THE OFFICE OF PRIME MINISTER.
IN a letter signed " Politicos " which appeared in the Daily Chronicle of Saturday last, the writer incidentally discussed a subject which must always be of interest to politically minded Englishmen. That subject is the office of Prime Minister. Nowhere else in the world is there any position at once so powerful and so anomalous. As long as he remains Prime Minister the Premier of the United Kingdom is possessed of more real power than any single individual, unless it be the Czar or the President of the United States. We are not sure, indeed, whether we ought to add the President of the United States, because, though he possesses the power of veto over legislation, he may not, and often does not, possess the confidence of the body which holds the purse-strings,—i.e., the House of Representatives. Again, the President is not free in the matter of appointments, or in the making of peace and war, for in these acts the Senate must join. The Prime Minister, however, as long as he remains Prime Minister, has practically the power of the purse, for the House of Commons never refuses the fiscal demands of a Minister whom it retains in power. The Prime Minister, too, as long as he retains the confidence of the Sovereign, makes what appointments he chooses, and can commit the country to peace and war. His position, in fact, allows him as long as he is in office to exercise the prerogatives both of the Crown and of the House of Commons. He can, that is till he is deposed from his place, turn the executive, or the fiscal, or even the legislative tap at pleasure. It is hardly necessary to remind our readers that the French Prime Minister, for various reasons, has no such position. The President and Senate on the one hand, and the system of Bureaux by which the Chambers work on the other, eat largely into his power. Yet great as is the power of the Prime Minister, the office has no foundation on law. The Prime Minister is quite as unknown to the law as is the Cabinet. If a legal pedant, blind to all facts not in the statutes or the text-books of the Common Law, were asked to define the office of Prime Minister and to describe the Cabinet, he would be utterly at a loss. In theory the Prime Minister is only a Privy Councillor at the head of a Department of State who is specially in the Sovereign's confidence, and who usually presides at an informal gathering of certain of the Privy Councillors who happen to hold offices of State,—a gathering which is called the Cabinet. That is the farthest which the legal pedant of our thought would dare to go. Yet, of course, the Prime Minister is in fact far more than the mere chairman of the Cabinet. The Cabinet, no doubt, has a great deal of power, but even if it was true once, it is certainly not true now that England is governed by. a committee of fifteen or sixteen persons. Let us consider for a moment what is the real, as con- trasted with the theoretical, position of the Prime Minister. In the first place, the Prime Minister as a rule makes his Cabinet. He is commissioned by the Queen to form a Cabinet because he is the man whom she considers to I possess the confidence of a majority of the House of Commons. He forms his Cabinet by asking certain Members of the two Houses to hold the great offices of State. He might do this in one day, and without con- sulting any one. As a matter of fact, what usually happens is this :—As soon as the commission to form a Government has been received, the Primo Minister takes into his confidence the two or three men who will hold the chief offices, and they together talk over the other names. When a man is decided upon he, as a rule, joins the conclave, and helps to consult as to men and places, and so the Cabinet gradually evolves itself. No doubt, as generally happens in this world, the Prime Minister's choice is never really free. Certain men must be in the Cabinet whatever happens, and hence they may be said not to be chosen by the Premier, but to be Ministers in their own right. In spite, however, of this, the fact that they are asked to serve by the Premier makes them feel his superiority. When the Cabinet is made the theory of the unwritten Constitution is that the Cabinet governs. In reality it seldom does anything of the kind. Each Cabinet Minister has very great power in his own Department, but the Cabinet as a Cabinet can do little. Since, how- ever, it knows everything, or almost everything, that is going on, it can exercise a great deal of indirect power. The previous knowledge that the majority of the Cabinet would like or dislike a particular policy has a great influence, but still the Cabinet does not rule. Who, then, really rules ? The Prime Minister,—but limited in a way which we must de- scribe later. What gives the Prime Minister this power ? In the first place, he summons and presides over, and so largely controls, the Cabinet meetings. Next, if a vacancy occurs he fills it up, and so can promote men from the lower to the higher offices. Then he can and does confer with his colleagues in regard to the business of their Departments, and so has a hold upon the whole machine of government. Sir Robert Peel saw every member of his Cabinet separately every day. Again, if there is a difference between two other members of the Government the Premier decides. If there is an irrecon- cileable difference between himself and a Minister it is the Minister and not the Premier who resigns. Lastly, the Prime Minister can by resigning himself dissolve the whole Ministry. These things, small in themselves, taken together make the Prime Minister's position what it is. He makes and can unmake a Cabinet. He presides over it, and he has the right to advise in regard to every Depart- ment, though this right is, of course, seldom exercised, and he has secured to him beforehand the support of the rank-and-file of any Cabinet if it comes to a. struggle between him and a colleague, because the rank-and-file know that if the Premier is beaten he has it in his power to upset the whole machine of government. Hence the voices of those who want to keep in office are always found on the side of the Premier.
We have spoken of the office of Premier as if there were no check upon it. In reality there are strong limita- tions to this, as to almost every other human institution. The chief of these is the power of the important Cabinet Ministers to resign if they are not given enough of their own way in the government of the country. The Prime Minister's power rests on the possession of a majority in the House of Commons. But as a rule that majority is of a composite character. The Premier may be popular, but a good deal of that popularity is given to him because he is working with certain colleagues. The resignation of two or three of these colleagues may therefore easily turn a majority into a minority. Hence the Prime Minister, though his nominal powers are so great, has to say to himself, ' I can't afford to offend A, B, and C, for if I do, and they leave the Cabinet, I shall be certain to ruin the Ministry. Practically, then, I can only govern by securing their assent and co-operation.' That is the plain English of a situation which exists, and must exist, in every Cabinet. Out of this situation arises what is known as the inner Cabinet. The Prime Minister, for fear of offending colleagues without whose help he cannot keep in power, consults on all matters of the first importance with the three or four chief men in his Ministry. From this it arises that Committee government, which appears to have been driven out by the rise of the authority of the Prime Minister—a comparatively modern phase of the Consti- intion—returns in the form of the inner Cabinet. This inner Cabinet is not in any sense a fixed or formal body, and must not be confounded with the Committees of the Cabinet to which are referred special and difficult subjects. -These Committees consist as a rule of the Prime Minister, 4he Leader of the House in which the Prime Minister does mot sit, and the head of the Department concerned. The inner Cabinet is a different matter. To it, of course, always belong the Leaders in both Houses, the Chancellor .nf the Exchequer, and the Foreign Minister. It often, thowever, extends beyond these officers, and includes, in tact, all Ministers who have an exceptional position in the country. In the present Cabinet the inner Cabinet is probably unusually large. It would not be discreet to attempt to name it too exactly, but it is certain that Lord :Salisbury would take no great step unless he was sure of ,the sanction of Mr. Balfour and Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. 4ioschen, the Duke of Devonshire, and Sir Michael Hicks- Beach. The question in what direction the Cabinet system as now developing is a very interesting and curious one. Has the Prime Minister reached his zenith, and is he declining before the inner Cabinet, or is his power still srowing ? The problem is not one which we can pretend to -salve, but we should imagine that it was largely a matter of Ministries and men. In one Ministry the Prime Minister will be all-important, in another the inner Cabinet, but we do not suppose that there can be any :general tendency in either direction. In any case, the ;.position of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is a very potent one. To say that he has to reckon with. an inner Cabinet is not really to belittle his authority, -for though he cannot act in great things without their consent, and so needs their aid, they need his still more. Without his consent the Cabinet does not exist at all. He is the " pin " which keeps the parts of the machine in their places.
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