Meetings of the cabinet are held on the summons of any one of its members, usually at the foreign office. Its proceedings are secret and confidential, and no record is kept of its resolutions, which are carried into effect by those of its members to whose depart ments they severally belong. As the acts of a ministry are at all times liable to be called in question in parliament, it is necessary that the heads of the chief departments should have seats in either house, in order.to be able, when required, to give prompt explana tions.
A government exists only so long as it can command the confidence of parliament. The sovereign has the power to dismiss his ministers whenever they cease to possess his confidence, but such a change would be useless without the support of the house of commons, who, by withholding their support, could paralyze all the functions of government. A sovereign has sometimes got rid of a ministry with whose policy he was dissatisfied, by dissolving parliament, and appealing to the country. When a ministiy cannot command the confidence of parliament, they resign, and a statesman of some other political party is sent for by the sovereign, and authorized to form a new cabinet. All the adherents of a ministry filling political offices resign along with it. as also the great officers of the court, and those officers of the royal household who have seats in either house of parliament. Sometimes officers holding lucrative appointments which do not necessitate resignation, have retired, as a manifestation of adherence to their political friends. In addition to the ministers already named, the following adherents of the ministry go out of office on a change of government: the three junior lords of the treasury, the two secretaries of the treasury, the four parliamentary under-secretaries of state, the pay master-general, the master-general of the ordnance, the surveyor-general of the ordnance, the five junior lords of the admiralty, the first secretary of the admiralty, the chief com missioner of Greenwich hospital, the president and parliamentary secretary of the poor-law board, the president of the board of health, the vice-chamberlain, the captain of the gentlemen-at-anns, the captain of the yeomen of the guard, the lords in waiting, the mistress of the robes, the treasurer of the household, the chief equerry, or clerk marshal, the judge advocate-general, and the lord chancellor for Ireland. The private secretary
to a rninister loses office on a change, his appointment being a purely personal one; and some changes are generally, though not always made in ambassadors extraordinary.
In 1839, when viscount :Melbourne's ministry resigned, sir Robert Peel, who was intnisted by the queen with the formation of a new ministry, proposed that, in order to give public proof of her majesty's confidence, the change should include the chief appointments held by the ladies of her majesty's household. The queen, counseled by lord Melbourne, refused her consent to this proposal, on the ground of its being contrary to the latest precedents of the reign of queen Anne. Sir Robert, however (with whose opinion the duke of Wellington expressed concurrence), considered the change a neces sary one; and as he refused to undertake the formation of a government without its being adopted, the result was that lord Melbourne and his colleagues were reinstated. At a council held on their resuming office, it was resolved " That for the purpose of giving to the administration the character of efficiency and stability, and those marks of the constitutional support of the crown that are requisite to enable it to act usefully to the public service, it is reasonable that the great offices of the court, and situations in the household held by members of parliament, should be included in the political arrangements made in a change of the administration. But they are not of opinion that a similar principle should be applied or extended to the offices held by ladies in her majesty's household."