The Government of England (Vol. I)

by A. Lawrence Lowell

Historians have often observed that the absence of the sovereign from cabinet meetings, since the accession of the House of Hanover, has been a great factor in the growth of cabinet government. His absence had, indeed, three distinct effects. It helped to free the individual members of the cabinet from royal pressure; it made it easier for them to act as a unit in their relations with the monarch; and it tended to remove him from the discussion of public policy until it had been formulated. This last point is highly important, and has a bearing upon the influence of the King to-day, because it is before the ministers have formed an opinion that his advice and warning are most effective. It is while some of them are reluctant and others are hesitating that the weight of his views has the best chance of turning the scale. After the matter has been threshed out and an agreement reached the decision is far less likely to be reversed, or even seriously modified, by his personal preferences.

Now the sovereign is not usually consulted about matters of domestic legislation and policy until the opinion of the cabinet has taken shape. For although he is informed in general terms of what is done at cabinet meetings, and sometimes discusses with a minister the proposed measures relating to his department, yet a matter is commonly talked over and agreed upon by the ministers before it is submitted to him for approval. In this way "the sovereign is brought into contact only with the net results of previous inquiry and deliberation,"[41:1] and the views of the cabinet are "laid before" him "and before Parliament, as if they were the views of one man."[41:2] Queen Victoria tried, indeed, to insist upon the right of "commenting on all proposals before they are matured;"[41:3] but apparently without much success. This was not equally true, however, of all departments of the government. On the contrary, after a long struggle with Lord Palmerston, in which she suffered many exasperating rebuffs, the autocratic foreign minister by his impulsiveness and lack of perfect candour gave her at last an advantage. She succeeded in establishing, by the memorandum of August, 1850, the rule that she must be kept informed of foreign correspondence and despatches before they were sent, so that foreign matters should be intact and not already compromised when they were brought to her attention. Mr. Gladstone has criticised the principles laid down at that time because they meant that the comments of the Premier on despatches were to be made, not privately to the foreign minister, but after the draft had been submitted to the Queen.[42:1] In other words, he complained that the Queen was consulted before the tenor of the despatch had been finally settled between the Premier and the foreign minister. His criticism seems, therefore, to be levelled at the practice of consulting the Crown before the policy has been agreed upon by those who are responsible for it,[42:2] in this case the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary, for despatches are not ordinarily brought before the full cabinet for consideration.

The opportunity for an exertion of royal influence is much less in those matters which are settled in cabinet meeting than in others. In the former case the sovereign is not usually consulted until the question has been thoroughly discussed, and the cabinet has reached a decision which is the more difficult to change because it is often the result of a compromise, and has, therefore, something of the binding force of an agreement; whereas, in questions which are not brought directly before the cabinet, the Crown when consulted has to overcome only the opinion, and perhaps the hasty opinion, of one or two ministers. This is true in such matters as the less important foreign relations, ecclesiastical and other patronage, and the ordinary executive work of the various departments. But herein another difference must be observed. The executive action of the government in domestic affairs is usually brought under very close scrutiny by Parliament, and is subjected to a galling fire there. Hence the minister, with the volley of questions levelled at the Treasury Bench ever before his mind, finds it more difficult in these affairs to yield his opinion to that of the monarch than he does in the case of foreign negotiations, and of ecclesiastical, judicial and military patronage, which are not habitually discussed in Parliament.[43:1] It would seem, therefore, that under ordinary circumstances the personal influence of the King in political matters is not likely to be very effectively asserted outside of foreign affairs, church patronage, and some other appointments to office.

Personal Influence of Queen Victoria.

Although one can perceive the general limitations upon the personal influence of the monarch imposed by the conditions under which it is exercised, one can never know how vigorously it is being used at the moment; and, indeed, it is difficult to estimate its actual effect during any comparatively recent period. There is no use in going back beyond the reign of Queen Victoria, to times when the parliamentary system was so imperfectly developed that ministers sometimes gave individual and contrary advice to the King;[43:2] and since the Queen came to the throne very little has been published which throws light upon the subject. From the various memoirs and letters of her ministers almost everything has been eliminated that bears upon the actual influence she exerted. Nevertheless certain facts appear. There can be no doubt that the personal opinions of the monarch were deemed of greater importance at the time of the Queen's accession than they are to-day. Of late years, indeed, many popular writers have tended to neglect the royal influence altogether. With the love of broad generalisation, which is at once valuable and perilous in political philosophy, publicists have been in the habit of speaking of the Queen as a figurehead; but statesmen who have seen the inner life of the cabinet know that the metaphor is inexact. Mr. Gladstone is reported to have said that every treatise on the English government which he had read failed to estimate her actual influence at its true value; and in his "Gleanings of Past Years"[44:1] he remarks, "there is not a doubt that the aggregate of direct influence normally exercised by the sovereign upon the counsels and proceedings of her ministers is considerable in amount, tends to permanence and solidity of action, and confers much benefit on the country." Perhaps at a later period he might have stated this less strongly; and although no final judgment can yet be formed, one may venture an estimate of the Queen's influence in the different branches of the government.

In Domestic Policy.

The effect of the Queen's personal preferences in the selection of the Prime Minister and his colleagues has already been discussed, and it may be added that on two or three occasions a cabinet, instead of resigning on a defeat in the Commons, dissolved Parliament in deference to her wishes;[44:2] but except for this it is hard to find definite traces of her influence upon the general domestic policy of the country. Yet in some departments, at least, of the public service she took a very lively interest. At times she was prodigal of suggestions and advice, which bore, as far as one can see, no positive fruit. She held her opinions strongly, expressed them boldly, and was frank in her criticism of measures, but did not succeed apparently in persuading her ministers to abandon or even to modify them. On more than one occasion she used her personal influence over the peers to prevent a disagreement between the Houses, but this was never done to give effect to her own personal views, and in the case of the Irish Church Disestablishment Bill it was done to secure the passage of a government measure with which she was not herself in sympathy.[45:1] In short her personal influence in domestic affairs, either in the form of initiating policy, or of effecting changes in that of her ministers, seems to have been very slight. To this statement, however, a couple of exceptions must be made, which relate to the Army and the Church. The Queen, who regarded the Army as peculiarly dependent upon the sovereign, procured the appointment of a royal duke as Commander-in-Chief, and for a time she resisted successfully all attempts to change the vague relation of that office to the Crown,[45:2] although in the end it was made completely subordinate to the minister responsible to Parliament.[45:3] In the matter of ecclesiastical appointments her opinions were expressed with still greater effect, bishops and deans having in several cases been selected by her, sometimes in preference to candidates proposed by the Prime Minister.

In Foreign Affairs.

But it was in foreign affairs that the Queen's efforts were most untiring, and on the whole most successful, in spite of many disappointments. For years she was opposed to Lord Palmerston's aggressive attitude, and while she never effected a radical change of policy, she appears at times to have softened it to some extent.[45:4] Throughout her reign she insisted upon the right to criticise despatches, and not infrequently she caused changes to be made in them; sometimes, as in the European crisis of 1859-1861, by appealing from the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister to the cabinet as a whole.[46:1] The most famous case is that of the Trent Affair in 1861, where the changes made in a despatch, in accordance with the suggestions of the Prince Consort a few days before his death, avoided a danger of serious trouble with the United States. In foreign affairs, therefore, it is safe to conclude that while the Queen never initiated a policy, her influence had on several important occasions a perceptible effect in modifying the policy of her ministers.

Changes during the Queen's Reign.