The Cabinet

It is the observation of your servant that the King's council hath grown beyond all reasonable measure. Where once a small body of trusted ministers might deliberate with speed and purpose, there now assembles a gathering of some thirty persons — a multitude more suited to a banquet than to the dispatch of the nation's business. No enterprise, whether of trade or of war, was ever well governed by a committee of such number; and yet this is the manner in which the most pressing affairs of the Realm are presently conducted.

The principles by which a well-ordered household or a great estate is governed ought equally to apply to the governance of the Kingdom. Responsibilities must be clearly drawn, that every minister may know what falls within his charge and be answerable for it. The present custom of permitting officers to serve two masters — reporting at once to this Secretary and to that — breeds confusion, dilutes accountability, and ensures that when a matter goeth awry, no single hand may be held to account.

Furthermore, the engine of the nation's prosperity — the advancement of trade, the encouragement of industry, the fostering of new arts and manufactures — is at present insufficiently attended to at the highest councils. Growth, which ought to be the foremost consideration of any government that wisheth its people to thrive, is subordinated to the mere keeping of accounts. The Treasury, though indispensable in its proper function of managing the public purse, hath arrogated to itself a dominion over policy that properly belongs to those who govern. What is needed is not the abolition of financial prudence but rather its proper separation from the direction of the nation's affairs.

These proposals therefore set down a new ordering of the Cabinet: smaller in number, clearer in purpose, and built upon a strengthened centre of the King's council that unites the Prime Minister, the Chancellor, the Cabinet Office, and a new Department for Economic Affairs within a single seat of government. The aim is not novelty for its own sake, but the restoration of what good governance hath always required — that those who rule should be few enough to decide, clear enough to be held responsible, and bold enough to act for the long-term good of the Realm.