effort of the imagination, and see how we should get on without her.
Let us strip Cabinet government of all its accessories, let us reduce
it to its two necessary constituents--a representative assembly (a
House of Commons) and a Cabinet appointed by that assembly--and examine
how we should manage with them only. We are so little accustomed to
analyse the Constitution; we are so used to ascribe the whole effect of
the Constitution to the whole Constitution, that a great many people
will imagine it to be impossible that a nation should thrive or even
live with only these two simple elements. But it is upon that
possibility that the general imitability of the English Government
depends. A monarch that can be truly reverenced, a House of Peers that
can be really respected, are historical accidents nearly peculiar to
this one island, and entirely peculiar to Europe. A new country, if it
is to be capable of a Cabinet government, if it is not to degrade
itself to Presidential government, must create that Cabinet out of its
native resources--must not rely on these Old World debris.
Many modes might be suggested by which a Parliament might do in
appearance what our Parliament does in reality, viz., appoint a
Premier. But I prefer to select the simplest of all modes. We shall
then see the bare skeleton of this polity, perceive in what it differs
from the royal form, and be quite free from the imputation of having
selected an unduly charming and attractive substitute.
Let us suppose the House of Commons--existing alone and by itself--to
appoint the Premier quite simply, just as the shareholders of a railway
choose a director. At each vacancy, whether caused by death or
resignation, let any member or members have the right of nominating a
successor; after a proper interval, such as the time now commonly
occupied by a Ministerial crisis, ten days or a fortnight, let the
members present vote for the candidate they prefer; then let the
Speaker count the votes, and the candidate with the greatest number be
Premier. This mode of election would throw the whole choice into the
hands of party organisation, just as our present mode does, except in
so far as the Crown interferes with it; no outsider would ever be
appointed, because the immense number of votes which every great party
brings into the field would far outnumber every casual and petty
minority. The Premier should not be appointed for a fixed time, but
during good behaviour or the pleasure of Parliament. Mutatis mutandis,
subject to the differences now to be investigated, what goes on now
would go on then. The Premier then, as now, must resign upon a vote of
want of confidence, but the volition of Parliament would then be the
overt and single force in the selection of a successor, whereas it is
now the predominant though latent force.
It will help the discussion very much if we divide it into three parts.
The whole course of a representative Government has three
stages--first, when a Ministry is appointed; next, during its
continuance; last, when it ends. Let us consider what is the exact use
of the Queen at each of these stages, and how our present form of
government differs in each, whether for good or for evil from that
simpler form of Cabinet government which might exist without her.
At the beginning of an administration there would not be much
difference between the royal and unroyal species of Cabinet governments
when there were only two great parties in the State, and when the
greater of those parties was thoroughly agreed within itself who should
be its Parliamentary leader, and who therefore should be its Premier.
The sovereign must now accept that recognised leader; and if the choice
were directly made by the House of Commons, the House must also choose
him; its supreme section, acting compactly and harmoniously, would sway
its decisions without substantial resistance, and perhaps without even
apparent competition. A predominant party, rent by no intestine
demarcation, would be despotic. In such a case Cabinet government would
go on without friction whether there was a Queen or whether there was
no Queen. The best sovereign could then achieve no good, and the worst
effect no harm.
But the difficulties are far greater when the predominant party is not
agreed who should be its leader. In the royal form of Cabinet
government the sovereign then has sometimes a substantial selection; in
the unroyal, who would choose? There must be a meeting at "Willis's
Rooms"; there must be that sort of interior despotism of the majority
over the minority within the party, by which Lord John Russell in 1859
was made to resign his pretensions to the supreme government, and to be
content to serve as a subordinate to Lord Palmerston. The tacit
compression which a party anxious for office would exercise over
leaders who divided its strength, would be used and must be used.
Whether such a party would always choose precisely the best man may
well be doubted. In a party once divided it is very difficult to secure
unanimity in favour of the very person whom a disinterested bystander
would recommend. All manner of jealousies and enmities are immediately
awakened, and it is always difficult, often impossible, to get them to
sleep again. But though such a party might not select the very best
leader, they have the strongest motives to select a very good leader.
The maintenance of their rule depends on it Under a Presidential
Constitution the preliminary caucuses which choose the President need
not care as to the ultimate fitness of the man they choose. They are
solely concerned with his attractiveness as a candidate; they need not
regard his efficiency as a ruler. If they elect a man of weak judgment,
he will reign his stated term; even though he show the best judgment,
at the end of that term there will be by constitutional destiny another
election. But under a Ministerial government there is no such fixed
destiny. The Government is a removable Government, its tenure depends
upon its conduct. If a party in power were so foolish as to choose a
weak man for its head, it would cease to be in power. Its judgment is
its life. Suppose in 1859 that the Whig party had determined to set
aside both Earl Russell and Lord Palmerston and to choose for its head
an incapable nonentity, the Whig party would probably have been exiled
from office at the Schleswig-Holstein difficulty. The nation would have
deserted them, and Parliament would have deserted them, too; neither
would have endured to see a secret negotiation, on which depended the
portentous alternative of war or peace, in the hands of a person who
was thought to be weak--who had been promoted because of his
mediocrity--whom his own friends did not respect. A Ministerial
government, too, is carried on in the face of day. Its life is in
debate. A President may be a weak man; yet if he keep good Ministers to
the end of his administration, he may not be found out--it may still be
a dubious controversy whether he is wise or foolish. But a Prime
Minister must show what he is. He must meet the House of Commons in
debate; he must be able to guide that assembly in the management of its
business, to gain its ear in every emergency, to rule it in its hours
of excitement. He is conspicuously submitted to a searching test, and
if he fails he must resign.
Nor would any party like to trust to a weak man the great power which a
Cabinet government commits to its Premier. The Premier, though elected
by Parliament can dissolve Parliament. Members would be naturally
anxious that the power which might destroy their coveted dignity should
be lodged in fit hands. They dare not place in unfit hands a power
which, besides hurting the nation, might altogether ruin them. We may
be sure, therefore, that whenever the predominant party is divided, the
UN-royal form of Cabinet government would secure for us a fair and able
Parliamentary leader--that it would give us a good Premier, if not the
very best. Can it be said that the royal form does more?
In one case I think it may. If the constitutional monarch be a man of
singular discernment, of unprejudiced disposition, and great political
knowledge, he may pick out from the ranks of the divided party its very
best leader, even at a time when the party, if left to itself, would
not nominate him. If the sovereign be able to play the part of that
thoroughly intelligent but perfectly disinterested spectator who is so
prominent in the works of certain moralists, he may be able to choose
better for his subjects than they would choose for themselves. But if
the monarch be not so exempt from prejudice, and have not this nearly
miraculous discernment, it is not likely that he will be able to make a
wiser choice than the choice of the party itself. He certainly is not
under the same motive to choose wisely. His place is fixed whatever
happens, but the failure of an appointing party depends on the capacity
of their appointee.
There is great danger, too, that the judgment of the sovereign may be
prejudiced. For more than forty years the personal antipathies of
George III. materially impaired successive administrations. Almost at
the beginning of his career he discarded Lord Chatham: almost at the
end he would not permit Mr. Pitt to coalesce with Mr. Fox. He always
preferred mediocrity; he generally disliked high ability; he always
disliked great ideas. If constitutional monarchs be ordinary men of
restricted experience and common capacity (and we have no right to
suppose that BY MIRACLE they will be more), the judgment of the
sovereign will often be worse than the judgment of the party, and he
will be very subject to the chronic danger of preferring a respectful
common-place man, such as Addington, to an independent first-rate man,
such as Pitt.
We shall arrive at the same sort of mixed conclusion if we examine the
choice of a Premier under both systems in the critical case of Cabinet
government--the case of three parties. This is the case in which that
species of government is most sure to exhibit its defects, and least
likely to exhibit its merits. The defining characteristic of that
government is the choice of the executive ruler by the legislative
assembly; but when there are three parties a satisfactory choice is
impossible. A really good selection is a selection by a large majority
which trusts those it chooses, but when there are three parties there
is no such trust. The numerically weakest has the casting vote--it can
determine which candidate shall be chosen. But it does so under a
penalty. It forfeits the right of voting for its own candidate. It
settles which of other people's favourites shall be chosen, on
condition of abandoning its own favourite. A choice based on such
self-denial can never be a firm choice--it is a choice at any moment
liable to be revoked. The events of 1858, though not a perfect
illustration of what I mean, are a sufficient illustration. The Radical
party, acting apart from the moderate Liberal party, kept Lord Derby in
power. The ultra-movement party thought it expedient to combine with
the non-movement party. As one of them coarsely but clearly put it, "WE
get more of our way under these men than under the other men"; he meant
that, in his judgment, the Tories would be more obedient to the
Radicals than the Whigs. But it is obvious that a union of opposites so
marked could not be durable. The Radicals bought it by choosing the men
whose principles were most adverse to them; the Conservatives bought it
by agreeing to measures whose scope was most adverse to them. After a
short interval the Radicals returned to their natural alliance and
their natural discontent with the moderate Whigs. They used their
determining vote first for a Government of one opinion and then for a
Government of the contrary opinion.
I am not blaming this policy. I am using it merely as an illustration.
I say that if we imagine this sort of action greatly exaggerated and
greatly prolonged Parliamentary government becomes impossible. If there
are three parties, no two of which will steadily combine for mutual
action, but of which the weakest gives a rapidly oscillating preference
to the two others, the primary condition of a Cabinet polity is not
satisfied. We have not a Parliament fit to choose; we cannot rely on
the selection of a sufficiently permanent executive, because there is
no fixity in the thoughts and feelings of the choosers.
Under every species of Cabinet government, whether the royal or the
unroyal, this defect can be cured in one way only. The moderate people
of every party must combine to support the Government which, on the
whole, suits every party best. This is the mode in which Lord
Palmerston's administration has been lately maintained; a Ministry in
many ways defective, but more beneficially vigorous abroad, and more
beneficially active at home, than the vast majority of English
Ministries. The moderate Conservatives and the moderate Radicals have
maintained a steady Government by a sufficiently coherent union with
the moderate Whigs. Whether there is a king or no king, this
perservative self-denial is the main force on which we must rely for
the satisfactory continuance of a Parliamentary Government at this its
period of greatest trial. Will that moderation be aided or impaired by
the addition of a sovereign? Will it be more effectual under the royal
sort of Ministerial Government, or will it be less effectual?
If the sovereign has a genius for discernment, the aid which he can
give at such a crisis will be great. He will select for his Minister,
and if possible maintain as his Minister, the statesman upon whom the
moderate party will ultimately fix their choice, but for whom at the
outset it is blindly searching; being a man of sense, experience, and
tact, he will discern which is the combination of equilibrium, which is
the section with whom the milder members of the other sections will at
last ally themselves. Amid the shifting transitions of confused
parties, it is probable that he will have many opportunities of
exercising a selection. It will rest with him to call either on A B to
form an administration, or upon X Y, and either may have a chance of
trial. A disturbed state of parties is inconsistent with fixity, but it
abounds in momentary tolerance. Wanting something, but not knowing with
precision what, parties will accept for a brief period anything, to see
whether it may be that unknown something--to see what it will do.
During the long succession of weak Governments which begins with the
resignation of the Duke of Newcastle in 1762 and ends with the
accession of Mr. Pitt in 1784, the vigorous will of George III. was an
agency of the first magnitude. If at a period of complex and protracted
division of parties, such as are sure to occur often and last long in
every enduring Parliamentary government, the extrinsic force of royal
selection were always exercised discreetly, it would be a political
benefit of incalculable value.
But will it be so exercised? A constitutional sovereign must in the
common course of government be a man of but common ability. I am
afraid, looking to the early acquired feebleness of hereditary
dynasties, that we must expect him to be a man of inferior ability.
Theory and experience both teach that the education of a prince can be
but a poor education, and that a royal family will generally have less
ability than other families. What right have we then to expect the
perpetual entail on any family of an exquisite discretion, which if it
be not a sort of genius, is at least as rare as genius?
Probably in most cases the greatest wisdom of a constitutional king
would show itself in well-considered inaction. In the confused interval
between 1857 and 1859 the Queen and Prince Albert were far too wise to
obtrude any selection of their own. If they had chosen, perhaps they
would not have chosen Lord Palmerston. But they saw, or may be believed
to have seen, that the world was settling down without them, and that
by interposing an extrinsic agency, they would but delay the beneficial
crystallisation of intrinsic forces. There is, indeed, a permanent
reason which would make the wisest king, and the king who feels most
sure of his wisdom, very slow to use that wisdom. The responsibility of
Parliament should be felt by Parliament. So long as Parliament thinks
it is the sovereign's business to find a Government it will be sure not
to find a Government itself. The royal form of Ministerial government
is the worst of all forms if it erect the subsidiary apparatus into the
principal force, if it induce the assembly which ought to perform
paramount duties to expect some one else to perform them.
It should be observed, too, in fairness to the unroyal species of
Cabinet government, that it is exempt from one of the greatest and most
characteristic defects of the royal species. Where there is no Court
there can be no evil influence from a Court. What these influences are
every one knows; though no one, hardly the best and closest observer,
can say with confidence and precision how great their effect is. Sir
Robert Walpole, in language too coarse for our modern manners, declared
after the death of Queen Caroline, that he would pay no attention to
the king's daughters ("those girls," as he called them), but would rely
exclusively on Madame de Walmoden, the king's mistress. "The king,"
says a writer in George IV.'s time, "is in our favour, and what is more
to the purpose, the Marchioness of Conyngham is so too." Everybody
knows to what sort of influences several Italian changes of Government
since the unity of Italy have been attributed. These sinister agencies
are likely to be most effective just when everything else is troubled,
and when, therefore, they are particularly dangerous. The wildest and
wickedest king's mistress would not plot against an invulnerable
administration. But very many will intrigue when Parliament is
perplexed, when parties are divided, when alternatives are many, when
many evil things are possible, when Cabinet government must be
difficult.
It is very important to see that a good administration can be started
without a sovereign, because some colonial statesmen have doubted it.
"I can conceive," it has been said, "that a Ministry would go on well
enough without a governor when it was launched, but I do not see how to
launch it." It has even been suggested that a colony which broke away
from England, and had to form its own Government, might not unwisely
choose a governor for life, and solely trusted with selecting
Ministers, something like the Abbe Sieyes's grand elector. But the
introduction of such an officer into such a colony would in fact be the
voluntary erection of an artificial encumbrance to it. He would
inevitably be a party man. The most dignified post in the State must be
an object of contest to the great sections into which every active
political community is divided. These parties mix in everything and
meddle in everything; and they neither would nor could permit the most
honoured and conspicuous of all stations to be filled, except at their
pleasure. They know, too, that the grand elector, the great chooser of
Ministries, might be, at a sharp crisis, either a good friend or a bad
enemy. The strongest party would select some one who would be on their
side when he had to take a side, who would incline to them when he did
incline, who should be a constant auxiliary to them and a constant
impediment to their adversaries. It is absurd to choose by contested
party election an impartial chooser of Ministers.
But it is during the continuance of a Ministry, rather than at its
creation, that the functions of the sovereign will mainly interest most
persons, and that most people will think them to be of the gravest
importance. I own I am myself of that opinion. I think it may be shown
that the post of sovereign over an intelligent and political people
under a constitutional monarchy is the post which a wise man would
choose above any other--where he would find the intellectual impulses
best stimulated and the worst intellectual impulses best controlled.
On the duties of the Queen during an administration we have an
invaluable fragment from her own hand. In 1851 Louis Napoleon had his
coup d'etat: in 1852 Lord John Russell had his--he expelled Lord
Palmerston. By a most instructive breach of etiquette he read in the
House a royal memorandum on the duties of his rival. It is as follows:
"The Queen requires, first, that Lord Palmerston will distinctly state
what he proposes in a given case, in order that the Queen may know as
distinctly to what she is giving her royal sanction. Secondly, having
once given her sanction to such a measure that it be not arbitrarily
altered or modified by the Minister. Such an act she must consider as
failing in sincerity towards the Crown, and justly to be visited by the
exercise of her constitutional right of dismissing that Minister. She
expects to be kept informed of what passes between him and Foreign
Ministers before important decisions are taken based upon that
intercourse; to receive the foreign despatches in good time; and to
have the drafts for her approval sent to her in sufficient time to make
herself acquainted with their contents before they must be sent off."
In addition to the control over particular Ministers, and especially
over the Foreign Minister, the Queen has a certain control over the
Cabinet. The first Minister, it is understood, transmits to her
authentic information of all the most important decisions, together
with, what the newspapers would do equally well, the more important
votes in Parliament. He is bound to take care that she knows everything
which there is to know as to the passing politics of the nation. She
has by rigid usage a right to complain if she does not know of every
great act of her Ministry, not only before it is done, but while there
is yet time to consider it--while it is still possible that it may not
be done.
To state the matter shortly, the sovereign has, under a constitutional
monarchy such as ours, three rights--the right to be consulted, the
right to encourage, the right to warn. And a king of great sense and
sagacity would want no others. He would find that his having no others
would enable him to use these with singular effect. He would say to his
Minister: "The responsibility of these measures is upon you. Whatever
you think best must be done. Whatever you think best shall have my full
and effectual support. BUT you will observe that for this reason and
that reason what you propose to do is bad; for this reason and that
reason what you do not propose is better. I do not oppose, it is my
duty not to oppose; but observe that I WARN." Supposing the king to be
right, and to have what kings often have, the gift of effectual
expression, he could not help moving his Minister. He might not always
turn his course, but he would always trouble his mind.