We turn next to the other element in the working machine of government,
the Cabinet, or policy-directing body, which is the very pivot of our
whole system. Two main functions fall to the Cabinet. In the first
place, it has to ensure an effective co-ordination between the various
departments of government; in the second place, it is responsible for
the initiation and guidance of national policy in every sphere, subject
to the watchful but friendly control of Parliament.
Long experience has shown that there are several conditions which must
be fulfilled if a Cabinet is to perform these functions satisfactorily.
In the first place, its members must, among them, be able to speak for
every department of government; failing this, the function of
co-ordination cannot be effectively performed. This principle was
discarded in the later stages of the war, when a small War Cabinet was
instituted, from which most of the ministers were excluded. The result
was confusion and overlapping, and the attempt to remedy these evils by
the creation of a staff of _liaison_ officers under the control of the
Prime Minister had very imperfect success, and in some respects only
added to the confusion. In the second place, the Cabinet must be
coherent and homogeneous, and its members must share the same ideals of
national policy. National business cannot be efficiently transacted if
the members of the Cabinet are under the necessity of constantly arguing
about, and making compromises upon, first principles. That is the
justification for drawing the members of a Cabinet from the leaders of a
single party, who think alike and understand one another's minds.
Whenever this condition has been absent, confusion, vacillation and
contradiction have always marked the conduct of public affairs, and
disastrous results have followed.
In the third place, the procedure of the Cabinet must be intimate,
informal, elastic, and confidential; every member must be able to feel
that he has played his part in all the main decisions of policy, whether
they directly concern his department or not, and that he is personally
responsible for these decisions. Constitutional usage has always
prescribed that it is the duty of a Cabinet Minister to resign if he
differs from his colleagues on any vital matter, whether relating to his
department or not, and this usage is, in truth, the main safeguard for
the preservation of genuine conjoint responsibility, and the main
barrier against irresponsible action by a Prime Minister or a clique.
When the practice of resignation in the sense of giving up office is
replaced by the other kind of resignation--shrugging one's shoulders and
letting things slide--the main virtue of Cabinet government has been
lost. In the fourth place, in order that every minister may fully share
in every important discussion and decision, it is essential that the
Cabinet should be small. Sir Robert Peel, in whose ministry of 1841-6
the system probably reached perfection, laid it down that nine was the
maximum number for efficiency, because not more than about nine men can
sit round a table in full view of one another, all taking a real share
in every discussion. When the membership of a Cabinet largely exceeds
this figure, it is inevitable that the sense of joint and several
responsibility for every decision should be greatly weakened.