Parliament, Cabinet and Dissolution

514 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTE~LY The-water in a gourd he draws and showers, He often bends to,rake the quickening grasses, And lavishly the'region buds and flowers, \ And ripens to the harvest where he passes. The rendering is of average quality for the collection and is certainly highly creditable. The essentials of the rhythmic scheme , are preserved, but there are slight imperfections, for example the sacrifice of the feminine endings in the first two stanzas. George's freedom from Hpoetic diction" is almost attained, but the third line of the third stanza is badly strained. The meaning is preserved closely except for a surprising mistake in the second line of the fourth stanza. The man is digging out a weed,-quitch-grass or couch-grass, which is anything but a "quickening grass." English readers may well feel grateful for this volume; which even though it falls well short of the claims implied on pages 252-4 by the translators, will nevertheless enable them for the ,first time, to gain an impression 'qf this master of poetic t,echt?iqtie. PARLI4MENT, CABI~ET AND DISSOLUTIONl ALEXANDER BRADY "A House of Commons respected by his ministers is essential to his Majesty's service: it is fit that they sho.uld yield to Parliament, and not that Parliament' should be new-modelled -until it is fitted to their purposes~ If our authori ty is to 'be held up when we coincide in opinion with his Majesty's advisers, but is to be set at nought the, moment it differs from them, the House of Commons will shrink in,to a mere appendage of administration, and wili lose that independent character which ... enables us to afford a real, effective and substantial support to his government." The words are those of Edmund Burke taken from a longer extract , which Mr Forsey quotes to emphasize the significance of his' subject; namely, that in the power to dissolve 'parliament- the Crown has a discretion which must' be used, not merely to , ' convenience the ministry of the hour, but to ensure the authority of the representative chamber. Mi- Forsey in a single sentence thus puts the central premise of his able and significant volume: "The British constitut~onal system was never intended to be a plebiscitary democracy, in which Parliament exists and debates I IThe'Roya! Power of Djssolution of Parliament ill the Br;Iish Commonwealth, by EUGENE A. FORSEY. Toronto, Oxford University PressJ 1943, ~5,OO. (, " ,, !f i'I ( ~ i! fl' I i I : I , I ' ' \ , REVIEWS only on sufferance under threat of dissolution at any moment by , the government in office, whether or not that government has a majority in the, House of Commons." , At first It might appear a simple matter to decide whether this premise is sound. Yet it is n~t simple because the British ' and ' Dominion constitutional systems rest, not I1)erely on statutes, but ,on delicate anq. indefinite conv'entions, subject 'at times to varied interpretations by men in ~he seats of authOJ,-ity. The question of how far the King or his representative can, under some circumstances , refuse to an existing Cabinet a dissolution is co.ntentious. Professor J. H. Morgan of London, a lawyer noted for his conservative attitude towards the constitution,' remarked of the grant by His 'Majesty in 1924 of a dissolution to 'Ramsay Macdonald, who was actually in a mi~ority 'in the' Commons,.that it definitely established ((the existence, in the hands of the Prime Minister, of this -coercive power over the Commons."2 , Ivor Jennings, on the contrary, autp.or of the most informed m~dern book on Cabinet government, is emphatic that the dissolution granted to Macdonald , in 1924 did not settle the issue.S Other distingUIshed authorities, including the late Lord Asquith, have' been confident tha,t the discretion of the ,Crown has not completely passed over to the Prime' Minister an~ the Cabinet; that the King may still refus~' a dissolution provided of course that he can find ministers to accept responsibility and to obtain ~upport in the legisl~~ure. The crucial circumstance is the parliamentary situation and the existence or non-existence of some great new...