was not to be considered the affair of the Cabinet alone. Metternich had shown considerable restlessness under the criticisms levelled against him in the House of Commons, and appeared to be under the impression that these should be ignored, if not silenced, by the King's Ministers. The Ambassador was instructed to point out to the Austrian dictator that this was an entirely erroneous view of the matter:

"Our influence, if it is to be maintained abroad, must be secure in the sources of our strength at home: and the sources of that strength are in the sympathy between the people and the Government; in the union of the public sentiment with the public counsels; in the reciprocal confidence and co-operation of the House of Commons and the Crown. If Prince Metternich has taught himself to believe that the House of Commons is merely a clog and impediment to the free action of the counsellors of the Crown; that its prejudices are to be softened, its waywardness to be soothed, but that the tenor of the Government is in fact independent of its impulse-that it is, in short, to be managed, but not to be consulted-he is mistaken. It is as essential a part of the national council as it is of the national authority; and woe be to the Minister who should undertake to conduct the affairs of this country upon the principle of settling the course of its foreign policy with a Grand Alliance, and should rely upon carrying their decisions into effect by throwing a little dust in the eyes of the House of Commons."

This was written in 1823-nine years before the first Reform Bill. Such were the relations of the Executive and the Legislature as they were conceived by a great Conservative Foreign Minister. A century later it sounds a strange, almost a revolutionary, doctrine that Parliament is to be consulted before Ministers enter into alliances or set the course of their policy. In practice, if not in theory, our diplomacy approaches rather more closely to the ideas of Metternich than to those of George Canning.

The question has been rendered more insistent by the progress of recent events; and many people are asking now, as some of us have been doing for a good many years past, whether the time has not come to allow the nation a little more influence than it possesses at present in the settlement, or at any rate the examination, of the most serious problems that can engage the attention of those who conduct its public affairs. It is in the department of foreign policy that the Cabinet autocracy is exhibited with the least reserve. In domestic politics, the House of Commons, in spite of the party system and the caucus and the existence of a drilled mechanical majority always at the disposal of Ministers, does contrive to exercise a certain influence over the processes of legislation. A Bill, if it cannot be rejected, can (1) Stapleton, George Canning and his Times, i. 377.

at least be amended, and if not amended it can be discussed in detail. The Ministry may force upon the electors a policy which they really dislike, but at any rate it cannot do so in the dark. An Insurance Bill or a Finance Bill may be unpopular or impolitic, but it is public. We know what is being done in our name, even if we are temporarily unable to prevent it.

But in foreign affairs we have not even that satisfaction. The arrangements are made in secret, and we may not learn their true character for years. We give pledges and receive them; but we do not ascertain what our commitments have been until the time comes to redeem them, it may be at an enormous cost in blood or money, and perhaps not even then. During the last few weeks the nation has discovered with surprise and the gravest anxiety that it has been on the very brink of war with the most formidable Power in the world owing to a series of engagements and agreements of which it has never been told anything save in vague and indefinite outline. We are now informed that there are no secret treaties with foreign Governments beyond those which have been recently brought to light. But for years everybody thought that such concealed conventions were in existence; and even now we are bound to assume that if there were no treaties there were at any rate understandings pledging us to burdensome responsibilities and perilous action. On any other theory our recent policy both as regards Morocco and as regards Persia is altogether inexplicable. In spite of the explanations lately given in Parliament, we are still very much in the dark as to the transactions through which we were very nearly drawn into war to support French claims in West Africa, nor is it clear why we are enabling Russia to establish a kind of political protectorate over more than half the independent country of Persia.

The attitude which has been adopted by those who represent the British Empire in the diplomatic arena may be entirely defensible; and it is possible that if the nation were behind the scenes of the drama, the acts done in its name would receive its entire approval. But it is not behind the scenes; it is not even a spectator of the play; and it has no opportunity either of approving or condemning until it is far too late for approval or condemnation to be of the smallest practical avail. For years past it has almost abandoned its supervision over the management of its external affairs. The Opposition as a body can do little, and it is patriotically indisposed to bring to bear the party machinery when its use might weaken the hands of an Executive engaged in critical negotiations with other Governments.

The

principle of continuity in foreign affairs is sound; but there has been a tendency to carry it altogether beyond due limits, so that practically the Foreign Secretary becomes as independent of the critical vigilance of his opponents as he is of that of the majority of his own party. As for the private member, his opportunities in these matters are even more restricted than in other departments of policy. He can, if he pleases, put questions on the paper, but it does not follow that they will be answered; and if the Minister answers evasively or declines to answer at all on the plea that to do so would be detrimental to the national interests, the questioner is helpless. He can call attention to the subject in Committee on the Estimates, or even, if he pleases, move a regular motion in the full House; but then, as I have pointed out elsewhere, he is always blocked by the irresistible momentum of the party apparatus. To move his motion, if he were seriously supported by his party, would be equivalent to a vote of censure. "You do not happen to approve of a particular step we have taken?" Ministers might say and practically do say to their followers. "Very well; but recollect that if you join Mr. Blank of the Opposition in saying so, we may have to go out of office, and you know what that means. How will your constituents like you to jeopardise the programme you were sent up to support because we have drawn a wrong boundary in Asia, or sacrificed some leagues of swamp and desert in Africa?

The argument is strongest when applied to foreign policy, because here the private member has the least certainty that he is right, and that his leaders are wrong, and he knows at any rate that he would have the greatest difficulty in persuading his constituents that his motives have been patriotic and his action prudent. Besides, he is aware that it is hardly possible for him to have all the facts before him. The solemn Ministerial hint about the information which is vitally important but cannot be disclosed is one not easily waived aside. It may be, and often is, a mere pretext; but, on the other hand, it is frequently quite genuine.

In practice it comes to this: that we are almost at the mercy of two men-the Foreign Secretary and the Premier-in the domain of foreign policy. I do not, of course, overlook the fact that all serious decisions have to be taken subject to consultation and discussion with the Sovereign. The importance of this point need not be underrated. The interest of the Crown in the external policy of the Empire is acknowledged, and it is highly probable that a King of England would make a better Foreign

Minister than any of his subjects. Still, an English Sovereign is only an adviser, though, of course, an adviser of the greatest weight, dignity, and influence; and in the last resort, if the Premier and Foreign Secretary choose to take the responsibility upon themselves, they can act in opposition to the deliberate opinion of the Throne. And that they do at times so act is

undeniable.

The Crown is well informed but frequently powerless; the People are both powerless and ignorant. Our foreign policy goes through the strangest gyrations and convolutions, and the nation is unable to follow these manoeuvres, and can only look on in dumb bewilderment, assuming that there are causes for them which it does not understand. Canning's dictum, that public opinion must be behind the policy with the Executive, is conspicuously set at nought; for public opinion is seldom tested, and owing to its want of knowledge of the facts it can rarely be formulated in any definite fashion. During the last few years we have entirely abandoned the old system of isolation, and have entered into a whole series of entangling and complicated alliances.

Whether those arrangements are really in accordance with the sentiment of the country it is quite impossible to say. The country never understood what was being done in its name until long after the event, and then it was only told that it must stand by the undertakings to which it had been committed (in the dark) by its Ministers. We have heard again and again that we are bound in honour to carry out the engagements to which we are pledged by the Entente with France; but to this moment we do not exactly know what those engagements are, or in what this comprehensive and indeterminate understanding has involved us. Still less do we know whether the Ministers have been pursuing a policy which the nation (if it knew what it was) would cordially endorse. So far as we can gain fitful glimpses of the situation we gather that heavy sacrifices have been made, and the gravest risks run, in order to cultivate the closest intimacy with France.

This policy of extreme friendliness followed with curious rapidity upon one of chronic enmity and constant suspicion. The change is welcome in itself; but it is bewildering in its suddenness, and it leaves many things unexplained. At any rate, the enmity and the friendship have alike been due to executive act and inspiration. During the last two decades of the nineteenth century our statesmen were industriously engaged in quarrelling with France. To that quarrel the nation was no party. In the main it knew nothing about it, nor had it any conception of the length to

which the duel of the Foreign Offices had gone, and little did it suspect that we were at times on the very edge of a rupture. It did not know that there was one day during Lord Rosebery's tenure of office when a few persons had to be confidentially warned that the issue of peace or war hung on the receipt of a conciliatory dispatch from Paris. Until nearly midnight these very well informed individuals fully believed that the world would awaken next morning to learn that England and France were at war. If that war had occurred it would have been waged on the utterly forgotten and insignificant question of the Siamese boundary. But did the British people want to go to war on the boundaries of Siam? Is there the smallest reason to suppose that if they had been consulted they would have fought France at the time on any such question?

At any rate, we have the fact that till 1900 our Governments were perpetually wrangling with France and obtrusively cultivating the friendship of Germany. Soon afterwards a complete change came over our Foreign Office. It threw itself effusively into the arms of the Republic, and has got upon the coldest terms, to put it mildly, with its rival. How far English opinion, as a whole, coincided with these rather remarkable divagations, whether it supported Mr. Chamberlain twelve years ago when he was urging alliance with Germany, or whether it has been in genuine sympathy with Sir Edward Grey during the past five years in which we have been cherishing the closest association with France, is a question on which no definite answer can be given. The country does not answer; it is not asked to decide. these points, and Parliament is very scantily informed upon them. Everything rests upon the responsibility of Ministers, and Ministerial responsibility in the department of foreign affairs is even more of a fiction than it is elsewhere.

It must be remembered that the Foreign Secretary is in a different situation from the rest of his colleagues; not only does he direct the policy of his Department, but he personally conducts its operations. The government of this Empire by a committee of political amateurs is often defended on the ground that these same amateurs have only to decide and discuss broad questions of policy while the actual business of their departments is transacted by their professional subordinates. The First Lord of the Admiralty may be a lawyer or a wholesale stationer, but then he is not expected to take one of his Majesty's fleets into action or even to direct its training at the manœuvres, nor does he himself prescribe the details of strategy, tactics, and discipline. These things are all managed for him by trained experts. But