but ne cessitates harmony

ters and

is in a permanent minority in the House of Lords, yet the House of Lords does not attempt, and nobody ever supposes that it will attempt, to throw out the Army Bill. When a Ministry is censured by the House of Commons, or is beaten on a division in a matter which it has declared to be vital to its existence, nobody ever supposes that it will remain in office and violate the law. We expect that the Queen will change her Ministers unless she has reason to believe that the House of Commons does not represent the feeling of the country, and in that case she will change her House of Commons by a dissolution of Parliament.

But we must not forget that the possible violation of the law is not the only reason why a Ministry should retire when it is shown to have lost the confidence of the House or of the country. Ministers are not only the servants of the Queen, they represent the public opinion of the United Kingdom. When they cease to impersonate public opinion they become a mere group of personages who must stand or fall by the prudence and success of their action. They may have to deal with disorders at home or hostile manifestations abroad; they would have to meet these with the knowledge that they had not the confidence or support of the country; and their opponents at home and abroad would know this too 1.

We arrive then at this point, that the Crown, as represented by its Ministers, must, by the conventions of the constitution, of Minis be in harmony with public opinion as represented by the Commons, members of the House of Commons. The legal necessity lies in the background; it forms an ultimate sanction which is not often present to the minds of those who act upon it.

1 It is possible for a Ministry to remain in office for a considerable time after undergoing a vote of censure without any risk of breaking the law. Lord Salisbury's government, in 1892, might have held office during the recess, for a period of five or six months, after a vote of want of confidence had been passed by the House of Commons. The practical and vital objection to such action on the part of a Ministry would be found in the weakness of its position if it had to discuss critical diplomatic questions with foreign powers.

and

People.

The conventional necessity is wholly outside the contempla- as representing tion of law. The will of the electorate can only be expressed Crown through its representatives, just as the will of the Crown can only be expressed through its Ministers, and what is sometimes talked of as 'the mandate of the constituencies' has no more legal value than the private opinion of the Queen on a question of national policy.

A member of the House of Commons represents not merely the constituency which has returned him to Parliament but the entire kingdom1. He is bound to respect the wishes of his constituents, partly because he may have engaged himself at the time of his election to try and promote them, partly because he may fear rejection at the next occasion of his being a candidate if he does not act up to his professions. But he is bound also to remember that he represents the Commons of the realm, and that the interests of his constituency are but a fraction of the interests which he has in charge.

In this manner a vote of the majority of the House of Commons against a Ministry in the nature of a vote of censure is an indication, probable though not certain, that the majority of the electorate desire to see the policy of the country directed by other hands: it foreshadows remotely certain legal difficulties which have never as yet been allowed to arise.

It may seem fanciful to attribute to an expression of opinion, which, however important in its results, has no immediate legal operation, the character of a judicial proceeding. This mode of passing judgment upon the executive was certainly not present to those who first wrote and spoke of the High Court of Parliament. Yet the practical control thus acquired by modern Parliaments over the choice and policy of the Ministers of the Crown represents the successful issue of a struggle which began when the mediaeval Parliaments asked

1 Coke, 4 Inst. 14.

that the officers of state should be chosen by themselves, or at least nominated in their presence. At any rate this appeared to me to be an attribute of Parliament which could not be passed by, and which if it was to be dealt with at all had better be dealt with here.