Premier

“ It was not until the eighteenth century that a Premier of the modern type came into existence. With the development of the party system, the gradual growth of the Cabinet's prestige, and the consequent weakening of the sovereign's prerogatives, the Prime Minister ceased to be the choice of the Crown, and became the nominee of the nation. As the leader of the party in office, he acquired the unquestioned right of selecting his own Ministers. ”

“ It is the duty of a Premier to formulate the general policies to be followed by the Government and to unify the work of all the separate Ministries so as to attain those desired policies. To do so the Premier must be constantly accessible to everyone engaged in the work of carrying out these policies. ”

“ In the appointment of the remaining ministers, and of all persons whose offices are regarded as political, the crown yields uniformly to the judgment of the premier. The King's Speech, on the opening of Parliament, is written by the ministers; all public communications of the crown pass through their hands; peers are created and honors bestowed in accord with their advice; measures are framed and executive acts are undertaken by them, sometimes without the sovereign's knowledge and occasionally even contrary to his wishes. ”

“ The beggar may have the same thought as the Prime Minister,—he only lacks the power of expression. The more helpless and inept the beggar, the greater the responsibility of the Premier. For the Premier has received education, culture, training, and the choice of the people, and to him is given the privilege of voicing the beggar's thought. ”

“ As to the caprice of parliament in the choice of a premier, who is the best person to check it? Clearly the premier himself. He is the person most interested in maintaining his administration, and therefore the most likely person to use efficiently and dexterously the power by which it is to be maintained. The intervention of an extrinsic king occasions a difficulty. A capricious Parliament may always hope that his caprice may coincide with theirs. In the days when George III. assailed his governments, the premier was habitually deprived of his due authority. ”

“ He is generally some prominent and popular local man, who is thus rewarded for political services by the Premier of the day, who advises the representative of the Crown, and practically confers the post. ”

“ The authority of the Premier especially is insufficient to rule the whole country from within, or to superintend foreign relations from without, and in order to adapt the government to exigencies, in which it is necessary to expect slight changes, the name of Premier {279} is hereby abrogated, and a President is created. ”

“ Finance; War; Marine; Interior; Public Instruction and Fine Arts; Commerce; and Public Works. At the head of the ministerial council is a president, or premier, who, under royal approval, selects his colleagues, but ordinarily assumes himself no portfolio. ”

“ The Premier shall appoint and may remove on his own responsibility the Ministers of State at the heads of the various Government Ministries. He shall be responsible to the King for the entire work of each Ministry. ”

“ Let the Regent receive fifty thousand taels annually from the Imperial household allowances, and hereafter the Premier and the Cabinet will control appointments and administration. Edicts are to be sealed with the Emperor's seal. I will lead the Emperor to conduct audiences. The guardianship of the holy person of the Emperor, who is of tender age, is a special responsibility. ”

“ To fill the various posts the premier must bring together the best men he can secure—not necessarily the ablest, but those who will work together most effectively—with but secondary regard to the question of whether they sit in the one or the other of the legislative houses. ”

“ We see that an administration majority, will attend successive presidents, as it attends successive premiers in England. Whether it is called whig or tory, federal or republican, high church or low church, causes no difference in the oneration of the fact. ”

“ Lady Eynesford's features did not relax. She bowed to her brother-in-law gravely and stiffly; her gaze appeared to travel far over the top of the low pony-carriage which contained Daisy Medland. Dick flushed with vexation. True, the Governor's wife did not yet know the Premier's daughter, but she need not have insisted on the fact so ostentatiously. Dick turned to his companion. She was laughing.
"Why are you laughing?" he asked, rather offended. A man seldom likes to be thought to value the opinion of the women of his family, valuable as it always is. ”

“ The Premier, conscious of his danger, had determined on a demonstration of his power. On the Sunday before that eventful, much-discussed Monday, when the critical clause was to come before the Legislative Assembly, he and his followers had decided to convene mass-meetings throughout the country, in every constituency whose member was a waverer, or suspected of being one of "Coxon's rats," as somebody—possibly Captain Heseltine—had nicknamed [Pg 152] them. This was bad, Kilshaw declared. ”

“ The Commissioner must be a South African citizen who—
(a)
is ordinarily resident in the Western Cape; (b)
is a fit and proper person with specialised knowledge of, or experience in, environmental matters; and (c)
complies with the requirements imposed by provincial legislation. (2)
The Premier must appoint as the Commissioner a person—
(a)
nominated by a committee composed of all parties represented in the Provincial Parliament and which decide to participate ”

“ MY DEAR GOVERNOR:—It was ordered by the franchises of destiny that you become the chief executive of a state in which the telling of tales brightened the hunter's camp-fire and cheered the lonely pioneer's cabin before our people learned the uses of ink; and the supreme fitness of this lies in the fact that you are yourself the best of story-tellers and entitled, for your excellence in this particular, as well as for weightier reasons, to sit at the head of the table in that commonwealth to which we are both bound by many and dear ties. ”

“ If the Governor of each Presidency were to have in his Council some of the officials of his Government, some of the non- official Europeans resident in the Presidency, and two or three at least of the intelligent Natives of the Presidency in whom the people would have some confidence, you would have begun that which will be of inestimable value hereafter—you would have begun to unite the government with the governed ”

“ It so happened that the prime minister was a member of a great house which had become illustrious by its profession of Protestant principles, and even by its sufferings in a cause which England had once looked on as sacred. The prime minister, a man of distinguished ability, not devoid even of genius, was also a wily politician, and of almost unrivalled experience in the management of political parties. ”

“ A Prime Minister, even here in England, who shall dare believe the heavenly omens, and address himself like a man and hero to the great dumb-struggling heart of England, and speak out for it, and act out for it, the God's-justice it is writhing to get uttered and perishing for want of—yes, he too will see awaken round him, in passionate, burning, all-defiant loyalty, the heart of England, and such a 'support' as no Division-List or Parliamentary Majority was ever yet known to yield a man! ”

“ The King called the Prime Minister, and said, "It looks to me as though the winner was your son, but he writes that his father is Chief Justice and not Prime Minister; what can that mean?" He handed the composition paper to the father, and asked him to look and see. The Minister gazed at it in wonder, burst into tears, and said, "It is your servant's son. Three years ago he went with some friends to a monastery to study, but one night he disappeared, and though I searched far and wide I have had no word of him since. ”

“ More commonly, it is the duty of the prime minister to lay the collective opinion of his colleagues before the sovereign, and take his pleasure on public measures and appointments. The sovereign never presides at a cabinet; and at the meetings of the privy council, where the sovereign does preside, the business is purely formal. ”

“ The spectators of the sorrowful scene were not merely the representatives of our people in Congress and of state, but the executive officers and Cabinet Ministers, the Chief Justice of the United States and his associates on the bench of that venerated tribunal, chieftains who protected our homes by service in the field and on the ocean, the clergy, and multitudes in various positions in the affairs of state and from private life, and an imposing array of Ambassadors, with their less elevated attachés, with gorgeous decorations. ”

“ The Prime Minister, with appalling responsibility for the life of the Empire, surrounded by men of all political faiths and representatives of every class, is no longer merely a spokesman, a prophet, a minister, an executive ”

“ The extraordinary spectacle was witnessed, on the meeting of parliament, of a man with no political connection, who had never been in the cabinet, and who had never served in any ministerial office, being practically prime minister. ”

“ In the United States, where the whole people is the fountain of power, the ministers are the servants of the President, appointed and dismissed by him. In England, while they are still in theory her Majesty's ministers, and the Prime Minister is nominally selected by the sovereign, by a remarkable transformation they have become the servants of the legislature—that is, of the people. ”

“ The instrument of Government provided that supreme executive authority should be vested in one person—the President, or his deputy for the time being, in conjunction with the Commons in Parliament assembled. The functions of the Lords had long since been abrogated. The President, or his deputy, in the circumstances stated, with the assistance of the members of the Committee or Council of State, had the fullest powers as the executive, and, in effect, presided over the destinies of the nation. ”

“ It is impossible to draw from the traditions of the Government, or from the exigencies of the times, a principle or theory of a political character upon which so curious a Cabinet could have been constructed. But however little in its composition the great interests of the country might have been consulted, the President, true to the accommodation idea, consulted his own convenience, and selected men for the most important positions of the Government whom he desired to please and who pleased him with their company. ”

“ The King, at the time when the story opens, has as his Prime Minister an aged Marquis, who is a dark, heavy man of intellectual aspect, whose man{271}ner is profoundly discouraging to all who seek to win his sympathy, and whose ascendancy in his own Cabinet is overshadowed by that of a Secretary of State, who bears an extraordinary resemblance to a certain Secretary of State who shall be nameless. ”

“ Practically, all real power has long been in the hands of the prime minister, and much of the modern history of the country consists of accounts of the struggles of the various factions for power. Under the prime minister there is a council, consisting of the relations of the king, the raj guru, the generals, and a few other officials known as kajis and sirdars and bhardars, which is consulted on all important business, and which forms a court of appeal for disputed cases from the courts of law. ”

“ By silent submission and tireless observance of duty he may rise, and rise quickly: he may become Governor, Chief justice, Minister of State, Minister Plenipotentiary; but the higher he rises, the heavier will his bonds become. ”

“ The executive power is exercised by the President of the Republic, who, for the transaction of public business, appoints six Ministers or Secretaries of State, who have charge of the portfolios of Foreign Relations, Government and Justice, the Treasury and Public Credit, War, Public Works, and Public Instruction. ”

“ We may fairly maintain that the creation and administration of our presidential office have added something to political history, and when we contrast in character and ability the men who have filled it with the monarchs of England and of France, we may have a feeling of just pride. Mr. Bryce makes a suggestive comparison in ability of our Presidents to the prime ministers of England, awarding the palm to the Englishmen,7 and from his large knowledge of both countries and impartial judgment we may readily accept his conclusion. ”

“ The four men who have held office as Prime Minister of the Commonwealth form, in the aggregate and as individuals, the best illustrations of the qualities just enumerated. Each has displayed a sound knowledge of human nature, evidencing the knowledge by his many-sidedness, his tact, his judgement, his mingled daring and caution, his willingness to compromise. ”

“ Either, as in the American republic, the head of the executive must be elected by some agency entirely independent of the representative body; or the body must content itself with naming the prime minister, and making him responsible for the choice of his associates and subordinates. ”

“ In other words, the incoming Prime Minister, with his Cabinet, has the right to remodel the Sovereign's household—or any other body of offices—in whatever degree he may think requisite, and the late Prince Albert could not even appoint his own private secretary, but much to his chagrin had to accept one appointed for him by the Prime Minister. ”

“ While the tranquil and steady tenor of our single executive, during a course of twenty-two years of the most tempestuous times the history of the world has ever presented, gives a rational hope that this important problem is at length solved. Aided by the counsels of a cabinet of heads of departments, originally four, but now five, with whom the President consults, either singly or altogether, he has the benefit of their wisdom and information, brings their views to one centre, and produces an unity of action and direction in all the branches of the government. ”