The making of a Government may be completed in a week if all goes well. Should there be difficulties in reconciling the claims of influential rivals for particular offices, it may extend over a fortnight. And what does it all signify to the people or nation? Charles Dickens was disposed to take an ironic view of the matter, if we judge from some passages in _Bleak House_. “The limited choice of the Crown,” he writes, “in the formation of a new Ministry would lie between Lord Coodle and Sir Thomas Doodle, supposing it to be impossible for the Duke of Foodle to act with Goodle, which may be assumed to be the case, in consequence of the breach arising out of that affair with Hoodle. Then, giving the Home Department and the Leadership of the House of Commons to Joodle, the Exchequer to Koodle, the Colonies to Loodle, and the Foreign Office to Moodle, what are you to do with Noodle? You can’t offer the Presidency of the Council. That is reserved for Poodle. You can’t put him in the Woods and Forests. That is hardly good enough for Quoodle. What follows? That the country is shipwrecked, lost, and gone to pieces because you can’t provide for Noodle!” That, however, does not quite settle the matter. May it not be said, rather—Happy country which has so many able and honest men striving for the opportunity of toiling in its service! CHAPTER XIV THE KING AND HIS MINISTERS AND THE COUNTRY. 1 The list of the proposed Administration is submitted by the Prime Minister to the King for approval. Constitutionally, the Sovereign has the right of veto, and may require any of the Ministerial appointments to be cancelled. This prerogative is now rarely, if ever, enforced. So far as is known, Queen Victoria was the last Sovereign to raise objections to certain of the names proposed to her. When Gladstone was forming his Government in 1880, she wished for Lord Hartington at the War Office, in place of Mr. Childers; but she was induced to give way. It was said in 1893, when Gladstone was again forming an Administration, that Henry Labouchere was not included solely because Queen Victoria refused her sanction. In the remoter past there are instances of the Sovereign not merely vetoing an appointment, but also of making one. But when George IV attempted to appoint Herries in 1827 Chancellor of the Exchequer, objection was successfully maintained. By modern usage, therefore, the position may be said to be that the Sovereign has the right to veto an appointment, but not to make one.