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this they soon removed to Wallingford House, opposite Scotland-yard. In the reign of George II., the present structure was erected on the site of Wallingford House, by Ripley; and, in the reign of George III., the architectural screen, now in front of it, was drawn by the decent hand of Adam, to veil its homeliness. Here has been the head-quarters of the Admiralty ever since it left the mansion of Jefferies. (Cut, No. 3.) The improvements made in the Naval department of Government, since the Revolution, have consisted chiefly in those details of management which escape the notice of the public. Its prominent features have remained, on the whole, unaltered. The instrument wielded by the Admiralty has grown with the nation's growth in stature and in perfection of its organisation.

ing of apprentices, the licensing of journeymen, and the promotion to the rank of master in their craft, in the same way as learned and mechanical corporations did on shore. To a body which counted among its members the best mariners of Britain came not unnaturally to be entrusted the ballastage and pilotage of the river. By degrees its jurisdiction came to be extended to such other English ports as had not, like the Cinque Ports, privileges and charters of their own: and in course of time the jurisdiction of the Trinity House became permanent in these matters. Elizabeth, always ready to avail herself of the costless services of her citizens, confided to this corporation the charge of English sea-marks. James II., when he ascended the throne, was well aware of the use that could be made of the Trinity House, and he gave it a new charter, and the constitution it still retains, nominating as the first master of the reconstructed corporation his invaluable Pepys.

It will at once be seen that in this building of the Admiralty there is not room for the whole of the managers of this huge instrument of national power. It spreads over the whole of London. Here are the council-rooms and the residences of the senior Lords; and if you pass the broad easy flight of steps by which access is attained to the public apartments, and ascend the narrow dark stairs beyond it, you will find yourself in the labyrinth of narrow passages, conducting to small rooms crowded with boxes and drawers full of charts, in which the busy hydrographical department is constantly at work. On the west side of the great square of Somerset House are the Victualling, NavyPay, and Transport branches of the Navy Office. The west terrace of the same structure contains the official houses of the Treasurer and the Comptroller of the Navy, of three Commissioners of the Navy Board, and the principal officers of the Victualling Department. Other branches of the management of the navy must be sought at Sheerness, Portsmouth, Plymouth, and even in the colonial dockyards. Greenwich, with its Upper and Lower Schools, and its Hospital, is a part of the great system, the training-place of the sailorboy, and the refuge of the worn-out veteran. Where is the "Ministry of Marine?" a native of the trim governments of the continent, where all departments of state are organised after the newest drill fashion, asks when he first comes to England. It is every-general control and takes charge more especially of the

where in the British dominions.

The Corporation of the Trinity House consists of Younger and Elder Brethren. The number of Younger Brethren is unlimited: they are commanders in the merchant-service who have never served under a foreign flag; they are admitted on the nomination of the Elder Brethren, after taking the oaths prescribed by the charter. The Elder Brethren are thirty-one in number: eleven are considered noble, or in the honorary line of the brotherhood; and twenty are taken from the merchant sea-service. Vacancies at the Board of Elder Brethren are filled up by their electing (by ballot) a successor; if to an honorary member from any admirals of the navy, ministers of state, and other persons of distinction; if to one of the merchant-line from among the Younger Brethren. The business of the board is in reality managed by the twenty members from the merchant-service, the honoraries rarely, if ever, interfering. The board consists of a master, four wardens, eight assistants, and eighteen Elder Brethren, simply so called. The business of the board is transacted by committees, six in number; the first and principal is called the Committee of Wardens: it consists of the Depute Master and the four Wardens; it exercises a

treasury and accounts. The second committee, consisting also of four members, is for the examination of masters in the navy and pilots. To ensure the competency of these examinations, the Elder Brethren are never ap

But the mechanism of our navy and the great secret of its power will be imperfectly comprehended, unless we turn our attention to the inmates of a not inelegant structure in the handsome Trinity-square on Tower-pointed upon this committee until they have been in hill. The corporation which transacts its business there is the right arm of the British Minister of Marine.

When there was no permanent royal navy, and even after one had been created, so long as vessels continued to be pressed in war-time as well as men, the King of England had to repose much more confidence in the wealthier masters of the merchant-service than now. They were at sea what his feudal chiefs were on shore. The guild or brotherhood of the Holy Trinity of Deptford Strand were probably tolerated at first in the assumption of a power to regulate the entry and train

the corporation some time, in order that the experience they gain by being employed on surveys of the coast may qualify them for the task. The third committee, consisting of two members, is for the supervision of ballastage in the river Thames; the fourth is the committee of lighthouses; the fifth for the collection of dues; and the sixth for attending to the pensioners and inmates of the noble almshouses belonging to the corporation. This brief recapitulation of the constitution and functions of the corporation will suffice to show that it is an institution by means of which the energies of the independent seamen which proved so

available in the reign of Elizabeth, have been retained in the service of the State down to the present moment. At no time has the merchant-service shown itself unsusceptible of the due sense of its responsibility. Officers who have risen high in the Royal service have begun their career before the mast, not only in merchantmen of the long voyage, but in coasters. Cook was apprentice in a collier. The merchant-service has kept pace with the awakening spirit of the age, as well as the navy. The East India trade has formed a valuable branch of the merchant-service. Many extensive ship-owners manifest a most laudable anxiety to promote the education, both professional and moral, of their apprentices, and to advance the young men from rank to rank as they prove themselves worthy. To show the high character attained by our mercantile marine under these auspices, it is only necessary to name the Scoresbys, the Enderbys, the Warhams, the Becrofts, and Lairds, who have competed for the palm with the Royal navy in urging onward the progress of discovery.

To a superficial observer the maritime administration appears a chaos-much that is of vital consequence seems to be neglected. But observations, such as arise in contemplating the machinery of the Admiralty and Trinity House, show that this is a misconception. The secret of the efficiency of our marine is that it governs itself, and that all classes belonging to it can, in some way or other, attain to a voice in its management. The bureaux of the Admiralty contain many practical and experienced seamen; and it is well known that in a Government like ours, in which party leaders chase each other in and out of office, the permanent secretaries in the offices are, in nine cases out of ten, the real ministers. The active members of the Trinity Board are recruited from the ranks of the merchant-service. The Trinity House consults the Admiralty in cases of difficulty; the Admiralty intrusts to the Trinity Board important practical duties. The Hydrographer's Office -the statistical department of the Admiralty-forms a connecting link between the two Boards. These practically trained officials are watched and checked by unofficial pupils of the same school-members of the Royal navy, or wealthy ship-owners-whose ambition has carried them into Parliament. The maritime administration and legislation of Great Britain, like all other parts of the British constitution, has rather grown than been made what it is, and it has sprung up stately and athletic. As the nation grows, so must it be extended; as the nation improves, so must the details of its organisation be amended. But the grand outline must be adhered to, for it is the form that nature has given to us, and to tamper with, or mutilate it, is death.

As immediately connected with the departments above treated of, we have thought it desirable to append an account of what is understood in this Country as the Cabinet, or the Ministry when used in

a limited sense, as 'Pitt's Ministry' 'Peel's Ministry,' &c., and for which we are indebted to the 'Companion to the Almanack for 1847.'

"Mr. Hallam, in his Constitutional History (Chap. xv.), gives the following account: According to the original constitution of our monarchy, the King had his Privy Council, composed of the great officers of state, and of such others as he should summon to it bound by an oath of fidelity and secresy, by whom all matters of weight, whether as to domestic or exterior policy, were debated, for the most part in his presence, and determined, subordinately of course to his pleasure, by the vote of the major part. It could not happen but that some counsellors more eminent than the rest should form juntos or cabals, for more close or private management, or be selected as more confidential advisers of their sovereign; and the very name of a Cabinet Council, as distinguished from the larger body, may be found as far back as the reign of Charles I. But the resolutions of the Crown, whether as to foreign alliances or the issuing of proclamations and orders at home, or any other overt act of government, were not finally taken without the deliberation and assent of that body, whom the law recognised as its sworn and notorious counsellors. This was first broken in upon after the Restoration, and especially after the fall of Clarendon, a strenuous assertor of the rights and dignity of the Privy Council. "The King," as he complains (Life, 319), "had in his nature so little reverence and esteem for antiquity, and did in truth so much contemn old orders, forms, and institutions, that the objection of novelty rather advanced than obstructed any proposition." He wanted to be absolute on the French plan, for which both he and his brother, as the same historian tells us, had a great predilection, rather than obtain a power little less arbitrary, so far at least as private rights were concerned, on the system of his three predecessors. The delays and the decencies of a regular council, the continual hesitation of lawyers, were not suited to his temper, his talents, or his designs. And it must indeed be admitted that the Privy Council, even as it was then constituted, was too numerous for the practical administration of supreme power. Thus by degrees it became usual for the ministry or Cabinet to obtain the King's final approbation of their measures before they were laid, for a merely formal ratification, before the Council

During the reign of William this distinction of the Cabinet from the Privy Council, and the exclusion of the latter from all business of State, became more fully established.'

In speaking of the earliest mention of a Cabinet Council as being to be found in the time of Charles I., Mr. Hallam must be understood to mean as part of the system of government in England. It has been sometimes stated that the Cabinet Council was so called from having been usually held in that reign in the cabinet or closet of Queen Henrietta. But in truth, whatever may have been the case with the thing, the name was familiar enough in England long before this date.

To prove this we need only refer to a passage in one of Bacon's Essays, the 20th, entitled 'Of Counsel,' first published in 1612, where he observes, that, to avoid certain inconveniences, "the doctrine of Italy, and practice of France, in some Kings' times, hath introduced Cabinet Councils; a remedy worse than the disease." As for the thing, it was no doubt derived directly by us from France, where the supreme government of the kingdom had long been conducted by what was called the Conseil du Cabinet, or Counsel of the (King's) Closet. The word Cabinet, from the Italian Gabinetto, indicates whence France had borrowed the institution. In France, as came also to be the case in this country, the Cabinet Council, although in reality only a portion of the Privy Council, or Council of State, stood out in such marked pre-eminence that it was very often designated simply the Council.

"We are accustomed to consider the Cabinet, or Cabinet Council, as being formed or constituted by the assemblage of the persons, or certain of them, who hold the offices of the Ministry-as if it were his appointment as minister that made an individual a member of the Cabinet; but the original understanding was probably different. In France, at least, it was the nomination of an individual by the King as a member of the Cabinet, or Council of Foreign Affairs, that made him a ministre d'état, or minister of state. A minister meant, constitutionally, a member of the Cabinet.

"Among ourselves, it can hardly be said that there is any office of State, however high, the holder of which is necessarily a member of the Cabinet, although the holders of those of principal importance have always, or almost always, been such in modern times. But there are several offices with regard to which it has been the custom sometimes to give the holders a seat in the Cabinet, sometimes not. When the late Lord Hill was Commander-in-chief of the Army, he had no seat in the Cabinet, either when it was composed of his own political friends or of persons of the opposite party; when the office was assumed by the Duke of Wellington, a personage of greater political importance, it was held by his Grace with a seat in the Cabinet, so long as his friends were in power; but now, again, that we have a Whig ministry, the Duke, though still at the Horse Guards, is in the Cabinet no longer. So at the close of the late government of Sir Robert Peel, the Paymaster of the Forces was not a member of the Cabinet; in the present Government, Mr. Macaulay, the holder of that office, is. The matter is commonly arranged and settled according to what are accounted to be the claims of the individual rather than of the office. On some rare occasions persons have sat in the Cabinet while holding offices which have never been considered as of a ministerial character. One of the members of the Whig Cabinet, of 1806-7 was Lord Ellenborough, the Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench. At other times some members of the Cabinet have held no office of any kind. The late Lord Sidmouth sat in the Cabinet for two years before 1824, when he retired from public

life, without any office, having resigned the Secretaryship of the Home Department, after holding it for ten years, in 1822. The present Earl of Carlisle sat for some time without any office in the Grey Cabinet. One or two of the offices, indeed, the occupants of which are generally members of the Cabinet, are little more than nominal-such, for instance, as the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster. The existence of such offices is attended with the convenience of enabling an individual to be made available in the Government whom his age or other circumstances may preclude from being burthened with the duties of any particular department. From all this it will be perceived that the Cabinet does not consist of any fixed number of persons. The members commonly range from eleven or twelve to fifteen or sixteen. 'The Cabinet Council,' says Roger North, in his Life of his brother, the Lord Keeper Guildford, speaking of the times of Charles II., 'consisted of those few great officers and courtiers whom the king relied upon for the interior despatch of his affairs. And, as offices of the law, out of clerkships, spawn other offices, so this Council was derived from the Privy Council, which originally was the same thing, and derived out of the Magnum Concilium, by that name mentioned in the rolls of Parliament; and the same out of Parliament, authorized by King Henry VII., was known by the place where it sat, namely, the Star Chamber. Assemblies, at first reasonably constituted of a due number and temper for despatch of affairs committed to them, by improvident increase came to be formal and troublesome, the certain consequence of multitude, and thereby a new institution becomes necessary; whereupon it is found easier and safer to substitute than to dissolve. Thus the Cabinet Council, which at first was but in the nature of a private conversation, came to be a formal Council, and had the direction of most transactions of the Government, foreign and domestic. The Spaniards have peculiar Councils, called Juntos, assigned to each great branch of the royal power, which prevents such sub-emergent Councils as these.' But both in England, as we have seen, and also in France, the Cabinet Council actually originated in the very state of things here described as subsisting in Spain: it was at first only one of these juntos, or committees, into which the Council was divided. And, indeed, it may be still considered as properly that section or committee of the Privy Council which is intrusted with the exercise of the executive authority of the crown. The Judicial Committee, commonly called the Court of Privy Council, is another such section, exercising the functions belonging to the Council as a court of justice; the Board of Trade, to be afterwards noticed, is a third, appointed to superintend the commercial and manufacturing interests of the country.

"In the Act of Settlement of the Crown upon the House of Hanover, passed in 1700 (the 12 & 13 William III., c. 2), it was enacted, that from and after the time such settlement should take effect,

all matters and things relating to the well governing of the kingdom, which were properly cognizable in the Privy Council by the laws and customs of the realm, should be transacted there, and all resolutions taken thereupon signed by such of the Privy Council as should advise and consent to the same. This regulation was intended to check the practice of not only originating but finally deciding affairs of state in a Cabinet or other small body selected from the Council, which had been made extremely unpopular by the excess to which it had been carried by William, who in some of the most important transactions of his reign had taken only one or two of his ministers into his confidence; but the clause was repealed in 1705 (by the 4 Ann, c. 8), before it had ever come into operation. In regard to the practice that has since subsisted, Mr. Hallam writes:- The plans of government are discussed and determined in a Cabinet Council, forming, indeed, part of the larger body, but unknown to the law by any distinct character or special appointment. I conceive, though I have not the means of tracing the matter clearly, that this change has prodigiously augmented the direct authority of the Secretaries of State, especially as to the interior department, who communicate the King's pleasure, in the first instance, to subordinate officers and magistrates in cases which, down at least to the time of Charles I., would have been determined in Council. But proclamations and orders still emanate, as the law requires, from the Privy Council; and on some rare occasions, even of late years, matters of domestic policy have been referred to their advice. It is generally understood, however, that no Councillor is to attend except when summoned, so that, unnecessarily numerous as the Council has become, in order to gratify vanity by a titular honour, these special meetings consist only of a few persons besides the actual Ministers of the Cabinet, and give the latter no apprehension of a formidable resistance.' In a note Mr. Hallam adverts to the well-known instance of the Dukes of Argyle and Somerset presenting themselves in the Council-chamber at Kensington, without having been summoned, on the morning of Friday, the 30th of June, 1714, when Queen Anne lay on her death-bed. It hardly appears, however, that the two dukes asserted any right to be present. Tindal's account is, that when they entered, the Lord Chancellor, the Dukes of Shrewsbury and Ormond, the three Secretaries of State, the Bishop of London, and some others—in fact, the Ministers, and perhaps one or two other Privy Councillors whom they had summoned- -were in a committee, or were holding an ordinary Cabinet Council; and then he goes on: It is easy to imagine that some of them were surprised at their coming in; but, after they had acquainted the Board with the reasons which brought them thither, the Duke of Shrewsbury returned them thanks for their readiness to give the Council their assistance in that critical juncture. Then they took their places.' A Privy Councillor, we may remark, is discharged from his

office at the Royal discretion; so that, even if he have a right to attend meetings of the Council without being summoned, its exercise is impracticable.

"We need hardly say that the cabinet and ministry now-a-days consist always of members who are all of one political party. This, however, was not so strictly the case formerly. Even at so late a date as towards the close of the reign of George II., it sometimes happened that the servants of the Crown were divided into factions, and might be seen in the Houses of Lords and Commons, night after night, publicly opposing one another upon the highest points of the policy of the day, and in the most unreserved language. If we go back still farther, to the reign of William III., we find ministries and cabinets deliberately constructed upon the principle of the arch, or that of a balance to be maintained by the antagonism of two opposing parties. Instead of sometimes a Whig and sometimes a Tory ministry, as is the modern system, King William used to take so many Whigs and so many Tories, and set them to wrangle with or out-manœuvre one another in the same cabinet. But the most remarkable scheme of this kind was that adopted by Charles II. in 1679, on the advice of Sir William Temple, when a new Privy Council, with the powers of what we should now call a Cabinet, was formed, consisting of thirty individuals, fifteen of them the chief officers of the Crown and household, the other fifteen selected from among the leading members on both sides of the Houses of Lords and Commons. In a proclamation announcing this novel arrangement, his majesty stated that he had resolved to lay aside the use he might have hitherto made of any single ministry, or private advices, or foreign committee for the general direction of his affairs,' and hereafter to govern his kingdom by the constant advice of the new Council, together with the frequent use of his great Council of Parliament, which he takes to be the true ancient constitution of this state and government.' The scheme, however, entirely failed.

"One word must be added on the office of the Premier or Prime Minister. This is an office as little known to our legal constitution as is the Cabinet Council; and the term is perhaps of still later introduction or establishment among us. It is French (Premier Ministre) as well as the term Cabinet. A principal minister, it is true, who has sometimes been sole minister, has existed in every period of the history of the monarchy. Legally and constitutionally, however, no one Privy Councillor has as such any preeminence over another, nor when they meet in Council does the vote of the one who may hold the highest office count for more than that of the one holding the lowest, or no office at all. The Prime Minister is merely the member of the Cabinet possessing the chief confidence of the Crown, or whom the Sovereign has chosen to intrust with the principal direction of affairs. But this is a matter of understanding, and nothing more; there is no express appointment of any member of the ministry as Prime Minister. And the distinction is attached to the person, not to any particular office.

It has been most usual in modern times that the Prime Minister should hold the office of First Lord of the Treasury, sometimes alone, sometimes conjoined with that of Chancellor of the Exchequer; but he may be the holder of any other office, or of no office at all. Lord Chatham was Prime Minister for some time, while holding the office of Keeper of the Privy Seal. We have now become quite reconciled to both the thing and the name (it is always in such cases the name that scares people the longest); but little more than a century ago we find Sir Robert Walpole resenting the title of Prime Minister as an imputation. In

a speech in reply to a motion for his removal, on the 13th of February, 1741, after he had been nearly twenty years at the head of affairs, he is reported to have said, 'Having first conferred upon me a kind of mock dignity, and styled me the Prime Minister, they [the supporters of the motion] carry on the fiction which has once heated their imaginations, and impute to me an unpardonable abuse of that chimerical authority which only they have thought it necessary to bestow.' It was more common formerly than it is now to designate the Prime Minister simply the Minister."

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