]

The inchoate character of the Cabinet for a considerable period explains
what might otherwise seem to be an anomaly,--the delay of Jefferson in
occupying his post. He did not arrive until March 21, 1790, when
Washington had been in office nearly a year. But this situation occasioned
no remark. The notion that the heads of the departments formed a cabinet,
taking office with the President and reflecting his personal choice as his
advisers, was not developed until long after Washington's administration,
although the Cabinet itself, as a distinct feature of the system of
government, dates from his first term. The importance which the Cabinet
soon acquired is evidence that, even under a written constitution,
institutions owe more to circumstances than to intentions. The
Constitution of the United States is no exception to the rule that the
true constitution of a country is the actual distribution of power,
written provisions being efficacious only in the way and to the extent
that they affect such distribution in practice. Hence results may differ
widely from the expectations with which those provisions are introduced. A
constitution is essentially a growth and never merely a contrivance.

CHAPTER II

GREAT DECISIONS

While Washington was bearing with military fortitude the rigors and
annoyances of the imitation court in which he was confined, Congress
reached decisions that had a vast effect in determining the actual
character of the government. The first business in order of course was the
raising of revenue, for the treasury was empty, and payments of interest
due on the French and Spanish loans were years behind. Madison attacked
this problem before Washington arrived in New York to take the oath of
office. On April 8 he introduced in the House a resolution which aimed
only at giving immediate effect to a scheme of duties and imposts that had
been approved generally by the States in 1783. On the very next day debate
upon this resolution began in the committee of the whole, for there was
then no system of standing committees to intervene between the House and
its business. The debate soon broadened out far beyond the lines of the
original scheme, and in it the student finds lucidly presented the issues
of public policy that have accompanied tariff debates ever since.

Madison laid down the general principle that "commerce ought to be free,
and labor and industry left at large to find its proper object," but