55. The Composition of the Executive.—The executive branch of the government, through whose agency these powers are exercised, consists of the sovereign, the ministry, and the entire hierarchy of administrative officials reaching downwards from the heads of departments and the under-secretaries at London through the several grades of clerks to the least important revenue and postal employees. There are various points of view from which the chief of the executive may be conceived of as the sovereign, the prime minister, the ministry collectively, or the king and ministry conjointly. So far as executive functions go, the sovereign, in law, is very nearly as supreme as in the days of personal and absolute monarchy. The ministers are but his advisers, the local administrative authorities his agents. The government is conducted wholly in his name. In practice, however, supreme executive acts of the kinds that have been mentioned are performed by the ministers; or, if performed by the crown immediately, will not be undertaken without the ministers' knowledge and assent. The ministers, and not the sovereign, may be held to account by parliament for every executive act performed, and it is but logical that they should control the time and tenor of such acts. It falls very generally to the prime minister to speak for and otherwise represent the ministerial group. On the whole, however, it accords best with both law and fact to consider the executive under the working constitution as consisting of the crown as represented and advised by the ministry.
56. The Crown and Legislation.—The second general group of powers lodged in the crown comprises those which relate to legislation. Technically, all legislative authority is vested in "the king in parliament," by which is meant the king acting in collaboration with the two houses. Parliament transacts business only during the pleasure of the crown. The crown summons and prorogues the houses, and it is empowered at any time to dissolve the House of Commons. No parliamentary act, furthermore, is valid without the crown's assent. It is on the legislative, rather than the executive side, none the less, that the crown has lost most heavily in actual authority. There was a time when the crown possessed inherent law-making power and through the agency of proclamations and ordinances contributed independently to the body of enforceable law. To-day the sovereign may exercise no such power, save alone in the crown colonies. It is true that ordinances with the force of law are still issued, and that their number and importance tend steadily to be increased. But in all cases these ordinances have been, and must be, authorized specifically by statute. As "statutory orders" they emanate from a delegated authority purely and bear no relation to the ancient ordinance by prerogative. The king may not even, by virtue of any inherent power, promulgate ordinances in completion of parliamentary statutes—the sort of thing which the French president, the Italian king, and virtually every continental ruler may do with full propriety. Of his own authority, furthermore, the sovereign may not alter by one jot or tittle the law of the land. There was a time when the crown claimed and exercised the right to suspend, or to dispense with, laws which had been duly enacted and put in operation. But this practice was forbidden definitely in the Bill of Rights, and no sovereign since the last Stuart has sought to revive the prerogative. Still another aspect of the ancient participation by the king in the legislative function was the influencing of the composition of the House of Commons through the right to confer upon boroughs the privilege of electing members. This right, never expressly withdrawn, is regarded now as having been forfeited by disuse. Finally, the power to withhold assent from a measure passed in Parliament has not been exercised since the days of Queen Anne,[72] and while legally it still exists, it is conceded for all practical purposes to have been extinguished.
57. Principles Governing the Actual Exercise of Powers.—After full allowances have been made, the powers of the British crown to-day comprise a sum total of striking magnitude. "All told," says Lowell, "the executive authority of the crown is, in the eye of the law, very wide, far wider than that of the chief magistrate in many countries, and well-nigh as extensive as that now possessed by the monarch in any government not an absolute despotism; and although the crown has no inherent legislative power except in conjunction with Parliament, it has been given by statute very large powers of subordinate legislation. … Since the accession of the House of Hanover the new powers conferred upon the crown by statute have probably more than made up for the loss to the prerogative of powers which have either been restricted by the same process or become obsolete by disuse. By far the greater part of the prerogative, as it existed at that time, has remained legally vested in the crown, and can be exercised to-day."[73]
The next fundamental thing to be observed is that the extended powers here referred to are exercised, not by the king in person, but by ministers with whose choosing the sovereign has but little to do and over whose acts he has only an incidental and extra-legal control. Underlying the entire constitutional order are two principles whose operation would seem to reduce the sovereign to a sheer nonentity. The first is that the crown shall perform no important governmental act whatsoever save through the agency of the ministers. The second is that these ministers shall be responsible absolutely to Parliament for every public act which they perform. From these principles arises the fiction that "the king can do no wrong," which means legally that the sovereign cannot be adjudged guilty of wrongdoing (and that therefore no proceedings may be instituted against him), and politically that the ministers are responsible, singly in small affairs and conjointly in more weighty ones, for everything that is done in the crown's name. "In a constitutional point of view," writes an English authority, "so universal is the operation of this rule that there is not a moment in the king's life, from his accession to his demise, during which there is not some one responsible to Parliament for his public conduct; and there can be no exercise of the crown's authority for which it must not find some minister willing to make himself responsible."[74] In continental countries the responsibility of ministers is established very commonly by specific and written constitutional provision. In Great Britain it exists by virtue simply of a group of unwritten principles, or conventions, of the constitution; but it is there none the less real. In the conduct of public affairs the ministry must conform to the will of the majority in the House of Commons; otherwise the wheels of government would be blocked. And from this it follows that the crown is obliged to accept, with such grace as may be, the measures which the ministry, working with the parliamentary majority, formulates and for which it stands ready to shoulder responsibility. It is open to the king, of course, to dissuade the ministers from a given course of action. But if they cannot be turned back, and if they have the support of a parliamentary majority, there is nothing that the sovereign can do save acquiesce.
58. Appointment of Ministers.—In the naming of a new premier, following the retirement of a ministry, the king is legally unhampered; but here again in practice he is bound to designate the recognized leader of the dominant party, and so to pursue a course in which there is left no room for the exercise of discretion. Only when there is no clearly recognized leader, or when circumstances compel the formation of a coalition ministry, is there a real opportunity for the sovereign to choose a premier from a number of more or less available men.[75] In the appointment of the remaining ministers, and of all persons whose offices are regarded as political, the crown yields uniformly to the judgment of the premier. The King's Speech, on the opening of Parliament, is written by the ministers; all public communications of the crown pass through their hands; peers are created and honors bestowed in accord with their advice; measures are framed and executive acts are undertaken by them, sometimes without the sovereign's knowledge and occasionally even contrary to his wishes.
III. The Importance and Strength of the Monarch
59. The Real Authority and Service of the Crown.—It would be an error, however, to conclude that kingship in England is unimportant, or even that the power wielded in person by the crown is negligible. On the contrary, the uses served by the crown are indisputable and the influence exerted upon the course of public affairs may be decisive. The sovereign, in the words of Bagehot, has three rights—the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, and the right to warn. "A king of great sense and sagacity," it is added, "would want no others."[76] Despite the fact that during upwards of two hundred