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Historical Significance of the term “Cabinet” in England and the United States1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Henry Barrett Learned
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Extract

The institution which is today termed the president's cabinet was, in its origin, a creation of George Washington. It grew out of the need of a vigorous, well organized and well directed central administration which should somehow be closely associated and unified under an executive chief magistrate.

Even before the close of the Revolutionary War there were signs that men desired to see the continental government in the guidance of a capable and trusted chief. There were occasional suggestions, too,—among which Pelatiah Webster's is quite the best known—that a committee or board of administrative officials not too strictly hampered by congress, might aid the chief executive as counsellors. Though ready after a brief discussion to establish a single executive magistrate at the head of the projected government, the convention of 1787 seems to have balked at Gouverneur Morris's crude plan for a president's council. The convention yielded, however, to the president the right to require from the principal officers their opinions in writing, and thus unconsciously helped to predetermine a privy council. In the early autumn of 1787 George Mason of Virginia expressed his fear lest there should “grow out of the principal officers of the great departments” what he termed a Council of State. The phrase was quickly reiterated by George Clinton of New York. James Iredell in answer to Mason, perceiving and writing of the analogy between some such body and the English cabinet committee, viewed the possibility of its existence in the new American government as in no wise dangerous.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , August 1909 , pp. 329 - 346
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1909

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References

2 Political Essays (1791), pp. 210, 213, 214, 221.

3 The Life of George Mason, 1725–1792. …. Ed. Kate Mason Rowland, ii, 388.

4 Letters of Cato, November 8, 1787, in Ford's, P. L.Essays on the Constitution, 262.Google Scholar

5 Answers to Mr. Mason's Objections to the New Constitution recommended by the late Convention at Philadelphia. By Marcus, . (Dated January 8, 1788).Google Scholar Reprinted in McRee, Griffith J., Life and Correspondence of James Iredell (1858), ii, 197.Google Scholar

6 Percy, Lord Eustace, The Privy Council under the Tudors (Stanhope Prize Essay, 1907), 1, 2.Google Scholar

7 The passage may easily be seen in its connection in Gardiner, S. R., Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution (1889), 129.Google ScholarCf. the similar demand of the Grand Remonstrance, Ibid., 131, 153, 154. The demand occurs also in the Ten Propositions (Pym's work) of June 24, 1641. Ibid., 92. Cf. 125, 171 (Nineteen Propositions), 246, 340 (Humble Petition and Advice of 1657).

8 The two ordinances establishing the committee, differing in some respects, may be read in Gardiner, , Constitutional Documents, 190, 192.Google Scholar As yet Gardiner is the only historian who has given them careful consideration. History of the Great Civil War, i, 357 ff. The history of this committee affords an excellent opportunity for a short contribution to institutional history.

9 Gardiner, , History of the Great Civil War (1886), i, 360, 361.Google Scholar

10 Edited by S. H. Reynolds, Oxford, 1891, p. 148 and footnote a

11 The earliest use I have discovered in the State Papers is on April 23, 1625: “There is talk of a selected or Cabinet Council, whereto none are admitted but the Duke of Buckingham, the Lords Treasurer and Chamberlain, Lord Brooke, and Lord Conway.” It is probable that Walter Yonge refers to the same matter when he records in June, 1625, this entry in his Diary (p. 83. Camden Society, 1848): “The King made choice of six of the nobility for his Council of the Cabinet.” On July 14, 1630, Sir Thomas Roe referred to Sir Henry Vane—as Mr.Gardiner, long since pointed out—as one “who is of the Cabinet.” State Papers—Domestic. 1629–1631, p. 306.Google Scholar According to Clarendon, (History, i, 263, Ed. of 1826)Google Scholar, within a few years the terms “Committee of State,” “Junto,” and “Cabinet Council” were used synonymously when referring to a group of royal counsellors. The pamphleteers of the civil wars reveal the similar usage. See The Clarke Papers, i, xliii, xlv (Camden Society, 1891). The term “Junto” as well, probably, as “Cabinet Council” was occasionally applied to the Committee of Both Kingdoms. For the more definite usage of the term as probably applying to an inner committee of the Privy Council under Charles II, see entries in Pepys's, Diary under November 9, 1664Google Scholar; August 26, 1666; November 16, 1667. The New Oxford Dictionary, s. v. cabinet, gives much evidence of the political usage of the term.

12 Parliamentary History, v, 731.

13 Parliamentary History, 733.

14 Ibid., vi, 971ff.

15 State Papers—Domestic, 1690–1691, 33.

16 Ibid., 38.

17 Ibid., 1694–1695, 295.

18 Sir W. R. Ansor regards this committee of state, termed reproachfully a “cabinet council,” as the re-appearance of Edward VI's committee of 1553. Law and Custom of the Constitution. Pt. ii. The Crown. 2d ed. 92–3.

19 Law and Custom., Pt. ii, 92.

20 Anson, , Law and Custom, 105.Google Scholar

21 “The thirty years from 1760 to 1790” says Prof. A. V. Dicey, “may be well termed as regards their spirit, the age of Blackstone.” Again: “The English constitution, looked at from a merely legal point of view, remained in 1827 almost exactly what it had been in 1800. If indeed we leave out of sight the Acts of Union with Scotland and Ireland, we might assert, without much exaggeration, that to a mere lawyer, who recognized no change which was not recorded in the statute book or the law reports, the constitution rested in 1827 on the foundation upon which it had been placed by the Revolution of 1689.” Law and Public Opinion, 70, 84.

22 Burke's, Works (Boston, 1866), I, 470.Google Scholar

23 Lowell, A. Lawrence, The Government of England, i, 53.Google Scholar

24 McRee's, Life and Correspondence of James Iredell, ii, 197.Google Scholar

25 Adams's, J.Works, vi, 439.Google Scholar

26 There were examples enough of local attorneys-general in the colonial epoch. The national attorney-general, it may be noted, was not head of a department until 1870. Statutes at Large, xvi, 162–165.

27 Washington's, Writings, ed. Ford, W. C., xi, 397–8.Google Scholar Cf. Hamilton's, Works, ed. Lodge, H. C., vi, 368.Google Scholar

28 See especially Jefferson's “opinions” scattered along after April 1, 1790, into the following December. Jefferson's, Writings, ed. Ford, P. L., v, 150 ff.Google Scholar

28 Washington's, Diary from 1789 to 1791, ed. Lossing, Benson J., 162.Google Scholar Also Writings, xii, 34, ft. note, 35.

30 Jefferson's, Writings, i, 165Google Scholar, v, 320 ff.

31 Ibid., i, 179, 189–90, 205, 210, etc.

32 Jefferson's, Writings, vi, 250.Google Scholar

33 Ibid., i, 218 ff. vi, 191 ff.

34 The first explicit reference that I have noted to the principal officers of the president as a “council” occurs in a letter of Jefferson to Madison of May 12, 1793: “The Anglophobia has seized violently on three members of our council” (Jefferson's, Writings, vi, 250Google Scholar). On May 19 Jefferson writes of the group as “our conclave” (Ibid., 261). On June 13 Madison is first to apply the well-known English term, writing of “the discussions of the cabinet” (Madison's, Writings, ed. Hunt, G., vi, 132).Google Scholar Again on July 22 he speaks of Hamilton's “cabinet efforts” (Ibid., 136). On August 2 the term “cabinet” first appeared in Jefferson's Anas (Jefferson's, Writings, i, 253).Google Scholar On August 18 Jefferson wrote of a paper “read in cabinet for the 1st time” (Ibid., vi, 394). On April 12, 1794, Rufus King referred in his Diary to the “cabinet” (Life and Correspondence, i, 519). Sometimes the expression was “ministerial cabinet” (American Mercury, Hartford, Ct., November 23, 1795, quoting a letter from Philadelphia of October 14), and not infrequently it was “executive cabinet” (Jefferson to Madison, January 22, 1797; also debates in the house of representatives of February 27, 1802, and January 11, 1803). The first reference to the group that I have come across in the Congressional debates is on April 25, 1798—“the great council of the nation.” On February 20, 1801, Jefferson wrote to Samuel Dexter using the phrase “Cabinet Council of the President.” The phrase, applied locally to a New York state group of officials as a “cabinet council,” I can find as early as May 20, 1792 (Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, i, 410).

There are few variations as time advanced. From many examples collected over the years of Jefferson's administration (1801–1809) I am convinced that then the term became well established in popular usage. There is considerable evidence within those years that the cabinet was looked upon as a definite institution of the American government. As Jefferson could write with good reason: “The third administration. …. presented an example of harmony in a cabinet of six persons, to which perhaps history has furnished no parallel” (Writings, ix, 307).

35 Annals of Congress, 9 Cong., 1st sess. (1805–6), 561, 514–5, 590, 606.

36 Ibid., 744.

37 Hamilton's, Works, vi, 367.Google Scholar

38 ibid. 419.

39 Jefferson's, Writings, ix, 69–70.Google Scholar

40 Ibid., 273–4.

41 Speeches delivered in the Congress of the United States: By Josiah Quincy. ‥ 1805–1813. Ed. by his son, Edmund Quincy. 379–80.

42 Ibid., 397–8.

43 Ibid., 402.

44 Richardson's, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, ii, 448Google Scholar; iii, 5, 19, 36.

45 Ibid., iv, 350, 659; v, 163, etc.

46 January 20.

47 Congressional Record, House Proceedings, December 14, 1906, p. 381 ff.

48 Ibid., 381.

49 The salaries are found in Statutes at Large, xxxiv, pt. i, chaps. 1635, 2907. The part of the statute reproducing Littauer's statement reads : “Sec. 4. That on and after March fourth, nineteen hundred and seven, the compensation of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Vice-President of the United States and the heads of Executive Departments who are members of the President's Cabinet shall be at the rate of twelve thousand dollars per annum each….” Chap. 1635: 993.

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