ed this precedent but it has since been disregarded. In Sir H.
Campbell-Bannerman's cabinet formed in 1905, six ministers were in the
House of Lords and thirteen in the House of Commons.

Cabinets are usually convoked by a summons addressed to "His Majesty's
confidential servants" by the prime minister; and the ordinary place of
meeting is either at the official residence of the first lord of the
treasury in Downing Street or at the foreign office, but they may be held
anywhere. No secretary or other officer is present at the deliberations of
this council. No official record is kept of its proceedings, and it is even
considered a breach of ministerial confidence to keep a private record of
what passed in the cabinet, inasmuch as such memoranda may fall into other
hands. But on some important occasions, as is known from the _Memoirs of
Lord Sidmouth_, the _Correspondence of Earl Grey with King William IV._,
and from Sir Robert Peel's _Memoirs_, published by permission of Queen
Victoria, cabinet minutes are drawn up and submitted to the sovereign, as
the most formal manner in which the advice of the ministry can be tendered
to the crown and placed upon record. (See also Sir Algernon West's
_Recollections_, 1899.) More commonly, it is the duty of the prime minister
to lay the collective opinion of his colleagues before the sovereign, and
take his pleasure on public measures and appointments. The sovereign never
presides at a cabinet; and at the meetings of the privy council, where the
sovereign does preside, the business is purely formal. It has been laid
down by some writers as a principle of the British constitution that the
sovereign is never present at a discussion between the advisers of the
crown; and this is, no doubt, an established fact and practice. But like
many other political usages of Great Britain it originated in a happy
accident.

King William and Queen Anne always presided at weekly cabinet councils. But
when the Hanoverian princes ascended the throne, they knew no English, and
were barely able to converse at all with their ministers; for George I. or
George II. to take part in, or even to listen to, a debate in council was
impossible. When George III. mounted the throne the practice of the
independent deliberations of the cabinet was well established, and it has
never been departed from.

Upon the resignation or dissolution of a ministry, the sovereign exercises
the undoubted prerogative of selecting th