66
ADMIRALTY
ADMINISTRATION
that you have all departments represented round a table, and that if it is necessary to take quick action, you can do in a few minutes that which it would take hours under another system to do ” ; and the report of the Royal Commission of 1889 remarked that “The constitution of the Board of Admiralty appears to us well designed, and to be placed under present regulations on a satisfactory footing.” The special characteristics of the Admiralty Board which have been described are accompanied by a very peculiar and noteworthy feature, which is not Powers. without relation to the untrammelled and undefined operations of the Admiralty. This feature arises from the discrepancy between the Admiralty patent and the Orders in Council, for the Admiralty is not administered according to the terms of the patent which invests it with authority, and its operations raise a singular point in constitutional law. The legal origin of the powers exercised by the First Lord and the Board itself is indeed curiously obscure. Under the patent the full power and authority are conferred upon “ any two or more ” of the commissioners, though, in the patent of Queen Anne, the grant was to “any three or more of you.” It was under the Act 2 Will. IV. c. 40 that two Lords received the necessary authority to legalize any action of the Board ; but already, under an Act of 3 George IV., two Lords had been empowered to sign so long as the Board consisted of six members. We therefore find that the legal authority of the Board under the patent is vested in the Board; but in the Order in Council of 14th January 1869 the sole responsibility of the First Lord was officially laid down, and in the Order in Council of 19th March 1872 the First Lord was made “responsible to your Majesty and to Parliament for all the business of the Admiralty.” As a matter of fact, the authority of the First Lord, independent of his colleagues, had existed in an undefined manner from ancient times. Before a select committee of the House of Commons in 1861 the Duke of Somerset stated that he considered the First Lord responsible, that he had always “ acted under that impression,” and that he believed “all former First Lords were of this opinion”; while Sir James Graham said that “ the Board of Admiralty could never work, whatever the patent might be, unless the First Lord were supreme, and did exercise constantly supreme and controlling authority.” It is not, therefore, surprising to find that there has been undoubtedly direct government without a Board. Thus, in the operations conducted against the French channel ports in 1803-4, Lord Melville, then First Lord, took steps of great importance without the knowledge of his colleagues, though he afterwards bowed to their views, which did not coincide with his own. Again, when Lord Gambler was sent to Copenhagen in 1807, he was instructed to obey all orders from the King, through the principal Secretary of State for war, and in this way received orders to attack Copenhagen, which were unknown to all but the First Lord. In a similar way the secretary of the Admiralty was despatched to Paris in 1815 with instructions to issue orders as if from the Board of Admiralty when directed to do so by the foreign secretary who accompanied him, and these orders resulted in Napoleon’s capture. These instances were cited, except the first of them, by Sir James Graham before the select committee of the House of Commons in 1861, in order to illustrate the elastic powers under the patent which enabled the First Lord to take immediate action in matters that concerned the public safety. It is not surprising that this peculiar feature of Admiralty administration should have attracted adverse criticism, and have led some minds to regard the Board as “a fiction not worth keeping up”—a view expressed
[BRITISH
by Mr Baxter, parliamentary secretary in 1871. There have been instances of the power of the First Lord being misused, and in relation to the loss of the Captain in 1870, it seemed a legitimate conclusion to draw from the evidence before the House of Lords committee that Mr Childers, being himself nominally responsible for sending this vessel to sea, constituted himself a judge of the case, and, exempting himself from blame, distributed censure among a number of persons, while he placed the chief weight on the Controller, who had been by a former board specially released from this responsibility.1 The truth is that there existed antecedently to the Admiralty patents, and now concurrently exists with them, an undefined power based upon usage enabling the First Lord to act independently of his colleagues. This is a feature of administration that evidently springs from necessity and political expediency. The case of the Captain had a beneficial effect upon Admiralty administration. It caused the Board to be reinstated in its former position, and gave once more to the system those advantages of intercommunication and consultation which have been alluded to. It cannot be said, however, that the question of ultimate responsibility is well defined. The Duke of Somerset, Sir James Graham, and Sir Charles Wood, afterwards Lord Halifax, held the view that the First Lord was singly and personally responsible for the sufficiency of the fleet. Sir Arthur Hood expressed before the House of Commons committee in 1888 the view that the Board collectively were responsible; whilst Sir Anthony Hoskins assigned the responsibility to the First Lord alone with certain qualifications, which is a just and reasonable view. II. Admiralty 0rganization.—Under the organization which now exists, the Board of Admiralty consists of the First Lord, the first and second Naval Lords, the Additional Naval Lord and Controller, the junior Naval Lord, and the Civil Lord, who are commissioners for executing the office of Lord High Admiral, and with them are the parliamentary and financial secretary and the permanent secretary. As has been explained, the First Lord is responsible under the Orders in Council to the Crown and to Parliament for all Admiralty business. In the hands of the other Lords and secretaries rest duties very carefully defined, and they direct the civil departments which are the machinery of naval administration. The first Naval Lord, the second NavalLord,and the junior Naval Lord are responsible to the First Lord in relation to so much of the business concerning the personnel of the navy and the movements and condition of the fleet as is confided to them, and the Additional Naval Lord or Controller is responsible in the same way for the material of the navy; while the parliamentary secretary has charge of finance and some other business, and the Civil Lord of all shore works—i.e., docks, buildings, &c.—and the permanent secretary of special duties. The First Lord of the Admiralty is the cabinet minister through whom the navy receives its political direction in accordance with imperial policy. He is the representative of the navy in Parliament, which looks to him for everything concerned with naval affairs. The members of the Board are his advisers; but if their advice is not accepted, they have no remedy except protest or resignation. It cannot be denied that the responsibility of the members of the Board, if their advice should be disregarded, must cease, and it is sufficiently obvious that the remedy of resignation will not always commend itself to those whose position and advancement depend upon the favour of the Government. 1 The late Admiral Sir Cooper Key, when director of naval ordnance during Mr Childers’s administration, observed to the writer that no First Lord of the Admiralty knew so little of the working of the Admiralty as Mr Childers, because, owing to the discontinuance of Board meetings, he lost the great advantage of hearing the discussion, (r.v.h.)
