The nicest of all the adjustments involved in the working of the British
Government is that which determines, without formally defining, the
internal relations of the Cabinet. On the one hand, while each Minister
is an adviser of the Crown, the Cabinet is a unity, and none of its
members can advise as an individual, without, or in opposition actual or
presumed to, his colleagues. On the other hand, the business of the
State is a hundred-fold too great in volume to allow of the actual
passing of the whole under the view of the collected Ministry. It is
therefore a prime office of discretion for each Minister to settle what
are the departmental acts in which he can presume the concurrence of his
colleagues, and in what more delicate, or weighty, or peculiar cases, he
must positively ascertain it. So much for the relation of each Minister
to the Cabinet; but here we touch the point which involves another
relation, perhaps the least known of all, his relation to its head.
The head of the British Government is not a Grand Vizier. He has no
powers, properly so called, over his colleagues: on the rare occasions,
when a Cabinet determines its course by the votes of its members, his
vote counts only as one of theirs.
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