CHAPTER XV.

THE MINISTERS OF A CONSTITUTIONAL KING.

LORD MACAULAY states in his history that before the Revolution of 1688, although there were ministers of the Crown, they did not constitute what we call a ministry; that is, a small body of men who, supported by a majority in Parliament, are agreed upon the general policy to be pursued in the management of public affairs.

This scheme was, he says, first adopted in the reign of William and Mary. The ministry was not for many years so compact a body as Macaulay's language would indicate. In the early part of the eighteenth century ministers openly opposed one another: and it was only by degrees that unity of political opinion became so far the attribute of Cabinet ministers,

that they assumed a joint responsibility for their policy and public measures.

Macaulay praises the institution of a Cabinet as a contrivance of consummate wisdom, inasmuch as it secured to Parliament a paramount influence over the executive government, without depriving the government of the proper functions of administration.

Without intending to depreciate this political contrivance, which is a necessity in our Parliamentary system, it must be admitted that the institution of the Cabinet has tended to diminish the personal responsibility of each individual minister, and to intensify party government by generating a combined opposition.

The responsibility of each minister is now sheltered behind the screen of the Cabinet. If the official conduct of a minister becomes the subject of animadversion in Parliament, the united Cabinet defend their colleague and claim to share his responsibility. The whole political party then rush to the rescue of the government,

and although in private they may blame the minister as a blunderer or jobber, in public they absolve him from all censure, and even lavish eulogies on his many virtues.

The responsibility of the Cabinet can only be enforced by a Parliamentary vote. In this case the judges are not impartial, inasmuch as both sides have a direct interest in the decision; one party desire to retain the ministry in office, the other party desire to occupy their places. The country therefore rightly regards a vote of censure, not as an honest judgment, but as a party victory.

Burke noticed with regret that the responsibility of ministers was much diminished. "The House of Commons," he said, “sitting for a great part of the year, has gradually approximated to the character of a standing senate, and has thus lost its control, because it is made to partake in every considerable act of the government."

Burke, moreover, deplored that "impeach

ment, that great guardian of the purity of the Constitution, is in danger of being lost even to the idea of it."

This loss will not be regretted by any modern politician. The power of impeachment was much misused. The Earl of Oxford was impeached for concluding the Peace of Utrecht. But this was a flagrant act of injustice and of party spite; inasmuch as a previous House of Commons had pronounced the peace to be beneficial. The impeachment of Warren Hastings, although it afforded an opportunity for brilliant oratory, was discreditable to the Commons, who in after years endeavoured to make some amends for this lengthened persecution of an able public servant.

The institution of a Cabinet with joint responsibility renders it difficult to condemn any individual minister for a public measure; and the most vindictive politician would hardly propose to send the whole Cabinet to the Tower. In modern times, indeed, politicians have found

the Tower to be, not the dreary dungeon of the condemned statesman, but the gateway to popularity and fame.

In the year 1854 Baron Stockmar wrote what Mr. Theodore Martin calls "a vigorous constitutional essay" for the instruction of the Prince Consort.

Baron Stockmar states in this treatise that "the old Tories, who, before the Reform Bill, were in power for fifty years, had a direct interest in upholding the prerogatives of the Crown, and they did uphold them manfully, although the Hanoverian kings, by their immoral, politically exceptionable, dynastic or private wishes and interests, made the task anything but an easy one."

"As a race," Baron Stockmar adds, "these Tories have died out, and the race, which in the present day bears their name, are simply degenerate bastards. Our Whigs, again, are nothing but partly conscious, partly unconscious Republicans, who stand in the same