SELECTED REFERENCES

A. L. Lowell, The Government of England (New York, 1908), I, 1-15; S. Low, The Governance of England (new ed., London, 1914), Chap. i; J. A. R. Marriott, English Political Institutions (Oxford, 1910), Chaps. i-ii; T. F. Moran, Theory and Practice of the English Government (New York, 1908), Chap. i; W. R. Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution (3d ed., Oxford, 1897), Chaps. i-iii; A. V. Dicey, Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (8th ed., London, 1915), Chaps. xiv-xv; H. B. Learned, "Historical Significance of the Term Cabinet in England and America," in The President's Cabinet (New Haven, 1912), Chap. i; G. B. Adams, Outlines of English Constitutional History (New Haven, 1918); W. Bagehot, The English Constitution (new ed., London, 1911); T. E. May, Constitutional History of England since the Accession of George III, edited and continued by F. Holland, 3 vols. (London, 1912); M. T. Blauvelt, The Development of Cabinet Government in England (New York, 1902); J. A. R. Marriott, England since Waterloo (London, 1913); G. B. Adams and H. M. Stephens, Select Documents of English Constitutional History (New York, 1906).

CHAPTER XI

THE MINISTRY AND THE CABINET

HAVING seen something of the nature of the English constitution its antiquity, its diversity of origins, its flexibility, and its elusiveness we come now to consider the actual governmental system which operates under it. And we may best begin with the great agencies that stand at the head and hold the system together, namely, the king, the ministry, and the cabinet. Parliament, with which these (especially the cabinet), have important relations, will be taken up in two succeeding chapters.

I. THE KING

Title to the Throne - Privileges. Since the Revolution of 1688 tenure of the English throne has been based exclusively upon the will of the nation as expressed in parliamentary enactment. The statute under which the succession is regulated to-day is the Act of Settlement, passed in 1701. It provided that, in default of heirs of William III and of Anne, the crown and all prerogatives thereto appertaining should "be, remain, and continue to the most excellent Princess Sophia, and the heirs of her body, being Protestants." Sophia, a granddaughter of James I, was the widow of a German prince, the Elector of Hanover; and although in 1701 she was not first in the natural order of succession, she was first among the surviving heirs who were Protestants. It was in accordance with this piece of legislation that, upon the death of Anne in 1714, the throne fell to George I, son of the German Electress. The present sovereign, George V, is the eighth of the Hanoverian dynasty.1 It would

1 After the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 the designation "Hanoverian dynasty" was formally discarded and the name "Windsor dynasty" was adopted in its stead. For a century and a quarter the sovereign of Great Britain was also the ruler of Hanover. At the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837, however, the union ended, because the law of Hanover forbade a woman to ascend the throne of that country.

of course be entirely within the power of Parliament to repeal the Act of Settlement and to bestow the crown elsewhere; indeed, Parliament could, if it wished, abolish kingship altogether. Under the established rules of descent the sovereign's eldest son, who bears the title of Prince of Wales, falls heir to the throne when a vacancy arises. If he be not alive, the inheritance. passes to his issue, male or female. If there be none, the succession devolves upon the late sovereign's second son, or upon his issue. No Catholic may inherit, nor any one marrying a Catholic; and the act of 1701 prescribed that the sovereign should in all cases "join in communion with the Church of England as by law established."

The king may own land and other property, and may manage and dispose of it precisely as any private citizen. The vast accumulations of property, however, which at one time formed the sovereign's principal source of revenue, have become the possession of the state, and as such are administered entirely under the direction of Parliament. In lieu of the income derived formerly from land and other independent sources, the king has been given for the support of the royal household a fixed annual subsidy - voted under the designation of the "Civil List" the amount of which is determined afresh at the beginning of each reign. The Civil List was introduced by an act of 1698, and had the effect of separating for the first time the private expenditures of the king from the public outlays of the nation. The amount voted George V at his accession in 1910 was £470,000 a year. The sovereign enjoys large personal immunity. For his private conduct he cannot be called to account in any court of law or by any legal process. He cannot be arrested, his goods cannot be distrained, and as long as a palace remains a royal residence no sort of judicial proceeding against him can be executed in it.

The King's Powers, Theoretical and Actual. - Viewed from a distance, English kingship is still imposing. The sovereign dwells in a splendid palace, sets the pace in rich and cultured social circles, occupies the center of the stage in solemn and magnificent ceremonies, makes and receives ostentatious visits to and from foreign royalty, and seems to exercise far-reaching powers of appointment, administrative control, military com

mand, law-making, justice, and finance. Examined more closely, however, the king's position is found to afford peculiarly good illustration of the contrast between theory and fact which runs so extensively through the English governmental system. On the social and ceremonial side, the king is indeed as important as the observer supposes him to be; indeed, his influence in these directions is commonly underestimated. But his control over public affairs-appointments, legislation, military policy, the Church, finance, foreign relations is purely incidental. There was a time when his power in these great fields was practically absolute. It was certainly so under the Tudors, in the sixteenth century. But the Civil War cut off large prerogatives, the Revolution of 1688-1689 sundered many more, the apathy and weakness of the early Hanoverians cost much, and the drift against royal control in government continued strong, even under the good monarchs of the last hundred years, until the king now finds himself literally in the position of one who "reigns but does not govern." Lawyers and students of political science continue to talk much about the powers of the crown; and long chapters will be found in the books upon the subject. This is all proper enough. The powers of the crown, under the English constitution, are numerous, vast, and of transcendent importance. The government could not run an hour if they were not exercised, and they are more extensive to-day than at any time in the past two hundred years. But the point is that the "crown" is no longer the king. If it be asked who or what the crown is, one may reply in the delightfully evasive phrase of Mr. Sidney Low that it is "a convenient working hypothesis; or one may be a little more definite by saying that it is, in a general way, the supreme executive agency in the government, once actually the king alone, but now rather the ministers and their subordinates, with the king as a sort of fifth wheel to the wagon. When we say that the crown appoints practically all national public officers we mean that ministers, who themselves are selected by the king only in form, make these appointments. When the king attends the opening of a parliament and reads the Speech from the Throne, the message is one which has been written by these same ministers. Government

1 The Governance of England (new ed., 1916), 255.

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measures

are continually framed and executive acts performed in the name of the crown, though the king may personally be quite ignorant of them or even strongly opposed to them. Two principles, in short, reign supreme and give character to the entire governmental system: (1) the king shall perform no important public act involving the exercise of discretion except through the agency of the ministers, and (2) for every public act performed by or through them these ministers shall be fully responsible to Parliament. The king can "do no wrong," because all of the acts done by him or in his name are chargeable to a minister or to the ministry as a group. But that tends to mean that the king can do nothing; because ministers cannot be expected to shoulder responsibility for acts which they do not themselves originate or favor.

The Real Authority and Service of the Sovereign. It would be erroneous, however, to conclude that kingship in England is obsolete and unimportant, or even that the king has no real influence in the government. Americans are likely to wonder why an institution which seems so completely to have outlived its usefulness has not been abolished; and Englishmen are free to admit that if they did not actually have a royal house they would hardly set about establishing one. None the less, the uses served by the monarch are considerable; his influence upon the course of public affairs may, indeed, be great. In the oft-quoted phrase of Bagehot, the sovereign has three rights the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, and the right to warn. "A king of great sense and sagacity," it is added, "would want no others." Despite the fact that during upwards of two hundred years the sovereign has not attended the meetings of the cabinet, and hence is deprived of opportunity to wield influence directly upon the deliberations of the ministers as a body, he keeps in close touch with the premier, and cabinet councils at which important lines of policy are to be formulated are not infrequently preceded by a conference in which the subject in hand is threshed out more or less completely by king and chief minister. Merely because the ancient relation has been reversed, so that now it is the king who advises and the ministry that arrives at decisions, it does not follow that the 1 The English Constitution (rev. ed.), 143.