The Government of England Part 7

[67:1] Parker, "Sir Robert Peel," III., 496-99.

[67:2] Morley, "Life of Walpole," 151. Cabinet dinners have occasionally taken place of late years, but it is safe to say that they have not been held with that object.

[67:3] Mr. Gladstone "was emphatic and decided in his opinion that if the Premier mentioned to the Queen any of his colleagues who had opposed him in the cabinet, he was guilty of great baseness and perfidy."

Morley, "Life of Gladstone," II., 575. But this seems to have applied only to giving their names. _Ibid._, III., 132.

[68:1] In 1906 the position was recognized by being accorded a place in the order of precedence. _Cf._ Hans., 4 Ser. CLVI., 742.

[68:2] Walpole repudiated the t.i.tle of First or Prime Minister, although he was, in fact, the first man to occupy such a position.

[68:3] See Ashley, "Life of Palmerston," II., 329-30; Gladstone, "Gleanings of Past Years," I., 242. See also the description in Morley, "Life of Walpole," 150-65, which, as already pointed out, represents Mr.

Gladstone's views.

[69:1] Morley, "Life of Gladstone," II., 383.

[69:2] Morley, "Life of Walpole," 159-60.

[70:1] "Sir Robert Peel, from his Private Correspondence"; _cf._ Parker, "Sir Robert Peel"; Morley, "Life of Gladstone," I., 248, 298.

[70:2] Ashley, "Life of Palmerston," II., 257; _cf._ Morley, "Life of Gladstone," II., 35.

[70:3] In his review of Parker's "Sir Robert Peel," in the first number of the _Anglo-Saxon Review_.

[70:4] Hans., 4 Ser. LXXVIII., 27.

[70:5] At the end of his first ministry, and at the beginning of his second, Mr. Gladstone held the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer.

With this exception, and with that of Lord Salisbury, no Prime Minister has been at the head of a department since 1835.

[72:1] "Gleanings of Past Years," I., 242.

[72:2] Morley, "Life of Walpole," 164-65. This would hardly be stated in such broad terms to-day.

[73:1] During the late war in South Africa, there was a special Cabinet Committee on National Defence, which was afterwards enlarged and made permanent, as explained in the following chapter.

[73:2] See a collection of instances in Todd, "Parl. Govt. in England,"

2 Ed., II., 471 _et seq._, and I., 444-49, 668-87. The vote in 1887 to adjourn in order to draw attention to the conduct of the police in the case of Miss Ca.s.s might very well have been regarded as a censure upon the Home Secretary, Mr. Matthews; but he did not think it necessary to resign. Hans., 3 Ser. CCCXVI., 1796-1830.

[74:1] The vote to reduce the salary of the Secretary of State for War in 1895 was anomalous. It was a trick which will be explained in a later chapter.

[75:1] Com. on Nat. Expenditure, Com. Papers, 1902, VII., 15, App. 1 and 3.

[76:1] Morley, "Life of Gladstone," II., 140.

[76:2] Hans., 4 Ser. CXXIII., 348-49.

[76:3] Morley, "Life of Gladstone," III., 506-09.

[77:1] It may be noted that the Chief Secretary of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland is not a parliamentary under-secretary, but the real head of the Irish Office, unless the Viceroy is in the cabinet; also that until the creation of the recent Board of Education the relations between the President and Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education were not clearly defined.

[78:1] In the Liberal cabinet of 1905, however, both representatives of India are in the Commons.

[78:2] The Board of Works and the Post-Office have at times been represented in the Commons by the Treasury.

[78:3] Some member of the government is always ready to answer questions for them, and if need be to defend a department not directly represented.

[79:1] Morley, "Life of Walpole," 165.

[80:1] The Duke of Argyle found fault with this practice as early as the cabinet of 1880-1885. Morley, "Life of Gladstone," III., 4. Mr.

Gladstone thought that liberty of speech should be used by a cabinet minister "sparingly, reluctantly, and with much modesty and reserve"

(_Ibid._, 113), although his own incautious remark about the American Civil War had at an earlier time caused the cabinet of which he was a member no little embarra.s.sment. _Ibid._, II., 75-86.

CHAPTER IV

THE EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS

The departments of state are very different from one another, both in historical origin and in legal organisation; and they have gone through transformations of all kinds, until the nomenclature has in some cases almost ceased to bear any relation to the facts. The t.i.tle of an officer often gives no clear idea of his functions. The most striking case is that of the Treasury, whose regular chief, from the time of Henry VIII.

to the death of Anne, was the Lord High Treasurer. Since 1714 the office has always been in commission; that is, its duties have been intrusted to a board composed of a number of Lords of the Treasury. But while the board is still regularly const.i.tuted by Letters Patent whenever a new ministry is formed, and still retains its legal authority, all political power has, in fact, pa.s.sed from its hands. The board never meets, most of its members have little or no connection with the Treasury, and its functions are really performed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is not now a chancellor, and does not control the work of what is more properly called the Exchequer. Thus, by a strange process of evolution the powers of the Lord High Treasurer have, by law, become vested in a board; and by a still later custom they are actually wielded by quite a different officer, whose t.i.tle indicates neither his succession to the Treasurer nor the nature of his present duties.

Although in origin and legal organisation the departments of state are very unlike, yet the growth of custom, and the exigencies of parliamentary life, have, for practical purposes, forced almost all of them into something very near one common type. Whatever the legal form of the authority at their head, the actual control is now in nearly every case in the hands of a single responsible minister, usually a.s.sisted by one or more parliamentary subordinates, and supported by a corps of permanent non-political officials, who carry on the work of the office.

[Sidenote: Origin of the Departments.]

[Sidenote: The Former Great Offices.]

The historical origin of most of the departments may be traced to one of three sources: the great offices of an earlier time; the secretariat of state; and the more recent boards and commissions. Many of the former offices of state survive as honorary posts, or with duties connected solely with the royal household.[82:1] The only ones that are still in touch with public administration are those of the Lord High Chancellor, who has retained the greater part of his ancient authority; of the Lord High Treasurer, the transformations of whose office have already been mentioned; and of the Lord High Admiral, whose powers have also gone into commission, and are vested in the Admiralty Board.

[Sidenote: The Secretariat of State.]

The secretariat is an old inst.i.tution, although the standing of its members has varied much at different times. There are now five secretaries of state, but their position is peculiar in this, that they all share, from a legal point of view, the same office; and except so far as statutes have conferred special authority upon one or another, each of them can perform the duties of all the rest. During the greater part of the eighteenth century there were two secretaries, one for the northern and the other for the southern department, the former having charge of the relations with the northern powers, the latter of those with the southern powers together with home and colonial affairs. A series of changes made at the end of the century resulted in an increase of the number of secretaries to three, and a redistribution of their work, so that one had charge of foreign relations, another of home affairs, and the third of war and the colonies. The Crimean War brought about in 1854 the separation of the colonial and war departments, with the creation of a fourth secretary of state; and, finally, the mutiny in India, and the consequent transfer of the direct government of that country to the Crown, caused the appointment of a fifth secretary of state to take charge of Indian affairs.

[Sidenote: The Recent Boards and Commissions.]

[Sidenote: Sham Boards.]

The third great source of public departments has been the creation in comparatively recent times of a number of administrative boards or commissions, whose duties (except in the case of the Board of Works) are not primarily executive; that is, they are not concerned mainly with direct administration, but rather with the supervision and control of local authorities and of bodies exercising functions of a public or a quasi-public nature. There are now five boards of this kind, the Board of Trade, the Local Government Board, the Board of Works, the Board of Agriculture, and the Board of Education. Some of them, the first and last named, for example, have developed from committees of the Privy Council; while others have grown out of administrative commissions which were not originally regarded as political, and had no representatives of their own in Parliament. Except in the case of the Board of Trade,[83:1]

both their organisation and their functions now rest upon statutes,[83:2] and in general character they are all very much alike.

Each of them consists of a president,[83:3] of the five secretaries of state, and of other high dignitaries, such as the Lord President of the Privy Council, the First Lord of the Treasury, or the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and sometimes, in the case of the older boards, even of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Speaker of the House of Commons. But the board never meets; the president alone const.i.tutes a quorum, and he conducts the business of the department, with the a.s.sistance, in the case of the Board of Trade, of the Local Government Board and the Board of Education, of a secretary who is not himself a member of the board, but is, like the president, capable of sitting in the House of Commons, and occupies, in short, the position of a parliamentary under-secretary.

In practice, therefore, these boards are legal phantoms that provide imaginary colleagues for a single responsible minister; and, indeed, the only department in the English government conducted by a board that really meets for the transaction of business is the Admiralty.[84:1]

A satirical observer has remarked that the English Const.i.tution is a bundle of shams; and this is inevitable where law fails to keep pace with custom--where the legal organisation has ceased to express the real working of the system. But it is difficult to penetrate the motive for deliberately constructing a sham; and yet that was done in the creation of the Board of Agriculture in 1889, and the Board of Education ten years later. In the last case the measure was criticised upon this ground;[84:2] and Sir John Gorst in reply said that, as there were other boards, the general desire of the House was thought to be in favour of a Board of Education, and that, although these boards did not often meet, they were potential.[84:3] He denied that the Committee of Council on Education had never met, and referred to an occasion, about twenty years earlier, when it had been called together, and actually transacted business.[84:4] A better statement of the reason, or rather the absence of any reason, for the creation of a sham board, was made with characteristic frankness by the Duke of Devonshire, who said, "as far as I remember, the point was mooted when the bill was first prepared, but I quite admit that I am unable, at the present moment, to recollect the reasons which weighed in favour of a board rather than a secretariat. It has the advantage, at all events, of numerous precedents, and it is perfectly well understood that there will be no board at all."[85:1]

In giving in this chapter a sketch of the executive departments nothing will be said of those offices to which no substantial administrative duties, or none outside of the royal household, are attached. There are about a dozen such posts, which are regarded as so far political that their holders retire upon a change of ministry; but they are omitted here, because the object is to describe not the offices of state, but the different branches of the public service and the distribution of business among them. Most of the departments require for our purpose only a few words, to point out the general nature of their duties and anything unusual in their structure or method of working. The functions of some others, such as the Colonial Office, the Local Government Board and the Board of Education, can be pa.s.sed over rapidly, because they will be treated more fully in the chapters devoted to the subjects under their control; while the Army, the Navy and the Treasury are described at greater length on account of the peculiarities in their organisation, and the fact that their work is not dealt with in any other part of the book.

[Sidenote: The Foreign Office.]