would not be susceptible to a vote of lack of confidence, but could only be removed when the Committee which nominated them^had found them guilty of some public misconduct in their administration.
The first result of this amazing separation of executive and administrative responsibility would be that the Chamber, looking from one to the other in the attempt to fix the ultimate responsibility, would find itself with only the vain shadow of control. For the Eight would in theory be responsible to it, but in practice—certainly on all major matters of policy—would be directed by the Four. Yet the Four could not be held responsible for the doings of the Eight. And the second result would be that the Eight would be little more than Civil Servants. Yet they would not be Civil Servants. They would neither be Ministers nor Civil Servants, having neither one kind of responsibility nor the other.
The baffling consequence would be that the Chamber would not only lose control over the Eight, but, because of the same division between executive and administrative responsibility, would lose control over the whole Executive (including the Four) in respect of functions ascribed to the Eight. It is in the details of administrative practice that the control of the Legislature is usually most important; and it is in just these details that, by the division of the Council into two kinds of Ministers, with different methods of appointment and removal and different sorts of tenure, that the Chamber will under these provisions have lost its control. It is true that it would have the remedy of putting out the Four; but few Chambers, having appointed the head or heads of a Government, desire to throw them out except on some fundamental, paramount issue. The remedy might be worse than the evil; and thus, by its reluctance to take so drastic a step, and by the division of responsibility, it would lose its continuous control over the Executive which is the very breath of legislative freedom.
It is unnecessary to point, further, to the danger of
