But all is not over yet. A Member of the House of Commons who accepts an office of profit under the Crown thereby vacates his seat, and must seek re-election. This applies to the heads of all the great Departments. Minor Ministerial posts, such as the Secretary to the Treasury, the Under-Secretaries of State, the Parliamentary and Financial Secretaries of various Departments, are exempted from this parliamentary law, as they are regarded as holding office not by appointment of the Crown, but by appointment of the Ministers in charge of the different offices. The object of compelling a Minister to submit his acceptance of office to the judgment of his constituents, which was first established by an Act of the reign of Queen Anne—Succession to the Crown Act, 1707—was to restrain the corrupt influence of the Crown over Parliament by its power of conferring place on servile and obsequious Members. The danger the statute was designed to avert has, happily, past long since and gone for ever. The Act of Anne, however, continues in operation despite the fact that, owing to the complete revolution which has since been effected in the Constitution, it is entirely remote from the realities of these democratic times. The only modification of the original Act is a provision in the Reform Act of 1867, by which a Minister who is transferred to another office “in lieu of and in immediate succession the one to the other” need not submit himself to his constituents. A constitutional difficulty arose on the taking over of the Chancellorship of the Exchequer by Gladstone on the resignation of Lowe in 1873, during a parliamentary recess, Gladstone at the time being First Lord of the Treasury and Prime Minister. Did the right hon. gentleman come under the provision of the Act of 1867, and therefore not obliged to seek re-election? The law officers of the Crown—Coleridge, Attorney-General, and Jessel, Solicitor-General—came to the conclusion that the seat was not vacated; and their opinion was supported by Sir Erskine May, Clerk of the House of Commons. On the other hand, Lord Chancellor Selborne advanced the opposite view, holding that, as Gladstone had taken the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer, not in lieu of and in immediate succession to, but in addition to, the office of First Lord of the Treasury, he must submit himself to his constituents. But this Gladstone was reluctant to do, as his seat for Greenwich was believed to be unsafe.