THE KING AND HIS MINISTERS AND THE COUNTRY.
1
The list of the proposed Administration is submitted by the Prime
Minister to the King for approval. Constitutionally, the Sovereign
has the right of veto, and may require any of the Ministerial
appointments to be cancelled. This prerogative is now rarely, if
ever, enforced. So far as is known, Queen Victoria was the last
Sovereign to raise objections to certain of the names proposed to
her. When Gladstone was forming his Government in 1880, she wished
for Lord Hartington at the War Office, in place of Mr. Childers; but
she was induced to give way. It was said in 1893, when Gladstone
was again forming an Administration, that Henry Labouchere was not
included solely because Queen Victoria refused her sanction. In the
remoter past there are instances of the Sovereign not merely vetoing
an appointment, but also of making one. But when George IV attempted
to appoint Herries in 1827 Chancellor of the Exchequer, objection was
successfully maintained. By modern usage, therefore, the position
may be said to be that the Sovereign has the right to veto an
appointment, but not to make one.
The Administration having been completely formed, a day is appointed
by the King for taking leave of the outgoing Ministers, and receiving
the incoming Ministers, at meetings of the Privy Council. The
customary procedure is for the Clerk of the Council to collect all
the seals of office from the various Departments beforehand and take
them to Buckingham Palace for the ceremony. Only certain Ministers
hold seals as insignia of office. The retiring Prime Minister has no
seal to hand over, even though he may also hold, as he usually does,
the office of First Lord of the Treasury; and therefore the new Prime
Minister has none to receive. The Ministers having seals of office
are the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Privy Seal, the five Secretaries
of State—Home Department, Foreign Affairs, Colonies, War, and India
(all of whom are constitutionally of co-equal and co-ordinate
authority, and fully authorized to transact, if need be, each other’s
business)—the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Chancellor of the
Duchy of Lancaster, and the Secretary for Scotland.
The seals of office are sets of three seals, each made of metal,
known respectively as the signet, the smaller seal, and the cachet.
It is only at the Foreign Office that full use is made of the
three. The signet is affixed to instruments for the ratification of
treaties. The smaller seal is used for Royal Warrants countersigned
by the Secretary. The cachet is used for the purpose of sealing
letters sent by the King to Foreign Sovereigns on matters of State.
Two seals only are used at the Colonial Office, the signet and the
smaller seal; while at the Home Office and the India Office the
smaller seal is used for all purposes. All the seals bear the Royal
Arms, but have no image or device appropriate to the office of which
each is the symbol. Each Minister receives the seals of his office
enclosed in a velvet case from the King. No doubt curiosity impels
him to examine the seals on that great day when he enters office, but
he probably never sees them again until that other notable day when
he quits office by handing the seals back to the King.
2
The outgoing Ministers are first received by the King in the Council
Chamber. The seals being sorted out, each Minister takes his and
delivers it up to the King, thereby relinquishing his office.
Ministers without seals resign office by formally taking leave of the
King. Later on, the new Ministers arrive at the Palace. The second
Council is then held. The first thing done is to administer the
Privy Councillor’s oath to such Cabinet Ministers as are not yet
members of the Privy Council. Each swears to be “a true and faithful
servant unto the King’s Majesty,” and to reveal it to his Majesty
should he come to know of “any manner of thing to be attempted, done
or spoken, against his Person, Honour, Crown, or Dignity Royal,”
and then proceeds to take a further oath upon which the secrecy of
Cabinet proceedings rests. The passage is as follows:
You shall, in all things to be moved, treated and debated in
Council, faithfully and truly declare your Mind and Opinion
according to your Heart and Conscience; and shall keep secret all
Matters committed and revealed unto you, or that shall be treated
of secretly in Council. And if any of the said Treaties or Councils
shall touch any of the Counsellors, you shall not reveal it unto
him, but shall keep the same until such time as, by the Consent of
his Majesty, or of the Council, Publication shall be made thereof.
The oath winds up, “So help you God and the Holy contents of this
book,” though by an Act of 1889 affirmation may be substituted for
the oath.
Disraeli, who knew something about the formation of Ministries,
has described the antithesis of the Ministry of All the Talents,
in his novel _Endymion_, as the Ministry of Untried Men. There is
much fact and some fiction in the description. The Ministry was the
one formed by Lord Derby in 1852, with Disraeli himself in it as
Chancellor of the Exchequer. Derby, leader of the Protectionists,
seemed to have a difficult task, for, barring himself, there was no
one to choose who had already held office. The task, Disraeli tells
us, was accomplished in this way: “A dozen men without the slightest
experience of official life had to be sworn in as Privy Councillors
before they could receive the seals and insignia of their intended
offices. On their knees, according to official custom, a dozen
men, all in the act of genuflexion at the same moment, and headed,
too, by one of the most powerful peers in the country, the Lord of
Alnwick Castle himself, humbled themselves before a female Sovereign,
who looked serene and imperturbable before a spectacle never seen
before, and which in all probability will never be seen again. One
of the band, a gentleman without any experience whatever, was not
only placed in the Cabinet, but was absolutely required to become
the Leader of the House of Commons, which had never occurred before,
except in the instance of Mr. Pitt in 1782.” Lord Beaconsfield’s
confession, it is well to recall, appeared after his final
disappearance from the political scene.
When the whole Cabinet has thus qualified for admission to the Privy
Council, his Majesty declares Lord President of the Council the
Minister appointed to that office, who thereupon takes the oath to
“well and truly serve his Majesty,” and kisses his Majesty’s hand.
The other Ministers take a similar oath in due order, beginning with
the Lord Chancellor, who receives the Great Seal, followed by the
Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury; and those who are
entitled to seals receive them from the King, while the others kiss
his Majesty’s hand in acceptance of office. Thus does the Sovereign
ratify the selections of the Prime Minister for the various posts in
the Administration.
3
Lord Campbell relates in his _Diary_ that in 1859, as the members
of the Palmerston Administration, in which he held the office of
Lord Chancellor, were going down to Windsor by special train, they
passed another express returning to London with the outgoing Premier,
Lord Derby, and his colleagues. What an opening for aspiring young
statesmen if a wicked wag of a railway director had ordered the two
trains to be put on the same line, was the genial comment of the
Lord Chancellor! Sir Stafford Northcote, who was a Minister in the
next Derby Administration, formed in July 1866, also gives some
interesting glimpses of the proceedings associated with a change of
Government. He writes: “Queen’s carriages met us at the terminus
and took us to Windsor Castle. As we went upstairs we met the late
Ministers coming down, and shook hands with them. While we were
waiting in the long room there was a sharp thunderstorm, and there
was another while we were at luncheon, after taking office. The
slopes of the Terrace looked as if there had been a fall of snow.
Some thought this a bad omen for us. Disraeli had a bad omen of his
own as we came down, for, thinking there was a seat at the end of the
saloon carriage, he sat down there, and found himself unexpectedly
on the floor.” This Administration lasted scarcely two years;
but, despite the ill-omened accident to Disraeli, it was for that
statesman a fortunate Administration. In it he first filled the great
office of Prime Minister, to which he succeeded on the resignation of
Lord Derby, on account of failing health, early in 1868.
But to return to Windsor Castle. Sir Stafford Northcote goes on to
say: “Lord Derby was first sent for by the Queen, and had a short
audience. We were then all taken along the corridor to the door
of a small room, or, rather, closet. Lord Derby, Lord Chelmsford,
and Walpole were called in; then the five new members of the Privy
Council—Duke of Buckingham, Carnarvon, Cranborne, Hardy, and I—were
called in together, and knelt before the Queen while we took the
oath of allegiance; then we kissed hands, rose, and took the Privy
Councillor’s oath standing. The Queen then named the Duke of
Buckingham Lord President of the Council, and we all retired. The
Prince of Wales and Duke of Edinburgh were in the room. We were then
called in one by one and kissed hands on appointment to office, Lord
Derby going first, then the Lord Chancellor, the Lord President,
the Lord Privy Seal, the Secretaries of State (all together), the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, etc. The seals were delivered to all
these, except the Lord President. Lord Derby then had a long audience
with the Queen, while we went to luncheon. Returned by special
train at four o’clock.” John Bright was the only Minister who, so
far as I know, was relieved of the obligation to kneel and kiss the
Sovereign’s hands on receiving the seals of office. When he went to
Windsor on his appointment as President of the Board of Trade, Queen
Victoria, a great admirer of his speeches, sent Helps, Clerk to the
Privy Council, to tell Bright she would dispense with the ceremony if
that was more agreeable to his feelings as a Quaker, and he availed
himself of this “considerate permission,” as he regarded it.
How a Minister (Henry Chaplin, afterwards Lord Chaplin) held the
seals of the Secretary of State for War, for the briefest period
possible, is mentioned in the diary of Lord Cranbrook, when he enters
the visit to Windsor of the Conservative Ministry of 1885 upon taking
office. “There was no contretemps but the careless omission of the
kissing hands by Northcote, which was soon set right; and her Majesty
gave Chaplin the War Office seals by mistake, easily rectified.
Still, there should be some distinctive mark on each set.”
4
But all is not over yet. A Member of the House of Commons who accepts
an office of profit under the Crown thereby vacates his seat, and
must seek re-election. This applies to the heads of all the great
Departments. Minor Ministerial posts, such as the Secretary to the
Treasury, the Under-Secretaries of State, the Parliamentary and
Financial Secretaries of various Departments, are exempted from
this parliamentary law, as they are regarded as holding office not
by appointment of the Crown, but by appointment of the Ministers
in charge of the different offices. The object of compelling a
Minister to submit his acceptance of office to the judgment of his
constituents, which was first established by an Act of the reign
of Queen Anne—Succession to the Crown Act, 1707—was to restrain
the corrupt influence of the Crown over Parliament by its power of
conferring place on servile and obsequious Members. The danger the
statute was designed to avert has, happily, past long since and
gone for ever. The Act of Anne, however, continues in operation
despite the fact that, owing to the complete revolution which has
since been effected in the Constitution, it is entirely remote from
the realities of these democratic times. The only modification
of the original Act is a provision in the Reform Act of 1867, by
which a Minister who is transferred to another office “in lieu of
and in immediate succession the one to the other” need not submit
himself to his constituents. A constitutional difficulty arose on
the taking over of the Chancellorship of the Exchequer by Gladstone
on the resignation of Lowe in 1873, during a parliamentary recess,
Gladstone at the time being First Lord of the Treasury and Prime
Minister. Did the right hon. gentleman come under the provision of
the Act of 1867, and therefore not obliged to seek re-election? The
law officers of the Crown—Coleridge, Attorney-General, and Jessel,
Solicitor-General—came to the conclusion that the seat was not
vacated; and their opinion was supported by Sir Erskine May, Clerk
of the House of Commons. On the other hand, Lord Chancellor Selborne
advanced the opposite view, holding that, as Gladstone had taken
the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer, not in lieu of and in
immediate succession to, but in addition to, the office of First Lord
of the Treasury, he must submit himself to his constituents. But this
Gladstone was reluctant to do, as his seat for Greenwich was believed
to be unsafe.
Meanwhile, the Conservative Opposition sought to make the situation
more embarrassing for the Government. The Speaker is not empowered
to issue his warrant for a new election during the Recess in the
room of any Member who since the Prorogation has accepted any office
whereby he has vacated his seat, unless on receipt of a certificate
from two Members and a notification from the Member himself of the
fact of such acceptance of office. What happened in this particular
case is thus described by John Morley in his _Life of Gladstone_:
“The unslumbering instinct of Party had quickly got upon a scent, and
two keen-nosed sleuth-hounds of the Opposition, four or five weeks
after Mr. Gladstone had taken the seals of the Exchequer, sent to
the Speaker a certificate in the usual form, stating a vacancy at
Greenwich, and requesting him to issue a writ for a new election. The
Speaker reminded them, in reply, that the issue of writs during the
recess in cases of acceptance of office required notification to him
from the Member accepting, and he had received no such notification.”
In the midst of the controversy Parliament was dissolved, and with it
the difficulty.
Governments have tried to repeal the statute of Queen Anne. Arthur
Balfour, who thought the law not only antiquated, but inimical to
good government, once, when Prime Minister, brought in a Bill to
abolish it. “I remember in my early days,” said he, in the session
of 1905, “the Party to which I belong—it was in 1880—derived
infinite enjoyment from the satisfaction of turning the late Sir
William Harcourt out of his seat at Oxford on his taking office as
Home Secretary. He found a seat after considerable inconvenience
to Mr. Gladstone’s Government; and in my opinion, although it gave
us great satisfaction as a good practical joke, it was a severe
condemnation of the system on which we now carry on business, and
which no practical assembly in the world but our own would tolerate
for an instant.” Balfour failed, however, to get the House of Commons
to agree to his Bill. I have heard several debates on the subject.
The chief argument of the Treasury Bench for the repeal of the Act
was that by reason of it no Prime Minister has ever been able to
exercise a really free choice in the selection of his colleagues in
the Administration; for often he has had to put a square man into
a round hole, because the round man that would fit the round hole
admirably held an unsafe seat, and therefore might not be re-elected.
But the view of the back benches always has been that the Act
supports the control of the House over the Government, and gives to
the constituency the opportunity of expressing its opinion as to the
action of its representative in accepting office under the Crown.
This view has always prevailed. During the Great War the principle
was twice suspended by emergency Acts. Members who accepted office
in the two Coalition Governments of the War—one under Asquith in May
and June 1915, and the other under Lloyd George in December 1916 and
January 1917—were expressly absolved from the necessity of seeking
re-election. But when the second Coalition Government, after the
General Election of December 1918, submitted to the new Parliament,
as their first measure, a Bill to repeal the statute of Queen Anne,
feeling against it was very strong, and all that the House of Commons
would assent to was to suspend for nine months the obligation on
Members to go to their constituencies on the acceptance of office.
5
With the re-election of the Ministers the work is at an end.
The Administration has been duly constituted, according to
long-established custom. However smoothly and rapidly it may have
progressed, there are certain to be many sore hearts—those of the
young with disappointed hopes, and, more pathetic still, those of the
old, who are deemed to be no longer fit for office. But what of the
outgoing Ministers? They no longer carry out of office the little
perquisites which were permitted to some of their predecessors. At
one time each Secretary of State, for instance, received on his
appointment a silver inkstand, which he could retain and hand down
as a keepsake to his children; but Gladstone, when Chancellor of the
Exchequer, abolished this custom, and the only souvenir of office an
outgoing Minister can take with him now is the red despatch box in
which he used to carry his official papers to the House of Commons.
How do they take their dismissal by the country? “There are two
supreme political pleasures in life,” says Lord Rosebery. “One is
ideal, the other real. The ideal is when a man receives the seals of
office from the hands of his Sovereign; the real, when he hands them
back.” It is the saying of a man who was sick and tired of office.
But I beg leave to doubt its general application.