The Evening Star THURSDAY, MAY 22, 1873.

Evening Star, Issue 3199, 22 May 1873, Page 2

The Evening Star THURSDAY, MAY 22, 1873.

During the late debate in the Provincial Council assertions were dogmatically and freely made in justification of the stand taken by the Opposition. One was that according to Constitutional practice in Great Britain, on the resignation of a Ministry during the recess, a Parliament would have to be convened, and that the monarch dare not do otherwise than select a Ministry from the majority of the Commons. It was concluded, therefore, that the Superintendent had acted unconstitutionally in doing neither. Now, neither of these positions is true in fact or theory. We by no means admit the analogy between the Constitution of the Provincial Council—a purely local Legislature, with modes of procedure hemmed round by specified limitations, and subordinate to a higher Parliament and the House of Commons. To compare the privileges of Colonial Governments with those claimed by the House of Commons at Home, and to base our theories of self-government upon the practice there, would be to allow ourselves to be led into continual error. It is possible that the written Constitutions of the Colonies, in some respects, invest the heads of Governments with powers which would be considered incompatible with that freedom from control claimed by the Commons at Horae. But in the late proceedings in the Provincial Council, dictatorial claims have been asserted by the Council beyond what the House of Commons has ever ventured to put forward. We have thus laid down three positions :—First, “It is not necessary at Home to convene Parliament on the death or resignation of a Minister during a Parliamentary recess; secondly, that it does not follow of necessity that a Ministry shall be selected from a Paliamentary majority ; and thirdly, that no dictatorial power is claimed by the Commons.” These will appear from the following instances Acting upon the acknowledged right to appoint his own Ministers, in 1784 George the Third formed an Administration under Mr Pitt in the face of a large majority of the House of Commons, which time after time expressed that it bad no confidence in the new Ministry, and requested the King to remove them. This change was made by the King before the Appropriation Act passed, and on an appeal to the country, the action of the King was sustained by a large majority. In the autumn of 1834, on a similar principle, W illiam th e F oURTH summarily dismissed his Ministry, and the Duke of Wellington conducted all the administrative affairs of the United Kingdom, pending the formation of a new Ministry under Sir Robert Peel. The immediate cause of the change was that Lord Althorpe, Chancellor of the Exchequer, was called to the Upper House by the death of his father Earl Spencer. Sir Robert Peel was gazetted first Lord of the Treasury on the Bth December, and did not even meet the existing Parliament, which was dissolved on the 30th of that month.

The second position is equally untenable, viz,; “ That the Queen ” —by which we understand those who made use of the term to mean the reigning monarch—“dare not do otherwise than select a Minister from the majority of the Commons.” This strange notion arises from utter ignorance of the history of Parliament, and a total misconception of the functions of Legislative bodies in their relation to the Executive head. We have already pointed out that in 1784, a year in which perhaps more learned and protracted discussions on Constitutional usage took place in Parliament than either before or since, George the Third dismissed a Ministry which enjoyed the support of a large majority in the House of Commons, and appointed one in defiance of repeated expressions of “ want of confidenceand we have also instanced the course of action taken by William the Fourth in 1834. It is obviously necessary to repeat these illustrations when they bear upon special principles; for even in the history of a nation cases in point are not so frequent as to supply numerous precedents frqm which to choose. In the last instance the country did not coincide with the King’s opinion of his Ministry, but returned a House of Commons that pronounced against the Peel Administration by a majority on the Speakership of ten -votes : the numbers being 3IG to 306. On the Address in reply, they were outvoted by 309 against 302-; but notwithstanding these adverse numbers, they continued to hold office six weeks longer, and, finally succumbing on the Irish tithe question, gave place to Lord Melbourne’s Administration.

With regard to the position taken by the Council, that it should be con-

suited in the appointment of Ministers, such a claim has never even been made by the House of Commons. In 1784, the House of Lords, in support of the King and Mr Pitt, by vote declared His Majesty’s undoubted right to appoint his own Ministers. When the Reform Bill was lost in the House of Lords, they did not even find fault with His Majesty’s servants. The Imperial Parliament, in fact, acts as a Council of advice, not as an instrument of coercion j which it would be, were it necessary to ask who shall or shall not compose an Executive, Mr Pitt contended that “ the independence of the Crown, and even its existence was endangered, if its prerogative were usurped by the Commons,” This might be strictly true, were there no remedy; but since the final appeal is to the constituencies, and the Crown has the power of advising with the people by means of an election of Representatives, if the King and people agree in placing confidence in the same persons, the Commons House is remodelled, and the difference between them and the Monarch set at rest. Dr. Hearn puts this point, as well as the constitutional remedies, so clearly, that we reprint the passage in extenso :— The King has the undoubted right to appoint and to retain in his service any Ministers that he thinks fit. His Parliament has a right equally indisputable to advise him to dismiss the Ministers thus appointed. But if the King decline to accept that advice, the harmony between the Crown and the Parliament, between the Executive and the Legislature, is at an end. In such a case the King has no other course than to dismiss the Parliament, whose advice he no longer finds suitable to his requirements. _____