borough observed that he had heard the privy council defined as a body "who were thought to know everything and knew nothing," and the cabinet as those "who thought nobody knew anything but themselves." 1 1 Parl. Hist., vol. vi. p. 974; Knight, Hist. Eng., vol. v. p. 168; Todd's Parl. Government, vol. i. pp. 251, 252. BOOK VII. GROWTH OF THE MODERN MINISTERIAL SYSTEM. Sover eignty now really vested in the house of commons; CHAPTER I. ITS PROGRESS DURING THE REIGNS OF GEORGE I. AND I. IN the English constitutional system as it now exists the supreme powers of the state are vested, not in the theory but in fact, in the representative branch of the imperial parliament, whose members under the provisions of recent reform bills are chosen by an electorate so broad as to embrace every element necessary for the full and free expression of the will of the people as a whole. The commands thus given by the nation to its rulers through the medium of this electoral system are executed by a committee chosen by the crown from the ranks of that party which for the moment commands a majority of the house of commons. In order to secure perfect crown and concord between the supreme legislative and executive powers, legislature the committee that acts as the agent of the representative the employ- chamber is also made the agent of the crown by being inment of a trusted with the offices that pertain to those who constitute concord between secured by common agent; the inner circle of the privy council known as the cabinet.1 The primary object of this delicate and complex mechanism is to secure a perpetual accord between those who wield the executive power in the name of the crown and the electorate by which the members of the representative chamber are chosen. As a means to that end three fundamental principles have been gradually established in practice upon which parlia 1 "A cabinet is a combining committee - a hyphen which joins, a buckle which fastens, the legislative part of the state to the executive part of the state. In its origin it belongs to the one, in its functions it belongs to the other.". Bagehot, The Eng. Const p. 14. government now reposes; cabinet system the tated out mentary government in England now reposes. The first of three printhese demands that the cabinet council shall be bound together which parciples upon as a unit through the possession of identical political principles liamentary held in common with a majority of the house of commons; the second, that the moment that condition of things ceases to exist the cabinet shall resign as a whole; the third, that for the more convenient execution of the policy approved by the representative chamber, the headship of the cabinet shall be vested in a single person known as prime minister. If the several parts that enter into the structure of this subtile mechanism had been created by the conscious action of the state embodied in charters, orders in council, or parliamentary statutes, the method to be pursued by those who attempt to draw out its history would be at once obvious and easy. But the fact is that the cabinet system as it now exists is the grad- modern ual and unpremeditated outcome of the progressive history of the nation as it has unfolded itself since the Revolution of unpremedi1688; it is the product of the growth of that set of tacit under- come of progressive standings generally known as the conventional constitution, history; which has developed alongside of the written code since that time. As it is true, then, that the wonderful thing to be described was not made but grew, nothing more can be attempted than a detailed statement of the successive stages through which it grew. For convenience the entire period of growth, which began with the Revolution and paused rather than ended with the last Reform Bill, may be broken into two dis- two distinct tinct epochs, that should be clearly distinguished from each growth; other. As a matter of historical fact, the three fundamental principles already defined regulating the relations of the cabinet to the crown, on the one hand, and to the house of commons, on the other, came into being long before the house itself was made a really representative body and as such a true exponent of the national will. The first epoch, therefore, in during the first, the the growth of the modern ministerial system-coextensive three vital with the reigns of George I. and George II. - is that during defining which the three vital principles defining the functions of the the func cabinet were so firmly settled in practice as to enable them cabinet to resist all subsequent efforts to overthrow them. If at the settled; end of this first epoch the house of commons had been really 1 See above, pp. 436-438. epochs of principles tions of the were firmly second, the house of an independent and representative body, parliamentary gov. ernment as now understood in England would have been substantially complete. In theory the lower house was at that time both representative and independent,-in fact it was both dependent and corrupt. The unreformed mediæval representative system, which the nation had outgrown, had through the restriction of the franchise been made dependent upon an absurdly small number of electors who were in the main subject to the control of the crown and the aristocracy. The prolonged and bitter struggle through which the nation has so reconstructed the popular chamber as to make it a truly during the representative body, dependent upon the will of the people alone, rounds out the second epoch in the history of modern cabinet government, which, beginning with the reign of George III., ends for the moment with the last Reform Bill. Through tive body; the exercise of the right of public discussion as embodied in the freedom of the press, the right of petition, and the right of public meeting, each one of which was sharpened and defined as the struggle progressed, the nation, after going to the very verge of civil war, was able to emancipate the representative branch of parliament, and to reconstitute it upon its present basis. By the reformed parliaments that followed the victory have been enacted the great schemes of recent legislation which have remodelled in a conserving spirit every branch of organic and administration, central, local, and colonial. The development, therefore, of the existing ministerial system, which began in earnest with the accession of the house of Hanover, has drawn after it not only every organic but every important administrative change that has taken place since that time. adminis trative changes that have followed the growth of the ministerial system. Growth of government by accession of The effort to unfold that development in such a natural and orderly sequence as will show the historical as well as the logical connection of each part with the other will be embodied in this and the following chapters. 2. The growth of cabinet government in its modern form, cabinet retarded by unpropitious surroundings during the reigns of stimulated William and Anne, was suddenly stimulated at the accession of George I. by the advent of new conditions specially favor able to its development. Foremost among those conditions was the impersonality of the new sovereign, resulting from a willingness upon his part to surrender his right to rule into the George I.; character hands of his constitutional advisers. So bitterly opposed was William III. to that idea that for a long time after his accession he acted as his own first minister, while he struggled to the end to break down the system of party organization out of which it arose.1 The personal characteristics of George I., his personal coupled with the circumstances surrounding his accession, istics, brought about a diametrically opposite result. As heretofore explained, the fact that he was to succeed peacefully to the throne at all was the fruit of the triumph of the Whigs in the council at the moment of Anne's demise; and their loyalty he rewarded by placing the executive power entirely in their hands. Nothing could have been more natural, therefore, than that this foreign king, who could not speak the English lan- as he could not speak guage, and who always regarded his English kingdom only as English, enan appendage to his Hanoverian electorate, should have been tire control given to his content to leave its entire management to an English cabinet Whig while he devoted his personal energies to the promotion of his electoral interests. Thus from George's accession it became the custom for ministers to hold cabinet meetings by them- who held selves, and to report the result to the sovereign through some by themparticular minister; and by the end of the reign of his suc- selves; cessor it had become "unusual" for the sovereign to be pre- it became sent at such meetings; and since the death of Anne no sov- for the ereign has ventured to refuse his or her assent to an act of sovereign parliament. George II., who was also born and bred in a for- present; eign country, was almost as incapable as his father of taking a leading part in English affairs, and the result was that he submitted, although to a less extent, perhaps, to the absolutism of cabinet rule. It is certainly true, so far as the reign of George I. is concerned, that "the personal authority of the sovereign seems to have been at the lowest point it has ever reached ; " 5 while it may be equally true, from what we learn through Chancellor Hardwicke, that George II. - who was fond of the 1 See above, p. 440. 3 2 As Walpole, his chief minister, could not speak French, the story goes that they conversed with each other in Latin. Coxe's Walpole, vol. i. p. 266; H. Walpole's Works, vol. iv. p. 426; Hallam, Const. Hist., vol. iii. p. 293. 3 An instance of the practice occurs, however, shortly after the accession of ministers, meetings "unusual" to be |