Footnote 93: The one notable instance in which this rule has been departed from within the past seventy-five years was Gladstone's tenure of the post of Secretary of State for the Colonies during the last six months of the Peel administration in 1846.[(Back)]
Footnote 94: On the reasons for the requirement of re-election and the movement for the abolition of the requirement see Moran, The English Government, 108-109.[(Back)]
Footnote 95: In France and other continental countries in which the parliamentary system obtains an executive department is represented in Parliament by its presiding official only. But this official is privileged, as the English minister is not, to appear and to speak and otherwise participate in proceedings on the floor of either chamber.[(Back)]
Footnote 96: Government of England, I., 57. See MacDonaugh, The Book of Parliament, 148-183.[(Back)]
Footnote 97: The same thing is true of the President's cabinet in the United States. The reasons for the policy are obvious and ample; but the preservation of cabinet records, whether in Great Britain or the United States, would, if such records were to be made accessible, facilitate enormously the task of the historian and of the student of practical government.[(Back)]
Footnote 98: Moran, The English Government, 99.[(Back)]
Footnote 99: In a statute fixing the order of precedence of public dignitaries. The premier's position, however, was defined by a royal warrant of December, 1905.[(Back)]
Footnote 100: The resignation of the premier terminates ipso facto the life of the ministry. An excellent illustration of the accustomed subordination of individual differences of opinion to the interests of cabinet solidarity is afforded by some remarks made by Mr. Asquith, December 4, 1911, to a deputation of the National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage. The deputation had called to protest against the Government's announced purpose to attach a suffrage amendment (if carried in the House of Commons) to a forthcoming measure of franchise reform. The Premier explained that he was, and always had been, of the opinion that "the grant of the parliamentary franchise to women in this country would be a political mistake of a very grievous kind." "So far," he continued, "we are in complete harmony with one another. On the other hand, I am, as you know, for the time being the head of the Government, in which a majority of my colleagues, a considerable majority of my colleagues—I may say that without violating the obligation of cabinet secrecy...—are of a different opinion; and the Government in those circumstances has announced a policy which is the result of their combined deliberations, and by which it is the duty of all their members, and myself not least, to abide loyally. That is the position, so far as I am personally concerned."[(Back)]
Footnote 101: Low, The Governance of England, Chap. 9; M. Sibert, Étude sur le premier ministre en Angleterre depuis ses origines jusqu'à l'époque contemporaine (Paris, 1909).[(Back)]
Footnote 102: The English Constitution (new ed.), 79.[(Back)]