"
It was an arrangement which secured the Prime-minister the co-operation
of Lord Castlereagh himself, and eventually of Mr. Canning; but it
failed to propitiate the Opposition, the leader of which in the House of
Commons, Mr. Ponsonby, turned it into open ridicule, affirming that
"nothing could be more absurd than a cabinet professing to have no
opinion on such an important subject." And it must be confessed that Mr.
Ponsonby's language on the subject seems the language of common-sense.
So far from the importance of a question justifying such an arrangement,
that importance appears rather to increase, if possible, the necessity
for absolute unanimity in the administration than to diminish it; and on
a grave and momentous subject to leave each member of a ministry free to
pronounce a separate and different judgment, so that one may resist what
his colleague advocates, is to abdicate the functions of government
altogether. To permit such liberty was either a proof that the ministry
was weak altogether--which it was not--or that its conduct on this
question was weak. In either case, it was a mischievous precedent that
was thus set;[174] and the fact that it has since been followed in more
than one instance, is so far from being any justification of it, that it
rather supplies an additional reason for condemning it, as being the
cause of wider mischief than if it had been confined to one single
question, or had influenced the conduct of one cabinet only.
Pages:
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380