KING AND MINISTERS

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 April 1937, Page 11

KING AND MINISTERS

THE CONSTITUTIONAL POSITION

From the accession of William and Mary to the death of William IV. there was a gradual transfer of effective power from the Monarch to Ministers responsible to Parliament, says a writer in “Current Problems.” The passing of the Reform Bill in 1832 and the gradual extension of the franchise made the basis of the situation clear.

The Ministers are responsible not only to Parliament but also to the people. The right of the present Government to control the destinies of Great Britain and the Crown Colonies rests in the last analysis on the support which a substantial majority of the electors gave them nt the. last general election. Though it is their duty to lead public opinion, it is also their duty to follow public opinion. Anything which is of real concern to the people is therefore of concern to the Government. With the development into nationhood of the British Dominions, the effective link between Great Britain and the Dominions is the King. The Dominion Governments are responsible to their own peoples, and just as the. British Government must take note of the reactions of public opinion in this country, so the Dominion Governments. must pay attention to movements of opinion in their own territories.

Consequently, an action which the King may propose to take and which affects the succession to the Throne is a matter on which the British Government must consult the Dominions.

It is commonly said the King always acts on the advice of Ministers. Mr. Asquith, as Prime Minister in 1913, laid down the rule absolutely. "We have now a well-established tradition of 200 years,” he said, “that, in the last resort, the occupant of the Throne accepts and acts on the advice of his Ministers. He is entitled and bound to give his Ministers all relevant information which comes to him; to point out objections .which seem to him valid against the course which they advise; to suggest (if he thinks lit) an alternative policy. Such intimations are always received by Ministers with the utmost respect and considered with more respect and deference than if they proceeded from any other quarter. But, in the end, the Sovereign always acts upon the advice which Ministers, after (if need be) reconsideration, feel it their duty to offer. They give that advice we“l knowing that they can, and jfrobably will, be called upon to account for it by Parliament.”

Actually there are certain matters upon which the King does exercise a discretion. Where, for instance, it is not clear who is to form a Government, the King exercises an effective choice upon his own responsibility. Also, Mr. Asquith’s statement clearly referred to matters of public policy which were submitted by the Cabinet to the King. The Cabinet has never intervened in matters which were clearly of purely private concern to the monarch. Queen Victoria constantly referred to Lord Beaconsfield what she regarded as purely family affairs, but neither the Queen nor Lord Beaconsfield considered them as Cabinet questions. Lord Beaconsfield was acting as a private adviser, a. friend of the family, upon whose mature judgment the Queen thought that she could rely. INCOMES AND MARRIAGE It is well known that recent monarchs have had a very substantial private income apart from that provided them by Parliament. The use, expenditure, or investment of this income appears never, so far as information has been available, to have been regarded as within the competence of the Government.

What are matters of this kind, which are so much the private concern of the King that they ought not even to be considered by the Cabinet, is a question upon which it would be impossible to lay down precise rules. Each case has to be considered on its own facts and in relation to the circumstances of the moment The marriage of a King is obviously a borderline case. Unless legislation is passed to provide the contrary, the King’s wife must necessarily be Queen and the children of the marriage must necessarily be next in the line of succession. The notion that a King could make a morganatic marriage of such a character that, although a marriage, it would not alter the succession, is a notion which hitherto English law has not admitted. If legislation were proposed, it would need the approval of the Parliaments of the Dominions as well as of the Pariiment of the United Kingdom. The engagement of Queen Victoria to Prince Albert was not, apparently, discussed in the Cabinet. Lord Melbourne was cognisant of the proposal, but no Prime Minister has ever been in that confidential, almost paternal, relation in which Lord Melbourne stood to the Queen.

The Queen subsequently announced her engagement to the Privy Council; but she took the decision of her own initiative. The husband of a Queen Regnant must obviously be more important than the wife of a King; and it might be thought that if 11 young and inexperienced Queen could decide for herself, a King of mature age and long experience of the duties of his office (even if new to the Throne) could do likewise. The circumstances arc, however, different. The country now makes much greater demands, not only upon the monarch, but also upon his consort and the members of his family, than was the case 100 years ago.

The King is far more than a figurehead; he is tile embodiment of the nation. He is. in fact, the vital link among seven nations. To introduce a jarring note into the relations between the Dominions and the United Kingdom would weaken the foundations of the British Commonwealth of Nations. Queen Alexandra and Queen Mary bore their share of the burden of public. service thus placed by the monarchs upon themselves. The wife of any King in the future will be expected to play the same part. PUBLIC OPINION If there is any possibility of a division in public opinion, of any diminution of the loyally which the peoples of the. United Kingdom and of the Dominions are prepared to give to the King and his Consort, the question is one of public policy with which the Cabinets of the Dominions must be concerned. In such circumstances Mr. 1 Asquith's view becomes important. The King must, in the lust resort, give way to his Ministers. | If 113 did not, the Ministers would. of course, resign. But the King must

have a Government. The King’s service, in the great Duke of Wellington’s phrase, must be carried on. If an alternative Government could not be found, the old Government must be restored and their advice accepted. Since the days of Queen Victoria there has been no such thing in British politics 'as a King’s Party. The Conservatives are the only party which has at any time shown any inclination through the mouths of its less responsible members, to make the Crown a Party Crown. This, however, was not the wish or the action of Conservative leaders, but of more extreme and enthusiastic members of the party, as at the time in 1910 when the swamping of the House of Lords was, discussed in relation with Asquith-Lloyd George legislation, and again last December in connection with the Constitutional crisis. Both King George V. and his son were far too wise to allow any such development, which they realised would very quickly imperil, and probably end, the monarchy.

The Statute of Westminster has created additional difficulties in that direction, but there is no reason whatever to suppose, from the events of last December, that there will be any greater difficulty in surmounting those complications in the future, as at that time. But it has to be remembered that the Crown of Britain, as a result of that Statute, is no longer one crown, but seven.