ast as old as the poetry of Burns. Nor can any thing be more curiously
characteristic of the political genius of the people, than the present
position of this most important official personage. Departmentally, he
is no more than the first-named of five persons, by whom jointly the
powers of the Lord Treasurership are taken to be exercised; he is not
their master, or, otherwise than by mere priority, their head: and he
has no special function or prerogative under the formal Constitution of
the office. He has no official rank except that of Privy Councillor.
Eight members of the Cabinet, including five Secretaries of State, and
several other members of the Government, take official precedence of
him. His rights and duties as head of the Administration are nowhere
recorded. He is almost, if not altogether, unknown to the Statute Law.

Nor is the position of the body, over which he presides, less singular
than his own. The Cabinet wields, with partial exceptions, the powers of
the Privy Council, besides having a standing ground in relation to the
personal will of the Sovereign, far beyond what the Privy Council ever
held or claimed. Yet it has no connection with the Privy Council, except
that every one, on first becoming a member of the Cabinet, is, if not
belonging to it already, sworn a member of that body. There are other
sections of the Privy Council, forming regular Committees for Education
and for Trade. But the Cabinet has not even this degree of formal
sanction, to sustain its existence. It lives and acts simply by
understanding, without a single line of written law or constitution to
determine its relations to the Monarch, or to the Parliament, or to the
nation; or the relations of its members to one another, or to their
head. It sits in the closest secrecy. There is no record of its
proceedings, nor is there any one to hear them, except upon the very
rare occasions when some important functionary, for the most part
military or legal, is introduced, _pro hac vice_, for the purpose of
giving to it necessary information.

Every one of its members acts in no less than three capacities: as
administrator of a department of State; as member of a legislative
chamber; and as a confidential adviser of the Crown. Two at least of
them add to those three characters a fourth; for in each House of
Parliament it is indispensable that one of the principal Ministers
should be what is termed its Leader. This is an office the most
i