er the
whole Executive (including the Four) in respect of functions ascribed to
the Eight. It is in the details of administrative practice that the
control of the Legislature is usually most important; and it is in just
these details that, by the division of the Council into two kinds of
Ministers, with different methods of appointment and removal and different
sorts of tenure, that the Chamber will under these provisions have lost
its control. It is true that it would have the remedy of putting out the
Four; but few Chambers, having appointed the head or heads of a
Government, desire to throw them out except on some fundamental, paramount
issue. The remedy might be worse than the evil; and thus, by its
reluctance to take so drastic a step, and by the division of
responsibility, it would lose its continuous control over the Executive
which is the very breath of legislative freedom.

It is unnecessary to point, further, to the danger of nominating a large
part of an Executive under these circumstances through a Committee. It is
notorious that Committees are, or can be made, more easily accessible to
intrigue than larger assemblies. The Chamber itself should be its own
Committee for the selection of Ministers, on the recommendation of the
President of the Council, with whom they would have to work. This
provision still further removes the Executive from the control of the
Chamber. And so the order of responsibility is inverted, which the plan of
the Constitution elsewhere so constantly emphasises. For the People may at
all times, by the Referendum and the Initiative, control the Legislature.
But the Legislature cannot, under these provisions, at all times and so
simply control the Executive. And so control fails just at the point where
authority tends most to arrogate power to itself.

Incidentally, also, the Legislature loses what generally has proved its
greatest source of strength. For the best informed critics of any Chamber
are those who once were Ministers, who appreciate the responsibility of
Ministers, and who temper their words as members with their knowledge and
experience. But, under these provisions, a member who is appointed as one
of the external Ministers ceases to be a Member. If he therefore finds it
incumbent on him to resign, because of disagreement with his colleagues of
the Executive (Inner or Outer), he ceases to be both a Minister and a
Member, and his service and knowledge are lost to the Chamber--