The terms Ministry, Cabinet, Government, are generally used in a more or less synonymous sense. The term Government may perhaps have a doubtful significance ; is it composed of all the ministers, or of only such as are members of the Cabinet ? Strictly speaking it includes the members of the Ccybinet only. The Ministry, on the other hand, includes not only the members of the Cabinet, but certain of their subordinates, such as the various parliamentary Secretaries of State. At the present moment the Cabinet is composed of the following Ministers : The Lord Chancellor, Lord President of Council, Lord Privy Seal, Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Secretaries of State for the Home, Foreign, Colonial, War, and Indian Departments, and for Scotland, the First Lord of the Admiralty, First Lord of the Treasury, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, President of the Board of Trade, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, President of the Local Government Board, President of the Board of Agriculture, and the Commissioner of Works. But the heads of other public departments may be called upon to take a seat in the Cabinet ; thus in the last administration the Postmaster-General was a Cabinet Minister, as also was the Chief Secretary for Ireland. A Lord Chief Justice has also had a seat in the Cabinet, as well as the Commander-in-Chief, and the Master of the Mint ; even a statesman without any office has been a Cabinet Minister. The number of Cabinet Ministers is as variable as the offices they may fill. The ll'Israeli Ministry of 1874 included only twelve Cabinet Ministers, while the present one has nineteen.
We have already mentioned that the Cabinet, as such, has no legal existence ; it therefore remains only to point out that, consistent to the last with its technical inconsistencies, its chief has a designation, or as such fills an office, equally unknown to die law. There was until very recently no such office as that of Prime Minister ; he usually held an office such as that of First Lord of the Treasury, and was known as Prime Minister because he had been selected by the king to form a ministry, and be responsible to the king therefor. The Prime Minister is accordingly the chief of the ministry, and often history gives his name to the administration he directs. Now the Prime Minister has specific rank as Premier, taking precedence next after the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Cabinet having had its origin in arbitrary selection by the king, is naturally subject to dismissal at the king's hands. The king may accordingly dismiss his ministers if they do not possess his confidence and he is dissatisfied with their policy. But this is a strongly fettered power and a step not lightly to be hazarded, for if a ministry is supported by a majority of the House of Commons, the power is practically non-existent and a change would be useless, as the measures of a new ministry, of different principles, could not be carried out in opposi tion to the opinions of a majority of the Commons, and the functions of government would be paralysed.* A ministry may, therefore, retain their posts in spite of the well-known dislike of the _king. He may dissoll e