VERNM ENT) . In some of the countries which have followed the United States form of gov ernment the Cabinet members are granted a seat in the legislature for purposes of govern ment, if not of voting. In the Cabinet system the head of the state in whose name all acts of government are performed is legally irre sponsible, the responsibility for such acts being assumed by the ministers who countersign or otherwise attest their approval of such acts. The Cabinet's responsibility for all govern mental acts is enforced by the legislative body by means of votes of censure or of lack of con fidence or by defeating the legislative meas ures or program advocated by the ministry. In the event of an adverse vote on their proposals the Cabinet must either resign or dissolve the existing legislature and appeal to the electorate at a new election. The responsibility is collec tive and the ministry stands or falls as a body or unit. But in England the fate of the Cabi net can only be affected by the censure of the House of Commons; the censure of the Lords can have no adverse effect.
Hence in governments patterned after the British system the Cabinet is the dominant power in the state and renders wholly impos sible the separation of powers, which forms the basic principle of constitutional government.
The American Cabinet, or "President's Cab inet)) has, of course, grown with the growth of the departments. There were but four Cabinet officers at the outset, the Secretaries of State, of War and of the Treasury, with the Attorney General. Of these, following the English tra dition, in which from necessity foreign affairs had held the highest place, the secretaryship of state was regarded as the most important and honorable, and its incumbent was consid ered to be in the line of succession for the Presidency, as for several administrations proved to be the case. John Quincy Adams was the last of these, and he appointed his chief rival, Henry Clay, Secretary of State with the presidential succession in view. The same notion has lingered to our own day and caused the Secretary of State to be termed the of an administration; in itself an absurd and meaningless term, but with color given to it by the preference for this post among some of the ablest party leaders ambi tious of the Presidency. The next officer added was the Secretary of the Navy, whose office was created in 1798. In 1829 the Postmaster General was raised to the Cabinet, though the office had existed 35 years; in 1849 the Secre taryship of the Interior was created and made of Cabinet rank; in 1889 was added the Sec retary of Agriculture, in 1903 the Secretary of Commerce and Labor. The last-named office
was divided in 1913 into the Department of Com merce and the Department of Labor, and the executive heads of each accorded Cabinet rank. In accordance with Congressional action in 1886 the Cabinet officers rank in order of suc cession to the Presidency as follows : Secretary of State, Secretary of War, Secretary of the Treasury, Attorney-General, Postmaster-Gen eral, Secretary of the Navy, Secretary of the Interior, Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of Commerce and Secretary of Labor. It will be noted that after the original four the others are named in the order of the creation of their de partments, not of their elevation to Cabinet rank.
The President's Cabinet cannot, properly speaking, be called a cabinet, in the sense of a unified body, and only once has it been recog nized by statute — in the General Appropria tion Act of 26 Feb. 1907, where it is called by name in the clause fixing the salaries of its members. It does not act as a unit and has no responsibility as a unit. The word is merely a popular name for the group of officers in charge of the great branches of administra tion, whom the President consults individually or collectively at will or not at all. A more ap propriate term for the President and his ad visers would be "administration;' since this of itself indicates that the group is restricted to the field of law operating and not concerned with law making, thus distinguishing the group from the British Cabinet which combines both functions and thus may properly be called the "government?' The President is the head and centre of the administration, possessing all power of direction, short of suspending the laws, and usually co-operates with the depart ment heads to enforce the principles of the party in power. There are no gradations of authority, the departments being equal in their subordination, and no means of inter-connection, save as they grow out of the Cabinet council. The department heads have nothing to do with legislation, and by law are prohibited from being members of the legislative body (Art. I, Sec. VI, ¶ 2 of the Constitution). Hence the privilege of debate and even of personal com munication with Congress as a body has been withheld from department heads.