eign secretary before they are submitted for the sovereign's approval; and if the former sees fit to rewrite the whole despatch, the latter has no right to be offended.2 nance of household; tary control revenue tion; While thus considering the vestiges of political authority Maintestill inherent in the person of the sovereign, it will be con- royal venient to briefly epitomize the financial arrangements made dignity and by parliament since the Revolution for the maintenance of the royal dignity and household. An account has heretofore been parliamengiven of the nearly absolute control established by the legisla- over the ture at the accession of William and Mary over the revenue, since the involving both the appropriation of supplies and the direction Revoluof their expenditure, — a system out of which arose what is known as the "civil list," a term originally used to designate "civil list " the sources of revenue appropriated to produce a fund to be defined; devoted to the king's personal expenses, the support of the royal household, and to the payment of certain civil officers and pensions embraced in a list that was laid before the house. The principle was thus settled that out of the annual revenue principle of appropriavoted for the support of the crown in time of peace a certain tion settled; portion should be appropriated to those objects, and that portion embraced the hereditary revenues and a certain part of the excise heretofore specially defined. During the reigns of reigns of Queen Anne and George I. their expenditures far exceeded George 1. the sums thus appropriated, and parliament was called upon to expendi pay the loans made to cover such deficits. When the heredi- exceeded tary revenues were passed on to George II., it was expressly tions; agreed that if they should fall below £800,000 a year parlia- arrangement should pay the deficit, and that if they exceeded that ment upon sum the king should have the surplus.5 As that arrange- George II.; George III., ment proved unsatisfactory, parliament upon the accession for a fixed of George III. induced him to accept a fixed amount "for sum, surthe support of his household and the honour and dignity of claim to the crown," 6 in consideration of which he relinquished his revenue; 1 Gladstone, Ch. Quar. Rev., vol. iii. P. 481. 2 Lord Russell testified that when Lord Palmerston was premier and he minister of foreign affairs (1859 to 1865), “according to the uniform practice of the foreign office, the despatches which I wrote were submitted to him as prime minister; frequently he would write the whole despatch over again, and I was always ready to accept his 8 See above, pp. 419, 420. 4 1 Geo. I. c. I; Burke's Works, vol. ii. p. 309. 28. Geo. II. c. I. 6 Commons' Journals, vol. xxviii. p. during the Anne and tures appropria contingent accession of rendered all hereditary William IV. surren life interest in the hereditary revenues, and all claim to the surplus.1 A further arrangement was necessary, however, to make the control of parliament complete, for the reason that the king still enjoyed considerable sums independent of its grants in the form of droits of the crown and admiralty and other casual sources of revenue in England, in addition to certain hereditary revenues in Scotland and a separate civil list for Ireland.2 Not until the accession of William IV. did the des crown surrender all of these independent sources of revenue dependent in consideration of a civil list of £510,000, which represented revenue for a reduction by reason of the fact that it was then relieved of £510,000; nearly all of the charges that properly belonged to the ordinary expenses of civil government. Upon that basis of absolute parliamentary control was settled the civil list of Queen control over Victoria, the first sovereign of her house to be deprived of the revenue of the kingdom of Hanover, detached at her accession from the crown of England. sources of a civil list of parlia ment's absolute civil list of present sovereign. Royal revenue originally ent of grants; of what it originally consisted; In the account heretofore given of the royal revenue as it existed in the days of the Old-English commonwealth, the fact independ was emphasized that it was not contingent upon legislative legislative grants. In addition to the private estates (propria hereditas) which he possessed as an individual and which he could disof by will, the king enjoyed the use of the royal demesne, pose which belonged to him as king, and which he could neither distinction burden nor alienate without the consent of the witan, and also certain dues in the nature of rent which finally became comestate and pulsory charges, certainly upon all holders of folkland. The distinction thus clearly drawn between the king's private estates and the folkland, the land of the people, gradually dis how the between king's private folkland disap peared; 1 I Geo. III. c. I. He surrendered "the hereditary_revenues, which were carried to the Fund termed 'the Aggregate Fund,' receiving a grant of 800,000 1. per annum secured on the Fund." - Dowell, Hist. of Taxation, vol. ii. p. 507. When that amount was found to be inadequate, it was increased to £900,000. 17 Geo. III. c. 21. 2 For the history of these sources, see May, Const. Hist., vol. i. pp. 235245. 8 Report on Civil Government Charges, 1831, 1 Geo. IV. c. I. The £510,000 was appropriated to their majesties' privy purse, salaries of the household, expenses of the household, special and secret service, and pensions. "The term civil list was retained as a convenient short term to designate this expenditure, though the civil list, properly so termed, no longer was included therein."- Dowell, Hist. of Taxation, vol. ii. p. 511. 4 Its amount was then fixed at £385,000, with the item of £75,000 for pensions omitted. Pensions granted under the Civil List Act, 1 Vict. c. 2, had increased the original amount to £409,000 in 1884-85. theory that held of the Anne's revenues of checked by appeared, however, as the idea gained ground that the king of the whole nation was the lord of the whole people, and as such was possessed of their land as terra regis. With the full development of feudalism after the conquest, the artificial con- feudal ception gained ground that all land was originally held of the all land was crown by feudal tenures; and the revenue thus flowing from originally the national domain, considered as the private patrimony of crown; the king, was swelled by the feudal incidents into great proportions.1 Not until the accession of Queen Anne was the in Queen process through which the land revenues of the crown had reign waste been wasted for centuries by improvident alienations checked of land by an act of parliament, in which the confession was made that the crown such revenues had already been so reduced that they "could statute; then afford very little towards the support of her government." By that act all absolute alienations were positively prohibited, and stringent limitations imposed upon the making limitations of all future leases, which were to be granted for a term not imposed longer than thirty-one years, or three lives. As a final settle- on royal ment of the whole matter, parliament, in the arrangement complete made with George III. for the support of his household and surrender finally of the royal dignity, stipulated that the crown should surrender made by George III.; to the nation all that remained of its land revenues in exchange for the civil list then secured to him. Thus were the royal demesnes "handed over to be dealt with like the other revenues of the state, to be disposed of by parliament for the public service. That is to say, the people have won back their own; . . . the terra regis of the Norman has once more be- terra regis come the folkland of our earliest freedom." 5 And in accord- into folkance with the precedents of those early times, the sovereign land; was again endowed by law with the right to acquire and dis- now empose of private property like any other individual. As an deal with exception to the arrangement thus made, the crown has been property permitted to retain the revenues of the duchies of Lancaster other 1 Vol. i. pp. 178, 182, 233, 236, 383. 21 Anne, c. 7, s. 5. 3 And even in that event a reasonable rent was to be reserved. 4 See above, p. 551. 5 Freeman, Growth of the Eng. Const., p. 140. 6 Cf. 39 & 40 Geo. III. c. 88; 4 Geo. IV. c. 18; 25 & 26 Vict. c. 37. "As our present sovereign in so many other respects holds the place of Æl- then grants; converted sovereign powered to individual. Origin of cabinet their distri bution; and Cornwall, the former the property of the reigning sovereign, the latter the independent inheritance of the prince of Wales, as duke of Cornwall. Before attempting to explain the delicate relations that bind Officers and the cabinet to the legislature, it may be well to indicate briefly method of the origin of the offices usually allotted to its members, and the manner in which such offices are distributed by the crown through the prime minister as its immediate representative. in theory, The theory is that the sovereign personally chooses the prime personally minister, and that he selects his colleagues subject to the crown's approval. The fact is that the crown can choose only one of the few great leaders of the two historic parties as prime minister, and he in turn is limited in his choice to the under chiefs in his own ranks who stand next to him in the sovereign chooses premier, and he his colleagues; in fact, sovereign's right to choose pre- public confidence. "Between the compulsory list, whom he mier very limited; number of cabinet settled by premier ; must take, and the impossible list, whom he cannot take, a prime minister's independent choice in the formation of the cabinet is not very large; it extends rather to the division of the cabinet offices than to the choice of cabinet ministers."1 The number of the cabinet, which is variable, is determined by the prime minister himself with the consent of the sovereign. The first of George III. consisted of fourteen members, of whom only one was a commoner; and in 1785 that number was reduced by Mr. Pitt to seven, all of whom had seats in the house of lords except himself. After his time it became customary for the cabinet to consist of from ten to sixteen members, a number "as large as it ought to be, and it seems officers of to be generally adopted as such by both parties." The offi state who usually compose the cabinet; 3 cers of state who according to modern usage generally compose the cabinet are the lord chancellor, the president of the council, the privy seal, the first lord of the treasury, the chancellor of the exchequer, the five principal secretaries of state for the home, foreign, colonial, war, and Indian departments, the first lord of the admiralty, the president of the 1 Bagehot, The Eng. Const., p. 12. 8 There were eight of ducal rank, Stanhope's Life of Pitt, vol. i. pp. 71, 165. 5 Lord Granville, Rep. Com. on Education, Com. Pap., 1865, vol. vi.; Evid. 1883; Todd, Parl. Government, vol. i. p. 283. The number is, however, increasing. The present cabinet of Lord Salisbury consists of twenty members. See the list in Whitaker's Almanack for 1897, p. 150. offices very ancient ; offices with Board of Trade, the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, and the president of the Local Government Board.1 It is hardly necessary to add that some of these offices are very ancient, some of the while others are of quite modern creation. The attempt has heretofore been made to show how it was that the council, through the decline in the influence of the nobles as leaders of the nation, was gradually transformed from an independent body that stood as a bridle upon the will of the king into a mere corps of trained officials subject to his direction. While the nobles still retained the hereditary offices with ever dimin- hereditary ishing duties, the council was continually reinforced by com- diminishing moners, who during the days of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth duties; began to assume the more active duties of administration.2 In the course of the transition from that state of things to the modern ministerial system a few of the ancient great offices a few have have been retained; others have been dissolved and their duties distributed; while in order to meet the requirements of have been new conditions, others have been very recently created. Four four officers officers of state of the first class who usually form a part of t all modern cabinets are the lord chancellor, whose duties are all cabinets. political as well as judicial; the president of the council, who serves without a portfolio in order to perpetuate an honorary political station whose importance has dwindled with that of the council as a whole: the lord privy seal, who seals warrants for the great seal and as such is at the head of a ministerial as distinguished from an administrative department; and the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster.3 survived, dissolved; enter into finances ment that dissolution The vast income and expenditure of the British Empire, an British estimate of which is annually laid before the house of com- managed by mons in a balance sheet called "The Budget," is managed by a a departdepartment of finance which has grown out of the dissolution arose out of of the ancient office of lord treasurer, who in the seventeenth of the century frequently appears as the leading minister of state. office of lord During that century the administration of the office was carried on at intervals by a commissioner; and since the reign 1 The lord lieutenant and the lord chancellor of Ireland are sometimes members. 2 See above, p. 177. The lord high constable, whose office 4 As in 1612, 1635, 1641, 1658, and 3 The lord chamberlain is an hereditary officer without administration. 1679. treasurer; |