rom his embassy at the Hague to
fill the post of Secretary of State promised a foreign policy which
would again place England high among the European powers.

[Sidenote: Temple and his Council.]

Temple returned with a plan of administration which, fruitless as it
directly proved, is of great importance as marking the silent change
which was passing over the English Constitution. Like many men of his
time he was equally alarmed at the power both of the Crown and of the
Parliament. In moments of national excitement the power of the Houses
seemed irresistible. They had overthrown Clarendon. They had overthrown
Clifford and the Cabal. They had just overthrown Danby. But though they
were strong enough in the end to punish ill government they showed no
power of securing good government or of permanently influencing the
policy of the Crown. For nineteen years in fact with a Parliament
always sitting Charles had had it pretty much his own way. He had made
war against the will of the nation and he had refused to make war when
the nation demanded it. While every Englishman hated France he had made
England a mere dependency of the French king. The remedy for this state
of things, as it was afterwards found, was a very simple one. By a
change which we shall have to trace the ministry has now become a
Committee of State-officers named by the majority of the House of
Commons from amongst the more prominent of its representatives in either
House, whose object in accepting office is to do the will of that
majority. So long as the majority of the House of Commons itself
represents the more powerful current of public opinion it is clear that
such an arrangement makes government an accurate reflection of the
national will. But obvious as such a plan may seem to us, it had as yet
occurred to no English statesman. To Temple the one remedy seemed to lie
in the restoration of the royal Council to its older powers.

[Sidenote: The Cabinet.]

This body, composed as it was of the great officers of the Court, the
royal Treasurer and Secretaries, and a few nobles specially summoned to
it by the sovereign, formed up to the close of Elizabeth's reign a sort
of deliberative assembly to which the graver matters of public
administration were commonly submitted by the Crown. A practice,
however, of previously submitting such measures to a smaller body of the
more important councillors must always have existed; and under James
this secret committee,