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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?