III. the Ministry." Seen under the light of these days CHAP. the contention was nothing less than that the royal power of commanding and administering our army should stand excepted from the scope of constitutional government; and from the time when the rights and the duties of a responsible Ministry began to be even dimly apprehended, it proved visibly impossible that statesmen of the quality of those who owe their political existence to the will of Parliament would consent to form the Government' of a sovereign entrusting them only by halves-consent to be a mere row of clerks, with a-possibly absurdking above them, disposing of their country's armed forces at his mere will and pleasure. If a sovereign after William of Orange had so relied upon what I have called the 'monarchical surface Upon the negotiation with Lord Grenville on the 31st of January 1806, for the formation of 'The Talents' Administration, George III. seems to have put forward this royal claim with care and precision, maintaining 'that the army had been kept distinct from the other 'branches of the administration since the time of the first Duke of 'Cumberland, and had been considered as under the immediate control of the king, through the Commander-in-Chief, without any right of 'interference on the part of the Ministry except in matters relating to 'the levying, clothing, and paying of the troops.' Upon this, Lord Grenville broke off; and it might appear at first sight that on the 3d of February the king abandoned his claim; but this was not the case. He consented to let Ministers propose what they wished, but stipulated that no changes in the government of the army should be carried into ' effect without his knowledge and approbation.'-See Ann. Reg., 1806, p. 25 et seq. The statement, I think, bears marks of having been furnished (whether directly or otherwise) by Lord Grenville himself. I observe that, owing no doubt to their long exclusion from office, Whig members, after the close of the great war, were in ignorance of the practice which withdrew our army from the command of the 'State,' and gave it to the 'personal king.' CHAP. of our laws as to think of conducting a foreign or III. civil war without the guidance or approval of a responsible Ministry, he would probably have undergone such coercion as must have acclerated the ripening of constitutional principles, and made it plain beyond cavil that the command of our army belonged to the king's government, and not to the personal king. But this question between kings and statesmen was never pushed to extremities; and each side, indeed, had a motive for conceding a good deal to the other one. Under the reigns of princes personally incompetent to conduct a campaign, sagacious courtiers saw that, whatever right of personal command they might claim for their master in peace-time, the business—the grave business-of war must be entrusted to responsible Ministers; whilst, on the other hand, there was a counter-eddy of military sentiment running always in the opposite direction-running always in favour of the personal,' as distinguished from the genuine 'State' sovereign. In a matter so delicate, so momentous as the devotion of the army, it was right that public men should at least hear-though not blindly follow-the opinions of those who saw danger in making it too glaringly plain that a Cabinet formed of civilians was the real commander-in-chief, and of those, too, who judged it important that commissions in the army should seem to have a more distinctly royal origin than appointments conferred by a Minister; whilst, moreover, all knew that from the general commanding an army down to even the III. youngest recruit, soldiers gave a more willing allegi- CHAP. ance to a master described in the concrete than to one shadowed out in the abstract; preferred service under a man to service under the State, and would rather turn out for 'King George,' than obey what men called the Government.' This soldier-side aspect of the question affordednot, indeed, a good warrant, but at all events—specious excuses for assenting to a relaxed application of constitutional principles; and, on the whole, as we shall presently see, our sovereigns on the one side, and our constitutional Ministers on the other, found a way of coming to terms; but they did so by agreeing to divide the control of our land forces between the king and the king's government, thus destroying, of course, that unity of command which is necessary for the well working of an office; and on the other hand, the partition, as we shall see, was not so effected as to lay the foundations of even a clear dual system; for, there being a severance of the royal authority without a corresponding allotment of the establishments under it, the two masters (by means of 'requisitions'), might be bawling, as it were, both at once to the same servants, and distracting them with double orders not only of different import, but likely enough to clash. Thus it was that our war administration fell into the disjointed state we have had to observe; and, as satrapies become petty kingdoms when the paramount authority is divided and weakened, so also amongst the military offices dispersed over London at the out CHAP. break of the war, there were some found enjoying the III. bliss of being almost independent, because during many a year they had been left altogether ungoverned by a Minister really chief over all. If the endeavour to keep our army apart from the governance of responsible Ministers' had achieved full success, the polity of this country must have crystallised into a monarchy after some Continental model, and in that case, of course-whatever the fate of our liberties-there might have been constructed a highly efficient War Department; but, being only half won, the Court victory brought about and prolonged that dismemberment of our military administration for which we have had to account. The 'personal king' (in late times) having never been suffered to handle a complete War Department himself, was yet always unhappily strong enough to prevent the genuine State king' from having one in his stead; and thus, owing to what yet survived of the old contention between Courtiers and Parliamentarians, between Divine Right and Liberty, England, falling between the two stools, was left to toil on as best she could without the great engine required for an efficient administration of war. III. The instrument by which George III. and his successors kept a personal grasp on our army was one called the 'Staff at Headquarters,' but more III. The Horse generally known as the 'Horse Guards.' Not form- CHAP. ing any part of the 'Government,' but wielding, nevertheless, a large share of the sovereign's military Guards power, this Office held some of the functions which are commonly entrusted to a War Department, but it also performed the duty of a Headquarter Staff, commanding all our cavalry and infantry. With due warrant as regarded expenditure (for which concert with the 'Government' was necessary) this same Royal Office provided for the raising, the training, the equipment, and the discipline of horse and foot; and besides, undertook other kinds of administrative business, for, by means of 'requisitions,' it had power to set in motion several other departments of State. As though to complete the unwholesome severance, and to withdraw our army absolutely from not only the rule but from even the fair enticements of constitutional government, custom suffered with a strange equanimity-that the Commander-in-Chief at the Horse Guards should alone take his sovereign's pleasure upon the choice of all officers, from the field - marshal down to the ensign.* The Horse Guards served as an Office in which the 'personal king' transacted his army business, and was scarcely in any large sense a Department of State, having in it not even one member of the * This sentence is not meant to convey more than its strictly literal import; for we shall see that, though the Commander-in-Chief always 'took the sovereign's pleasure,' his act had to be, in some cases, governed by the compromise' afterwards mentioned. With respect to the arrangements under which the Commander-in-Chief now takes the Queen's pleasure, see footnote, post, at the close of chap. iv. |