Queen is only at the head of the dignified part of the
Constitution. The Prime Minister is at the head of the efficient part.
The Crown is, according to the saying, the "fountain of honour"; but
the Treasury is the spring of business. Nevertheless, our first
magistrate differs from the American. He is not elected directly by the
people; he is elected by the representatives of the people. He is an
example of "double election". The legislature chosen, in name, to make
laws, in fact finds its principal business in making and in keeping an
executive.

The leading Minister so selected has to choose his associates, but he
only chooses among a charmed circle. The position of most men in
Parliament forbids their being invited to the Cabinet; the position of
a few men ensures their being invited. Between the compulsory list whom
he must take, and the impossible list whom he cannot take, a Prime
Minister's independent choice in the formation of a Cabinet is not very
large; it extends rather to the division of the Cabinet offices than to
the choice of Cabinet Ministers. Parliament and the nation have pretty
well settled who shall have the first places; but they have not
discriminated with the same accuracy which man shall have which place.
The highest patronage of a Prime Minister is, of course, a considerable
power, though it is exercised under close and imperative
restrictions--though it is far less than it seems to be when stated in
theory, or looked at from a distance.

The Cabinet, in a word, is a board of control chosen by the
legislature, out of persons whom it trusts and knows, to rule the
nation. The particular mode in which the English Ministers are
selected; the fiction that they are, in any political sense, the
Queen's servants; the rule which limits the choice of the Cabinet to
the members of the legislature--are accidents unessential to its
definition--historical incidents separable from its nature. Its
characteristic is that it should be chosen by the legislature out of
persons agreeable to and trusted by the legislature. Naturally these
are principally its own members--but they need not be exclusively so. A
Cabinet which included persons not members of the legislative assembly
might still perform all useful duties. Indeed the peers, who constitute
a large element in modern Cabinets, are members, now-a-days, only of a
subordinate assembly. The House of Lords still exercises several useful
functions; but the ruling