The American cabinet is anal ogous not to the British cabinet, but to the privy council. Sherman urged that there was need of such a council, in order to keep watch over the president. It was suggested that the privy council should consist of "the president of the Senate, the speaker of the House of Representatives, the chief justice of the supreme court, and the principal officer in each of five departments as they shall from time to time be established; their duty shall be to advise him in matters which he shall lay before them, but their advice shall not conclude him, or affect his responsibility." The plan for such a council found favour with Franklin, Madison, Wilson, Dickinson, and Mason, but did not satisfy the convention. When it was voted down Mason used strong language. "In rejecting a council to the president," said he, "we are about to try an experiment on which the mest despotic government has never ventured; the Grand Seignior himself has his Divan." It was this failure to provide a council which led the convention to give to the Senate a share in some of the executive functions of the president, such as the making of treaties, the appointment of ambassadors, consuls, judges of the supreme court, and other officers of the United States whose appointment was not otherwise provided for. As it was objected to the office of vice-president that he seemed to have nothing provided for him to do, he was disposed of by making him president of the Senate. No cabinet was created by the Constitution, but since then the heads of various executive departments, appointed by the president, have come to constitute what is called his cabinet. Since, however, the members of it do not belong to Congress, and can neither initiate nor guide legislation, they really constitute a privy council rather than a cabinet in the modern sense, thus furnishing another illustration of the analogy between the president and the archaic sovereign. judiciary. Concerning the structure of the federal judiciary little need be said here. It was framed with very The federal little disagreement among the delegates. The work was chiefly done in committee by Ellsworth, Wilson, Randolph, and Rutledge, and the result did not differ essentially from the scheme laid down in the Virginia plan. It was indeed the indispensable completion of the work which was begun by the creation of a national House of Representatives. To make a federal government immediately operative upon individual citizens, it must of course be armed with federal courts to try and federal officers to execute judgment in all cases in which individual citizens were amenable to the national law. But for this system of United States courts extended throughout the states and supreme within its own sphere, the federal constitution could never have been put into practical working order. In another respect the federal judiciary was the most remarkable and original of all the creations of that wonderful convention. It was charged with the duty of interpreting, in accordance with the general principles of common law, the Federal Constitution itself. This is the most noble as it is the most distinctive feature in the government of the United States. It constitutes a difference between the American and British systems more fundamental than the separation of the executive from the legislative department. In Great Britain the unwritten constitution is administered by the omnipotent House of Commons; whatever statute is enacted by Parliament must stand until some future Parliament may see fit to repeal it. But an act passed by both houses of Congress, and signed by the president, may still be set aside as unconstitutional by the supreme court of the United States in its judgments upon individual cases brought before it. It was thus that the practical working of our Federal Constitution during the first thirty years of the nineteenth century was swayed to so great an extent by the profound and luminous decisions of Chief Justice Marshall, that he must be assigned a foremost place among the founders of our Federal Union. This intrusting to the judiciary the whole interpretation of the fundamental instrument of government is the most peculiarly American feature of the work done by the convention, and to the stability of such a federation as ours, covering as it does the greater part of a huge continent, it was absolutely indispensable. Thus, at length, was realized the sublime concep tion of a nation in which every citizen lives under two complete and well-rounded systems of laws, —— the state law and the federal law, each with its legislature, its executive, and its judiciary moving one within the other, noiselessly and without friction. It was one of the longest reaches of constructive statesmanship ever known in the world. There never was anything quite like it before, and in Eu rope it needs much explanation to-day even for educated statesmen who have never seen its workings. Yet to Americans it has become so much a matter of course that they, too, sometimes need to be told how much it signifies. In 1787 it was the substitution of law for violence between states that were partly sovereign. In some future still grander convention we trust the same thing will be done between states that have been wholly sovereign, whereby peace may gain and violence be diminished over other lands than this which has set the example. Great as was the work which the Federal Convention had now accomplished, none of the members supposed it to be complete. After some discussion, it was decided that Congress might at any time, by a two thirds vote in both houses, propose amendments to the constitution, or on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the states might call a convention for proposing amendments; and such amendments should become part of the constitution as soon as ratified by three fourths of the states, either through their legislatures or through special conventions summoned for the purpose. The design of this elaborate arrangement was to guard against hasty or ill-considered changes in the fundamental instrument of government; and its effectiveness has been such that an amendment has come to be impossible save as the result of intense conviction on the part of a vast majority of the whole American people. Finally it was decided that the Federal Constitution, as now completed, should be presented to the Continental Congress, and then referred to special conventions in all the states for ratification; and that when nine states, or two thirds of the whole number, should have ratified, it should at once go into operation as between such ratifying states. When the great document was at last drafted by Gouverneur Morris, and was all ready for the signatures, the aged Franklin produced a paper, which was read for him, as his voice was weak. Some parts of this Constitution, he said, Signing the he did not approve, but he was aston- Constitution. ished to find it so nearly perfect. Whatever opinion he had of its errors he would sacrifice to the public good, and he hoped that every member of the convention who still had objections would on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility, and for the sake of unanimity put his name to this instrument. Hamilton added his plea. A few members, he said, by refusing to sign, might do infinite mischief. No man's ideas could be more remote from the plan than his were known to be; but was it possible for a true patriot to deliberate between anarchy and convulsion, on the one side, and the chance of good to be expected from this plan, on the other? From these appeals, as well as from Washington's solemn warning at the outset, we see how distinctly it was realized that the country was on the verge of civil war. Most of the members felt so, but to some the new government seemed far too strong, and there were three who dreaded despotism even more than anarchy. Mason, Randolph, and Gerry refused to sign, though Randolph sought to qualify his refusal by explaining that he |