ndefinite of all, but not the least important. With very little of
defined prerogative, the Leader suggests, and in a great degree fixes,
the course of all principal matters of business, supervises and keeps in
harmony the action of his colleagues, takes the initiative in matters of
ceremonial procedure, and advises the House in every difficulty as it
arises. The first of these, which would be of but secondary consequence
where the assembly had time enough for all its duties, is of the utmost
weight in our overcharged House of Commons, where, notwithstanding all
its energy and all its diligence, for one thing of consequence that is
done, five or ten are despairingly postponed. The overweight, again, of
the House of Commons is apt, other things being equal, to bring its
Leader inconveniently near in power to a Prime-Minister who is a Peer.
He can play off the House of Commons against his chief; and instances
might be cited, though they are happily most rare, when he has served
him very ugly tricks.

The nicest of all the adjustments involved in the working of the British
Government is that which determines, without formally defining, the
internal relations of the Cabinet. On the one hand, while each Minister
is an adviser of the Crown, the Cabinet is a unity, and none of its
members can advise as an individual, without, or in opposition actual or
presumed to, his colleagues. On the other hand, the business of the
State is a hundred-fold too great in volume to allow of the actual
passing of the whole under the view of the collected Ministry. It is
therefore a prime office of discretion for each Minister to settle what
are the departmental acts in which he can presume the concurrence of his
colleagues, and in what more delicate, or weighty, or peculiar cases, he
must positively ascertain it. So much for the relation of each Minister
to the Cabinet; but here we touch the point which involves another
relation, perhaps the least known of all, his relation to its head.

The head of the British Government is not a Grand Vizier. He has no
powers, properly so called, over his colleagues: on the rare occasions,
when a Cabinet determines its course by the votes of its members, his
vote counts only as one of theirs. But they are appointed and dismissed
by the Sovereign on his advice. In a perfectly organized administration,
such for example as was that of Sir Robert Peel in 1841-6, nothing of
great importance is matured, or would ev