Cabinetmaker

“ Some of them are capable of talking well upon any subject. These aspire to be Secretaries of State. Others, not so remarkable for general ability or so glib of tongue, confine themselves to particular departments of administration. It is the endeavour of each to obtain a mastery of the business details of some special office—Foreign, Home, Treasury, Colonial, Army, Navy, Post Office, Pensions, Trade, Transport, or Agriculture—looking for an Under-Secretaryship, in the expectation of ultimately attaining, after some years of diligent and capable service, to Cabinet rank. ”

“ What, the head of the Treasury Department,—a vigorous and commanding statesman, a practical statesman, the benefit of whose wisdom and experience the nation fondly believes it always obtained before the great measures of the government are taken,—unacquainted with and unconsulted on important despatches,—and yet talk of a Cabinet! Not merely unconsulted, but ignorant of the documents.... I have no hesitation in saying, there is no Cabinet, when I see a man second to none for vigorous understanding and practical good sense ousted from it. ”

“ Or he might have pointed to the very excellent feature of Cabinet Ministers sitting in the House and being directly responsible to Commons and Senate for the management of their departments to the expenditure of a farthing. A Cabinet member who may be quizzed to-day, to-morrow, every day in the week except Sunday, on the management of affairs under him can never take refuge in ambiguous silence or behind the skirts of his chief, as secretaries delinquent have frequently taken refuge behind the spotless reputation of a too-confiding President. ”

“ The chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, the postmaster-general, the first commissioner of works, the president of the board of trade, the chief secretary for Ireland, the lord chancellor of Ireland, the president of the local government board, the president of the board of agriculture, and the president of the board of education, are usually members of the cabinet, but not necessarily so. A modern cabinet contains from sixteen to twenty members. It used to be said that a large cabinet is an evil ”

“ Unless the composition of the House of Commons were improved, or unless the rules requiring cabinet ministers to be members of the legislature were relaxed, it would undoubtedly be difficult to find, without the Lords, a sufficient supply of chief ministers. But the detail of the composition of a cabinet, and the precise method of its choice, are not to the purpose now. The first and cardinal consideration is the definition of a cabinet. We must not bewilder ourselves with the inseparable accidents until we know the necessary essence. ”

“ As has been pointed out, the uses of the crown are by no means wholly ornamental. None the less, the actual executive of the nation is the cabinet. It is within the cabinet circle that administrative policies are decided upon, and it is by the cabinet ministers and their subordinates in the several departments that these policies, and the laws of the land generally, are carried into effect. On the other side, the cabinet members not only occupy seats in one or the other of the houses of Parliament; collectively they direct the processes of legislation. ”

“ And for five weeks he was the cabinet, holding all the high offices—Treasury, Home, Foreign, and Colonial—himself, so as not to embarrass his successor by making appointments. The Whigs raised a great outcry against this one- man power, but the people rather admired the industry of the veteran who rose at six o'clock in the morning and went the rounds of the departments performing the routine duties with the greatest industry and fidelity and steadily refusing to use his enormous power and patronage for personal or factional rule. ”

“ A cabinet does not exist out of office, and no one in his senses could covenant to call the late cabinet together, I think, even if there were something on which it was ready to take counsel, which at this moment there is not. On the other hand, you will have seen from my letter that the idea before me has been that of going unusual lengths in the way of consulting beforehand, not only leading men but the party, or undertaking some special obligation to be assured of their concurrence generally, before undertaking new responsibilities. ”

“ I have said that the Cabinet is essentially the regulator of the relations between King, Lords, and Commons; exercising functionally the powers of the first, and incorporated, in the persons of its members, with the second and the third. It is, therefore, itself a great power. But let no one suppose it is the greatest. In a balance nicely poised, a small weight may turn the scale; and the helm that directs the ship is not stronger than the ship. ”

“ The nicest of all the adjustments involved in the working of the British Government is that which determines, without formally defining, the internal relations of the Cabinet. On the one hand, while each Minister is an adviser of the Crown, the Cabinet is a unity, and none of its members can advise as an individual, without, or in opposition actual or presumed to, his colleagues. On the other hand, the business of the State is a hundred-fold too great in volume to allow of the actual passing of the whole under the view of the collected Ministry. ”

“ But I think I am only expressing your own conviction when I say, that as to the principal aims of your Administration the Cabinet should be substantially a unit, and consist of men who not only in a languid way acquiesce in those aims, but have them sincerely, earnestly at heart. ”

“ By a gradual process his authority has come more and more under the control of his ministers, until it is now almost entirely in the hands of the cabinet, which is responsible to Parliament, and through Parliament to the nation. The cabinet is to-day the mainspring of the whole political system, and the clearest method of explaining the relations of the different branches of the government to each other is to describe in succession their relations with the cabinet. ”

“ More vital than the functions of the cabinet as a whole are those which its members perform, as individuals, as heads of their departments. Every member of the cabinet, as has been mentioned, is the head of a department, and as such is given charge of some branch of the government’s work, subject at all times, however, to the direction of the President. ”

“ The work that a Cabinet officer chiefly does is to sign his name to letters or papers that other people write. There is very little constructive work done in any Cabinet office. While the glamour of intimate association with the President—the honor that comes from such a position—appeals to me, for I still have all my old-time vanity and love of dignity and appreciation; yet the position that I occupy is one of so much power, and I am conscious so thoroughly of its usefulness, that I do not want to change it. ”

“ It is to be hoped that, in these days, when we all take an interest in our Empire, everybody knows that the Executive Council is the outward, visible, and recognised form of that impalpable, unrecognised, all-powerful institution, the Cabinet, consisting in fact, though not in theory, of the same persons, save that the Governor is present when the meeting is of the Council, and absent when it is of the Cabinet—a difference of less moment than it sounds, seeing that, except in extreme cases, the Governor has little to do but listen to what is going to be done. ”

“ The chiefs of these ministries, viz., the ministers of state, form the cabinet under the presidency of the minister-president. The system and actual working of the cabinet is similar to those of the advanced Western nations. A cabinet meeting is held usually once a week, and important affairs of state are discussed therein. The cabinet as a body is responsible to the emperor for those affairs, though each minister has great latitude of action in matters which fall exclusively within the sphere of his ministry. There are many matters which do not require personal discussion. ”

“ Under our government the Secretaries who form the Cabinet are in the strictest sense the President’s own ministerial appointees; the men, chosen out of all the nation, to whom he thinks he can best depute the most important and laborious of his executive duties. Of course they all advise him on matters of general policy when he so desires it, and in practice each Cabinet officer has a very free hand in managing his own department, and must have it if he is to do good work. ”

“ Cabinet government is a device for bringing the executive and legislative branches into harmony and coöperation without uniting or confusing their functions. It is as if the majority in the Commons deputized its leaders to act as the advisers of the Crown and the superintendents of the public business, in order that they might have the advantage of administrative knowledge and training in advising legislation and drafting laws to be submitted to parliament. ”

“ The idea of the cabinet as a homogeneous body, collectively responsible to parliament, was not yet established. Government was largely carried on by ministers working more or less independently of one another. In 1760 the cabinet, an informal committee of the privy council, was an institution of a different character from that of to-day. ”

“ In Great Britain, the cabinet, selected from the legislature, is the real executive body. "In its origin it belongs to the legislative part of the State; in its functions it belongs to the executive part." By a conventional code, the ministry or "the Government" can be changed by a vote of want of confidence, or by a defeat of the ministry in the House of Commons on a governmental measure. Our Cabinet holds a subordinate position. The Constitution contemplates, but does not define, "executive departments." ”

“ All laws are sanctioned and promulgated by the president, who is invested with the veto power, which can be overruled only by a two-thirds vote. The president, with the advice and consent of the senate, appoints judges, diplomatic agents, governors of territories, and officers of the army and navy above the rank of colonel. All other officers and officials he appoints and promotes without the consent of the senate. The cabinet is composed of eight ministers—the heads of the government departments of the interior, foreign affairs, finance, war, marine, justice, agriculture, and public works. ”

“ Each cabinet officer, again, controls his own department pretty much as he pleases, without consultation with the President or with his coadjutors, and often in the face of determinations which have been reached by the others. ”

“ We turn next to the other element in the working machine of government, the Cabinet, or policy-directing body, which is the very pivot of our whole system. Two main functions fall to the Cabinet. In the first place, it has to ensure an effective co-ordination between the various departments of government; in the second place, it is responsible for the initiation and guidance of national policy in every sphere, subject to the watchful but friendly control of Parliament. ”

“ To those days also the reformers went for models of ministerial organisation. They formed a government consisting of seven departments,—religion, home affairs, foreign affairs, finance, army and navy, justice and law,—and at its head they placed a premier, who must be an Imperial Prince, and a vice-premier, the Cabinet being assisted by a body of eighteen councillors, who, including in their ranks the most active spirits of the revolution, exercised great influence. ”

“ The duties of this council are confined chiefly to a salutary vigilance over the constitution and laws, and to the convocation of extraordinary sessions of the national legislature, either in conjunction with the president or by its sole act. The cabinet consists of a minister of foreign and domestic affairs; a minister of justice; a minister of finance; a minister of war and marine, each of whom receive an annual salary of six thousand dollars.
Each state government is independent within its local jurisdiction, and, like the federal government has, executive, legislative and judicial powers. ”

“ One sometimes hears of an interior junto, or cabinet within the cabinet, that really determines the policy. This is undoubtedly an exaggeration; a giving of formal shape to informal conferences among leaders on special questions, which have always taken place; but it appears not improbable that if the growth in the size of the cabinet continues, some such interior nucleus may develop which will bear to the cabinet something of the relation that the cabinet now bears to the ministry.
Offices in the Cabinet.
Certain offices always bring their holders into the cabinet. ”

“ If happily, by its intelligence and attractiveness, a cabinet can gain a hold upon the great middle part of Parliament, it will continue to exist notwithstanding the hatching of small plots and the machinations of mean factions. ”

“ In the third place, the procedure of the Cabinet must be intimate, informal, elastic, and confidential; every member must be able to feel that he has played his part in all the main decisions of policy, whether they directly concern his department or not, and that he is personally responsible for these decisions. ”

“ When he enlists his capable generals as aides, why doesn't he also enlist capable chairmen and ministers? Only from there, will he pull all the threads of government together. There alone, one learns to pay attention to the big picture of the state and its details. There is no better place for educating oneself for leadership positions than the cabinet, where the wisdom of the state is concentrated, where every matter is thoroughly processed, and where one can follow the course of business to its smallest artery. ”