George I, The King Who Spoke No English
The Beginnings of Cabinet Government
Whatever may be said or thought about the status of mid-twentieth-century Britain as a world power; however much the patriot may hanker after the power and the glory of empire un-regardful of the ruthlessness and often specious justification which the acquisition of it involved; however much the detractor may scoff at the reluctance to accept a second-rate role; only the ultimate cataclysmic event can ever expunge from the record of history the major contribution which the English have made to the right of man to order his own affairs, to govern his own political and social destiny through duly elected representatives.
The great Greek Empire, they say, gave Western civilization Philosophy; the great Roman Empire gave Western civilization Law and Roads; the English gave the world Democratic Government made to measure modern needs, a system which respects the rights of men, from lavatory attendant to Lord Great Chamberlain.
It was a system that was not thought out by men gathered round a table, met there for the purpose of drawing up a specification for government. It evolved over centuries from the interplay of human character, from the juxtaposition of weak kings and strong people, of strong kings and stubborn people, from force majeure and logical development, through persuasion and beheading, by design and by accident.
It was one of the latter which was directly responsible for the evolvement of two of the major features of British democratic government, the constitutional monarch and the Cabinet, which are, in fact, interlocking features. That is to say, once the Cabinet began to function automatically, the monarch surrendered his executive powers; once the monarch, in a country in which autocracy as a principle of government had been firmly rejected, ceased to attend the deliberations of his council, the council had to act. And the king thus tacitly passed the executive power to his council for one reason only, that, ignorant of their language, too stubborn, perhaps too old, to try to learn it, he could not follow their deliberations and grew bored of sitting hour after hour not able to understand or be understood.
That such a thorough-going Teuton should become king of an Anglo-Saxon people was the result of the Englishman’s inborn love for law and order, the symbol of which he liked to find in his ruler. If there was instability at the top, it tended to permeate through all the many aspects of national existence. Long experience of struggles to secure the succession had, by the eighteenth century, taught Englishmen that nothing can be more destructive of national well-being than this kind of internecine upheaval.
Their determination to avoid a repetition of the disorganization caused by the Wars of the Roses, for example, had made them prepared to look for the heir to the throne at the end of a line that might be so tenuous it only just held, provided it did stretch from a legitimate occupant of the throne whose own accession had been in the direct line. The fact that he on the end of the line might be a full-blooded foreigner did not perturb them; Henry Tudor the Welshman, James Stuart and William the Dutchman had all been foreigners. So when the father-son, or rather mother-son, descent petered out in Anne, they did not hesitate to accept the relative of the queen with the best title to descent, no matter how distant; in fact, they passed an Act of Settlement which established his title.
Born at Hanover on 28 March, 1660, the year of the Glorious Restoration, George Louis was the son of Ernest Augustus, Elector of Hanover, and Sophia, a grand-daughter of James I, and a second cousin of Anne, which made her son George Louis a second cousin once removed of the woman he would sometime succeed. The Act of Settlement of 1701 had named his mother first as successor of Anne, and in the event of Sophia predeceasing Anne had designated him.
In 1698 he had succeeded his father as Elector of Hanover, and when Anne died in 1714 was summoned to England to mount the vacant throne. The Hanoverians were by nature stolid and uninspired, and though possessing a measure of common sense, they were not well endowed intellectually. By English standards they were uncouth in manners, crude in morals, devoid of wit. George was a typical Hanoverian; nevertheless, he had the best claim to the throne of England.
He could do no harm for by 1714 it had become well-established that his advisers, though of his own choice, should be limited to the members of that party which commanded the majority in the House of Commons; ministers, therefore, who could claim to represent the will of the largest number of Englishmen. The advantages of this arrangement were discovered by William III, and it is somewhat strange that former monarchs had not realized that by this arrangement more than any other the guaranteeing of adequate financial supply to carry on the government could be more easily achieved.
Admittedly, the Whig junta of 1697 was not the first administration to be formed from a single party. The famous Cabal administration of Charles II’s reign is regarded by historians as the earliest Cabinet in English history. But it differed fundamentally from the modern concept of a Cabinet. Firstly, it had no collective unity. Its members—Clifford, Ashley, Buckingham, Arlington and Lauderdale, from the initials of whose names it derived its designation, were just five individual ministers whom the king chose and consulted as much or as little as he pleased. That they belonged to a group of politicians which professed the same views on major issues was quite fortuitous. The Cabal were responsible to the king, and not to parliament, and had little control over the legislature.
These modern characteristics of Cabinet government were slow to develop. Even by the end of William’s reign they were only just emerging. Anne’s reign began with a coalition government of Whigs and Tories, but by 1708 the resignation of the Tories left the ministry purely Whig. In 1710 it was supplanted by a Tory government, which remained in power until the death of Anne in 1714 brought the Hanoverians to the throne, and with them a Whig supremacy which lasted until 1770. None of these experiments between 1660 and 1714, however, can be regarded as Cabinets in the modern sense. The sovereign still framed policy, and consulted the chief ministers independently, when convenience dictated.
At this point it is necessary to consider briefly the general lines which had operated in the field of the monarch seeking and being tendered advice over the preceding centuries. To go no farther back than Henry II (1154-1189) we find the Curia Regis, or King’s Council, already well established. It was through this Council that the king wielded his power over the country. By the middle of the following century this council had become a body composed of a wide membership, resembling more a parliament than a body of experts designed to advise the king. After the institution of parliament by Simon de Montfort, the Council continued to exist, but it was much smaller, its functions more advisory, though it retained the judicial powers of the earlier greater councils.
In effect it was a royal Council, and it continued to develop, until by Richard. II’s reign (1377-1399) it had become known as the Privy Council. In this form it has continued to function down to the present day.
During the minority of Henry VI the Privy Council governed the country, while Henry VII used it merely as a sounding-board and acted upon such advice of its members as suited his own policies. From 1540 it became a regular organ of state, from which most of the existing administrative system developed. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it had two main functions: it acted as a council of state, discussing and advising the Crown on all matters of policy, and taking administrative action; and secondly, reinforced by judicial and other assessors, it functioned as a court of law.
Under Henry VIII the Privy Council comprised an average of twenty members; Mary had a Council of fifty or more; Elizabeth reduced them to under twenty, at which figure the membership remained until the Restoration; then the number began to increase once more, but now began to include “inner rings”, like the Cabal. But down to George I’s time it was the monarch who alone, with or without advice, framed policies and ordered them to be carried out, the administrative function resting, not with the Privy Council, but with a ministry led by a Secretary of State, with other ministers to assist in overseeing that the king’s commands in various more specific spheres were carried out. Only parliament could block the king’s wishes, and when the party system developed, unless the king’s ministers could secure the support of the majority they were liable to have a difficult time in persuading Parliament’s jealous members to approve what the monarch required.
From this it clearly emerges that while the monarch was prevented by parliament from being an autocrat, he still retained considerable powers of government, and that until he was prepared to or compelled to surrender those powers, Cabinet government could not be effected. Since the main function of monarchs was to govern, there could be little likelihood of a voluntary surrender of power, and so long as the monarch recognized the final authority of government, there could be no legal reason for inflicting upon him a deprivation of power. On the other hand, should the moment arrive when the monarch was either unable or unwilling to wield his kingly power, there was in existence an instrument capable of taking over the power and exercising it in his behalf.
So when George I found the deliberations of his ministers boring because he could not understand a word they said, it was a natural development that they should take over his governmental functions from him, for the country had to be governed; someone had to see to it that everything continued to run smoothly.
Nevertheless, the transition to Cabinet government was not a sudden development. There were obstacles traditional and practical to prevent that from happening. As always, Parliament continued to have a rooted distrust of the monarch and ipso facto of anyone appointed by himself to represent him; while the Privy Council was still the only recognized advisory body of the Crown. But with regard to the latter, its members were numerous and included both Whigs and Tories; it could not provide a sufficiently small or united executive; and there were no recognized means of distinguishing the members to form a Cabinet from those who were to be excluded. Even to-day the Cabinet minister takes no other oath than that which is taken by every Privy Councillor, and in the eighteenth century every Privy Councillor might claim to be consulted on matters of state.
Gradually, however, a monopoly was usurped by a small group of ministers in whom the Secretary of State confided; and George I’s Secretary of State was an extraordinary man, who, had he been other than what he was in character, might not have had the influence on the development of Cabinet government that he had.
Sir Robert Walpole first entered Parliament in 1701. He was a typical, coarse-minded, hard-headed and capable country gentleman of the age, lucid and forcible, but not eloquent of speech, with a mastery of figures and a shrewd judgment of men, marred by a cynical disbelief in their possible disinterestedness. He first held office in the Whig administration of 1708 as Secretary of War. This was followed by a period of disgrace, when he was accused of corruption and falsely convicted in defiance of evidence, and placed in the Tower. But such was the character of the man, however, that two years later he was back in office, the date coinciding with the accession of George I.
After three years in opposition, the bursting of the South Sea Bubble combined with his reputation as a financier brought him back to power. By this time George had long ceased attending the meetings of his ministers, and when Walpole’s brother-in-law, Lord Townshend, retired from the Secretaryship of State in 1730, Walpole almost automatically succeeded him in that office.
Walpole’s policy had one supreme object, to advance the material prosperity of England, developing her commerce, keeping her at peace, and resisting all temptation to become involved in European embroilments.
He would have overborne monarchs far less amenable to having their kingly functions usurped than George. In the ministry he would brook no rival. In all but name, he was the monarch, and an autocrat at that, though a cryptic one, for he observed certain forms which still involved the king. He did not, for example, go so far as to obliterate the king’s consent to the acts which he performed on the king’s behalf. He was the king’s First Minister in fact and in name, the first Minister of the Crown to be called Prime Minister.
For eighteen years he dominated the nation, and he got his way with parliament by a system of parliamentary corruption more methodical than his predecessors. He did not say that “every man has his price”, but he acted on that doctrine as a general principle.
By the time that he was compelled to resign, after being forced to declare war on Spain, he had steadily asserted his right to choose his own colleagues in the ministry, who, in consequence, were selected from his own party, and became collectively responsible for their policy. Cabinet government had come into being, and it had come to stay.
George III attempted to break up the Cabinet unity by consulting ministers individually. The younger Pitt had great difficulty in stopping private communications on matters of policy between the king and his Chancellors. But in the course of time Pitt’s views prevailed, and the Crown was reduced to the alternative of accepting or rejecting the advice of the Cabinet as a whole. This was really no choice at all so long as the Cabinet had the confidence of the House of Commons.
The result was that the advice of ministers had become the action of the Crown. Whereas the Crown used to govern by means of ministers, now ministers, united in the Cabinet, governed by means of the Crown’s authority. This removed the Crown’s veto on legislation since it could only be exercised on the Cabinet’s advice, and the Cabinet must necessarily enjoy the confidence of the legislature. The change therefore placed the monarch above politics, and although nowadays the monarch’s advice and experience are at the service of the Cabinet, and may directly affect matters of state, the ultimate responsibility belongs to the Cabinet.
The Cabinet is the pivot of the British constitution. It is not merely the supreme executive body, it is also part of the legislature, and its control of, and responsibility to, Parliament gives a greater unity to British government than is possessed by any other self-governing country not governed by the Cabinet system.