The Star. SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 1917. THE PRIME MINISTER.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12083, 11 August 1917, Page 8

The Star. SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 1917. THE PRIME MINISTER.

Time wag when Britain had no Prime Minister. To-day, when the Sovereign occupies what is practically a subsidiary position in the guidance of the nation's affairs, the P r im e Minister is, as it Were, the chief nerve centre of the Empire. That statement may seem strange, and some may be disposed to challenge its authenticity. However, facts are " chiels that winna ding," as a slight excursion into history will show. In the earliest times in Britain, as elsewhere, the King was the centre of all power; all great State movements emanated from him. Ho wias the centre of pow«r, and although sometimes the Sovereign called to his counsel persons of lesser degree, he did not delegato to •uch persons any official position. For many years the foolish theory that the .. Kinjg could do no wrong, and that he ' was superlatively endowed with wisdom, was widely accepted. But timo worked great changes, and gradually the power of the great barons increased ! and made itself felt, and at a later period they shared the rulership with . ihe King. Weak Kings gave the people chances to assert themselves, and with the election of Parliament! it became inevitable that there should be parties ■ and leaders. Without any legislative •nactments it gradually came about that the leaders of the dominant party became the King's counsellors, with the . title of Secretaries of State. Although Parliaments, more or loss representative, have existed in England since the tjime of the Saxons, it was not until the eighteenth century that the first Prime Minister took his seat in Parliament, and it was not until the drafting of tihe Treaty of Berlin in 1878, when Lord Boaconsfield's name appeared in the first clause as "First Lord of : her Majesty's Treasury, Prime Minister of England," that this great officer of State received official recognition in Britain. Nor was it until December. . 1905, that tihe law discovered that he existed. On the second day of that , montn, however, a warrant was issued * "which included him at last in the table of Precedency, placing him immediately after the Archbishop of York! No one seems clear how he came by hia name, hut most peoplo are agreed t|iat itihe country owes him to its German kings. No English King of tho ; PKantageneit or the Welsh one of the House of Tudor, much less the ' Stewarts, would have suffered him for »n instant. Even Queen Anne got only well enough with a Secretary of State. ' ,when the first* King of the Hano.i'Veiiiwi li»e , ascended tha three every- < V ,

thing was changed. The first and second George disliked England too much to govern it, and so left that business to the "Walpoles and Carterets, the Pulteneys and Pitts, the Foxes and Temples. It was in this way that the office of Prime Minister originated. Tlie Tories were in disgrace for having coquetted with the Cavalier. Harley went to the Tower, and Bolingbroke to Commerc.y. and so all unopposition, the great Whig oligarchy got firmly into the saddle. The leading man of ttfa party was Sir Robert "Walpole. He took hold of the Government for twenitjyone years, and by his sheer force of character and the King's overmastering indifference, succeeded in dominating the country so as to bte regarded as the first Prim© Minister. From that day until to-day, from Wnlpole to Lloyd George, there have been just, thirtv-six Prime Ministers, and the first one to be recognised In- the law was the thirty-fourth, Sir Henry Campbell-Baniierman. How the title sprang up no one seems very clear. It | was in general use, of course, long before it was applied to Walpole. The first mention of it, in English, appears tb have been by Bishop Maxwell, in 1616, but Maxwell, as well as Clarendon, in the great history, used .it as general term for leading Ministers. Its first application to nn individual appears in a paper by Lord Norwich, written in IGoo, where a. reference is made to Prince Conde's Prime Minister. The'term seems, indeed, to have been fairly general, in Europe, from it(ha;b time on, and was applied retrospectively, by such writers as Evelyn, to the position of Leicester or Burleigh at the Court of Elizabeth. It is quite manifest, howevor, that the term was gradually acquiring an opprobrium, as meaning a creaiAiro of a King, and tfois becomes quite evident from a quotation in Fog's Journal of the year 1733. It was at this moment, when Walpole was fighting for his political life, with a whole host of enemies, that the 'title began to be applied to him personally, with the result tliat it wa;; vigorously repudiated by him iu a speech in the House of Commons, in 1741. No matter how much W&lpol© might repudiate the title, however, it stuck to him, and became gradually a tiliile, not dif probrium, but of honour, for he has, ever since that time, been regarded as the first of the Prime Ministers of Great Britain. It was probably the mere attribution of the term Prime Minister to .valpole, combined with his arbitrary way of enforcing his power in the Cabinet, that brought about his fall, and so it was only very gradually that the office wormed its way into thati curious unwritten thing, the Constitution. Even now there is no salary attached to the office, the Prime Minister drawing this as First Lord of the 'I reasury or from some other office. Still, gradually his power has become immense, until to-day his influence makes him dominant in all affairs of state. Nominally appointed by the King, as Sir Robert Peel was always wont to insist, he is none the less actually the choice of the electors, since whoever the King might appoint, only a man secure of the support of the majority of the House of Commons could remain in office for a day. The vote of the House consequently makes him or unmakes him, for an adverse vote in the House, on a matter of any importance whatever, brings about his resignation automatically. Then, if there is no one in the House who can command a majority, a general election follows equally automatically. An adverse vote in the Lords he ignores unconcernedly, foi the Lord,<s can only hold up a B 11 for a couple of sessions, after which, if the gentlemen of the House of Commons still adhere to their view, the Bill automatically receives the King's signature. For the King's veto, though existing theoretically, has long since ceased to be exercised. It is the Ring again, by the same pleasant fiction, in whose gift the patronage of the Crown lies, but it is the Prime Minister who actually dispenses the patronage, even down to the official members of the King's own h-ousehold. In the same way, though in a Cabinet Council, he, like any other member of tho Cabinet, only posseses one vote, none the less he holds the fate of the entire Ministry in liia hands, for his resignation puts every other member out of office. Hence it is neither King nor Minister, but the constituencies! which rule, for the Prime Minster, though supreme in office, holds office •at the will of the people.