CHAPTER XII
HOW A GOVERNMENT IS MADE

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Macaulay, writing to his sister Hannah on December 19, 1845, says: “It is an odd thing to see a Ministry making. I never witnessed the process before. Lord John Russell has been all day in his inner library. His antechamber has been filled with comers and goers, some talking in knots, some writing notes at tables. Every five minutes somebody is called into the inner room. As the people who have been closeted come out, the cry of the whole body of expectants is: ‘What are you?’ I was summoned almost as soon as I arrived, and found Lord Auckland and Lord Clarendon sitting with Lord John. After some talk about other matters, Lord John told me that he had be trying to ascertain my wishes, and that he found I wanted leisure and quiet more than salary and business. Labouchere had told him this. He therefore offered me the Pay Office, one of the three places which, as I have told you, I should prefer. I at once accepted it.”

But this Ministry was fated not to be formed. Both Lord Grey and Lord Palmerston, two leading members of the Whig Party, wanted the Foreign Office, and neither would recognize a superior claim in the other. Macaulay, from whose very lips the cup of office was thus rudely dashed, bore the disappointment philosophically. On the day after he had sent the letter, from which I have quoted, he wrote another to his sister, saying: “All is over. Late at night, just as I was undressing, a knock was given at the door of my chambers. A messenger had come from Lord John with a short note. The quarrel between Lord Grey and Lord Palmerston had made it impossible to form a Ministry. I went to bed and slept sound.”

When we come to consider the interesting business of making a Government, the first question that arises is—What is the chief test of a man’s capacity for office? Under our Constitution, with its free and unfettered Parliament, of which the Ministers must be Members, a deliberative assembly where everything is made the subject of talk, talk, talk, and provided with a Reporters’ Gallery for the dissemination of its debates through the Press, it is inevitable that a man’s fitness for a post in the Administration should be decided mainly by his gift of speech. It must often prove a false standard of judgment in regard to genuine ability and character. Glibness of tongue, or even oratory, is certainly not an essential qualification for the administrative duties of government. Still, the fact remains that the ready talker with but little practical experience of affairs has a better chance of office than the man of trained business capacity who is tongue-tied. Perhaps debaters are really more useful to a Government than business men in an arena of conflict like the House of Commons. There are some excellent anecdotes pointing to such a conclusion. Disraeli, forming an Administration, offered the Board of Trade to a man who wanted instead the Local Government Board, as he was better acquainted with the municipal affairs of the country than its commerce. “It doesn’t matter,” said Disraeli; “I suppose you know as much about trade as Blank, the First Lord of the Admiralty, knows about ships.” John Bright once said he asked Richard Lalor Sheil, an eloquent speaker, but unconnected with commerce, how it happened that he was appointed to the Board of Trade. “I think,” replied Sheil, “the only reason is I was found to know less of trade than any other man in the House of Commons.” Bright himself was made President of the Board of Trade in 1869. It used to be said in the Department that, so unfitted was he for administration, he did not know even how to tie up official papers with red tape.

When, at an earlier period of political history, Sidney Herbert, Lord Herbert of Lea, resigned the War Office, Palmerston fixed upon Sir George Cornewall Lewis to succeed him, and argued the point with Lady Theresa Lewis, saying that the duties would not be military, but civil. “He would have to look after the accounts,” said the Prime Minister. “He never can make up his own,” replied the wife. “He will look after the commissariat,” said the Prime Minister. “He cannot order his own dinner,” replied the wife. “He will control the clothing department,” said the Prime Minister. “If my daughters did not give the orders to his tailor, he would be without a coat,” replied the wife. Cornewall Lewis, however, accepted the offer, and his Under-Secretary soon afterwards discovered him in Pall Mall reading a work on the military tactics of the Lycaonians. Sir Arthur Helps, the essayist, who was Clerk of the Privy Council, used to tell the story that once when there was a difficulty in finding a Colonial Secretary, Lord Palmerston said: “Well, I’ll take the colonies myself,” and presently remarked to Helps: “Just come upstairs with me for half an hour and show me where these places are on the map.” Charles James Fox is said to have confessed his ignorance of what Consols meant. He gathered from the newspapers that they were “things which rose and fell”; and he was always delighted when they fell, because he noticed, that for some unaccountable reason, it very much annoyed Pitt, as Chancellor of the Exchequer. That, no doubt, was Fox’s fun. But we are told of Lord Randolph Churchill, on the authority of his son and biographer, Winston Churchill, that when, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Treasury returns worked out in decimal figures were laid before him, he inquired what “these damned dots” signified. I myself heard Sir Edward Carson, a distinguished lawyer, speaking as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1917, during the Great War, declare that he entered the Admiralty in a state of extreme ignorance. “Someone asked me the day I went there how I felt,” he went on to say, “and I said, ‘My only qualification is that I am absolutely at sea.’”

After all, perhaps, it is a matter of no very great concern. Are there not capable permanent officials in the various Departments of the State, whose duty it is to see that administration is efficient and economical? The simple task of the Minister, as he sits behind the scenes in a room at Whitehall, is as a rule to see that things are done in harmony with the political policy of his Party. What seems to be absolutely necessary to the prosperity of an Administration is that in the Houses of Parliament—open as they are to the gaze and hearing of the country—it should have at its service a number of able debaters. The measures of the Government have to be submitted to the judgment of a deliberative Assembly, and a newspaper-reading public; and accordingly a successful Minister is he whose ready gift of clear and forcible exposition of Party principles and policies enables him to expound and defend these measures. Gladstone, when forming his first Government in 1868, invited John Bright to join it, giving him his choice of any office, except the War Office or the Admiralty, which, as he was a Quaker and a man of peace, would hardly suit him. Bright selected the position of President of the Board of Trade. As I have said, he never gave evidence of any special business capacity, but he was the greatest orator of his day; he had uttered in the House of Commons and on the public platform the most beautiful and also the most scornful passages that ever fell from the lips of man; he possessed debating gifts which enabled him to place a political question in a light that made it shine beyond its deserts, and that being so he was deemed fit for a place of importance and emolument in the new Government. What is the good of a Minister rising to the Table of the House of Commons with an unanswerable case if he be unable to state it—if he be choked with arguments for which he can find no utterance?

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It follows, therefore, that when a General Election has pronounced the sentence of condemnation on the existing Government, and men of another Party are called to the service of the country, selection for office is restricted mainly to those who have won distinction as debaters in Opposition. On the benches to the left of Mr. Speaker are always numbers of young men ambitious of office, eagerly pushing themselves to the front on that conspicuous field of political activity, under the eyes of the Reporters’ Gallery, most constant in their attendance, ever watching for an opportunity to strike a blow at once for their Party and their own reputation, in the hope that in the day of victory they shall have the proper reward of their services. Some of them are capable of talking well upon any subject. These aspire to be Secretaries of State. Others, not so remarkable for general ability or so glib of tongue, confine themselves to particular departments of administration. It is the endeavour of each to obtain a mastery of the business details of some special office—Foreign, Home, Treasury, Colonial, Army, Navy, Post Office, Pensions, Trade, Transport, or Agriculture—looking for an Under-Secretaryship, in the expectation of ultimately attaining, after some years of diligent and capable service, to Cabinet rank. Yet the qualities needed for success in office are often entirely different from those that bring fame and renown in Opposition. Gladstone said of Robert Lowe, whom he appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in his first Administration on the strength of the reputation which that slashing debater had made in Opposition, that he was “splendid in attack, but most weak in defence”; “that he was capable of tearing anything to pieces, but of constructing nothing.” But it is only after the brilliant swashbuckler of Opposition has been tried in office that his incapacity and weakness in the true gifts of statesmanship are discovered.

Besides the pushful young men in the ranks on the back benches, with their abounding sense of fitness for office, there are the veterans of the Front Opposition Bench, survivors of the Ministry of the Party when it was last in power. Some of these, it often happens, are men who have grown old and worn in the service, as their wrinkled faces, bald heads, and stooped forms testify; but their interest in public affairs has not in the least abated, and they still crave to be placed at the head of Departments. It might be supposed that the weighty responsibility of office is a burden to be avoided rather than coveted by old parliamentarians; the world has such pleasant delights, apart from politics, with which they might occupy the leisure of the close of their day. But that is an idle supposition. It is true that in the Senate of Rome, to which election was for life, there was a special law providing that no senator over sixty should be summoned to its meetings. Did any Roman ever willingly acquiesce in it except the physically incapable? In modern England human nature is exactly what it was in ancient Rome. The grievance of the Front Bench man approaching seventy would be, not that he should be dragged from seclusion and quiet to sit for hours of a morning in a room at Whitehall, reading documents, and attend at the House of Commons till late at night, but that he should be set aside in the distribution of offices when his Party has again triumphed at the polls. And he has tradition and custom at his back, in support of his desire, as well as his past services. It is held that a member of either House of Parliament who has already been in the Cabinet is entitled to high office again whenever his Party comes back to power; and that, should he be passed over, should he be put on the retired list, he has every reason to feel affronted.

These are the two classes—the old but the tried, the able but the untrained young—from which the Prime Minister draws the members of his Administration. As I have indicated, he has not an absolutely free choice. He may not sit down in his study and, surveying the most prominent members of his Party in both Houses, select for office those who have proved themselves possessed of the qualities of character, ability, experience, and training. His task it is to satisfy, as far as possible, claims as conflicting as they are strong, and, at the same time, give to his Administration that weight and authority which is necessary to win and hold, in some measure, the confidence of the country. It is said that Gladstone, who formed no fewer than four Administrations—an almost unprecedented record in constitutional history—used to draw up on separate slips of paper a list of the various offices, placing opposite each the names of three or four more or less eligible men as alternatives, and then, by a process of sifting, evolve the definite list. But this method, which no doubt most Prime Ministers adopt more or less, is not at all the simple matter it looks. It has to be followed out with exceeding care and circumspection. For every post in the Ministry there are at least three or four influential aspirants, old or young, each of whom thinks the office on which his mind is set is his by every title of personal fitness and devotion to the Party. To adjust these rival claims is, as I have said, no easy thing for the Prime Minister. Some of the office-seekers, those especially who know there are strong rivals in the field, insist upon personal interviews, in order to set forth their pretensions fully and unanswerably, and the serious loss the Party, if not the nation, would suffer were it not to have the advantage of their services. Every post brings shoals of letters from Members of Parliament, and leading Party men in the country, strongly urging the appointment of this person or that to a post in the Ministry, or his inclusion in the Cabinet.

Another important consideration of which the Prime Minister is obliged to take heed is the distribution of the offices of the Administration between the House of Lords and the House of Commons. It was provided by the Government of India Act, 1858—creating a fifth Secretary of State, that for India, the others being for Foreign Affairs, Home, the Colonies, and War—that four Secretaries of State and four Under-Secretaries may sit as members of the House of Commons at the same time.[1] In 1864 notice was taken that five Under-Secretaries were sitting in the House of Commons in violation of this statutory provision, and a motion was made that the seat of the fifth Under-Secretary was thereby vacated. The House referred the matter to a Committee, who reported that the seat of the Under-Secretary last appointed was not vacated, but as the law had been inadvertently infringed, it was thought necessary to pass a Bill of Indemnity. By the Air Force Act, 1917, a sixth Secretary of State, that for Air, was created, and the number of Principal Secretaries of State and Under-Secretaries capable of sitting in the House of Commons was increased to five. The Chancellor of the Exchequer must be in the representative Chamber, as the hereditary House cannot impose taxation. The holders of all the other prominent offices may be in one House or the other, as the Prime Minister thinks most convenient. But it has now become a rule, from which probably there will never be a departure, of placing the Home Secretary—the Minister whose department comes most closely into touch with the ordinary life of the citizen—and his Under-Secretary in the House of Commons. The Foreign Secretary, whose duties are most delicate and responsible, has usually been given the greater freedom and leisure of the House of Lords. Arthur Balfour declared in the House of Commons, during the Session of 1905, that the Foreign Secretary would never again be seen in that Chamber, unless the House was prepared to release him from the ordinary obligations of a Minister. “Because, if you ask him,” continued the Prime Minister, “to come down to answer questions, or when his own office is under discussion; if you require him to come down, as my other right hon. friends are required to come down, whenever there is a Government division or an important Government debate; if you require him to be here throughout the whole night, and at the same time to carry on the work of such an office as the Foreign Office—he cannot do it. I respectfully say it with full knowledge both of what the House of Commons requires and what is required of the Minister for Foreign Affairs.” Sir Edward Grey subsequently sat in the House of Commons for ten years, as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, but concessions in regard to answering questions and general attendance were granted him of the kind indicated by Balfour. The other Secretaries of State—War, Colonies, India—may be in either the House of Lords or the House of Commons, subject to the statutory provisions I have mentioned, but in whatever Chamber the Principal Secretary may be, the Under-Secretary of the same department must be in the other. The religion of aspirants to office must also be taken into account by the Prime Minister.

There are two positions in the Government for which Roman Catholics are ineligible—the Lord Chancellorship of England and the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland. In 1891 Gladstone brought in a Bill “for the removal of the religious disabilities of Roman Catholics to hold the offices of Lord Chancellor of England and Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.” It was opposed by the Unionist Government then in power, and was defeated by 256 votes to 223. It was known as “The Ripon and Russell Relief Bill,” as it was well understood that if the Bill were carried Gladstone, on his return to office, intended to make the then Lord Ripon, who was a Catholic, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; and Sir Charles Russell, also a Catholic, Lord Chancellor of England.

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The process by which the Government is formed is, constitutionally, most interesting; but even in the best of circumstances, and apart altogether from the limitations to his unfettered choice which I have set out, it must indeed be harassing to the Prime Minister. If his power and influence are great, so are his embarrassments and difficulties. “Lord Grey is in a dreadful state of anxiety and annoyance; thinks he shall break down under his load,” wrote Lord Tavistock to his brother, Lord John Russell, in 1830, during the making of the first Reform Administration. Disraeli, speaking in the House of Commons in March 1873, described the constitution of a new Government as “a work of great time, great labour, and of great responsibility,” and declared that the task had to be discharged solely by the Prime Minister. “It is a duty which can be delegated to no one,” he said. “All the correspondence and all the interviews must be conducted by himself, and, without dwelling on the sense of responsibility involved, the perception of fitness requisite, and the severe impartiality necessary in deciding on contending claims, the mere physical effort is not slight.” The only Prime Minister, perhaps, who approached the task of making an Administration with a sense of gaiety not unmingled with irresponsibility was Lord Palmerston. He had the engaging weakness of putting square men in round holes and round men in square holes, and the reconstruction of the Ministry which sometimes followed as a consequence was, to him, only a fresh source of laughter. “Ah, ha!” he would cry, “what a delightful comedy of errors!” Gladstone, while revelling in the power and authority of the position, was deeply impressed also by its gravity and solemnity. He writes in his diary, January 29, 1886: “At a quarter after midnight in came Sir H. Ponsonby with verbal communication from Her Majesty, which I at once accepted.” It was the command to form his third Administration, that which came quickly to grief on the question of Home Rule. Next day, Saturday, was spent by Gladstone in consultation with his principal colleagues. After church on Sunday, from one o’clock till eight, political business engrossed his attention. “At night came a painful and harassing succession of letters,” he writes, “and my sleep for once gave way; yet for the soul it was profitable, driving me to the hope that the strength of God might be made manifest in my weakness.” Next morning he went down to Osborne to attend the Queen, had two audiences with her Majesty, an hour and a half in all, and in the evening returned to London. He writes in his diary the following day: “I kissed hands, and am thereby Prime Minister for the third time. But, as I trust, for a brief time only—slept well. D. G.”

John Morley, summarizing in his Life of Gladstone the correspondence which Gladstone received while he was engaged in forming an Administration, writes: “One admirable man with intrepid naïveté proposed himself for the Cabinet, but was not admitted; another no less admirable was pressed to enter, but felt that he could be more useful as an independent Member, and declined—an honourable transaction, repeated by the same person on more than one occasion later. To one excellent member of his former Cabinet the Prime Minister proposed the Chairmanship of Committees, and it was with some tartness refused. Another equally excellent member of the old Administration he endeavoured to plant out in the Viceregal Lodge in Dublin, without the Cabinet, but in vain. To a third he proposed the Indian Viceroyalty, and received an answer that left him ‘stunned and out of breath.’”

It is also entertaining to study the varied feelings with which politicians have received the offer of office. “Dear Henry,” wrote Robert Lowe in a brief, laconic note to his brother in December 1868, “I am Chancellor of the Exchequer with everything to learn. Yours affectionately.” It was the surprise appointment of Gladstone’s first Administration, for Lowe had previously shown but little interest in finance. His administration of the office soon ended in an abortive attempt to impose a tax on matches. In another letter to a friend, Lowe said: “I have this day accepted the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer in Gladstone’s Government. I am almost angry with myself for not being more pleased. One gets these things, but gets them too late. Ten years ago I should have been very differently affected. However, it is something to have done what I said I would do.” It was a curious frame of mind in which to enter upon a great office. He had said he would be a Cabinet Minister, and the thing had come to pass. That was all.

That eminent lawyer, John Duke Coleridge, returned home from a concert on the night of December 4, 1868, to find—as he records in his diary—“Gladstone’s messenger waiting with an offer of the S.G., Collier to be A.G.” The letter of the Prime Minister was written from “11 Carlton House Terrace,” and marked “Most Private.” “I need not spend words,” said Gladstone, “in assuring you that I anticipate great advantage to the new Government from your most valuable aid, and that I look forward with great pleasure to the relations which will, I hope, be established between us.” Coleridge sent the messenger back with a note refusing the post absolutely. He doubted whether, as Solicitor-General, he could serve with satisfaction under the proposed Attorney-General, Sir Robert Collier. “I know well,” he wrote, “that a man who once puts office by puts it by probably for ever; and you will not suppose that I send this answer without regret and a considerable struggle. But I am sure it is my duty to do it.” Next morning Coleridge received another letter inviting him to come to 11 Carlton House Terrace. “So I had to go to him,” Coleridge writes on December 5th. “He was most kind, and urged me to accept.” Two days later he says: “So the deed is done, and I suppose in a few days I shall be Minister.” On Saturday, December 10th, he went down to Windsor, “with a lot of Ministers coming in and going out,” had luncheon, saw the Queen, and was knighted. “I could not help it,” he adds. What chance had his weak human disinclination for office against the working of resistless, inevitable Fate?

At a Press Club dinner in London, John Morley related the circumstances in which he received and accepted in 1886 the offer of the post of Chief Secretary for Ireland, with a seat in the Cabinet. “It was whilst I was writing a leading article for a certain periodical,” said he, “that I received a letter from an illustrious statesman, who was then forming a Government, offering me a post in his Cabinet.” “Gentlemen,” he added, amid the cheers and the laughter of the company, “so strong in me was the journalistic instinct that, after accepting the illustrious statesman’s offer, I went back and finished that leading article. And I can assure you that neither the grammar nor the style of the latter half of the article fell short of my usual standard.” One of the most humanly interesting books dealing with public life in England is From a Stonemason’s Bench to the Treasury Bench, in which Henry Broadhurst tells the story of his career. In 1886 he was Secretary to the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress and a Member of Parliament. One busy day at his office a letter was handed to him by a messenger, and, opening the envelope, he found the following communication:

According to custom, Broadhurst immediately called upon the Prime Minister. He said that if it were Mr. Gladstone’s wish that he should join the Administration, he hoped it would be in some capacity less important than that of Under-Secretary of the Home Office. But the Prime Minister would not listen to any objections to the offer. “I’ll answer for you myself,” said he, playfully. “You must prepare at once to enter upon the duties of the office.” Broadhurst adds: “I can honestly declare that I left Mr. Gladstone’s house without any of those feelings of exhilaration and pleasing excitement which the gift of office is generally supposed to awake in the breast of the politician.” He lived the hard struggle of his early years over again in the next half-hour. “The lowly beginning of my career,” he says, “its labours at the forge and the stonemason’s shop, the privations, the wanderings, and my varying fortunes, stood out in my mind’s eye as clearly as so many living pictures. Especially did my memory recall the months I had spent working on the very Government buildings which I was about to enter as a Minister of the Crown.” He deplored the lack of education in his early days, and visions of failure and humiliation in the discharge of his new duties, in consequence, tormented him.