sion, of
all appointed officers except judges, members of the Council of India,
and the Comptroller and Auditor General; (3) the execution of all laws
and the supervision of the executive machinery of the state throughout
all its branches; (4) the expenditure of public money in accordance
with appropriations voted by Parliament; (5) the pardoning of
offenders against the criminal law, with some exceptions, either
before or after conviction;[71] (6) the granting, in so far as not
prohibited by statute, of charters of incorporation; (7) the creating
of all peers and the conferring of all titles and honors; (8) the
coining of all money; (9) the summoning of Convocation and, by reason
of the headship of the Established Church, the virtual appointment of
the archbishops, bishops, and most of the deans and canons; (10) the
supreme command of the army and navy, involving the raising and
control of the armed forces of the nation, subject to such conditions
only as Parliament may impose; (11) the representing of the nation in
all of its dealings with foreign powers, including the appointment of
all diplomatic and consular agents and the negotiation and conclusion
of peace; and (12) the exercise, largely under statutory authority
conferred within the past half-century, of supervision or control in
respect to local government, education, public health, pauperism,
housing, and a wide variety of other social and industrial interests.

[Footnote 71: This power, in practice, is seldom
exercised. The Act of Settlement prescribed that
"no pardon shall be pleadable to an impeachment by
the Commons in parliament."]

*55. The Composition of the Executive.*--The executive branch of the
government, through whose agency these powers are exercised, consists
of the sovereign, the ministry, and the entire hierarchy of
administrative officials reaching downwards from the heads of
departments and the under-secretaries at London through the several
grades of clerks to the least important revenue and postal employees.
There are various points of view from which the chief of the executive
may be conceived of as the sovereign, the prime minister, the ministry
collectively, or the king and ministry conjointly. So far as executive
functions go, the sovereign, in law, is very nearly as supreme as (p. 055)
in the days of personal and absolute monarchy. The ministers are but
his