LORD JOHN’S NEW POSITION.

New Zealander, Volume 9, Issue 755, 9 July 1853, Page 3

LORD JOHN’S NEW POSITION.

(From the Spectator, Feb. 20.)

The new arrangement «f the Ministi’y, by which Lord John Russell relinquishes the seals of the Foreign Office to the Earl of Clarendon, but retains his seat in the Cabinet without office and his leadership of the Commons, has given rise to va rious remarks, criticising the arrangement. It does not appear to us, however, that the writers grasp the real question involved. The Standard, for example, denounces an Innovation which places a Commoner in the Cabinet without office, because he is ihus without official responsibility ; an objection which the writer does not seem to entertain with regard to Peers, because they are “ the hereditary advisers of the Sovereign, entitled at all times to access to the Royal presence in order to tender their advice,” which makes them virtually Cabinet Ministers, whether they are or are not charged with any official duty. Our contemporary reads his constitutional history in this matter without his usual clearness. The Peers are the hereditary advisers of the Sovereign, for the reason that Peers in old times, armed with sword, wealth, and feudal power, were able to intrude into the presence of the Sovereign, and to force their advice upon him whether he would or not. They are hereditary Privy Councillors, but not hereditary members of that Cabinet Council which the Sovereign selects for himself. Neither are they more responsible than Commoners; rather the reverse, since they owe account neither to constituency nor to Sovereign. Theoretically they are less "fitted than a Commoner to undertake a post which ought not to be granted save to a responsible holder.

Another journalist is professedly chagrined at the probability that Lord John Russell may find Inn.self a Cabinet Minister without any patronage at Ins disposal to purchase the.influence due to so distinguished a position ; and the writer indulges a hope, therefoae, that Lord John Russell will be duly consulted by Lord Aberdeen in the disposal of Ministerial patronage ; an example offering itself in the vacant Bishopric of Lincoln. In other words, the writer suggests that patronage like the disposal of a bishopric, is a very fair subject for bickering amongst statesmen who are competing fbr the disposal of patronage ; and a hope is insidiously hinted that Lord Aberdeen and Lord John Russell preserve a better understanding between ca< hj other than to quarrel about the privileges of office. We have no expectation that these eminent statesmen will give way to bickering; and there fore the anxiety of our contemporary on the score of a good understanding between the two leaders of the Ministers, is likely to be more amusing than mischievous.

_ There is no question, however, that the post assigned to Lord John Russell is both an anomaly and an innovation. It is true that statesmen have before now sat in the Cabinet without office; and it is true that the Peer is not more responsible than tlie Commoner. Still, the assignment of the post to a Commoner is a further innovation, and a new instance which tends to confirm an exceptional resort as an established practice. Mr. Cayley’s proposal to give a salary to “ the Leader” of the House of Commons, as such, shows how irregular and provisional the arrangement is felt to be.— There is no doubt that the old species of Ministerial responsibility which shields the Crown from responsibility—the liability to be impeached, with capital punishment, which would make a Strafford serve in lieu of a Charles the First—is now obsolete, and we are not likely to see any Minister’s head rolling in the saw dust. It becomes more necessary, therefore, that the mild species ot responsibility which exists should not be rashly abandoned ; that responsibility consists in the vole of the Commons, and in the general bearing,of public opinion. It is a compound of the Minister’s power to get supplies from the Commons, and of his own power to endure public reprobation. As long as he can get cash, and does not mind being sent to Coventry by press or public, responsibility does not lie heavy upon him. Now, practically, a Minister is not so likely to be called to book when he is unattached as when he is in office ; the details of which give rise to those definite motions that alone command the attention of the Commons. In office, a Minister must account in detail for his public conduct; unattached, there are comparatively few points upon which he can be called to account.

There may be a practicable inconvenience in such an immunity, aggravated by another possible consequence. If the practice of summoning to the Cabinet Council Ministers who are not in office, be established, it would be no great stretch of the innovation to summon to the Council men who have not been in office at all. If it so pleased the Crown, it would be possible to confer a seat in the Cabinet upon some person who had undergone no training in any department; who was thus far a dilettante Minister, but whose commanding influence with the Throne or with the Parliament, might place the Legislature, the People, and the Crown, in very false relations. Without any departure from the record of the new precedent, it might be possible to call (o the Cabinet a man, young, audacious, and favoured by the Throne, especially if that Throne were filled, by a woman The most questionable part ofthe new arrangement lies in the fact that there is an innovation without any determinate conditions or limitation of its applicability. When changes, not greater than this, are introduced into our constitution, it is the useful custom to invite the concurrence of the Legislature in a Bill, which so affixes limits to the new plan that it cannot be subsequently extended beyond the original purport. What definite record will exist in the present instance I —None. It is therefore an innovation indeterminate ; and, as such, it may well include the seeds of further innovations not yet disclosed to us. We are far from saying that improvements may not be made in the relations of Ministers to the entire Cabinet, to the Crown, or to Parliament. We admit the convenience which may arise from placing a man of commanding powers in an advantageous position at the head of a Ministry, without departmental dutjes. But there are other reforms still more familiar to the public anticipation, if the Ministerial system were to be revised. There is, for example, the question of giving to Ministers scats ex ollicio in the House of Commons. There is also the question as to the appointment of a Minister of Education ; another as to the appointment of a Minister of Justice, who should be able to supervise the general administration of the law, and to mediate between the legal profession and the public at large, without embarrassment by judicial or official duties and bonds. But changes of this kind, however recognised by the public sanction, ought not to be effected without some formal instrument, which shall limit the precedent, and prevent its extension to mutations not contemplated by the suggestion of the original reform : such formal procedure would be a much more safe as well as convenient mode of effecting an innovation.