MINISTER MINISTERS. 



833 



ministers vary somewhat: under lord Melbourne, 

 they are the following : 1. First lord of the trea- 

 sury ; 2. lord high chancellor ; 3. chancellor of the 

 exchequer ; 4. secretary of state for foreign affairs ; 



5. secretary of state for the colonial department; 



6. secretary of state for the home department; 7. 

 president of the council ; 8. lord privy seal ; 9. first 

 lord of the admiralty ; 10. president of the board of 

 control; 11. paymaster of the forces ; 12. secretary 

 at war ; 13. chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster. 

 The French ministry consists of, 1. the minister of 

 the interior ; 2. minister of finance ; 3. keeper of 

 the seals and minister of justice ; 4. minister of 

 public instruction and ecclesiastical affairs ; 5. minis- 

 ter of commerce and public works ; G. minister of 

 the marine and colonies ; 7. minister of war ; 8. 

 minister of foreign affairs. The American cabinet 

 consists of the secretaries of state (foreign and home 

 affairs), of the treasury, of war, and of the navy. 

 The attorney-general, and sometimes also the post- 

 master-general, are members of the cabinet. The 

 chief-justice of the supreme court of the United 

 States is never a member of the cabinet. He is 

 merely a judicial officer, and not removable, except 

 by impeachment. The lord high chancellor is the 

 only judge in Britain who belongs to the ministry. 

 In France and Britain, the members are appointed 

 solely by the king ; in the United States, the concur- 

 rence of the senate is necessary for the appointment 

 of the secretaries, and all other officers nominated by 

 the president. No case, however, has yet existed in 

 which the senate has refused to concur in the ap- 

 pointment of the secretaries, because it has been 

 thought unfair to deny the president the choice of 

 his own cabinet, as all the responsibility rests upon 

 him. The modern idea of constitutional monar- 

 chies, in which two most heterogeneous prin- 

 ciples, the inviolability of the law, and that of 

 the monarch, who thus stands above the law, were 

 to be reconciled, produced a skilful contrivance the 

 responsibility of ministers in order to leave the 

 inviolability of the monarch uninfringed, and yet to 

 put a check upon the arbitrary use of his power. 

 Europe owes this development of constitutional law, 

 as most of the improvements in her political insti- 

 tutions, to England. One or more ministers in 

 France and Britain (and many other countries) 

 countersign the royal orders, and by thus doing 

 become responsible for the contents. This responsi- 

 bility is always a delicate thing, because it is impos- 

 sible to define with exactness what constitutes uncon- 

 stitutionality and a violation of the public interest ; 

 and, hard as it may appear in the abstract, the ques- 

 tion must be left to the houses of legislature to decide, 

 in case of an impeachment of the ministers. In gen- 

 eral, however, there is little danger of the ministers 

 being impeached, except for very flagrant violations 

 of law, or in times of very violent party spirit. 

 Peculation also forms a ground of impeachment. In 

 the United States of America, no such responsibility 

 rests on the secretaries, nor is their countersign 

 requisite, for the simple reason that the president 

 himself is answerable for every thing which he does, 

 and may be impeached. (See Impeachment.) Though 

 the constitutional monarch has the full right to 

 appoint and discharge his ministers according to 

 pleasure, he is, nevertheless, obliged to appoint such 

 as will satisfy public opinion, or the legislature will 

 not grant supplies, and, in fact, will not co-operate 

 with the administration. This denial to grant sup- 

 plies, which is the great support of the people against 

 the government, was called, some time ago, in 

 France, an outrageous interference with the king's 

 prerogatives. In Britain, the command of a majo- 

 rity in the houses lias become indispensable for the 



ministers, so that the loss of a bill brought in by 

 them is regularly followed by the resignation of the 

 premier. This applies, however, only to what are 

 denominated cabinet questions, in respect to which it 

 is considered necessary that the ministry should be 

 united. Where a difference of opinion is openly pro- 

 fessed by the ministers themselves, the. question is 

 not a cabinet question, and the failure of a bill pro- 

 posed by a minister respecting it is not considered 

 fatal to the administration. Thus the Catholic eman- 

 cipation was for a long time not a cabinet question ; 

 and when Canning lost his bill, in 1827, he, never- 

 theless, did not give in his resignation. The situa- 

 tion of the constitutional monarch in France and Bri- 

 tain, and many other reasons in the organization of 

 the governments of those countries render it neces- 

 sary for the ministers to be present at the parlia- 

 mentary debates, and to support their measures : in 

 fact, one member of the cabinet, the lord high chan- 

 cellor, is, ex officio, president of the house of lords. 

 In Britain, those of the ministry who are peers sit 

 in the house of lords ; the others sit in the house of 

 commons, in virtue of being elected members ; but it 

 is considered. indispensable that they should be there. 

 They could not be admitted into the house except as 

 members. The prime-minister, if a peer, sits in the 

 house of lords : Pitt and Canning, who were com- 

 moners, sat in the commons. In France, the mini- 

 sters are also generally members of one or the other 

 house, but they need not be members, because the 

 constitution gives them the right of being heard in 

 either house, by virtue of their office. The ministers 

 have their bench in France. In the United States of 

 America, no secretary can sit in either house, as the 

 constitution prohibits any officer of government from 

 being chosen a representative or senator. In Russia, 

 the cabinet is different from the ministry. The 

 former has the management of the emperor's private 

 affairs and of foreign politics, and its members are 

 called cabinet ministers ; the members of the mini- 

 stry, so called, are tenned state ministers. Some 

 governments have also conference ministers, who 

 have no real departments. The love of titles has 

 produced a great mixture of these designations in 

 different countries. In France, it was formerly cus- 

 tomary to appoint an ex-minister minister of state, 

 with a pension. Those who were ministers of state 

 before the revolution of 1830, have remained so ; but 

 the ex-ministers, since 1830, have returned to their 

 private stations. In Britain, the privy council is to 

 be distinguished from the ministry. The former con- 

 tains a very large number of members. 



MINISTERS, FOREIGN. In the article Diplo- 

 macy, some account has been given of the history of 

 embassies ; it remains here to speak of the different 

 classes of foreign ministers as they now exist. 

 Every person sent from one sovereign government 

 to another, and accredited to the latter, in order to 

 transact public business, of a transient or permanent 

 character, in the name of his government, with 

 that to which he is sent, is a foreign minister. 

 Sometimes such ministers are sent merely to be pre- 

 sent at the coronation of a foreign prince ; some- 

 times to settle disputed points ; at other times to 

 reside permanently with the foreign government. 

 Generally, they are divided into three classes. 

 Those of the first class, called ambassadors, are not 

 merely the agents of their government, but represent 

 their sovereign personally, and receive honours and 

 enjoy privileges accordingly. The English, French, 

 Spanish, Russian, Austrian governments send am- 

 bassadors to each other; the Prussian government 

 does not send ministers of this rank. The second 

 class are those called by the joint title of envoys 

 extraordinary and ministers plenipotentiary ; they 



