overgrown royal council. This tendency was viewed with apprehension by many people who felt that the concentration of power in the hands of an "inner cabinet" might fail to be accompanied by a corresponding concentration of responsibility. For more than a decade, however, criticism of the inordinate size of the cabinet group was freely voiced upon numerous occasions and by many observers.1 Unsatisfactory experience during the early stages of the Great War led not only to the reconstruction of the cabinet on a coalition basis, but to a drastic reduction in the number of members; the regular cabinet was wholly superseded by a " war cabinet " of five (later six) persons. Contrary to expectation in some quarters, this proved to be only a temporary arrangement. In less than a year after the armistice, the cabinet was revived on its earlier lines, save that it continued to be a coalition; and the problem of the proper size of the body is still to be solved.2

When a new ministry

Appointment of the Prime Minister.3 and with it, of course, a new cabinet is to be made up, the first step is the naming of the prime minister. Technically, the choice rests with the king. But custom, springing from practical necessity, leaves, as a rule, no room whatever for discretion in the matter. Promptly, and as a matter of course, the king sends for the man who is best able to command the support of the majority in the House of Commons, and asks him to make up a ministry. If the retiring ministry has "fallen," i.e., has been forced out of office by the loss of its parliamentary majority, the new premier is certain to be the recognized leader of the party which formerly has played the rôle of opposition. If there has not been a shift in party status, the premiership will be bestowed upon some one of the colleagues, at least upon one of the fellow-partisans, of the retiring premier, nominated, if need be, by the chiefs of the party. Thus, when in 1894 Gladstone retired from office on account of physical infirmity, the Liberal leaders in the two houses caucused on the question of whether he should be succeeded by Sir William Vernon Harcourt or by Lord Rosebery. They recommended Lord Rosebery, who was forthwith appointed by the Queen. If, by any

1 Lowell, Government of England, I, 59; Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, I, Pt. i, 211.

2 The war cabinet is described below. See pp. 106-111.

In the succeeding pages the composition and functions of the cabinet are described as they were prior to the Great War. At the date of writing (1920) a coalition ministry, inherited from the war period, is still in office. But there is a reasonable presumption that the former system will be revived, at least in its essentials.

circumstance, the premiership should fall to the Opposition at a moment when the leadership of this element is in doubt, the crown would be guided, similarly, by the informally expressed will of the more influential party members. While, therefore, the appointment of the prime minister remains almost the sole important governmental act which is performed personally by the sovereign, even here the substance of power has been lost and only the form survives.1

Selection of Other Ministers and Cabinet Members. The remaining members of both ministry and cabinet are selected by the premier, in consultation, as a rule, with leading representatives of the party. The list of nominees is placed in the hands of the sovereign, who gives it the necessary formal approval, and an announcement forthwith appears in the London Gazette to the effect that the persons named have been chosen by the crown to occupy the several posts. Officially, there is no mention of the "cabinet." In the selection of his colleagues - whether they are to be simply ministers or cabinet members as well — the premier theoretically has a free hand. Practically he is bound to comply with numerous principles and to observe various precedents and practical conditions. Two principles, in particular, must be adhered to in determining the structure of every cabinet. All of the members must have seats in one or the other of the two houses of Parliament,2 and all must be identified with the party in power, or at least with an allied political group. There was a time, when the personal government of the king was still a reality, when the House of Commons refused to admit to its membership persons who held office under the crown, and this disqualification found legal expression as late as the Act of Settlement of 1701.3 With the ripening of

1 On certain occasions notably in 1852 and 1859 Queen Victoria determined by her personal choice which of two or more leaders in the ruling party should be put at the head of a new ministry. But it is doubtful whether any future sovereign will have an opportunity to exercise similar discretion. Compare the appointment of the prime minister in France, as described below (see p. 399).

2 The one notable instance of departure from this rule during three quarters of a century preceding the Great War was Gladstone's tenure of the post of Secretary of State for the Colonies during the last six months of the Peel administration in 1846.

A clause of this act made any person holding an office or place of profit under the crown incapable of sitting in the House of Commons. The cabinet system was now, however, taking form, and Parliament soon perceived how inadvisable it was to exclude the great officers of state from the chamber in which they could most effectively be held to account. Accordingly, the provision was modified by the Place Act of 1707 so that members of the House of Commons appointed to offices under the crown should indeed vacate their seats, but should be immediately capable of reëlection. Such reëlection almost invariably follows as a matter of course,

H

parliamentary government in the eighteenth century, however, the thing that was formerly regarded as objectionable became highly expedient, if not a necessity. When once the ministers formed the real executive of the nation, it was but logical that they should be permitted to appear on the floor of the two houses to introduce and advocate measures and to explain the acts of the government. Ministers had always occupied seats in the upper chamber; and not only was all objection to their appearance in the lower chamber removed, but by custom it came to be an inflexible rule that cabinet officers, and indeed the ministers generally, should be drawn exclusively from the membership of the two houses. If it is desired to bestow a ministerial post upon a man who is not a member of either house, the difficulty may be got around either by making him a peer, which would entitle him to a seat in the House of Lords, or by procuring his election to a seat in the House of Commons.

Since the days of Walpole, who was himself a commoner, the premiership has been held approximately half of the time by commoners and half of the time by peers. Distribution of the other cabinet members has varied greatly. The first cabinet in the reign of George III contained fourteen members, of whom thirteen had seats in the House of Lords; and throughout the eighteenth century peers usually preponderated decisively. The steadily increasing importance of the House of Commons, however, led especially after the Reform Act of 1832- to the selection of a larger proportion of members from the lower chamber, and during the past thirty or forty years cabinet positions have usually been divided about evenly between the two houses. A statute of 1864 curiously prevents more than four (now five) of the five (now six) secretaries of state from sitting in the House of Commons; and the Lord Privy Seal, the Lord High Chancellor, and the Lord President of the Council almost invariably belong to the House of Lords. Beyond this, there is no positive requirement, in either law or custom. To fill the various posts the premier must bring together the best men he can secure not necessarily the ablest, but those who will work together most effectively with only secondary regard to the question of whether they sit in the one or the other

and without opposition. The Representation of the People Act of 1867 provided that the mere transfer, from one office to another in the same ministry, of a person who has been reëlected since his appointment to his former office, shall not involve the loss of his seat. The provisions of the Place Act were suspended in several instances during the Great War. Cf. Lowell, Government of England, I, 146; Moran, Theory and Practice of the English Government, 108-109.

of the legislative houses. A department whose chief sits in the Commons is certain to be represented in the Lords by an undersecretary or other spokesman, and vice versa. In France and other continental countries which have a cabinet system, executive departments are, as a rule, represented in Parliament by their presiding official only. But this official is permitted, as English ministers are not, to appear and speak on the floor of either chamber.1

Other Considerations Determining Appointment. - A second general principle which controls in making up both a ministry and a cabinet is that of party harmony. William III undertook to govern with a cabinet in which there were both Whigs and Tories, but the result was confusion and the experiment was abandoned. Except during the ascendancy of Walpole, the cabinets of the eighteenth century usually embraced men of more or less diverse political affiliations. But gradually the conviction took root that in the interest of unity and efficiency the political solidarity of the cabinet group is indispensable. The last occasion (prior to the Great War) upon which it was proposed to make up a cabinet from utterly diverse political elements was in 1812. The scheme was rejected, and from that day to 1915 cabinets were regularly composed, not always exclusively of men identified with a single political party, but at least of men who were in substantial agreement upon the larger questions of policy, and who expressed willingness to cooperate in carrying out a given program. The fundamental requisite is unity. It is the obligation of every cabinet member to agree, or to appear to agree, with his colleagues. If he is unable to do this, he must resign.

In the selection of his co-laborers the premier works under still other practical restrictions. One of them is the wellestablished rule that surviving members of the last cabinet of the party, in so far as they are in active public life and desirous of appointment, shall be given prior consideration. Members of the party, furthermore, who have come into special prominence and influence in Parliament must usually be included. In truth, as Bagehot points out, the premier's independent choice is apt to find scope not so much in the determination of the cabinet's personnel as in the distribution of offices among the members selected; and even here he will often be obliged to subordinate his wishes to the inclinations, susceptibilities, and capacities of his prospective colleagues. In the expressive simile 1 See p. 439.

of Lowell, the premier's task is "like that of constructing a figure out of blocks which are too numerous for the purpose, and which are not of shapes to fit perfectly together."

Ministerial Responsibility. In its actual operation the English cabinet system, down to the Great War at all events, presented three salient features: (1) the responsibility of cabinet ministers to Parliament; (2) the secrecy of cabinet proceedings; and (3) the close coördination of the cabinet group under the leadership of the premier. Every minister, whether or not in the cabinet, is responsible individually to Parliament, which in effect means to the House of Commons, for all of his public acts. If he is made the object of a vote of censure he must retire. In the earlier eighteenth century the resignation of a cabinet officer did not affect the tenure of his colleagues; the first cabinet to retire as a body was that of Lord North in 1782. Subsequently, however, the ministerial group so developed in compactness that in relation to the outside world, and even to Parliament, the individual officer came to be effectually subordinated to the whole. Not since 1866 has a cabinet member retired singly in consequence of an adverse parliamentary vote. If an individual minister falls into serious disfavor, one of two things almost certainly happens. Either the offending member is persuaded by his colleagues to modify his course or to resign before formal parliamentary censure shall have been passed, or the cabinet as a whole rallies to the support of the minister in question and stands or falls with him. This is but another way of saying that, in practice, the responsibility of the cabinet is collective rather than individual. This responsibility covers the entire range of acts of the executive branch of the government, whether regarded as acts of the king or of the ministers themselves, and it constitutes the most distinctive feature of the English parliamentary system. Formerly the only means by which ministers could be held to account by Parliament was impeachment. With the development, however, of the principle of ministerial responsibility as a necessary adjunct to and instrumentality of parliamentary government, the occasional and violent process of impeachment was superseded by continuous, inescapable, and pacific legislative supervision. The impeachment of cabinet ministers may, indeed, be regarded as obsolete.

A fundamental maxim of the constitution to-day is that a cabinet shall continue in office only so long as it enjoys the

1 Government of England, I, 57. See MacDonaugh, Book of Parliament, 148-183.