[Footnote 20:  The English method, however, would probably not work well in this country, and might prove to be a source of great and complicated dangers.  See above, p. 169.]

[Sidenote:  Executive departments] [Sidenote:  The cabinet] The Constitution made no specific provisions for the creation of executive departments, but left the matter to Congress.  At the beginning of Washington’s administration three secretaryships were created,—­those of state, treasury, and war; and an attorney-general was appointed.  Afterward the department of the navy was separated from that of war, the postmaster-general was made a member of the administration, and as lately as 1849 the department of the interior was organized.  The heads of these departments are the president’s advisers, but they have as a body no recognized legal existence or authority.  They hold their meetings in a room at the president’s executive mansion, the White House, but no record is kept of their proceedings and the president is not bound to heed their advice.  This body has always been called the “Cabinet,” after the English usage.  It is like the English cabinet in being composed of heads of executive departments and in being, as a body, unknown to the law; in other respects the difference is very great.  The English cabinet is the executive committee of the House of Commons, and exercises a guiding and directing influence upon legislation.  The position of the president is not at all like that of the prime minister; it is more like that of the English sovereign, though the latter has not nearly so much power as the president; and the American cabinet in some respects resembles the English privy council, though it cannot make ordinances.

[Sidenote:  The secretary of state.] The secretary of state ranks first among our cabinet officers.  He is often called our prime minister or “premier,” but there could not be a more absurd use of language.  In order to make an American personage corresponding to the English prime minister we must first go to the House of Representatives, take its committee of ways and means and its committee on appropriations, and unite them into one committee of finance; then we must take the chairman of this committee, give him the power of dissolving the House and ordering a new election, and make him master of all the executive departments, while at the same time we strip from the president all real control over the administration.  This exalted finance-chairman would be much like the First Lord of the Treasury, commonly called the prime minister.  This illustration shows how wide the divergence has become between our system and that of Great Britain.

Our secretary of state is our minister of foreign affairs, and is the only officer who is authorized to communicate with other governments in the name of the president.  He is at the head of the diplomatic and consular service, issuing the instructions to our ministers abroad, and he takes a leading part in the negotiation of treaties.  To these ministerial duties he adds some that are more characteristic of his title of secretary.  He keeps the national archives, and superintends the publication of laws, treaties, and proclamations; and he is the keeper of the great seal of the United States.