sarily members of the House of Commons) were admitted to the council board. In 1404, under Henry IV., the council consisted of 19 members, of whom 3 were bishops, 9 peers, and 7 commoners. They were bound by a special oath of fidelity and secrecy, and received regular salaries of large amounts. But the council still remained a checking as well as a ministerial body. It was at once the controller and the servant of the Crown; the instrument of the king's prerogative, and the curb placed by the baronage on the arbitrary exercise of his will. The number of councillors soon however appears to have proved too large for effective administration, and about the time of Henry VI. the more eminent and assiduous members were formed into a select or con- The Privy fidential committee, exercising alone all the administrative functions previously shared with the other members of the Ordinary Council, and distinguished from these latter by the title of Privy Councillors. The oath of secrecy was now only exacted from the Privy Councillors, the ordinary councillors being no longer consulted on purely executive business, although they continued to take part in the judicial duties of the Council in its court of Star Chamber.

6

Under Edward VI., in 1553, the Ordinary Council consisted of 40 members (22 being commoners), and was divided for judicial and administrative purposes, into 5 commissions or committees. The most important of these, composed of eleven noblemen, two bishops, and seven commoners (one half of the whole number of councillors) was styled the Committee for the State' and constituted, in fact, the Privy Council. The large number of commoners, both in the whole Council and in the Committee for the State' marks the change which had silently been effected in the relations between the Council and the Crown. The independence of the Council had rested on the presence of men who could not easily be removed, great hereditary officials and powerful nobles.

Council.

Cabinet Council.

Under the Tudors the large infusion of commoners changed the nature of the Council from a mixed checking and administrative, into a purely official body, exercising the whole executive power of the Crown, and, through the medium of the Star Chamber and of proclamations, a very large part of the judicial and the legislative power also. On the abolition of the Star Chamber the judicial functions of the Council fell into abeyance, and the reason for the distinction between ordinary and Privy Councillors having then ceased to exist, all the members of the Council, from the date of 'the Restoration, were sworn as Privy Councillors.

The Privy Council continued to be the constitutional body of advisers of the king, whom he was bound by the laws and customs of the realm to consult. But Charles II. hated the delays and restraints imposed upon his designs by long debates in Council, and having greatly augmented its numbers was able to allege with truth that the great number of the Council made it unfit for the secrecy and despatch which are necessary in great affairs.' Availing himself of one of the peculiar characteristics of the Council-its action through committees― Charles formed a small select committee or Cabinet Council with whom he concerted all measures of importance before submitting them, for a merely formal ratification, to the whole body of Privy Councillors.

'Formerly,' says Trenchard, writing towards the close of the 17th century, all matters of state and discretion were debated and resolved in the Privy Council, where every man subscribed his opinion and was answerable for it. The late King Charles [II.] was the first who

1 The name of a Cabinet Council,' says Hallam, 'as distinguished from a larger body, may be found as far back as the reign of Charles I.' (Ces Hist. iii. 184); but it occurs in the preceding reign in the writings of Logi Bacon, who, in his essay on the Inconveniences of Counsel," says for which inconveniences, the doctrine of Italy and practice of France, ins kings' times, hath introduced cabinet counsels: a remedy worse than the disease.' Bacon, Works (ed. Spedding, Ellis & Heath, 1858), vi. 424

broke this most excellent part of our constitution, by settling a Cabal or Cabinet Council, where all matters of consequence were debated and resolved, and then brought to the Privy Council to be confirmed.'' The word 'cabal,' with the meaning of 'club' or 'association of intriguers' had been popularly applied to the secret councillors of the king even under James I., and the accidental coincidence that, in 1671, the Cabinet con

scheme for

sisted of the five unprincipled ministers, Clifford, Arling- The Cabal' ton, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale, the initials of ministry, 1671. whose names made up the word Cabal, caused the latter designation to be used for some years as synonymous with Cabinet, and did much to bring the cabinet system of government into disrepute. Moreover, though convenient and even necessary for administrative purposes, Cabinet government, in the form which it assumed at this period, was undoubtedly fraught with great evils. It deprived the Privy Council of all power to check the actions of the king, and vested the real government of the country in a body of ministers practically irresponsible to the nation. Accordingly, in 1679, an attempt Temple's was made, on the advice of Sir William Temple, to restore the Privy Council to its former position. It was remodelled and its numbers reduced from 50 to 30, of whom 15 were the chief officers of state, and the other 15 were made up of 10 lords and 5 commoners. The joint income of the new council was not to fall below £300,000, a sum nearly equal to the estimated income of the whole House of Commons. Temple hoped that a body thus constituted of great nobles and wealthy landed proprietors, too numerous for a Cabal and yet not too numerous for secret deliberation, would form at once a check upon the Crown and a counterbalance to the influence of Parliament. By the advice of this Council

1 Trenchard, Short History of Standing Armies (published about 1698),

P. 9.

reorganization of the Privy Council, 1679.

The Cabinet

system resumed.

Change in its essential characteristics.

of Thirty, Charles II. pledged himself to be guided in all affairs of State; but the pledge was quickly broken, and an interior or Cabinet Council was again formed which differed from the whole body of the Privy Council, as, under Edward VI., the Committee for the State,' and under Henry VI., the Privy Council itself had differed from the Ordinary Council.1

This distinction of the Cabinet from the Privy Council has ever since continued. The Privy Council still remains the only legally recognized body, but the Cabinet though altogether unknown to the law, and for a long time regarded as unconstitutional and dangerous, has gradually drawn to itself the chief executive power, and become, by universal consent and usage, the essential feature of our system of Parliamentary government. The firm establishment of the Cabinet system has, however, only been rendered possible and advantageous by a gradual, but long since completed, change in its essential characteristics. Under the two last Stewarts the Cabinet was, in truth, a cabal of the king's servants for sustaining the authority of the Crown, not only against its legally authorized Privy Councillors, but against the wishes and power of Parliament. Since the Revolution it has become a ministry, nominally appointed by the sovereign, but in reality an executive committee of the

1 An excellent sketch of the history of the Privy Council will be found in Mr. A. V. Dicey's Arnold Prize Essay, Oxford, 1860, to which I am indebted for several of the details in the text.

2 In 1711 the Earl of Scarsdale, in the House of Lords, having proposed a resolution in which the responsible advisers of the Crown were referred to as the Cabinet Council,' it was suggested that the word 'Ministers" should be substituted as being better known. This alteration the mover ultimately agreed to; but while the point was under discussion some peers maintained that 'Ministers' and Cabinet Council' were synonymous, others that there might be a difference, Lord Cowper that they were b terms of an uncertain signification, and the latter unknown to our law while Lord Peterborough observed that he had heard a distinctio between the Cabinet Council and the Privy Council; that the Privy Counci were thought to know everything, and knew nothing, and those of the Cabinet Council thought nobody knew anything but themselves' Pari Hist. vi. 971, cited by Hallam, Const. Hist. iii. 185.

ment.

two Houses of Parliament, practically chosen by the Party governmajority of the House of Commons. This result is mainly due to the division of the English people, and consequently of the Parliament, into two great political parties which have contended one against the other for the control of the executive power. It was not, however, until the accession of George I. that government by party was fully established. Down to the year 1693, William III. distributed the chief offices in the Government about equally between the two parties, a policy which not only failed to secure unanimity, but even allowed of open hostility between the various ministers of the Crown, as well in the discharge of their executive duties as in the discussions in Parliament. The inconvenience of this state of things was so great that at length, between 1693 and 1696, William III., acting on the advice of Robert, Earl of Sunderland, abandoned the neutral position which he had hitherto maintained between the two parties, and entrusted all the chief administrative offices to the Whigs, who commanded a majority in the House of Commons. The close union of the Whig leaders, each promptly defending his colleagues against every attack, was so novel a spectacle that they became popularly known as the Junto.' But the ministerial system of The 'Junto.' government in its modern form was by no means as yet completely established. When, at the general election. of 1698, a House of Commons was returned adverse to the Junto, and Montague, who, as First Lord of the Treasury, had for four years occupied the position and wielded the power of leader of the House, ceased to exercise any control over it, the ministry, instead of resigning office to their adversaries, as statesmen similarly situated would now act, kept their places. Thus the old want of harmony between the servants of the Crown and the representatives of the people returned in full force, and continued, with some short intervals of