protection against minor mistakes; any error of judgment committed bona fide, and only entailing consequences which one person might say were good, and another say were bad, could not be so punished.  It would be possible to impeach any Minister who disbanded the Queen’s army, and it would be done for certain.  But suppose a Minister were to reduce the army or the navy much below the contemplated strength—­suppose he were only to spend upon them one-third of the amount which Parliament had permitted him to spend—­suppose a Minister of Lord Palmerston’s principles were suddenly and while in office converted to the principles of Mr. Bright and Mr. Cobden, and were to act on those principles, he could not be impeached.  The law of treason neither could nor ought to be enforced against an act which was an error of judgment, not of intention—­which was in good faith intended not to impair the well-being of the State, but to promote and augment it.  Against such misuses of the prerogative our remedy is a change of Ministry.  And in general this works very well.  Every Minister looks long before he incurs that penalty, and no one incurs it wantonly.  But, nevertheless, there are two defects in it.  The first is that it may not be a remedy at all; it may be only a punishment.  A Minister may risk his dismissal; he may do some act difficult to undo, and then all which may be left will be to remove and censure him.  And the second is that it is only one House of Parliament which has much to say to this remedy, such as it is; the House of Commons only can remove a Minister by a vote of censure.  Most of the Ministries for thirty years have never possessed the confidence of the Lords, and in such cases a vote of censure by the Lords could therefore have but little weight; it would be simply the particular expression of a general political disapproval.  It would be like a vote of censure on a Liberal Government by the Carlton, or on a Tory Government by the Reform Club.  And in no case has an adverse vote by the Lords the same decisive effect as a vote of the Commons; the Lower House is the ruling and the choosing House, and if a Government really possesses that, it thoroughly possesses nine-tenths of what it requires.  The support of the Lords is an aid and a luxury; that of the Commons is a strict and indispensable necessary.

These difficulties are particularly raised by questions of foreign policy.  On most domestic subjects, either custom or legislation has limited the use of the prerogative.  The mode of governing the country, according to the existing laws, is mostly worn into a rut, and most administrations move in it because it is easier to move there than anywhere else.  Most political crises—­the decisive votes, which determine the fate of Government—­are generally either on questions of foreign policy or of new laws; and the questions of foreign policy come out generally in this way, that the Government has already done something, and that it is for the one part of the legislature alone—­for the House of Commons, and not for the House of Lords—­to say whether they have or have not forfeited their place by the treaty they have made.