The Evolution of the Cbi - n - et- 2 -
Cabinet Government. By W. Ivor Jennings, MA., Lt.D. (Cambridge University Press. 211.)
IN 1922, when Edwin Montagu was compelled to resign phis office as Secretary of State for India because he had authoried ' the Government of India to publish a certain memorandum .without waiting for Cabinet sanction, he told the House of "Commons that " Cabinet responsibility had become a joke." This he said in his haste, but the old discipline of collective responsibility had certainly been greatly relaxed during the Years of the War and in the Parliament which followed; and he had much sympathy in being suddenly caught out in one of the old rules. What were these old rules and how far- do they still govern the situation ? There are many recognised text-books on Constitutional and Parliamentary practitte, but these were mostly written in the nineteenth century, and it is difficult to-make them adequate by revision. The time is ripe for a comprehensive study of what may be called the modern period, the period which embraces the great struggles between Lords and Commons, the Parliament Act, the extensions of the franchise, the development of Parlia- mentary and administrative Government under stress of .the enormously increased mass of business during the last- fifty years.
• In his book on Cabinet Government, Dr. Ivor Jennings has made an invaluable contribution to knowledge and right thinking on this subject, and if I limit myself to saying " contribution " it is only because the nature of the subject is such that there can be no finality in it. The merit of British Parliamentarism is the adaptability and flexibility with which it adjusts itself td changing circumstances, and ' often in ways so gradual and subtle that they can only be perceived by those who come after. Dr. Jennings's method is to take the generally accepted body of doctrine on the theory and practice of Cabinet Government from the Reform Act of 1832 onwards, to test and correct it by reference to the biographies of statesmen and other available material, such as the letters of Queen Victoria, the Life of King Edward, the Esher Papers, and when he conies to recent times; by what is public knowledge or can be ascertained by inquiry. It will be Dr. Jennings's business and that of his publishers, the Cambridge University Press, to keep this book revised and amended as new material accumulates. At a moment when Parliamentarisna is under a cloud, such a book as this should help the rising generation to 'understand the great British tradition of free government, and explain the subtle and partly subconscious co-operative effort which is necessary to make it work and keep it in repair.
The essentials of the British Cabinet system are that each of the Members of a Cabinet shall be responsible for all its decisions, and that its proceedings shall be the secret Cif its members. The two things hang together. If its members were at liberty to say that they had opposed this or that decision and been overruled, their collective responsibility would soon dissolve into varying degrees of individual-irre- sponsibility: If theii proceedings were recoided for inspection by other people, the complete freedom of discussion needed for good decisions would be restrained by the thought that they might go on the records as men of wavering minds. Dr. Jennings describes the new practice of keeping Cabinet Minutes and approves it as a necessary record of Cabinet decisions, so long as it does not reveal the part taken by individuals in reaching them. The conditions under which these minutes can be consulted and the time after which they may be available to students and historians have not yet, so far as I am aware, been reduced to any rule, a'S--.no
:doubt they will be, but the taking of this record and the equipment of the Cabinet with . a Secretary and Secretafiat are new and important facts of which the results may only gradually appear. Dr. Jennings is at pains to dispel certain illusions about the power and influence of this Secretariat, but I think he a little underrates the part which it has played and may play again under a Prime Minister who uses it as his instrument. • It is a great tribute to the high standard of honour among British public men that so few charges of the betrayal_ of - Cabinet secrets have been made or sustained. The one
• deliberate experiment in relaxing the principle of " collective lcapcnsihlJity "÷-thb _." agreement tO . differ" in-- 1932-hieke down:not because Ministers took any -unfair. advantage of it, but because the spectacle of members of the same Government debating and recriminating with one another in public proved, after a very short experiment, to be equally damaging to the Governtnent and• to its dissenting members. -The chief and
most insidious threat to both secrecy and collective responsibility has been an enterpiising Press which considers itself entitled to pierce the veil, and offers a chronic temptation to ambitious men to promote their own causes or fortunes by playing into its hands. This is no new story. The Minister- and-newspaper-alliance can be traced back at least 'to - Palmerstonian times, and it was Mr. Gladstone's complainCof some of his junior colleagues in the 'eighties that in this respect at all events " they did not know the rules of the game." Discipline was notoriously loose in this as in other respects in war-time, when eminent men persuaded themselves that national necessities overrode all normal rules. The wonder, as we look back on it, is not that the war disturbed, but that it did not wreck the Cabinet system. Its recovery under later administrations is a very remarkable fact, and in Dr. Jennings's narrative we see it functioning again under the old rules, and with its custom and usage substantially unaltered. Mr. Baldwin is Cabinet correctitude personified. .
I can only glance at a few points among the thousand that
arc discussed in this book. Dr. Jennings writes judiciouily and correctly about the position of the Sovereign. Great as were the virtues of Queen Victoria, her partisanship in the closing years of her life was undermining the monarchy, and it is not to the credit of Conservative statesmen that they aided and abetted her in it. • Hersuccessors on the throne have shown their wislom in no respect more than in their scrupulous observance-of the impartiality of the Crown and their reliance on influencing events' by their character and example, and the continuity of their experience. The proper relations of the Sovereign to the leaders of Opposition are not very easy to define, and I do not think Dr. Jennings quite understands Asquith's objection to the King's seeing these leaders .in January, 1911. It was not that he objected to the King's hearing their views, it was that he thought that the King would be in a false position if he saw them and did not reveal the fact that he was under a pledge to create peers if they defeated the Parliament Bill in the House of Lords. It was in fact the chief part of their Subsequent. grievance that they had been given no warning of the action of the Sovereign. .
The King's position under the Statute of Westminster seems
to me to need rather more consideration than Dr. Jennings gives it. In all affairs that may touch two members of tie Commonwealth, the King is left without a Minister to advise him. I doubt if it is safe to regard'this aspect of the matter as negligible, even though we assume that in dealing with one member of the Commonwealth the King is bound to accept the advice of the Government of that member. If we are looking ahead, the whole subject needs careful consideration. King George regarded the new position created for the monarchy with a good deal of misgiving.
J. A. SPENDER:.
Previous page
