executive power and the organ of the legislative power. The 'efficient secret of the British Constitution' was, therefore, not the division, but 'the nearly complete fusion' of the two powers. A vital change had been unnoticed because it had taken place by a tacit and gradual process. The Cabinet has no recognised position in our Constitution; its powers are defined by no definite law; and yet its development implies a profound constitutional change. The Cabinet is, says Bagehot, the 'hyphen' which joins the legislative to the executive power. Because the hyphen had not been forged by any legal process, the 'fusion' of powers which it indicated had been ignored. The two powers had coalesced by slow, insensible, and unavowed methods, and the coalescence was therefore supposed not to have taken place at all. The 'literary' theory not only failed to recognise, but implicitly denied, the essential fact. The radical change had been carried out under a mask of uniformity. The Constitution had come to embody a principle which was the very reverse of the ostensible principle; and as we had only looked at the external forms, we had spoken as though the prerogative of the Crown still represented the same facts as in the days of the Tudors.
