In addition to these calming influences, we may note that
Ministers who have their hands actually on the lever of govern- ment, and are engaged in its daily work, feel much more need that the King's Government shall be carried on than do their irresponsible advisers in the Press. Of late years unneces- sary resignations—resignations of individual Ministers or of Cabinets on political punctilios—have become far less common than they used to be. This is not due to any ignoble cause, or to Ministers desiring the spoils of power or "clinging to office," but rather to the fact that the machinesy of government is now much more complicated and intricate, and that modern Ministers always have in their hands many schemes half carried through which they earnestly desire to see accomplished. From no unworthy motives, then, but rather from the desire to finish half-accomplished work, Ministers, we may be sure, will not resign or produce a crisis which may lead to resignation unless they are obliged to do so by the force of circumstances.
