in office of whom the House of Commons does not approve, and it makes it almost equally impossible to remove from office a Minister of whom the House of Commons does approve(4). The written Law and the unwritten Constitution alike exempt the Sovereign from all ordinary personal responsibility(5). They both transfer the responsibility from the Sovereign himself to his agents and advisers. But the nature and extent of their responsibility is widely different in the eyes of the written Law and in the eyes of the unwritten Constitution. The written Law is satisfied with holding that the command of the Sovereign is no excuse for an illegal act, and that he who advises the commission of an illegal act by royal authority must bear the responsibility from which the Sovereign himself is free. The written Law knows nothing of any responsibility but such as may be enforced either by prosecution in the ordinary Courts or by impeachment in the High Court of Parliament. The unwritten Constitution lays the agents and advisers of the Crown under a responsibility of quite another kind. What we understand by the responsibility of Ministers is that they are liable to have all their public acts discussed in Parliament, not only on the ground of their legal or illegal character, but on the vaguest grounds of their general tendency. They may be in no danger of prosecution or impeachment; but they are no less bound to bow to other signs of the will of the House of Commons; the unwritten Constitution makes a vote of censure as effectual as an impeachment, and in many cases it makes a mere refusal to pass a ministerial measure as effectual as a vote of censure. The written Law knows nothing of the Cabinet or the Prime Minister; it knows them as members of one or the other House of Parliament, as Privy Councillors, as holders, each man in his own person, of certain offices; but, as a collective body bound together by a common responsibility, the Law never heard of them(6). But in the eye of the unwritten Constitution the Prime Minister and the Cabinet of which he is the head form the main feature of our system of government. It is plain at a moment’s glance that the practical power of the Crown is not now what it was in the reign of William the Third or even in that of George the Third. But the change is due, far less to changes in the written Law than to changes in the unwritten Constitution. The Law leaves the powers of the Crown untouched, but the Constitution requires that those powers should be exercised by such persons, and in such a manner, as may be acceptable to a majority of the House of Commons. In all these ways, in a manner silent and indirect, the Lower House of Parliament, as it is still deemed in formal rank, has become the really ruling power in the nation. There is no greater contrast than that which exists between the humility of its formal dealings with the Crown and even with the Upper House(7), and the reality of the irresistible