MacDonaugh, The Book of Parliament, 148-183.]

VII. THE CABINET IN ACTION (p. 070)

*74. Ministerial Responsibility.*--In its actual operation the English
cabinet system involves the unvarying application of three principles:
(1) the responsibility of cabinet ministers to Parliament; (2) the
non-publicity of cabinet proceedings; and (3) the close co-ordination
of the cabinet group under the leadership of the premier. Every
minister whether or not in the cabinet, is responsible individually to
Parliament, which in effect means to the House of Commons, for all of
his public acts. If he is accorded a vote of censure he must retire.
In the earlier eighteenth century the resignation of a cabinet officer
did not affect the tenure of his colleagues, the first of cabinets to
retire as a unit being that of Lord North in 1782. Subsequently,
however, the ministerial body so developed in compactness that in
relation to the outside world, and even to Parliament, the individual
officer came to be effectually subordinated to the group. Not since
1866 has a cabinet member retired singly in consequence of an adverse
parliamentary vote. If an individual minister falls into serious
disfavor one of two things almost certainly happens. Either the
offending member is persuaded by his colleagues to modify his course
or to resign before formal parliamentary censure shall have been
passed, or the cabinet as a whole rallies to the support of the
minister in question and stands or falls with him. This is but another
way of saying that, in practice, the responsibility of the cabinet is
collective rather than individual, a condition by which the
seriousness and effectiveness of it are vastly increased. This
responsibility covers the entire range of acts of the executive
department of the government, whether regarded as acts of the crown or
of the ministers themselves, and it constitutes the most distinctive
feature of the English parliamentary system. Formerly the only means
by which ministers could be held to account by Parliament was that of
impeachment. With the development, however, of the principle of
ministerial responsibility as a necessary adjunct to parliamentary
government, the occasional and violent process of impeachment was
superseded by continuous, inescapable, and pacific legislative
supervision. The impeachment of cabinet ministers may be regarded,
indeed, as obsolete.

*75. How a Mini