CABINET (originally the closet or private apartment of a monarch, in which he consults with his most trusted advisers; hence, some times as a term of contempt, those who frequent the king's closet. See CABINET above). The col lective body of official advisers of the executive head of the State. In modern times the term is usually limited to the ministers, or heads of the great departments of State. in a constitu tional government, but there is no reason for restricting it to such heads of departments, nor in refusing the title to the chosen advisers of an absolute monarch. The powers and functions of cabinets vary greatly, even in modern constitu tional States.
In England the Cabinet is virtually a com mittee of the House of Commons, and it consti tutes the supreme executive authority of the realm. In the 'United States the term is applied to the group of executive heads of the Federal Government, who have no authority outside of their several departments, and whose function as Cabinet ministers is purely an advisory one. The Cabinets of the two countries are alike in this respect, however, that they are composed exclusively of the members of the dominant po litical party—a result insured in England by the fact that the Cabinet, being a committee of the legislature, is dependent on a party majority for its continuance in office, and in the United States by the assumed obligation of the President to appoint only members of his own political party to the chief offices of the State. In the constitutional governments of the Continent of Europe and in Japan. as well as in the self-governing British colonies, the model of the English Cabinet has usually been followed. There being in those countries, with the excep tion of France and Switzerland, no opportunity for the popular will to express itself directly in the choice of the chief executive, popular govern ment is conceived of as signifying parliamentary government, and the attempt is made, with vary ing degrees of success, to secure to the legislature a substantial measure of executive power through a responsible Cabinet, subject to its control. It
is only in Great Britain that this transfer of executive power from the titular head of the State to the legislature has become complete, and that we find Cabinet Government in its most highly developed form. In France, however, it is practiced with a large measure of success. and is completely accepted in theory, whereas, in most of the Continental States which have • adopted the device of the parliamentary Cabinet., it is still imperfectly accepted and applied.
France is the only important instance of the adoption of Cabinet government by a republic. In the free States, in which the popular will finds expression in the choice of the head of the state, it has not usually been deemed necessary to de prive that head of his executive authority, nor to set up a competing executive, deriving its au thority less directly from the people. Hence in Switzerland and the republic of the Western World. the American model—a Cabinet responsi ble not to the legislature, but to the President or Governor—has been adopted. In this system the Cabinet, as a body. has no official existence, the persons composing it being individually, and not collectively, responsible to the head of the State, and usually holding their offices as well as their advisory relation to hint subject to his will. In the Federal Government of the United States this relation is clearly indicated in the phrase President's Cabinet,' by which his official advisers are commonly referred to. Accordingly, the dis nussal of a Cabinet minister, or even of the whole Cabinet, may be effected without altering the political complexion or the policy of the ad ministration; whereas. under the English system, the Cabinet is 'the Government,' its members stand or fall together, and its dismissal involves, in the full sense of the phrase, a change of gov ernment.