and most valuable institution which had the same function in the State that a powerful General Staff has in an army. It contained men of the very highest ability and distinction belonging to all parties-red revolutionaries, moderates, royalists, exiled and former nobles, administrators, generals, admirals, and great lawyers. It possessed five sections for Finance, Legislation, War, Navy, Home Affairs. Each section discussed and prepared its own measures, and these were then submitted to, and discussed by, the whole council. The Code Napoléon was thus evolved. Napoleon himself took a very active part in these plenary sittings, attending often during seven or eight hours and scrutinising every proposal. As the Conseil d'État worked behind closed doors, no speeches addressed to the electors were made in it. Discussion was carried on by brief and telling argument. No time was wasted. The result was that innumerable vast reforms were brought forward at almost incredible speed, and that every Government measure was wise and was carefully worked out in all details, embodying not only the views of the technical experts but the experience of the foremost men of France as well.

Both Frederick the Great and Napoleon the First by concentrating all the administrative power into their own hands, were able to repair in a few years unprecedented ravages and to convert chaos, poverty, and starvation into order, wealth, and plenty. Boards and councils are slow-moving and timorous bodies wedded to precedent and hampered by obstruction, intrigue, and sheer stupidity. No Cabinet of Ministers could have achieved a tithe of the national reconstruction and reorganisation accomplished so rapidly by Frederick and Napoleon.

The greatest statesmen of the New World agree with the greatest statesmen of the Old in believing that the national government should be controlled and directed not by a Cabinet, not by a number of men of equal authority, but by a single individual supported by a council of able men of his own choosing, his subordinates. The founders

of the United States placed the Executive into the hands of a practically irresponsible President who was free to appoint his Ministerial subordinates who cannot be forced out of office by a parliamentary vote. The American President is an elected king possessed of vast power, and in time of war he is the actual commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy. The greatest American statesmen, the makers of the Constitution, entrusted the Executive to a single man, believing that only thus efficiency and true responsibility could be ensured. I have given their views very fully in the following chapter, to which I would refer those who desire detailed information. Alexander Hamilton, the greatest constructive statesman of the United States, wrote in the Federalist:

Wherever two or more persons are engaged in any common enterprise or pursuit there is always danger of difference of opinion. If it be a public trust or office, in which they are clothed with equal dignity and authority, there is peculiar danger of personal emulation and even animosity. . . . Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike. But if they have been consulted and have appeared to disapprove, opposition then becomes, in their estimation, an indispensable duty of selflove. No favourable circumstances palliate or atone for the disadvantages of dissension in the executive department. Here they are pure and unmixed. There is no point at which they cease to operate. They serve to embarrass and weaken the execution of the plan or measure to which they relate, from the first step to the final conclusion of it. They constantly counteract those qualities in the Executive which are the most necessary ingredients in its composition, vigour and expedition, and this without any counterbalancing good. In the conduct of war, in which the energy of the Executive is the bulwark of the national security, everything would be to be apprehended from its plurality

But one of the weightiest objections to a plurality in the Executive is that it tends to conceal faults and destroy

responsibility. . . . It often becomes impossible, amidst mutual accusations, to determine on whom the blame or the punishment of a pernicious measure, or a series of pernicious measures, ought really to fall. It is shifted from one to another with so much dexterity, and under such plausible appearances, that the public opinion is left in suspense about the real author. . . . I was overruled by my council. The council were so divided in their opinions that it was impossible to obtain any better resolution on the point.' These and similar pretexts are constantly at hand, whether true or false. And who is there that will either take the trouble or incur the odium of a strict scrutiny into the secret springs of the transaction?

Alexander Hamilton's views curiously agree with those of Prince Bismarck previously given.

To the readers of these pages it will be clear that the greatest statesmen of the European Continent and of the United States were absolutely opposed to entrusting the control of the national government and administration to a Cabinet of jointly responsible Ministers, believing that efficiency was incompatible with that form of government. It will be clear to them that the greatest statesmen of modern times believed a body, such as the British Cabinet, a source of division, of weakness, and of danger; that they considered that such a body would, owing to its divided councils, create disorganisation and confusion; that joint responsibility would destroy all real responsibility; that the control of affairs by a number of men would chiefly be productive of hesitation, vacillation, and delay, and make secrecy and rapid action impossible.

Those who write or speak about the British Constitution habitually treat the control of national affairs by a number of jointly responsible directors, who are supposed to act unanimously in all matters of importance, as if this arrangement were a matter of course, as if it had existed since time immemorial and had by its very antiquity proved its excellence. They treat it as if it were the last word and the

highest expression of national organisation. In reality the national organisation of Great Britain, which formerly was highly centralised and extremely efficient, has gradually much deteriorated. Let us see what we can learn from that most important part of Britain's history which is usually not mentioned in the text-books.

In the olden days Great Britain was governed by powerful Kings with the assistance of a Council. The local administration was entrusted to great noblemen who acted as the King's representatives, for a regular civil service with. salaried officials is a very modern invention. These noblemen were paid by being allowed to exploit the land granted to them and the people dwelling thereon, and in return they had to keep order and to support the King. In course of time the power of the noblemen grew at the cost of the King, against whom they frequently revolted. They considered themselves the nation and dominated Parliament, the King's Council, and the King himself, and ruled the country. The most powerful noblemen occupied then a position not dissimilar to that now held by party leaders and, like party leaders, they fought one another for supremacy. They ruined the nation by their personal feuds. These disorders and abuses, which might have ended in England's downfall, were abolished by the energetic rulers of the House of Tudor, who reorganised the distracted and impoverished country and made it united, rich, cultured, and powerful. Professor Marriott tells us in his excellent book, ' English Political Institutions':

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From 1404 to 1437 the King's Council was not merely dependent upon Parliament, but was actually nominated by them. But the result was a dismal failure. . . . The result was that while Parliament was busy in establishing its rights against the Crown, the nation was sinking deeper and deeper into social anarchy. . . The people, reduced to social confusion by the weak and nerveless rule of the Lancastrians, emerged from the Wars of the Roses anxious for the repose and discipline secured to them by the New Monarchy.

For a century century the Tudors continued to administer the tonic which they had prescribed to the patient suffering from disorder and economic anaemia. The evolution of the Parliamentary machinery was temporarily arrested, but meanwhile the people grew socially and commercially. Aristocratic turbulence was sternly repressed; extraordinary tribunals were erected to deal with powerful offenders; vagrancy was severely punished; work was found for the unemployed; trade was encouraged; the navy was organised on a permanent footing; scientific training in seamanship was provided; excellent secondary schools were established in these and in many other ways the New Monarchy, despotic and paternal though it was, brought order out of chaos and created a New England.

Let us now briefly survey how the Fredericks and Bismarcks of the Tudor period created this New England. About the year 1470, during the reign of King Edward the Fourth of the House of York, Sir John Fortescue, the Chief Justice of the King's Bench, wrote a most interesting and important treatise, The Governance of England.' A particularly remarkable chapter, the fifteenth, deals with the Cabinet question, and is entitled 'How the King's Council may be Chosen and Established.' In slightly modernised English it runs as follows:

The King's Council was wont to be chosen of great princes and of the greatest lords of the land, both spiritual and temporal, and also of other men that were in great authority and office. Which lords and officers had in their hands also many matters of their own to be treated in the Council, as had the King. Wherefore, when they came together, they were so occupied with their own matters, and with the matters of their kin, servants, and tenants, that they attended but little, and sometimes not at all, to the King's business.

And also there were but few matters of the King's, but if these same matters touched also the said counsellors, their cousins, their servants, tenants or such others as they owed favour to, what lower man was there sitting in that Council