of none is this more true than of the English Constitution. The
literature which has accumulated upon it is huge. But an observer who
looks at the living reality will wonder at the contrast to the paper
description. He will see in the life much which is not in the books;
and he will not find in the rough practice many refinements of the
literary theory.
It was natural--perhaps inevitable--that such an under growth of
irrelevant ideas should gather round the British Constitution. Language
is the tradition of nations; each generation describes what it sees,
but it uses words transmitted from the past. When a great entity like
the British Constitution has continued in connected outward sameness,
but hidden inner change, for many ages, every generation inherits a
series of inapt words--of maxims once true, but of which the truth is
ceasing or has ceased. As a man's family go on muttering in his
maturity incorrect phrases derived from a just observation of his early
youth, so, in the full activity of an historical constitution, its
subjects repeat phrases true in the time of their fathers, and
inculcated by those fathers, but now true no longer. Or, if I may say
so, an ancient and ever-altering constitution is like an old man who
still wears with attached fondness clothes in the fashion of his youth:
what you see of him is the same; what you do not see is wholly altered.
There are two descriptions of the English Constitution which have
exercised immense influence, but which are erroneous. First, it is laid
down as a principle of the English polity, that in it the legislative,
the executive, and the judicial powers are quite divided--that each is
entrusted to a separate person or set of persons--that no one of these
can at all interfere with the work of the other. There has been much
eloquence expended in explaining how the rough genius of the English
people, even in the middle ages, when it was especially rude, carried
into life and practice that elaborate division of functions which
philosophers had suggested on paper, but which they had hardly hoped to
see except on paper.
Secondly, it is insisted that the peculiar excellence of the British
Constitution lies in a balanced union of three powers. It is said that
the monarchical element, the aristocratic element, and the democratic
element, have each a share in the supreme sovereignty, and that the
assent of all three is necessary to the action of that sovereignty.
Kings, lords, and commons, by this theory, are alleged to be not only
the outward form, but the inner moving essence, the vitality of the
Constitution. A great theory, called the theory of "Checks and
Balances," pervades an immense part of political literature, and much
of it is collected from or supported by English experience. Monarchy,
it is said, has some faults, some bad tendencies, aristocracy others,
democracy, again, others; but England has shown that a Government can
be constructed in which these evil tendencies exactly check, balance,
and destroy one another--in which a good whole is constructed not
simply in spite of, but by means of, the counteracting defects of the
constituent parts.
Accordingly, it is believed that the principal characteristics of the
English Constitution are inapplicable in countries where the materials
for a monarchy or an aristocracy do not exist. That Constitution is
conceived to be the best imaginable use of the political elements which
the great majority of States in modern Europe inherited from the
mediaeval period. It is believed that out of these materials nothing
better can be made than the English Constitution; but it is also
believed that the essential parts of the English Constitution cannot be
made except from these materials. Now these elements are the accidents
of a period and a region; they belong only to one or two centuries in
human history, and to a few countries. The United States could not have
become monarchical, even if the Constitutional Convention had decreed
it, even if the component States had ratified it. The mystic reverence,
the religious allegiance, which are essential to a true monarchy, are
imaginative sentiments that no legislature can manufacture in any
people. These semi-filial feelings in Government are inherited just as
the true filial feelings in common life. You might as well adopt a
father as make a monarchy: the special sentiment belonging to the one
is as incapable of voluntary creation as the peculiar affection
belonging to the other. If the practical part of the English
Constitution could only be made out of a curious accumulation of
mediaeval materials, its interest would be half historical, and its
imitability very confined.
No one can approach to an understanding of the English institutions, or
of others, which, being the growth of many centuries, exercise a wide
sway over mixed populations, unless he divide them into two classes. In
such constitutions there are two parts (not indeed separable with
microscopic accuracy, for the genius of great affairs abhors nicety of
division): first, those which excite and preserve the reverence of the
population--the DIGNIFIED parts, if I may so call them; and next, the
EFFICIENT parts--those by which it, in fact, works and rules. There are
two great objects which every constitution must attain to be
successful, which every old and celebrated one must have wonderfully
achieved: every constitution must first GAIN authority, and then USE
authority; it must first win the loyalty and confidence of mankind, and
then employ that homage in the work of government.
There are indeed practical men who reject the dignified parts of
Government. They say, we want only to attain results, to do business: a
constitution is a collection of political means for political ends, and
if you admit that any part of a constitution does no business, or that
a simpler machine would do equally well what it does, you admit that
this part of the constitution, however dignified or awful it may be, is
nevertheless in truth useless. And other reasoners, who distrust this
bare philosophy, have propounded subtle arguments to prove that these
dignified parts of old Governments are cardinal components of the
essential apparatus, great pivots of substantial utility; and so they
manufactured fallacies which the plainer school have well exposed. But
both schools are in error. The dignified parts of Government are those
which bring it force--which attract its motive power. The efficient
parts only employ that power. The comely parts of a Government HAVE
need, for they are those upon which its vital strength depends. They
may not do anything definite that a simpler polity would not do better;
but they are the preliminaries, the needful prerequisites of ALL work.
They raise the army, though they do not win the battle.
Doubtless, if all subjects of the same Government only thought of what
was useful to them, and if they all thought the same thing useful, and
all thought that same thing could be attained in the same way, the
efficient members of a constitution would suffice, and no impressive
adjuncts would be needed. But the world in which we live is organised
far otherwise.
The most strange fact, though the most certain in nature, is the
unequal development of the human race. If we look back to the early
ages of mankind, such as we seem in the faint distance to see them--if
we call up the image of those dismal tribes in lake villages, or on
wretched beaches--scarcely equal to the commonest material needs,
cutting down trees slowly and painfully with stone tools, hardly
resisting the attacks of huge, fierce animals--without culture, without
leisure, without poetry, almost without thought--destitute of morality,
with only a sort of magic for religion; and if we compare that imagined
life with the actual life of Europe now, we are overwhelmed at the wide
contrast--we can scarcely conceive ourselves to be of the same race as
those in the far distance. There used to be a notion--not so much
widely asserted as deeply implanted, rather pervadingly latent than
commonly apparent in political philosophy--that in a little while,
perhaps ten years or so, all human beings might, without extraordinary
appliances, be brought to the same level. But now, when we see by the
painful history of mankind at what point we began, by what slow toil,
what favourable circumstances, what accumulated achievements, civilised
man has become at all worthy in any degree so to call himself--when we
realise the tedium of history and the painfulness of results--our
perceptions are sharpened as to the relative steps of our long and
gradual progress. We have in a great community like England crowds of
people scarcely more civilised than the majority of two thousand years
ago; we have others, even more numerous, such as the best people were a
thousand years since. The lower orders, the middle orders, are still,
when tried by what is the standard of the educated "ten thousand,"
narrow-minded, unintelligent, incurious. It is useless to pile up
abstract words. Those who doubt should go out into their kitchens. Let
an accomplished man try what seems to him most obvious, most certain,
most palpable in intellectual matters, upon the housemaid and the
footman, and he will find that what he says seems unintelligible,
confused, and erroneous--that his audience think him mad and wild when
he is speaking what is in his own sphere of thought the dullest
platitude of cautious soberness. Great communities are like great
mountains--they have in them the primary, secondary, and tertiary
strata of human progress; the characteristics of the lower regions
resemble the life of old times rather than the present life of the
higher regions. And a philosophy which does not ceaselessly remember,
which does not continually obtrude, the palpable differences of the
various parts, will be a theory radically false, because it has omitted
a capital reality--will be a theory essentially misleading, because it
will lead men to expect what does not exist, and not to anticipate that
which they will find.
Every one knows these plain facts, but by no means every one has traced
their political importance. When a State is constituted thus, it is not
true that the lower classes will be wholly absorbed in the useful; on
the contrary, they do not like anything so poor. No orator ever made an
impression by appealing to men as to their plainest physical wants,
except when he could allege that those wants were caused by some one's
tyranny. But thousands have made the greatest impression by appealing
to some vague dream of glory, or empire, or nationality. The ruder sort
of men--that is, men at ONE stage of rudeness--will sacrifice all they
hope for, all they have, THEMSELVES, for what is called an idea--for
some attraction which seems to transcend reality, which aspires to
elevate men by an interest higher, deeper, wider than that of ordinary
life. But this order of men are uninterested in the plain, palpable
ends of government; they do not prize them; they do not in the least
comprehend how they should be attained. It is very natural, therefore,
that the most useful parts of the structure of government should by no
means be those which excite the most reverence. The elements which
excite the most easy reverence will be the THEATRICAL elements--those
which appeal to the senses, which claim to be embodiments of the
greatest human ideas, which boast in some cases of far more than human
origin. That which is mystic in its claims; that which is occult in its
mode of action; that which is brilliant to the eye; that which is seen
vividly for a moment, and then is seen no more; that which is hidden
and unhidden; that which is specious, and yet interesting, palpable in
its seeming, and yet professing to be more than palpable in its
results; this, howsoever its form may change, or however we may define
it or describe it, is the sort of thing--the only sort--which yet comes
home to the mass of men. So far from the dignified parts of a
constitution being necessarily the most useful, they are likely,
according to outside presumption, to be the least so; for they are
likely to be adjusted to the lowest orders--those likely to care least
and judge worst about what IS useful.
There is another reason which, in an old constitution like that of
England, is hardly less important. The most intellectual of men are
moved quite as much by the circumstances which they are used to as by
their own will. The active voluntary part of a man is very small, and
if it were not economised by a sleepy kind of habit, its results would
be null. We could not do every day out of our own heads all we have to
do. We should accomplish nothing, for all our energies would be
frittered away in minor attempts at petty improvement. One man, too,
would go off from the known track in one direction, and one in another;
so that when a crisis came requiring massed combination, no two men
would be near enough to act together. It is the dull traditional habit
of mankind that guides most men's actions, and is the steady frame in
which each new artist must set the picture that he paints. And all this
traditional part of human nature is, ex vi termini, most easily
impressed and acted on by that which is handed down. Other things being
equal, yesterday's institutions are by far the best for to-day; they
are the most ready, the most influential, the most easy to get obeyed,
the most likely to retain the reverence which they alone inherit, and
which every other must win. The most imposing institutions of mankind
are the oldest; and yet so changing is the world, so fluctuating are
its needs, so apt to lose inward force, though retaining out ward
strength, are its best instruments, that we must not expect the oldest
institutions to be now the most efficient. We must expect what is
venerable to acquire influence because of its inherent dignity; but we
must not expect it to use that influence so well as new creations apt
for the modern world, instinct with its spirit, and fitting closely to
its life.
The brief description of the characteristic merit of the English
Constitution is, that its dignified parts are very complicated and
somewhat imposing, very old and rather venerable; while its efficient
part, at least when in great and critical action, is decidedly simple
and rather modern. We have made, or rather stumbled on, a constitution
which--though full of every species of incidental defect, though of the
worst workmanship in all out-of-the-way matters of any constitution in
the world--yet has two capital merits: it contains a simple efficient
part which, on occasion, and when wanted, can work more simply and
easily, and better, than any instrument of government that has yet been
tried; and it contains likewise historical, complex, august, theatrical
parts, which it has inherited from a long past--which take the
multitude--which guide by an insensible but an omnipotent influence the
associations of its subjects. Its essence is strong with the strength
of modern simplicity; its exterior is august with the Gothic grandeur
of a more imposing age. Its simple essence may, mutatis mutandis, be
transplanted to many very various countries, but its august
outside--what most men think it is--is narrowly confined to nations
with an analogous history and similar political materials.
The efficient secret of the English Constitution may be described as
the close union, the nearly complete fusion, of the executive and
legislative powers. No doubt by the traditional theory, as it exists in
all the books, the goodness of our constitution consists in the entire
separation of the legislative and executive authorities, but in truth
its merit consists in their singular approximation. The connecting link
is the Cabinet. By that new word we mean a committee of the legislative
body selected to be the executive body. The legislature has many
committees, but this is its greatest. It chooses for this, its main
committee, the men in whom it has most confidence. It does not, it is
true, choose them directly; but it is nearly omnipotent in choosing
them indirectly. A century ago the Crown had a real choice of
Ministers, though it had no longer a choice in policy. During the long
reign of Sir R. Walpole he was obliged not only to manage Parliament
but to manage the palace. He was obliged to take care that some court
intrigue did not expel him from his place. The nation then selected the
English policy, but the Crown chose the English Ministers. They were
not only in name, as now, but in fact, the Queen's servants. Remnants,
important remnants, of this great prerogative still remain. The
discriminating favour of William IV. made Lord Melbourne head of the
Whig party when he was only one of several rivals. At the death of Lord
Palmerston it is very likely that the Queen may have the opportunity of
fairly choosing between two, if not three statesmen. But, as a rule,
the nominal Prime Minister is chosen by the legislature, and the real
Prime Minister for most purposes--the leader of the House of
Commons--almost without exception is so. There is nearly always some
one man plainly selected by the voice of the predominant party in the
predominant house of the legislature to head that party, and
consequently to rule the nation. We have in England an elective first
magistrate as truly as the Americans have an elective first magistrate.
The Queen is only at the head of the dignified part of the
Constitution. The Prime Minister is at the head of the efficient part.
The Crown is, according to the saying, the "fountain of honour"; but
the Treasury is the spring of business. Nevertheless, our first
magistrate differs from the American. He is not elected directly by the
people; he is elected by the representatives of the people. He is an
example of "double election". The legislature chosen, in name, to make
laws, in fact finds its principal business in making and in keeping an
executive.
The leading Minister so selected has to choose his associates, but he
only chooses among a charmed circle. The position of most men in
Parliament forbids their being invited to the Cabinet; the position of
a few men ensures their being invited. Between the compulsory list whom
he must take, and the impossible list whom he cannot take, a Prime
Minister's independent choice in the formation of a Cabinet is not very
large; it extends rather to the division of the Cabinet offices than to
the choice of Cabinet Ministers. Parliament and the nation have pretty
well settled who shall have the first places; but they have not
discriminated with the same accuracy which man shall have which place.
The highest patronage of a Prime Minister is, of course, a considerable
power, though it is exercised under close and imperative
restrictions--though it is far less than it seems to be when stated in
theory, or looked at from a distance.
The Cabinet, in a word, is a board of control chosen by the
legislature, out of persons whom it trusts and knows, to rule the
nation. The particular mode in which the English Ministers are
selected; the fiction that they are, in any political sense, the
Queen's servants; the rule which limits the choice of the Cabinet to
the members of the legislature--are accidents unessential to its
definition--historical incidents separable from its nature. Its
characteristic is that it should be chosen by the legislature out of
persons agreeable to and trusted by the legislature. Naturally these
are principally its own members--but they need not be exclusively so. A
Cabinet which included persons not members of the legislative assembly
might still perform all useful duties. Indeed the peers, who constitute
a large element in modern Cabinets, are members, now-a-days, only of a
subordinate assembly. The House of Lords still exercises several useful
functions; but the ruling influence--the deciding faculty--has passed
to what, using the language of old times, we still call the lower
house--to an assembly which, though inferior as a dignified
institution, is superior as an efficient institution. A principal
advantage of the House of Lords in the present age indeed consists in
its thus acting as a reservoir of Cabinet Ministers. Unless the
composition of the House of Commons were improved, or unless the rules
requiring Cabinet Ministers to be members of the legislature were
relaxed, it would undoubtedly be difficult to find, without the lords,
a sufficient supply of chief Ministers. But the detail of the
composition of a Cabinet, and the precise method of its choice, are not
to the purpose now. The first and cardinal consideration is the
definition of a Cabinet. We must not bewilder ourselves with the
inseparable accidents until we know the necessary essence. 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.