THE RE-ELECTION OF CABINET MINISTERS. N OTHING is so hard to
alter, or even to get fully dis- cussed, as a traditionary practice. Everybody is talking of the Sleaford election ; dozens of articles have been written about it; the leader of the Liberals has him- self made a speech on it; but nobody seems to care for, or even notice, the main point involved in it,—that no such election ought to have been held. It has been the custom, as well as the law, that when a Commoner takes office, his seat should be vacated ; and consequently, everybody accepts that practice without caring, or, indeed, perceiving, how injurious it is to democratic government. The standing difficulty of that method of ruling is not either legislation or taxation. A democracy always hits on the taxes the people will pay, and it has a courage in making them do it which belongs neither to Kings nor to aristocracies. If the Czar taxed rentals as some of our Municipalities do, or eatables as the Parisian democracy does, he would find his cities in insurrection. As to legislation, popular Assemblies have at least this merit, that they know if a law will be hated, and only pass such an one under the pressure of necessity, to the great development of that most useful of civic virtues, law-abidingness. It is in securing administration that democracy fails. It is always wanting the best of administrators, men full of competence and originality ; it heaps on them day by day new work, often of the most complicated kind—it will, for instance, in the next five years drown the Minister of Agriculture in new functions—yet it is always restricting its own power of finding the fittest men. It never, for example, will pay according either to capacity or success ; but with a dull stupidity of which any great contractor would be ashamed, fixes an immovable and usually inadequate salary, to be taken or left. So far as we know, there is not in the world a single democratic Government which, to get a special man, will sanction special pay ; and there is not a great firm, or a great school, or a great railway which will not. Then democracy demands that its administrator, if of the first class and responsible, or, in other words, invested with real power, shall be a persuasive talker. If he is a silent man, like Von Moltke, it will not have him at all ; and if he talks badly, it rejects or delays or spoils half the im- provements he wants to introduce. A dumb Minister with a great plan, say for fortifying England, is in practice an im- possibility, for before democracy will spend, unless, indeed, it is exceedingly frightened, it must be convinced through its ears. So must a King, you will say ; but it is not true, for a King will also use his eyes. The Emperor William chose his silent genius after reading his " Report " on the Turkish Army. That single restriction reduces the area of choice 50 per cent. ; but that is only the first of the series enforced in this country. The British democracy, unlike any other, insists not only•that its administrator shall be content with fixed wages, and shall talk well, but that he shall have local influence sufficient to get himself elected by a community which, in estimating him, probably never thinks of his administrative capacity at all, but is concerned about his theories of government, or his views on philanthropy, or his readiness to follow a parti- cular leader. That third restriction reduces the area of choice almost to a vanishing quantity, all the adminis- trators having to be selected, not from the seven millions of adult males within the British Islands, but from among one thousand or them, of whom at least three hundred are too old, too rich, or too preoccupied to undertake the work. One in ten thousand truly a British Minister must be, for the British public limits its choice by a custom as strong as law to that precise proportion. it is actually true that the greatest military organiser or the greatest Admiral cannot be placed in the House of Commons to explain his views, unless some constituency which knows nothing of his subject, and could not estimate his strength if it did, chooses to make him its representative. One would think that the commonest of all common-sense would induce a democracy to seat a representative of each of the costly Services without election ; but that is not the traditional custom, and democracy, though insusceptible of any other feeling for the past, is fettered by political tradi- tion. Even this, however, is not sufficient in the way of restricting a choice which ought, if there is any truth in the theory of democracy, to be absolutely unlimited. If by patient seeking, and after many endeavours, the people's responsible agents have found a competent man who is willing to undertake the work, their appointment is invalid unless the special constituency for which the administrator sits chooses to ratify the choice. It may be, and usually is, totally ignorant of the matter ; it may be preoccupied with Local Option, or allotments, or Miss Cass, or anything else unconnected with the good organisation of a Depart- ment, or it may have contracted a capricious dislike for the individual selected; but all the same, it has an absolute and irresponsible veto on the choice. The exercise of its veto is no doubt deprecated, as it is seen that it may disorganise all the arrangements of a Government, and involves the absurdity that a part of the community is entitled to overset the verdict of the whole ; but still, it exists, and the fear of its exercise constantly interferes with the wisest choice.
The first restriction, the fixity of State salaries, is, of course, incurable. The English people will never attain the freedom from jealousy and suspicion which would enable a Premier to raise or lower a colleague's salary. They will trust him with varied powers involving great expenditures ; but they would regard this power as certain to be jobbed, and will accordingly never give it. The second restriction, too, is, we suppose, practically unavoidable, being, so to speak, a natural consequence of an incurable condition. In a Debating Society it is necessary to have the power of debate ; and in England, though not in America, the first business of the administrator is to persuade the great Debating Society to which we entrust the control of the whole executive power. The third restriction, which confines high office to Members of Parliament, though we hold it to be irrational, and hope yet to see it abolished as regards the Fighting Services, has, it must be admitted, one important compensation. It forces all those ambitious of power to qualify for the House of Commons, and therefore ensures for an Assembly which might otherwise be abandoned to mediocrities, a supply of able candidates. That is an advan- tage grievously missed in the American House of Repre- sentatives and the German Reichstag, and may possibly, when the educative function of the House is considered, be a considerable set-off to a restriction otherwise not only indefensible but absurd. In any case, however, this restriction will never be relaxed, except, perhaps, as regards the two Services, Members naturally believing that they are for all functions the most capable men in the world ; but it is surely time that the fourth restriction was swept absolutely away. It does no good to anybody, and it does great harm to the people, whose agents constantly lose through it their power of picking out the best man for important work. They cannot take a man, however much they want him, unless he is sure of his seat ; and his seat depends not on the people—that would be reason- able, their counter-signature then resembling that of the King in a true Monarchy—but on a minute section of them, not elected, nor in any other way necessarily representative. That is a system surely just a little grotesque. We can conceive of a Constitution in which the power of selecting Ministers is taken away from the Crown and given to the representatives directly, or even to the people consulted by Referendum ; but would any man in his senses invent one under which a Cabinet Minister should be selected or rejected by Sleaford ? Yet, as far as rejection at least is concerned, that is the scheme of government under which we are living now. It is said that Sleaford has rights, if they are not so extensive as these, and among them the right of disapproving the action of its representative when he takes office ; but why should not the expression of that disapproval wait until the General Election ? It does wait in every other case, except bank- ruptcy or conviction of crime, and we do not suppose that the upholders of tradition will affirm that the acceptance of office is as bad as either. They are, in fact, so coerced by tradition, that they are deaf to reason, and we can think of only one argument—the argument from jealousy —which may possibly come home to their minds. Is it not rather an insult to Members of the House of Commons that they should be disqualified by taking office, while the many-privileged Peers are not ?
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