adjust every thing, and
ascertaining the nett result, let it pass on freely for the fulfilment
of the purposes of the great social union. Like a stout buffer-spring,
it receives all shocks, and within it their opposing elements neutralize
one another. This is the function of the British Cabinet. It is perhaps
the most curious formation in the political world of modern times, not
for its dignity, but for its subtlety, its elasticity, and its
many-sided diversity of power. It is the complement of the entire
system; a system which appears to want nothing but a thorough loyalty in
the persons composing its several parts, with a reasonable intelligence,
to insure its bearing, without fatal damage, the wear and tear of ages
yet to come.

It has taken more than a couple of centuries to bring the British
Cabinet to its present accuracy and fulness of development; for the
first rudiments of it may sufficiently be discerned in the reign of
Charles I. Under Charles II it had fairly started from its embryo; and
the name is found both in Clarendon and in the Diary of Pepys.[16] It
was for a long time without a Ministerial head; the King was the head.
While this arrangement subsisted, constitutional government could be but
half established. Of the numerous titles of the Revolution of 1688 to
respect, not the least remarkable is this, that the great families of
the country, and great powers of the State, made no effort, as they
might have done, in the hour of its weakness, to aggrandize themselves
at the expense of the crown. Nevertheless, for various reasons, and
among them because of the foreign origin, and absences from time, of
several Sovereigns, the course of events tended to give force to the
organs of Government actually on the spot, and thus to consolidate, and
also to uplift, this as yet novel creation. So late, however, as the
impeachment of Sir Robert Walpole, his friends thought it expedient to
urge on his behalf, in the House of Lords, that he had never presumed to
constitute himself a Prime-Minister.

The breaking down of the great offices of State by throwing them into
commission, and last among them of the Lord High Treasurership after the
time of Harley, Earl of Oxford, tended, and may probably have been
meant, to prevent or retard the formation of a recognized Chiefship in
the Ministry; which even now we have not learned to designate by a true
English word, though the use of the imported phrase "Premier" is at
le