Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/492

Rh 472 M 1 N M I N extent of 20,000 to 30,000 oz. annually ; it is mainly derived from the gold obtained in the Thames district, which contains about 30 per cent, of the less valuable metal. Coal is worked in several places, but the total output is at present comparatively small. New Caledonia. The discovery of nickel ore in this island by M. Gamier in 1867 was one of great mineralogical interest, and it has since borne fruits of considerable commercial importance. The New Caledonia ores are hydrous silicates of nickel and magnesium, which occur in veins in serpentine, and contain from 7 to 18 per cent, of metal. The mineral is found on the Mont d Or not far from Noumea. Most of the ore is sent to France to be treated. To the list of works on mining mentioned in the article COAL (rol. vi. p. 81) the following may be added : Gallon, Cours Sexploitation des Alines, Paris, 1874, and English translation by C. Le Neve Foster and W. Galloway ; Serlo, Leitfaden zur Bergbaukundt, Berlin, 1878 ; Zoppetti, Arte mineraria, Milan, 1882 ; A. von Groddeck, Die Lehre von den Lagerstdtten der Erze, Leipsic, 1879 ; P. von Rittinger, Lehrbvch der Aufbereitungskunde, Berlin, 1867; Jahrbuch fur das Berg- und Huttenwesen im Konigreiche Sachsen, Freiberg, annually; Annual Reports of H.A1. Inspector* of Mines; Preliminary Report of Her Majesty s Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into Accidents in Mines, Lonc on, 1881; Annales des Mines, Paris, 6 parts published yearly; The Engineering and Mining Journal, New York, published weekly ; Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, Philadelphia ; Die berg- unit hiittenmiinnische Zeituny, Leipsic, weekly; Oesterreichische Zeitschrift fiir Berg- und Hiittenicesen, Vienna, weekly. (C. L. N. F.) MINISTRY. Ever since the introduction of monarchical institutions into England the sovereign has always been surrounded by a select body of confidential advisers to assist the crown in the government of the country. At no period could a king of England act, according to law, without advice in the public concerns of the kingdom ; the institution of the crown of England and the insti tution of the privy council are coeval. At the era of the Norman Conquest the king s council, or as it is now called the privy council, was composed of certain select members of the aristocracy and great officers of state, specially summoned by the crown, with whom the sove reign usually advised in matters of state and government. In the earlier stages of English constitutional history the king s councillors, as confidential servants of the monarch, were present at every meeting of parliament in order to advise upon matters judicial in the House of Lords ; but in the reign of Richard II. the privy coun cil dissolved its judicial connexion with the peers and assumed an independent jurisdiction of its own. It was in the reign of Henry VI. that the king s council first assumed the name of privy council, and it was also during the minority of this sovereign that a select council was gradually emerging from out of the larger body of the privy council, which ultimately resulted in the institution of the modern cabinet. Since the Revolution of 1688, and the development of the system of parliamentary govern ment, the privy council has dwindled into comparative insignificance when contrasted with its original authorita tive position. The power once swayed by the privy council is now exercised by that unrecognized select committee of the council which we call the cabinet. The practice of consulting a feAv confidential advisers instead of the whole privy council had been resorted to by English monarchs from a very early period ; but the first mention of the term cabinet council in contradistinction to privy council occurs in the reign of Charles L, when the burden of state affairs was intrusted to the committee of state which Clarendon says was enviously called the &quot; cabinet council.&quot; At first government by cabinet was as unpopular as it was irregular. Until the formation of the first parliamentary ministry by William III. the ministers of the king occupied no recognized position in the House of Commons ; it was indeed a moot point whether they were entitled to sit at all in the lower chamber, and they were seldom of one mind in the administration of matters of importance. Before the Revolution of 1688 there were ministers, but no ministry in the modern sense of the word ; colleague schemed against colleague in the council chamber, and it was no uncommon thing to see ministers opposing one another in parliament upon measures that ought to have been supported by a united cabinet. As the exchange from government by prerogative to government by parlia ment, consequent upon the Revolution of 1688, developed, and the House of Commons became more and more the centre and force of the state, the advantage of having ministers in the legislature to explain and defend the measures and policy of the executive Government began gradually to be appreciated. The public authority of the crown being only exercised in acts of administration, or, in other words, through the medium of ministers, it became absolutely necessary that the advisers of the sovereign, who were responsible for every public act of the crown as well as for the general policy they had been called upon to administer, should have seats in both Houses of Parliament. The presence of ministers in the legislature was the natural consequence of the substitution of government by parlia ment for the order of things that had existed before 1688. Still nearly a century had to elapse before politica} unanimity in the cabinet was recognized as a political maxim. From the first parliamentary ministry of William III. until the rise of the second Pitt divisions in the cabinet were constantly occurring, and a prime minister had more to fear from the intrigues of his own colleagues than from the tactics of the opposition. In 1812 an attempt was made to form a ministry consisting of men of opposite political principles, who were invited to accept office, net avowedly as a coalition Government, but with an offer to the Whig leaders that their friends should be allowed a majority of one in the cabinet. This offer was declined on the plea that to construct a cabinet on &quot; a system of counteraction was inconsistent with the prosecution of any uniform and beneficial course of policy.&quot; From that date it has been an established principle that all cabinets are to be formed on some basis of political union agreed upon by the members composing the same when they accept office together. It is now also distinctly understood that the members of a cabinet are jointly and severally responsible for each other s acts, and that any attempt to separate- between a particular minister and his colleagues in such matters is unfair and unconstitutional. The leading members of an administration constitute the CABINET (q.v.). The members of an administration who are sworn of the council, but who are not cabinet minis ters, are the lord-lieutenant of Ireland, the vice-president of the council for education, the judge advocate general, and the chief officers of the royal household. The sub ordinate members of an administration who are never in the cabinet, and who are seldom raised to the distinction of privy councillors, are the junior lords of the treasury, the joint-secretaries to the treasury, the paymaster-general, the junior lords of the admiralty, the parliamentary under secretaries of state, and the law officers of the crown. During the present century the power of ministers hap been greatly extended, and their duties more distinctly marked out. Owing to the development of the system of parliamentary government, much of the authority which formerly belonged to English sovereigns has been delegated to the hands of responsible ministers. As now interpreted, the leading principles of the British constitution are the personal irresponsibility of the sovereign, the responsibility of ministers, and the inquisitorial power of parliament. At the head of affairs is the prime minister, and the difference between theory and practice is curiously exemplified by the post he fills. The office is full of anomalies. Like the cabinet council the prime minister is unknown to the law