LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE PRIME MINISTER AND THE CROWN.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTLT011.1
SIR,—A view of "The Venezuelan Imbroglio" has been ad- vanced in your correspondence columns and elsewhere which is calculated to dumbfound students of this country's Constitu- tional history. It has been seriously argued that " Court in- fluence," rather than the deliberate judgment of the Ministry, is the efficient cause of the co-operation of our own Fleet with the German Fleet off the Venezuelan coast. In plain terms, we are invited to believe that the English Sovereign of his own motion has successfully importuned his Ministers to en- tangle this country in an alliance with a foreign Power. It is taken for granted that the policy did not present itself to the Ministers before it was brought to their notice by the King, and that it failed very strongly to recommend itself to the Ministers when Royal pressure secured its adoption at their hands. It is not obscurely hinted at the same time that the King was himself persuaded to take his line of action by the German Emperor, his nephew.
No one in this country except the King and his Ministers knows the actual course of the recent negotiations with Germany. But as a student at somewhat close quarters of the accepted modes in which the Sovereign transacted political business with Ministers during the sixty-three years of the late Queen's reign, I think I am justified in warning the public against putting credence in the current gossip respecting the King's responsibility for the existing situation.
The gossip is built upon a radical misconception of the practical working of the Constitution, as it was firmly fixed during the late Queen's reign. There is no ground for the suspicion that any revolutionary change in the relation of the Sovereign with his Ministers has taken place during the last two years. The King is perfectly familiar with the limita- tions which binding usage sets on the exertion of Royal influence in politics. The Prime Minister has been trained in a school which identifies his office with practically absolute political power. The coil of tradition which now encircles the Prime Minister's office is far too heavy to permit him suddenly to surrender any essential part of his power or influence to the Sovereign. The current gossip in effect assumes that in the negotiations with Germany the Prime Minister has ex- changed his place in the Constitution with the Bing. Such an assumption is a bubble that cannot be pricked too quickly.
Every schoolboy knows that the Sovereign has long since been deprived by statute or binding precedent of personal power in all the important spheres of government. Although a very small knowledge of the conversation or correspondence that was con- stantly passing between the late Queen and her Ministers is suffi- cient to prove the point, it does not seem to be equally well under- stood that Royal influence can only work along well-defined and very restricted lines. The Sovereign can under the Constitu- tion no more initiate a policy for Ministers to follow, or im- pose upon them by the urgency of his appeal a policy of his own devising, than he can by his sole authority promulgate a new law. In the domain of foreign affairs especially, custom requires the Ministers to acquaint the Sovereign with the intentions of the Government before definitely committing the country to any specific course of action. That is the sole obligation which an unalterable tradition imposes on the Minister in his relations with the Sovereign as far as foreign affairs are concerned. The Sovereign on his part solely enjoys the right of criticising the Minister's proposals. But usage forbids the Minister to attach to the Royal criticisms any paramount force. If the Minister deems those criticisms to be of any value, he has it in his power to adopt them, but, in accordance with admitted custom, be invariably treats them as unauthoritative suggestions, and is entitled to ignore them altogether, without in any way prejudicing his relations with the Sovereign.
In no conceivable circumstances can the Government's action in high matters of politics originate suddenly and unprovokedly with the King. The Sovereign is debarred by usage from offering formal advice to the Minister on any political question. No authentic knowledge of political affairs is at his disposal until the Ministerial decision is communicated to him in its completeness. In his private capacity the Sovereign naturally forms his own opinion of passing events. Informally he may express a hope that a certain course may be followed by his Ministers before he receives from them any official intimation of the position of affairs. But tradition compels him to ex- press his personal views, when they are unsolicited, in a tenta- tive and interrogative form of words, which barely raises them above the level of an irresponsible suggestion, and certainly robs them of anything approaching the character of an authoritative command or pronouncement. No trace of sub- servience has been suffered to survive in the Minister's manner of correspondence with the Sovereign. The uninvited recom- mendation of the Crown is treated by the Minister in much the same style as a recommendation coming to him from a private subject. The reply ordinarily takes the form of a simple non possumus. Custom prohibits the Minister from allowing his final decision to be controlled effectively by the Royal wishes or hopes.
You have reminded your readers that the Prime Minister has always at command the weapon of resignation wherewith to resist assertion of Royal authority .and influence which conflicts with the pursuit of his own policy, or would substitute for the Government's line of action a scheme initiated by Royalty. But does not such a statement misrepresent the elements of the situation? A far simpler and more effective instrument of resistance to Royal authority and influence has been placed by all-powerful usage in the Minister's hands. He has only to meet a Royal suggestion which fails to com- mend itself to him with a direct negative in order, except in the rarest cases, to extinguish it summarily. In Charles II.'s reign, it is perfectly true, the Sovereign habitually expected his Minister, especially in the sphere of foreign politics, to carry out the Royal recommendations. But even in those distant days Parliament asserted that for a Minister to argue that the expression of the Royal wish imposed on him the obligation of giving it practical effect was to expose himself to the penalties of high treason. Statute and precedent have in the intervening centuries rendered absolute and incontestable the salutary doctrine that the Minister is alone personally responsible for the acts of his Government; that the Sovereign is not in a position to tender him official advice; that the Minister has not the power, even if he had the inclination, to obey the behests or the requests of Royalty. To invite the public to believe that in the matter of this German " alliance " the best-established principles and practices of the Constitution have been subverted by Sovereign and Minister seems to me to insult the public intelligence.—I [We are glad to find so competent an authority as Mr. Sidney Lee taking exactly the line we took last week on the Constitutional point. We have dealt with the question again this week in another column.—En. Spectator.]
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