18 THE WINTER TROUBLES. CHAP, foreign or civil war without the guidance or III . . ' approval of a Ministry responsible to Parliament, he would probably have undergone such coercion as must have accelerated the ripening of consti- tutional principles, and made it plain beyond cavil that the command of our army belonged to the king's ' Government/ and not to the personal king. But this question between kings and states- men was never pushed to extremities ; and each side, indeed, had a motive for conceding a good deal to the other one. Under the reigns of princes personally incompetent to conduct a campaign, sagacious courtiers saw that, whatever right of personal command they might claim for their masters in peace-time, the business — the grave business — of war must be entrusted to responsible Ministers ; whilst, on the other hand, there was a counter-eddy of military sentiment running always in the opposite direction — run- ning always in favour of the ' personal,' as distinguished from the genuine ' State ' sov- ereign. In a matter so delicate, so momentous as the devotion of the army, it was right that public men should at least hear — though not blindly follow — the opinions of those who saw danger in making it too glaringly plain that a Cabinet formed of civilians was the real com- mander-in-chief, and of those, too, wlio judged it important that commissions in the army should .seem to have a more distinctly royal origin than appointments conferred by a Minister ; whilst, moreover, all knew that from the general com- manding an array down to even the youngest
