four is determined wholly by statute. At the head of each is a president (save that the chief of the Board of Works is known as First Commissioner), and the membership embraces the five secretaries of state and a variable number of other important dignitaries. This membership, however, is but nominal. No one of the Boards actually meets, and the work of each is performed entirely by its president, with, in some instances, the assistance of a parliamentary under-secretary. "In practice, therefore, these boards are legal phantoms that provide imaginary colleagues for a single responsible minister."[86] Very commonly the presidents are admitted to the cabinet, but sometimes they are not.[87]
VI. The Cabinet: Composition and Character
67. Regular and Occasional Members.—The cabinet comprises a variable group of the principal ministers of state upon whom devolves singly the task of administering the affairs of their respective departments and, collectively, that of shaping the policy and directing the conduct of the government as a whole. The position occupied by the cabinet in the constitutional system is anomalous, but transcendently important. As has been pointed out, the cabinet as such is unknown to English law. Legally, the cabinet member derives his administrative function from the fact of his appointment to a ministerial post, and his advisory function from his membership in the Privy Council. The cabinet exists as an informal, extra-legal ministerial group into whose hands, through prolonged historical development, has fallen the supreme direction of both the executive and the legislative activities of the state. The composition of the body is determined largely by custom, but in part by passing circumstance. Certain ministerial heads are invariably included: the First Lord of the Treasury, the Lord Chancellor, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the five Secretaries of State, and the First Lord of the Admiralty. Two dignitaries who possess no administrative function, i.e., the Lord President of the Privy Council and the Lord Privy Seal,[88] are likewise always included. Beyond this, the make-up of the cabinet group is left to the discretion of the premier. The importance of a given office at the moment and the wishes of the appointee, together with general considerations of party expediency, may well enter into a decision relative to the seating of individual departmental heads. In recent years the presidents of the Board of Trade, the Board of Education, and the Local Government Board have regularly been included, together with the Lord Lieutenant or the Chief Secretary for Ireland.[89] The Secretary for Scotland and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster are usually included; the Postmaster-General and the President of the Board of Agriculture frequently, and the First Commissioner of Works and the Lord Chancellor for Ireland occasionally.
68. Increasing Size.—The trend is distinctly in the direction of an increase in the size of the body. The more notable cabinets of the eighteenth century contained, as a rule, not above seven to ten members. In the first half of the nineteenth century the number ran up to thirteen or fourteen, and throughout the Gladstone-Disraeli period it seldom fell below this level. The second Salisbury cabinet, at its fall in 1892, numbered seventeen, and when, following the elections of 1900, the third Salisbury government was reconstructed, the cabinet attained a membership of twenty.[90] The Balfour cabinet of 1905 and the succeeding Campbell-Bannerman cabinet likewise numbered twenty. The increase is attributable to several causes, especially the pressure which comes from ambitious statesmen for admission to the influential circle, the growing necessity of according representation to varied elements and interests within the dominant party, the multiplication of state activities which call for direction under new and important departments, and the disposition to accord to every considerable branch of the administrative system at least one representative. The effect is to produce a certain unwieldiness, to avoid which, it will be recalled, the cabinet was originally instituted. Only through the domination of the cabinet by a few of its most influential members can expeditiousness be preserved, and during recent years there has been a tendency toward the differentiation of an inner circle which shall bear to the whole cabinet a relation somewhat analogous to that which the cabinet now bears to the ministry. Development in this direction is viewed apprehensively by many people who regard that the concentration of power in the hands of an "inner cabinet" might well fail to be accompanied by a corresponding concentration of recognized responsibility. During more than a decade criticism of the inordinate size of the cabinet group has been voiced freely upon numerous occasions and by many observers.[91]
69. Appointment of the Premier.—When a new cabinet is to be made up the first step is the designation of the prime minister. Legally the choice rests with the crown, but considerations of practical politics leave, as a rule, no room whatsoever for the exercise of discretion. The crown sends as a matter of course for the statesman who is able to command the support of the majority in the House of Commons. If the retiring ministry has "fallen," i.e., has lost its parliamentary majority, the new premier is certain to be the recognized leader of the party which formerly has played the rôle of opposition. If there has not occurred a shift in party status, the premiership will be bestowed upon some one of the colleagues, at least upon one of the fellow-partisans, of the retiring premier, nominated, if need be, by the chiefs of the party. Thus, when in 1894 Gladstone retired from office by reason of physical infirmity, the Liberal leaders in the two houses conferred upon the question as to whether he should be succeeded by Sir William Vernon-Harcourt or by Lord Rosebery. They recommended Lord Rosebery, who was forthwith appointed by the Queen. If, by any circumstance, the premiership should fall to the Opposition at a moment when the leadership of this element is in doubt, the crown would be guided, similarly, by the informally expressed will of the more influential party members. While, therefore, the appointment of the prime minister remains the sole important governmental act which is performed directly by the sovereign, even here the substance of power has been lost and only the form survives.
70. Selection of Other Members.—The remaining members of the cabinet are selected by the premier, in consultation, as a rule, with leading members of the party. Technically, what happens is that the first minister places in the hands of the sovereign a list of the men whom he recommends for appointment to the principal offices of state. The crown accepts the list and there appears forthwith in the London Gazette an announcement to the effect that the persons named have been chosen by the crown to preside over the several departments. Officially, there is no mention of the "cabinet." In the selection of his colleagues the premier theoretically has a free hand. Practically he is bound by the necessity of complying with numerous principles and of observing various precedents and practical conditions. Two principles, in particular, must be adhered to in determining the structure of every cabinet. All of the members must have seats in one or the other of the two houses of Parliament, and all must be identified with the party in power, or, at the least, with an allied political group. There was a time, when the personal government of the king was yet a reality, when the House of Commons refused to admit to its membership persons who held office under the crown, and this disqualification found legal expression as late as the Act of Settlement of 1701.[92] With the ripening of parliamentary government in the eighteenth century, however, the thing that once had been regarded properly enough as objectionable became a matter of unquestionable expediency, if not a necessity. When once the ministers comprised the real executive of the nation it was but logical that they should be authorized to appear on the floor of the two houses to introduce and advocate measures and to explain the acts of the government. Ministers had occupied regularly seats in the upper chamber, and not only was all objection to their occupying seats in the lower chamber removed, but by custom it came to be an inflexible rule that cabinet officers, and indeed the ministers generally, should be drawn exclusively from the membership of the two houses.[93] Under provision of an act of 1707 it is still obligatory upon commoners who are tendered a cabinet appointment, with a few exceptions, to vacate their seats and to offer themselves to their constituents for re-election. But re-election almost invariably follows as a matter of course and without opposition.[94] It is to be observed that there are two expedients by which it is possible to bring into the cabinet a desirable member who at the time of his appointment does not possess a seat in Parliament. The appointee may be created a peer; or he may stand for election to the Commons and, winning, qualify himself for a cabinet post.
71. Distribution Between the Houses of Parliament.—Since the middle of
