les whose
operation would seem to reduce the sovereign to a sheer nonentity. The
first is that the crown shall perform no important governmental act
whatsoever save through the agency of the ministers. The second is
that these ministers shall be responsible absolutely to Parliament for
every public act which they perform. From these principles arises the
fiction that "the king can do no wrong," which means legally that the
sovereign cannot be adjudged guilty of wrongdoing (and that therefore
no proceedings may be instituted against him), and politically that
the ministers are responsible, singly in small affairs and (p. 057)
conjointly in more weighty ones, for everything that is done in the
crown's name. "In a constitutional point of view," writes an English
authority, "so universal is the operation of this rule that there is
not a moment in the king's life, from his accession to his demise,
during which there is not some one responsible to Parliament for his
public conduct; and there can be no exercise of the crown's authority
for which it must not find some minister willing to make himself
responsible."[74] In continental countries the responsibility of
ministers is established very commonly by specific and written
constitutional provision. In Great Britain it exists by virtue simply
of a group of unwritten principles, or conventions, of the
constitution; but it is there none the less real. In the conduct of
public affairs the ministry must conform to the will of the majority
in the House of Commons; otherwise the wheels of government would be
blocked. And from this it follows that the crown is obliged to accept,
with such grace as may be, the measures which the ministry, working
with the parliamentary majority, formulates and for which it stands
ready to shoulder responsibility. It is open to the king, of course,
to dissuade the ministers from a given course of action. But if they
cannot be turned back, and if they have the support of a parliamentary
majority, there is nothing that the sovereign can do save acquiesce.

[Footnote 74: Todd, Parliamentary Government in
England, I., 81.]

*58. Appointment of Ministers.*--In the naming of a new premier,
following the retirement of a ministry, the king is legally
unhampered; but here again in practice he is bound to designate the
recognized leader of the dominant party, and so to pursue a course in
which there is left no roo