Durability of Administrations.

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to endure either the lofty arrogance of Pitt or the pompous trifling of Rockingham. All the relief his Majesty had was in varying the nature of his misery and changing his tormentors. In the first ten years of his reign occur seven prime ministers; and there would have been twice seven had the monarch been so lucky as to have a successor at hand every time he felt disposed to turn out an administration. We are not, therefore, disposed to see anything so very novel in the present state of political disorganization as to set it down to the account of a modern enactment. Wherever there are no great constitutional or fiscal questions at issue, political opinions will always be vaguely defined, and when political opinions are vaguely defined, there will be a series of weak administrations. In this respect we certainly are not worse off than at many antecedent epochs in our history. During the last six years our ministries have been as short-lived as during the eventful six years which immediately succeeded the passing of the Reform Bill, and yet, taking each of these periods, we can count only four administrations. But between 1805 and 1810 we can count the same number, and in 1782-83 four succeeded each other in one year and seven months. During the first ten years of the present reign occur only three administrations. In the tenth year of George III.'s reign Lord North was the seventh Prime Minister. The average length of administrations, from the accession of the House of Brunswick to the passing of the Reform Bill, is one in every four years. Their duration from 1832 to the present time only differs from this by a very small fraction. The fact is, in comparing the present with the past in this respect, we labour under a double delusion. Of recent administrations the shortest make the most lively impression on account of the novelty and excitement they afford; while, in dealing with the past, the longest take possession of our memories to the exclusion of the rest. We dwell upon the successful tactics of Walpole and the lengthy premiership of Liverpool and Pitt, until we lose sight of the short administration of Shelburne, which must be counted by months; that of Portland, which must be reckoned by weeks; and that of Bath, which must be numbered by hours!

But, in reality, the present collapsed state of party in the House of Commons, with its concomitant attendant of weak ministries, may be traced to causes which have as little to do with the Reform Bill as with the quadrature of the circle; and these are so far from being recondite, that none but children should be excused for overlooking them. Previous to the flight of James II., England saw a great army abandoned by its officers, who went over in a body to lay their swords at the feet of the

General against whom they were commissioned to fight. About twelve years ago this country beheld the same desertion in the political world. A great chieftain, surrounded by his staff, left the political ranks he had so often led to victory, and deliberately gave his support to the enemy. The army he abandoned, unlike the one collected on Salisbury Plain, elected a new set. of leaders, who carried on a more ruthless war with their late friends than with their old enemies. Though these attacks have been for some time suspended by the removal of the principal actor from the scene, the wounds inflicted are not yet cicatrized; and that little knot of chiefs still remains without followers, and the army which they abandoned is yet in the hands of leaders of doubtful faith or of questionable ability. The Whig chiefs, instead of availing themselves of the breach in the ranks of their opponents to secure their power, fell as usual into dissension; and that to such an extent as to allow themselves to be outwitted by a mutilated party which has its head in one place and its tail in another. Russell ejected Palmerston from power, who in turn did the same kind office for Russell; and when these gentlemen were again reinstated, their ultra followers stepped in to their extreme discomfiture, and settled some unpleasant accounts with both. That the quarrel of the two Whig leaders about the unauthorized recognition of Napoleon should be ascribed to the extension of the suffrage, and Sir Robert Peel's conversion on the Corn Laws should be set down to the disenfranchisement of boroughs in Schedule A, does appear to us one of the most extraordinary aberrations of the human intellect.

Though we are by no means inclined to short-lived ministries, we are not quite sure that more evil is not to be feared from those of a very durable character. Nearly every good measure which has received the sanction of the Legislature has been carried by administrations of four or five years' duration. Nearly every bad measure has been passed by administrations extending over twelve and eighteen years. Sir Robert Peel's last five years' administration repealed the Corn Laws. During Melbourne's six years' term of office the Municipal Act was passed; during the shorter ministerial tenure of Earl Grey the Indian trade was thrown open, the representation reformed, and the negro emancipated. The short-lived Wellington ministry gave us the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, and the Roman Catholic Relief Bill. The brief ministries of Grenville and Rockingham abolished the slave trade, carried economical reform, and repealed the Stamp Act; and the five years and a half dictatorship of the first Pitt won for us our principal outlying dependencies, and made the power of Britain paramount in every quarter of the

Lengthy Governments not desirable.

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491 globe; the second Pitt, North, and Walpole huddled all the little good they effected during their sixty-five years' tenure of Downing-street into one page, that page could not compete with the list which the brief administration of Earl Grey could furnish. To the first we owed a foreign policy which yoked this country to the wheel of Continental despotism, the tax on bread, the Alien Act, and the many dark bills of coercion necessitated by the spirit of rebellion which Lord Liverpool's Government voked by its unrelenting opposition to every moderate plan of reform. To the second we owe four hundred millions of debt which purchased defeat abroad and commercial panics at home. To the third we owe the loss of our American colonies, and to the fourth the destruction of the Sinking Fund which in a few years would have swallowed up the debt, and a system of parliamentary corruption which has no parallel in the most venal of imperial senates, or in the most slavish junto of Asiatic despotism. The reason of all this appears to be sufficiently obvious. Governments which have a presentiment of being short-lived are generally too weak to carry an obnoxious series of measures. They generally lean on popular favour for support against the personal antipathy of the sovereign, or a strongly organized opposition in Parliament. They are also invariably anxious to leave something behind them which will urge the country to demand their recall. On the other hand, the most durable ministries have always commanded large majorities in both Houses, and there has been the completest harmony between their movements and the predilections of the sovereign. This is the only class of governments which can persist in a policy really mischievous and distasteful to the nation. Our cabinets are at present unknown to the law, but we see no reason why they should be so, since so much depends on their operation. Among other regulations we would have their sittings determined by statute, and their existence connected with some limit in point of time. The Executive of America is dissolved every four years. That of Sweden cannot last longer than three. The Executive of Rome in its palmiest days was confined to one year; while that of the old Florentine Republic was of still shorter duration. Why should not ours be turned adrift if they manifest a disposition to go over their eighth or tenth year? Depend upon it governments lose nothing by the process of reconstruction. Antæus, from fresh contact with their mother earth, they derive renovated strength, and proceed on their course with new life and vigour. With no limit to their existence, they are too apt to wrench the representative machinery of the country to the fortification of their weakness, and to prolong their duration to a

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corrupt and feeble dotage. Such was the Government of Pelham, of Walpole, of Lord North, of the younger Pitt, of the late Lord Liverpool. Such, doubtless, would have been the Government of Percival had he lived to consolidate it. While everything goes on in the beaten track, the power of a ministry to continue in office is generally in proportion to its duration. The bench becomes filled with their creatures; the Customs and Excise with their placemen; the Church with their nominees. By means of commissions and the lucrative offices connected with the education and police of the country, every servile tongue and unprincipled pen is at their disposition. The nation becomes packed with their agents, who act with the joint force of a disciplined body, and who raise their voice in exulting huzzas above the crowd, until their admiration is mistaken for that of an enthusiastic country. There is hardly a doubt, had it not been for the Spanish and American wars, that by means of such machinery as this Walpole and North, like Pelham, Liverpool, and Pitt, would have died at the head of their respective administrations. The nation, having experienced the evils that result from the prolonged administration of an unprincipled minister, backed by the prejudices of the sovereign and a corrupt parliamentary majority, would do well to guard against a recurrence of the mischief. What we want is neither very weak nor very strong administrations, but those only of medium strength: such as have sufficient force to endure as long as they pursue a right course, and which are easily overset when they move in a wrong direction. Cabinets of ten years' growth, under chiefs tenacious of political power, have in general proved too strong for the country.

The only instrument the people possess for keeping the executive in check, is a compact and well organized opposition. The frequent election of Parliaments avail nothing to this end, if the members act without concerted effort, and as their individual volitions prompt. For the Government and its supporters being always a well knit body, act with disciplined force and united energy. If a mob of isolated senators attempt to arrest the progress of an administration, unless their numerical force be positively overwhelming, their disconnected efforts are likely to prove as unavailing as those of the rabble when they attempt to interfere with the march of a well serried body of infantry. But a well organised opposition is not always at hand. It has failed the nation at some antecedent periods of its history for a protracted period. It is wanting at the present moment, and if the tendency to senatorial dislocation which now prevails be not checked, it is likely to be wanting for some time to come.

Expediency of Party.

493

There appears to be a growing disposition in the country to regard those members of Parliament who refuse to be trammelled by party ties as the only incorruptible patriots, and to look upon the rest as lawyers speaking from a brief. When a speaker rises below the gangway, so conscious is he of this feeling, that the first thing he does to gain the favour of his hearers is to assure them he acts without collusion with any party in the House, and speaks solely under the pressure of his unbiassed convictions. This is quietly done with the air of a man who is clearing himself from dishonest imputations. Such sentiments, and the feelings to which they appeal, appear to us to arise out of a mistaken idea of the functions of legislators. These are not simply to criticise measures like editors of newspapers, to point out what is evil, and to defend what is good, but to take such steps as shall lead to the defeat of the one and the adoption of the other. This can only be effected by referring particular measures to general principles, and acting in concert with those who have adopted that line of policy which those general principles point out. Neutral senators either do not know their trade, or knowing their trade, lack the capacity to carry it out.

By the nature of the case, so long as we uphold the constitutional doctrine of the responsibility of cabinets in solidum, there must always be a strong body of senators regularly disciplined and bound in frank pledge to each other for the purpose of carrying the measures of the minister. Under the present system, as long as self interest, or private attachment, has any influence over men's minds, this body must of necessity exist at all times. The question, then, about the expediency of party, is not whether such unions shall exist, but whether we shall suffer them to be all on one side, and not adopt the same species of combination for exercising an efficient control over Governments which they have recourse to for the preservation of their power. If there is to be no party organization on the left of the Speaker's chair, it is surely fair there should be none on the right. If the benches opposite the treasury be filled with a fortuitous concourse of senators, it is right that those behind the treasury should be equally free from party distinction.

To effect this purpose we are invited* to break up the present homogeneous structure of cabinets; to choose ministers irrespective of party ties, and render each supreme in his own department, without any controlling agency but such as is interposed by the Parliament or the sovereign. Our reply to this scheme is, that it is inadequate, and even were it adequate, that it is * Homerson Cox, British Commonwealth, p. 41. North British Review, No. XLVII., p. 183.