hallenge) is, I
believe, by much the most notable instance for the last fifty years; and
it is only within the last fifty years that our Constitutional system
has completely settled down. Before the reform of Parliament it was
always easy to find a place for a Minister excluded from his seat; as
Sir Robert Peel for example, ejected from Oxford University, at once
found refuge and repose at Tamworth. I desire to fix attention on the
identification, in this country, of the Minister with the member of a
House of Parliament.

It is, as to the House of Commons, especially, an inseparable and vital
part of our system. The association of the Ministers with the
Parliament, and through the House of Commons with the people, is the
counterpart of their association as Ministers with the Crown and the
prerogative. The decisions that they take are taken under the competing
pressure of a bias this way and a bias that way, and strictly represent
what is termed in mechanics the composition of forces. Upon them, thus
placed, it devolves to provide that the House of Parliament shall
loyally counsel and serve the Crown, and that the Crown shall act
strictly in accordance with its obligations to the nation. I will not
presume to say whether the adoption of the rule in America would or
would not lay the foundation of a great change in the Federal
Constitution; but I am quite sure that the abrogation of it in England
would either alter the form of government, or bring about a crisis.
That it conduces to the personal comfort of Ministers, I will not
undertake to say. The various currents of political and social
influences meet edgeways in their persons, much like the conflicting
tides in St. George's Channel or the Straits of Dover; for, while they
are the ultimate regulators of the relations between the Crown on the
one side, and the people through the Houses of Parliament on the other,
they have no authority vested in them to coerce or censure either way.
Their attitude toward the Houses must always be that of deference; their
language that of respect, if not submission. Still more must their
attitude and language toward the Sovereign be the same in principle, and
yet more marked in form; and this, though upon them lies the ultimate
responsibility of deciding what shall be done in the Crown's name in
every branch of administration, and every department of policy, coupled
only with the alternative of ceasing to be Ministers, if what they may