'If you have not, then you are civil
servants of the crown, who counsel and do what you consider wrong or
unjust, with a view to retain your snug places or to win the favor of
the sovereign.' And this being so, Parliament withdraws its confidence
from them. Herein, too, lies that ministerial power of which sovereigns
are so much afraid. They can say, 'We will not do this or that which the
sovereign wishes, because we cannot be responsible for it.' But why
should a sovereign see anything here to be afraid of? To him it is, in
truth, the best of safeguards. A really loyal servant should do nothing
for which he is not prepared to answer, even though his master desires
it. This practical responsibility is of the utmost advantage to the
sovereign. Make independence, not subservience, the essential of
service, and you compel the minister to keep his soul free toward the
sovereign, you ennoble his advice, you make him staunch and patriotic,
while time-servers, the submissive instruments of a monarch's extreme
wishes and commands, may lead, and often have led, him to destruction.
"But to revert to the law of responsibility. This ought not to be in
effect a safeguard for law itself. As such, it is superfluous in this
country, where law reigns, and where it would never occur to any one
that this could be otherwise.
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