THE CABINET COUNCIL.

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hounds, the Chief Equerry and Clerk Marshal, and the Lords-in-waiting. These offices are for the most part usually held by peers or members of the House of Commons who are the political adherents of the existing Ministry. To describe the duties of these officers would extend my lecture beyond its proposed limits.

I now come to my second heading the ministers belonging to the Cabinet Council, and who constitute the chief members of an Administration. I was obliged to defer describing their duties till now, because without saying something of the Privy Council I could not have mentioned the Cabinet, as the Cabinet is an unrecognised select committee of the Privy Council. The practice of consulting a few confidential advisers instead of the whole Privy Council has been resorted to by English Sovereigns from a very early period; but the first mention of the term Cabinet Council, in contradistinction to Privy Council, occurs in the reign of Charles I., when the burden of state affairs was intrusted to the Committee of State, which Clarendon says was enviously called the "Cabinet Council." This form of government was at first extremely unpopular, and it was not till 1783 that the Cabinet Council was regulated by those rules which it now enforces, and

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which are essential to its wellbeing. Before that date the Cabinets were often composed of men of different judgment and principles, and who seldom were of one mind in matters of importance. William III. attempted the first successful reform (Sir W. Temple's scheme was a failure) in the Cabinet, by constructing a Ministry whose members should be of accord upon the general principles of state policy, and be willing to act in unison in their places in Parliament. Before this reformation, the introduction of the King's ministers into Parliament, for the purpose of representing the Crown in the conduct of public business within its walls, was a thing unknown in England. True, that from an early period various ministers had obtained seats in the House of Commons, but they occupied no recognised position, and it was often a mooted point whether they were entitled to sit at all in the House. It was not till the formation of the first parliamentary Ministry by William III. that ministers of the Crown were cordially received by the Commons. "Under the Plantagenets, Tudors, and Stuarts there had been ministers, but no Ministry. The servants of the Crown were not, as now, bound in frank pledge for each other. They were not expected to be of the same opinion even on questions

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of the gravest importance. Often they were politically and personally hostile to each other, and made no secret of their hostility." It was not long before the nation began to appreciate the advantages of having Cabinet ministers in the legislature to explain and defend the measures and policy of the executive government. But more than a century had to elapse before political unanimity in the Cabinet was recognised as a political maxim. From the first parliamentary Ministry of William III. until the rise of the second William Pitt in 1783 (with the exceptions of the anarchy that existed from 1699 to 1705, when there was no Ministry, and the political agreement during the Ministry of Robert Walpole), divisions in the Cabinet were constantly occurring. At the same council-board were Whigs and Tories, men who advocated High-Church principles and men who favoured Dissent; and it was no uncommon thing to see colleagues in office opposing one another in Parliament upon measures that ought to have been supported by a united Cabinet. In 1812 an attempt was made to form a Ministry consisting of men of opposite political principles, who were invited to accept office not avowedly as a coalition government, but with an offer to the Whig leaders that their friends should

be allowed a majority of one in the Cabinet. This offer was declined on the plea that to construct a Cabinet on "a system of counteraction was inconsistent with the prosecution of any uniform and beneficial course of policy." And from that time it has been an established principle that all Cabinets are to be constructed on some basis of political union agreed upon by the members composing the same, when they accept office together. It is also distinctly understood that the members of a Cabinet are jointly and severally responsible for each other's acts, and that any attempt to separate between a particular minister and his colleagues in such matters is unfair and unconstitutional. On the resignation of the Prime Minister in deference to an adverse vote of the House of Commons, all his colleagues also now resign. It was not always so. From 1688 to George I. changes in the Ministry were always gradual, and there is no instance of the simultaneous dismissal of a whole Ministry and their replacement by another till the accession of George I. to the throne, who effected a total change in all the chief officers of state, though this change was due to his dislike to the ministers of Queen Anne, and not on account of prevailing opinions in Parliament. The resignation of Sir Robert Walpole is the first

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instance of the resignation of a Prime Minister in deference to an adverse vote of the Commons; and the resignation of the Ministry of Lord North is the first instance of a simultaneous change of the whole Administration (excepting Lord Chancellor Thurlow) in deference to the opinions of the House of Commons. From that time, when a change of Ministry has occurred it has been invariably simultaneous and complete. If upon the retirement of a Cabinet any ministers have remained in office, they have been obliged to make a fresh agreement with the incoming Prime Minister before forming part of the new Administration.

Soon after the resignation of Lord North's Ministry, another event occurred which has ever since been regarded as an important precedent in the relation of the King's Council to Parliament-viz., the first instance (after the practice of changing the whole Cabinet at once had been established) of an appeal by the Ministry to the nation at large to reverse the preponderance of parties in Parliament. In 1784 the King resolved to dismiss his ministers, who were personally obnoxious to him, although they were supported by a majority of the House of Commons, and he called Mr Pitt to his counsels.