disputes connected with the Melbourne ministry had been forgotten in still more angry disputes and still more exciting events, the grave historian deliberately repeats the doctrine which in his struggle for office the brilliant partisan had so warmly advocated. In that passage of his great work in which he describes the institution by which the House of Commons is enabled effectually to control the executive administration, Lord Macaulay* declares that in Parliament the ministers are bound to act as one man upon all questions relating to the Executive Government; and the illustrations with which he supports his position, and which I have cited in a preceding chapter, are all selected according to this view.

Reconcilia

theories.

§ 6. It seldom happens that when two eminent men advance opposite opinions the one is wholly right or the other wholly wrong. The one generally errs by tion of these excess, the other by deficiency; and each serves to correct or to limit the other. Sir Robert Peel never denied that ministers were responsible for their administrative as well as for their legislative conduct. Lord Macaulay expressly admits that an administration is bound to resign if it be impressed with the conviction that the legislative change which it unsuccessfully proposed is of such a nature that without that change it cannot carry on the public service. In these mutual concessions, then, we may perceive the true principle. Ministers must possess the full confidence of Parliament in their administrative integrity and skill; and that confidence must be shown not only by a refusal to censure their proceedings, but by a readiness to enact such measures as the ministers may declare to be in their opinion essential to the proper

*Hist. of England, iv. 435.

administration of the existing laws. But it is not requisite that Parliament, if it have confidence in a minister as the administrator of the law as it is, should have equal confidence in the same person as an adviser respecting the law as it ought to be. On questions with which he is specially conversant the minister in his place in Parliament speaks with authority. On questions which do not affect, or only indirectly affect, the actual administration of public affairs, the opinion of a minister should merely go for what it is worth. He is an administrator, not a jurist. He exercises, indeed, a double function. He is the servant of the Crown, and he is a member of the Legislature. But in criticising the conduct of the minister we are not to take into account the failures of the member. Success in the one sphere doubtless contributes materially to success in the other. But the two functions are distinct, and should be separately judged. The test, then, of the influence of any legislative measure upon the fate of any ministry, whether its own proposal be rejected or a bill to which it was hostile be passed, is the same as that which in ordinary circumstances determines their retention or their abandonment of office. There is one question which must always be uppermost in the mind of every servant of the Crown: "How is the Queen's Government to be carried on?" If the measure, or the loss of the measure, do not affect, or affect in but a slight degree, the administration of the existing law, ministers are bound, however much they may disapprove of the innovation, or however much they may regret the loss of their proposal, to continue in office. If, on the contrary, a serious and immediate change in the practical working of Government be introduced, ministers cannot be required to incur a responsibility against which they protested. When such an obstacle occurs, it is immaterial from which branch of the Legis

+

lature it proceeds. If there be any measure without which the ministers consider that they cannot conduct the public service, and if that measure be rejected either by the Crown or by the House of Lords or by the House of Commons, the ministers are not bound to undertake a duty for which in their estimation their powers are inadequate.

The principle which I have thus attempted to state may perhaps be considered vague. Even if it were so, it would be better than the absence of any principle and a resignation at the discretion of the Premier upon every casual defeat in Parliament. But in truth the apparent vagueness of the principle is merely the ordinary difficulty in the application of a general rule. With whatever precision a principle may be defined, the question must always remain whether any given state of facts is or is not included in it. In the present instance the decision must rest with the ministers themselves. It is for them to determine whether any particular proceeding of the Legislature will prevent them from efficiently conducting the public service. They make their decision under a heavy responsibility. Their character as public men is at stake. If from moral cowardice or from petulance they wantonly forsake their trust, their Sovereign may well decline again to receive as advisers men who have abandoned their posts in the hour of need. Public opinion, too, and the representatives in Parliament of that opinion, will not fail to visit with severe and deserved punishment the recreant minister who preferred his own ease or the gratification of his petty resentment to his duty towards his King and his country.

§ 7. It is not, however, upon any general reasoning or upon the dicta of any men however eminent that the determination of such a question must depend. We must deal

with it as with any other case of customary law. We must examine the precedents, and endeavour Precedents of from them to deduce some general rule. If the ministerial resignations. generalization thus obtained concur with the results to which our deductions from the nature of the office have led us, the proof will be complete. I propose therefore to inquire whether there be any instances in which ministers, notwithstanding the rejection of important measures which they had presented to Parliament, still continued in office; and, again, whether there be any instances in which ministers have resigned for any other cause than some impediment to their administration of public affairs.

The precedents of the last century are, for reasons which I have already stated, not very valuable in determining our modern constitutional practice. They have, however, some weight. We find then, after the accession of the House of Hanover, the rejection by the House of Commons of the Peerage Bill of 1719: but Lord Sunderland and Lord Stanhope never even thought on that account of leaving office. Sir Robert Walpole was obliged to abandon his project of Excise Reform: but he continued as minister for some years after his defeat. In Lord Chatham's ministry the House of Commons actually refused a part of the Ways and Means for the year,* and would not sanction the proposed increase of the Land Tax. Yet so serious a disaster did not lead to the displacement of the ministry. Even in the triumphant administration of the younger Pitt the House of Commons on more than one occasion rejected his proposals. He was defeated on the Westminster scrutiny. He failed to carry in the Irish Parliament his commercial policy towards Ireland. His Reform Bill was

* Massey's Hist. of Eng., i. 307.

lost by a large majority. Even his plan for the defence of the coast and for the fortification of Portsmouth and Plymouth was rejected.* These defeats, and especially the loss of his Irish propositions and of his scheme for the fortification of the dockyards, were subjects of bitter mortification to Mr. Pitt; yet neither he nor his opponents appear to have thought that he was under any obligation to resign. These precedents of Mr. Pitt have a double interest. On the one side the events themselves curiously illustrate the supposed strength of the "strong governments" before the Reform Act. On the other side the course which Mr. Pitt then adopted seems conclusively to show that a minister, who is conscious that he retains the general confidence both of the King and of Parliament, is not required to resign because some of his most important legislative proposals have not been accepted. For the practice in later times I need only refer to that long list of measures which, as I have before observed, the House of Lords, sorely against the will of the ministers of the day, either rejected or largely modified. In our own days we have seen more than one Reform Bill, a name once of magic potency, quietly set aside without any detriment to the ministry that proposed it.

It thus appears that ministers, even when defeated on very important measures† of legislation, have not thought it their duty to resign. A similar inquiry will show that on every occasion before 1841, and in most cases after that date in which a resignation of any ministry has taken. place, the immediate cause has been some difficulty in administration. It will be sufficient for the present purpose to commence with the reign of William the Fourth. During the reigns of the last two Georges the ministerial changes See Earl Stanhope's Life of Pitt, i. 254, 272, 275, 288. + See Todd's Parl. Govt., i. 132.