e sense in which we use it, was
then unknown. [24] The thing itself did not exist; for it belongs to an
age in which parliamentary government is fully established. At present
the chief servants of the crown form one body. They are understood to be
on terms of friendly confidence with each other, and to agree as to
the main principles on which the executive administration ought to be
conducted. If a slight difference of opinion arises among them, it is
easily compromised: but, if one of them differs from the rest on a vital
point, it is his duty to resign. While he retains his office, he is held
responsible even for steps which he has tried to dissuade his colleagues
from taking. In the seventeenth century, the heads of the various
branches of the administration were bound together in no such
partnership. Each of them was accountable for his own acts, for the
use which he made of his own official seal, for the documents which he
signed, for the counsel which he gave to the King. No statesman was held
answerable for what he had not himself done, or induced others to do.
If he took care not to be the agent in what was wrong, and if, when
consulted, he recommended what was right, he was blameless. It would
have been thought strange scrupulosity in him to quit his post, because
his advice as to matters not strictly within his own department was
not taken by his master; to leave the Board of Admiralty, for example,
because the finances were in disorder, or the Board of Treasury because
the foreign relations of the kingdom were in an unsatisfactory state. It
was, therefore, by no means unusual to see in high office, at the same
time, men who avowedly differed from one another as widely as ever
Pulteney differed from Walpole, or Fox from Pitt.

The moderate and constitutional counsels of Halifax were timidly and
feebly seconded by Francis North, Lord Guildford who had lately been
made Keeper of the Great Seal. The character of Guildford has been drawn
at full length by his brother Roger North, a most intolerant Tory, a
most affected and pedantic writer, but a vigilant observer of all those
minute circumstances which throw light on the dispositions of men. It is
remarkable that the biographer, though he was under the influence of the
strongest fraternal partiality, and though he was evidently anxious to
produce a flattering likeness, was unable to portray the Lord Keeper
otherwise than as the most ignoble of mankind. Yet the inte