The Government of England Part 5

[45:2] Lee, "Life of Queen Victoria," 266, 302.

[45:3] 33-34 Vic., c. 17. Order in Council, June 4, 1870.

[45:4] _Cf._ Lee, "Life of Queen Victoria," 299, 336, 349.

[46:1] Morley, "Life of Walpole," 159. But see Morley, "Life of Gladstone," I., 415.

[46:2] Pp. 544-45.

[46:3] "Croker Papers," II., 317. A couple of years earlier Peel had dreaded the advent of a ministry that might appear to be dictated to the King by the House of Commons, and continue in office independently of his will and control. Parker, "Sir Robert Peel," II., 302. No statesman would repeat either of these remarks to-day.

[46:4] In Prince Albert's letter to his daughter, the Crown Princess of Prussia, on the advantages of a responsible ministry, he speaks of the power of the monarch to settle the principles on which political action is to be based, in terms not applicable in England. Martin, "Life of the Prince Consort," IV., 218.

[48:1] "Life of Victoria," Pref., vii-viii.

[51:1] _The Times_, Sept. 17, 1903.

[52:1] Hans., 4 Ser. XCIV., 1500. The Civil List of Edward VII. was fixed at his accession at 543,000, to which must be added about 60,000 of revenues from the Duchy of Lancaster, and also the revenues from the Duchy of Cornwall which go to the heir apparent as Duke of Cornwall.

Rep. Com. on Civil List, Com. Papers, 1901, V., 607.

CHAPTER III

THE CABINET AND THE MINISTERS

[Sidenote: Absence of Fixed Traditions.]

A German professor in a lecture on anatomy is reported to have said to his cla.s.s, "Gentlemen, we now come to the spleen. About the functions of the spleen, gentlemen, we know nothing. So much for the spleen." It is with such feelings that one enters upon the task of writing a chapter upon the cabinet; although that body has become more and more, decade by decade, the motive power of all political action. The fact is that the cabinet from its very nature can hardly have fixed traditions. In the first place, it has no legal status as an organ of government, but is an informal body, unknown to the law, whose business is to bring about a cooperation among the different forces of the state without interfering with their legal independence. Its action must, therefore, be of an informal character. Then it meets in secret, and no records of its proceedings are kept, which would in itself make very difficult the establishment and preservation of a tradition. This could, indeed, happen only in case of a certain permanence among the members who could learn and transmit its practice. But a new cabinet contains under ordinary circ.u.mstances none of the members of its predecessor. A Conservative minister knows nothing of the procedure under Liberal administrations; and we find even a man of the experience of Sir Robert Peel asking Sir James Graham about the practice of a Liberal cabinet, of which that statesman--who at this time changed his party every decade--had formerly been a member.[53:1] No doubt the mode of transacting business varies a good deal from one cabinet to another, depending to a great extent upon the personal qualities of the members.

Still, the real nature of the work to be done, and hence the method of doing it, have changed during the last half century less in the case of the cabinet than of any of the other political organs of the state, and one can observe certain general characteristics that may be noted.

[Sidenote: Nature of the Cabinet.]

The conventions of the const.i.tution have limited and regulated the exercise of all legal powers by the regular organs of the state in such a way as to vest the main authority of the central government--the driving and the steering force--in the hands of a body entirely unknown to the law. The members of the cabinet are now always the holders of public offices created by law; but their possession of those offices by no means determines their activity as members of the cabinet. They have, indeed, two functions. Individually, as officials, they do the executive work of the state and administer its departments; collectively they direct the general policy of the government, and this they do irrespective of their individual authority as officials. Their several administrative duties, and their collective functions are quite distinct; and may, in the case of a particular person, have little or no connection. The Lord Privy Seal, for example, has no administrative duties whatever; and it is conceivable that the work of other members might not come before the cabinet during the whole life of the ministry.

[Sidenote: Functions of the Cabinet.]

The essential function of the cabinet is to coordinate and guide the political action of the different branches of the government, and thus create a consistent policy. Bagehot called it a hyphen that joins, a buckle that fastens, the executive and legislative together; and in another place he speaks of it as a committee of Parliament chosen to rule the nation. More strictly, it is a committee of the party that has a majority in the House of Commons. The minority are not represented upon it; and in this it differs from every other parliamentary committee. The distinction is so obvious to us to-day, we are so accustomed to government by party wherever popular inst.i.tutions prevail, that we are apt to forget the importance of the fact. Party government as a system has developed comparatively recently; but it has now become almost universal. The only exception among democratic countries (that is, the only case where the executive body habitually contains members of opposing parties) is in Switzerland. Still the system is carried to a greater extent in some countries than in others; and the amount of power concentrated in the hands of a single party leader, or a body of party leaders, varies very much. The President of the United States, for example, is the representative of a party; but he rules the nation only in part. The legislature is neither in theory or in practice under his control; and this is so far true that even when Congress is of the same party as himself, neither he nor any committee of the party so controls both executive and legislative that any one body can be said to rule the nation. But where the parliamentary system prevails, the cabinet, virtually combining in its own hands, as it does, the legislative and executive authorities, may fairly be said to rule the nation; although the degree in which this is true must depend upon the extent of its real control over the legislature. Now, although the legal power of the executive government is in some respects less in England than in most continental countries, the actual control of the cabinet over the legislature is greater than anywhere else.

The cabinet is selected by the party, not directly, but indirectly, yet for that very reason represents it the better. Direct election is apt to mean strife within the party, resulting in a choice that represents the views of one section as opposed to those of another, or else in a compromise on colourless persons; while the existing indirect selection results practically in taking the men, and all the men, who have forced themselves into the front rank of the party and acquired influence in Parliament. The minority of the House of Commons is not represented in the cabinet; but the whole of the majority is now habitually represented, all the more prominent leaders from every section of the party being admitted. In its essence, therefore, the cabinet is an informal but permanent caucus of the parliamentary chiefs of the party in power--and it must be remembered that the chiefs of the party are all in Parliament. Its object is to secure the cohesion without which the party cannot retain a majority in the House of Commons and remain in power. The machinery is one of wheels within wheels; the outside ring consisting of the party that has a majority in the House of Commons; the next ring being the ministry, which contains the men who are most active within that party; and the smallest of all being the cabinet, containing the real leaders or chiefs. By this means is secured that unity of party action which depends upon placing the directing power in the hands of a body small enough to agree, and influential enough to control. There have, of course, been times when the majority was not sufficiently h.o.m.ogeneous to unite in a cabinet; when a ministry of one party has depended for its majority upon the support of a detached group holding the balance of power. The Peelites in 1850, the Liberal Unionists in 1886, and the Irish Nationalists in 1892 formed groups of this kind; but such a condition of things is in its nature temporary and transitional, and usually gives place to a coalition ministry, followed by party amalgamation.

[Sidenote: Formation of the Cabinet.]

The statesman sent for by the Crown and intrusted with the formation of a ministry becomes himself the Prime Minister, and selects his colleagues. It may be added, also, that he has virtually power to dismiss a minister; that is, subject to his responsibility to the cabinet as a whole and to Parliament, he can request the Crown to dismiss a colleague--a request which the Crown cannot practically refuse.[56:1] In the selection of the cabinet his choice is, however, decidedly limited both as to persons and offices. In the first place, all the men still in active public life who served in the last cabinet of the party have a claim, a very strong claim, to sit in the new cabinet, and hence it is unusual to discard a man who is willing to return to office.[57:1] This in itself fills a goodly number of the cabinet positions. Then all the prominent leaders in Parliament, and especially in the House of Commons, must be included. In fact, as Mr.

Bagehot puts it, the Prime Minister's independent choice extends rather to the division of the cabinet offices than to the choice of cabinet ministers. Still, he has some lat.i.tude in regard to the men whom he will admit; especially the younger men, who are appointed to offices in the ministry but not in the cabinet, and this may be a matter of great moment. One cannot tell, for example, how different the history of Parliament in the middle of the century might have been had Peel decided to invite Disraeli to join his ministry in 1841.[57:2] Although the Prime Minister has by no means a free hand in the selection of his colleagues, the task is often extremely difficult and vexatious. It 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; for with the selection of the members of the cabinet the difficulties are by no means over. The distribution of the offices among them may raise additional problems. One man will take only a particular office, while others may object to serving if he occupies that post. Where parties are a good deal broken up, or are evenly divided, obstacles like these have sometimes prevented the formation of a cabinet altogether; and there is always some disappointment and consequent discontent on the part of men who thought themselves sufficiently prominent to be admitted to the ministry, and whose chagrin may drive them into an independent att.i.tude.

There are, indeed, two ways in which an ambitious young member of the House of Commons can render his services indispensable to the Prime Minister. He must, of course, first get the ear of the House, and make himself a power there. Then he may vote regularly with the party whips, support the leaders of his party on all occasions, and speak in their favour whenever he can be of use to them. In that case he is likely to be regarded as a promising young man of sound principles who can be relied upon by his chiefs. Or, he may follow the opposite course of the candid friend, criticising and even attacking the leader of his party, showing the weak points in his arguments, and the errors in his policy.

In that case, if the young man has achieved so important a position that he cannot be disregarded, he stands a good chance of being given an office as a dangerous critic who must be conciliated and attached firmly to the government. The first of these methods is slower but safer. The second has sometimes been tried with startling success, notably in the case of Lord Randolph Churchill; but it has also been tried too obviously, and without the necessary social or parliamentary influence; and when it does not succeed it is likely to leave its victim hopelessly stranded below the gangway.

[Sidenote: Increase in Size.]

The number of members in the cabinet has varied very much at different times,[58:1] and of late years it has shown a marked tendency to increase. William Pitt had only six colleagues. A generation ago the cabinets contained from a dozen to sixteen members; but they have now run up to eighteen or twenty. There are several reasons for the change.

In the first place, as the sphere of the state activity extends and the government grows more paternal, the range of affairs that come within the action of the cabinet is greater; and hence from time to time there is need of admitting a representative of some fresh department to its consultations. Then, on the political side, the development of the parliamentary system has made it necessary for the cabinet to have an ever stronger and stronger hold upon the House of Commons; and, therefore, the different shades of feeling in the party that has a majority in that House must be more and more fully represented in the cabinet. This alone would tend to increase the number of its members; but far more important still is the fact that a seat in the cabinet has become the ambition of all the prominent men in Parliament. Consequently the desire to be included is very great, and the disappointment correspondingly acute. For these various reasons there is a constant pressure to increase the size of the cabinet. The result is not without its evils. A score of men cannot discuss and agree on a policy with the same readiness as a dozen. There is more danger of delay when action must be taken. There is a greater probability of long discussions that are inconclusive or result in a weak compromise. There is, in short, all the lack of administrative efficiency which a larger body always presents; unless, indeed, that body is virtually guided and controlled by a small number of its own members. That some recent cabinets have been actually so controlled there can be little doubt; and this must become more and more the case as the cabinet grows larger, if it is to retain its great suppleness and strength. One sometimes hears of an interior junto, or cabinet within the cabinet, that really determines the policy. This is undoubtedly an exaggeration; a giving of formal shape to informal conferences among leaders on special questions, which have always taken place; but it appears not improbable that if the growth in the size of the cabinet continues, some such interior nucleus may develop which will bear to the cabinet something of the relation that the cabinet now bears to the ministry.

[Sidenote: Offices in the Cabinet.]

Certain offices always bring their holders into the cabinet. These are the positions of First Lord of the Treasury (a post almost invariably held either by the Prime Minister himself, or by the leader of the House of Commons if the Prime Minister is a peer and takes some other office); Lord Chancellor (a great political as well as judicial office); the great English executive offices, those of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the five Secretaries of State, and the First Lord of the Admiralty; and a couple of dignified positions without active administrative duties, those of President of the Council and the Lord Privy Seal. Certain other officers have been of late years always in the cabinet; such are the Presidents of the Board of Trade, the Local Government Board, and the Board of Education, and the Chief Secretary for Ireland,--except when his nominal superior, the Lord Lieutenant for Ireland, is himself a member. On the other hand, the Secretary for Scotland and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster are usually in the cabinet; while the President of the Board of Agriculture and the Postmaster-General are often there; the First Commissioner of Works and the Lord Chancellor for Ireland occasionally so. The tendency at the present day is certainly in the direction of including the head of every considerable branch of the administration.

The counsel of a statesman who was incapacitated for the performance of steady administrative work, or unwilling to undertake it, was occasionally secured in former times by giving him a seat in the cabinet without any office under the Crown. He then became what is known on the continent as a minister without portfolio. The last case of this kind in England was that of Lord John Russell in 1854-1856; but the same object is practically attained to-day by means of the office of Lord Privy Seal,[60:1] which involves no real administrative duties, and those of President of the Council,[60:2] and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, where the duties are very light.

[Sidenote: The Ministers must have Seats in Parliament.]

As the continental practice whereby ministers are allowed to address the legislature, whether they have seats in it or not, is unknown in England, every member of the cabinet, and indeed of the ministry, must have a seat in one or other House of Parliament;[61:1] the last exception being that of Mr. Gladstone, who held the office of Secretary of State for the Colonies during the last few months of Sir Robert Peel's administration in 1846, although he had failed of reelection to the House of Commons.[61:2] The reason commonly given for such a limitation in the selection of ministers is that otherwise they could not be made responsible to Parliament, where they must be present in order to answer questions, and give information relating to their departments. From the standpoint of Parliament this is perfectly true, but the converse is also true. The head of a department sits in the House of Commons quite as much in order to control the House, as in order that the House may control him. In his chapter on "Changes of Ministry," Bagehot has shown how defenceless against attack any department is sure to be without a spokesman in Parliament, and he cites as a forcible ill.u.s.tration the fate of the first Poor Law Commission.[61:3] All this applies, of course, only to the House of Commons, for although the presence of ministers in the House of Lords is a convenience in debate, and an appropriate recognition of the legal equality of the two chambers, there is no responsibility to be secured thereby, and it is not the essential means of controlling the action of the peers.

[Sidenote: The Cabinet System and Administrative Efficiency.]

The men who win places in the ministry have usually, although by no means invariably, made their mark in debate. It is a strange a.s.sumption that a good talker must be a good administrator, and that a strong government can be formed by parcelling out the offices among the leading debaters in the legislative body. At first sight it appears as irrational as the other corollary of the parliamentary system, that the public service is promoted by dismissing an excellent foreign minister, because the House of Commons does not like an unpopular clause in an education bill. Any one with a sense of humour can point out the incongruities in any human organisation, whether it works in practice well or ill. But there is, in fact, reason to expect that a leading debater will make a good head of a department. Influence is rarely acquired over a body so permanent as the House of Commons by mere showy eloquence. Real weight there must be based upon a knowledge of men, and a power to master facts and grasp the essential points in a situation.

It must be based, in other words, upon the qualities most essential to a good head of a department in a government where, as in England, the technical knowledge, the traditions, and the orderly conduct of affairs, are secured by a corps of highly efficient permanent officials. No doubt all leading debaters do not make good administrators. Sometimes a minister is negligent or ineffective, and occasionally he is rash. There are men, also, who have outlived their usefulness, or who were once thought very promising, and have not fulfilled their promise, but who cannot be discarded and must be given a post of more or less importance.

The system works, however, on the whole very well, and supplies to the government offices a few extraordinary, and many fairly efficient, chiefs, although it puts some departments under the control of poor administrators.

The power of creating peers would make it possible to select for the head of a department a tried administrator altogether outside of the parliamentary field. Something like this was attempted in the recent case of Lord Milner, who was offered, on Mr. Chamberlain's resignation, the post of Secretary of State for the Colonies. Lord Milner was, indeed, a peer at the time the place was tendered to him, but he had attended in the House of Lords only to take his seat. He had never spoken or voted there, and in fact had had no parliamentary career, his nearest approach to St. Stephens having consisted in standing on one occasion as a candidate for the House of Commons without success.

Formerly a statesman regularly began his official life as a parliamentary under-secretary; and he did not become the head of a department, or win a seat in the cabinet, until he had in this way served his apprenticeship in public administration--a practice which furnished both a guarantee of experience and a test of executive capacity. Of late years there have been a number of exceptions to this rule. Mr. Chamberlain, Lord Randolph Churchill, Mr. Morley and Mr.

Birrell, for example, were admitted to the cabinet, and put at the head of great departments without any previous training in the service of the government. As a rule, however, the old system is likely to prevail, because it is difficult for a man to make his mark in Parliament unless he begins his work there very young; and the exceptions occur only in cases of men of great ability.

[Sidenote: The Need of Unity in the Cabinet.]

In the earlier part of the century, before the party system had developed as fully as it has to-day, complete unity in the cabinet was much less necessary than it is now. At that time it was not uncommon to have matters, sometimes very important ones, treated as open questions in the cabinet, and a good deal of discussion has taken place upon the advantages and the evils of such a practice.[63:1] Members of the cabinet occasionally spoke and voted against government measures, although a difference carried to that length was always rare. One even finds colleagues in the ministry standing as opposing candidates at an election.[63:2] Such occurrences would be impossible to-day, because, as will appear more fully when we come to treat of the political parties, parliamentary government in its present highly developed form requires a very strong cohesion among the members of the majority in the House of Commons, and, therefore, absolute harmony, or the appearance of harmony, among their leaders. It is necessary to present a united front to the Opposition, but if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself for the battle? Any one watching the course of events during the early summer of 1903 must have observed how rapidly the process of disintegration went on in the Conservative party while it was known that the ministers were at odds over the tariff. Party cohesion, both in the House and in the cabinet, is, indeed, an essential feature of the parliamentary system; but since men, however united on general principles, do not by nature think alike in all things, differences of opinion must constantly arise within the cabinet itself.[64:1] Sometimes they are pushed so far that they can be settled only by a division or vote, but this is exceptional, for the object of the members is, if possible, to agree, not to obtain a majority of voices and override the rest.[64:2] The work of every cabinet must, therefore, involve a series of compromises and concessions, the more so because the members represent the varying shades of opinion comprised in the party in power.

A minister who belongs to one wing of the party may, in fact, be more nearly in accord with a member of the front Opposition Bench than with some colleague who stands at the other political pole of opinion, and yet he will stay in the cabinet unless the measures proposed are such that he feels conscientiously obliged to resign. So long as he remains in the government he will attempt to agree with his colleagues, but when he has finally left them his personal opinions will take full course, and he may go off at a tangent. In this way the behaviour of an ex-minister towards his former colleagues, which is sometimes attributed to rancour, may very well be due to a natural expansion of opinions which were held in check while he clung to the cabinet.

[Sidenote: Need of Secrecy.]

Men engaged in a common cause who come together for the purpose of reaching an agreement usually succeed, provided their differences of opinion are not made public. But without secrecy harmony of views is well-nigh unattainable; for if the contradictory opinions held by members of the cabinet were once made public it would be impossible afterwards to make the concessions necessary to a compromise, without the loss of public reputation for consistency and force of character.

Moreover a knowledge of the initial divergence of views among the ministers would vastly increase the difficulty of rallying the whole party in support of the policy finally adopted, and would offer vulnerable points to the attacks of the Opposition. Secrecy is, therefore, an essential part of the parliamentary system, and hence it is the habit, while making public the fact that a meeting of the cabinet has taken place, and the names of the members present, to give no statement of the business transacted. Not only is no official notice of the proceedings published, but it is no less important that they should not be in any way divulged. In fact, by a well-recognised custom, it is highly improper to refer in Parliament, or elsewhere, to what has been said or done at meetings of the cabinet, although reticence must at times place certain members in a very uncomfortable position.[65:1]

Occasionally it becomes well-nigh intolerable. This is true where a cabinet breaks up owing to dissensions over an issue that excites keen public interest, and in such cases the story of what happened may be told in a way that would be thought inexcusable under other circ.u.mstances.[66:1]

When we consider the great public interest that attaches to the decisions of the cabinet, and the great value that premature information would have for journalists and speculators, it is astonishing how little cabinet secrets have leaked out. In curious contrast with this are the reports of select committees of Parliament, the contents of which are often known before the report is made,[66:2] probably in most cases not from any deliberate disclosure, but as a result of the piecing together of small bits of information, no one of which alone would seem to be a betrayal of confidence. The reason this does not happen in the case of cabinets is no doubt to be sought in the complete reliance of the members upon one another, and their disbelief in the statements of any one who pretends to have obtained information from a colleague. The best proof of the real silence of ministers is found in the fact that although on two or three occasions the press has been remarkably shrewd in guessing at probable decisions, members of the cabinet have seldom been guilty of talking indiscreetly. The one or two instances where it is alleged to have occurred have, indeed, acquired the sort of notoriety of exceptions that prove the rule.[66:3]

At one time, it seems, before the reign of Queen Victoria, minutes of cabinet meetings were kept, showing the opinions held, with the reasons given therefor, and these were transmitted to the King.[67:1] Even as late as 1855 regular cabinet dinners took place, marked by the possible convenience that no reports of the topics of discussion were sent to the sovereign, as in the case of more formal meetings.[67:2] At the present day he receives only a general statement of the matters discussed, with formal minutes of decisions that require his approval; and it would be considered improper to inform him of the conflicting opinions held by the different ministers.[67:3] In fact no records of the cabinet are kept. This results in occasional differences of recollection on the question whether a definite conclusion was reached on certain matters or not; but possible difficulties of that kind are probably of far less consequence than the facility in compromising differences of opinion and reaching a harmonious conclusion that comes from the entire informality of the proceedings. So little formal, indeed, are the meetings that a person not a member of the cabinet is occasionally brought in for consultation. This occurred in 1848, for example, when the Duke of Wellington attended a Liberal cabinet to give advice upon measures to be taken in view of the danger of the Chartist riots.

[Sidenote: Times of Meeting.]

It is an old practice, and obviously a necessary one, to hold one or more meetings of the cabinet in the autumn to consider the measures to be presented to Parliament during the coming session; to arrange, as it were, the government's parliamentary programme. Other meetings are held from time to time whenever necessary; sometimes as often as once a week during the session; occasionally even more frequently when urgent and difficult matters are to be decided. After the session of Parliament comes to an end in August, the ministers usually take their vacation in travel, sport, or public speaking; and cabinet meetings are suspended unless political questions of a pressing nature arise.

In the rare cases where the cabinet is obliged to settle its policy by the crude method of a division or vote, the voices of its members count alike; but questions are usually decided by preponderance of opinion, not by votes; and the weight of the opinions of the ministers is naturally very unequal. Such a difference must be particularly marked in the large cabinets of the present day; and some of the members must be perfectly well aware that they are expected to follow rather than to lead. The relative influence of the different ministers over their colleagues, both at the cabinet meetings and elsewhere, depends, of course, primarily upon their personal qualities; although the post occupied is, in some cases, not without importance. This is particularly true in the case of the Prime Minister.