officio President of the Privy Council of the
Governor-General. In the Australian Common-
wealth, though the Premier is usually at the head
of an important department, such as the Ministry
of External Affairs, or the Ministry of Home Affairs,
he is also President of the "Executive Council,"
the existence of which body is so far recognized that
it has a Vice-President and a Secretary. ^*

But in England the existence of the Prime Minister
was long and jealously concealed. He does not seem
to have been formally mentioned in any public docu-
ment before 1878, when he made his appearance in
an unexpected place. In the opening clause of the
Treaty of Berlin, Lord Beaconsfield is described as
"First Lord of Her Majesty's Treasury, Prime
Minister of England." This was, no doubt, a con-
cession to the ignorance of foreigners, who might
not have understood the real position of the
British plenipotentiary if he had been merely
given his official title. There is another timid
advance towards reality twenty-two years later:
at the time of the reconstruction of the Unionist
Cabinet in November, 1900, the Court Circular,
whether through inadvertence, or in a deliberate
spirit of daring innovation, alluded to the Marquess
of Salisbury as "Prime Minister." ^†

The term, or its alternative "Premier," ^† has
always been rather "unconstitutional." In 1761
George Grenville declared Prime Minister to be
"an odious title." Lord North thought so too,

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