en be projected, in any
department without his personal cognizance; and any weighty business
would commonly go to him before being submitted to the Cabinet. He
reports to the Sovereign its proceedings, and he also has many audiences
of the august occupant of the Throne. He is bound in these reports and
audiences, not to counterwork the Cabinet; not to divide it; not to
undermine the position of any of his colleagues in the Royal favor. If
he departs in any degree from strict adherence to these rules, and uses
his great opportunities to increase his own influence, or pursue aims
not shared by his colleagues, then, unless he is prepared to advise
their dismissal, he not only departs from rule, but commits an act of
treachery and baseness. As the Cabinet stands between the Sovereign and
the Parliament, and is bound to be loyal to both, so he stands between
his colleagues and the Sovereign, and is bound to be loyal to both.

As a rule, the resignation of the First Minister, as if removing the
bond of cohesion in the Cabinet, has the effect of dissolving it. A
conspicuous instance of this was furnished by Sir Robert Peel in 1846;
when the dissolution of the Administration, after it had carried the
repeal of the Corn Laws, was understood to be due not so much to a
united deliberation and decision as to his initiative. The resignation
of any other Minister only creates a vacancy. In certain circumstances,
the balance of forces may be so delicate and susceptible that a single
resignation will break up the Government; but what is the rule in the
one case is the rare exception in the other. The Prime Minister has no
title to override any one of his colleagues in any one of the
departments. So far as he governs them, unless it is done by trick,
which is not to be supposed, he governs them by influence only. But upon
the whole, nowhere in the wide world does so great a substance cast so
small a shadow; nowhere is there a man who has so much power, with so
little to show for it in the way of formal title or prerogative.

The slight record that has here been traced may convey but a faint idea
of an unique creation. And, slight as it is, I believe it tells more
than, except in the school of British practice, is elsewhere to be
learned of a machine so subtly balanced, that it seems as though it were
moved by something not less delicate and slight than the mainspring of a
watch. It has not been the offspring of the thought of man. The C