CABINET GOVERNMENT.

Taranaki Daily News, 10 July 1917, Page 4

CABINET GOVERNMENT.

A correspondent writes inquiring the origin of Cabinet Government. Before replying directly to the query, it may (be as well to explain how the word Cabinet became applied to executive administration. ,It is customary in a monarch's residence to have an apartment set aside (for the transaction of Government business and usually designated as -the King's Cabinet. In the Sri tish system of government the Cabinet is a body composed of the heads of the chief executive departments who arc jointly responsible for the government of the country, so it will be seen that the word cabinet as applied to government takes its name from tho place of meeting of the chief Ministers of the Crown for the time Ibeing. This corporate responsibility is the product of a struggle between the legislature and the executive which forms the central feature of English history. The Cabinet lias no legal recognition; it is merely a collection of individuals who happen to hold certain offices, for purposes of deliberation. For the last 300 years or more the Cabinet has taken the place % whieh, for the previous. 200 years, had been held by the Privy Council. Ministers are of necessity Privy Councillors, but the Privy Council was, and still in theory is, the executive, the Cabinet being the motive power. As to the origin, of Cabinet, it was evolved in due time by the process of constitutional development. From early Anglo-Saxon times the central government was carried on by the King assisted by the magnates and wise men. In 1295 the Great Council became a fully representative Parliament, and between that time and the Wars of the Roses the two houses of Parliament gradually acquired control of all national business, and in 16S0 the British parliament finally established the modern limited monarchy, but it 'was under the first of the two Georges that the Calbinet system was developed, whereby the effective sovereignty of the nation was transferred from the monarch to a ministry supported Iby a majority in the House of Commons. In the nineteenth century the Cabinet system was perfected, and the full representation of the people ensured by sweeping electoral reforms. Ministers are now directly responsible to parliament and not to the King.