become quite unlike the running commentaries on passing events, the tentative suggestions, or even the sharp criticisms, which form the staple of ordinary times; they are couched in terms of vehement remonstrance, of grave warning, or of earnest entreaty, sometimes almost of command; they have become dynamic. As permanent organisations for gauging and expressing the Public Opinion which is finally to rule, meetings and newspapers would be subject to grave drawbacks. The true note of public opinion would run risk of being lost in the straining after a factitious effect. A very small number of opponents can, at the risk of a breach of the peace, throw a great meeting into confusion, and deprive it of all articulate utterance. Newspapers which profess to open their columns to the real opinion of the country, may easily pronounce for just that opinion which they wish to prevail. However valuable agitation may be as an auxiliary, nay, though it may prove able for once, and as an exception, to afford an efficient means of organisation for public opinion, yet jealousy of agitation as a permanent rival to Parliament is by no means illfounded. But rightly read, a violent agitation may be the symptom of an atrophy which renders the constitutional organ no longer able to perform its function; in other words, it may indicate that the healthful working of the body politic requires the intervention of a House of Commons "freshly elected" and "sure of the popular assent." 2 To the three rights, the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn, which Bagehot allows to the English monarch, may we not add these two rights more? First, he may on his own responsibilty, if he suspects that his Cabinet Council is advising him contrary to the deliberate opinion of his people, have his great Council, Parliament, called together and their opinion taken, and in the second and last resort he may have the matter referred to a Parliament which is newly elected, although the old one has endorsed the advice of the Ministers." 1 See Sir Erskine May, Const. Hist. vol. ii. p. 271, and the passages from De Tocqueville there quoted. 2 English Constitution, p. 75. 3 On the constitutional point see Sir Erskine May, Const. Hist. vol. ii. p. 89. The Times (Sept. 30th, 1876) doubts the constitutional accuracy of Mr. Lowe's language in a letter in which he implied the Queen's right so to act on her own initiative. See With respect to foreign affairs there is an important distinction between the broad issues which can be indicated beforehand sufficiently to ascertain that Parliament and the country are in harmony with the Cabinet, and the details of the negotiations through which a policy is worked out. The theory of Cabinet Government leaves a foreign minister free to express an opinion in conversation with an ambassador, but it recognises the right of Parliament, and even of the constituencies, to challenge the collective discretion of the Cabinet on a broad issue of foreign policy. The line which separates what a foreign minister may do on his own responsibility from what he may do only when he is the organ of a previously-consulted Cabinet, is laid down by Lord Palmerston in a letter in which he gives an account of the circumstance of his dismissal in 1851. He does not claim for himself as foreign minister the right to initiate post, chap. xiii. § 3. The Spectator, on the other hand, writes as follows (Dec. 29th, 1877): "Some of the various discussions which have been going on in relation to the Queen's share in the political crisis of the moment, seem to us to imply very spurious constitutional assumptions in the minds of those who criticise. . . . It is assumed, in fact, that the Queen has no right at all to act on her own judgment, even in such a matter as 'recurring to the advice of Parliament' sooner than usual, unless that carlier recurrence be approved by the Minister. .. But the real question is, whether the Queen has a constitutional right to insist on an earlier summons of Parliament, -supposing she really believes that a good deal depends on its advice,-even though her Ministers are disposed to think that course unnecessary and undesirable. . . . We are the less likely to be biassed in the strong view which we also hold,-that if Her Majesty had, even on her own sole judgment, insisted on an earlier recurrence than usual to the advice of Parliament, she would have been exercising a strict constitutional right, in which it would be most undesirable and mischievous in any way to limit her. . . . If, then, the Queen has at any time reason to believe that the majority, if consulted, would either modify the policy of the Ministers, or greatly assist them to work out their ideas, she is, strictly speaking, subserving the purpose of constitutional government in calling a meeting between the committee of management and the constituency by which that committee of management is virtually chosen. Indeed, the Crown has a power much greater than this. It can even dissolve Parliament against the advice of Ministers whenever the Monarch has grave reason to believe that the majority supporting Ministers is an accidental one, and would disappear on an appeal to the people. The Sovereign, under the English Constitution, is indeed the depository of one of the most important of the regulative appliances which secure the harmony between the nation and the policy of the Administration. What the Sovereign does on the advice of the Ministry, they, of course, are responsible for. What is done on the responsibility of the Crown, the wearer of the Crown alone must be responsible for, and therefore all that can properly be done on such a responsibility is to take guarantees that the Administration is not misinterpreting the will of Parliament, and that Parliament is not misinterpreting the will of the nation. But what is done in good faith and on fair grounds with a view to secure such ends as these, is not only strictly constitutional, but one of the best of our securities that the Constitution shall continue to satisfy the people. The right of the Sovereign to insist on hearing what Parliament or the country has to say, where there seems to be any plausible doubt as to the verdict which it may pronounce, is one far too important to be called in question only because, like all other rights, it may now and then be exercised where it would have been certainly wiser to let it alone." a policy, but contends that his communication to the French ambassador had no such significance : There is a well known and perfectly understood distinction in diplomatic intercourse between conversations which are official and which bind governments, and conversations which are unofficial, and which do not bind governments. . I said nothing to Walewsky] which would in any degree or way fetter the action of the Government; and if it was to be held that a Secretary of State could never express any opinion to a foreign minister on passing events, except as the organ of a previouslyconsulted Cabinet, there would be an end of that easy and familiar intercourse which tends essentially to promote good understanding between ministers and governments.-Ashley's Life of Palmerston, vol. i. p. 314.1 We may read with this a memorandum which Lord Palmerston circulated among his colleagues in 1860, and from which it appears that he assumed as a matter of course, that the House would have an opportunity of considering a critical matter of foreign policy; and that he recognised it as a fitting matter to be submitted to the judgment of the constituencies, if the existing House should be adverse. . [He contended that we ought to come to an agreement with France and Sardinia] to prevent any forcible interference by any foreign power in the affairs of Italy. But such an engagement might lead us into war. War with whom? War with Austria. Well, suppose it did, would that war be one of great effort and expense? Clearly not. . We ought not to be frightened by words; we ought to examine things. But is such a war likely? On the contrary. It is said, however, that although the course now recommended might in itself be right and proper, it would not be approved by the country nor by Parliament. My deliberate opinion is that it would be highly approved by the country upon the double ground of its own merits and of its tendency to avert a rupture with France, and to secure the continuance of peace with our neighbour. I am equally of opinion that it would be approved of by Parliament; but if by any combination of parties an adverse decision were come to, it would, in my opinion, be the duty of the Government to appeal from Parliament to the country. My belief is that such an appeal would be eminently successful; but if it were not, I would far rather give up office for maintaining 1 Compare what Lord Malmesbury says: Old diplomatists must know the difference between an officious and an official conversation. The first is the free interchange of opinions between the two ministers, and compromises neither, the latter would do so, and bind their governments. I always, when at the Foreign Office, prefaced a conversation by saying on which footing it was to be understood.-Memoirs of an ExMinister, vol. i. p. 303. the principle on which the course which I recommend would be founded, than retain office by giving that principle up.-Life of Palmerston, vol. ii. pp. 176-180. Of course it is not to be imagined that a great statesman will be the mere passive instrument to carry out a policy dictated to him by a Public Opinion which he has had no part in forming. It is his to expound the policy which he considers appropriate; and it may be that the country will recognise it as the practical embodiment of only half-conscious aspirations, which thenceforth become clear and definite. Again, it is his to expose fallacies, by which, as he thinks, Public Opinion is being misled, or to point out the dangers of some course of policy which he believes to be fraught with disaster, and it may be that the country will recognise the value of the warning. It has been said the man who goes forward and puts his foot down makes Public Opinion. The influence which Cabinet ministers, and in a lesser degree members of Parliament, can exercise on Public Opinion in this way is immense. Nor is the sovereignty of Public Opinion trenched upon so long as this influence is exerted in a way which is consistent with frankness. But if the sovereignty of Public Opinion is to be maintained, ministers when they go forward must let the country know the purpose of the journey. They must not commit the country to risks and responsibilities without being assured of its assent. Still less must they sophisticate opinion by the suppression of the truth or the suggestion of what is false; or venture to treat the country like a patient in delirium, or a timid child, to be deceived for his own good and led to safety through dangers and suffering which of his own will he would refuse to encounter.1 Or, to give the metaphor a forensic turn, we may say that "the Court must not be misled;" the opportunity of pronouncing judgment on a right appreciation of the issue must not be withheld until the decisive step has been taken and it is too late to recall it. 1 It seems sometimes to be suggested that for its own ultimate safety, it is necessary that the country should be committed to a war for objects which Public Opinion would deliberately decide were not worth the sacrifice. Lord Salisbury on one occasion put a curious doctrine which seems to be the converse of this, and according to which it seems that the country is sometimes for its own good to be restrained from making an effort or sacrifice although Public Opinion might demand it. We may, perhaps, call this the Married Woman theory of the Constitution. "Those who are in office have their feelings like other men; but they hold the resources and power of England not as owners, but as trustees. An owner may do what he likes, looking to his sympathies, his anxieties, and his wishes; but a trustee must act according to the strict rights and interests committed to his charge."-Lord Salisbury at Mansion House, T. Aug. 3rd, 1876 § 5. Unstable Equilibrium of Cabinet Government. In the popular apprehension the sovereignty of Public Opinion acting through its constitutional organ, was, at the beginning of Lord Beaconsfield's ministry, regarded as too firmly established to be in danger of ever again sustaining an overthrow. People were apt to be impatient of punctiliousness about constitutional forms. They cared little or nothing about the manner in which a thing was done, so that they approved the thing itself.1 Scruples of this kind, to be sure, had been appropriate in a bygone age, when, as had happened now and again in the course of our history, some ambitious monarch or minister might be tempted to grasp at absolute power, but all such danger was now considered obsolete. To wish to be a despot, "to hunger after tyranny," as the Greek phrase had it, marks in our day an uncultivated mind.Bagehot, Eng. Const. p. 80. Yet what warrant have we for reckoning so confidently on a human nature proof against ambition, or for assuming that no motives will ever again be powerful enough to urge a man to that conflict in which the prize is so great? What warrant have we for assuming that even English Cabinet government in its perfection must be proof against attack? Mr. John Morley, after remarking on Burke's favourite topic of the delicate balance of the English constitution, says: If this were so, what could its best friend more strenuously desire than that it should be removed with all convenient speed from so perilous an elevation, and placed in unshaken security upon the plain?-Morley's Burke, p. 115. We might indeed desire it; but is any condition of stable equilibrium attainable in politics ?2 The poet tells us :— He that roars for liberty Faster binds a tyrant's power; Forces on the freer hour. While human nature remains what it is, something like a perennial conflict must go on between the principles of Consulta A striking illustration is the impatience aroused by any criticism of the purchase of the Suez Canal Shares from the constitutional point of view. 2 Cf. Mill, Representative Government, p. 11 |