THE BRITISH CABINET.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1503, 27 July 1912, Page 14

THE BRITISH CABINET.

'AND THE INNER JUNTA WHICH RULES. (By Sidney Low, in the "Daily Mail.") Tlio Attorney-General's promotion to tho Cabinet is a novelty, not only in its character but an its form. Tho offichl announcement stated , that Sir R-ufus Isaacs had been appointed a member of "ibis Majesty's Cabinet." This must be pretty nearly the first time, perhaps it is the very first time-, that the phrase has been used in a formal document. The Cabinet is so "unknown to the Constitution" that (its name is scarcely ever mentioned officially. In tho middlo of th» lust century a Committee of the House of Commons recommended that ;a certain precedence should be given to "Cabinet Ministers," but this proposal was rejected on tho ground that the House of Commons had no cognisance of tho existence of such persons. It was not, I believe, till twelve years ago that the word "Cabuiet" ev.en appeared eft tho noticepaper or other official document. And even now tlio Cabinet has no legal status, nnd it would puzzle any lawyer to define lit or to say precisely, what it is, though, of coavrso, we all know, more or less, what it does.

An Informal Body,

Strictly, speaking, "his Majesty's Cabinet" has no corporate existence. A Cabinet Minister is merely a Privy Councillor who is entrusted with certain administritivo duties and gets paid for doing them. Ptoplo often talk of the "Cabinet Minister's Oath"; but there is no such thing. The Minister only takes tho oath required from all other Privy Councillors. Every one of theso right honourable gentlemen has sworn "to bo a true and faithful servant unto the King's Majesty as one of his Majesty's Privy Council," and to "keep secret nil matters committed and revealed unto you or that shall be treated secretly in council." It' he is not in the Cabinet he has no secrets to reveal, for he hears none. The entire body of the Privy Council is supposed to advise the Sovereign en affairs of Stale. In practice all its executive and political functions ha-e passed into the hands of the -'secret committee of tho Kings servants, who nra quite correctly spoken of as'"the Government," for it'is they who collectively rulo the country, so long as they remain in office. But no Act of Parliament ever gave them these powers, which could not be asserted or defended iri any Court of law. They are due to prescription, accident, and custom. Technically the Cabinet as a Cabinet can do nothing. It cannot even write a letter or issue n signed order. It has not, indeed, the means of doing so, for it docs not keop a clerk or a typewriter, it has no office, nor, has it any money wherewith to buy a sheet of notepaper. The most powerful and important committee in tho world is without a staff,, a secretory, a eeal, a minute book, or a fixed location. When it assembles it has to depend on the hospitality of the Treasury or tho Foreign Office, or it may meet at tho privalo residence of one .of the members. Mr. Gladstone occasionally held his Cabinets in the suburban mansions near London, lent to him by his friends during the Parliamentary session. When a Cabinet Council sits it has no agenda before it, nor has it any record of what was done at, its last meeting. No~ono keeps tho minutes; and it is still deemed a. little contrary to etiquette for any Minister to take a. note of the proceedings, or, indeed, to write anything at the meotings at all. In fact the Cabinet Council is still treated as if it were nothing more than a casual private consultation \betwcen a few of the Privy Councillors. It bears the traces of its ancestry; for it was born over the , dinner table. It originated in the reign of Queen Anne in those famous Saturday dinners, at which a select group of tho Privy Council assembled to discuss tho affairs of their party without the presence of the Queen and of colleagues whose presence was not desired. The Cabinet has always kept to the tradition. It is a secret comraitteo of government and a secret committee of the dominant party in Parliament; and where the one function begins. and the other ends no one can ever say. All its members are collectively responsible for the acts of. one of them; but there are no means of knowing what.the decisions nf the Cabinet are at any moment till they are embodied in action, or how many of the Ministers may dissent from tho opinion of the majority, or whether indeed it is the majority or a minority that really direots tho policy. The Real Governing Council. Owing to various causes-the power of (ho Cabinet has increased of late years. But anothor change, equally important and less open to observation, is the steady growth'of the inner Cabinet, or real governing committee. This is mainly due to the size of modern Cabinets. Up till fifty years ago C'abinots of twelve, or even ten, were considered quite large enough. Now they usually contain twenty or twenty-one members, and there are signs of further expansion. But everybody accustomed to the work of committees knows that it is impossible to transact real confidential business with an assembly of this size. Wo havo here a reproduction of the process which evolved tho Cabinet from the Privy Council. The councils tend to become merely formal meetings, held less frequently than in. the past, and chiefly called to -register the decisions already arrived at in, intimate conversation betweon tho small group of powerful Ministers who really pull the ropes. So we get a Cabinet within a Cabinet, secrecy behind secrecy; for tho membership of tho ruling junta varies from timo to time according as personal influences rise and fall, ana it would be difficult even, for some of the Ministers themselves to say who constitute the Premier's confidential advisory council at any given moment. This throws an additional cloak of darkness over Cabinet proceedings, and renders it still more difficult to bring homo through Parliament that nominal responsibility which so many other circumstance's Lave tended to diminish. Por the constituencies and the electorate havo not only very limited means of learning what their mlors aro doing, but they do not in reality know who they are. Enshrouded within our miscellaneous large general committee of moro or less distinguished party politicians is the working effective "cabal," the junta of five or six or seven with its variable o.nd undisclosed composition. The junta ie not tho snnio now as it was a twelve-month ago, nnd it may be different a month hence. The history of Cabinet policy is tho hitfoiT of tho shifting of personal fereea within tire' Cnbinet, and that is a story of which little is.known except by inference and guesswork.