Page:History of the Radical Party in Parliament.djvu/222

 208 History of the Radical Party in Parliament. [1827- due, not to either the aristocratic or the liberal section of rulers and their adherents, but to the Liberal members of each House unconnected with Government." * Important as the Act itself was, the conditions under which it was passed were, politically speaking, almost as important, and they raised questions as to the duty and responsibility of ministers of the gravest character. The Government of a constitutional country have a double duty to perform : they must carry out the wishes of the people expressed through their legitimate representatives, and at the same time they are bound to give to the Crown advice founded on their own conscientious opinions, and to endeavour to carry out that view in their policy. If these two duties conflict, as they must often do, the course would seem clear : they have no power to resist the will of Parliament, they have no right to act against their own convictions ; they should resign, and give place to those who can honestly accept the national decision. Wellington and his colleagues chose not to accept this alternative, and they set, for almost the first time, an example which has since been often followed by Conservative ministers of undertaking to carry out a policy to which they were on principle opposed. In the present instance there was no pretence of altered opinion. One week ministers strongly opposed the repeal of the Acts ; the next, they themselves supported and carried the measure. There were, no doubt, peculiar circumstances attending this case, and the same will be found as other instances occur ; but casuistry is as danger-, ous in politics as in morality, and the issue must be tried by an appeal to principle. That there are serious evils attending the course adopted by the Government can hardly be denied. It strikes at the root of the personal responsibility of ministers ; for if an Act, which they perform unwillingly and against their own opinions, turns out to be injurious to the country, how are they to be blamed ? It weakens the national sense of conscientiousness in politics when ministers can do indifferently what they consider wrong and what they consider
 * " History of the Thirty Years' Peace," vol. i. p. 467.