to controlling influence in the
state the members of the ministerial body continued supposedly upon a
common footing in respect both to rank and authority. The habitual
abstention of the early Hanoverians from attendance at cabinet
meetings, however, left the group essentially leaderless, and by a
natural process of development the members came gradually to recognize
a virtual presidency on the part of one of their own number. In time
what was a mere presidency was converted into a thoroughgoing
leadership, in short, into the premier's office of to-day. It is
commonly regarded that the first person who fulfilled the functions of
prime minister in the modern sense was Sir Robert Walpole, First Lord
of the Treasury from 1715 to 1717 and from 1721 to 1742. The phrase
"prime minister" was not at that time in use, but that the realities
of the office existed is indicated by a motion made in the Commons
attacking Walpole on the ground that he had "grasped in his own hands
every branch of government; had attained the sole direction of
affairs; had monopolized all the powers of the crown; had compassed
the disposal of all places, pensions, titles, and rewards"--almost
precisely, as one writer puts it, what the present premier is doing
and is expected to do.[98] By the time of the establishment of (p. 073)
the ministry of the younger Pitt, in 1783, the ascendancy of the
premier among his colleagues was an accomplished fact and was
recognized as altogether legitimate. The enormous power of the
premier, arising immediately upon the ruins of the royal prerogative,
was brought virtually to completion when, during the later years of
George III., the rule became fixed that in constituting a ministry the
king should but ratify the choice of officials made by the premier.

[Footnote 98: Moran, The English Government, 99.]

Not until 1906 was the premier's office recognized by law,[99] but
through more than a century no other public position in the nation has
been comparable with it in volume of actual ruling power. Within the
ministry, more particularly the cabinet, the premier is the guiding
force. He presides, as a rule, at cabinet meetings; he advises with
colleagues upon all matters of consequence to the administration's
welfare; and, although he will shrink from doing it, he may require of
his colleagues that they acquiesce in his views, with the alternative
of his resignation.[100] He occupies one of the hi