SDARY COIL, CURRENTS, Ac. 



SECTOR. 



432 



I !* to another circle : if the Utter be called primary, the former 

 U secondary when it pastes through the poles of the primary. 



\HY COIL, CURRENTS. Ac. 

 i:KT.\l:Y (French, Serrflairt), one entrusted with the secret* 

 of hi* office or employer; one who writes for another. It* remote 

 origin i the Latin trmtttm. The phrue * notarius eeretonun " is 

 pplinl l.y Vnpitctu (' Div. Aurelianus ') to one of the secretaries of 

 the emperor Aurelian. This appellation was of very early UM in 

 England: Archbishop Recket. in the reign of Henry II., had hi* 

 " eeretariui ; " although the penon who conducted the king's corre- 

 pondrnce, till the middle of the 13th century, was calleil I. 

 only, probably from the office being held by an ecclesiastic. The first 

 time the title of " Mcretariui nosier " occurs is in the 37th Hen. III., 

 :. 



SECRETARY OF STATE. The office of swrotary of state i* ! 

 of very ancient date, and the person who fills it has been called 

 rariouiJy '' the king', chief secretary," "principal secretary," and. ::fi.-r 

 the Restoration. " principal secretary of state." He wns in fact the 

 king's private iccretary, and had custody of the king's signet. The 

 dutin of the office were originally performed by a single pemon, \vh<> 

 had the aid of four clerks. The statute 27 Henry VIII., c. 11. n-gn- 

 Uting the fee* to be taken by " the king's clerks of his grace's M^n, t 

 and privy seal," directs that all grant* to be passed under any of hi< 

 majesty's seals shall, before they are so sealed, be brought and delivered 

 to the king's principal secretary or to one of the clerks of the signet. 

 The division of the office between two persons is said to have occurred 

 at the end of the reign of Henry VIII., but it is probable that the two 

 secretaries were not until long afterwards of equal rank. Thus we 

 find Sir Francis Walsingham, in the time of Queen Elizabeth, addressed 

 as her majesty's principal secretary of state, although Dr. Thomas 

 Wilson was his colleague in the office. Clarendon, when describing the 

 chief ministers at the beginning of the reign of Charles I., mentions 

 the two secretaries of state, " who were not in those days officers of 

 that magnitude they have been since ; being only to make despatches 

 upon the conclusions of councils, not to governor preside in tli"- 

 council*." Nevertheless the principal secretary of state must, by his 

 immediate and constant access to the king, have been always a person 

 of great influence in the state. The statute 31 Henry VIII., c. 10, 

 gives the king's chief secretary, if he is a baron or a bishop, place above 

 all peers of the same degree ; and it enacts that if he is not a peer, ho 

 shall hare a seat reserved for him on the woolsack in parliament; and 

 in tin- Star Chamber and other conferences of the council, that he 

 shall be placed next to the ten great officers of state named in the 

 statute. He probably was always a member of the privy council. 

 Cardinal Wolsey.in his disgrace earnestly implores Secretary Gardiner 

 (afterwards bishop of Winchester), whom he addresses as a privy coun- 

 cillor, to intercede for him with the king. ( Ellis' s ' Letters,' vol. ii.) I.nrd 

 Camden, in his judgment in the case of Entick v. Carrington (11 liar- 

 grave's 'State Trials,' p. 317), attributes the growth of the secretary 

 of state's importance to his intercourse with ambassadors and the 

 management of all the foreign correspondence of the state, after the 

 policy of having resident ministers in foreign courts wns established 

 in Europe. Lord Camden indeed denies that he was anciently a privy 

 counsellor.' 



The number of secretaries of state seems to have varied from time 

 to time : in the reign of George III. there were often only two ; but 

 there are now five principal secretaries of state, whose duties are 

 divided into five departments, namely, for home affairs, foreign affairs, 

 for war, for the colonies, and a fifth, first appointed in 1 858, for the 

 management of the affairs of India. They are always made members 

 of the privy council and the cabinet. They are appointed (without 

 patent) by mere delivery to them of the seals of office by the sovereign. 

 Each is capable of performing the duties of all the departments, and 

 the offices are all so much counted to be one and the same, that if 

 removed from one secretaryship of state to another, a member of the 

 House of Commons does not vacate his seat. 



To the secretary of state for the home department belongs the 

 maintenance of the peace within the kingdom, and the administration 

 of justice so far as the royal prerogative U involved in it. All patents, 

 charters of incorporation, commissions of the peace and of inquiry, pass 

 through his office. He superintends the administration of affairs in 

 Ireland. The secretary for foreign affairs conducts the correspondence 

 with foreign states, and negotiates treaties with them, either through 

 British ministers resident there, or personally with foreign ministers at 

 this court. He recommends to the crown ambassadors, ministers, and 

 consuls to represent Great Britain abroad, and countersigns their 

 warrants. The secretory for the colonial department performs for the 

 colonies the same functions that the secretary for the home department 

 performs for Great Britain. The secretary for war has the manage- 

 ment of the army, in which he has the assistance of the commander- 

 !n-chief. Each is assisted by two under-secretaries of state, nominated 

 by himself; the one being usually permanent, the other dependent 

 upon the administration then in power. The secretary for India h.-w 

 one under-necrciary, and the assistance of a council There is likrwiw 

 in each department a large establishment of clerks appointed by the 

 principal secretary. 



The power to commit persons on suspicion of treason i incidental 



to the office of principal secretary of state a power which, though 

 long exercised, has been often disputed. It is not necessary here to 

 give the arguments on both sides ; they are discussed with great care 

 by Lord Camden in the case above cited (Entick r. Carrington), which 

 was one of the numerous judicial inquiries arising out of the dispute 

 between the Crown and John Wilkes at the beginning of the reign of 

 George III. The conclusions to which Lord Camden comes are that 

 the secretary of state is not a magistrate known to the common law ; 

 that the power of commitment for state offences, which he has for 

 many ages exercised, was used by him as an immediate delegation tn<iu 

 the person of the king, a fact which may be inferred, amour 

 things, from the debates in parliament in the time of Charles I., v, h. -i 

 Secretary Cook claimed the power on that ground ; that nevertheless 

 court* of justice must recognise this power, inasmuch as there has 

 l>ecn constant usage of it, supported by three judicial 

 favour of it since the Revolution, namely, by Lord Holt in 1895 (Rex 

 r. Kendal ami Itowr) ; by Chief Justice Parker in 1711 (Queen r. 

 Derby); and by Lord Hardwicke in 1734 (Rex r. Earbury). In a 

 more recent case (King r. Despard, 1798), Lord Kenyon sayn, " I haxi- 

 no ililliciiliy in saying that the secretaries of state have the right to 

 commit," and he hints that Lord Camden felt too much doubt on the 

 subject. 



There is also a chief secretary for Ireland, resident in Dublin (except 

 when parliament is sitting), and having always an under-sn 

 there. He corresponds with the home department, and is under the 

 authority of the lord lieutenant. His office is called that of secretary 

 to the lord lieutenant ; but it is analogous to the office of secretary of 

 state. He has sometimes, though very rarely, been a member of the 

 cabinet. 



SKCT (from the Latin Serla). Two accounts are given of the origin 

 of this word. By some persons it is represented as a derivative of 

 ntqu-or (tccu-tut), " to follow." By others it is derived from iee-o 

 (sec-tu), " to cut." It is in this case, as in many similiar instances, 

 not easy to decide between the pretensions of the two ; and it is 

 far from being improbable that some persons may hav used the 

 word as a derivative from one verb, and others as derived from 

 the other. 



The scctt of philosophers in ancient times seem rather to have been 

 persons who were follmoen of some distinguished teacher, than per- 

 sons cut off from any general mass. But when we come to the word 

 in its now more common and familiar use, namely, as denoting a par- 

 ticular community of Christians, the idea then predominates of ttpara- 

 tion, rutting off, over that of following. Thus no one thinks of calling 

 the Roman Catholic church a sect : and none, except it was d< 

 to disparage and dishonour it, would call the English Pro! 

 church a sect. But when we descend below it, we then see smaller 

 religious communities, who are cut off from a church, either by tin-M- 

 own act, or by some supposed or real act of usurpation and unchristian 

 tyranny on the part of the larger community. Thus the Quakers are 

 a sect, the Anabaptists are a sect, the Methodists are a sect, and the 

 Independents and English Presbyterians now are sects, though some 

 of these were for a time in existence without falling under the descrip- 

 tion of a sect, being still incorporated in the church, in which they 

 sought to accomplish certain reforms. In other systems there are 

 smaller bodies of sectaries. 



SECTION, the curve made by the intersection of two surfaces. In 

 the graphical arts it means generally a plane section, and most fre- 

 quently a vertical section, the horizontal section being calkd the plan. 

 In architectural designs, the longest vertical section is usually called 

 the elevation, the term section being restricted to vertical sections 

 which are perpendicular to the elevation. 



s I ICTOlt (Geometry), the figure made by two straight lines which 

 meet, and a curve which cuts them both. The most common is the 

 circular sector, made by two radii of a circle and the arc which they 

 include. If r be the radius in linear units, and 6 the angle measured 

 in theoretical units [ANGLE], the area of the sector is J r 5 9 square units ; 

 but according as the angle is expressed in degrees and fractions of a 

 degree, in minutes and fractions of a minute, or in seconds and fractions 

 of a second, the area is found by the first, second, or third of the 

 following formula; : 



r= tf 



r* fl- 



ax 67-29578 2x3437747 2 x 206264-8 



SECTOR (drawing instrument), an instrument invented by Ountcr, 

 which has the appearance of a small carpenter's rule, marked with 

 scales in every part ; the greater number of these scales not being laid 

 down parallel to the edges of the rule, but converging towards the 

 pivot on which the moving arm of the rule turns while the instrument 

 is opened. Only these converging scales properly belong to the sector ; 

 the others arc merely laid down for convenience on such blank spaces 

 as are left by the converging or Rectorial scales. 



The sector is a large number of pairs of compasses packed up into 

 one, and most explanations of the instrument attempt to describe 

 them all in one. It will, however, be more convenient to separate one 

 pair of compasses from the rest, and to describe its use. Each piece 

 of the ruler is marked with the same scales. Take one of these scales, 

 O A, and that which corresponds to it, o n ; then A o B is a pair of com- 



