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.