Next after the Inaugural Address, his first official act was the
selection of his Cabinet; and here the general disappointment was
equalled by the general wonder. As the President was little known
except from the victories which had commended him, it was not then
seen how completely characteristic was this initial act. Looking back
upon it, we recognize the pretension by which all tradition, usage,
and propriety were discarded, by which the just expectations of the
party that had elected him were set at nought, and the safeguards of
constitutional government were subordinated to the personal pretensions
of One Man. In this Cabinet were persons having small relations
with the Republican Party and little position in the country, some
absolutely without claims from public service, and some actually
disqualified by the gifts they had made to the President. Such was
the political phenomenon presented for the first time in American
history, while reported sayings of the President showed the simplicity
with which he acted. To a committee he described his Cabinet as his
“family,” with which no stranger could be allowed to interfere, and
to a member of Congress he announced that he selected his Cabinet “to
please himself and nobody else,”--being good rules unquestionably
for the organization of a household and the choice of domestics, to
which the Cabinet seem to have been likened. This personal government
flowered in the Navy Department, where a gift-bearing Greek was
suddenly changed to a Secretary. No less a personage than the grand
old Admiral, the brave, yet modest Farragut, was reported as asking,
on the fifth of March, the very day when the Cabinet was announced,
in unaffected ignorance, “Do you know anything of Borie?” And yet
this unconspicuous citizen, bearer of gifts to the President, was
constituted the naval superior of that historic character. If others
were less obscure, the Cabinet as a unit was none the less notable as
the creature of Presidential will, where Chance vied with Favoritism as
arbiter.
All this is so strange, when we consider the true idea of a Cabinet.
Though not named in the Constitution, yet by virtue of unbroken usage
among us, and in harmony with constitutional governments everywhere,
the Cabinet has become a constitutional body, hardly less than if
expressly established by the Constitution itself. Its members, besides
being the heads of great departments, are the counsellors of the
President, with the duty to advise him of all matters within the sphere
of his office, being nothing less than the great catalogue in the
Preamble of the Constitution, beginning with duty to the Union, and
ending with the duty to secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves
and our posterity. Besides undoubted fitness for these exalted
responsibilities, as head of a department and as counsellor, a member
should have such acknowledged position in the country that his presence
inspires confidence and gives strength to the Administration. How
little these things were regarded by the President need not be said.
Unquestionably the President has a discretion in the appointment of
his Cabinet; but it is a constitutional discretion, regulated by
regard for the interests of the country and not by mere personal
will, by statesmanship and not by favoritism. A Cabinet is a national
institution and not a Presidential perquisite,--unless our President is
allowed to copy the example of Imperial France. In all constitutional
governments, the Cabinet is selected on public reasons, and with a
single eye to the public service; it is not in any respect the “family”
of the sovereign, nor is it “to please himself and nobody else.”
English monarchs have often accepted statesmen personally disagreeable,
when they had become representatives of the prevailing party,--as
when George the Third, the most obstinate of rulers, accepted Fox,
and George the Fourth, as prejudiced as his father was obstinate,
accepted Canning, each bringing to the service commanding faculties.
It is related that the Duke of Wellington, with military frankness,
encountered the personal objections of the King in the latter case,
by saying: “Your Majesty is the sovereign of England, with duties to
your people far above any to yourself; and these duties render it
imperative that you should at this time employ the abilities of Mr.
Canning.”[117] By such instances in a constitutional government is the
Cabinet fixed as a constitutional and not a personal body. It is only
by some extraordinary hallucination that the President of a Republic
dedicated to Constitutional Liberty can imagine himself invested with
a transforming prerogative above that of any English sovereign, by
which his counsellors are changed from public officers to personal
attendants, and a great constitutional body, in which all citizens have
a common interest, is made a perquisite of the President.